╰┈➤ˎˊ˗ ꒰ u and bsf!jj don’t have any boundaries atp …꒱
“dude, what did we just walk into?” pope murmurs quietly to john b beside him, his eyes seemingly unable to move from the sight in front of the pair: you and your so called ‘best friend’ jj maybank, cuddling in your bed. completely unconscious, completely enveloped in each other.
john b’s not as surprised; being the technical owner of the pogue’s shared hangout spot — and the place you and jj crash at so often you also essentially live at — he’s slightly more normalised to the lack of boundaries you experience with the other. especially after parties at the boneyard full of beer and weed, or long days that could easily send you into a seventeen hour nap, you often find yourself sleeping on jj’s chest. well, vice versa more commonly then he’d like to admit.
john b pats pope on his shoulder lightly, shaking his head at the scene. he’s swiftly stepping out of your room and moving onto bigger, ‘better’ things — aka, what next to do in terms of gold hunting — else where in the chateau. “i don’t know, but i think we ought to give ‘em space.”
pope however, can’t pull his gaze off of you both. jj’s on top of you in every sense, with his large form pressing into you and his face nuzzling in between your chest. he’s even got his muscular arms wrapped tightly around your waist, impermitting you to move away from him even while asleep. you’re equally pressing into him, with your own arms swaddling around your best friend’s upper body, one hand lazily placed at the base of his skull; even while pretty much comatose, your fingers instinctively rifle through strands of his golden, sun-damaged hair.
even as early day sunlight streams in from your open window — which allows in the faint buzz of crickets hiding in the tall grass just beyond the walls of the chateau. even as your blanket slides off the bed, you start relying on jj's apparently endless body warmth. even as his snores wrack through the room, you press closer to him, your arms subconsciously bringing him nearer to you.
pope gets pulled out of his awe by the sound of john b complaining else where in the house: “mind you, he called me whipped! the balls on this guy. they’re not even officially together.”
day by day, calling each other ‘ just best friends’ seems to become less and less believable.
ᯓ★ a / n : i love him.
ᯓ★ thank you for reading!! likes n reblogs very much appreciated 🫶.
hear me out.. ali!david x vampire!reader who’s like just passing through santa carla and has no clue that there’s other vamps, and david is veryyyyy ‘curious’ about them and basically just finds them everywhere but he keeps it a secret from the rest of the boys until they find out and are like ‘dude that’s called having a crush🤦🏻’ but he’s in denial😭 sorry if this makes no sense i love ur writing
Author's Note: hey so I actually love this request and I am more than happy to deliver! thank you so much for enjoying my content!
curiosity
Ali!David x vampire!gn!reader
David had lived in Santa Carla long enough to know all the predators that prowled the streets.
All the vampires.
Their territories.
Their scents.
So when an unfamiliar one wafted past him on the breeze, he took note.
He caught the scent first, then the sight when it was gone, lingering briefly among the crowds on the boardwalk.
Interesting .
The next night, you were perched on the railing, watching the ocean instead of the tourist-filled boardwalk below.
You caught sight of him first, watching you, and turned to face him with a smile on your face.
"So," you said, tilting your head to the side, "is this your hunting grounds?"
David smiled.
"Depends on who's asking."
You finally took a proper look at him, amusement dancing across your features.
"Just passing through."
"You always pass through for three nights?"
"You've been counting."
"…I notice things."
"Hm."
You left before he could ask anything else.
The fourth night, he found you again.
Not on purpose, of course.
He had been riding past the cliffs, not really looking for anything in particular, when he stumbled across you.
"You again," you said with a smirk.
"You again."
"I thought you said this wasn't your territory."
"I never said that."
"You implied it."
David crossed his arms over his chest.
"You ask a lot of questions."
"So do you."
"…Fair."
You laughed, the sound echoing in his chest long after you disappeared into the night.
It became a habit.
He would "accidentally" find himself on the overlook every time he wanted to watch the moon rise or at the abandoned pier twenty minutes after you had left. He learned you preferred to feed on drunks and violent men rather than innocent tourists, that you changed your location every month or so, that you collected old records from thrift shops because it was "part of the adventure."
None of it was intentional.
It just… happened.
"You know," you said one night as you sat on the roof of an abandoned motel, "you're following me."
David scoffed.
"I don't follow people."
"No?"
"No."
You gestured vaguely at the boardwalk below.
"You've 'accidentally' stumbled upon me six times now."
"…Santa Carla isn't that big."
"Mhm."
"I patrol."You patrol antique stores now?".."
"You spent forty minutes pretending to look through vinyls."
"…They had good music."
You smiled.
"I bet."
The boys started noticing, too.
David started disappearing for hours at a time and returning with the scent of other vampires clinging to him.
Sometimes he'd smile to himself when he thought no one was looking.
Paul nearly ended up in the hospital after seeing it happen for the third time.
"What the hell was that?"
David frowned at him.
"What?"
"You smiled."
"I did not."
"You did."
"I was thinking."
"About what?"
"…Nothing."
The "secret" didn't last nearly as long as he'd hoped, unfortunately.
It was Marko who caught him, not doing anything suspicious at all, just actually talking for once.
David was leaning against the railing, listening to you tell yet another ridiculous story about getting distracted by live music and accidentally staying in New Orleans for a week, when he laughed.
Actually laughed.
"Then I realized that I had no idea where my bike was."
Marko's jaw dropped. All three boys were gaping at David by the time he returned to the cave.
Paul looked positively giddy when David finally arrived.
"So."
David looked at each of his friends in turn, waiting for one of them to say something, anything, really.
"…So?"
"Who is the vampire?"
Silence.
"What vampire?"
"The one you've been sneaking off to see."
"I haven't been sneaking."
"You've disappeared every night for almost two weeks," Dwayne said dryly.
"I've been… observing."
Marko practically choked on the words.
"Observing."
"Yes."
Paul looked at him expectantly. "And what's their favorite food?"
David blinked at him.
"…Blood."
"Besides blood."
"…"
"What music do they like?"
"…Classic rock."
"What do they collect?"
David opened and closed his mouth a few times before finally sighing in defeat.
"…Records."
Paul groaned loudly, covering his face with his hands.
"DAVID."
"What?"
"That's called getting to know someone."
"I needed information."
"You know they hate olives."
"…That's tactical."
"You know their birthday."
"…It came up naturally."
"You know their favorite place to watch sunsets."
"…"
"…"
"…That one's irrelevant."
Marko buried his face in his hands.
"Oh my god."
"I do not have a crush."
Three pairs of eyes stared unblinkingly at him.
"You absolutely do," said Dwayne.
"I don't."
"You've literally never talked this much to anyone," said Paul, his grin wide.
"I'm gathering intelligence."So when are you gathering intel with them tomorrow?"
"…Around nine."
The cave went silent. David went rigid.
"HE HAS A SCHEDULE." Marko said triumphantly.
The next night, you were waiting for him on the cliff when he arrived, your motorcycle parked next to the wall. You tensed when you heard the familiar patter of boots against the sand behind you, but it wasn't the boys.
"You know," you said as David sat down on the ground across from you, "your friends followed you yesterday."
He sighed.
"…They found out."
"Took them long enough."
"You knew?"
You gave him a strange look, like he was speaking in another language.
"David."
"…What?"
"You've been finding excuses to talk to me for almost two weeks."
"I have not."
"You asked me what my favorite constellation was."
"…I was curious."
"You brought me a record you found because you thought I'd like it."
David busied himself with staring at the ocean.
"I was being… polite."
A laugh escaped you, warm and pleasant.
"You are the worst liar I've ever met."I don't lie."You do."
"…Poorly."
"Very."
For once in his long, long existence, David was at a loss for words.
You nudged his shoulder with yours.
"It's okay."
He looked at you, surprised.
"I was hoping you'd keep showing up."
David blinked at you, a slow smirk spreading across his face.
"…Don't tell the boys."
You laughed, tilting your head back to look at the sky.
synopsis: david is supposed to belong to the night, but at two in the morning, he's taking up all the space in your apartment.
You got home shortly after one in the morning and nearly tripped over David’s boot.
It sat directly inside the front door, wet from the rain and abandoned on its side. The other had made it several feet farther into the apartment before meeting a similar fate beside the couch, where his leather jacket now hung across the back cushion.
You stood there for a moment, keys still in hand. David had a key. Technically. You had never given him one, but that distinction had stopped mattering several weeks ago. At least there wasn’t blood on the carpet this time.
You locked the door behind you and dropped your bag onto the kitchen table.
“David?”
No answer. Water shifted somewhere down the hall.
You followed the trail of clothing toward the bathroom. A studded glove sat on the kitchen counter. His shirt was outside the bathroom door, half-soaked and stained crimson around the collar, one of the sleeves torn completely off.
“...David?”
“I heard you the first time.” His voice came from behind the door. You pushed it open.
David was in your bathtub.
For several seconds, neither of you said anything. The bathroom mirror had completely fogged over. Steam crowded the small room, and nearly every inch of the bath had disappeared beneath an unreasonable amount of white foam. The bottle of lavender bubble bath you had bought two days ago floated empty beside his arm.
You crossed your arms, staring down at him.
David leaned his head back against the porcelain. “Relax, sweetheart. It’s not holy water.”
“You used all of it,” you stated, pointing at the bottle.
David glanced toward the plastic bottle as though he had no idea how it had gotten there. “There wasn’t much left.”
“It was brand new!”
“Then you bought a very small bottle.”
“It cost twelve dollars.”
His eyebrows lifted. “You paid twelve dollars for soap?”
“It’s not soap.”
“It made bubbles.”
“That doesn’t make it soap.”
David considered this before sinking lower into the water. “You got ripped off.”
You stared at him. He smiled—that sharp, effortless smirk that meant he’d won. His hair had been pushed back from his face, though several wet strands had already fallen loose again. A thick line of blood ran from behind his ear and disappeared beneath the bubbles.
“Whose is that?” you asked.
The smile remained. “Hello to you, too.”
“David.”
“It’s not mine.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“I know.”
You stepped inside, picking his shirt up from the ground before shutting the door. The steam immediately pressed against your skin.
You held up the shirt; the fabric was ruined, the sleeve torn nearly in half. “What happened?”
“Somebody grabbed me.”
“So you tore your own sleeve off?”
“He grabbed the jacket, I gave him some of the shirt.” David shrugged, a few bubbles sliding down his pale shoulder. “He wanted a piece of me. I let him have one.”
“Did he survive taking it?”
David’s eyes drifted toward the ceiling, unbothered, as if the question was beneath him. His smile came slow. “Look at you,” he dropped his voice, dragging the moment out, “so many questions for someone who hasn’t earned the answers.“
You dropped the shirt beside the sink, lifting a hand to rub your temple. “Great.”
“He was alive when I left,” David offered. “Mostly.”
“That isn’t reassuring.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be.”
“You broke in here covered in blood.”
“I didn’t break in. You should stop leaving your key in obvious places.”
“It was under my mattress.”
“Exactly,” he scoffed, his smile widening as he looked back at you. “And besides, it’s only blood. It washes out. See?” He gestured to the faint pink tint in the water. “Good as new.”
You walked over and sat on the porcelain edge of the tub, your hip only a few inches from his shoulder. The sight of David surrounded by lavender bubbles was still difficult to process. Most nights, he came straight from the boardwalk in leather and stage makeup, carrying himself like the crowd had followed him all the way home. Tonight, he smelled like a luxury spa and looked almost harmless.
Almost.
“You had a show tonight,” you began.
“We have a show every night.”
“How did it go?”
“Fine.” The answer came too fast.
You looked at the torn shirt again. “Looks like it.”
“The shirt had nothing to do with the show.”
“So something happened afterward.”
He dragged one hand through the water, sending bubbles sliding up the side of the tub. You waited. Silence usually annoyed him enough to start talking on his own. Tonight was no different.
“Max thinks I’m wasting my time,” David eventually muttered, his eyes landing on your face before tracking down your neck. “The band. Michael. All of it.”
“And what does Max want you to do instead?”
“What he always wants.” David looked up, his gaze heavy and dark. “Do you really want to spend your night talking about Max, baby?”
You rolled your eyes, though his words still managed to catch you off guard, a sudden spike of heat tracing down your spine.
“No,” you said.
“Good.”
You shook your head, leaning forward to dip two fingers into the water near his shoulder.
The heat made you jerk your hand back immediately.
“Holy shit, David!” you hissed. You shook out your fingers, staring at the bath in disbelief. The skin across your knuckles had already started turning red.
“How are you sitting in that? It’s practically boiling.”
David glanced down at the water.
“It’s fine.”
“It is absolutely not fine.”
Before you could move away, David’s wet, bare hand shot out of the water. His fingers wrapped around your thigh, pinning you to the edge of the tub.
You gasped. The contrast was a violent shock—the water on his skin was near boiling, but his actual hand, his flesh, was freezing cold against your bare leg. It felt like dry ice pressing into your skin.
His gaze dropped to watch your skin flush under his touch. “You’re dramatic,” he murmured, drawing a slow line up your thigh. “Get in.”
The invitation sounded much more like an order.
“I’m not getting into a boiling bath,” you said, your voice a little breathier than you wanted it to be. You reached down, twisting the faucet to take the edge off. David watched the water level rise slightly before you turned it off. “Turn around so I can change.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“I’m changing.”
“I know.”
“Turn around.”
Reluctantly, David listened, releasing your leg and presenting you with his back. You stripped quickly, leaving your clothes in a pile on the counter before stepping over the edge into the mountain of foam.
But the second your foot broke the surface, you stopped dead.
“What the hell?”
David frowned, looking back over his shoulder. “What?”
The water wasn't hot anymore. In the short time his hand had been on your thigh, David’s icy, unliving mass had completely leached the heat out of the water. It was freezing.
“David! You refrigerated the entire bath!”
David’s eyes narrowed as he turned back around. “Don’t.”
“You’ve been sitting here so long you turned it into an ice box!”
“You don’t have to get in,” he murmured, the corners of his mouth twitching as his eyes tracked the line of your collarbone. “But I know you’re going to.”
You ignored his comment and put your foot in again before you could change your mind, shivering as you lowered yourself into the opposite end of the tub. The tub was small; your foot pressed against his thigh while his knee rested beside your hip. His skin felt colder than the water.
"You can't stay away from me," he teased, and you felt the words more than heard them, low against your ear. Angered by his smug expression, you gathered a handful of bubbles and threw them directly at his face. They landed across his cheek and nose.
David slowly blinked. The teasing dropped out of his face entirely.
“Come here.”
“I think I’m fine.”
“You have three seconds.”
You went to throw another handful, but David caught your ankle beneath the water. With a sudden, powerful jerk, he pulled you forward. A wave of water crashed over the side of the tub. You shrieked, sliding across the slick porcelain until you collided hard against his chest.
David’s hand moved from your ankle to your wrist, pinning it against the edge of the tub. His other hand came up to cup the back of your neck, his fingers tangling in your hair. His thumb rested directly over your racing pulse; the steady, frantic beat thudded against his cold palm.
“You’re shivering,” he murmured, his face inches from yours.
“Because you stole all the heat,” you whispered, your pulse jumping hard enough that you were sure he could feel it under his palm.
“Let me give some back.”
David leaned in, his lips brushing against yours first—a freezing contrast to the warmth of your skin. You gasped at the cold shock of it, and he used the moment to deepen the kiss. He released your wrist, his hand sliding down to grip your waist and pull you completely into his lap, his solid chest pressing unyieldingly against yours. You wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling him closer as he bit your lower lip just enough to make you sigh into his mouth. The kiss grew slower, heavier, melting the chill between you until your skin tingled. He tasted of rainwater and the sharp, copper sting of iron—faint, but unmistakable beneath the sweet mask of the lavender.
When he finally pulled back, his breaths were shallow. A faint, unnatural flush of life had actually risen to his cheeks from the sheer heat of your skin. He returned his grip to your wrist, thumb tracing your pulse point again.
It was then that the pieces finally clicked in your head: the scalding hot water, the bath over the ocean. Why he had stayed here instead of choosing to bring you back to the cave.
“You were trying to warm yourself up,” you whispered gently, “before I got home. That’s why the water was so hot.”
His thumb paused against your wrist. “I was covered in blood.”
“You could’ve cleaned off anywhere.”
“I wanted a bath.”
“You don’t take baths.”
David released your waist, deflating just enough that you knew you'd hit the mark. “You complain when I’m cold.”
You blinked, your brows pulling together. “I do not.”
“You move away.” David leaned back against the tub, looking somewhere over your shoulder.
You thought about the mornings you woke up on the opposite side of the bed. It happened almost every time he stayed over: you always fell asleep close to him, but sometime during the night, your body would subconsciously drift toward the warmer side of the mattress. David had never said anything. Apparently, he had still noticed.
“You took a bath so I wouldn’t push you away.”
He didn't answer right away. When he did, his voice had gone flat. "I took a bath because I had blood in my hair."
“You used lavender bubble bath to make yourself warm enough to cuddle.”
David’s eyes snapped back to yours. “Choose your next words carefully, angel.”
You reached up, brushing a wet strand of hair away from his face. “I love that you wanted me close.” Before he could respond, you leaned forward to press a soft, lingering kiss to his jawline, right over the faint trace of dried blood. “Turn around. Let me wash your hair before we both freeze to death.”
David hesitated, then sighed, shifting so his back faced you again. You picked up the plastic cup by the faucet, filling it with water and pouring it carefully over his head. The first stream ran pink down his neck.
“Was it Max?” you asked, working your fingers through the damp strands.
“No.”
“...But you argued with him?”
You worked through another section of hair. For a while, David said nothing. Then he sighed.
“He thinks I’m taking too long with Michael. That the band’s making me careless.” David’s mouth tightened. “He thinks the boys need discipline.”
“He likes that word.”
David glanced over his shoulder. “Exactly. And he’s…fixated on you.”
Your fingers stilled in his hair for a fraction of a second. “Fixated how?”
David went quiet for a second too long. “He’s been watching us. He likes how you take care of things. He thinks you're soft…loving.” David let out a low, rough hiss of a laugh, though there was zero humor in it. “He thinks a savage house like ours needs a heart. He told me you’d make the perfect baby of the family, once we fix that pulse of yours.”
The baby of the family.
The words hung heavily in the steam, and your arms prickled with goosebumps that had nothing to do with the cold bathwater. You had met Max at the video store months ago. He had approached you with a warm smile and introduced himself as David’s adoptive father, sounding more like an exhausted suburban parent than anything remotely dangerous. According to him, David was a good kid going through a rebellious phase. The cave, the band, the leather—none of it was supposed to last forever.
After that came the dinners.
Max always insisted on hosting. He remembered things you mentioned once, bought you gifts you never asked for, and asked about your future as though he expected to be part of it. Sometimes, one of the boys would appear outside your work or follow you home and claim they had simply been nearby. Max called it looking out for you.
He had never had a daughter before.
Apparently, he liked the idea.
You worked the last of the blood from David's hair. "And what do you think?" you asked, voice soft.
David’s shoulders tensed beneath your hands. “I think he needs to stay out of it.” He glanced back at you, voice dropping. “He doesn’t get to decide what happens to you.”
You poured another cup of water, rinsing the last of the blood away until the water ran completely clear, and pulled the plug. “You could’ve called,” you said.
“And said what?”
“That you didn’t want to go back to the cave.”
“I can go wherever I want.”
“You know what I mean. The boys would’ve asked questions.”
“They know better.”
“They still would’ve noticed.”
He turned enough to glance at you over his shoulder. “And you didn’t?”
“I always notice.”
Your fingers remained against his shoulder, tracing absentmindedly over the cold skin at the base of his neck. David’s head tipped back against the edge of the tub. His attention dropped toward your hand.
“Good,” he mumbled. His hand closed around your wrist before you could pull away. “Let me know when you’re done playing with the soap.” His thumb moved once against your pulse. “Then we can do this properly.”
You didn’t really know what to say to that. David turned back around before you could figure it out.
By the time you finally drained the tub, the water had become unbearable. You climbed out first and wrapped yourself in a towel. David stayed where he was until most of the water had disappeared, staring down as the last of the bubbles circled the drain. His plan had failed completely. Any warmth the bath had given him was already gone.
You dried off and changed in the bedroom, eventually convincing him to finally get up and track down a spare pair of black pants he’d left behind weeks ago.
When you climbed into bed, David was still standing beside the window, watching the rain run down the glass.
“Aren’t you coming?”
He looked back. “I don't want to freeze you out of your own bed.”
You lifted the heavy comforter in response. The mattress dipped as he slid in beside you. Neither of you said anything. But as sleep finally began to pull at you, you didn't drift away to the warm side of the mattress.
Instead, you reached across the gap, caught his cold wrist, and pulled his arm around your waist. You backed up until your spine was pressed against his chest, absorbing the chill of him without a second thought.
David went completely still. Then, his arm tightened around you, pulling you securely against him. His mouth brushed the warm skin at the back of your neck.
“Go to sleep, baby,” he whispered.
When you woke the next morning, David was gone.
His clothing had disappeared from the bathroom floor. The water had been cleaned up, though one of your towels was missing. So was your spare key.
None of that surprised you. The brand-new, twelve-dollar bottle of bubble bath sitting on the bathroom counter did.
Vanilla.
A small piece of paper was tucked underneath it. In messy, jagged handwriting, it read:
Lavender was terrible.
You turned it over. A second line had been written on the back.
Keep the water hot tonight.
a/n: apologies for the delay friends! honestly, i've been super drained recently and haven't felt like i've been producing my best work, so i wanted to wait until i was satisfied with at least this to share with you all. i have a couple of other fics in the works, but honestly, i've just been super overwhelmed recently. i decided to step away from my inbox for this one, to right something just for me.
and what's more self-indulgent than a david fic, a bubble bath, and a steamy makeout scene? (get it, steamy? because it's steamy? ok im going to shut up now)
thanks for reading, feel free to send in a request! there is no human way for me to directly write every single one, but i do read them all for inspiration. i love hearing ideas! spit them out!
p.s. if there's any stranger things fans that made it this far....send in some billy requests!
DOUBLE P.S….i lowkey just remembered that uhhhhh ALL water technically burns vampires, it’s just that only the holy water is lethal. so…i guess david’s toughing it up in this fic? whoops!
warnings; use of y/n, use of third person, medical inaccuracies, no dividers (shut up about them in my ask box) , typos + bad grammar
authors note: first written fic in a minute so be nice!!!
—
brendon park prided himself on being a few things: a good son, a great surgeon, and someone who didn’t have work drama. sure, he was aware that he was brash, incredibly so, which landed him the title of “park the shark” which he wore like a badge of honor, because being “park the shark” meant he didn’t have problems other attendings had. he didn’t have any residents seeing him as a pseudo father figure. he didn’t have any residents with a crush on him (or any that were brave enough to act on it). he had no nurses subtly asking him to get drinks.
while he appreciated the separation between work and life, he understood why attendings like dr. robby got caught in the situations he did. it’s hard to have work and a life when work is your life.
brendon tried hinge, bumble, even tinder. women were too young, or too old, or had too many kids, or demanded more of him than he could provide. it was unfortunate, as he was a creature that craved intimacy, like most, but the beauty of being an orthopedic surgeon was that he didn’t have time to mull over his loneliness. there was always a kid who fell off a tree, or an elderly woman who fell when getting out of her bathtub.
the most brendon could sulk was when actively doing surgery. you could tell a surgeons mood based on what played in the operating room. brendon often played 90’s rock, maybe a little modern rap, drake or gunna. if he were a nicer surgeon he’d let residents add to his playlist, however, he was not that nice, or so he thought.
he and his residents were doing an easy shoulder arthroscopy. brendon liked surgeries like this, especially with his favorite nurse back from leave.
as she is setting up the materials for said surgery, brendon asked:
“how was your trip? we missed you here,” his lips forming a thin line, the closest thing he’d done to a smile in the OR in months.
he only ever gave them to her, his favorite nurse. she arrived to the PTMC fresh from university, wide eyed and bushy tailed, which allowed brendon to mold her into the perfect thing for him, nurse, that is.
“i’m sure you made do without me,” she smiled back before continuing, “it was nice, very sunburnt now,” she hummed.
“barely, need you here” brendon grumbled before flashing a smile under his mask. she nodded in understanding before stepping away from the materials and putting her own mask on.
the surgery had gone well, even better than brendon had expected; that said a lot as he expected perfection.
all the residents could tell when brendon was having a good day, he was lighter on his feet, spared a small smile, even gave a laugh, so as a resident was conducting the last stitches he asked:
“is there any chance someone else can control the music?”
brendon looked up from the cavity in the man’s shoulder to stare at the resident. before he could muster a reply, his favorite nurse jumped in, “change it up with a little taylor swift, what’d ya say sharkie” she grinned, staring at the resident knowing she saved him.
“if you can get nurse y/n to make us a playlist, i’ll play it” he hummed looking at her.
“hmmm you guys don’t want that, gonna hear ‘you want a break from the ads’ seventy times” she giggled as she prepared to leave and get the patients aftercare instructions. a couple residents gave a short, soft, laugh, understanding the pain of not being able to swing the additional $7.99 a month for ad free listening, but thankfully the conversation died there.
the idea didn’t die for brendon though, he wanted to know what she listened to. did she like rap? pop? indie? folk? what concerts would she drag him to if he were hers?
he considered texting her and asking for her spotify, saying he’d taken the residents comment to heart, but she knew him well enough to know he was lying. part of him hated the feeling of wanting her, someone he couldn’t have, but another part, a larger part, relished in the fact that she existed in his world in such a grand way, that he could smell the column of her neck as she stood behind him on her tipy toes to look at an incision site. so he had no plan to stop his crush any time soon.
when he crawled into his expansive bed, alone that night, he broke one of his rules. he used his phone 30 minutes before bed, but he broke an even bigger rule, indulging in a work crush.
he opened his phone and searched her first and last name into spotify, finding nothing. if he was normal he’d end his search here; however, he was far from normal. he opened her instagram and searched her following for her name to find what she called a “spam account” where he was featured on numerous occasions.
he often put up a fight when she took photos of him, but part of him loved it. he loved knowing people scrolled through and saw photos of him, thinking he was hers. he wondered if people saw him and thought he was her boyfriend, or her nice boss, maybe a coworker. he thought he should request to follow the account, but that was a dilemma for another time.
he copied her username and pasted it into spotify to be met with her name and a cute selfie of her.
he hummed taking a screenshot and cropping it to her profile picture. he scrolled through the profile, seeing a playlist of love songs, that she had yet to experience to their fullest, based on the playlist title. he smiled, a real smile, one he’d never show in the OR, imagining himself giving her those experiences, filling all of her “big expectations.”
she’d bring him out of his shell, he’d be happy to dance with her at a concert, carry her on his shoulders at a fair when her boots hurt her feet, cradle her when her shoes gave her blisters. he hummed and added some of her songs to his surgery playlists, come on elieen, with or without you, work song; all songs he could say he found himself, but knew you’d recognize.
he exited that playlist and found another one that made him realize how perverted he was. it was from her college days (he said as if those days weren’t eighteen months ago), a photo of her back in a university of pittsburgh jacket, rationally he knew it was a vintage jacket but part of him was seething at the idea of her having a stupid boyfriend who played football while her were in college.
he knew it’s stupid to be jealous over a man who didn’t even exist. it was even dumber to be possessive over a woman that wasn’t even his, and was 15 years his junior. but the lizard part of his brain didn’t care, and angrily clicked out of the playlist and opened the next.
the photo was an actress he couldn’t name moping like he was over that stupid football player that probably had CTE, if he was even real. the name was “we’re in hell” with the description “having a crush on a guy who doesn’t want you” with three heart eye emojis following the text. he felt defeated. of course she was into someone else, she was a young gorgeous nurse surrounded by fit young residents. after that revelation he decided to put his phone away for the night.
the following day, he was in a bad mood, snarling at residents, barking orders at nurses, avoiding consults like the plague. he was pissed, he wasn’t entitled to her, he knew that, but it pissed him off knowing that she wanted someone in the building, someone as incompetent as his residents.
when she strolled in at 9:30am she set her bag in the nurses station along with her matcha with a bright pink foam on top.
“hi doctor park,” she grinned taking a sip of her beverage, creating a small pink foam mustache.
he looked at her, his eyes softening immediately. a whole room of people and he was the first she looked for.
“what the hell is that?” he asked, he knew what it was, he scrolled her instagram often enough to know exactly what she ordered and where she frequented.
“matcha with strawberry cold foam,” she hummed licking the foam off her lip and thrusting the plastic cup into his hand, “you can have a sip if you want?”
“i’m good on all that. hip replacement at 10:10 in 215. complicated injury, need you in there.”
“heard” she smiled taking another sip before setting it down and rolling up her floral thermal undershirt, another thing park loved.
he loved seeing her femininity, he loved seeing the pink water bottle she had, the strawberry lip gloss she wore, the pink alo sets, the floral and pastel undershirts. he never wanted her to be rough, to turn into him, he loved knowing she was sunshine incarnate and he could protect her from rotten patients and rude residents who haven’t learned their place in brendon park’s clinic.
she went to set up the surgery room as residents lined the wall waiting for their attending to come in. she laughed at their formation as she grabbed all the tools, “you guys can loosen up a bit, he’s not gonna kill ya” she hummed. the senior resident spoke up, “he wouldn’t kill you, but he’d kill us!”
she laughed softly rolling her eyes, “you guys are so dramatic.”
“you don’t understand, this is your domain more than it is doctor park’s. in this building it is you, him, and everyone else. you are the sun of this department and we all revolve around you.”
“and i haven’t been given a cute name like sunshine” she pouted as the patient was wheeled in by the anesthesiologist and his senior resident. park trailed behind them and stepped in behind her, gripping her shoulder whispering, “hi sunshine” as he adjusted his mask.
“hello shark” she smiled looking in a mirror across the room to ensure she didn’t have any hair peeking out of her surgical cap.
as the resident started anesthesia, park opened his phone queuing a playlist, not realizing it was hers from when he stalked her yesterday.
as the surgery began, the music was booming. it wasn’t gunna, or the foo fighters, it was olivia dean. the residents were confused and looking at each other with their eyebrows raised, then looking to her. she shrugged softly looking at the only female resident who was humming along.
“did peg you as an olivia dean fan” she teased looking across the patients groin at park.
“i contain multitudes” he mumbled back, the flush of his face covered by the mask.
“didn’t peg you as a whitman guy,” a resident added.
“not a time for jokes,” park grumbled glaring at the resident.
when the next song was noah kahan, then the next one was olivia rodrigo, everyone in the OR was confused, including brendon. she couldn’t hide the grin on her face as she looked at him, charmed that he had taken the time to look for her spotify of all things.
“is this actually nurse y/n’s playlist” the senior resident asked brendon.
he was embarassed, he felt caught, like some creep trying to find his 20 something nurses spotify.
“yeah!” she grinned back, “he asked me for it when you were begging for a change in music” she looked to brendon, he gave her a curt nod, a silent thank you for saving him. she nodded back, wishing her mask was clear so she could tell him he owed her.
when the surgery was finished she began getting all aftercare directions ready humming along to U2. as the residents cleared she noticed brendon standing there.
“can we talk?” he asked, his voice the softest she’d heard it.
“yeah, what’s up?” she smiled as he killed the music.
“i’m so sorry. finding your personal account was an invasion of privac—“
“i already found yours” she laughed, “no sweat, doctor park” she said drawing out the vowels in his name, the title so sultry coming from her lips.
“you what?”
“yeah? i like knowing what old man stuff you listen to while you do your old man things” she giggled taking off her surgical cap. before he could reply, the door shot.
“dr.park, they need a consult in the ED” a resident said, not seeing the moment he interrupted.
“leaving me for robinavitch, not the first time that’s happened” she pouted.
“idiots,” he grumbled shoving his surgical cap in his pocket.
“if the feeling is mutual, text me, sharkie” she smiled as they left the OR. he nodded before getting called away.
after work he opened his phone to see a text from her already.
being married to jack means sleeping on your tummy with one thigh hitched over his waist when he sleeps on his back. his broad hand & chubby wrist holding onto your warm skin, fingers curled around your thigh. you’re basically sleeping on top of him as he wiggles a little closer, lifting your leg up further so he can press his morning hard-on against the soft swell of your cunt.
one hand spreading your cheeks so he can wedge himself into you, while his foot plants flat on the mattress. a low, sleepy, raspy groan “fuuck.” oozing out of him as he settles himself inside.
when you stir, pushing your leg further into his tummy to keep him close, he’s instantly going for the kiss. hips bucking up in circles as he lazily laps at your tongue, “good morning, baby. kiss?”
slooooooooowwww makeout and fucking at 8am on his off-day </3
richie has a younger sister. her and mikey can’t tell the difference between being in love and being best friends that are way happier in each other’s company than any other time.
wow what a big surprise i’m writing friends to lovers again!
Your brother is annoying as fuck. Everybody knows that — every single resident in the city of Chicago, Illinois knows that Richard Jerimovich is really fucking annoying. So, obviously, by proxy his best friend must be pretty annoying too. And he is, Mikey is his own brand of irritating.
…But there’s just something about him. He’s got that smile, and he looks at you and asks questions like there is nothing in the world he’d rather be doing than talking to you. Mikey’s obnoxious, yeah, but in a way that makes you want to be obnoxious with him. That’s probably half of Rich’s problem, honestly, how much time he’s spent with Mikey throughout the years.
Thanks to that, though, you’ve also spent a lot of time with Mikey — with all of the Berzatto’s, really. You’re closest in age to Sug, so in your younger years you spent most of the family (plus you and richie and all the rest of the stragglers) gatherings trying to make conversation. You’re both…very different people.
You have the same ‘obnoxious by proxy’ issue. It seems to spread from Richie like a fucking virus, and given that he’s the closest thing you’ve ever had to a father figure, God help you, you were its first victim. Grandma did not have it easy between the two of you. So, yeah, conversations with Sug were kind of awkward. Natalie, she’s always been like the mother her’s should have been while you’re more of the straggle on little sister clinging to whatever attention anyone will give you. You love her, of course, just like you love Carm, too, but the older you got the more you gravitated towards your brother and Mikey’s company. Eventually, Rich and Bear turned into Rich and Bear and lil’ Bird.
That’s what grandma had always called you. Her little bird, always tweeting and fluttering around the house. Donna had caught onto it and had thought it was the funniest thing considering you’d blown through five different jobs that month.
“Oh,” She’d thrown her head back with laughter, clapping. “Isn’t that true? Like a bird, flying from place to place with no care.”
That’d been a long time ago now. You don’t get to see the Berzatto’s, or even Rich for that matter, very much anymore. Rich and Tiff are married with a baby on the way, Mikey’s running The Beef, Sug’s got her fancy schmanschy boyfriend Pete and her fancy schmanschy bank job, and Carm disappeared to wherever the fuck he went for his equally as fancy schmanschy chef shit. Leaving you just kind of…there. Still fluttering around from stupid job to stupid job like the little stupid bird you are. You did have a stable job for a pretty long minute there — a waitress at this little 24/7 diner. The hours sucked, your co-workers sucked, the food kind of sucked, but the pay was pretty good.
You quit two days ago.
It feels like a relief, if you’re being honest, not having to be tied back down to a place again. You can go back to your usual Birdie ways. Plus, now you can surprise everyone at Donna’s Fourth of July Party you were supposed to work through.
Mikey’s the first one to notice you walking into the backyard from the side gate — he stands from the patio table and points your way with that big grin of his.
“Look who flew in! Hey, lil’ Birdie girl!” He meets you halfway across the lawn with Richie in tow while everyone else waves and greets you from the deck. There’s even something about the way he walks that’s just so Mikey, swaggering and tall, fast and bulky but never in the way.
You laugh, cheeks warm and already achey. Mikey’s always been able to cheer you up like that, like stepping outside on a warm, sunny day after months of rain and sleet, but it’s amplified when he hugs you tight and groans, lifting you onto your tippy toes so your face lands in his shoulder.
“Hey, Bear,” You give him a big squeeze right back, your palms running over his back. “Missed you.”
“Missed you too, my Birdie,” He mutters into your ear while he sets you back down and presses a sloppy kiss to your cheek when Richie starts bitching about sharing and having a turn.
“Wassup, baby Bird?” Rich pulls you into his side to press his lips to your forehead. His stubble scratches over the side of your face, arm tugging around your neck. “Thought you’re ’posed to be working all day.”
“Eh,” You pat Richie’s chest and he takes it as a signal to loosen his grip and start walking back to the deck everyone else still sits on. “Damn the man, it’s a fucking holiday.”
“Did you quit? That’s the type of shit you say when you quit, Birdie.” Mikey snickers from the other side of Rich, who looks down at you with his eyebrows raised expectantly.
“That’s the type of shit I say when the man deserves to be damned,” You make a stupid face up at him, pointing a finger into the side of his jaw hard enough to make his face shift the other way.
“Yeah, you totally fuckin’ quit!” Mikey pitches in, his deep laughter ringing through the whole street.
Richie yells your name, your real name, and pulls you into the softest headlock in existence.
“I was just fucking telling Tiff how good you were doing, you little piece of shit!” He pulls at you just a little harder to make you stumble and shriek against his chest. “Six months you made it — y’know how many times you’ve done that? Two!”
“Help me for christ sake, Bear!” Mikey is laughing his ass off, and you believe he takes pity for a moment when he peels you out of Richie’s grip, but five seconds later you’re back to screeching and now thrown over Mikes shoulder while he jogs up the deck’s stairs.
“Hey Sug, Pete, hi Tiff!” You greet who you can see through the hair curtaining your upside down view against Mikey’s back. “Don’t mind me, y’know, just hanging — around!” Before you can finish your stupid, overused joke Mikey throws you back upright. Dizzy from all the fast movements, you stumble into his chest. He throws his big arm back around your shoulder and guides you the few last steps to the table of food laid out that everyone else had already gotten to.
“Watchu want, lil’ Bird?” His thick fingers give him a hard time separating the fancy, stars and striped paper plates Donna got for the occasion but he refuses to let you help or get your own food — just gives your hip a shove, and tells you to go say hi to everyone else while he fixes you something up.
You listen, because Mikey makes it hard not to when all of his instructions are said in that sweet, light voice and he looks at you with those big brown eyes like you’ve never done anything wrong in this world. Mikey guides you to where he’d been sitting next to Richie at the table and stands behind you with a hand on the back of your chair. He grabbed you a water, too, which is already cracked open when he sets it next to your plate on the table.
It’s easy to fall right back into the system of the Berzatto household, especially on a holiday like this, where the only cooking Donna had to do was already prepared side dishes and Mikey could man the grill while she drinks too much for the rest of the night. It’s nice, all things considered, to get to be with your people. To laugh obnoxiously, and listen to all of Mike and Richie’s stupid stories, and drink a little bit more than what would be considered okay if it wasn’t the fourth of July. Mikey keeps bringing you a beer back every time he grabs himself a new one, and who are you to say no to that.
Richie, for the first time in all of his existence, and Tiff are the firsts to leave and considering the woman can’t drink, nobody blames them. Sug and Pete follow shortly after, as well all of the other random gaggles of aunts and uncles and family friends and whoever the fuck. Donna went inside to get another drink, and never came back out. It’s just you and Mikey, now.
You can hear the radio he’d set up on the deck still murmuring something about America and freedom from all the way around the house on the front patio. You walked around the front the house to sit and watch the fireworks the people across the street always fire off. They’ve been done for a while and way too many mosquitoes are starting come out, but Mikey is next to you on the porch swing, calloused, warm hands going up and down over your legs in his lap, so you don’t really care.
“You ever,” You start, staring off into space. When you’re drunk, you let all the stupid shit your mind lets you think leave your mouth, and you haven’t drank in a while, so it’s probably worse. “Bear, do you ever have dreams about The Beef?”
You tilt your head against the back of the cushioned, wooden bench to find him already staring at you. There’s amusement in his eyes, followed by a little bit of confusion as to where you’re going with this.
“No, not really, Birdie,” He shakes his head just a little bit, but it’s enough for his outgrown hair to move over his forehead. You want to reach out and touch it, comb your fingers through it, pull at it and kiss him hard, or maybe sweet and slow instead. Woah. When the fuck did that happen?
“Why?” Mikey asks like he’s a little afraid, but definitely more curious. His hand stops moving, and instead, his fingers tap above your ankle.
“I get—I get these dreams where ‘m at work,” You squirm around to face him better, knees bending as you move to lay back against the stiff arm of the bench that rocks back and forth from all your movement. “They’re not even bad dreams, i’m just doin’ work shit, but that’s what makes them so bad. Like…like it’s so boring and slow and then yknow, I wake up the next day and have to do actually go do it.”
Mikey isn’t really sure what to say about that, but you can tell he’s listening. Mikey always listens, he always nods with your sentences and makes expressions at all the little plot tangents.
“That’s what happens,” You look down to his fingers tapping against your leg. One of his fingernails still has a white line from when you asked him to come help hang a painting after you’d inherited grandmas house. You’d been laughing so hard at something incredibly stupid and couldn’t stop, so he decided to try to nail the thing up with blurry eyes and shaking shoulders. You want to grab his hand and push it up higher or kiss that white line away or maybe hold it in yours and squeeze three times and never let him go. “That’s when I quit, when I get the dreams.”
Your head falls back with a harsh bonk onto the hard wood, arms crossing over your chest when a gust of wind blows through. You wish Mikey had a jacket to give you because he would, he always does, and you could keep it for a couple days to smell him.
“Fuckin’ stupid, isn’t it?” You mumble, looking over and into the stars. His fingers stop tapping, and instead wrap around your ankle with a squeeze, drawing your gaze back to him. His hand is warm, and so is his thigh under his jeans.
“Don’t say that,” He criticizes you, but it’s so soft it hardly counts. The furrow in his eyebrow looks less like confusion and more like concern and sympathy, now. Those eyes of his will kill you someday — all bright and shiny and dark and wet and just so fucking Mikey Bear like. “Don’t let anybody tell you you’re stupid. Nothin’ about you is stupid.”
When he says stuff like that, and looks like that, big and strong and sweet and loving and so content to be with you and just so Bear, who’s been there your whole life and never said you were stupid, or naive, and calls you Birdie for no other reason than because you are simply his lil’ Bird, you want to fall into his lap. You want to wrap around him and smell his cologne and let his hands touch all over you and feel his voice rumble in his chest under you. You want to curl up over his scratchy jeans and seep into his stupid Miller Lite t-shirt and laugh and smile and never have to be apart for months on end because you both have stupid, busy, boring, chaotic, jobs.
So you do. You pull your legs from over top of him and crawl into his lap. He lets out a huff of air, but doesn’t stop you.
“Thank you, Bear,” You squeeze around his shoulders tight, like you had all those hours ago when he pulled you up off the lawn and into his chest. “I have dreams about you too, sometimes.”
“Oh, yeah?” He grins down at you, a palm landing steady against your back to keep you in place. The other smooths over your hair when the wind blows it over your face. “You wanna quit me too, or what?”
“No,” It falls from your lips instantly and hushed, like even just saying it shouldn’t have happened. “Never, Bear. Never ever. Always get em’ when I miss you.”
“Really?” He says it like he would have never thought that to be possible, that someone would ever miss him that much. His hand smooths over your hair again, and his grin widens. “You’re in my dreams all the time, pretty girl.”
Your own grin grows to match his. You’re not sure why — if it’s the pet name, his hands keeping you secure and touching you so delicately, the admission of you being in his dreams, or it’s just because he’s Mikey, and when he smiles you can’t help but smile too. You haven’t smiled this much in a long, long time. Probably since the last time you’ve gotten to spend a full day with Mike and Rich.
“What do we do in your dreams?” You whisper, leaning your forehead to his.
“Lots of stuff,” His head shakes back and forth just once. This time you only notice because you feel him moving against you. “Back to bein’ kids doin’ stupid shit in my bedroom. Our trip to Lake Michigan, when you stole Rich’s sunglasses in the car, remember that? When the waves were so big, y’know,” You nod in unison. “Was takin’ over the fuckin’ boardwalk and we just kept on goin’, got back to the truck soakin’ fuckin’ wet.”
“His sunglasses blew off my face when the wave almost took me,” You murmur, toying with the neck of his shirt. “But you saved me.”
“Yeah, Birdie,” He nods, once. “Those are my good dreams. What d’your dreams with me look like?”
You lean further into him with a pleasant hum, taking the last tiny bit of distance away to lay back against this chest and play with the little hairs over the back of his neck.
“They aren’t with you. You’re not just apart of it, or a memory or somethin’. It’s just you.” Your hand travels down, scratching his neck gently then thumbing at the indentation the tag of his worn, soft shirt leaves over his skin. “You’re just there, that’s all. Just you and me — me and my Bear.”
Mikey’s hand follows the slope of your spine to sit at your waist with a squeeze. His other one pets over your hair one last time before he uses it to push your head away from the crevice of his muscled shoulder and presses a lingering, soft press of a kiss to to your temple.
“Me and my Birdie. You wanna hit the hay, baby, or what?”
In the morning, Richie will show up for his stupid tracksuit jacket he forgot. He’ll find the two of you, Bear and lil’ Bird, sprawled over top of each other on the Twin XL that Mikey barely fit on by himself for the long time he endured it. Thank fuck he got out of there.
Richie will think nothing of it, because you’re Bear and lil’ Bird, and do something obnoxious like start yelling and clapping or throw whatever not too hard object he sees at Mikey’s back while the big man crowds you against the wall in his sleep.
The three of you will go out for breakfast after you throw on a new shirt you stole out of Mikey’s old closet full of his high school years’ clothing and the jean shorts you wore on the fourth. Mikey will sit next to you, throwing his arm across the booth behind you and Richie will complain about sitting on his lonesome. You will not talk about your time on the porch then, nor ever. You won’t talk about the dreams or the pet names or the forehead kiss.
Richie will ask how you plan on getting another job while you drink a milkshake at 9 in the morning. When you roll your eyes and groan against the straw, Mikey will look across the booth and tell your brother he hired you and that you’re starting at The Beef on Monday. You will choke on your milkshake, Richie will yell something expletive, and Mikey will just shrug.
summary: mornings at the original beef of chicagoland
contains: implied age gap, he's only soft with you type bullshit aka jamie's bread n butter
a/n: in honor of the surprise ep of the bear which i haven't seen yet so no spoilers plz. and plus also however i have had this specific pairing cooking in my head for months so plz be nice ily <3 | beautiful buttons divider from @strangergraphics
You're almost never in a good mood first thing in the morning. How could you be? It's seven a.m, and you're dragging feet behind you that are still leaden from mopping the night before.
Coffee helps infinitesimally, churning the gears in your brain that remain stagnant until the bitterly smooth liquid rolls down your throat. The sputtering, once-white Mr. Coffee machine that's been sitting in the corner behind the register since aroundabout 2004 —if you had to guess— is your only friend until about eight a.m.
That includes Michael.
He slugs in not long after you. He does surprisingly well before prep work begins, as chipper as he can be, much to your disdain.
"Mornin', beautiful," he sneaks up behind you, beard tickling your skin as he plants a kiss to the dead-center apple of your cheek.
You grumble something incoherent in response.
"Still hate the world, huh?" Michael slides his beefy (no pun intended) hands along your arms until you turn to face him. You give a slow, heavy nod.
"Poor baby, can't muster a poor smile for her old man till she finishes her coffee, huh?" He dips his chin so his brown eyes are level with yours, narrowing them slightly. He shakes you by the shoulders like a rag doll, earning a dramatic roll of your eyes that gives way to the slightest uptick of your mouth.
"That-a-girl," he snickers, then tucks a runaway hair behind your ear.
"I hate you," you respond flatly.
"You didn't seem to hate me last night," he palms the countertop behind you, locking you in place at an angle.
"We have a restaurant to open, Michael," you deadpan. His beard scrubs over your skin as he trails kisses down your neck.
"Michael?" He taunts, sliding his palms over your hips and hoisting you up onto the counter in one fell swoop. Your legs fall open the second he so much as nudges them with his knees. Your hands fly around his neck. "You only call me that when I'm in trouble."
He presses his thumbs into your hip bones, bent at the waist to pepper your neck in kisses. You open your mouth to grumble something else pragmatic, about how Tina or Marcus will be here any second, but the mere presence of his warm, large frame over yours melts your brain into mush.
He's an expert when it comes to drawing you out of a bad mood. Something so intimate about his attention solely focused on you, even if it's only for a few minutes before someone inevitably barges in.
The man whose brain tugs him in a thousand different directions, working multiple schemes and angles at once, dedicating all his precious attention on you.
His touch tugs the slightest little whine from your lips. You scoot forward to the edge of the counter, clambering for any piece of him. Mikey's lips finally slot over yours in a long, dominating kiss.
He drags his tongue torturously along your bottom teeth, one hand shooting up to cradle the nape of your neck, holding you steady and purposefully angled. You love kisses like this, before the day's grabbed a hold of him, before he's smoked a cigarette and he tastes only of cheap toothpaste and black coffee.
The erratic, impulsive, reckless man who kisses you in measured, deliberate strokes. Effectively lapping up all the logic and thought from your overworked brain. Something so poetic about all that.
"So?" He asks, peeling his face away from yours. He leaves you reeling and desperate for breath. Your heart thrums between your legs as you tentatively run your index finger along the bump of his nose.
"So, what?" You blink up at him, clueless to whatever deeper meaning he hints at.
"Am I in trouble?" Michael squeezes your hips. The crinkles by his eyes betray he's only playing.
You squirm, your elbow bumping the ancient coffee maker. It takes everything in you not to drag him by the wrist into the walk-in to violate a few health codes.
"No, Bear, you’re not in trouble," you heave a sigh, glancing at the clock on the water-stained wall behind him. Nearly a quarter after seven. Tina really will be here any minute. "But we do need to get started."
He hangs his head. You can practically read his mind, anticipating the rest of the staff.
It’s the same old song and dance. Soon Tina will arrive, then Marcus, Ebra, Angel, Manny. Richie won’t be here till after nine because he’s gotta take Eva to school on Tuesdays. But the voices will suck out all the air in the place, and Mikey will claw to be the loudest because it’s all he’s ever known.
You see it every morning, as the first rays of sun filter through the windows that are in desperate need of a scrub down. The anticipation to start the day slowly eats away at Michael, at your Bear. There are onions to slice and tables to clean, beef to braise and books to balance so all these lovely people can take a paycheck home.
Once he gets going, once he finds order among the chaos, he’s fine.
He’s better than fine. In fact, he thrives in it.
It’s finding the strength each morning to actually do it that's eating away at him.
"You're the only reason I brave this fucking hellhole anymore, birdy," he palms your thigh once before peeling his body away from yours.
"That's just not true," you hop up off the counter, then wrap your arm around his bicep in a quick, comforting squeeze. "You love it here."
"I love you here," he corrects as you swing the door open into the kitchen.
Like a puppy, or maybe just a man whose heart is inextricably tied to yours, he follows.
𓏲ּ𝄢 𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: for four years you've stolen affection from ser gwayne hightower. kisses pressed to his cheek. fingers buried in his auburn hair. now you're finally betrothed, yet he remains as painfully chivalrous as ever, denying being pulled into an unwatched hallway or even a kiss despite his mischievous princess' every attempt to entice him.
𓏲ּ𝄢 𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐬: smut, p with p, mild angst, fluff, heavy romance, swearing, poor gwayne, reader is a menace, yearning, making out, cunnilingus, thigh riding, 18+ MDNI
𓏲ּ𝄢 𝐚𝐧: reader is targaryen (rhaenyra’s younger sister)—no physical features are explicitly described other than targaryen features (purple eyes and silver hair since i couldn’t resist)
title from freddie fox's droolworthy reading of Keats' La Belle Dame Sans Merci~ link
𓏲ּ𝄢 𝐰𝐜: 8.9k (oneshot)
Gwayne Hightower would not touch you.
It was beginning to feel like a punishment.
He was ever the attentive fiancée. He offered his arm when you walked. He held your waist to help you dismount Dreamfyre, but let go as soon as your riding boots brushed the floor. During feasts, he led you by the small of your back when the crowd pressed too closely, but he never allowed it to settle there. These many years you had been beside him, and he had never even stolen a kiss.
He spent four years before your match as your personal knight. And you had hardly been restrained with your affection for him then.
You pressed kisses to his cheek whenever he did something that pleased you. You threaded your fingers through his auburn hair when he knelt before you to fasten the ties of your riding boots. You touched him at any opportunity. And now that he was your betrothed, your behavior grew tenfold.
You wore your lowest cut gowns, enough to earn disapproving stares from the maids, and leaned over tables when he stood across from you, asking what he thought of your rubies, baring your throat with the peak of your breasts.
A few goblets into any feast, you became a terror. You would catch Gwayne’s hand beneath the table and attempt to pull him toward abandoned halls, empty balconies, shadowed alcoves— anywhere private enough so that he might finally claim what was his.
He always followed where you led him. His fingers would close around yours. He would let you pull him from the hall, his long strides carrying him behind you without protest until the music dulled and the torchlight thinned. He followed until he realized what you planned. Then it was like trying to pull a stubborn mule by the rein.
"Princess…”
"Ser Gwayne." You would wrap your arms around his neck.
He would carefully peel them away. You would press yourself against him and feel, unmistakably, the hard outline of his cock against your stomach. Proof enough that he was not unaffected by you.
Sometimes his eyes closed as though he were praying through some private agony. His breath would leave him slowly through his nose. His large hands would settle upon your hips, warm and tight enough to make you ache beneath the silk.
But Gwayne always stepped away. He always peeled your hands from his clothes and returned you to the safety of the feast like some wayward child who had wandered too close to the fire.
Gwayne was too good a man. Too honorable. A knight who still believed in chivalry when half the realm treated it as a pretty lie told to maidens before men stuck themselves inside. He guarded your virtue more fiercely than you, refusing to take advantage of your wine-softened judgment no matter how you tempted and tormented him. Gwayne never allowed himself to ruin you.
It was the hottest day of the summer when you realized why.
You went to the training yard whenever the weather was warm. When the knights in their exertion would shed their shirts to continue their training. It was improper. This was explained to you endlessly by your ladies, your father, even your sister, but no one succeeded in stopping you. You sat there for hours, watching as sweat ran down his throat and gathered along the hard planes of his chest. His auburn hair darkened at the temples. Broad through the shoulders, lean at the waist, his pale skin flushed from the sun.
You sat beneath a covered gallery with a cup of watered wine and made no effort to conceal your staring at only him.
Gwayne made every effort not to acknowledge it.
But the other knights did not conceal their interest in you. A young knight from the Reach bowed every time he passed the gallery. Another removed his shirt despite having done nothing strenuous enough to justify it. When one of them asked whether you might favor him with your ribbon for his next bout, Gwayne lowered his practice sword and looked at him.
“Ser Roland.”
“My lord?”
“If you possess enough breath to beg favours from the princess, you possess enough to continue.” Gwayne struck him hard enough to send the knight sprawling into the dust. When his opponent rose, Gwayne disarmed him so violently that both wooden swords cracked.
He never looked toward you, but the muscle jumping in his jaw was satisfaction enough. His jealousy was one of the few scraps you had. They were pitiful little things, but they proved Gwayne’s restraint was not disinterest.
When the training ended, you descended into the yard while the men washed and dressed. Gwayne’s shirt lay where he had left it. You only meant to collect it for him. That was all. A sweet, wifely gesture before you were properly his wife.
A ring slipped from the breast pocket when you lifted the linen.
It fell into the dust without a sound. It was gold, old enough that its surface had softened with years of wear. Small, delicate, made for a woman’s hand. A pale green stone rested in its setting, not bright like an emerald but gentle, almost clouded, with tiny filigree vines around the band. It looked like a humble version of your own betrothal ring on your finger set with purple sapphire.
Oh.
For months, perhaps longer, you had noticed him touching something inside that pocket. His fingers would disappear briefly beneath the edge of his doublet, finding something hidden there. You had caught him alone once, holding a small golden object in his palm and staring down at it with such a contemplative expression that you had quietly retreated before he noticed you.
You had wondered what it was. And now you knew. A woman’s wedding ring.
You looked toward Gwayne. He stood beside the well, speaking to another knight as water ran over his bare chest. He did not notice you.
Perhaps she was blonde. Oldtown seemed filled with golden women in your imagination, graceful and pious, with eyes as crystal blue as their waters. Likely she was the daughter of some landed knight, far too low for the son of Otto Hightower. She had to be beautiful.
Like your sister, Rhaenyra, you had been permitted your pick of the eligible men presented to you.
Ancient lords offered themselves beside sons younger than some of their horses. Heirs came from every corner of the realm, gathering at Driftmark until the corridors filled with unfamiliar banners and the stables groaned beneath the weight of their entourages. They waited in a line that curved through the great hall, each man eager for his chance to stand before you and explain why his blood was worth joining to yours.
You had sat on the throne of pale driftwood, made comfortable with plush white furs. Your skin polished with oils and perfume and your hair woven with pearls.
Your father’s advisor sat lower at your side, jabbering endlessly on about advantages in your ear.
The men themselves offered ships, armies, ancient blood, loyalty, gold, grain, any and every resource the crown had want for, they offered at your feet. Young and old praised your beauty, your intelligence, your lineage. You were the fairest daughter of the king. Truly befitting the title Jewel of the Realm. A true dragon amongst women. You rested your cheek on your fist.
One lord promised to give you six healthy sons despite appearing near death himself. Another recited the victories of every knight in his family since the Conquest. A young heir stumbled through a poem about your amethyst eyes, despite never having actually looked at your face since his attention was too caught at your breasts.
Then Gwayne stepped forward and bowed.
Your Gwayne. He was painfully handsome in the green finery of his House and silver jewelry; his auburn hair brushed back from his face.
“My princess, House Hightower has—"
“I accept.”
It was the first time you had spoken since the procession began. Silence spread across the hall.
Gwayne remained bent for a moment. When he lifted his head, his expression was almost comical. His eyes were wider than you had ever seen them, lips slightly parted.
“Princess,” the advisor beside you began cautiously, “perhaps you should consider—”
“Pray, consider what?” you turned on the man sharply. “House Hightower is among the oldest and wealthiest houses in the realm and Ser Gwayne’s father has served faithfully as Hand of the King for years.”
Otto Hightower was the worst of any power-hungry, conniving snake you’d ever witnessed, and his elder brother had only one son, Ormund. A cruel, volatile young man according to what Alicent heard from Gwayne. It was a matter of time before he befell accident and Gwayne would inherit Oldtown in his stead.
You had not spent years dreaming of Gwayne without considering what marriage to him would mean. You were besotted, not a fool.
“Every merchant vessel entering the Honeywine pays for the privilege. Every hold filled with silk, spice, wine, steel, or grain enriches House Hightower before its cargo ever reaches the market. Their wealth may not lie buried beneath a mountain like House Lannister’s, but trade does not run dry.”
You looked back to Gwayne, softening your voice. “I have always longed to see Oldtown. The most beautiful city in Westeros perfumed by endless flowers, I am told, and near enough I would be only two days by dragonback from my most precious sister. I think it a fine match.”
Gwayne looked at you.
You had begged him often enough for stories of Oldtown. Of the Hightower burning against the evening sky. The bells of the Starry Sept. Of the great markets along the Honeywine, crowded with merchants and sailors from half the known world. Of the city in spring and summer, when flowers climbed every wall and spilled from every garden until the streets seemed to burst with them. He always answered you patiently.
Otto coughed into his hand to poorly conceal his delight. He had already been presented and rejected before his son. He stood among the assembled lords looking every bit like a fat cat drowning in cream.
At the time you had thought Gwayne’s reaction adorable.
Now you felt like you were going to vomit—
He would not kiss you because he did not want to.
Gwayne had ceased being your personal protector once the betrothal was announced. A future husband could not stand alone outside your chambers at all hours without inviting questions about your virtue. And you— vain, witless creature that you were— found it romantic. You imagined him restless in his new rooms, him lying awake with the same ache that kept you from sleep.
All the while, he had been touching another woman’s ring through the fabric over his heart.
Suddenly every kindness he’d shown you spoiled beneath the memory of it.
He had been romantic, in his careful way. He remembered which flowers you liked and had them brought to your chambers when the gardens were bare. He stood beneath your balcony in the rain because you had fallen asleep under the covered daybed before dismissing him. He warmed your gloves before winter rides and carried sugared plums in his pocket because he knew you became more foul-tempered when hungry. After you rolled your ankle, he had carried you through half the Red Keep.
That was Gwayne’s particular cruelty. He was too good a man to be careless with you. Too honorable to let his reluctance become unkindness.
He had proposed because his father commanded it.
He was your knight only because he was commanded.
You had seen him joust the day your mother died. Alicent had spoken of her brother, how he was good. He was kind.
You had been lonely, half-wild with grief— you had seen your beautiful mother bleeding out in her bed. His blood in the mud. The unfairness. The helplessness of everything. You fixated upon him like a dragon with prey. You wanted him. You wanted him more than you'd ever wanted anything.
Viserys had always had a fatal weakness for his daughters. Jewels, hawks, gowns, ponies, sweetmeats, if either of you desired something, he rarely found the strength to refuse.
He was only seven-and-ten, already a knight. The scar beneath his left eye a neat line of black thread against pink swollen skin. He spoke his oaths to you. That day onward, his life belonged to you.
Perhaps someone had given the ring to him before he left. Perhaps he had intended to give it back with another promise.
Your stomach lurches painfully and you need to physically hold back the vomit, closing your mouth and constricting your throat.
His back was to you. You dropped his shirt back beneath the tree as though the linen had burned your hands. With no greeting nor blown kisses you turned on your heel.
You returned to your chambers, hand clenched around the ring until your nails drew blood. When you finally opened it, the delicate gold was stained red along one edge.
By twilight, you found Gwayne beneath the Heart Tree.
The sky above the walls had deepened to violet, the last of the sun caught in the highest windows of the Red Keep. Gwayne sat with his back against the pale trunk, his linen shirt only half-buttoned and his auburn hair disordered from the repeated drag of his hands through it. His doublet lay overturned across one knee. The contents of his pockets had been emptied onto the grass beside him
The sight of him scraped away much of the satisfaction you had carried with you.
The goldsmith had worked quickly when summoned by a princess. You had rejected three designs for chains before choosing one fine enough to disappear beneath Gwayne’s clothes, but strong enough that the ring would not be lost again. It was plain gold, without gems or needless ornament. Anything grander had seemed an insult to the modest woman you imagined once worn it.
Now, seeing the strain around his mouth and the bleakness in his eyes, you wished you had not taken it at all. “Gwayne.”
His head lifted sharply.
Relief came too quickly before he mastered it. He rose at once, brushing grass from his clothes, though his attention never left your face.
“My princess.”
You smiled despite the ache beneath your ribs. You had done something kind for him. That was what mattered. You brought the velvet pouch from behind your back and offered it to him. “I have something for you.”
He accepted it carefully, brows furrowed together.
The fine chain spilled over his palm, followed by the ring he had clearly spent the last several hours searching for like a madman. Relief broke naked across his face. His shoulders lowered. His mouth parted on a breath.
“Forgive me.” Your voice came quieter now. “I should not have taken it.”
His eyes rose to yours.
“It fell from your shirt in the yard, and I feared you would lose it. You carry it loose in your pocket as though it were a copper.” You touched one finger to the chain in his hand. “Something so precious deserved better.”
“You had this made?”
You nodded. You would not be cruel enough to let him lose his last piece of her merely because you were a stupid, spoiled little bitch who imagined herself loved.
He looked at the chain again, thumb passing over the links with painful care.
Gwayne had always been good to you. Your blood was not made for gentleness, but he made you wish to be good back.
He was romantic in a hundred small ways. He gave you everything a good man might reasonably give a lady but withheld any single thing that would have allowed you to believe he wanted you as a man.
He slipped the chain over his head and tucked the ring beneath his shirt. It disappeared against his chest, settling exactly where you had intended— directly over his heart.
You looked at his face and wondered what kind of woman could place such grief there.
“She must have been very dear to you.”
Something changed in his expression. Love, certainly. Loss. A tenderness so old and deep that it appeared to have settled permanently into him.
“She was.” he said quietly. “More than I could ever explain.” His hand closed around the ring, “I miss her constantly.”
Something inside you broke like a final cut of a frayed thread. You clasped your hands together so he would not seem them shaking. You smiled once more, though it felt like stretching skin over a corpse. “It is late, I should return inside.”
He stepped toward you. “Allow me to escort you.”
“There is no need.”
“It is dark,” he reached for your hand.
You stepped away before he could touch it. The movement was small, no more than half a pace.
Still, his fingers stopped in the empty air between you. You pretended not to notice, giving a shallow curtsy, “good evening, Ser Gwayne.”
You had never addressed him so coldly in private before and his brown knit.
“My princess—”
You only turned on your heel.
You spent the two weeks before your wedding being haunted by a woman who did not possess a face.
You saw her in every maid with golden hair. Every noblewoman who giggled at something dry Gwayne had said. Every daughter of the Reach who lowered her lashes and found some reason to linger near him.
Sometimes she was blonde and gentle, pale as milk, with a soft voice made for prayer.
Sometimes she was dark-haired and bold. The sort of woman who might have met Gwayne in stables or beneath the shadow of the Hightower, pressing herself against him while he promised her a life he would never be permitted to give. You imagined he liked boldness if it was her.
Sometimes she had a full, romantic body that would have filled his hands beautifully. Sometimes she was slim-boned and graceful, made to stand beside him without making him look like a man burdened.
You imagined him kissing her without having to be begged. Following her into dark halls without stopping halfway to remember his honor. You imagined his hands closing around her waist because she was gentle and he wanted them there, rather than because she had been dismounting a dragon and needed help down.
You imagined him fucking her. The thought arrived most at night, vicious and detailed. Gwayne beneath another woman. Gwayne above her. His auburn hair disheveled through her fingers, his mouth open against her breast, his cock disappearing inside her body.
You became despondent.
The curtains remained drawn in your chambers. You did not rise until later and later in the day. Your meals sat untouched and stone cold or sent back to the kitchens.
Weeks’ worth of unopened gifts all from House Hightower sat piled high and collecting dust. The sent bouquets made your chambers smell of sweet moonblooms and died where they were placed because you would not allow your ladies to put them in water.
Far, far more had already been sent ahead to your soon-husband’s home in preparation for your arrival. You dreaded the thought of seeing any of it. You dreaded ever seeing Oldtown.
Your favorite gowns disappeared into the furthest reaches of your wardrobe. The low necklines Gwayne had once looked away from were replaced by collars worked high beneath your chin. You wore heavy embroidered silk despite the heat and sleeves buttoned at the wrist.
The first afternoon you appeared dressed like a particularly wealthy septa, Rhaenyra had choked on her watered-wine and kept staring like you'd grown a second head.
When you saw Gwayne later in the day, he eyed your gown as well. You gave him the same distant courtesy you might have offered any knight at court. “Good day, Ser Gwayne.”
You did not kiss his cheek. You did not touch his hair. When he offered his arm, you accepted because refusing would cause gossip. Your hand rested lightly upon his sleeve. Nothing more.
You addressed him only when courtesy required it.
Thank you, Ser Gwayne.
That will be all, Ser Gwayne.
You need not trouble yourself, Ser Gwayne.
Within two weeks, Rhaenyra had exhausted both her patience and her sympathy.
“You are ill,” she said, bursting into your chambers, despite it being the midday before your wedding, to find you still in bed. Your wedding gown hung ready for you against your painted screen. You spent the night and morning staring glumly at it.
Your sister planted both hands upon her hips.
“You do not attend the training yard. You have not spoken of your wedding, not with me or the planners. You have not tormented poor Ser Gwayne.” Her eyes narrowed. “And worst of all, you have not even been to see Dreamfyre in three days.”
You groaned, just wishing for her to go away. “I am not ill.”
"I swear to the gods, if you're pregnant out of wedlock—"
You dragged a pillow over your head. “I'm not pregnant, you bloody fool.”
There was a pause and you could feel her gaze burning a hole into your back. “Are you certain.”
“I would first need to actually bed him for that to be possible.”
Rhaenyra crossed the room in several quick strides and ripped the pillow from your face, staring down at you as if it was life and death. “You have not bedded him?”
You glare up at her, face scrunched.
“Your wedding is tomorrow. You have been betrothed for months. By the gods, what have you been doing all this time?”
You rolled away from her.
“Send for him. Have him take you. When the child arrives before the proper number of moons, we can claim it came early.”
You threw a pillow at her. “Are you deranged! I am still a maiden!”
She wore satisfaction like silk having managed to finally rile you for the first time in weeks. She sat heavily at the edge of your bed and laid atop you, her low back across yours. “Tell me.”
You did not want to. But there were no secrets allowed between you. And your sister was a relentless animal. She would remain atop you all day if necessary. She’d lie here till the end of time if it meant you would feel better.
“There is another woman.”
As you told your story, your sister’s expression did not change. You didn’t expect her to understand. She has little interest in your brother-in-law, Laenor, which was hardly surprising considering he possessed even less interest in her entire sex.
“Ah. Well.” She nodded, resolved. “He has always made you too soft anyways. And now the solution is obvious,” her mouth curved faintly. “He will be your husband before the court. In private, you must do as I do. Occupy yourself elsewhere just as he will.”
Your stomach soured horribly again at the thought of another woman in his bed while you were married. But your thoughts moved toward her newest personal knight.
Ser Harwin “Breakbones” had become a frequent presence near your sister. Broad as a fortress wall, smiling too easily whenever she spoke. Due to your sister's scandalous stories, you were far more familiar with the way the man used his cock more than his actual personality.
“Such as your new occupation with Ser Harwin.”
Her smile widened. “Ser Harwin is certainly devoted to his duties.”
“I am certain he performs them tirelessly.”
“He has remarkable stamina.”
You laughed and you saw her face light in the way it always did when she managed to make you laugh. Then you saw the idea form in her head. A devious little spark.
Before you could object, she caught your face between both hands and smashed a kiss against your cheek. It was wet, loud and irritating.
You shoved at her shoulder, wiping her spit off. “Ugh! Get off me.”
“No more of this.” She declared.
“You are not queen yet. You cannot simply command my misery finished.”
She seized you again and smooshed another disgusting kiss upon your other cheek. “Tonight, we are going out.”
Your sister returned after dark. She slipped through the hidden door behind the tapestry without knocking, wearing a rough brown tunic, loose breeches and boots that had been stolen from a stable boy. Her silver hair had been braided tightly and shoved beneath a dark wool cap, though several pale strands had already escaped around her temples.
She carried another bundle beneath one arm.
“Get dressed.”
It was far from the first time the two of you had escaped into the city. Within the hour, your hair had been crushed beneath a cap, your body hidden beneath coarse wool and Rhaenyra was pulling you through the city by the hand. It smelled like piss and roast meat and floral perfume poured over unwashed skin.
You drank first in a tavern where every table was sticky and the ale tasted as though it had been strained through an old boot. Then a brothel where sailors sang were loud and one of them narrowly missed vomiting into your lap.
You would learn later what happened inside the Red Keep.
A maid entered your chambers shortly before midnight and found the bed empty.
She panicked, searching everywhere you may have hidden in your chambers or the kitchens. All your ladies spent years watching you and Gwayne. if you were upset, they fetched him. When you caused mischief, he untangled it. When you disappeared, he always knew where to look. So, frantic, she burst directly into his chamber finding him halfway through removing his doublet.
"My lord," she gasped. "The princess... I—I cannot find her."
For one moment, he simply looked at her.
His mind rejected the words. You had retired hours ago. He had watched you leave the hall, dressed in dark blue, your throat covered to the chin. You had scarcely looked at him all evening.
“What do you mean, you cannot find her?”
The girl began to stammer. “Her bed is empty, my lord. Her ladies thought she was asleep. No one saw her leave, and the window is still locked, and I checked the solar, but she is not—”
“Who entered her rooms tonight?”
“No one, my lord. I swear it.”
“Who was stationed outside?”
“Ser Martyn and Ser Olyvar.”
“And they saw nothing?”
“No.”
“Then either they are liars or imbeciles.”
The maid’s eyes filled with tears at his harsh tone. Gwayne scarcely noticed. Fear had already taken hold of him, cold fingers sinking through flesh and curling around bone. You had been different for weeks. Quiet. So unlike yourself that he had begun to worry you had fallen ill, though every maester he sent to you insisted otherwise. You acted now with perfect courtesy to him. You looked at him as though he were a fucking stranger and it was driving him to madness.
Now your bed was empty.
“Say nothing of this,” he ordered.
The maid blinked. “My lord?”
"You will not wake the castle. You will not summon the guard. You will not speak a word of this unless I command it."
"But the princess—"
"Would be ruined before dawn if the Red Keep learned she vanished from her chambers the night before her wedding."
The words tasted foul. Vanished. The night before her wedding.
He had seen reluctant brides before. Girls wrapped in silk and pearls with red-rimmed eyes. He had pitied them. He never imagined you among them. Not after you had chosen him.
But you had retreated from him. And Gwayne couldn’t understand for the life of him why. He tried everything. He sent flowers, your favorite white moonblooms, roses, violets, and sweet peas till your chambers began to resemble a garden. Every morning your maids carried armfuls of dead flowers out. So jewels followed. Silver necklaces set with sapphire, emerald earrings, rubies meant to lie against the hollow of your throat. You wore none of them. He suffered through two hours with a court poet selecting syrupy verses he knew would make you tease him.
You only thanked him for the politeness shown by House Hightower.
You scarcely left your chambers anymore, and whenever he sought a private word, your ladies intercepted him with smiling excuses. The only place he ever truly saw you was at dinner and he couldn’t bloody well ask why you were no longer trying to entice his clothes off in front of the king.
His last resort, he wore your silk favor around his wrist every morning in the yard. It was almost embarrassing.
A favour was meant for battle or a joust, not an ordinary afternoon in training. The other knights had noticed. One had smiled knowingly before Gwayne put him flat on his back in the dust. Dutifully, he tied your purple and green woven silk to his wrist every morning.
You always possessed some uncanny gift for appearing whenever he removed his shirt. Without fail he would look up from the yard to find you leering over the gallery, licking your lips like a cat— he, your cornered songbird.
But you never came. His heart fell everytime he glanced to the empty gallery and he was mottled with bruises because he kept glancing, failing to notice the blows coming to him.
He knew first where to search.
Dreamfyre’s enormous body rose and fell beneath the darkness of the Dragonpit, blue scales catching what little firelight reached her. When Gwayne approached, one golden eye opened and fixed upon him with displeasure.
He stopped well beyond reach of her jaws. He had known your dragon for four years. That did not make him foolish enough to mistake familiarity for safety.
Dreamfyre released a low rumble that vibrated through his ribs.
“I know,” he said, jumping back, “I very much dislike my being here as well.”
You had not fled the city. You would never have left without your dragon. You loved the beast with a devotion that was purely absurd considering she possessed teeth longer than his forearm and could swallow the both of you without chewing.
Relief came first. Then frustration. He had not spent four years enduring your mischief without learning that when you caused trouble, Rhaenyra was rarely far.
Gwayne closed his eyes “Seven fucking hells.”
The poppy den was warm enough to make your skin damp. Carpets covered every inch of the floor, stained with wine and ash. Smoke curled beneath the ceiling, sweet and burnt, thick enough to soften every face in the room. Men and women reclined against embroidered cushions with glassy eyes while servants moved between them carrying wine and pipes.
Neither of you smoked. You only liked the smell. You had drunk just enough to feel pleasantly warm without guaranteeing tomorrow's misery.
Rhaenyra sprawled beside you with one arm thrown over her eyes and one boot missing. You had no notion where it had gone.
A servant bent to refill your cup. His tunic hung open almost to his navel, displaying a great deal of smooth golden skin. Rhaenyra lifted her arm just enough to watch him leave. “Laenor would like him.”
“Laenor likes anything with a cock and a smile.”
“He is not so particular about the smile.”
Your laughter choked on your wine and burned as it came out of your nose.
Rhaenyra laughed so hard that she rolled onto her side, clutching her stomach.
You did not hear the door open. Gwayne stood at the entrance to the den, chest rising hard beneath his cloak. For the better part of an hour, he had searched every establishment Rhaenyra’s personal guard, Ser Cole, told him of. Dread sitting like lead in his stomach. He had imagined finding you in some alley with your throat cut open. Some filthy bastard laying hands where no man had leave to touch. He had imagined blood staining your silver hair.
He had not imagined you were lying facedown upon a stained carpet, cheeks flushed, drunk off your pretty little arse and laughing with your equally asinine sister
Then you turned your head and your laughter died.
Rhaenyra followed your stare. For several moments, no one moved.
He expected you to rise and come to him with an apology. You’d wear that sweet, sheepish little smile you used whenever your behaviour crossed the thin line between troublesome and outright criminal. You would hug his upper arm, press it to your breast and look up at him with fluttering lashes, telling him it had only been a bit of fun, Gwayne. And, as usual, he'd melt for you.
Instead, you and Rhaenyra looked at one another.
Something silent passed between you. You bolted in opposite directions.
Rhaenyra threw herself through the back entrance, her single boot abandoned somewhere behind her. Her laughter vanishing behind a hanging curtain.
You made it a few steps before Gwayne caught you around the middle.
A startled cry escaped you his arm locked across your stomach, crushing your back against his chest while you kicked uselessly.
“What,” he said against your ear, each word clipped with terrifying precision, “in the seven hells possessed you?”
“Unhand me this instant!” You struggled harder, trying to pry his arm from your waist.
Gwayne only tightened his grip. He had been imagining your throat opened because some Flea Bottom cunt had recognized the silver of your hair.
You drove your heel backward, narrowly missing his knee.
His patience ended.
He bent, caught you behind the knees and you shrieked as he threw you over his shoulder.
Blood rushed to your head. His shoulder dug beneath your ribs with every step as he walked out. You slapped both hands against his back and tried to force yourself upright, but the position gave you no leverage and you hung limp. Your cap slipped free and fell somewhere in the street white hair spilling nearly brushing his boots.
“Gwayne—!”
His hand struck the fat of your arse. It was not hard enough to truly hurt, but it stung even through your breeches, sharp enough to leave you frozen for one astonished breath.
Then outrage flooded you. “You fucking beast!”
Gwayne’s hand remained splayed across the backs of your thighs, keeping your flailing hips pinned against his shoulder.
“Compose yourself,” he said, voice dangerously calm, “If you kick me again, I shall take it as confirmation that the first correction was insufficient.”
“You would not dare.”
“Tonight has already proven that you greatly overestimate my patience.”
You kicked him again.
Gwayne halted. For one silent moment, his hand remained motionless against your thighs. Then he sighed through his nose. “As you wish.”
His palm cracked against your backside a second time. It landed harder than the first, not cruelly, but firmly enough that the sting bloomed hot beneath your breeches.
You gasped. “You—”
“Choose your next words carefully.”
“You sanctimonious cunt!”
You fought him the entire way back to the keep. You pounded your fists on his back and cursed his name, his House, and every Hightower ancestor unfortunate enough to have produced him. You threatened to have him dismissed, exiled, fed like a goat to dragons. When that failed, you informed him with crocodile tears that your ribs were breaking and he needed to put you down. He only huffed and shifted your hips higher upon his shoulder to take the pressure off, and you released a scream of pure frustration.
By the time he reached the hidden passage, his breathing had grown harsh, and sweat dampened the hair at his temples. Still, his hold never loosened. He endured your tantrum until you reached the concealed door behind the tapestry in your chambers. Gwayne shoved the panel open, strode inside, and threw you onto the bed.
You bounced on the mattress with a startled cry. He slammed the hidden door closed and turned upon you. You had never seen him so angry, never at you.
"What," he hissed, "possessed you?"
"It was only one evening."
"One evening in a brothel."
"A poppy den.” You crossed your arms, climbing to your knees on the bed. "Rhaenyra was only trying to give me a night of freedom."
"I do not care if she took you to the Starry Sept.” He looked at you with incredulous anger.
"The night before your wedding you went wandering Flea Bottom," he repeated, running his hand through his hair but saying the words slowly as if to make them sensible. "You could have been recognized. You could have been taken.” He scoffed. “Do you understand what men do to women they find unguarded in places like that? Do you understand what they would have done to you?”
“I do not belong to you yet, lord husband,” You snarled, “You forget to whom you speak, Ser.”
His face hardened. "I have forgotten nothing."
"Then remember our vows are not spoken till tomorrow. Until then, where I go and what I do are of no concern of yours."
“No concern—” His laugh was short and disbelieving. “I have spent the last hour searching Flea Bottom because you vanished from your bed, and you dare tell me you are no concern of mine?”
“You need not trouble yourself. By this time tomorrow, you will have all that was promised to you.”
Something in his expression shifted, though his anger remained. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“My hand. My name. Dragon’s blood for House Hightower.” Your face was inches from his, voice growing colder. “I shall stand beside you before the court. I shall leave for Oldtown when you commanded. I shall spread my legs and give whatever heirs your father expects of me."
Gwayne went utterly still.
You should have stopped. Instead, wounded pride drove the blade deeper. “Is that not enough?”
“Enough?” he repeated.
“You have never wanted anything more from me.”
He looked as if you had slapped him. “You believe that?” he asked.
“I assure you, I will perform my duty as well as you preform yours.”
Neither of you spoke. You only stared at one another, breathing hard. Then something in him seemed to crack, not into anger, but into exhaustion.
“You have not looked at me in two weeks.” His voice had gone quiet in a way that was worse than shouting. “If you cannot bear this match—if you cannot bear me—” He looked at you. “Tell me. Tell me plainly and I will find a way to undo it. I will fall on my sword before I see you miserable.”
Your throat tightened. Whatever anger had been there had quickly vanished. It hurt to look at the despair on his face.
"What would you have of me to ease this wretchedness I have must have done to you?”
You wanted. God you wanted. Just once before everything changed between you. Just once before he ceased to be your Gwayne when he returned to her.
You leaned up and pressed your lips against his. He was as still as a statue. You moved your mouth against his clumsily, pursing your lips together and then rubbing your lips against his. Gwayne still didn’t move. Your heart pounded painfully in your chest and your face flushed with embarrassment. Tears came to your eyes at his lack of reaction. When you pulled away you tried to hide your face from him. “I am so sorry.”
You still held him, your fingers buried in his hair, tears spilling freely down your cheeks. “I tried,” you say. “I swear I tried to be better.”
"I do not understand." You sobbed and tried to release him, but his hand caught your wrists keeping your palms pressed against his face though it was scrunched in confusion. "Sweetling, by the gods, what do you mean?”
“I tried to stop humiliating you. To stop touching you when you did not want me to. I know I have been selfish. I know what your father made you give up for this marriage.”
His brow drew sharply together. “What did my father make me give up?”
“The woman in Oldtown.”
Silence.
“The what?”
“The ring,” you forced out. “The woman whose ring you carry. You said she was dearer to you than you could explain. You said you missed her constantly.”
For one long moment, Gwayne only stared. The misery of the past weeks lay suddenly naked before him. You thought—
Seven fucking hells.
You thought he belonged to another woman.
Gwayne’s fingers tightened around your wrist.
“I cannot—" your words dissolved around your broken breath. “I am not selfless. I cannot while you bed her. Gods watch her have your children. Please, Gwayne— please— I know you do not love me but please I cannot bear that—”
His mouth cut off your choked rambling.
The force of it bent you backward. His hands cupped your face, almost reverent in their gentleness, a startling contrast to the cruel hunger of his mouth. You made a suprised sound and he swallowed it.
For years he had imagined this.
Every night he stood outside your chambers, he imagined opening the door. He imagined finding you beneath the thin summer sheets, your nightgown rucked around your thighs, and finally taking what you had spent years offering him. Honour be damned, to hold you, press his lips to yours and finally bury himself in your slick, soft heat. Every indecent gown you wore he imagined throwing up your skirts and bending you over the nearest table until you forgot to laugh at him.
But you were his sweet princess. His beautiful love, innocent despite being a demon sent specifically to torment him. Despite what you believed, you did not truly understand the ugliness of men. He had spent years protecting you from his own indecency. He could not endure the thought of you looking upon him with fear or disgust if he acted.
But you were sobbing into his mouth because he had been so restrained that you actually believed he loved another, and Gwayne simply couldn't fucking bear it.
He had loved you since he was a squire visiting, unnoticed at the edge of your father’s yard. You had run right past him, silver hair amess, using your ruffled dress as a pouch for your stolen lemon cakes, your sister hot on your heel, not even noticing he existed. He still remembered the sound of your laughter.
Now you dared apologise for keeping him?
You cried harder.
Gwayne shushed you against your mouth, the sound low and ragged as he tried to soothe you but he did not stop. Each sob was cut short by another kiss. His tongue pushed between your lips with none of his usual courtesy, invading you so thoroughly that your fingers tightened painfully in his hair.
You whimpered.
The sound nearly ruined him. He dragged you closer until your thighs struck his, one hand sliding behind your neck to keep you where he wanted you. His tongue moved against yours with vulgar hunger, licking into your mouth. You only opened for him, trembling while he took and took.
When you finally choked on a breath, Gwayne tore his mouth away. Only an inch. Barely enough to let you gasp.
“The woman,” he whispered, kissing the corner of your lips. “Your supposed rival—” Another kiss. “My mother.”
You froze but Gwayne kissed again before you could reply.
“The ring belonged to my mother.”
His mouth moved over yours between each broken word, as though he could not force himself to leave you long enough to explain.
“She died when I was eight,” a kiss to your upper lip. “I loved her.”
You could not stop sobbing, whether from the wine or the relief or violent exhilaration of having his hands finally upon you.
Gwayne muttered an apology against your mouth, though nothing in the way he kissed you was sorry.
You coughed when his tongue pushed too deep. He drew back just enough for you to breathe, lips still brushing yours in small, feverish kisses, unwilling to surrender even that scrap of contact.
“I am sorry,” he whispered.
Kiss.
“Sweetling, breathe.”
Kiss.
You sniffled and turned your face away, overwhelmed by the rough scrape of his mouth tasing of salt from the humiliating tears covering you both.
Gwayne caught your chin. His fingers forced your face back toward him. Then he kissed your tightly pursed mouth again.
“I love you,” he said between kisses, “I love you. I love you.”
You laughed now against his mouth, still trying to kiss him back each time, still with wet cheeks.
"I should go," He said in between kisses, but he made no move to stand.
You didn’t answer, just tugged him by his collar. You couldn’t let him go. Not now, not after this. The only thing you wanted was to spend this night together, in love. You press yourself against his body with frantic, clawing need to be closer, so that you could cut him open and bury yourself inside his skin. Maybe that would finally relieve that ache you felt within you every day. You rolled your hips, desperate and Gwayne immediately offered his leg without thinking.
Acting on instinct, you hitch your legs around him, and gasp at the sensation. His leg against your thighs and your clit rubbing him through the rough material of your trousers. The friction was exquisite and brutal all at once. You rocked against him, unsteady and wild, while his mouth gentled on yours— his hunger seemingly somewhat satiated by the sensation of you against his leg.
But soon the fabric began to burn, chafing your sensitive skin raw. “Gwayne,” you begged, voice fraying. “Please—it’s too rough.” You tightened your legs around him, holding on like you might drown. “I need—”
He understood, ever your valiant knight. He pulled back just enough to lay you down on the mattress, your body pliant beneath his hands. He tugged at your trousers, the burlap scraping one last time as he dragged them down your thighs.
He looked at you and the intensity of it nearly burned. His eyes raked over your slick, flushed cunt, the faint trembling of your naked thighs, the way your knees tried to edge together in reflexive shyness. His mouth fell open as if he’d never seen a woman before. He groaned as if wounded, “Gods be good.”
You giggled, face hot with the embarrassment of being seen for the first time. It was unbearable. You tried to cross your legs, but his palms eased them apart again with effortless strength.
“Don’t stare,” you whispered, throwing your arm over your eyes.
“You’re so beautiful.” Gwayne's gaze was on your face, dark at the cheeks and vulnerable for him.
He settled down between your legs. He kissed your thigh, then turned his head and kissed the other. He ventured higher and gave a soft bite to the sensitive skin and nosed at the spot before running his tongue over it.
He didn't let you set the pace. When you tried to grind closer, he held you still, forcing you to let him savor. He sucked, he licked, he bit gently at your inner thighs, making sure every inch of soft flesh was marked before he even considered giving you what you desired.
“Husband, please”
As if to reward you for his new title, Gwayne brought his mouth to your center, until his nose was hovering above your clit. You felt him inhaling deeply and you yelped. His eyes were shut tight in bliss, as though committing the very scent of you to memory before he pressed a kiss to your mound. “Gods you’re soaked.”
The first swipe of his tongue was unlike anything you could have imagined. You gasped and slammed your hands down on the mattress. "Gwayne."
Gwayne moaned and pressed closer.
He took it slow at first, so slow you could have died from it. He licked at your entrance without ever quite dipping inside, just tasting the slick on his tongue. He kissed at your clit ever so gently, just to feel you shiver and moan under his lips. But when Gwayne finally, finally licked his way from your entrance up to your clit, the bastard avoided touching it directly with his tongue, instead swirling little circles around the pearl just for the sake of making you twitch and grab at his hair needily, practically humping his face the same way you had his thigh.
He didn’t allow you. One broad hand pinned your hips to your bed, still slowly licking up down and everywhere but where you needed him most. You were throbbing now, achingly empty, and Gwayne was only humming softly above your clit and slowly dancing his tongue in the spaces around it. Not content to let you get away from him without some form of punishment it seemed.
“Gwayne,” your fingers pulled at his auburn hair.
His green eyes opened looking up at you—a direct, flat stroke over your clit that made you gasp, your back bowing off the bed, your knees clamping around his ears as a shock of pure sensation ignited along your nerves.
The game was over. Now his tongue worked you in earnest, lavishing attention directly on your clit before straying from his patterns to trace the hooded flesh around it, only to return again with relentless, focused laps.
Obscene wet noises filled the room, making you shut eyes and turn your head away, body singing in pleasure, a delicious knot building fast in your belly.
But he pulled back and you practically sobbed, your fingers tightening in his hair as he said muffled and breathless against you, “Eyes, wife. Eyes back on me.”
He resumed again only after your eyes were locked on him, though your vision was watery.
His lips sealed around your clit, and he suckled on the bead with a careful mouth, not hard enough to bruise, but certainly hard enough to let the tight knot in your stomach peak and crash through you.
You screamed as you came, having to bite the flesh of your lip to keep from waking the entire keep. Your back arching tight and knees slamming shut around Gwayne’s ears. You couldn’t speak but you whined and Gwayne knowingly went back to licking broad stripes with his tongue, soft enough not to overwhelm you.
He kept licking until you pushed his head away, panting as you came down from your release. Watching the debauched act of him licking his lips, wiping off the excess slick with the back of his hand before his cheek rested, haggard on your thigh.
For a moment all you could do was lay there.
"Was that it?" You ask dumbly. "Was that all?"
Gwayne turned his head and gave a bite against your thigh.
"No," you laugh, pushing his head back as he continued placing punishing bites on your delicate skin. "I meant— will you not let me tend you?"
Rhaenyra had explained to you, in graphic detail, every act she knew to preform and you had always been eager to have him in your mouth, but right now, you could hardly remember how to articulate your own name.
Gwayne laughed and lifted his head. "I do know what you mean." He climbed up over your body and collapsed beside you.
Your fingers toyed with the lace of his breeches, but his hand lifted your knuckles to his lips. "Not tonight, sweetling." He took you into his arms and pulled you close.
You huffed at him and he laughed. “Patience.”
“I have waited far too long already,” you whined but were content enough to turn in his arms and tuck your head into his neck. "Can we not just find someone to marry us now?"
He laughed. Gwayne wondered how you would react if he told you that he would take himself in hand and murmur your name, spilling over himself nearly every night for four year.
"I will marry you tomorrow, in the light of the Seven so all may know I didn’t steal you away in the night.”
He pet your hair and you preened. “Fine... but if you refuse to finally bed me afterwards, I shall lock you in with Dreamfyre and let her have her way with you instead."
Gwayne bit back a laugh. "I am at your service, my princess."
You laughed again and as your eyes slowly closed to sleep, you felt him shift out from beneath you, and your hands fisted to his shirt.
"I must go," he said, gently unfurling your hands. "Before anyone wakes."
"No, stay with me," you whined.
He laughed softly. "Soon, my love, I promise."
He kissed you once, twice, four times, before he pulled away from your grip and slid out of bed.
And when tomorrow came, you two stood together before the altar of the Seven, dressed in white and green, the scent of beeswax and fresh flowers filling the sept. Sunlight poured through colored glass, bathing the marble in pools of ruby and sapphire. You cut one another's lips and were one with him, exactly as you had always been meant to be.
HOTD masterlist
𓏲ּ𝄢 𝐚𝐧: if you stayed this long, thank you thank you thank you!! this is my first fic i’m posting after a very, very long slump. I have more queued up and more in the works MWAH!
if you want to be in my tagged for any character i write for let me know :)
something something tipsy riding robby into oblivion, coming back from a dinner w samira and jack after having a bit too much wineee
(im tiosy as i write this so hopefukly it makes sense))!!
i fear that i have made this more soft than horny but 😭 i hope you like it thank you for sending it to me!!
dr robby x f!reader
content: 18+ mdni, alcohol, sexually explicit content, robby is so so soft and tender
You hiccuped, the keys tumbling from your hand and clattering to the floor.
You giggled, "Whoopsies."
You bent to scoop them back up, but your boyfriend behind you stopped you, with a hand to your shoulder, "I'll get them, sweetheart."
You were pretty tipsy, but still noted the fond amusement in his voice. Placed a hand on his back as he bent to grab the keys and then gently pushed you aside to get to the door.
"How many glasses did you have?" He asked, teasingly.
It had been a rare night out for the both of you, usually too tired to do anything other than lay on the couch with a movie.
But tonight, you'd managed to make it out of the house on a double date with Samira and Jack and Robby had volunteered to be the designated driver. You had taken the keys from him on the walk up to the house, insisting you could open the door yourself. But now he took over, immune to your pouting.
"I don't know," You sighed, "At least three."
He chuckled as he turned the door knob, pushing it open and past the threshold.
Quickly, you followed after, shoving him up against the wall, eliciting a surprised laugh from him, "What are you doin', honey?"
You kicked the door closed behind you and fumbled with the button on his jeans as you kissed up his neck, nibbling softly at his jaw, "Want you."
He sighed as you shoved your hand into his boxers, his soft cock twitching for you immediately as you reached for his balls, "Now?" He managed.
You nodded into his neck, "Right now, please."
It wasn't difficult to convince him, as it often wasn't. He had always been so easy for you, almost pliant, though you would never say it to him like that. Knew he would take it the wrong way, even if you adored it.
Soon enough, you straddled him as he laid back against the pillows, watching you in the low light of the bedside lamp. You rubbed your slick folds over his now hard cock, watched the steady rise and fall of his chest. You loved to watch how he reacted to you, nevermind the view of his bare chest below you, you could never get enough of him.
The alcohol was fading from you, but still had you feeling giddy as you sank down on him, the feel of him filling you up more intense than it usually was sober, the butterflies filling up your stomach quite suddenly.
You leaned over him to kiss him, chest to his chest as you ground your hips against him. You were vaguely aware of him swearing, confessing how much he loved you, helpless to your relentless rhythm.
"Fuck, feel so good, m'girl…pretty girl," He gripped your cheeks in his hand, forcing your eyes to look into his. You lost your cadence at their bottomless warmth, floored by the seemingly endless adoration there. In your pause, he gripped your hips and helped you to fuck him faster, until he was panting hard, falling apart just moments later.
Exhausted, you collapsed against his sweaty chest and closed your eyes as you listened to his heart beat begin to slow, no longer galloping.
"Come on, baby," He said eventually, "Let's get you in the shower."
"I don't wanna shower," You whined. Always curiously childlike when drunk, but still just as stubborn as always.
"Yes, you do. And you'll be upset with me in the morning if I don't make you now. So, come on." He said, gently steering you down the hallway and towards the bathroom, "I'll help."
True to his word, when Robby got in the shower with you, he grabbed your makeup eraser, wetting it before taking your chin between his fingers and wiping lightly over your face, "Close your eyes," He murmured.
You loved when he was soft like this, when he took care of you. Drunk as you were, the way he handled you, delicately, like you were something to be treasured, it nearly brought tears to your eyes.
When he was done, he kissed along your jaw to the sensitive spot just below your ear and you shivered, "Didn't think I forgot about you, did you?" He whispered as he slipped a hand between your legs.
You closed your eyes and leaned your head against the tile walls of the shower. Let yourself drown in the feel of his calloused fingers against your clit, the ecstasy of his tongue as it swirled around your nipples.
You came undone in what felt like moments and he smothered your moans with his mouth. He cooed sweet words in your ear as he cleaned you up and got you into bed, one of his soft, worn t-shirts over your body.
Easily, you drifted off, limbs wrapped around his body and his lips at the shell of your ear. You wouldn't remember his words the next morning, just that you could hear the love as it echoed into your dreams.
synopsisyou just wanted to be helpful, robby's helpful girl, you didn't realise that helping out might've exposed robby in an un-expected sort of way... (2.1k words)
warningssmutish, mention of sex, mention of big dick (it's robby, duh) condom, language
authornotei just absolutely was obsessed with this ask, i loved it so much. it's a big short, just a little thing, lowkey i think it's ass but it was fun. (gif credits to @timothyolyphant)
Pitt masterlist. Last Robby fic!
“I need a condom,”
It wasn't the typical greeting you were used to, really, it wasn't a usual sentence you heard in the ED. Especially not from Samira, flushed in the cheeks with her hair scraped back into a bun.
She'd rushed to you and Santos as you stood outside exam room three, discussing a patient when she joined the two of you, making the statement a little louder than she probably intended. Samira looked around the space behind her and besides you.
Trinity smirked, eyeing Samira up and down. “Okay, Mohan.”
“No, no, not for me, my patient,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “Please, I wish it was for me.”
“Why do you need a condom for a patient?” you asked, amused almost. “Is he hot?”
“What? No? My patient, he's HIV but apparently very, very active and he doesn't have condoms. He says he-he prefers it without and I've explained everything to him but there's no condoms in the draw where we keep them!” explained Samira.
“We have a condom draw?” asked Trinity, taking only that as the necessary information from Mohan's ramble.
You handed her the chart. “You sleep with women.”
“What? So I'm not allowed in the condom draw?”
“It's for sex ed teachings, people who are young and having sex,” you shrugged. “Stuff like that. Come on, I can help you out.”
The nurses desk was practically vacant. Around you everyone busied themselves with greeting the nigh shift and getting them out, taking away patients like the changing of the guard. It was almost too early to be dealing with tough patients who wouldn't protect themselves.
You led the way around the counter, Mohan and Santos (who took an invitation for herself) followed you over to the desk as you reached down for Robby's bag, propping it up.
It was no surprise to them that you were reaching for his bag, reaching for his stuff like it was yours. What was Robby's was yours. The real surprise had been when Mel found the two of you eight months ago making out in the storage room, shrieking and dropping a bag of blood that then splashed all over you.
And obviously at the scream everyone ran over and found the two of you rather compromised and covered in blood. You still weren't really done living that down.
You fished around in Robby's bag, the owner somewhere not there to see as you brought out an opened box of condoms. “Here,” you said handing her a thick strip as Santos laughed.
Samira took them wearily, a small dusting of pink on her cheeks. “Won't you... miss these?”
“No,” you said, rocking on your heels, suddenly feeling the familiar creeping heat of embarrassment. “We have... more.”
Santos smirked. “Keeping Robby in shape, huh?”
Samira shuddered. “I really don't want to think about my boss like that, but thank you!” you said, waving the strip like it was a flag and rushing off before her patient could walk off. She was a good doctor, dedicated you knew and you were just happy to help her reach her potential.
Distracted by watching her leave you failed to notice Trinity sneak over to Robby's bag, peeking inside like a nosy cat.
“Hey!” you lectured, pulling the zipper shut on her hand.
“What? Just wanted to know what else you got in there? Does he keep a pair of panties? Vibrator if it gets quiet,” she teased.
You blushed, shaking your head and looking down to the bag. “You have no shame, that's your boss you're talking about.”
She made a pfft noise. “You're the one screwing him.”
Yes, you were. Proudly and happily.
Javadi slid up next to you, practically shoving you a tablet and asking for your advice. You were somewhere deep in your residency, one of the first they were introduced to on their hell of a first day. Not as scary as Robby, easier to talk to than Langdon. It was typical for the Pittlings and Mohan to come to you when they needed advice. You liked it really, as much as Santos teased you and as much as Mohan and Javadi doubted themselves.
“Hey Crash,” said Trinity, all but giddy with the new knowledge she had about Doctor Robby's contents in his bag. “You wanna know what's in this bag of secrets.”
“No,” you chastised.
Javadi's eyes lightened up. “Is that Doctor Robby's bag?”
“It doesn't matter,” you said, pushing it back down to your feet.
“Hey,” Samira joined the group of you again, handing you back the strip of condoms. “He said he can't take these.” The rest of the doctors and nurses hustled around the Pitt, un-knowing of the personal dilemmas being aired out.
You lifted your shoulders. “You needed condoms, those are condoms.”
“Yes but they're not the right size,” said Mohan. “He says they wouldn't fit, they're too big.”
Oh.
Perhaps at some point you'd been shocked at the size of Robby. Before you'd only had your imagination and hints of him beneath his scrubs. The times when he'd brush past you in the teasing beginning of your relationship and you'd feel something prod at you. The first time he'd dragged you to his bedroom, lips seething in heat and teeth nipping in want to only lay you out on his bed and drag his pants and underwear down to show all of him- then you'd been shocked. Mouth watering so.
Over the months the shock transformed to desire, reaching hands and an eager mouth that you stopped thinking about the size.
You didn't think anything of it when you handed Mohan a strip of five extra-large condoms.
Standing at the nurses station it may as well have been a deserted island and you stared down at the condoms like it was your first offering of food.
“Uh-”
Javadi snatched the condoms from Samira first, staring down at them with mouth agape. “Oh my god.”
“Javadi-”
“Holy shit!”
You looked back and Santos had pulled out Robby's bag again, pulling out the box and staring at the size stamped on the front. “Santos!”
“No wonder you walk in limping.”
“I do not- I do not walk in limping!”
“Well, there was that one time-” said Mohan.
“No, there wasn't!” you argued. “I'd bruised my ankle.”
Mohan chuckled to herself. “Sure.”
Trinity smirked. “Bruised something.”
Javadi was still staring at the strip of condoms in wonder. “How do they even get this big?”
You snatched them away from her the way you might have if a child found them. Quickly you stuffed them in the box, threw them back in Robby's bag and kept it behind your back.
“Wait, why do you have a box of condoms for work?” asked Javadi.
“Oh please,” said Santos with a groan. “They're always at it in work. Better safe than sorry.”
“We are not always at it at work,” you defended.
“The storage closet?” asked Mohan, apparently abandoning the venture of finding fitting condoms for her patient.
You held up a finger. “That was one time.”
“The toilets,” added Santos, sadly remembering the time you and Robby had hid yourselves in the bathroom for a break. A break that was only supposed to be comforting touched turned hot and reaching quickly.
“That one time in the exam room where we thought we were examining a broken hip for a Mrs Driscoll-” began Javadi.
“Okay! Okay, I get it!” you interrupted.
“I think it's nice,” Trinity quipped her lip, arms crossing over her chest. “Get some dick when you can right.” She patted your shoulder like a proud sister as she left the group of you, laughing quietly to herself.
Victoria and Samira followed suit, leaving you with the ramifications of your own embarrassment. So what your boyfriend was largely endowed, wasn't it a compliment? Weren't you the luckiest girl in the world to have Robby with soft and tender touches turned to almost hateful thrusts with how hard he loved you.
You made sure Robby's bag was tightly closed before sliding it back under the desk.
The day brought the same usual storm the ED always brought. Enough to distract you from the mornings events and the package sitting inside of Robby's bag. You were left with only a creeping heat crawling up your neck, the last dregs of your doctors eyes on you and their giddy smiles.
You'd only managed to make it to the staff lounge for a coffee by mid day, taking the mug that was yours, marked with an inside joke and given one secret Santa round.
“Hey.” Robby slipped into the room, leaning his back against the sink and standing next to you.
“Hey yourself.”
For a moment there was a silence where you poured coffee for the both of you, handing him his mug.
Robby's fingers grazed yours, the simplest touch sending shivers through your skin. “Can I ask you something?”
You hummed, head tucked away. He wouldn't have heard about the mornings teasing's, would he?
“Santos has been... off today,” he said.
He would.
You gulped, a feign of concern falling to you. “She has?”
“Keeps looking at me and smirking. She's doing this thing with her hands where she-” he demonstrated, spreading his hands to different distances, some small, some bigger. His hands wavered around the imaginary object between his hands.
You were left groaning.
Robby's head tilted toward you. “Do you know anything?”
In attempts of hiding away the story your head ducked and shook side to side.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing,” you said.
Robby's fingers were slightly calloused but no less humble as he pinched your chin, realigning his gaze with yours. His brows rose, gaze pouring into yours. He didn't even have to ask you again.
You sighed. “This morning Mohan had a patient with HIV and she wanted to give him condoms but there was none where they usually are so I gave her some of ours. But they weren't exactly... the right size.”
There was a small furrow of confusion in his face as he waited for you to elaborate.
You turned your body into his, lowering your voice. “Not everybody can fit into an extra large, Robby.”
The furrow gave and a small grin split his cheeks as he glanced down to your shoes, a pink blooming under his beard and to his cheeks. It was different from your own embarrassment. He was more pleased with himself.
Robby straightened, hands wavering. “So how does... this connect to-”
“Santos was there this morning when Samira asked.”
He chuckled, tongue poking out into his cheek as he shook his head in amusement.
“It's not funny,” you said, nudging him.
He rocked on his feet. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
Your coffee was turning lukewarm in hand, the bitter taste suddenly too sweet as you made to walk away from him and stew in your own humiliation.
Robby's fingers wrapped around your wrist and tugged, using you to pull himself in closer. “Oh, I'm sorry,” he teased, voice dropping into the low drag in his condescending way. The sort of voice he used to coax you down into bed with his darkening eyes and lustful approach. “Is my dick too big? Do I fuck you too good?” His hands grabbed at your hips, bringing you into him, tongue darting out to your neck.
Your body wriggled in his hold, trying to escape as his arms grew strong around you. “Stop!” You laughed.
“Make me.” He nipped at your neck, licking over the sting he caused.
The door was pushed open and Langdon stumbled in the doorway, catching sight of the two of you tangled in arms and laughter.
“Are you two doing it in the lounge now?” he asked.
You guessed you just should've been thankful Langdon wasn't there that morning, otherwise there would have been competitions between him and Santos on who could make the best jokes out of your misery.
Slowly, Robby moved away from you, pulling himself up straight and pulling at his hoodie before leading the way out the room.
McKay was wheeling a patient away to x-ray, Samira was giving aftercare instructions to an elderly couple and Mel was somewhere lurking in a corner talking to Dana.
Santos, however, was still being the most productive, sitting across from Javadi and still trying to make sense of some invisible size between her hands.
You watched, un-able to stop as Robby walked behind Santos and spread her hands apart just a little, enough to leave more than enough inches between her hands.
Robby walked away, satisfied.
taglist (if you want to be added or took off just say the word!): @oldbaddies, @mafercita101,@tiddieshakeshownu, @mismwaa, @annabethpotter221b
synopsisyou and john have always been cut from the same cloth, close in the way only you two could be working in the ER. but what john doesn't know- your deep love for him- can't hurt him. only you. but if you have to hear him love a girl that isn't you one more time, your heart might not make it.
warningsheavy angst, language, sex allusions
authornotei've been binge watching ER, I'm obsessed, my god its so good and of course, I love John Carter. i don't know if anyone else will care but i have to write for this man
“John! Oh John!”
John. Oh John. It was a mantra prayed upon next door to your room. It was religious, almost every other night the calling for his name.
It was damn right sinful.
When John had invited you to move in with him almost six months ago you thought all your problems were solved. You would no longer lose rent on a stuffy apartment you didn't even like, being kept up by frat parties that seemed to run all night. You'd share with Carter, be able to study together as you had since starting as med students together, be able to help each other out and share the rent.
“Oh my god, John!”
You hadn't thought about the noise. The moaning, the thudding of beds, the awkward greeting of the new girl of the week in the mornings where all you wanted to do was drink coffee and get ready for the day in peace.
Your bed was next to Carters, a wall separating the two of you.
This girl was blonde, slim, not from the hospital from what you could tell. They'd stumbled in at eleven and you'd heard him jingle at the door so you hid yourself away, running from the living room you paid rent for to offer them privacy and peace that they never offered you.
“John...” the girl had whined, you imagined her hands crawling up his chest, peeling off his coat and scarf, dragging her lips over his neck.
“Wait, wait, wait-” you heard John, probably making sure the coast was clear before he took her on the sofa. The sofa you'd paid for! He'd called your name, checking where you were. Gathering you'd hidden yourself away he carried on.
It wasn't the first night the sound of fucking next door had kept you up, in fact you'd lost count of the many of women John preferred to you. Slowly your patience was failing. Sleep as an intern in the ER was precious- like a gem stone. You shouldn't have been losing it in your own apartment.
You heard the mumble of medical procedures and thought you were in a nightmare.
“John, what are you doing?” the girl asked.
You knew what he was doing. To make himself last and drag on the night he thought about medical notes, the books you studied piled on the coffee table.
“Making it last,” you heard him say.
You wished he wouldn't.
When the low moaning started again you couldn't take it.
It was somewhere past four but you'd never known Mark Greene to turn away help.
“What are you doing here? You're not on till seven,” said Carol as you threw on your doctors coat, swinging on the stethoscope.
Outside it was dark, starting to rain and you'd drank two coffees on the way in. You weren't feeling awake but the hustle of the ER and the calls of trauma were better to hear than the moaning and slams of bed.
“Couldn't sleep, thought I'd get in early, early bird catches the.... something,” you said, eyeing the board. Abdominal pains, sores, vision blurs, the usual. There were plenty not taken up with a doctor.
“Couldn't sleep huh?” Carol asked, as familiar with the drill as you were.
“Nop.”
“And what was her name this time?”
“I didn't catch it.”
You didn't know if it was a head nurse thing or just a Hathaway thing but Carol had caught the feelings you had for John maybe even before you had.
She'd watch the two of you come in as fresh faced med students aiming for two different things. The two of you worked well on cases. You learnt how to take a more direct approach through Carters determination in surgery and John learnt to take closer care with his patients with your attentiveness in a pedes rotation.
“God, men are pigs,” said Carol.
“What have I done now?” asked Ross as he passed, leaving and picking up a chart. “You're in early,” he observed.
“I'm dedicated.”
“Wanna check out a cough in five?”
“I'll be there.”
You didn't need to stare to see Carol and Doug share a look. As you'd taken an interest in pedes work in the ER you'd been brought under Dough Ross's rather large wings. And if you were around Ross by proximity you were around Carol. And if you were around them Carter wasn't far.
It was a chain of terrible love stories.
“Eventually you'll get written up for overtime,” said Carol.
“A hospital that hates over-achievers, damn.”
“You should just talk to him.”
You turn to her, leaning on the counter. “And tell him what? I hate him having sex?”
“Well if he could be a little quieter,” she suggested.
“It's not him, it's the women.”
Carol was silent as you distracted yourself with the charts. You knew what she would say next, you knew what you would say after that and it would continue as it had for months. “You should tell him how you-”
“-no.”
“What's the worst that could happen?”
“He says he doesn't feel the same way, tells everyone, I'm left embarrassed, I lose my apartment, need I go on?”
Her eyes rolled. “No I get it.”
“Hey!” Ross called out. “Cough! Five! Let's go!”
You followed him on and used what you'd come to the Er to get: distractions. You followed Ross around from patient to patient, got called in on a trauma and even had time to change the the filters in the coffee machine before you were faced with John.
He was bright eyed, smiling with his dimples. Heck, you were even convinced his eyes lit up seeing you, with your coat hanging off, hair already falling out of its hold and he'd just left some blonde babe. Maybe she'd dropped him off at the hospital and he'd beg a lift back with you. Or he'd told her to let herself out the apartment.
Carter had no right to look at you like that.
“Hey,” he smiled. “You get in early? I thought you started at seven with me?”
“Oh yeah... I was paged in early.”
“Trauma?”
“Cough.”
He laughed. “You were paged in for a cough.”
“I know can you believe it,” you had tried to make it sarcastic, wanted it to seem like a passing comment but your lips didn't move into a smile and it fell weak into your stomach.
John leant next to you at the counter, tilting his body in a way to try to look at you. “You okay?”
“Why wouldn't I be?”
“Something's up, what?”
Maybe it was how close you’d worked, going from students to interns. Or it was your living together which made you both understand each other with small looks.
Clearly you didn’t know each other well enough, otherwise he’d note the bags under your eyes or the way your body didn’t lean into his like you used to.
John jutted his hip against yours with a chuckle. “Talk to me, c’mon.”
“I just didn’t get much sleep last night.” You admitted.
How stupid could men be?
John didn’t even catch on to what you were laying down. “How about we do something tonight? Catch a movie? Get some dinner?”
You and John used to do that sort of thing often. When you'd first moved in together it was all watching films with take out, taking it in turns to order your favourites. You could hardly recall what the films were about because the two of you spoke throughout them. It took a month then you knew everything there was to know about him.
But that was almost two years ago and things were different.
You were in love with him.
He had no idea.
Instead he had love for hours a night and that seemed to do him fine.
John was still waiting for an answer. “Dinner? Movie?”
You looked at him. Over his shoulder you spotted Carol, shaking her head. “Dinner sounds great.”
John's face broke out into a smile. “Yes!” he cheered. His lips pressed to your head quick, gone before you could get a feel of him.
“Carter!” Benton called.
Benton's ordering and bossing around of Carter had grated on his nerves for months but you'd never seen him smile so wide and all but skip to him.
Maybe things weren't being so bad.
“Why would you agree to go to dinner?” asked Carol.
Why would you? Because even if he wasn't your lover, he was still your friend. You'd take that. “Was I supposed to say no?”
“You're gonna hurt yourself,” she said.
But sadly you had hope, which was probably the only thing keeping you in the state you were in.
“It's just dinner with a friend,” you said, picking up a patients chart, any chart.
Carol clocked her head at you. “It's not though is it?”
“To him it is.”
John appeared at your side, hands bracing your arms as he leant over you. For a moment you panicked, imagining that he heard it all. His grin said different. “I'll book us Nona's, your favourite Italian, I'll get it for eight.”
He disappeared, rushing around the corner. You got a last look at his scrubs and gown.
When you turned back to Carol she'd gone too.
“And so I said to him, that's not his Appendix, that's his Kidney.”
Johns laughter bounced around the restaurant. As promised he’d booked your favourite Italian, a table in the window lit by a candle and golden lights around you.
There was an empty plate from a tiramisu you’d shared and several empty glasses of wine dotted around from the evening you’d shared, lipstick of your stained glasses you’d had.
John had entertained you all night, telling jokes, talking about work. His eyes had been lit up since you both sat down, talking animated and never letting a moment of quiet. He’d even dressed up, supporting a suit as if this was some kind of date.
With the lights down low and dragging your fingers over your glass of wine, you almost imagined it was.
The waiter came by and John waved him down.
“Another bottle of white,” he ordered, sharing the last dregs of the bottle between your two glasses.
“If I didn’t know any better I’d say you’re trying to get me drunk,” you joked.
“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” he laughed. “I’ve missed you. It’s just nice that we get to do this, I didn’t see you at all yesterday. You were in bed when I got home.”
Home. Home with his date.
“We’ve been… busy,” you said.
Johns smile broke but only a fraction, some sort of disappointment floating by and marring his expression. “Yeah, I-I guess we have.”
There was a flicker of silence, the first sort there’d been in the night.
The wine was delivered.
“We should do this once a week,” suggested John, alight with the idea.
You laughed. “What, with our schedule?”
“Okay.” He rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “Once a month, surely we can manage that, right? We’re capable people, capable doctors.”
There was more laughter, dulling the ache you’d been carrying.
At some point Johns hand had come down and touched yours.
You’d expected him to pay your hand friendly, move it away and make another crack at a joke.
His hand lingered. Stayed, his fingers stayed slowly moving against the back of your hand.
John watched as his fingers drew lazy circles over your skin. There was a smile playing on his lips.
You didn’t have it in you to move away. You chuckled lightly. “What are you doing?”
John looked at you, his other hand coming up to cup his chin as he rested there. “I’ve missed you.”
It was sincere, almost loving.
You laughed it away. “You’ve said that already.”
“What? A guy can’t say it again?”
“A guy can’t say but you…” you trailed off.
“I what?” asked John pointedly, tilting his head to get a better look of you.
It was almost cruel how unaware he was, or maybe acted he was. The thought that he knew your feelings that were oh so obvious to some and were using them against you made you feel sick.
You slipped your hand out of his and took a sip of your wine. “Nothing.”
“No, what?” he asked, nudging himself closer to the table. “What were you gonna say?”
You drained the glass of wine and picked up the bottle, pouring yourself more while John watched and waited. You laughed, doing your best to brush it off. “I dunno what I was gonna say, slipped by me.”
You could tell he didn't believe you. He seemed to like to chose when he wanted to believe you.
“I-” He'd just started to speak when his gaze drifted over your shoulder and widened at the door. “Oh god, don't turn around, don't look- don't look!”
Frowning you did just what he said not to do, wine still in hand.
Carter was busy slouching in his chair, trying to hide.
A girl walked in with two of her friends, peeling off their coats and handing them to the staff at the door. They were all large smiles and tanned skin, dresses that hugged perfectly and hands manicured. They were alight with life and not drowned in exhaustion like you.
You looked back to John and didn't even have to guess and why he was hiding from them. Your brows rose at him.
“I went to school with her,” he said, scratching at the back of his neck. “She has a massive crush on me.”
“Does she?” at least you weren't the only fool to love him.
John nodded, the front of his hair moving as he did.
You looked again and as if she sensed you, the girl turned.
“No... no... no....” chanted John as she seemed to recognise him, even half swallowed by the table as he was trying to be.
“John Carter!” the girl greeted with her arms out and her wide smile.
John was polite in standing and hugging her.
You were polite in occupying yourself with the wine.
“Oh my god, look at you it's been so long!” she said, pulling away. Her hand smoothed the jacket of his suit. “God when I last saw you you were winning horses races on... oh, what was your horses name, again?”
“Marigold,” said John.
“Marigold, that's right!” she laughed, hand slapping at his bicep and lingering.
You snorted at the obvious affection she was laying on. At least (you hoped) you were slightly more incredulous.
They both looked to you.
“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt,” she apologised.
John went to speak but you spoke before he had the chance.
“You didn't, actually, join us if you like,” you invited.
John's face fell. “What?”
“Oh, I mean I'm here with friends but, hey, what's one drink between old friends?” she pulled up a chair effortlessly, setting it between you and Carter.
Carter himself lingered up on his feet, pulling his jacket close and slotting a button in. He looked at you, almost with some betrayed ideas in his eyes. He sat down, deflated but his old friend from school - Samantha- was already taking his wine glass and filling it. She was already talking about the first time she met John.
You didn't know why you'd decided to interrupt your own night with him. Just as you didn't know why John seemed to perturbed that you had.
Two days later he was at it again.
“John! Oh, John!”
You didn't even get a glance at this one, you had no idea who it was. The old friend from the restaurants or a friend of hers that had joined you later in the night. Maybe it was patient or a friend or family of patients. It could've even been the new intern that had started. You didn't know.
They were all blending into one.
“John! John! John!”
You'd tried putting on headphone from you walk man. You'd tried smothering yourself with your cushion. You'd tried every trick under the sun but it was as if the sounds of pleasure had buried itself in your bones. Even if you couldn't hear it, you knew it was there and it was enough in your bones to have you tossing and turning.
“H, stands for hemolysis, the- the break down of red blood cells-”
You threw your covers off. It was nearing three a.m. The ER could always use an extra pair of hands. That's what you told yourself as you pulled on clothes in the dark, desperate to get out the apartment before you crawl out of your skin.
Perhaps turning on the light would have been beneficial.
You pulled up your pants, jumping to do so but sliding on a lose sock. You fell, hurtling to the ground and trying to catch yourself on the desk had only resulted in banging your head on the side.
For a moment, lying in the dark of your room with a new ache in your head you thought maybe you were concussed because there was suddenly no noise. No nothing.
“John-”
“- wait, shh, shh-”
Nope, still there.
You finally got your pants on without any more injury and left your room.
There were to empty beer bottles at the kitchen counter. You noticed them as you pulled kitchen roll onto your head, pulling it back you pulled open the fridge to check in the light. A little blood.
All the more reason to get to the ER.
You were just fetching your bag from the side when the squeak of a door behind you alerted you.
“Hey, what's going on?” John spoke up.
You didn't dare turn around. You knew if you did you'd find a recently fucked-out Carter, maybe his friend hanging off his arm like his other friends had two nights before at Nona's.
He called out your name.
“Nothing, John,” you dismissed, swinging your bag over your shoulder.
“Where are you going, it's like, three am?”
You didn't answer.
“Did the hospital call?”
“Just go back to bed, Carter.”
It could have been the head split, the fact you were running on little sleep as it was or that John was so insisting he cared when the noise of you falling had clearly broken him out of his blissed state.
You never called him Carter. If you did, it was a bad sign.
“Wait- wait- jus' a second, hold on-”
You turned, catching a glimpse of him retreating back in his room.
You dabbed at your cut again, seething at the pain it brought.
You doubted stitches were needed but maybe some glue. Heck, maybe you could find an on-call room and sleep off the wound.
John's door opened again and he was rushing out, tugging a shirt on with joggers already pulled up. He flicked the light on and you watched his eyes widen at the cut as if you'd been shot. “Woah-woah, hey-hey-”
“Leave it, John.”
“What happened? What'd you do?” he rushed to you, sliding on the floor as he cupped your cheeks, checking the cut in the light.
His clothes hung limp on him and you didn't even have to look close to see the blue and purple bruises at his neck, still fresh, a thin trail of kisses not yet settled. There was no slouch in him like you knew there to be in you. He was alert. The kind of attention sex required.
He was using all that energy- the energy he was stealing from you- to asses your wound.
“What were you doing, jumping-jacks?” he tried to joke.
You didn't feel like laughing. “Can you leave it, please?”
The crinkle at his eyes at his own teasing dropped. He became as dull as you felt.
“No, no I- I can't leave it,” he said, serious. “You're bleeding, you're hurt, what happened?”
You sighed. “I was dressing in the dark, I'm a clutz.”
He shook his head. “Why were you dressing at three am?”
“Because I'm going into work.”
“We're not on nights.”
“Then I'm going in for fun.”
“Like the other night when you were paged in for a cough that didn't exists?” he said. “Mark told me, so what's going on?”
You had hoped Mark Greene- your mentor- wouldn't be noticing the slow falling apart of your love life. No such luck there. “Nothing,” you told him. “Nothing is going on.”
“You running off in the night is something, in my books at least,” said John, stern. His arms fell to his side. “So, you want to tell me?”
You'd just done a thirty-six hour shift and was only reward with two hours sleep. You didn't have it in you to be kind to him while your own chest felt like it was caving in on itself. “No, I don't.”
John scoffed. “Well, I've got all night, I can wait.”
“No, you don't.”
He frowned.
At that moment his latest peeked out of the room. She'd had the decency to wrap herself up in his thin white sheet at least. Her hair was a mess, her body covered in a thin sheen of sweat. She genuinely seemed sorry to be interrupting but clearly wanted to get back to the high she was chasing.
“Hey, John, is everything okay?”
She was so un-like you. She was everything you weren't. You didn't even know who she was but she wasn't you and seeing her coming out of John's room, wrapped up in his sheet and smell and faint marks of him you were reminded of that.
You didn't know why she- an odd number in his list of conquests- broke your heart. But it did.
You chocked on a sob, turning away from them both.
John's neck snapped to you at the noise. “Hey, hey-” his hands were soft on your forearms but you shrugged him off.
“John?” asked the girl again, a lazy drawl of her voice piercing your heart.
“Just, go back in, I'll- I'll be a second,” he said, dismissively.
It some how made it all the much worse because he didn't care for the other girls feelings. It was nothing serious to him, it never was. If it was serious, if he brought a girl back and took painstaking effort to introduce the two of you maybe you could pull on a brave face, pretend to be happy for him.
But he was constantly throwing it all in your face.
“John?” the girl asked again.
“Meg, seriously, I just need to sort this out-”
Sort it out? Like you were something on a check list?
You'd managed to make it to the front door before John caught you.
“Hey, wait! No- jus'-” his hand slammed down over you on the door, closing it before you could escape. “You're scaring me now, what's going on?”
“Nothing,” your own voice betrayed you, cracking as tears escaped you.
You rushed to wipe them away but John beat you to it.
“Hey, hey.” His thumb swept at the tears, voice laced in worry and pain. “Why are you crying? What's happened?”
You knew yourself well enough from the years of stress of medical school, from losing patients that were making promising progress and dying, from months of hearing John love on a girl that wasn't you to know when you couldn't trust your voice. All you could do was duck your head and sniff.
John was still close enough for you to smell the other girls perfume on him. “Why- why don't we sit down? I'll make you some tea.”
“I don't want tea,” you chuckled dryly.
John seemed startled. Tea was always what you offered him after the hard days. “Coffee?”
“I just want to go,” you admitted.
“Go? Go where?” he asked, voice almost as broken as yours. “You want to leave, you want to get out of here?”
He asked like he was almost understanding where you were coming from.
You nodded.
“Can I come with you?”
You shook your head.
John nodded with tight lips, like his own heart was breaking. “Okay them, I- I can't let you go. Not alone.”
You cried. “John-”
“It's three am it's dark out, I'm not letting you go anywhere alone-”
“John-”
“And frankly you're scaring me right now, I can't stand seeing you like this-”
“- I just don't want to be near you right now.”
The confession hung between the two of you like a hook caught in your hearts and tearing you both down. It was one thing you hurting because of John's actions but it wasn't like you'd told him how you felt. So really, you were hurting him for nothing.
“Okay, okay,” he said calmly. Turing for a second to gather himself up, patting the back of his hair down. “Okay you don't have to be anywhere near me but can you at least stay? So I know you're safe. I'll- I'll hide in my room or something. Out there, it's-it's not and I know you hate me right now but you will give me a heart attack if you go-”
“- I don't hate you,” you uttered.
“Well you just said you don't want to be near me,” he pointed out, the first angry notes in his voice. He took a deep breath and took a step closer, his hands clenched in together. John bent a little in the knees to get a look at you. “I'm sorry, whatever I did, I'm sorry, so sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you.”
He hadn't. Nothing he'd done had been with you in mind.
John laughed at himself. “It's me, for Christ sake, I'd never do anything to hurt you, okay? You've got to believe me. You know me.... you know me!”
The door to his room opened again and in the dim light the both of you saw his girl- Meg- wander out. She was in one of his old grey shirts, flaunting herself with jutted out hips. She threw herself down on the sofa and watched, waiting.
You wiped your tears away, telling yourself to get a grip. “Can we just- can we do this later, John, please?”
You'd thought the tears and begging would have been enough but John looked at you, studying all over you. He took in a deep breath like he was getting his confidence from somewhere.
He shook his head, staring at you. “No. Okay, wait- just wait for for a second, one second.”
You did. You waited one second and watched as he returned to Meg, crouching at the sofa and talking low to her. He even put his hand on hers and spoke very calmly and clearly.
Whatever he was saying Meg seemed to not like, or really understand, her eyes flickered back up to yours accusingly.
That's when you slipped out the door and hailed down a taxi to take you to the ER.
Carol had offered to help but you said no, so did Lydia, practically following you down with the right kit to take care of the cut on your head. Genie had offered with a kind understanding smile but you'd hidden yourself away on an empty bed with a mirror.
Mark was the only one you'd let stay in the room, even then you weren't letting him get close enough to help. “We should get a CT, at least.”
“Geez, it's just a small cut,” you chuckled, putting the thin strips of tape over it to help bring it together. It was the sort of thing that wasn't even medical. Just common sense.
“Better safe than sorry,” he said.
“And do you want to be the one to tell Wheever you ordered un-neccary tests and wasted hospital rescourse and money?”
You'd thought that would have been enough to deter him but instead Mark leaned forward.
“Yes.”
Damn.
“As chief resident I don't have to have you working till you get the all cleared.”
You huffed. You could always find an on-call room to catch up on sleep but you feared you'd re-play John's heartbreak over again if you did. “Fine, book me the CT,” you said, slinging your stephscope back around your neck and pocketing your pocket mirror.
“Thank you,” said Mark and with one last look of conserved worry, he left.
But the door swung open a second later and Carter waltzed in, hands in the pocket of his lab coat. He paused and looked at you, as if you were a patient of his.
It was going on four. He'd followed you in.
You opened your mouth to say something. A sorry, maybe. An apology for ruining his sex time and for crying.
John beat you to it. “I know you said you didn't want to be around me but I'm sorry, I-” he laughed at the very idea that was true. He knew you too well for that. “I don't believe you.”
“What do you want me to do about that?”
“I want you to talk to me.” John grabbed the stool close and sat on it, pushing himself close in front of you like any attentive doctor would. He grabbed your hands. “Talk to me.”
You wondered what you should have told him first. That out of desperation for your well-being Chuni had offered up her spare room at her place till you could get a place of your own. That Mark was willing to move around the schedule and face Wheever's wrath in doing so. That you couldn't take one more night of not being the one John chose.
“I'm sorry for being mad earlier, at the apartment,” you said first, looking down to where he held your hands. His knuckles were bleached white from the tightness he held onto you to. “I'm not- I'm not mad at you.”
His body sagged in relief. “You're not?”
“No.”
“Oh - thank god.” His body curved over yours, breath fanning the envelope of your hands.
“It's just me, it's just stuff,” you dismissed.
“No, it's not just stuff,” he said, equally as dismissive. “If it's getting you up in the middle of the night, ending in you being hurt- I mean... we can sort it.”
His thumb was a delicate tough as he brushed over your cut.
It didn't feel as painful when he did.
John's gaze lingered on your cut before looking back at your eyes. There was nothing to indicate he knew what this was really about, only a small hurting sorrow that he didn't know how to help you.
It was enough to hurt you all over again.
But maybe pulling the band off at once was better than a slow, agonising pull.
You squeezed his hands. “John, I'm moving out.”
The words were like heavy stones sinking in the bottom of a lake. You saw his expression blanked, his hands release yours slowly and his face pale as if the world was ending. His eyes searched yours trying to detect a hint of amusement.
He found nothing.
Mark popped his head back in, saving you. “CT's ready for you.”
“Thanks Mark,” you said as he nodded once and left again.
John hadn't moved, frozen in place. He stared past your body.
“I'll um... I've got to go...” it was the cowards way out but the way you saw it you'd been tough a long time, lying in bed and crying yourself to sleep. Letting yourself feel pathetic for doing so when you had so much more in life to give it meaning. If you could just get away enough, create some distance so you didn't feel trapped you could at least keep his hand in friendship. At least still have the privilege of looking in his eyes everyday and know, just for a second, you once had a chance for it all with him.
When you got back to the door and looked back, John was still on the stool, eyes watering.
Three hours later your shift officially started but you were already four patients deep, a case in pedes with Ross, a trauma that had gone up to the OR, an elderly man with a nasty fall to his hip and possible schizophrenia. Your last was a young girl, complaining of stomach craps. You suspected pregnancy and was thinking as much when you glanced out the door to the front desk.
John was staring through the door at you, Carol at his side trying to talk to him also staring in at you.
It wasn't a good sign in any case, not when Carol knew everything and John knew so little. It didn't help he looked wrecked. Tie askew, hair sticking up in the way that indicated hands running through it in stress.
Then he rounded the corner and disappeared from view.
“Leanne, have you been sexually active recently?”
“With my boyfriend.”
“And how long ago was your last period?”
“Two weeks.”
“Are you late?”
“Not yet.”
You jotted it all down on the chart. “Ok, we're gonna get some blood work, start you on an IV and get a urine sample in-”
The door swung open and you and Maleek who was helping on the case looked up.
John stood there, breathless like he'd ran the ten or so paces it took to get here.
“John?” you asked.
“You love me?”
The world stilled. There was suddenly nothing but you and him. Him looking at you astonished, like he couldn't believe it. At a loss of words from the very idea.
“I'm sorry- what?”
He took a heavy step forward, a deep inahle seething. “You love me.”
It wasn't an accusation the second time.
You looked back to the fifteen year old and Maleek who seemed as startled as you. “Can we not- I'm with a patient-”
“It's okay, I got this,” said Maleek, stepping in the way.
And John Carter was still standing there, catching his breath and staring at you.
You, with little other choice, barged past him.
You heard Carol calling out for you as you marched around trying to find a private corner to have the dreaded confrontation.
“I'm sorry!” she called.
John was hot on your heels. “Don't apologise, I deserved to know!”
Benton had joined the crew of on lookers at the desk. “Do I want to know?” you heard him ask.
“Probably not,” Mark replied.
Exam room two was empty and you held the door open for Carter. He marched in, hands running over his hair again as he mumbled to himself. You closed the door behind, locking it and closing the blinds because you knew everyone was going to try to listen to your world crumble.
You gave yourself a two second head start in catching your breath before turning to him.
John stood in the middle of the room, hands on his hips, waiting. His lip tucked under his teeth. “You love me.”
“Who told you?”
“Carol,” he said. “I was so worried about you I asked if she knew what was going on but turns out everyone did. You know, I could've asked Doug, Mark, Susan, Genie, basically everyone I mean- was I the last one to know?”
“There was nothing for you to know.”
“Really?” he scoffed.
“Yes!” you snapped. “It was my feelings, you didn't need to know them!”
“Yes, I did! I needed to know!”
“Why?”
“Why? Because- because it's me!”
You groaned, frustration ripping through the tears you had cried that morning. “What does it matter, John? You don't love me!”
“Of course I love you!”
“Not in the way I love you, not like that!”
“Yes I do!” he all but screamed.
The room fell silent. You could hear the labour of his breath and the wheels and running outside the room. A trauma was called in yet nobody was rescuing you or John.
He stood there, exposed.
Yes I do!
It was the heat of the argument, you told yourself, as you shook the idea out of you. For a second you almost believed him.
John deflated, watching as you hugged yourself, as you didn't rush to him or smile at his confession. “Do you... do you think I don't love you?”
You levelled your gaze on him.
As if he could see the break of your heart through the windows to your soul he shattered.
“Oh my god. You think I don't love you?”
You lifted your shoulders in a tired shrug. “Was I supposed to believe you did? You fuck a different girl every night while I'm on the other side of the damn wall.” The words come out bitten and finally the penny dropped for John.
The sleepless nights, the times he knew you were tired, the way you hid around every corner, in every room. Slowly he fit all the pieces together and he didn't like what he was seeing.
“That wasn't- they were- they were nothing,” he stuttered.
It was your turn to scoff. “Yeah, it never sounded like nothing-”
“You have to believe me, okay, you- you have to-” he begged, rushing in front of you. His hands took yours without your offer and he held it close to him, over his chest where you could feel his racing heart by the palm of your hand. “- you can't- you have to-”
He clenched his jaw.
You waited for more. “Can't what?”
John screwed his eyes shut, uttering a curse before opening his eyes. They pleaded onto you. “You can't think they meant anything over you. You can't,” he said so definitely you almost believed him. Almost.
“You're not making sense.”
“I know- I- I know,” he said, moving closer to you. He rested his head on your shoulder and you didn't have the strength to move. There was no smell of any other girl, only your shampoo he used in his hair. You could feel the tremble of his body. “This isn't how I wanted this to go.”
You were still, like you were a bunny in the jaws of a lion.
John pulled back and you were shocked at the redness of his eyes, at the tears threatening to spill. “When I dreamt about this I dreamt roses and a better declaration,” he chuckled at himself.
“I'm glad you find this really amusing, John, but I-”
“I don't- I don't,” he said at once. But he still chuckled dryly. “I just think I've messed up my whole life and I- I don't know how to fix this.”
You weren't sure what he was saying because he couldn't be talking about whatever was going on between the two of you. Frankly, you weren't sure what was going on. There was confessions hanging in the air like dirty laundry and tears from him that you didn't know what to do with. None of it made sense.
Your brain went to the only sense it could make.
“You've ruined your life?” you asked, full of concern for him. “What? Is one of the girls pregnant?”
John swiped his hands over his face, roughly. “No. No, I've just realised I fucked everything up with you.”
You stared at him and laughed. “And that's your entire life ruined?”
Carter nodded earnestly.
He loved you? He was insisting he did. Looking at you like he did.
A fist grabbed your heart and squeezed. You counted every girl you'd met through him and tried to add it up to love. It only made your head hurt and you knew it had nothing to do with the cut.
“I can't- I can't do this right now,” you said. “I have patients. So do you.”
“Can we talk? Tonight. Can we- can we talk? Please. Back home,” he begged, voice quiet like you'd never heard him before. “Please don't leave me.”
You wanted to argue there was nothing to leave. That even if you were going to go you still had a room of things to pack and sort. “Okay, fine, tonight.”
For the rest of the day you and John avoided each other, only working side by side on traumas. It was the only clue anyone got about the two of you. Nobody had dared ask what was going on but as you threw yourself into work and John got back on the floor after a thorough self-pity party they were all smart enough to guess it didn't go well.
“So, you're talking?” asked Carol at the end of your shift as you finished passing off your charts.
“Tonight, yeah.”
“That's good, isn't it?”
You huffed, finding your bag. “He says he loves me, Carol.”
She didn't know whether to smile or not. “Yeah, I think he does.”
“So what were the girls?”
“Distractions? A bit of fun? Men don't always have to make sense. Even if they are in love,” she told you, knowing all too well the the ins and outs of men and stupid choices through Doug Ross and their famous on and off relationship. “But give him a chance, he might surprise you.”
A chance.
You were tired. The kind that came from a long shift and little sleep. The kind you'd become accustom to that it didn't shock you when you felt it knocking on your door.
Were you too tired for a chance?
A throat cleared behind you and Carol disappeared from your side.
John stood in front of you, sheepish, with a bouquet in hand. They were your favourite flowers. “For you.”
Ignoring the audience that was trying (and failing) at being subtle, you took them.
“Thank you.”
He nodded, shy, in a way you hadn't seen him be since the both of you first started in the ER.
Nobody knew what to say next.
“Can I, um, can I take you home now?”
You could have been petty and told him you'd catch the subway back. Or that you'd hail a cab but you were both going the same way and you'd end up in your living room, talking, one way or another.
The car ride was quiet with John trying to find a radio station that didn't grate on him and ended up in silence.
When he pulled up in front of your apartment building he rushed out the car like it was on fire. He pulled open your door before you got the chance and helped you with your bag and bouquet.
In the apartment it was just as un-touched as it had been in the morning.
You didn't realise until you saw it so that you'd been expecting a lingering guest.
But there was only signs of you and John.
He was watching you while he set both your things down. “Do you want a drink?”
“No, no thanks I think I should be sober for this,” you said. Amicable ground was trying to be found, keeping your voice neutral was the best you could do. “Do you want a drink?”
“No, no.”
The silence was invasive. An un-wanted guest.
You would start it, as you had with all your messed up feelings. You could finish it even if it hurt. “If you love me what were all the girls?”
John seemed to leap at the chance to defend himself. “Nothing. They were nothing, they were-” he paused, taking time to think about his next words. “They were just distractions. Meaningless. To get you out of my mind.”
“Cheap, John.” It was almost word for word what Carol said.
“Nothing I say can defend myself, I'm not trying to defend myself I'm trying to tell you the truth. I need you, and if I've ruined this I'm not letting you go without fighting.”
He approached you, giving you space and time to step back or flinch away. You didn't.
“I've loved you since I met you. Ever since you came up to me thinking I was a doctor and knew where labs were, I knew it. Love at first sight- if you think that's bullshit- I don't care because I knew it. But you made it clear, very clear you were here to be the best doctor you could be and I wanted that for you, I still do- I always will,” he said.
You remembered John years ago, tailored white coat and hopeful. You'd gone up to him because you were supposed to meet Doctor Greene in labs and had no idea where that was and he was the first person in a white coat and clipboard you'd seen.
You did twelve hours next to him that day, competing on stitches and sutures.
“You know, I had an apartment when I heard you were looking to move in with someone, cheap rent and that,” he said, laughing at himself. “I moved out of that apartment and got another one within the week with a spare room just so I could ask you to move in.”
The apartment you were stood in.
“What?”
John nodded like he knew it was ridiculous. “It worked.”
You knew the Carter family was rich beyond imagination. You'd always wondered why John insisted on a room mate when he could afford to live comfortably without one.
“When you told me you were thinking of moving in with Anna god I had a heart attack, practically begged her to back off.”
John had helped you pack your old place, had carried your stuff with care into his apartment. It had looked so much like him, so lived in you wouldn't even think to wonder how long he'd lived there. You'd never have guessed only a week till you invaded with your stuff.
“It was the closest I could have you without having you.”
“Why didn't you tell me then?” you asked.
His face screwed up like he regretted it. He did, you guessed. “Because we both get tired. We get irritable. I hate failing patients and you take on so many that you can't give yourself a minute to think during the day.”
You weren't sure if it was a compliment or not.
“We work together, we live together, take patients together I figured we'd crash and burn if I told you how I felt,” he admitted. “And- god, help me- if I had to live only being your friend it was better than living without you at all.”
But you and John had never argued. The both of you had figured out how to silently read each other. How to know when he needed space or a hug and a shoulder to cry on. He knew when you needed an extra pair of hands or to just put a stupid movie on to fall asleep too.
The nights you'd fallen asleep in his arms on the sofa and woke in your bed. The mornings where you were on and he wasn't but he was still up to get you a coffee. The days you worked close together and ignored everyone else. It all meant something else now.
“The girls were to forget,” said John. “It didn't work, hardly. All I could think about was you. And I know- I know it's wrong. I had to recite medical facts to myself just to get the thought of you out my head.”
“I thought you did that to make it last for them,” you admitted, realising now how silly it's all been.
He shook his head. “I didn't mean to hurt you. I'd rather cut off my own hands than make you cry. And I've made you cry and hurt you so just get a knife and-” he made a chopping motion, chocking on a laugh.
John wiped his tears with the back of his hand and he looked at you. “If you want to leave then leave but I can't let you go. I'll be around, I'll be really hard to get rid of.”
The both of your rooms stood behind you. Both dark. Both separate cages for the two of you.
“All I could think about when I saw you with those girls was how much they were never like me,” you spoke, quietly. “I thought you'd never... you know... think of me that way.”
John's hands were firm on your cheeks, gaining your attention. “It was always about you. You didn't deserve that, you didn't, I wish I could take it all back and tell you. But why didn't you tell me?”
Why? Because you were afraid. Knowing what you knew now it didn't seem a strong enough argument.
You laughed. “Are we stupid?”
John grinned through his own tears. He nodded, caressing your cheeks. “I think we are, I think so.”
Your foreheads leaned against each other as you laughed.
Slowly, it faded as he pressed his forehead into yours harder.
“I'm so sorry, baby.”
“I'm sorry,” you said, hands coming to hold his face, feeling the rough stubble in your palms.
“No, no, you have nothing to be sorry for, it's me, it's me,” he uttered, eyes closing. “If I've ruined this forever please tell me.”
You couldn't say he didn't have a point. Working long hours made you both difficult at times but never to each other. You couldn't say the girls wouldn't hurt you for some time more, that your insecurities weren't something you had to work on yourself.
Yet, you couldn't say you could manage without him.
“I don't think you have, no.”
John breathed out against you. “No?”
“No,” you shook your head against his. “I think if we love each other-”
“- we do, we do-”
“ -we should at least give it a try.”
“I'm not trying with you, I'm not trying- I'm doing,” John assured you, hands still moving along your cheeks, your hair, anything to hold you. “I'm not messing it up again, I'm not. I'd propose right now if you asked me to.”
You pulled back enough to stare at him seriously. “Don't.”
“Okay, okay, I won't,” he said. When he opened his eyes back at you he smirked, a twitch to his brows. “At least not today.”
There was laughter in place of tears and you knew that if you slept tonight there'd be no need to hurt. Maybe, instead, time to heal.
“Not for a long time,” you told him.
John nodded along, mockingly going along with you. “But eventually right?”
“Maybe you should kiss me before we get that far?”
The laughter died quietly. You were slowly brought into his arms as they wrapped around you, hands moving down your back without going further.
There was a gentle breeze of his warmth and the tips of his hair tickled you as he tilted his head, your own neck moving back to meet him.
It was soft and sweet. A small press of his lips like he was too scared to break you. It was your hands around his neck that brought him closer, it was his whimper that moved him on as his hands held your waist. You stayed pressing into each other, promising silent things as you did, until you both recognised the burn in your lungs for breath.
“I love you,” he said, slowly dragging his lips against yours again.
summary — jack has seen you leave a trail of broken hearts and bad dates, and he’s determined to prove to you that you’re looking for love in all the wrong places.
warnings — 12.6k words. age gap (jack’s around 50; reader’s a 4th year resident, so 20s), attending/resident power dynamic; mentor/mentee relationship, idiots in love maybe?? yearning!jack, jealous!jack, jack ‘i’ll pay for it’ abbot strikes Again!!!! hurt + comfort (one instance of jack being an ass, but he smooths it over during the same shift - they can’t stay mad at each other), mild angst, patient death, jack’s leg - reader helps him adjust the prosthetic and takes care of him during a long shift, canon-typical medical scenes and probably lots of inaccuracies (i’m an english major reddit is my best friend) ; on-page patient death, reader performing compressions, reader DATES DATES and may be unprofessional (affectionately she just wants to find love and her entire life revolves around the hospital who can blame her), reader’s written to have hair she brushes and can pin up, she also gets on her toes to kiss him but that can be ignored i just liked the image jack basically bribes her into a date, no smut but they’re So very much thinking about it, rushed-ish ending i think?
notes — wrote this in a slump it took so Unbelievably long and i’m not even sure i like it but i wanted to post something before i give up on writing anything ever again!!!!
It was midnight and a peds nurse was lingering by the ambulance doors, and Jack knew that he wasn’t meant to be there. Lewis was his name, maybe, but Jack couldn’t even be sure of that — and knew he had no reason to be sure of it, because the guy wasn’t meant to be there. Running the ER in the middle of the night, with all of the day’s patients handed off, and the night’s still finding their way through triage, was difficult in itself, and he didn’t have the energy to also babysit Ryan-or-Lewis-or-whoever hovering there like a little boy waiting to be picked up from school.
“Is he meant to be here?” Jack asked, closing the space toward the desk where Lena was pointing something, jutting his thumb in the direction of the guy.
Lena flattened a printout on the desk with two fingers, hardly sparing him a glance.
“Him. Peds. Why is he there?” he tried again.
“Couldn’t tell you,” she said, but the corner of her mouth had flicked up, proving that she was simply choosing not to tell him.
“He’s off his unit,” he said. He knew he sounded just slightly silly stating the obvious.
“Seems so.”
“Send him back, then,” Jack drawled, incredulous, hands finding his hips. “There’s enough shit going on here.”
“You send him back,” she retorted, amused just slightly. “If you’re so concerned.”
Jack looked up at the ceiling, shaking his head as his hands went to rest on his hips. When he looked back down, he found you walking toward the nurse and it suddenly made complete sense.
He let out a sigh. “This has to be a joke.”
His eyes, as they did more often than was appropriate, caught on you, hair coming down loose from where you’d pinned it, the scrubs lopsided at one hip, riding lower than where they’d started at the beginning of the night. You turned to say something to the guy quickly, and the movement caught the slip, your scrub top moving up half an inch, and Jack’s eyes went there before his brain could tell him that was wrong, some groove in him that noticed you before it noticed anything useful. He had a second of pure, unhelpful distraction before his brain reminded him that he was an attending and had things to do.
“I actually think it’s funny,” Lena said, shrugging.
Of course it had something to do with you. He should’ve figured it out the second he saw the guy standing there with his hands in the pouch of his scrubs, rocking heel to toe like the floor was just too exciting to be standing on. Nobody loitered around the ambulance bay at midnight for good reason. People came through those doors bleeding or they didn’t come through them at all, and this guy had shown up with nothing wrong with him, except maybe a case for some lovesickness.
“I’m gonna make this stop,” Jack said, already pushing himself away from the nurse’s station.
Lena’s eyes widened slightly. “Don’t say anything that gets you sat down with HR.”
“She can goddamn try me,” he said, and went. Also because Jack was fairly sure you would never report him to HR.
He crossed the floor and caught the tail-end of your conversation as he closed in.
“ — just tell me when you’re free, that’s all I’m asking,” the guy was saying.
You were already half-turned, already gone as you waved a hand loosely beside you. “I don’t know, I just don’t think we should try again.”
Jack blew out a breath, standing a few feet short of you, your back facing him. Why was he not surprised? He’d been keeping tally without meaning to, and he knew that was embarrassing. There was the radiology fellow who’d started hand-delivering films that very well could’ve gone through the system; the travel nurse who’d washed through in six weeks and left the floor faintly weird in his wake; the anaesthesia resident who now took the long way around the department if he saw you at the end of it, as though he were a dog who’d learned the fence was electric. And now this one, apparently, Peds with his whole hopeful heart hanging out in Jack’s department.
“You’re so sweet for coming down here,” you practically crooned at him, shifting on your heels, eyes flicking down to the form in your hand. “But I really do have a whole long night ahead of me, and I know my answer’s not gonna change, so I won’t make you wait around for it, okay?”
Jack fought the urge to roll his eyes when you said the words with the upward lilt of a woman sending a toddler back to his mother. He wanted to laugh a little when he saw that the guy had taken it standing up like it was a gift.
The hell of it was that Jack understood the man. He understood every last one of them because he stood next to you fifty hours a week, had been doing so for three years, and whatever the department thought of him after his consistent therapy, he was not carved out of stone.
Jack was afraid that if he hadn’t been your attending these last four years and a little younger, wearing his heart on his sleeve, he’d have been eating out of the palm of your hand.
You gave the guy a there-there pat, and it was only then did his eyes land on Jack, who he probably knew was your fucking attending. You turned then, and immediately said, “Oh, Dr. Abbot, I’ve got the guy in six’s labs back, the potassium —”
“Mhm.” Jack’s hands came up and landed on your shoulders before you’d finished the sentence, squaring you off the spot where you stood and turning you bodily back toward the floor like you were a gurney.
“It is four-point-nine, but the EKG’s good, so I was gonna recheck in —”
“Let’s recheck it now,” he said. He kept you moving, his palms broad through the cotton of your scrubs, steering you a few feet till your own feet caught onto the idea.
You grumbled something under your breath, and once he’d stopped you right in front of six, you turned to face him with your brows raised.
“Say something?” he asked, tipping his chin down.
“You seem like you’re mad at me,” you said.
“Huh. I do?” He let go of your shoulders — noticing, distantly, the exact second his hands came off and suddenly felt too empty — and reached past you to pluck six’s chart off the tray, more to have something to do with them than needing it. “You’re right. You should recheck in ten minutes.”
“You’re mad at me,” you said again, crossing your arms over your chest.
He blew out a breath, and suddenly felt just a little silly at getting worked up over a nurse by the doors when there was a large, glowing board behind him full of names that needed his complete, undivided attention.
You were a senior resident, after all, four years deep, one of his sharpest — you’d treated the guy in six, hadn’t you, you’d flagged it and called for the EKG and made the right call on the recheck before he’d even asked, all while dismantling some man’s hopes. Somehow, your mess and competence ran on the same current. You never let the first touch the second. He’d have loved, some nights, to have an excuse to be mad — a missed lab, a blown line, anything he could write up and point at — and you kept declining to hand him one. All of this meant he was left with this vague swampy irritation, and Jack wasn’t the sort of mentor who liked to hound upon that.
“No, sweetheart, I just love it when you get random men hanging around the department,” he settled on saying, feeling his shoulders visibly loosen a fraction.
You winced, eyes darting over to the emptiness in front of the doors now. “Sorry.”
“You’d say it won’t happen again, but we both know better.” He shrugged. Then, he reached out his hand — he wasn’t sure why, except that it just happened naturally — and patted you once on the shoulder, then on the second turned you to face the curtains leading to your patient. “Doctor up.”
And you did, the loose, embarrassed shape of you being replaced in the space of a single breath, being replaced by something Jack had watched grow into you over the years and still hadn’t quite gotten used to.
Trauma called it in nine minutes later, an MVC, unrestrained driver, GCS dropping in the field. Jack was working on a laceration in four when he heard the crackled warning, and by the time he’d looked up out the curtains, you were already moving, gowned and at the head of the bay calling out assignments like you’d been doing this for a decade.
“I need two units O-neg before he rolls in,” you said, voice pitched high enough to carry without yelling, cutting clean through the perpetual noise of the department. “Somebody get me a second eighteen-gauge ready, and I want an ultrasound in here.”
Donnie and Mateo were already moving, and so were the people around you, falling into your orbit like the room had easily reorganized itself around your voice the second it went up. Jack stood by the curtain, gloves from the lac still on, and found he couldn’t make himself move just yet.
The doors banged open. EMS wheeled the stretcher through fast, calling out vitals over each other, and you were already on the patient’s side before the gurney had fully stopped moving, hands moving on his neck, chest, eyes scanning his pupils in a matter of ten seconds. He began walking over, catching your voice as you called out your reads as someone hung the blood and someone else prepped the ultrasound wand. “Page neuro now.”
“On it,” Mateo said, already moving.
You had both hands on the patient, running the primary survey quickly, confirming, checking, discarding possibilities out in short, clipped sentences Jack recognized as the sound of your brain running six steps ahead of your mouth. Sweat had started on your hairline. You called out for OR to be on standby, eyes flickering around the room and landing on Jack. “OR, please,” you said, aimed at him, brows going up.
“On it,” Jack said, because there was no way he was going to let you be wrong about needing something and didn’t make sure you got it.
The next six minutes went by fast and loud, in bursts and then suddenly quiet, the room narrowing down on functionality. You stood at the center of it; you called it and ran it. You got the man upstairs stable enough that Walsh didn’t sound worried for one second, and that was a compliment from her.
Jack watched the whole thing from four feet back, arms crossed, and chipping in when your brain had snagged. He was feeling a heat in his chest helplessly and entirely unprofessional, it was always present when he was able to see, in real-time, how far you’d come from your first day of residency when your hands were a second too slow on the central line and how your voice would pitch up at the end of every read, asking for permission every time instead of stating it like a fact, eyes finding him across the room each time, checking.
There was none of that left in you now, he realized, had done so a long time ago. He thought, watching you now, that this was the closest thing he’d let himself do to falling in years, standing uselessly riveted as he watched a woman he’d taught outgrow the need for him in real time, and finding that instead of the loss he’d expected to feel when the day finally came, all he felt was warm and terrifying and too much like pride.
When the room had started clearing out, he watched your mouth drop open as you let out a heavy breath, eyes going over to him. The second he watched you realize he was still there, your face shifted, the relief turning into something sharper.
“Why didn’t you jump in?” You crossed the floor toward him in four hard strides, gloves already peeled off and balled tight in one fist, snapping the second one free with a motion that looked terrifyingly like it wanted to be aimed at him. “His pressure tanked for thirty seconds and you just watched.”
“You had it.”
“You didn’t know that,” you said, voice going up an octave, adrenaline still thrumming through you, hands coming up the gesture at the blood-streaked floor. “I could’ve missed something. You’re the attending, Jack, you’re supposed to catch if I missed something —”
“I would’ve,” he interrupted, stepping in close enough that you had to tilt your head back to keep glaring at him properly. “The second you needed me, I would’ve stepped in. I wasn’t gonna take it from you before you did.”
“You can’t gamble like that with a patient —” Your chest was rising and falling fast, gloves now crushed in your fist, and he could see the fear catching up now that everything around you had gone quiet enough to let it, something that looked more like fear of yourself than for the patient. “What if I’d frozen —?”
“I knew you wouldn’t.” He reached his hand out, thumb catching a smear of the blood at your jaw you’d accidentally smeared on yourself, wiping it off carefully with the pad of his thumb, and felt you go still under it. “You don’t trust my judgement?”
“You know I do. You just could’ve said something.”
“I could’ve. He dropped his hand from your jaw only to catch your wrist instead. “Didn’t wanna interrupt you being brilliant. Kinda liked watching it happen.”
Your mouth opened, surely to let out some unnecessary retort, and died there when he pressed one slow stroke of his thumb against your wrist, raising a brow.
“Relax,” he said, voice going rough as he leaned in a little, forcing you to meet his eyes properly. “Just take the win. That’s an order.”
“Now you wanna give orders,” you mumbled.
He barked out a short laugh, letting go of your wrist. “Only when you’re being stubborn for no reason.”
It was sometime during the second year of your residency when he’d started catching your drift. It had started with a random Friday shift. He’d seen you at the station, elbows on the counter, telling Lena something conspiratorially. Jack was meant to be reading a chart but couldn’t help how his ears had perked up. Anything to get through the shift, he supposed.
“ — no, but he was perfect on paper,” you were saying, “kept his house clean and everything. He told me he kept his plant alive for six years —”
“So, what happened?” Lena said flatly, like she already knew what you were going to say but wanted to hear anyway.
“He wanted to take me bowling on the second date,” you said through a sigh. “I know how it sounds, but you’ve gotta hear me out —”
“I’m genuinely not going anywhere.”
“ — for the first date, bowling’s fun. But he took me to a nice dinner the first time, he set a standard, and then the second date he goes bowling, which means the effort’s already —” You created a little downward slope with your hand. “And if it’s already sliding on date two, where’s it at on date two hundred? I can already see my marriage with him and it’s bad.”
It seemed you had a criteria, Jack learned then. It was proven even more when he’d heard you talk about your other failed dates, seen them, and learned — without ever wanting to — what they were, to an extent.
He knew you couldn’t stand a man who ordered for you without asking. He knew you’d written off a fellow for the way he talked about his mother, and another one — an accountant, a rare specimen who had no clue what an EKG was — over a text message you’d read aloud to Ellis in a voice of complete horror, though Jack had never caught what it actually said, only your face while you read it. He knew you gave people precisely three dates, that this was a rule you held if the first and second date went well, three apparently being the magic number at which a person could no longer hide the demon they were going to turn out to be (your words).
He knew, too, that you only allowed one kiss after the first date, if even that. It was never up for negotiation, no matter how beautifully the night had gone, for you never wanted to end up “emotionally overdrawn on an account you hadn’t even opened yet.”
He knew you a man lost real points if, over the three dates, if it involved drinks, he ordered the same one. He knew a man gained them, silently and instantly, for being able to sit in a lull without narrating his way out of it, and that you considered this the single rarest trait in modern dating.
He knew you were looking for something you had no name for and would recognize on sight, which struck him as a hell of a way to run a search.
He’d have told you, if you asked, that he tuned most of the station chatter out as a matter of survival, for while he enjoyed the occasional gossip, he couldn’t very well absorb everyone’s business. And that was true about everyone’s business but yours, apparently, because yours came in clear.
Your business he retained against his own better judgement, and he realized — once, during a slow shift — that he could’ve drawn you a better map of your taste than you seemed to carry yourself. He could’ve told you, if you asked, exactly the kind of man who’d finally clear your bar, and exactly why he had yet to show up.
It was almost nice, some nights, watching you try anyway. The ER was a place where everyone was kept tethered to the world by a thread, and everyone who worked in it long enough to develop some version of the same calluses. Jack had grown his years ago, and he wore them invisible, occasionally aching, and had come to terms with it being permanent.
Love, for Jack, had stopped being a real noun before you’d shown up, somewhere between things he used to want and things he’d decided weren’t for him anymore.
You still believed in it. You’d watched this place take everything soft out of grown men twice your seniority and somehow walked through the same fire hopeful, still convinced, against every scrap of evidence, that somewhere there was a person worth all that hoping.
For that reason, he had decided to not interrupt your endeavors, not until now, when he noticed you during hand-off before your night shift with him started, in front of Robby, of all people.
While Jack loved Robby like a brother, he had a documented, department-wide, actuarially reliable seven-week expiration date on every woman he charmed out of this building. He’d heard intra-departmental gossip about him. There was, Jack was fairly sure, a running joke about it that predated your residency by years.
He knew you definitely were not finding love in his best friend. But Jack felt the buzzing in his mind go quiet and mean watching how you with him.
You laughed at something and Jack lost, for one humiliating second, the thread of what he’d walked over to say. It happened sometimes, more than he’d admit to anyone. Ordinary noises out of you hit him somewhere in his chest before the better part of him flagged it as a problem, and he had to physically clear his throat before finding his footing again.
“ — Italian’s always good after pulling a double,” Robby was saying. “But I do love some microwave ramen, too, when I’m missing my med student days.”
“Oh, so your standards have been raised being chief?” you said, and Jack could hear the smile and wariness in it.
“For sure —”
Jack let out a huff, something resembling a laugh, as his feet planted him between the two of you. He was close enough that his shoulder nudged yours and you had to step back to keep your balance. He felt your weight land for a second against him with a satisfaction he had no, absolutely no business feeling for something so small. So childish.
He turned to Robby, spreading his hands wide, mock outrage. “My resident.”
Robby looked mildly amused, unbothered, so Jack added, before he could respond, “Go home before I report you to HR.”
“You’d do that to me?”
“In a heartbeat. Have some shame.” Jack kept his shoulder where it was still angled half in front of you, an old, unexamined instinct keeping the line drawn even though Robby had already backed off.
He tipped his head toward the doors, toward the gold light coming up in them, the day shift draining out around you both. “There’s a whole rich life waitin’ for you out there.”
Robby just smiled and pushed off the counter, giving you a small wave before he left.
Jack turned to you then, brows furrowed. “Seriously?”
You let out a short laugh. “Work hard, play hard?”
“Soundin’ a lot like a frat brother right now. Never have those words been said in an ER,” Jack said.
“I wasn’t actually going to do it,” you said, rushing the words out with something more honest in them. “For the record. I know what — he’s got a reputation.” You picked at the counter. “I was just talking to him. He’s funny.”
Jack had to recalibrate for a second. “You were talkin’ sweet to him.”
“I talk sweet to everyone.” You lifted a shoulder, completely unbothered. “You should try it sometime.”
He rolled his eyes at that. He reached over for your cup of coffee sitting between you — closer to his elbow than yours — and drank a sip, eyes going up to the ceiling at the sheer volume of syrup you’d decided you needed in your bloodstream today. “The hell?” he muttered, turning the cup slightly as if that would help. “Are you trying to embalm yourself?”
“Give it back.”
“In a minute.” He took a second sip, slower this time, and watched you over the rim of the cup. Then, he set it back a few degrees off how you’d had it, just to see your jaw tick.
You pulled the cup back in, thumbed it around until the lid faced you again, and drank from it without breaking your explanation. “I’m offended you think I’ll get wine and dined by the chief attending.” You tilted your head. “Give me some credit here. I won’t be his seven weeks.”
“Huh.” He rubbed the back of his neck, which was warm. “Well, good. Don’t think he’ll clear your bar anyway.”
“See, you get it,” you said, pointing a finger at him. “At least someone around here does.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, tipping his head slightly forward that even he hadn’t realized that he had shifted the distance just slightly. “Better than most.”
Your eyes widened slightly at that, and Jack took that as his cue to step back, clear his throat, as he jerked his chin toward the board.
“Alright, time to work. Stop the play,” he said, trying to get his voice the right level. “Go look at chest pain on three.”
“So bossy,” you said, but you were already turning around to go to three.
Well, that’s what he was, wasn’t he? For some reason, he had to remind himself that.
It was what he had to remind himself as his hands hovered your trembling ones as you tried to pump air into Mrs. Foley’s lungs, knowing she was already gone — had been for a while now, if he was honest — longer than it took you to admit. He knew it, he’d grown the grim ability to recognize when a body stopped being a patient and being someone you were performing compressions on for the family’s sake, for your own need to have done everything.
He’d let it run anyway, because you hadn’t accepted it yet, and he’d wanted to give you that extra minute to arrive at it on your own.
Mateo had come up to Jack’s side, snapping his gloves off, the sound of it overshadowed by your own heaving.
“She has to call it,” he murmured. “You want me to —”
“No.” Jack’s eyes, he felt, could not move away from your distress. “I’ve got her.”
Mateo looked at him for a moment longer than the moment warranted, and then he stepped back and let Jack be. You were still going, your compressions had gone harder, faster, less like genuine medicine and more like you were pleading with Mrs. Foley herself now. Sweat had gone to the hair at your temple. Your jaw was set in a clench Jack recognized all too well, and for a moment, Jack wished that he didn’t have to be so acutely tuned into watching what the job did to others, the same way it did to him.
He stepped in behind your shoulder, close, and brought his hand down over yours where they were locked on the old woman’s chest.
“Look at the clock,” he said quietly into your ear.
“One more round —”
“You’ve done plenty.” He pressed, gently, until your hands stilled under his, and felt your entire body resist it. “You know she was gone before we could’ve even done anything —”
“She’s been my patient for years —”
Jack knew then that while you may have been an excellent doctor, his senior resident that had bloomed under his mentorship but still could’ve gone without him and done just the same, it wasn’t a good feeling to wonder if the job would dim you the way it had him.
“I know.” He kept his hands over yours with enough pressure so as to not let you drive them down again. “That’s why it’s yours to call. But you’ve gotta call it, Doctor.”
Your breath hitched as you turned your neck to face him, and there was a pool brimming on your lashline that you kept at bay, nodding. Your hands under his stopped straining upward, and he felt the exact second you accepted it, for it moved through your shoulders and down your spine and left you a little smaller standing there, the fight trickling into the moment after, which Jack always thought was worse.
“Time of death,” you said, forcing your voice back into the procedural tone, “oh-three-forty-one.” You peeled your gloves off finger-by-finger.
His hand found the small of your back after taking the minute, leading you to the little family consult room with the boxed tissues and fake ficus with a couch that had absorbed more bad news since longer than you or he had worked there. He shut the door with the flat of his hand and let the floor’s noise cut to a hum through the drywall.
You stood in the middle of the room with your arms crossed, holding yourself, and stayed silent.
Jack propped himself against the table, arms folded, as he breathed out a small sigh through his nose. He knew you weren’t a talker after the bad ones. Some residents came out of a loss with their mouths running, narrating it into something survivable, and some went quiet and small and had to be waited out, and you were the second kind. So he waited.
You broke it eventually, like he always knew you would have. “I’ve got a butterscotch she gave me seven months ago in my locker still,” you murmured, craning your neck so you were looking at the ceiling. You wiped under your eyes with the heel of your hand roughly.
“Think I’ve got one, too,” he murmured, wincing as he tried to shift his weight.
It had been building up for the past few hours, a hot ring of wrong down below the knee where the socket had gone slick and furnace-warm because it was past hour fourteen, when he’d sweated the fit and never changed the liner because there’d been no window that wasn’t already accounted for. He shifted his weight off it, trying again, and reached down to thumb the release, breaking the seal.
He let out a short, punched out sigh as he pulled himself down onto the chair behind him, one hand balancing himself on the table. “Sorry,” he gruffed out, jaw clenching.
Your eyes flickered down to the prosthetic limb he was balancing against the pole of the table and you were already moving before he could finish apologizing. You never asked if he needed a hand. You’d learned sometime during your second year that asking him gave him a chance to say no, and you’d quit handing him that chance sometime during your second year, so now you just came. You went down on one knee at the pole of the table.
“Don’t say sorry,” you mumbled, eyes not meeting him.
His jaw stayed tight and he didn’t fight it, fight you. That was a formality and you both knew it, a thing he did with his shoulders and not his hands, but he watched the top of your head and thought — like he always did, each time, and never said out loud — there was no one else on god’s green earth he’d let do this in the way you did. Not the prosthetist, who did it clinically. Not the VA, who did it tired. You did it each time like it was nothing and everything at once, as though this something not worth remarking on.
He very badly wanted to thank you, despite how small he always felt when you did this. He wanted to tell you that you were, without question, better at this than anyone who was paid to do it.
Your fingers found the socket and went for the liner because you knew the fit went bad and the sweat before it went bad anywhere a person could see, knew he’d have to run it slick and furnace-hot than spend the fourteen minutes off the floor. You rolled it back with the flat of your thumb, easing the trapped heat out of it, and he felt the pressure of the ring of raw below his knee and had to clench his jaw to not let the relief show on his face. You spared him anyway by keeping your eyes down where they’d been.
“You’ll strip your skin doing this,” you said conversationally, the roughness still present in your voice from the code. “You know that. You keep running it past twelve and one of these nights it’s cellulitis and I’m admitting you.”
“If only I could be so lucky.”
He ducked his head slightly, a part of him wanting to catch the reaction, and he saw how one corner of your lip was barely turned up.
You thumbed a line of red where the socket’s edge had bitten in, checking it, and your touch went careful around there. “This is new. The edge is catching higher than it was.”
“Went to a new liner last month,” he said, voice low. “Not broke in yet.”
“Then you break it on your days off. Not on a fourteen hour.” You finally looked up at him, shaking your head with this flat, fond expression he’d come to realize was your favorite way to look at him. “You’d write me up for less.”
“I’d write you up for a lot less,” he agreed, thinking back on the time you’d fought him tooth-and-nail over staying through a migraine, refusing, point-blank, to hand off a soft rule-out chest pain at eleven when the migraine had started very visibly began creeping up on you.
He’d caught you before you’d said a word about it because you’d begun squinting at the numbers and pressed the heel of your hand against one eye for a moment too long between patients, thinking nobody was watching. He was, he realized, always watching you in some way.
“Go home,” he’d said quietly, catching you by the elbow outside the curtain. “That’s not a request.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve got a migraine.”
“I’ve got a job.” Your jaw had clenched, stubbornly, and Jack had thought that even if he’d put all his strength into it, he wouldn’t have been able to unclench it for you. “I’m not handing off a chest pain because my head hurts. This guy has waited long enough for a bed. I’m not the priority here.”
He’d wanted to tell you that you were, actually, that you were exactly the priority, and watching you white-knuckle forms with your pupils blown different sizes from pain scared him more than any board full of critical pains ever had. But he’d just pulled down the light two notches, told the nurses to shadow eleven’s discharge, and put a bottle of water and two Tylenol on your desk without a word. And thank god, you’d taken the Tylenol and finished the shift standing up because sitting made the room tilt worse, and only taken on non-critical cases. You’d refused until the end that you should’ve gone home three hours earlier.
Now, you huffed something that was nearly a laugh, your first real once since the code, and went back to setting. And Jack sat there with his arms crossed in the dark with your hands on the worst-guarded part of him and the door shut against the whole floor, and thought about how he believed nobody deserved you. People were vile and sucked and cut in line and let doors swing shut behind them, and you handed out three dates to men who wrote sonnets in your voicemail and couldn’t clear a bar you’d never once lowered for anyone. He’d thought, more nights than he liked to admit, that these people had no idea what they were auditioning for.
His eyes snagged on you because there was nothing else in this small room worth looking at. There was still salt dried in your lashline from the code. You were a wreck and you were fixing his leg anyway, still half-shaking from a woman you couldn’t save, and it hadn’t occurred to you to stop and put yourself back together first. It never did. Jack had seen the care run out of you before you ever decided to spend it.
“I’m sorry about Mrs. Foley,” he said.
You shook your head, face still angled down, thumb pausing mid-motion. “I’ll be okay,” you murmured, lifting up one shoulder. “I just hate that she couldn’t get here sooner.”
“You did nothing wrong,” he said plainly. “Family said she’s been feeling off for two days now.”
“I know.” Your voice cracked, betraying the flatness you were trying to present. “Doesn’t make it easier.”
You lifted your head for a moment, then, looking at him with a sad smile he knew you were painting on to get him to stop talking.
He nodded stiffly, tipping his chin down. “Alright. Finish my leg and we’ll run this floor together.”
Up in radiology a few nights later, Jack had gone himself to sort out a reading that had been sitting long and he’d cornered a tech and got what he needed and was already halfway out the door, jacket sleeves still rolled from the last set of compressions, when he saw the guy standing off by the light boxes.
Younger. A resident, he supposed, in scrubs a size too crisp for someone who’d actually been on the shift long enough to earn wrinkles in them. He’d been watching Jack the whole time — Jack could feel it, the itch of being observed — shifting his weight heel to toe against the linoleum floor.
“Somethin’ on my face?” Jack said flatly because he really did have to get back to the floor.
“You’re — sorry, you’re Dr. Abbot, right?”
“Last I checked.”
The guy’s hand came out of his jacket’s pocket, and there was a piece of folded paper in it. Jack looked at it like it was a spider, hoping — no, praying — it had something to do with work.
“Could you give this to her?” the guy asked, and Jack’s hope died, as he stepped closer. “The senior resident on your shift. She’ll — she’ll know who it’s from.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jack murmured, brows pulling in together. “You ever heard of texting, kid?”
“I did,” he said, and Jack could practically feel the heat radiating off of him. “She stopped answering, so I figured, maybe on paper, she’d actually —”
“Take the hint,” Jack grumbled, snatching the paper out of his hand. Then, as he turned to the door, he said, “You know I work in the ER?” When the guy only nodded quickly, he added, “You know she works in the ER?”
“I — yeah. Obviously.”
“Then you know she doesn’t need this.” He held up the paper between him and the guy. “She’s got enough on her plate without some guy too chicken to call her handing me a note like I’m her mailman.”
The guy opened his mouth, nose scrunching at Jack’s words, but nothing came out.
“Yeah.” Jack was already walking, note tucked in his pocket, done with the conversation. “Try calling next time. Or don’t.”
The guy looked at least a little sheepish, a little ashamed, and Jack thought good, he should feel ashamed. He wasn’t sure what the protocol in dating was now — he’d been just a little rusty and out of the stretch for a stretch of years he preferred not to count in single digits — but he was fairly certain that whatever the rules had curdled up to, this could not possibly be inside them.
He rode the elevator down with the note in his pockets, and he could feel the small stiff square of another man’s hope pressing over the outside of his thigh.
He found you at your desk, hands running restlessly through your hair as you spoke into the microphone, charting. The words were coming out of you bluntly, mechanic and after saying the same variation a thousand times over. There was a pen behind your ear you’d forgotten about and the residue of a lab value gone blue across the back of your hand where you’d scrawled it hours ago and never washed off.
He stood there for a second before you noticed him, and thought — not for the first time and with the same low irritation he always felt about it — that he had no earthly business being the man this got routed to.
Jack leaned down so his head hovered beside yours, scanning your work on the screen, close enough that his shoulder nearly brushed yours, head tilted to read your screen at an angle that had nothing to do with actually needing to see it.
“The man wants an espresso martini?” he asked, furrowing his brows as he read over your notes, right by your ear.
You jumped just slightly and swivelled on your stool to face him, then back at the screen. “Shit — Jack. Announce yourself.” You scanned the words on your notes, shaking your head and already backspacing. “No, that was me talking to myself. Stupid mic picked it up.”
“Long as it’s just the one,” he drawled, staying there in your space a little longer, watching the side of your face instead of the screen now. “Those things sneak up on you.”
“Speaking from experience?” You turned on your stool to face him fully, chin tilting up to meet his eyes, something playful and a little challenging in it.
“I’ve got a couple decades on you. Everything’s snuck up on me.”
You held his gaze a little longer, then looked away first, tongue coming out over your lips for a second. He took a small satisfaction in not being the one who blinked first.
He blew out a breath through his nose, remembering, with reluctance now, what he’d actually come here to do. “Speaking of sneaking up.” He pulled out the note from his pocket. “I got something to deliver to you —”
You furrowed your brows when he handed it to you. “Secret admirer?” you asked jokingly.
He barked out a short laugh. “Nothin’ secret about it. You ignoring some radiology fellow?”
You grimaced, opening the note and scanning over the words quickly. He could’ve left, but stayed instead and watched you read it. The frown only pulled deeper, and he saw your eye twitch once as you scanned the words.
Against his better judgement, he murmured, “That bad?”
“Uh — no, it’s okay.” You shrugged stiffly.
“Huh,” he breathed out, studying you outright now. “Wonder what you’re doin’ to these guys to get them so wound up.”
You chuckled, mostly to yourself. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
His chest tightened at that. It was unfair how you could make anything to him sound like something he’d been waiting to hear. He swallowed. “Suppose I would.”
“That an offer, Dr. Abbot?”
“Might be,” he said, shrugging one shoulder.
You laughed — surprised, the tension in your shoulders breaking slightly — and shook your head, folding the note back up. “You’re ridiculous. Well, thank you for getting it to me. I’m sorry he bothered you with this —” You swivelled, placing the note on your desk before picking up your phone. “That’s really weird.”
“That’s one word for it,” Jack said, and left it there, because you’d already turned and had your phone in one hand and the microphone in the other. The small furrow was back between your brows, and he’d learned there was a point past which pushing you got him a brighter, smaller version of whatever you were covering.
He drifted toward the far end of the station where Mateo was crouched at the crash cart running his palm along the drawers, checking seals, restocking and checking the fact of it on slower nights like this.
“She okay?” Mateo asked, snapping the drawer, seemingly having caught the interaction.
“Oh, you know.” Jack leaned a shoulder into the wall, arms crossing. “The belle of our ball. Can’t clock in without collecting a proposal.”
Mateo huffed. “She loves love.”
“That she does.” Jack watched you across the station, the phone lit against your ear now. “Don’t know why she keeps doing that to herself, though.”
“She’s an optimist.” Mateo clicked a seal into place, then moved down the cart. “Thinks someone’s gonna turn out different.”
Jack hummed, then, because the question had been sitting low and unlovely for a couple hours, he asked, “You two give it a run ever?”
Mateo turned his neck to look up at Jack. “Me and —” He jutted his thumb behind him to vaguely gesture at you. “Her?”
“Mhm.” Jack kept his eyes on you. “You’re close.”
“Nah.” Mateo went back to the cart, shaking his head as he chuckled softly. “I don’t think I’d pass a single one of her tests. Besides, I got my eye on someone.”
“Apparently I don’t make the list either, I guess,” Jack murmured.
Mateo laughed through his nose, eyeing Jack with something new now. “You want to?”
Jack caught it, reaching his palm and smacking it against Mateo’s curls with no force. “No. Now, do your job.”
“I am —” He laughed through the words, eyes scanning over Jack’s stiffened posture now. “It’s good you don’t, then. Couldn’t handle her anyway.”
“Sure, I could,” Jack said immediately.
Mateo’s head turned again, lips curving upwards at Jack’s words, and he felt momentarily blindsided by his own mouth, entirely too honest for something that had started as a joke.
“Sure, you could,” Mateo teased, drawing out the words.
“Shut it.” Jack grabbed a box of gloves off the cart and set it down two shelves lower than it needed to go, purely to do something with his hands that didn’t involve reaching for Mateo’s collar. “Wasn’t a real question.”
Couldn’t handle you? As if he didn’t know, without having to think about it, that you took the stairs two at a time instead of the elevator when you were annoyed and needed somewhere to put your extra energy, or that you’d started drinking your coffee black on nights a patient reminded you of someone, syrup and cream abandoned, like sweetness felt wrong to have that shift. As if he hadn’t noticed, months ago, that you hummed the same four off-key notes from a jingle neither you nor Jack could place when a chart was boring you to death, or that you double-checked every single IV line now, ever since one bad mistake in your first year. He could very well handle you, he simply hadn’t been given the chance to do so.
Most of the time, Jack was fine with watching your love life play out in 3D. More often than not, he knew they’d never work out. You were just too good for anyone who came sniffing, and there was a grim comfort in that, in knowing the fellows and the nurses would wash through and out and leave you exactly where he found you, three feet down the counter from him, close enough to keep.
Tonight the comfort wasn’t coming. Mateo’s accidental interrogation had rubbed Jack wrongly, somewhere he had yet to fully locate yet, and was sitting in his chest like a splinter he kept forgetting was there until he turned the corner over the night, saw you, and noticed it was there. He should’ve let it stay as nothing, but his brain had apparently decided three hours later was the correct time to relitigate the whole exchange, turning it over at odd intervals between patients like a tongue worrying a chipped tooth.
It was the bad sort of slow in the ER, the sort that let his brain fill up with things he’d have no time for on a real night. Ellis had wandered over to your desk with two energy drinks and placed her arms loosely beside your computer.
Jack was distantly aware he had misplaced labs to hand back to you because they’d gotten lost in the system, and he told himself that was the whole reason his body had started moving in your direction.
“I got a rundown from Marge,” Ellis said, dropping into an empty stool beside you. “Apparently he wrote it out of the OR.”
“You’re joking,” you muttered. “I don’t understand it.”
Jack stood there with the labs in his hand, close enough to hear it.
“I’m still wondering if I should respond,” you were saying, half into your hands. “Is this romantic? This one’s never happened before.”
Ellis laughed slightly with you, and the two of you had built one of those small pockets that slow nights sometimes allowed, thirty seconds of being people instead of clinicians.
Jack set the labs down at the edge of your keyboard harder than he meant to, the papers slapping flat against the desk, and both of you looked up at him like he’d grown two heads. Fuck — had he? It sure felt like he was operating off of whatever chemical cocktail his brain had whipped up for nights like this, some ugly little compound of jealousy and exhaustion. He was fairly sure if you pulled his labs right now they’d look like a man in the middle of a bad reaction to something not yet figured out in the scientific world.
“Labs on eight got lost.” His palm stayed on the sheet for a few seconds too long, some instinct telling him to keep his hand on something solid before the rest of him did something stupid. “You’ll want to recheck the trop.”
His eyes cut, against every ounce of better judgement he had left, to the note still folded in your hand, the same one he’d carried down like it was radioactive, the same note that had clearly done something for you that four years of Jack standing next to you clearly hadn’t. An unreasonable, low feeling creeped up behind his ribs at the sight of it, hot and out of proportion to a piece of folded-fucking-paper.
Ellis’s smile went uncertain as he felt her gaze snag on him.
You blinked up at him, and whatever had been sitting easy in your face a second ago curdled itself away, the corners of your mouth retreating. He knew this same retreat, had watched you recalibrate your muscles, swiftly, built to be unreadable against anyone who hadn’t spent four years learning your face.
His stomach dropped and heat climbed up the back of his neck, jaw tightening on its own. He hated that his body had learned to answer you the way it answered a motor alarm. He hated more that some raw, cornered part in him — still smarting about Mateo’s offhand comment and sore from that folded note — felt it wasn’t soothed.
You blinked up at him, and the laugh faded off your face, and you said, easily, warm, “Yeah — course. I’ll get right on that.”
He shrugged up one shoulder, lips pressing into a thin line. He turned, already walking away. “Whenever there’s a gap on your social calendar, I guess.”
He heard the small silence that opened behind him, and he could practically imagine you and Ellis looking at each other. Then, he heard you push back from the desk, the stool wheels catching, and your footsteps coming after him like he’d known they would, because you were the last person to let something like that go.
“Hey.” You fell into step beside him, voice pitched low, still giving him more benefit than the doubt had earned in the last ten seconds. “What was that about?”
“Nothing.” He tilted his neck up slightly to do a quick scan of the board, some stubborn muscle in his neck refusing to let him meet your eyes. “Got a department to run.”
“And you’ve been running it great. You just became weird right now.” He could feel you working it over beside him, shifting on your feet as you toed the line between resident and the hard-won territory neither of you had ever named. “Jack.”
“You want to laugh about your shitty dates, that’s your business,” he said instead of letting it go, sounding too far from the man who’d had his hands hovering over yours an hour ago, watching you put in a chest tube, telling you that you’d done well. “Do it a little quieter. This is an ER, not a lunch table.”
His words stopped you for half a step. Jack kept walking, an ugly, cowardly momentum carrying him three more steps before you caught back up.
He heard you recalibrate your voice in real time when you said, “I was charting on a slow shift,” carefully. “You’ve made worse jokes when it’s even more busy. What’s this about?”
“It’s about you treating this place like it’s your dating pool and not your place of work.” The words came out much uglier than he meant, and he didn’t have it in him to call them back. “It’s not professional. It reflects on the department. Reflects on me. Somebody’s gotta say it, and apparently that’s me, since you clearly enjoy it too much to stop.”
You stopped walking altogether this time. He turned to face your stillness whole, then, and found your eyes narrowed at him, looking like you’d been hit from a direction you hadn’t been completely guarding against.
He let out a breath, fingers going up to his forehead to wipe at sweat that wasn’t there. “I’m just saying what —”
“I’m sorry,” you said, voice going level and courteous, as you nodded quickly. “You’re right. You’re my attending, it reflects on you. I’ll keep my personal life out of work.”
“That’s not —” he tried, but you were already turning away, shoulders squared and chin level, professional armor snapping into place just like he’d told you to. It should have made him feel better to watch you take it so cleanly, to not make a big deal out of it. All it made him feel was like something had been surgically removed from him.
“Stop —” he tried again, to your back now, and the sentence died somewhere between his teeth and the air. That was okay. There was no end to the sentence that didn’t sound worse than the beginning anyway.
He blew out a sharp breath through his nose, standing in the middle of the floor with his hand still half-raised toward you, fingers curling back into his palm when he realized you weren’t there to reach. Jack felt, distantly, uselessly, like the only thing standing still in the entire building.
“Great going,” he heard Lena say, trailing past him, a tray tucked against her hip, not even breaking stride. “You got rid of the one entertainment we’ve got around here.”
His shoulders stiffened, and he caught up with her in three steps, jaw working around words that wanted to spill out defensively and came out simply tired. “It’s not entertainment if she keeps getting hurt,” he grumbled. “She’s not a show. Stop treating her like one.”
“Didn’t look like she was the one getting hurt tonight,” she said, rounding a corner and leaving him standing there.
Jack let out a low groan, running a palm down the lower half of his face, and dropped his hand only when he’d scrubbed enough friction into his jaw to feel it sting a little, which was at least a sensation he’d chosen, at least tonight. He stood there a second longer, staring at nothing in particular. His hands found his hips on reflex.
“Fuck,” he muttered to himself, and dragged both hands back through his hair, gripping once at the roots before letting go.
He rolled his neck, felt it pop unsatisfyingly, and pushed off the wall he hadn’t even realized he was leaning against. His leg fucking ached, the burn starting behind his knee. He ignored it like he always did and started walking anyway, jaw still held tight, hands shoved deep into his pockets like he could physically hold himself together with the seams of his own black scrubs.
It was by the lockers after hand-off that Jack saw you next. Both of you had conveniently managed to work over-time; he because there was nothing to get home to, and you — he’d heard through the grapevine — because one of your patient’s little sister was coming in toward close, and you simply wanted to talk with her instead of handing the situation off to one of the day residents.
Usually, nobody had asked you to stay when you did. Most times, there was no version of staying that showed up in your favor; he and Shen were gone, so there was no attending grading you on it; no hours that counted. It was just for a kid who was going to get bad news from a face she’d seen before, so you cost yourself hours of sleep you most definitely needed to be the soft spot for a stranger’s little sister, and hadn’t mentioned it to a soul, and he knew you would’ve been embarrassed if he brought it up.
He found you using the little mirror inside your locker to apply some kind of pink-tubed gloss with one hand while the other ran its fingers through your hair. Jack pursed his lips, eyeing you from the doorway, because he was pretty sure you’d done something different to it in the last ten minutes.
“Look nice,” he tried, biting the bullet and walking toward his own locker. “Goin’ somewhere?”
You caught his eyes in the mirror instead of turning around. “Just breakfast,” you said, and there was none of the earlier lilt in it, the warmth that you’d always aimed at him gone functional. You capped the gloss with more force than it needed and dropped it into your bag.
Jack stood there a second too long with his hand over his own locker without opening it. He’d expected — and he knew he was more optimistic than usual for doing so — your easy back-and-forth, his slip-up from earlier forgotten. He wasn’t sure what to do with the quiet or you not looking at him properly, hairbrush working through your hair in short strokes.
He’d saved around thirty lives tonight, and that was what he was good at. He was not good, and had never claimed to be good, at the aftermath of hurting a person he’d have put his own body between a stretcher and wall for, without meaning to, over something that had never been about the radiology fellow at all.
He opted out of opening his locker and chose instead to lean his bicep against the locker, eyeing you in front of him. “Mad at me?” he murmured.
You let out a short breath, shaking your head, and he tracked all your micro-expressions through the mirror. “On the clock?”
“Well, we’ve both been off it for a while now,” he said, watching the shape of your mouth in the mirror, waiting for it to give something away. It didn’t. “But no. Asking as your —” He stopped himself, because ‘friend’ seemed not to be the honest word though it was the first one that popped up. “Off the clock. Whatever I am to you right now.”
You set the hairbrush down on the little shelf with more care than the moment needed. “It’s okay, Jack,” you said, shaking your head.
“Don’t think it is. Try again.”
You watched him for a second in the mirror, then you turned.
“It’s just embarrassing,” you said, and the words came out smaller than anything he’d heard out of you in years. You crossed your arms over your chest. “I respect you and I hate that you’d think for one second I don’t take this place seriously.” Your voice cracked on the last word, just barely, and you pressed your lips together. “So, yeah. It’s embarrassing to have my attending confirming I’m exactly what people think I am.”
He was shaking his head before you could even finish the sentence. “Nobody thinks —”
“You do,” you said, voice rising slightly. “So, off the clock, I’m embarrassed, and tonight, I’m going to be your resident. Because I agree with you. It’s been unprofessional of me to keep dating within the hospital —” You threw your arms up halfway by your side, and you let out a short laugh that came out dry and wrong. “And I hate that you’ve probably been thinking it for four years.”
“I haven’t,” he said too fast. God, he’d come here to make tonight better for you, not to make you re-evaluate all your years working with him. “Sure, I thought it was none of my business how you spend your good nights off. Didn’t stop me from thinking they didn’t deserve ‘em.”
You rolled your eyes. “You’re just saying that now ‘cause you feel bad.”
“Wish it were that simple,” he said, and chose to leave it unelaborated because it wasn’t that simple and he had no intention of explaining exactly why. “Half the time, you know it’s not gonna work out. You’re breaking my heart by making me watch you break yours.”
You blinked, and he watched the fight loosen out of you by inches. “It’s just a free breakfast, Jack. Nothing to get your heart broken over.”
Jack let out a huff through his nose, mouth opening to say what, he didn’t know. “Is that all? ‘Cause I can get you free breakfast for the rest of your life.”
You laughed, disbelieving, through your nose, some of the night’s weight finally cracking off of you. “You’ve got a weird way of apologizing.”
“Just to my favorite resident.” He pointed his index finger at you, lazy, and pushed himself off the lockers. His shoulder blades left a faint dust-print on the metal where he’d been leaning. He thumbed in the combination without looking at the dial — muscle memory, years of the same locker — and the door swung open with a rusted squeak. He pulled out his bag. “So?”
“So what?”
“You ditch the fellow.” He slung the bag up over his shoulder, close enough now that he caught the tail-end of the perfume you’d lightly spritzed over yourself. “I buy.”
You looked at him for a second too long, lips pushing to one side, as though you were gauging whether this was a bit or not, another line he’d tossed and wanted to let die on its own. He stood there, jaw set and features relaxing to show you he did mean it, more than he wanted to admit, if he was being honest with himself.
“You’re serious.”
“Do I look like I’m not?” He nodded once at your locker, your bag sitting on the shelf. “Grab your stuff. We’re going.”
“Fine,” you said finally, reaching over and zipping your backpack all the way before throwing it over one shoulder. “Can you drive? I’ve been taking the subway.”
“Why?” he asked drily. “You’ve got a car.”
Jack realized, as he watched you slide in across from him and folding both hands around the coffee before it was all the way poured, that he’d never once been on a date where the woman had no idea it was one.
It wasn’t lost on him what that made him, a man old enough to know better, letting a thing be one thing on his side of the table and another thing entirely on yours, saying nothing to square the difference. But he’d meant what he’d said, and he was going to feed you.
You ordered a short stack, eggs, hash brown, decaf on loop. She wrote it down, definitely having heard worse from better.
“Thanks for the treat, Jack,” you said when Dina left, bringing the rim of your cup to your lips. “Don’t think I could’ve done another breakfast to let him down gently.”
“We have to make some changes to your lifestyle,” Jack replied, voice rough, as he eyed you.
“Oh, yeah?” you murmured. “We?”
“Well, I did have to deliver a note to you today. In all my life working here, that’s never happened.”
You laughed around the rim of your cup. “In my defense, I don’t think anyone’s wrote me a note out of an OR either. That’s a first for both of us.”
“Glad we share the experience.”
Dina came by with a pot and topped you off without being asked, and placed the food in front of you. Jack watched you reach for the salt before your fork had even touched the eggs, shaking it twice over the plate.
“You’re gonna give yourself a stroke by forty.”
“You’re gonna give me a stroke right now if you comment on my food.” But you set the shaker down after the third shake, which he noticed and had to bite back a smile.
Dina dropped his plate in front of him — bacon, eggs, no pancakes — and you were reaching for it with a piece of your fork before she’d even finished setting his fork down. He gave you a faux-frown, picking up his fork and, without looking, spreading a piece of your hashbrown off the opposite plate in trade. He wasn’t sure when the two of you had started stealing bites and sips off of each other’s stuff, only that it’d started somewhere and calcified into something neither of you mentioned.
“Rude,” you said, mouth already full.
“Learned it from you,” he muttered, nudging his plate an inch closer to your side of the table, which you took full advantage of.
Dina’s radio crackled through something twangy and close-to-familiar behind the counter, competing with the clatter of a skillet somewhere in the back, the whole place smelling like batter and grease soaked into decades of countertop, syrup that had dried a hundred small amber rings nobody had ever fully scrubbed off.
“I’ve never been here before.” You absentmindedly cut the hashbrown in half as your eyes raked over the place. “This a regular spot for you?”
“Since before you joined,” he said easily, but his brows furrowed as he realized he’d been coming here alone for years. He was in the same booth when he could get it, ordered the same order, and it struck to him only now, watching you eat your hashbrowns, how much smaller and less lonely a booth felt with you taking up the other half of it. “Used to be the only quiet I got on some weeks.”
You hummed. “And now?”
“Guess the quiet’s pretty negotiable.” He shrugged. “I can go without it.”
You smiled down at your plate, something easy working at the corner of your mouth. A thread of syrup had gathered at the seam of your lips — you hadn’t noticed, too busy considering his answer — and before he’d cleared the impulse with the rest of himself, his thumb was already moving, catching it at the corner quickly, no different than when he swiped under your lashline for salt after a bad night.
You stayed still, having gotten used to his hands somewhere during your residency.
“You’re a mess,” he said, wiping his thumb off on the paper napkin folded under his elbow.
“You’ve got coffee on your scrub top,” you said, eyes flicking down to his chest. His brows furrowed and he looked down, and you were right. “Pot, kettle.”
He’d been about to say something else, he could’ve sworn it, but had lost every word of it watching you smile so unguarded, free enough to let him look at you. He had to reach for his coffee just to have something to do with his hands.
When the check came, folded in its little plastic tray, you both reached for it at once. Your hand landed flat over his knuckles. Neither of you moved it for a second, for his hand stayed exactly where it was, broad and unmoving under yours, and something unspoken passed through the two inches of fornica between your faces as he raised a brow at you. He slid the tray out from under you slowly.
“Said I’m buying,” he said, shaking his head slightly.
The drive back had been quieter than the one there had been. It was nearing ten in the morning, and he knew both of you had stayed up longer than intended, especially for two people who had to clock back in in a shorter amount of time than he deemed plausible to reset completely.
He’d cracked the window down an inch, and the air coming through carried the smell of wet pavement and the sound of a garbage truck grinding its gears three streets over. Your neighborhood, he was learning, woke up slow; there was a paperboy on a bike, a guy in scrubs different from yours locking up his own car after a shift that wasn’t at the PTMC, and Jack drove through it with two fingers loose over the wheel. Neither of you had bothered with the radio.
You’d gone somewhere billowy around your third cup of decaf, all the sharp edges of the night replaced with something looser and sleepier, and you gave him directions in a voice gone thick from exhaustion as you were likely starting to feel it behind your eyes.
He pulled his car along the curb and let it idle, one shoe braced against the floorboard, watching the numbers of your building.
“Gonna sleep?” he asked.
“Gonna try.” You were already working the bag strap over your shoulder, hair falling loose out of the knot you’d put it up in at some point at the diner, strands of it catching the early light. “I’ve got no idea how you do this then take SWAT calls.”
“You’d be able to do it, too, if I put you on the field.”
You mumbled something, letting your head drop against the window for a second, before picking itself back up. “Stop threatening me, Jack.”
He watched you fight your eyelids, his mouth pulling up at the corners at the sight. “C’mon. Get inside before I gotta carry you up.”
You snorted, half-hearted. “You can’t. You’d throw your hip out.”
“Try me.” He was already rounding the hood before you’d gathered your bearings, boots loud on the quiet street, and you let out another laugh and let him get there first, too tired to argue about who gets to open what.
He walked you up the cracked path, palm settling at the small of your back, and you leaned back into it, half your weight given over without you noticing it.
At the door, you fumbled with your keys out from under a granola wrapper and a capless pen, missed the lock twice, and gave up trying on the third. You turned to face him instead with your back against the frame and your bag slowly sliding off one shoulder.
“Thank you,” you said, words coming out loose and filtered by the exhaustion even as you tried to meet his eyes head-on. “For the — everything. The explanation. And the breakfast.”
Jack felt his lips curve up, fingers flexing at his sides. “Anytime.”
“And for driving me there — thank you. And for the drive back.”
“Uh-huh. You gonna go inside?” he said, voice going quieter as he looked down at the ground, at how the toes of your shoes were almost touching. “Or keep thanking me until you fall asleep standing up?”
You cocked your head to the side, your lips moving upwards into a fuller smile. His own mouth curved as he shifted on his feet slightly, closing the barely-there inch between his shoes and yours.
“Jack?”
He hummed, and you went up slightly onto your toes before he’d finished deciding what to do with you. Or maybe he’d moved in first, or maybe there was no real order to it at all. His mouth found yours somewhere in that uncertainty, slowly despite it, because he’d already worked out every version of this moment and this one had simply appeared in front of him.
His hand came up to cradle the side of your jaw, thumb settling into the soft hollow just beneath your ears. Your skin was warm despite the cold snap in the air, much softer than he’d let himself imagine, and he felt the exact second your breath caught against his mouth, a small stutter that made his fingers curve around your jaw, index resting against your cheekbone.
He kept it slow, it was the only thing he had any real control over right now, the pace of it instead of the fact of it. He used what little he had left, dragging his mouth against yours, like he could somehow make up for four years of nothing by refusing to rush the first thirty seconds of something. His other hand found your waist, and his palm felt how your back curved into him, the hitch of your ribs on an inhale, and he pressed you back the last inch against the doorframe more to ground himself.
Your fist found the front of his canvas jacket, dragging him in the last stubborn space he’d been too careful to close himself, and a sound came out of his chest that embarrassed him a little. He felt you smile against his mouth, and his entire body felt warm at having been caught enjoying this entirely as much as he was.
He tilted his head so his forehead pressed against yours and pulled his mouth away. His lips jutted out slightly, feeling suddenly empty and unwilling to put the full distance back between the two of you.
Your eyes were still shut, and you were breathing unevenly. “Thank you,” you murmured.
He huffed a short laugh, and in it, realized how breathless he, too, was.
You tipped your chin back up, already chasing him.
Jack felt the want knot up inside him, greedy and unreasonably leaning back in to meet you halfway before the rest of him had caught up and made him stop. He made a small sound in his throat and pinched his eyes shut, letting you get right up to the edge of it, breath already tangling with his, wanting so badly to just let it happen, before his finger came up between you, pressed light against your bottom lip to stop you a hair short. It was more for his own sake than the words he remembered you telling someone years ago ringing in his head.
“Ah-ah.” His voice came out rough with want, entirely at odds with his actions. “Your rule. Only one kiss after the first date. I’m trying —” he exhaled hard, almost dramatically, “— trying real hard here to make it to the second.”
“Huh?” Your eyes peeled open. “This was a date?”
“Best one you’ve had I’m guessing, with the way you’re breaking your rules.” His finger stayed right where it was, and he watched your eyes struggle to focus, still glassy from the kiss. He could feel the warm huff of breath breaking unsteady against his fingertip, could feel your mouth soft and parted underneath it, waiting on him.
You pressed a peck against his finger instead, your mouth barely dragging against his skin as a shy smile formed behind it that he felt more than saw. “Maybe.”
“Well, good.” He smiled, despite himself, and pushed himself off your forehead, opting instead to press his lips there. “Get some sleep,” he murmured against your hairline, lips lingering a little longer there. “Might be able to get a full seven hours.”
“Will you?”
“Doubt it.” He pulled back enough to look at you properly, thumb tracing a line along your cheekbone — his touch feather-light, tracking the exact curve of it, memorizing the route — before he made himself drop his hand entirely, fingers curling loosely at his sides because suddenly he had no idea what to do with them without you under them. “Kinda got a lot on my mind now.”
“Yeah?” You bit back a smile, still not quite steady on your feet. “Anything you wanna share with the class?”
“Not a chance.” He bent a fraction and hooked two fingers under the strap of your bag where it’d slid down to your elbow, dragging it slowly back up to your shoulders, knuckles grazing your arms the whole way. “You’ll find out. Eventually.”
He forced himself to step off the mat — one step back, then the second, putting real distance between you now — forcing ease into his expression that he definitely wasn’t feeling. He stopped a few feet away from you anyway, unable to fully commit to walking away, watching you stunned and still in your doorway, mouth a little kiss-soft. He felt so completely helpless and pleased at the sight. “Text me when you’re up and I’ll get to planning date two.”
You raised a hand into a wave, fingers curling in the air.
“Bye, Jack,” you said, and his name came out of your mouth softer than you probably meant it to, smooth and cushy the way it never sounded on shift.
He lifted his chin up at you once and made himself turn, finally, finding the path back to his car. He made it to the curb before he looked back again, and you were still standing there, one hand braced on the door, watching him go with an expression he was sure he was going to think of the entire drive home.
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