summary: what starts as an academic crush on your painfully observant professor becomes significantly harder to survive after spencer reid signs a piece of feedback with “I remain yours sincerely.” unfortunately, you make the deeply questionable decision to keep it tucked inside your phone case.
includes: no use of y/n, professor!spencer reid, student/teacher dynamic, mutual pining, slow burn, academic yearning, intellectual intimacy, awkward flirting, emotional repression, praise kink if you squint, small age gap, office hours tension, accidental confession, unresolved sexual tension, humiliation as a love language, reader is down catastrophic, hopeful ending
based on this request
By the second semester, you know three things with absolute certainty.
First: Dr. Spencer Reid writes on whiteboards like he’s racing a clock only he can see.
Second: nobody voluntarily sits in the front row because it’s psychologically exhausting to be perceived by him for extended periods of time.
And third:
You are developing a deeply academic crush that is rapidly mutating into something clinically embarrassing.
The lecture hall hums softly around you with the sounds of backpacks unzipping and laptops waking from sleep. Rain taps against the high windows in restless little bursts, turning the late afternoon light silver at the edges.
At the front of the room, Dr. Reid is already halfway through uncapping three different markers at once.
He’s wearing a charcoal cardigan today.
You notice because of course you do.
Not in a normal way, either.
In the kind of way where your brain stores the information carefully like it might appear on an exam later.
“Statistically,” he says without turning around, “most people remember information better when there’s contextual novelty attached to it, which is why you all remember where you were during emotionally significant events but not what you ate last Tuesday.”
A beat.
Then he glances back toward the class.
“Unless it was tacos. People tend to remember tacos.”
A few students laugh.
You do too, unfortunately loud enough that his eyes flick toward you automatically.
There it is.
That tiny spark of recognition.
Not dramatic. Not cinematic. Just enough to say I know you.
Which is worse.
Much, much worse.
Because you’ve taken two semesters with him now. You go to office hours. You answer questions when nobody else will. Once, during your first class, you made an offhand comment about eidetic memory research and his entire face lit up like someone plugged sunlight directly into the national power grid.
Since then, you’ve been doomed.
Utterly doomed.
You try to focus on the lecture.
Really.
You do.
But Dr. Reid teaches like a man accidentally possessed by forty-seven documentaries and an anxiety disorder. He paces when he gets excited. His hands move constantly while he talks, long fingers stained faintly with marker ink. He veers off-topic in fascinating directions and then somehow circles perfectly back without notes.
It should not be attractive.
And yet.
Here you are.
Again.
Second semester.
Same problem.
Maybe worse.
“Now, if we look at the correlation between environmental instability and cognitive adaptation,” Dr. Reid continues, already turning back toward the board before the class has fully caught up, “there’s a measurable increase in hypervigilant pattern recognition in subjects exposed to inconsistent formative environments, which sounds complicated but is actually just your brain becoming an overachieving raccoon.”
Marker squeaks across the whiteboard in frantic slanted lines.
His handwriting is terrible.
Not objectively unreadable, exactly. More like every word is trying to outrun the next one. Sharp angles, crowded letters, arrows shoved into margins as though his thoughts physically cannot remain in a straight line.
You stare at it anyway.
Fondly.
Which feels like a personal failing.
He writes faster as he talks, cardigan pulling slightly across his shoulders when he reaches higher on the board. One sleeve has ridden up near his wrist, exposing the thin line of his watch and a faint smudge of ink against his skin.
You should be taking notes.
Instead, your brain is busy cataloging details like you'll be taking a quiz on his anatomy.
Then he steps sideways to underline something, and your gaze drops completely against your will.
Oh no.
Oh, that’s unfortunate.
Because apparently Dr. Spencer Reid has a nice ass.
Not in a dramatic way.
Not in a “male model carved from marble” way.
Just… unfairly nice for a man who spends most of his time talking about psychology and forgetting to eat lunch.
The slacks help.
Which feels hostile, honestly.
You blink hard and jerk your attention back to your laptop with the violent internal energy of someone trying to slam shut fifty browser tabs at once.
Focus.
Academic environment.
You are a serious student.
A serious student who absolutely did not just spend several seconds staring at her professor’s ass while he explained trauma responses.
Jesus Christ.
“Repeated exposure to unpredictability,” he says, still writing, “can create compensatory behaviors centered around control, organization, or information gathering.”
A few tired chuckles.
Then the clock clicks over.
Immediate chaos.
The lecture hall empties like someone pulled a drain plug.
Students flood toward the exits in clusters of conversation and damp jackets, the noise swelling briefly before dissolving into the hallway outside. Within less than a minute, the room goes from crowded to echoing.
You stay seated.
Not intentionally.
At least that’s what you tell yourself.
Your laptop suddenly needs to be shut very carefully. Your charger has apparently tangled itself into a knot requiring advanced engineering. Your pens must be arranged with the precision of ceremonial artifacts.
At the front of the room, another student has stopped to ask Dr. Reid something about the midterm.
You try not to stare while pretending not to listen.
It’s difficult.
Because listening to Spencer Reid explain things is like accidentally falling into a Wikipedia rabbit hole narrated by a very pretty insomniac.
“…the issue isn’t the terminology,” he’s saying, already rifling through papers again while the student nods along. “It’s application. Most people can memorize diagnostic criteria. The harder part is recognizing behavioral variance in context.”
His sleeve slips down slightly as he gestures, revealing ink smudged along the side of his hand again.
God.
You wonder briefly if there’s a psychological term for being attracted to a man who looks like he's constantly five minutes away from a lecture.
Probably.
He’d know it.
The student thanks him and heads out, disappearing into the hallway with everyone else until suddenly it’s just—
You.
And him.
The room feels different when it empties.
Too large. Too quiet.
Rain patters softly against the windows.
Dr. Reid glances up from stacking his notes, clearly registering your continued existence only now. “Oh, you're still here. Perfect.”
Your stomach drops so fast it’s honestly impressive.
Perfect?
There is no version of “perfect” that has ever ended calmly for a student being addressed by a professor after class.
Your brain immediately begins cycling through possibilities at medically concerning speed.
You plagiarized accidentally somehow.
You cited the wrong edition.
You hallucinated an entire journal article in APA format.
You’ve been academically excommunicated.
“Me?” you say brilliantly.
Dr. Reid blinks once. “Yes?”
Excellent start.
You shove your charger into your bag and stand quickly enough that your chair squeaks against the floor.
The sound echoes.
Violently.
You briefly consider walking directly into the rain and starting a new life elsewhere.
Instead, you manage a strained little, “Sorry. Uh. Yeah. What’s up?”
Dr. Reid gathers a few loose papers into a stack before pulling one free.
Your paper.
You recognize the bent corner immediately because you spent three straight hours staring at it last weekend in a caffeine-induced fugue state.
“I finally finished reading these last night,” he says, tapping the packet lightly. “Your section on adaptive masking behaviors was particularly good.”
The panic in your bloodstream stutters awkwardly. “…good?”
“Yes.” He looks faintly surprised by your surprise. “Very good, actually.”
There’s something deeply unfair about receiving praise from Spencer Reid specifically. He says things too earnestly. No performance to it. No academic politeness. Just direct sincerity delivered with terrifying eye contact.
You feel your nervous system fold like cheap lawn furniture.
“You made an interesting connection between hypervigilance and social mirroring,” he continues, flipping through the pages. “Most students approached the assignment from a purely diagnostic perspective, but you framed it as a survival adaptation first, which is considerably more accurate.”
Your heart does an embarrassing little cartwheel.
Because this is the problem.
Not just that he’s attractive.
It’s that every time he talks to you, it feels like he’s opening a secret door in your ribcage and switching on all the lights.
“Oh,” you manage intelligently. “Thanks.”
“And your question here.” He points suddenly to a paragraph halfway down the page. “About whether prolonged masking eventually alters baseline identity perception?”
You nod slowly.
He looks delighted.
Actually delighted.
Like you handed him a particularly interesting puzzle and not a half-panicked essay written at two in the morning while eating stale pretzels.
“That’s the kind of question people usually don’t ask until graduate-level behavioral analysis,” he says. “There’s still ongoing debate about it, especially regarding prolonged trauma adaptation and identity diffusion.”
You try very hard to remain normal about the fact that Spencer Reid is complimenting your intelligence in an empty lecture hall while rain taps softly against the windows like a movie determined to make things worse for you personally.
“Most current models oversimplify the distinction between performed identity and integrated identity,” he continues, already slipping fully into Lecture Mode again. “Humans are actually much more context-dependent than people like to admit. Personality isn’t nearly as fixed as we pretend it is.”
He flips another page absentmindedly.
“You also cited Dr. Nakamura’s 2018 paper, which almost nobody finds unless they’re specifically looking for it.”
Your mouth opens before your brain catches up.
“…you noticed my citations?”
Dr. Reid looks up.
There’s a tiny crease between his brows now, confused in the gentlest way possible. “Of course I noticed your citations.”
Well.
That’s going to live in your skull forever now.
He says it like it’s obvious. Like naturally he paid attention. Like naturally he read your work closely enough to recognize specific research choices.
Meanwhile you’re trying not to ascend directly out of your body.
“You’re one of the strongest writers in the class,” he says, matter-of-fact. “Your arguments are usually more structurally complex than your peers’, even when you seem unsure of them.”
The room abruptly feels too warm.
You grip the strap of your bag tighter. “I didn’t know you thought that.”
Because there’s something unbearably intimate about being understood academically by someone you admire. It feels dangerously adjacent to being seen naked. Like he’s looking directly at the shape of your thoughts with careful hands.
Dr. Reid glances back down at your paper again, seemingly unaware he’s currently causing neurological events.
“I did mark a few places where your transitions got rushed,” he says, pulling a pen from behind his ear. “Mostly because I think you were thinking faster than you could physically write.”
You laugh softly before you can stop yourself. “That does happen.”
“Yes,” he says immediately, almost too quickly. “I know.”
Silence.
Tiny.
Strange.
His expression shifts a fraction afterward, like maybe he hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
Rain rattles softly against the windows again.
And suddenly you become acutely aware that you are alone with Spencer Reid in an empty lecture hall while he holds your paper like it’s something fragile.
Dangerous situation, truly.
Then he uncaps the pen and scribbles something quickly across the last page.
His handwriting slants wildly across the margin.
Fast. Crowded. Ink-smudged.
You watch his hand move despite yourself.
When he finishes, he folds the packet once and offers it back to you.
“There,” he says. “I added a few additional reading recommendations if you want them.”
You step forward to take it, fingers brushing briefly against his.
Electricity.
Actual cinematic electricity.
You almost drop the paper.
Humiliating.
“Thanks,” you say, quieter now.
“Mhm.”
But he doesn’t let go immediately.
Not enough to mean something.
Just enough to notice.
Then he seems to catch himself and releases the pages all at once, clearing his throat lightly before stepping back toward the desk.
You look down automatically.
At the bottom of the final page, beneath a cluster of notes and arrows and recommended articles, he’s signed off absentmindedly in cramped blue ink.
Excellent work here. Keep pushing this line of thought.
I think you’re asking the right questions.
— I remain yours sincerely,
Spencer Reid, PhD
Your pulse trips over itself.
Because who signs feedback like that?
Who writes I remain yours sincerely like a Shakespearean poet accidentally trapped in modern academia?
And worse:
Why does it make your stomach feel like it just fell down an elevator shaft?
The walk back to your apartment is a blur of rainwater, campus lights, and psychological deterioration.
Your umbrella keeps tilting sideways in the wind.
You barely notice.
Because every functioning part of your brain is currently occupied by one singular, catastrophic detail:
I remain yours sincerely.
Who writes that.
You clutch the paper tighter inside your bag every time the rain picks up, irrationally terrified the ink might smear. Which feels insane. Deeply insane. The behavior of a woman one inconvenience away from being studied in a laboratory.
By the time you get home, your shoes are damp, your hair is frizzing at the edges, and your nervous system is fried.
You lock the apartment door behind you and immediately pull the paper back out.
Like an addict.
Like a widow rereading war letters.
“Oh, this is bad,” you mutter to yourself.
Your apartment offers no judgment. Just soft lamplight and the hum of the refrigerator and rain whispering against the windows.
You drop your bag onto the couch.
Then sit at the kitchen table with the paper spread carefully in front of you.
You read the signature again.
And again.
And then, because apparently humiliation is now a recreational activity, you trace the letters lightly with your thumb.
Spencer Reid, PhD.
The ink catches faintly against the pad of your finger where he pressed harder on certain strokes. You can almost see the speed of him in it. The impatience. The intelligence outrunning the mechanics of handwriting.
God. You're so weird. You're unhinged. You're obsessed.
Your phone buzzes with a text from your friend Maya.
did u survive reid’s lecture or did he accidentally make eye contact and kill you instantly
You stare at the message for a long moment before replying:
worse
Three dots appear immediately.
what happened
You look down at the paper again.
At the stupid signature.
At the devastating little yours.
Then, against every survival instinct evolution ever gifted humanity, you take a picture of the bottom half of the page and send it.
There’s a full thirty seconds of silence.
Then:
OH YOU ARE DOWN HORRENDOUS
You groan aloud and drop your forehead directly onto the table.
The phone buzzes again.
“I remain yours sincerely”????? WHAT IS HE A PROFESSOR OR A MAN WRITING YOU FROM THE CRIMEAN WAR
Another buzz.
he wants u biblically
“HE DOES NOT,” you say aloud to the empty apartment, scandalized.
Your phone immediately lights up again.
u kept the paper though didnt u
You freeze.
Slowly, guiltily, your eyes drift toward your desk drawer.
Because inside that drawer already sits: one graded response paper, two annotated reading packets, and a sticky note from three weeks ago where Dr. Reid had written:
Your interpretation here is excellent. Come see me during office hours if you want to discuss further.
The sticky note currently lives tucked inside your favorite book like a pressed flower.
You close your eyes.
“Jesus Christ,” you whisper to yourself.
Another text arrives.
DID U KEEP THE PAPER
You type back:
not officially
Maya responds instantly.
that is the most incriminating answer ive ever heard
You abandon the conversation entirely and toss your phone onto the couch before she can escalate further.
Then you sit there alone for a moment.
Quiet apartment. Rain outside. Spencer Reid’s handwriting beneath your fingertips.
The thing is, you know this crush is ridiculous.
He’s your professor. Technically not even that much older than you, but enough that it matters. Enough that your brain keeps trying to file this under impossible and failing spectacularly every single time he looks at you like your thoughts are worth listening to.
That’s the real problem.
Not the cardigan.
Not the hands.
Not even the objectively offensive existence of that signature.
It’s the attention.
The terrifying sincerity of it.
Spencer Reid listens to you like he’s carefully placing your words somewhere safe.
And you don’t think anyone has ever done that before.
Your chest aches unexpectedly at the thought.
Too honest.
Too close to something real.
You exhale slowly and pick the paper up again, intending to finally put it away somewhere normal and reasonable.
Instead, your gaze catches on the folded edge of your clear phone case sitting beside you on the table.
No.
Absolutely not.
You stare at it.
Then at the paper.
Then back at the phone.
“This would be a humiliating choice,” you inform yourself firmly.
Silence.
Rain taps softly against the windows.
Five minutes later, you are sitting on your couch with Spencer Reid’s signature folded carefully behind your phone.
You look at it through the clear plastic.
Immediate stomach flip.
“Oh, you absolute loser,” you whisper to yourself.
But unfortunately:
you’re smiling.
By the time midterms crawl across campus like a biblical plague, your situation has not improved.
If anything, it’s evolved.
Dangerously.
Because now there is routine.
Now there are office hours conversations that accidentally become forty-five minutes long. Now there are moments where Dr. Reid pauses to ask, “You read the article I mentioned, right?” already knowing the answer before you nod.
Now there are tiny things.
Tiny, lethal things.
The way he automatically hands you printed articles first when passing materials down the row. The way his face brightens with visible recognition every time you speak in class. The way he says your name like he enjoys the shape of it.
It’s become less like a crush and more like being slowly haunted.
Which is why remaining after lecture today feels less unusual than it probably should.
You don’t mean to time it like this.
It just… happens.
The room empties in that familiar way, like the building exhales and forgets to inhale again. Chairs scrape. Jackets zip. Someone laughs too loudly in the hallway like they’re trying to prove they’re still human after all that thinking.
And then it’s just you again, hovering at the edge of the aisle with your notebook pressed a little too tightly to your chest.
Dr. Reid is still at the whiteboard.
Erasing.
Relentless little motions. Wrist flicking. Chalk dust or marker residue or whatever ghosts lectures leave behind drifting faintly in the air. His cardigan is pushed up at the elbows now, like it’s given up on behaving properly.
He doesn’t look over immediately.
Which, somehow, makes it worse.
Because you’ve started to associate his attention with a kind of internal weather shift. Like the room tilts slightly toward you when he notices you’re there.
You clear your throat.
Soft. Careful.
“Dr. Reid?”
The eraser pauses mid-swipe.
Then stops completely.
He turns.
And there it is.
That subtle recalibration. Like a radio finding your frequency without meaning to.
“Oh,” he says. Not surprised exactly. Just… pleased in a quiet way that feels too personal to name. “You’re still here again.”
Again.
Like it’s a pattern he’s noticed.
Like he’s been waiting for it.
You nod, suddenly hyper-aware of your hands, your posture, your entire existence. “Yeah. I had a question about today’s lecture.”
“Of course.” He sets the eraser down on the ledge beneath the board and steps away from it fully now, giving you his attention like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “What about it?”
Your brain, traitorous thing that it is, briefly offers you ten different ways to phrase this more intelligently.
None of them survive the trip to your mouth.
“It was about emotional responses,” you say. “Like… how people react differently to the same stimulus depending on context and prior experience.”
He nods slowly, like he’s already tracing where this is going.
You continue anyway, because stopping now would be suspicious and also physically impossible.
“You said something about adaptation shaping perception. And I was thinking about whether emotional responses can… overwrite themselves? Like, if enough context builds up, does the original reaction still matter, or does it get replaced entirely?”
Dr. Reid tilts his head slightly, studying you the way he studies everything he respects—carefully, like it might shift if he blinks wrong.
“That’s a more complicated question than it sounds like you intended it to be,” he says gently.
Your stomach drops.
“Sorry,” you start immediately. “I didn’t mean— I just meant like in general, not—”
“No.” He interrupts softly. Not sharp. Just steady. “Don’t apologize. It’s a good question.”
That does something unfortunate to your nervous system.
He takes a step closer to his desk, resting one hand lightly on it as if anchoring himself to the conversation.
“So the original response doesn’t disappear. It becomes less accessible, or it gets reframed by later experiences. But it’s still there. Just… quieter.”
You nod slowly, trying to keep up.
“That’s why certain triggers can feel disproportionate,” he adds. “They’re not creating a new reaction. They’re reopening an old one that’s been reorganized over time.”
Something about the way he says it makes it feel less like psychology and more like confession, even though it absolutely isn’t.
You swallow.
“That makes it sound like nothing ever really goes away,” you say quietly.
A beat.
Dr. Reid looks at you a little more directly now.
“It doesn’t,” he says. Simple. Certain. Then, softer: “But that doesn’t mean it stays the same.”
The room feels warmer again.
Or maybe that’s just you.
You glance down at your notebook like it suddenly contains emergency instructions for being normal.
“Right,” you manage. “That makes sense.”
It doesn’t feel like it makes sense. It feels like it rearranged something in your chest and didn’t bother explaining itself.
Dr. Reid pushes off the desk slightly, as if the intensity of the moment has to be gently contained.
Then, almost like an afterthought, he adds, “Is that what you were thinking about specifically? Or was there another angle?”
There it is again.
That attention.
Patient. Open. Not assuming you’re wasting his time.
You hesitate.
Because the truth is more dangerous than the question.
But you’ve never been very good at leaving things unasked.
“I guess I was wondering,” you say slowly, “if people can… respond emotionally to something they intellectually understand isn’t rational.”
Dr. Reid stills for half a second.
Not much. Most people wouldn’t notice.
But you’ve started noticing everything.
“That happens frequently,” he says after a moment.
Your grip tightens on your notebook.
“Even when they know better?”
His gaze flickers briefly toward you again. Sharper now. Not unkind. Just… more precise.
“Yes,” he says. “Especially then.”
A quiet beat stretches between you.
Too quiet.
Your pulse has started doing strange, uneven things against your ribs, every instinct in your body suddenly screaming that this conversation has drifted dangerously close to something exposed.
Because the problem with Spencer Reid is that he listens too carefully.
Most people let things slide past them. Most people hear the shape of a sentence and move on.
Dr. Reid hears the fracture lines underneath it.
And right now you’re increasingly certain he’s standing one follow-up question away from watching you spontaneously combust in front of the behavioral sciences department.
You tighten your grip on your notebook hard enough to bend the edge slightly.
“Right,” you say quickly. Too quickly. “Okay. That actually answered my question, so I should probably—”
You gesture vaguely toward the door.
Toward freedom.
Toward escape.
Toward literally anywhere that is not this room with this man looking at you like he’s trying to solve something.
But Dr. Reid’s expression shifts faintly before you can move.
Concern.
Not suspicion. Somehow worse.
“Are you alright?”
There’s no accusation in it. Just immediate attentiveness.
Which unfortunately makes panic bloom hotter in your chest.
“Yep.” The word arrives at terminal velocity. “Absolutely. Totally fine.”
You are speaking with the cadence of someone being held hostage by her own nervous system.
His brows pull together slightly. “You seem anxious.”
“Well,” you laugh weakly, “I think that’s sort of my baseline.”
Wrong choice.
Because that earns the smallest flicker of a smile from him.
Soft. Brief. Real.
It hits you directly in the bloodstream.
You need to leave immediately.
“I just remembered I have to…” You motion uselessly with one hand. “Do something.”
Brilliant.
Academic titan.
Dr. Reid opens his mouth like he’s about to say something else, and that tiny moment of anticipation detonates pure survival instinct in your chest.
“Anyway!” you blurt. “Thanks for answering my question. Sorry. Again. I’m gonna go.”
You turn too fast.
Your bag catches against the side of a chair.
The strap yanks violently sideways, dragging the chair with it in one catastrophic scrape against the floor.
You stumble trying to untangle yourself, notebook slipping from your grasp entirely.
Papers explode everywhere.
For one suspended second, the universe goes completely still.
Then Dr. Reid moves instantly.
“Oh, here—”
You both crouch at the exact same time.
Of course you do.
Naturally.
Because God is dead and this is apparently funny to the universe.
Your foreheads nearly collide.
You jerk backward so abruptly you lose balance a second time, catching yourself with one hand against the floor while loose papers scatter farther beneath the desks.
“I’m so sorry,” you say immediately, horrified.
But that's not the end of the torture. Because why would it be? Why would the universe and whatever forces rule it let you get out of this embarrassment that easily?
Your phone.
No.
No, no, no.
Time slows with cinematic cruelty.
The device must have slipped from your bag when the strap caught the chair. The clear case popped loose on impact, skidding separately across the floor.
And there, face-up beside the phone itself like evidence submitted directly to a court of law—
his signature.
And Dr. Reid is staring directly at it.
There’s no plausible explanation for this.
None.
You cannot even pretend it’s accidental.
Who accidentally stores a professor’s signed feedback inside their phone case?
No one, that's who. Just you.
Your soul begins exiting your body through your ears.
Don’t panic, your brain says uselessly, while panic fully consumes the landscape.
Dr. Reid reaches for the paper slowly.
You want the floor to open and swallow you whole like a tectonic event.
“Oh my God,” you whisper.
Dr. Reid looks at the note for one suspended second longer.
Then another.
His expression changes in tiny increments you only notice because you’ve spent months studying him with the intensity of a graduate thesis.
Recognition.
Confusion.
Realization.
And then something else. Something softer. Something that makes your pulse stumble violently against your ribs.
Very slowly, he lifts his eyes to yours.
You have never known true psychological horror until this moment.
“I can explain,” you blurt immediately.
Can you?
Absolutely not.
But the sentence launches itself out of your mouth anyway with all the grace of a car accident.
Dr. Reid’s brows lift slightly. “You can?”
“No,” you say honestly. “Actually, not in a way that helps me.”
Excellent.
Wonderful.
You briefly consider faking your death.
He glances back down at the paper again, thumb resting lightly near the edge where the fold has started softening from use.
And then, very softly:
“You kept it.”
Not teasing.
Not judgmental.
Which almost makes it harder.
Heat floods violently into your face.
“This was,” you say immediately, “so much less creepy in my head.”
A tiny crease appears between his brows like he’s trying not to smile.
“I didn’t say it was creepy.”
“It’s objectively creepy.”
“I don’t think objectively means what you want it to mean there.”
“That’s worse somehow.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. Actually twitches.
You stare at him in horror.
“Please don’t laugh at me,” you whisper.
“I’m not laughing at you.”
“You’re visibly experiencing amusement.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It absolutely is.”
The smile threatens again, smaller this time, restrained at the edges like he doesn’t fully trust himself with it.
And then, disastrously, his gaze drops once more to the signature.
His own handwriting.
His own absurdly formal sign-off.
When he speaks again, there’s something almost embarrassed threaded through his voice now.
“In fairness,” he says, “I probably shouldn’t have written ‘I remain yours sincerely.’”
You make a strangled sound halfway between a laugh and cardiac arrest. “No, you really shouldn’t have.”
“I wasn’t thinking about how that sounded.”
“That somehow feels less reassuring.”
His eyes flick back to yours then.
Warm amber under fluorescent lights. Too attentive. Too intelligent.
“But you noticed it,” he says quietly.
There’s no ego in the statement.
Just observation.
You swallow hard.
“Yes.”
The room goes still around the answer.
Not awkward exactly.
Just aware.
Dr. Reid looks down briefly, almost thoughtful, before carefully placing the paper back atop your fallen notebook instead of immediately handing it over.
“You know,” he says after a moment, “historically, formal academic correspondence used possessive sign-offs fairly often.”
You stare at him.
“Are you trying to academically explain away my crush on you right now?”
The sentence escapes before you can stop it.
Silence detonates instantly afterward.
Your entire nervous system flatlines.
Because you did not mean to say that.
You meant to think it privately and then carry the shame forever.
Dr. Reid goes completely still.
His lips part slightly like his brain lost the next page of the script.
“Oh my God,” you whisper, staring at the floor. “Forget I said that.”
But the problem with Spencer Reid has always been this:
he never ignores important things.
And when you finally force yourself to look back up, he’s watching you with an expression so carefully controlled it almost hurts to see.
“You have a crush on me,” he says.
Not mocking.
Not smug.
Honestly, he sounds more astonished than anything else.
You squeeze your eyes shut briefly. “I am asking respectfully for the earth to open beneath me.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer I currently have.”
You expect discomfort.
Distance.
Professional correction.
Instead, Dr. Reid exhales softly through his nose and sits back slightly against the leg of a desk beside him, still crouched across from you among scattered papers and your exploded dignity.
And then, to your complete horror, he says:
“I thought there was a possibility.”
Your head snaps up.
“What?”
A faint flush has appeared high on his cheekbones now.
Tiny. Visible.
It rearranges the architecture of your entire universe.
“You’re very attentive to me,” he says carefully.
You choke immediately. “I need you to stop observing things.”
“That seems unlikely.”
“You’re a behavioral analyst. This is abuse of power.”
That almost earns another smile.
Almost.
“But I wasn’t sure,” he continues more quietly. “And I didn’t want to assume something that would make you uncomfortable.”
You stare at him.
“You noticed,” you say faintly.
Dr. Reid tilts his head a little.
“You keep every note I give you.”
Well.
When he says it out loud like that, it sounds medically concerning.
“I didn’t think you knew that.”
“I didn’t,” he admits. “Not conclusively.”
His gaze flickers briefly toward the paper beside your phone.
“I do now.”
You cover your face with one hand.
“This is the worst day of my life.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“That’s because you’re not experiencing it from inside my body.”
A pause.
Then, very gently:
“No,” he says. “I don’t think I am.”
Something changes in the room after that.
Tiny shift. Tectonic consequence.
The humor softens at the edges, leaving behind something quieter. Something breathing carefully between the two of you.
Dr. Reid reaches down first, gathering the scattered pages into a neater stack before offering them back to you properly this time.
Your fingers brush again.
And this time neither of you jerks away immediately.
It lasts maybe half a second longer than it should.
Enough to feel intentional.
Enough to ruin you permanently.
His eyes lift to yours again, thoughtful in that dangerous way he gets when he’s turning something over carefully in his mind.
“You know,” he says slowly, “there are ethical complications here.”
You let out a startled laugh. “That’s one way to put it.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
His fingers tap once against the edge of the paper still resting between you.
“You’re my student.”
The words land carefully. Reluctantly.
Like he hates them a little.
“Which means,” he continues, “that regardless of how I feel about this conversation, there are boundaries I’m responsible for maintaining.”
Your pulse stumbles.
Regardless of how I feel about this conversation.
That’s the moment the floor drops out from under you.
Because that’s not rejection.
It’s worse.
It’s possibility wearing a seatbelt.
“But there are also only six weeks left in the semester.”
Your breath catches.
The words land between you with astonishing softness.
Not a proposition.
Not quite.
Just a door left cracked open in the dark.
Dr. Reid seems to realize exactly how that sounded one second after saying it, because a flicker of alarm crosses his face immediately afterward.
“I’m not implying,” he starts quickly. “I mean, I am implying something, technically, but not inappropriately. I just meant that institutional boundaries are temporary in specific contexts and I thought transparency was preferable to pretending I hadn’t noticed the situation and now I’m explaining this badly.”
You stare at him.
Then laugh suddenly.
Not nervous this time.
Real.
Because Spencer Reid, genius profiler, has gone visibly flustered sitting on the floor of his own lecture hall.
The sound seems to catch him off guard.
His shoulders loosen a fraction.
And for the first time since this catastrophe began, the panic ebbs enough for something else to bloom beneath it.
Something warm.
“I… I can wait six weeks,” you say softly.
Spencer’s smile is small enough that someone else might have missed it entirely.
You don’t.
Because of course you don’t.
It changes him in tiny ways. Softens the sharp concentration he usually wears like armor. Pulls warmth into his face until he looks less like Dr. Spencer Reid, terrifyingly intelligent guest lecturer, and more like a man trying very hard not to look too happy about something.
Half Hope: A CM Retelling of Persuasion - Master List to Series
Based on Jane Austen’s final novel Persuasion, several years after leaving the BAU, Hotch is called back to consult on a confusing murder case in a national park only to discover that the girl who broke his heart when he was a teenager is currently working as an SSA with the BAU. Will the two of them solve the grisly case and overcome flirtations from the local authority and defeat the ghosts of their past to find each other again? | Aaron Hotchner x BAUfem!Reader | Angst with Fluff
The Love Profile - Master List to Series
In which the team profiles Aaron Hotchner and Y/N’s romance just in time for Valentine’s Day. | 8 Part Series + Bonus Chapter | Aaron Hotchner x BAUfem!Reader | Fluff with some angst | Requested
One Shots:
The Boss Man
Inspired by The Beautician and the Beast | In which Y/N joins the team and disrupts the strict world of the BAU’s Unit Chief…for the better. | Aaron Hotchner x BAUfem! Reader | Fluff | Requested
While You Were Sleeping - Part I - Part II - Part III
Based on the film of the same name | In which Spencer Reid is saved by a kind, but lonely, metro worker, and her claims to be his fiance confuse the rest of the BAU team. His acute amnesia only adds to the confusion…but to make things worse: Hotch is falling in love with her. | Aaron Hotchner x Fem!Reader | Angsty Fluff | Requested
Into the Light
In which the BAU team figures out why Aaron Hotchner is more relaxed these days. Some might say he’s even…lovestruck. | Aaron Hotchner x BAUfem! Reader | Fluff
I Wanna Hold Your Hand + My Love I Can’t Hide
In which your boss knows a lot more about you than he lets on…and for good reason. | Aaron Hotchner x BAUfem! Reader | Angsty Fluff
Snuggled Up Together
In which Aaron Hotchner reconsiders his position on staying in the BAU during some Christmas cuddle time with Y/N and Jack. | Aaron Hotchner x fem!Reader | Christmas Fluff | Requested
Where the Love Light Gleams + What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?
In which Aaron Hotchner and Y/N are determined to stave off relationship rumors at the BAU Christmas Party by…pretending to be in a relationship and the sequel where they finally get to discuss what happened at the Christmas Party. | Aaron Hotchner x BAUfem!Reader | Christmas/New Year’s Fluff
Visions of Sugar Plums
When Jack’s counselor suggests ballet class to help with balance issues, neither of the Hotchners are prepared for his new ballet teacher, Miss Y/N, and the magical Christmas they’re about to have. | Aaron Hotchner x Ballet Teacherfem! Reader | Christmas Fluff
pt.2 flashback (if you really think about it lol) of dirty little secret
Jack watches as you shakily sob on his couch, tears never stopping as they fall down your soft cheeks. Your shorts riding up your thighs every time you shift in your seat.
Jack barely keeps track of your words, more focused on you than anything you’re actually saying (selective hearing, some might say) since all he really catches is something about a boy you matched with on tinder and have been seeing for a while. He’s mostly transfixed by you instead. So vulnerable. So trusting. Sitting right there in front of him while he has thoughts he shouldn’t be having about his best friend’s daughter.
He sits next to you on the couch, leaning forward and lifting his pants, unfastening his prosthesis quietly. He sets it down beside the couch like it’s nothing important, and his eyes are back on you.
“I hate him,” you keep sobbing. Jack caresses your arm, and you climb into his lap as if his action was an invitation.
“I literally hate him,” you wipe your tears with your sleeve. “He said I was too much,” you continue, voice breaking again. “What does that even mean? I’m not too much,” you pause, shaking your head, expecting that to make you feel better, but it doesn’t.
You sniff again, still not done. “I’m never using tinder again,” you lift your gaze to see Jack looking at you, almost like he’s looking through you. “Never, I’m done with men.”
“Right,” Jack hums faintly.
Your head rests in the crook of his neck, his hand rubbing your back while his free hand stays on your thigh, fingers lingering on your ass.
“I’m not too much,” you say, almost like you’re convincing yourself.
You can feel the heat coming from Jack’s body, goosebumps rising across your skin as you realize his fingers are almost touching your ass.
“You’re not, sweetheart,” he reassures you, his mouth so close to your face you can smell the coffee and mint on his breath.
You sniffle, shifting on top of him, trying to get more comfortable, both legs around his waist, sitting on his lap while facing him.
You wrap your arms around his shoulders, your mouth going to his neck as you whisper, “I hate him,” repeating it as tears threaten to come back.
“You need a man, Ro. Not some fucking guy on a dating app that doesn’t know what he’s doing,” he finally says. “You need a man who knows how to please you.”
“Please me?” you ask, confused.
“Yes, sweetheart. Please you.” He places his hands on your lower back, pulling you closer so you can feel his hard cock under his pants.
You whine quietly, lifting your gaze to really look at him.
“Please me how?” your lashes stick together as you look up at him, eyes puffy and shining, completely unaware of how vulnerable you look, only noticing the way his tongue drags over his lips, like he’s proud of you for walking right into the trap he set.
“Let me show you,” he waits until you nod, and slides his hand inside your shorts, rubbing circles on your clit over your damp underwear. “So wet for me, sweetheart,” he mumbles. “You like this, don’t you?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” you moan, grinding on his hand.
“Such a dirty girl. This was your plan all along, wasn’t it, Ro?” He moves your underwear to the side, pinching your clit and making your back arch. He takes a long, teasing lick to your chest, sucking on your neck making sure to leave a mark.
He shoves two fingers inside you, not moving them, waiting for you to ride his hand.
“Just like that, sweetheart,” his free hand goes to your jaw, squeezing slightly and forcing you to look at him. “Did that fucking tinder guy make you feel like this?”
“N-no,” you ride his hand, one hand on his shoulder for balance, the other rubbing your clit.
“You’re all fucking mine. You hear me, Ro?” he bites your chest, neck, arm. “Say it.”
“I’m yours. I’m yours,” you gasp as you grind on his hand faster, the fingers on your clit moving at a speed that makes your eyes roll back. His hand moves from your jaw to the back of your head, pulling you closer until his lips are touching yours.
“Cum for me, sweetheart,” he groans against your mouth, taking your lips in his, biting you hard until you taste metal on your tongue. “Keep your eyes on me.”
You let out a loud moan as you cum all over his hand, your hand leaving the inside of your shorts. Jack quickly replacing it with his, his thumb rubbing circles on your clit, riding out your orgasm.
You fall onto his chest, trying to catch your breath, as Jack whispers sweet things in your ear, kissing your hair.
“Good girl. You did so good, sweetheart,” he praises, feeling you clench around his fingers.
A/N: I cannot stress enough how much spoilers for Ready or Not 2: Here I Come this has. Like to the point I'm putting the description and tags under the cut! Please be aware I lift entire surprise plot points of the movie for this! Couldn't stop thinking about this while sitting in the theater!! GO SEE THE MOVIE IT IS SO GOOD!!!
this thing is 15k words.
AO3 Link if that's your preference
Summary: You survived your wedding only to be hunted by the most powerful families in the world. The monster awoken in you intrigued Titus Danforth, who would do anything to have The High Seat and you as his as well. Thankfully, a hidden rule might make that all possible.
Tags: violence, blood, descriptions of bodily injury but i don't think i made it too bad, morally gray!reader, horny for violence reader and titus, slightly OOC Titus for the sake of sicko romance, slightly OOC ursula, the tiniest hint of weird sister/mother things with Titus (like so small i dont think you'll notice), SMUT!, BLOOD KINK!, BITING!, SLAPPING!, ROUGH SEX!, unprotected sex and they don't even talk about it he just does that :), multiple positions, light choking, like not even choking, they are crazy for each other, slightly subby Titus for like a second
Part Two: A Solstice Sacrifice
Part Three: The Debut
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is not how the day after your dream wedding was supposed to go.
You’re supposed to be in first class on a plane to some remote Le Domas family home in the countryside of France. You’re supposed to be sipping wine and giggling with your new husband as you both conspire to find a way to sneak into the bathroom together to join the mile high club.
You’re not supposed to be fighting for your life for the second night in a row, as Satan worshipping rich assholes hunt you for sport and their place on the top of the food chain of the whole goddamn world.
But as you kick in the face of the man in the gold mask and knock several of his teeth out, as a guttural scream rips from your throat, as you shove him into a high powered industrial wash machine, as you listen to his desperate screams as he drowns and is cooked from the steam, you can’t help but feel, for the second night in a row, more alive than you’ve ever felt in your life.
+
When he first watched the footage of your ill-fated wedding night, Titus Danforth saw something in you.
The way you choked your new sister-in-law, taking her to her knees, the way you crashed a car and rolled it before beating the Le Domas’s trusted servant to a pulp, the way you took out the matriarch with the very game box that had damned you. It was monstrous, it was raw, it was bloody.
You had a look in your eyes after killing Mrs. Le Domas, wide and black and...hungry. Titus knew that look well. He’d seen it in the mirror many times.
It was a look he hadn’t seen on anyone else, not even his own sister, his twin. Why now? Why her? Why would Mr. Le Bail present him with someone whose soul so clearly aligns with his own, just to have her be the one they must hunt and destroy? Hadn’t he been faithful?
Ursula had clicked her tongue when the final video ended; you laughing as your husband exploded in a mess of blood and guts. “She’s fierce.”
Titus had nodded, jaw tight. “She’s smart...she’s a fighter.”
“It’s a shame.”
Something heavy formed in the pit of his stomach. A lock of rage and need and anger forming like a tumor in his body, weighing him down. His heart grew to a painful size in his chest, the beating of it thumping in his ears. His breath came out in tiny, rushed bursts through his lips. Sweat formed on his brow.
His sister knew that look. The festering smoldering embers of Titus yearning for something, and knowing there was nothing he could do to have it. It was a look he’d given their father many times through their lives. “Titus...”
“I want her.”
His voice was a rough mumble, rocks stuck in his throat that threatened to cascade down in a landslide of a scream.
“You can’t have her. The By-Laws have been triggered, we have to fight for our seat. This is father’s final wish. Your needs cannot—”
“I have never needed—” he stopped himself, taking in a deep breath, eyes closed. “I want to keep her. She’s...”
“You’ve never met this girl, my dear brother.”
“And yet I know everything I need to.”
+
When you were sitting in the main room of the Danforth Lodge as The Lawyer explained the rules of your second night of torment, gag over your mouth, still bloodied wedding dress itching on your skin, you did your best to take in every word.
It was simple.
Survive the night of human hunting until sunrise again, and you were free to go. Whichever hunter from the High Families managed to kill you, would win the High Seat. The hunters are not allowed to kill each other, not even by accident. If none of them were able to catch you and wear Mr. Le Bail’s ring at the end of the night, he would be very unhappy. You assumed the fate of your in-laws is what awaited these people as well.
As the rules were being explained, you took a mental survey of the room. Only a few people looked like they could be real threats to you, so if you found a way to mow through the strong ones, you could easily hide from the idiots. Though, a voice that had been awoken last night was begging you to just end them all, in whatever sick way was available to you.
You studied each of their faces, engraining them on imaginary wanted posters in your mind, eyes moving across the room, until you settled on...him.
The man sitting in the middle table, next to the woman who had greeted you when your blindfold was first removed here. Titus and Ursula Danforth. The twins. And Titus wasn’t looking at the lawyer as he went over the oh-so-important and sacred rules. No, he was looking directly at you.
At first you noticed how handsome he was. Significantly older than you, but with a ruggedness that drew you in. His hair was silver, soft looking curls, there were slight wrinkles around his eyes, and silver stubble on the lower half of his face. But what really started the race of your heart, what made you suck in a deep breath even through the gag in your mouth, were his eyes. Dark, hazel eyes bore into yours, and instead of holding the smugness and envy of everyone else in the room, his were filled with...sadness?
That couldn’t be right. He was here to kill you, just like all of them. He has no reason to be sad.
But.
That’s the only way to read his expression. While his lips were twitched up in a smirk, the smile didn’t reach those eyes at all. He kept contact with you deeply, like he was trying to search into your eyes and into your very soul. Like he was trying to find something in there. No. Like he’d already found it. The sadness was from the knowledge he was going to lose it.
When it was time for the game to begin, you didn’t even flinch. You were exhausted, you were frustrated, but you were determined to win again. You’d come this far.
A needle was presented with some sort of drug that would knock you out so you could be taken to a secret location on the grounds. Before the Lawyer’s assistant could even lift a finger, Titus was on his feet.
“I’ll do it,” he’d said.
The low tone of his voice rumbled in your ears, sent a shiver up your spine. Not fear. A thrill of excitement.
The heavy contact between your eyes remained the entire time he walked up to you. You even tilted up your face to look at him as he grabbed the needle.
He brought it to your neck, and leaned down to whisper in your ear, in a voice that felt gentler than you’d have thought him capable, “It’s going to be me that gets you.”
It should have sounded like a threat. It was a threat. He was going to kill you. That’s what he was saying to you.
But.
In the promise of his words, something underneath felt like more.
You watched as his face faded from your vision as everything had gone black.
+
It’s been hours since you’d been let loose on the golf course. You had two kills under your belt, and had only suffered a cut to your hand and some shrapnel in your arm from an explosion that you hadn’t caused.
The first kill was easy enough, and the next person to join the hunt from his family hadn’t bothered to show up. The other ones you saw looked like idiots anyway, it would have been almost boring to have to fight them.
Your second had been particularly fun. The father of your former husband’s ex fiancé. You’d managed to trick him into shooting himself with his own gun. And that new small, sick part of you was thrilled at the idea that the annoying, bitchy girl you had stolen Alex from was going to be joining the field.
You had run into Titus and Ursula a few times, but instead of trying to fight them off, upon seeing Titus again, you both froze at the sight. Ursula yelled something at him, and tried to shoot you, but she missed and you ran. He let you. You didn’t want to fight them. You were happy you didn’t have to.
The thrill of the chase filled Titus like a drug in his veins, and he tried to ignore the fact that this chase was to end in your death, and not with you shoved against a brick wall, melting in his hands as they ripped at your clothes, his mouth latched onto every inch of your blood covered skin he could get.
His head wasn’t in this game, even though he knew he had no choice but to win.
Your next opportunity to run or kill comes when you are hiding out in the dancehall of the Danforth Casino. The sophisticated Chinese woman, who you’d noticed looked utterly bored by the explanation of the rules, has cornered you, holding you back with a sword pointing to your throat.
“You need to listen to me!” she yells desperately. “I don’t want to kill you! I don’t want to do this! But there is a loophole to this whole game!”
Your eyes, which have been darting around the room looking for an escape, stop their manic wandering. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I had my lawyers scour the By-Laws of the High Seat, and they found that if you, the winner of your High Family’s game, were to willingly join another, then that family would automatically gain the High Seat, and have complete control of everything. You wouldn’t need to die.”
“I just need to marry another one of you people?”
She nods her head frantically. “I-I know it’s not ideal. But what choice do you have? I can offer that chance to you. M-My son is an idiot, but you can just marry him, give me all the power, and live life however you please.”
“Give you all the power?” you ask, but more as a quiet question to yourself.
Maybe it would be worth it to just give up on the fighting and the running and just...settle. Maybe giving yourself to this other family, selling your soul to live would be easier than all of this.
Suddenly an image flashes in your mind. If you can just marry your way out of this, if you can just pick one of the litter to tie yourself to, to sell your soul for, and to win all of the power in the world for...
The image your mind constructs is of the man staring sad and longingly at you in the lodge. The man who has probably trained his whole life for this, letting you run away in the woods.
Why can’t you have Titus Danforth?
No. That’s crazy. It doesn’t matter what you think you saw in his eyes, or if you think he let you go in those woods. They have gathered to kill you. He is here to hunt you. You’re going to leave tonight a widow, and nothing else.
The woman has been rambling on as you think, saying something about how she would be better than everyone else with this power. You don’t care. You don’t want her son. You don’t want to settle.
You let out a piercing scream, as you run at her, hands aiming for her sword. Her eyes go wide as you manage to catch it and rip it away from her.
+
“Is that fucking true?” Titus spits into his phone.
Ursula is pacing angrily, grumbling to herself about the incompetence of the rule writers.
They’d been watching you on cameras in their effort to catch you, and heard the whole conversation over the security microphones.
On the other end of Titus’s cell is the Lawyer, who responds in his eerily jaunty voice, “Yes. Technically as the catalyst of the vacancy, if she were to join a High Council Family willingly, in other words marry into them instead, well then there would be no Spousal vacancy, and therefore no need to fight for the High Seat.”
“So if I—” Titus’s voice catches, sounding just a little too hopeful. “If she married into our family, we would keep our seat?”
“Yes, Mr. Danforth, precisely.”
“FUCK!” Titus yells, angrily ending the call and slamming his phone repeatedly onto the nearest counter. “All this fucking time wasted! She got fucking hurt again! And I could have just—"
“Titus, stop it!” Ursula yells, grabbing his arm in a strong grip to stop his violent movement. “This is a good thing! You wanted her, right? Well congrats my darling brother, if we can get to her, then maybe you can actually have her!”
His breath comes out in heavy huffs, eyes wild and angry. But he nods, slowing himself at her words. He can have what he wants, what his black heart is telling him he needs. He just has to catch her.
“We have to save her. We have to get to her before—"
“Wait a second, Ti,” Ursula cautions, letting go of his arm. “If I let you do this—"
“Let me?”
“I could still kill her.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“I don’t want to, not now, so don’t make me,” Ursula hisses. “If I let you do this, if we can convince her to marry you, then I need you to promise right now, on Le Bail’s name, that you will share that power with me, as Father intended.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“It’s not about trust, dear brother, it’s about making sure we keep our words. I will swear it too. On Mr. Le Bail’s name, if the Bride joins our family and we hold the High Seat, I will share that power with you, Titus.”
His jaw clenches. “On Mr. Le Bail’s name, I swear it.”
+
You manage to slam the hilt of the sword into the woman’s face, the crack of her nose breaking makes a sick satisfaction fill your blood. You smile maniacally and laugh as she falls back, still doing her best to hold the sword.
“What is wrong with you? You stupid fucking bitch! I’m offering you a way out!” She screams as she spits a spray of her blood into your face.
You shake it off, fighting for control over her weapon. You’re just about to finally rip the sword from her grasp, when the double doors of the hall slam open, and Alex’s ex stands in the opening. She lets out a scream as she sees you, and your eyes go wide as the sound of gunshots fills the room.
You and the other woman manage to dart out of the way, as the Ex runs towards you, fire and zero control in her eyes. An opportunity is about to open up, that twisted part of you begins to smile as you realize you can hit two birds with one stone. You yank the older woman around, and just as the Ex reaches you both, you slam both your hands holding the sword into her.
The Ex chokes, blood coughing out of her mouth as she shakes and falls to the ground, sword sticking straight up.
“What have you do—” the woman is cut off by the explosion of her body, raining blood and guts all over you for probably the dozenth time this weekend.
With a cough, you wipe the blood from your face, matter of factly blinking and shrugging.
That’s four people down. Only the dummies and the Danforths left.
The Danforths.
You shake yourself out of those ridiculous, wishful thinking ideas again, and make a mad dash to the door, out to the dark of the night again.
+
“Thank fuck she got out!” Titus exclaims, a swell of pride in his belly as he watches the security footage on his phone. His now chosen future bride is clever and vicious. His pants start to tighten at the thought of it.
“Yes but she’s going for the woods again! She could get away and then we get nothing but death!” Ursula urges. She’s speeding as fast as she can on their golf cart in the direction of your approximate location. “She’s heading north, when we get to the tree-line, you go get her, and I’ll make sure no other hunters follow. I’ll send them on a goose-chase away from you.”
Titus nods.
When reach their destination, before he can jump out and chase after you, Ursula grabs him one last time. “Hold on!” She reaches down to her right hand and pulls off one of the pieces of jewelry. A silver ring with a purple gem, sitting in a crescent moon frame. “It was mother’s. If you’re going to propose, you might as well do it right.”
He snatches it from her, laying a quick kiss on her cheek as a thank you, and runs into the woods.
+
It’s dark other than the faint glow from the Danforth property, and the light of the moon above you, but just past the trees you can see the stone fence of the property line. Your feet are heavy but they carry you as fast as they can go to your freedom.
It’s going to be over soon, the only way you can make sense for it to.
As you approach the wall, you slow down, head darting back and forth as you try to find some way to climb over it.
In the silence since you’ve stopped, the only sound is your stilted breathing and the wind blowing through the leaves.
And a crack of twigs behind you.
You gasp, turning with wide eyes as the imposing silhouette of Titus Danforth emerges from the trees. He looks like he’s glowing with the orange property lights coming from behind. Your first instinct is to find the beauty in it. Your second is to remember what his purpose here is.
He approaches slowly, and as your back hits the stone wall, you notice that he hasn’t brought his weapon. Maybe he dropped it in his haste. Maybe he finds it more pleasurable to kill you with his bare hands. You know you certainly did when it had been your chance to snuff out a life.
“You look like a lost little lamb,” Titus says, voice once again softer than you’d expected.
“Like a lamb to the slaughter, you mean?” You snarl at him.
He lets out a short laugh. “Hmm. You’re funny. You don’t sound scared.”
“I’m too angry to be scared.”
“Oh yeah? What’s got you so angry?”
You roll your eyes. “Other than the obvious multiple attempts on my life? Well, I thought I found the love of my life, and then it turns out he was a secret Satan worshipper whose family tried to kill me.” As you speak, one of your hands starts to feel around for any fallen branches that might be strong enough to play the role of a weapon. “And then when I needed him the most, when I stood up for myself and killed his psycho bitch mother, he turned on me. As though any of this is my fault!”
“That sounds awful, but you’re not the first to meet this fate,” Titus says casually, hands going into his pockets. His right hand feels around for the ring, as he searches for the words to make his offer. But it’s so fun to play with you. You’re tough, you’re truly not scared of him, you’re up to this challenge. All things that make him want you more. “You know, my sister and I watched the whole thing. We were given the security footage of your wedding night. I saw everything you did to those moron Le Domas’s, even the mother. Tell me about that kill.”
Your hand manages to grip onto something strong, but the words of his confession and question hit you just as you get a good grip on it. “What?”
“When you killed the Le Domas mother, what did it feel like?” Titus asks again, taking a step closer, voice dropping an octave.
You can feel your heart start to beat in your ears, the memory of her kill flooding into you. It felt powerful. It felt enriching. It felt...good. Too good. And he saw it. He saw all of it. Your most violent acts. Your thighs squeeze together, and you know he sees it by the way his eyes flash to them and widen just slightly. Your chest heaves, as he licks his lips, and you don’t know what this is. The moment nor this feeling. But you know you can’t just stand here and wait for it to be a trap.
“How about I show you?” You bark out as you swing the heavy stick towards him.
A look of excited shock comes over him as Titus dodges your swing, and then again as you swing the stick back the other way. He has this wild smile on his face, like he’s inviting you to try again, to actually hit him. He wants to see how far you’ll go, how deep you’ll fall into violence.
But he’s not fighting back. He doesn’t want to hurt you.
You throw the stick as hard as you can at him, then rush forward to try to take him to the ground. Your much smaller body only manages to push him back a couple steps, but you take a swing with your fist at his face instead. The first one misses, but the second lands with a loud thud right on his mouth.
“Ahh!” He grunts as the hit rocks him, but when he turns back to you, the slightest bit of blood trickling from his mouth, he only looks more pleased.
You try to get him again, but he manages to catch your arms, twisting you so you’re turned around, back to his chest, with your arms subdued between your bodies. You twist and jerk and turn and struggle, whimpering and screaming to get out, eyes laser focused on a path to run towards, all the while he’s trying to say something to you.
“Hold on, little lamb, you don’t have to do this,” Titus insists. “I know about the loophole!”
That stops you in your tracks. A shaky breath escapes from your lips. He knows? He knows about the marriage clause? He’s not attacking you, he didn’t bring a weapon to this fight, and he knows...
“What about it?” You ask, just the slightest bit of hope in your tone.
Titus tilts his face into your hair, taking a long inhale of your scent. The faintest bit of whatever’s left of the expensive perfume Alex Le Domas had bought you, mixed with the blood of your kills.
“Marry me.”
The request is so soft, it’s almost inaudible. You gasp, body beginning to warm from your chest and shake. “W-what?”
“Marry me, Lamb,” Titus says again, with more authority this time. “Be my bride, be my wife, end this whole game, and I will literally give you the world.”
You swallow a lump, shaking your head. “Y-You just want that High Seat. H-How do I know you won’t do this and then lock me in some dungeon, or...or...kill me later.”
“I do want that seat, I will not lie to you,” Titus says, then suddenly turns you in his arms, gripping you tightly by the shoulders, looking down at you with a newfound intensity. “But I want you. I don’t need you to tell me how those kills felt, because I know. I know the surge of power and control, the sick delight in ending someone before they can do the same to you. You liked it. You liked how it felt, didn’t you?”
Unconsciously, you begin to nod. Your mouth drops open, and your eyes flutter at his words, at the sound of his voice, you can feel it everywhere. You can feel the heat and the wetness between your thighs, and you forget to be ashamed about it.
“Yeah. I know. I can see it in you. That’s what I want. That strength, that hunger, I feel it too. My sister and I are meant to rule this whole world, and I need someone by my side who has that strength, your beauty, your hunger for blood, your ruthlessness,” Titus purrs, pulling you closer to him. His hands slip down from your shoulders, as he feels your body start to give in to the arousal caused by his words. He slides them around to the small of your back, fingertips pressing into the blood-soaked fabric of your torn and desecrated wedding dress.
“I-I don’t know...”
“Beautiful little lamb doesn’t know her own strength. I see the monster in your heart and it looks like mine.” Titus brings one of his hands up to your cheek, where a tear has fallen. He wipes it away, and hopefully with the last of your shame for who you truly are. His perfect soulmate. “Be mine, and you’ll never have to do this again. You’ll never have to give up your power again. You'll never have to feel unsafe again.”
The arousal fully takes you over, and your eyes shut as they roll back in your head for just a moment. When Alex proposed, he did it deceitfully. He didn’t ever want to reveal the true nature of his family, and then he cast you out once he saw yours. Power was never in his offer. True love apparently never was either.
When your eyes open again, they look upon Titus Danforth with only one determination.
You surge forward, capturing his lips in a brutal, biting kiss. The taste of his blood fills your senses, metallic and addicting, you reach your long out to lick it from his chin, before connecting into a kiss again.
He welcomes it, moaning into your mouth, as your arms wrap tightly around each other. He loses himself in the kiss, swallowing all your breaths and whimpers, backing you into the stone wall, lifting you just slightly, so his hips can rut against your core.
You can feel how hard he is under his pants, and you moan at the feeling, at the fantasy of pulling them down and letting him fuck you out here like this, make you his under the moonlight.
“Yes,” you moan, both from the feeling of his strong body against you, and as your answer to the proposal. “Yes, Titus, I’ll marry you. I want that, I want everything.”
“I’ll give you the whole fucking world,” Titus pants into your mouth, rolling his hips to get any kind of friction.
It’s been so long since he’s been intimate. He’s got his select hook ups, women to satisfy his needs and gratify him, but true intimacy is not something he invites into his life often. But here under your touch, the feeling of your lips, he can’t get enough. He’s been starved for more than blood.
But there isn’t much time left in the night. If you’re not married by sunrise, this will all have been for nothing.
So regretfully, reluctantly, he tears himself away from you. You let out a needy whine at the loss of his heat, and he watches as your body contracts and shakes from the arousal.
“Oh my sweet lamb,” Titus coos, taking pity on you. He reaches back into his pocket to finally pull out his mother’s ring. His heart swells with pride at the excited gasp you let out when he slips it onto your finger. “We can’t give in to that now. We have to make it official, we have to win the game.”
The glow from the property looks like fires in your eyes, as you break into a genuine, bright, happy smile for the first time since you said your first set of vows to Alex Le Domas.
+
The drive back to the Lodge is filled with an undercurrent of buzzing tension between you and Titus, as Ursula chatters the whole way there about how excited she is.
“Don’t get me wrong, it was very fun watching you rip everyone apart, those other families have been so fucking annoying, but I prefer the glamor of a wedding over a hunt any day,” she rattles on, delightfully unaware of you and Titus mostly ignoring her in the back.
They aren’t worried about staying quiet, as most of the other eligible hunters are dead, and the ones who are left know they could never stand a chance at winning a fight against the Danforth Twins.
Once back at the Lodge, the Lawyer approves of the new plan, and begins calling upon extended family members of the High Council, as well as lower families under Mr. Le Bail’s contract, to attend the ceremony. It won’t be as grand or as long as your first wedding, only a few hours until sunset and all that, but Titus and Ursula assured you it will be twice as romantic.
Ursula takes you up to one of the guest quarters, and passes you to the care of servants. “I have the perfect dress for a Dark Wedding you can borrow! Well, you can have it, actually, I have a feeling I’m not going to want it back after you and Titus are done...doing whatever weird shit you’re going to do later.”
She leaves with a cackling laugh, as the group of servants help you strip out of your blood covered clothes. Your shoes are sent downstairs for cleaning, they start to toss your tights and your underwear into the lit fireplace, but you stop them before they can throw your dress into the flames.
“Wait! I-I want to keep that,” you say, earning a raised brow from the girl holding the dress. You shrug. Maybe it’s silly, but that dress...it was meant to represent your happily ever after, the end to your life of living paycheck to paycheck in loneliness, the start of having a real family. But now...as much as the sight of it should sicken you, it represents your ability to survive, your resilience. “It has sentimental value.”
She simply nods and drapes the dress over the back of one of the Victorian chairs.
Your bare feet patter into the bathroom across the cold, dark tile, to the gold, footed bath that waits on the other end. The servants help you step into the warm water and turn on the overhead faucet. Water rains down on you, as servants begin to clean away the blood and grime from the last two days. Lavender and Gardenia scents fill your nose, and you hum pleasurably as for the first time since your rehearsal dinner, you feel your body completely relax.
After your bath the servants dry you off, massage lotion onto every inch of your skin, as well as healing salves onto your wounds, and fix up your hair and makeup, while you sit in a white robe made of the softest material that has ever graced your skin. Underneath of which you’re adorned in a black lace and satin lingerie set, which is probably more expensive than any underwear you’ve ever owned combined.
It’s not long until Ursula returns, wearing a long black strapless dress, with a garment bag in one hand and a large hatbox in the other, shooing the servants out of the room for your privacy. Her smile grows as she sniffs around the room, eyes widening when she realizes the sweet smell is coming from you.
“Well, that certainly is an improvement!” She chirps, tossing the box on the bed and clapping her hands excitedly after you take the garment bag. “You smell like Mother’s garden, no doubt Titus’s choice.”
“Thank you?”
“Oh, trust me, it’s a very good thing. We don’t have many memories of Mother, she died when we were so young, but her garden at the Rhode Island estate has been kept up to her standards and preferences by our groundskeeper all this time. Father...” Ursula’s voice trails off as the smile falls from just her eyes for a moment. But after a quick twitch of her neck, it reaches her eyes once more. “Well, I’d like to keep it that way.”
“I don’t think I’ll have any say over how to upkeep your family’s home,” you say.
“It’s your family home now too, Little Dove,” Ursula reminds you.
A small breath gets caught in your throat. “I-I’ve never had...”
As your voice fades, Ursula’s ever present smirk turns down into something more sincere. “A family home? A family?”
You nod, giving her a shrug. “I haven’t lived the easiest life. I mean, don’t get me wrong, this weekend has been the worst of it, but...I guess that’s why I got through. I always just...get through it all, no matter what, by any means necessary.”
“You fight.”
I win. Is the thought that crosses your mind and...it’s so much more direct of a voice than you’re used to. What is this thing that has emerged from the darkest recesses of your heart?
“I do what I need,” You say instead, stepping behind a partition to change. “It will be nice to, um, just do what I want.”
“Oh, and you will.”
As you change, Ursula starts to pace around the room, fingers running over the dark wood of the molding on the walls. She clicks her teeth nervously, eyes darting to the door, before she locks it. “That actually brings me to something important I wanted to talk to you about. Before the ceremony and all that.”
“Okay,” you say nervously, shoulders tightening from the change in her tone.
“It’s my brother, you see. I love him very much, we’ve been together our whole lives, but he’s...he’s not the kindest of men,” she starts to explain, approaching the partition so she can lower her voice. “You don’t have anything to worry about, trust me when I say I have never seen him react to any woman the way he did the first time he saw you. No, see...he can be quite the violent man. He wasn’t allowed to release that side tonight, but after you officially join the family, you’ll learn everything. You’ll be able to watch footage of past rituals, if you wanted.”
A sick thrill shoots up your spine at the idea. He was holding back today, only got to see you at your most monstrous, and the thought that there could be footage of him. Your hands start to shake as they pull the dress up your body.
What kind of sounds does he make when he lands a killing blow? What does the flex of his arms look like when he swings a heavy weapon at his prey? How handsome is he covered in someone else’s blood, chest heaving, looking down at them like a bug he’s about to squish...
“Anyway,” Ursula continues, breaking you out of your thoughts. “The reason I’m bringing all this up is because, well, I want you and I to be a team, of sorts. Truthfully, I will admit I was a little worried about the whole ‘running the world with my psycho brother’ thing. Don’t get me wrong, I do love him, but I’ve had to reign him in our whole lives. Now with you...I think that job will be much easier.”
“You want me to help you control him?” You asks suspiciously. A tightness forms in your chest. You don’t want to control this man who has just seen you at your own least controlled and loved it. He wants to save you, even after seeing your darkest of tendencies. How could you turn on him and not love him the same in return?
“No! No it’s not about control!” Ursula says, frustration in her tone. Her fingers grip at her temples, as she lets out a ragged sigh. “It’s the opposite, really. I don’t want to have to keep him in check anymore, but now that we have you, I don’t think we’ll have to. You’ll give him some light in his life, someone to care about do the right thing for, without having to be told to.
We are about to control everything, have the most power in the world, do you have any idea what that means? Tides will rise and fall at our whims, wars will begin and end at our words. Titus...well, before you, I thought he could use this power to possibly just destroy the world, which would be so boring and pointless.”
You brush down the fabric of the black dress, pulling it into place around your body, as you let out a sigh. When you step back around the partition, Ursula’s hand falls from her face, and her jaw drops.
“Wow, you clean up very good,” she says as her eyes rake down your body.
The black wedding gown fits you perfectly, long bell sleeves and mermaid tail making you look like some sort of demonic beauty from an old painting. You get a look at yourself in the long mirror at the other end of the room, and you know all at once that this is so much better than the white lacy thing you’d worn yesterday. You feel yourself stand up straighter, hold yourself higher. This is right. This is your true self.
Ursula has the lightest tears pricking the corners of her eyes, as she takes your hands in hers, thumb tapping her mother’s ring that sits fitting perfectly on your left hand.
“How do you want me to help with Titus then? Just when I can be free, I have to live my life only for him?” You ask expectantly.
“Live your life for yourself, but don’t be afraid of him. Show him what the point of all this is, what happiness truly is. He sees something in you, and I think I'm starting to understand as well. That ruthlessness I saw from you on the field? Fuck, even I was kind of into it. I have never seen him give a shit for anyone outside our family like I have seen him care for you tonight.
He was distraught at the idea that we would have to kill you, and when that loophole was revealed, I saw a fire ignite in him I have never seen before. I truly don’t think anything will quell the brutality that he has in his soul, but maybe you can help me direct it. You're getting a piece of this power too. Embrace it.”
You’re taken aback by her words. You barely know this man. You don’t know him at all really, but from what she describes...you know you feel that way too. He has seen inside your soul and loved it, and with the tiniest glimpses of his, you know you could love him as well. This is the life meant for you. Everything before, all the hurt and the pain and the loneliness, the drifting through aimlessly, all the questioning of it all has been answered by him. With this offer of joining and creating the most powerful family in the world.
“I can do that, I want to... I want to be happy, for once. And Titus...” You squeeze her hands tight, biting your lip to hold in your smile. “I think we can make each other very happy.”
“Good,” Ursula says with a satisfied smile. “Here,” she reaches behind her neck to unlatch the silver pentagram pendant that sits there. “You need something borrowed.” She steps into your space, nose to your cheek as she secures the clasp around your own neck, before settling her hands on your shoulders in a tight hug. “I always wanted a sister. Between Titus and Father, it’s been difficult being the only woman at the top of the family. You and I are going to make a great team.”
You give her a kiss on the cheek as a thank you, as she finally lifts the lid of the hatbox. Your eyes widen as she lifts a black crown, encrusted with red jewels, and attached to a long black veil. The final piece to complete your ceremonial ensemble.
The time for the Dark Wedding has come.
+
Ursula leads you down to the basement of the Lodge, where floor to ceiling dark wood doors, engraved with a giant pentagram, are opened by two servants in dark purple robes, the hoods covering their faces. You’re lead down a stone stairwell, into a dark Chamber, lit with orange fire on pilons carved into the shape of goat heads.
The witnesses, members of other families, are all in their own purple robes with hidden faces, but you can still feel their eyes on you as you walk past. You can feel the envy radiating from them. Some want to kill you for their own seat on the High Council, some want to steal you away to marry you themselves. Several of the women wish it was them who would be called Titus Danforth’s Bride. But they knew there was nothing they could do when you and Titus had Mr. Le Bail’s blessing.
You had won the game. At last.
At the other end, sits a lavish alter complete with a statue of Mr. Le Bail hanging from above, goat head motifs carved into the stonework of the wall, and an alter table covered in books, black candles, and several ceremonial supplies. The Lawyer stands behind the table in an ornate black gown, wearing a smile and a horned headdress.
In his hands is the contract book the Hunters had to sign. The book of rules Mr. Le Bail set forth for his rituals and games. He gives you a nod as you descend toward him.
Next to him is Titus, who sucks in a breath, eyes soft and needy at the sight of you.
“You’re beautiful, Little Lamb,” he says in a low voice.
He’s in dark layered clothes, a gray ascot around his neck, and black hunter’s boots, with his hands crossed in front of him. His mouth drops open, eyes wide, chest visibly rising and falling as his eyes never leave the deep, penetrating stare into yours.
You feel your heart beat speed up, you imagine the sound of it echoing off the walls. Your tongue darts out to lick at your bottom lip, and that’s the only moment that Titus’s eyes linger to anywhere else.
Ursula guides you up the steps of the alter, taking her place behind you as, the Lawyer hands you and Titus matching silver bands. The Lawyer instructs you both to put them on each other, then takes your left hand in his.
“We gather here under the light of the full moon, surrounded by the fires provided by Mr. Le Bail, so join these two souls in eternal connection.”
He brings your hand close to him, and with a sharp, black blade he etches a small cut on the lower part of your palm. Your eyes stay on Titus who looks on with delight as you don’t even flinch. A few droplets or your blood are spilled into an ornate gold goblet, and the Lawyer directs you to keep your hand out as he repeats the action with Titus’s left hand.
One the blood is mixed in the goblet, the Lawyer brings your hands together, matching the wounds so your blood joins his, and you hiss at the touch. Not at the pain, no. There is no pain.
You hiss from the sudden electric spark that bursts out as your soul is connected to his. Your lips drop open, your eyes flutter, and Titus gently jerks you closer to him as his fingers intertwine with yours.
The Lawyer wraps a black silk scarf around both of your hands and ties it off, keeping you two locked together, before picking the goblet up and holding it above you with both his hands.
“Do you swear on Satan’s name to take Mr. Titus Chester Danforth to be yours, through fires of hell in this life and the next?”
“I swear.” You say without hesitation, your voice barely yours, distant and echoing as your eyes hood over, and you feel Titus tug you ever closer, until your breath mixes with his. “I promise to be yours.”
You watch his lips twitch up in a smile, almost like a little boy who opened the one singular present he wanted on his birthday. Has he been dreaming of you? Have you been his wish since before he knew you were waiting?
“Do you swear on Satan’s name to take the former Mrs. Le Domas to be yours, through the fires of hell in this life and the next?”
A needy squeal escapes your mouth as you are suddenly jerked forward, hard, so your body is met right up against the hard muscle of Titus’s. He towers over, looking down with a hunger he knows is finally going to be sated. His lips are hairs away from yours as he says his vows. “I swear. I will never let another person touch you, harm you. I will never let your power be taken again. I swear to give you the world. All of it.”
The Lawyer hands you both a matching set of black and gold pens and opens Mr. Le Bail’s book to an empty page. You watch as flames appear on the paper, writing out your contract to both Le Bail and the Danforth family. You feel a stinging in your hand as you bring the pen down to the page, a moment of hesitation.
You’re about to sell your soul. For all the power over the world. For a marriage to a man who sort of scares you but thrills you more than anyone you’ve ever met in your life.
But what even was your life before, anyway? Lonely, poor, an upbringing of abuse, no sense of a real family or home? You can have everything. You will have everything.
You sign the page. Titus signs immediately after, with much less hesitation. None, actually.
“By the all mighty powers of Satan, Lucifer, Mr. Le Bail, you two are now one. The Danforth Family is therefore restored to the High Seat, to be shared by you three.”
A surprised smirk flashes over Titus’s face. It doesn’t even fall when the Lawyer hands Mr. Le Bail’s gold ring to Ursula, who slips it onto her middle finger with a pleased expression.
You hadn’t been expecting that. Of course the twins would share as they are both head of the family, but you...of course. You’re the matriarch of the Danforths. If heirs to the family are to be made, they would come through you. In giving yourself to Titus, to the contract of Mr. Le Bail, you have gained all the power of the world.
“You may kiss your Bride. Hail Satan!”
Titus surges forward, capturing your lips in his with a deep moan, as the other families chant in celebration of your dark union. His grip on your hand tightens, as his other one slips around your back, sliding down to the curve of your ass. You whimper into the kiss, biting at his bottom lip, as your own hand goes to the back of his neck, tugging roughly at the little curls of his hair.
The sound of Ursula’s excited clapping breaks you from your stupor, reminding you both of your audience. In truth, Titus would take you right now, tear your clothes into shreds and fuck you on the alter right in front of everyone and Mr. Le Bail himself.
He and Ursula never thought they would marry. It all seemed too complicated with the deadly rituals involved. Why get attached to someone outside the family when they may have to hunt them? When they had each other anyway? Father always emphasized the importance of keeping power in their family’s hands.
But now Titus has you. Truly has you. You belong to him and he belongs to you as well.
His hunger has only grown. His need to show you what a good husband he can be, how you have given this power to the right man, to the right family. He wants to take you in every way, show you what true pleasure can be. Erase any memory you have of that stupid Le Domas boy who couldn’t find the wits to see what value you hold. Who was afraid of the monster you have inside.
Titus has no desire to tame that monster. He wants to free her.
You breathe into each other’s mouths as the kiss is finally broken, and he turns triumphantly to the witnesses.
“Hail Satan!”
The chants continue, as Ursula giggles behind you. “Awe, you two are so cute. And kind of gross. But I’m happy for you!”
“I’m happy for all of us,” you say, taking one of her hands in yours.
The Lawyer unwraps you and Titus from the silk, and offers the scarf to Titus, who takes it with a slight wink your direction. You can only imagine the dirty plans he has for that later. You want to know. You wish you could read into his mind and see everything he wants from you, to show you all over your most depraved fantasies as well.
Titus leans down, placing a kiss just under your ear, the scratching of his stubble sends a tingle of excitement through your skin. “Are you ready, Little Lamb?”
You don’t trust your voice to not give away to everyone just how needy and desperate you are for him, though that kiss might have been evidence enough. You bite your lip and nod as your response, and allow him to whisk you away.
+
Your journey to Titus’s quarters on the top floor is buzzing with promise and arousal. You can feel yourself dripping between your thighs as he pushes you up against the wall of the elevator, and you lean up expecting a kiss, but are met with his hand to your throat instead.
The way your eyes light up is like you’ve passed some test with him. He isn’t squeezing or anything, just holding you there with a strong hand around your neck. His breath is hot on yours, lips just out of reach for a kiss, his eyes blown out dark but hooded. You can see him holding back, can feel it in the tension of his body up against yours.
His free hand trails down between your bodies, petting down the soft fabric of your wedding dressing over your belly, then between your legs. Your breath hitches, then releases in a soft moan as he presses two fingers forward, and even through two layers of fabric he can feel how wet you are. His face breaks into a smile
“This new, or have I left you like this since the woods, my little Lamb?” His voice is rough, a deep, sexy tone filled with teasing.
“S-since the woods,” you say honestly. Why lie? When you know you’re about to get exactly what you want?
“Fuck,” Titus groans. “What a terrible man I am, leaving my sweet girl in this state for all this time.”
You let out a breathless laugh, reaching between your bodies to grip at the hard bulge you’ve felt against your leg. “And what a terrible wife I am to have left you like this.”
He grunts, pushing his hips into your hand, curving his fingers up at the same time, and catching your whine into his mouth.
The elevator dings, interrupting the heat of the moment.
His hand leaves your neck and before you know it, you’ve been swept up in his strong arms, as he carries you to the bedroom. You laugh, peppering kisses all over the side of his face, and once you’re through the threshold, you squirm out of his grasp, grabbing at him anywhere you can to take him to the bed. You yelp as the backs of your knees hit the end, sending you toppling backwards on the soft mattress. You ruck your dress up to let him step between your legs, but he stops you once it reaches your waist.
“Don’t rush, my lamb, don’t rush,” Titus says with an amused laugh, kneeling with one leg on the bed. “We can go slow. We have forever now, and you...you’ve been through a lot in two days.”
“Fuck that,” you scoff, scratching your hands up his chest. “Last night, well the other night, after the wedding with Alex, I was expecting to get fucked good. And instead, I got almost killed. A lot. Now I’m a newly wed again, and I won’t have this wedding night unsatisfied again.”
Titus’s brow raises, Amusing. His fingers brush into your hair, gentle at first, until they grip tight and pull your head back, exposing your neck to him. “You want to get fucked good?”
“Yes.” Your voice is desperate, broken, filled with a desire you’re pretty sure you’re experiencing for the first time. Your nails dig into his jacket, fuck all these stupid layers, and you shove it down his shoulders. You rip through his clothes, delighting at the sounds of seams tearing, tossing fabric every which way until you’ve got him in nothing but his pants, finally giving you a view of his strong body.
He’s built exactly as you thought, all toned muscle and thick arms, light skin littered with freckles like stars in the night sky. He’s beautiful. You want to bite him all over, latch your teeth to every part of his chest until the indents never leave, until you’ve scarred him as your own. You want him to do the same to you.
He pulls you back into another biting kiss, his sharp teeth latch onto your bottom lip, you moan at the feeling of the skin breaking, and the metallic sourness of your blood fills your mouth. Titus groans, sucking on your lip to drink it, as his hands slide up your back, to the clasp on your dress. It catches, and he lets out a frustrated sound halfway between and grunt and a whine, as he starts to tear the dress apart.
“Mmm!” you whine, pulling back from the kiss, lips red and swollen and eyes wet, your eyeliner and mascara starting to run. You’re filthy already, and Titus meets your look with an animalistic grin. But you simply pout. “Don’t ruin the dress, Ti.”
“I can buy you ten more exactly like it, it’s in my fucking way.”
“You’re not ruining this one,” you spit back. He doesn’t get it, but you know you have the old wedding dress, stained with a dozen people’s blood, waiting in your room. Maybe you’ll put them both on display in wherever it is you’re going to live now, as a shrine to your power, your win of both games. “It has sentimental value to me now.”
Before he has the chance to argue again, you use your strength to lock your legs around him, and force him around on his back on the bed. You sit up straight, straddling his lap, and you can feel his dick twitch even through his pants below you. His chest rises with a deep breath, wild smile breaking out on his face, tongue darting out to lick his lips.
“Fuck, you’re so strong, that’s the girl I saw out there,” Titus says in amazement.
You look down proudly. No man you’ve ever been with has looked at you like this, spoken of you like this, like you’re something sacred, something to be worshipped. Hell, you’re not even the same person any of those stupid boys dealt with. Something awoke in you over this weekend, something can never be sent to slumber again.
“Do not ruin my wedding dress, Mr. Danforth.”
His lips purse together, holding down a smirk, and he looks up at you through his brow, impatiently, boyishly...bratty. “Whatever you say, Mrs. Danforth.”
The name excites you more than you thought it would.
You reach up behind your back, finding the clasp of your dress, and your nimble fingers are able to easily break it open. You grin as you watch Titus’s mouth fall open. He looks simply parched. There’s something very arousing about having such a powerful and dangerous man hungry and desperate beneath you.
“Help me with the zipper? Gently.” You ask with a pout. He gives a subtle nod to his head, sitting up straight as his hands find their way to your back, sliding the zipper down slowly.
Titus groans at the sight of your tits nearly spilling out of the satin bra, and he can feel the drool start to form under his tongue. He wants to bite them, he wants to suck on your nipples while you bounce on his cock.
You shimmy the sleeves of the dress down off your arms, and then direct his hands to pull the dress up off of your body, before you carefully toss the dress to a chaise off to the side.
“You’re so beautiful,” Titus says, almost unconsciously, voice soft and breathless as his eyes wander over the view of your body. His fingertips trace over your skin where dark bruises and healing cuts are littered. The evidence of your ability to survive, proof that you are the woman worthy of Titus Danforth, of the whole world. Still, it bothers Titus to see such damage done to his bride. “If I could kill them all over again for doing this to you, I would.”
“Careful, this one,” You warn in a playful tone, pointing to a light scratch on your rib, “was caused by your sister.”
Titus cringes. “Well, it will never happen again, not by our hands.”
You pout. “But what if I want you to mark me up?”
His eyes snap up to yours, hips jerking up unexpectedly. “Lamb...”
“What?” You whine. “What if I want you to scratch me, and bite me, and mark me as yours?”
He doesn’t give you a chance to continue, before you know it, you’re the one on your back again, with Titus kissing and licking his way down your body, over every remnant of your fights. He bites his way through your bra, sharp teeth ripping it in half, and you gasp, cunt aching at the show of desperation. The sound he lets out at the sight of your bare breasts, can only be described as devastatingly hungry.
He licks his lips before latching onto your left breast, sucking on your nipple, biting it lightly, pulling needy whimpers from your lips. When he pinches the other one between his fingers, you release a high pitched moan, and you can feel a spike of heat between your legs, juices drip on your thighs.
“Oh fuck, Titus,” you whimper, one hand flying to grip onto his curls, the other slamming on the bed, fingers twisting in the soft sheet, doing anything to find purchase to ground you.
He moans around you, and your back arches up into him as he tugs your nipple with his teeth before releasing, only to repeat the same actions on your other one. He’d stay here all night if he wasn’t so desperate to fuck you, to devour you in every way.
His hand dips between your legs when he feels them start to shake, slipping into the lace panties, and he groans into your skin at the wetness he finds. It coats his fingers, already dripping through your panties and practically pooling on the bed.
It takes him a second to rip your panties to pieces, unwrapping his prize.
“There she is,” he mumbles, voice filled with awe.
“Titus,” you groan, sitting up on your elbows. “You said you were going to fuck me.”
And he loves your impatience, your petulance. You’re so much like him.
Titus doesn’t quicken his actions, though, he’s not ready to get rid of that frustrated fire in your eyes. He doesn’t feel like it. Instead he slinks down the bed, grabbing you roughly by the ankles to yank your body down with him. He laughs at the small yelp you let out, at the widening of your eyes at his show of strength, and then throws your legs donw to grab your wrists instead.
“You think you’re going to tell me what to do?” His voice isn’t as playful as before.
But he’s not met with fear from you, exactly as he expected. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
You look up at him with even more hunger and determination than before. When he releases your wrists, you make quick work of his pants, nipping and biting at his lower stomach, humming into his skin.
He helps you strip him of the last of his layers, and your heart skips when you finally get the full look at him, at his thick cock that’s already leaking at the tip. Your pussy clenches, your nails scratch hard down his strong thighs, digging into the skin enough to leave angry red lines, and you kind of want to run them down again, cut him open, lick up his blood on your way to his cock.
But he tips you up with two fingers under your chin, waiting until you look into his eyes again before he wraps that hand around your jaw. He brushes his thumb over the cut on your lip, then dips it into your mouth. Your pupils are blown black as you suck on him, wishing it was his cock filling your throat instead.
“I’m not a gentle man.”
“Good.” And you hardly recognize your own voice, wanton and syrupy and needy. You’ve only just learned how much you love when it isn’t gentle, when you’re pushed to the limits of your body. You need him to make you feel that way again. “Don’t be gentle. Take me, Titus, like in the woods. I know you were holding back. Fuck me like you want to, like I’m yours.”
“You are fucking mine,” he snarls, shoving your head back, then follows it up by quickly turning you onto your stomach.
He crawls over your body, kicking your legs apart, and pushing down on your lower back until you’re arched beautifully for him, ass in the air, pussy dripping and clenching from the emptiness.
There’s fresh scabs on your back, from where you’d scratched it open on the metal gate as you’d tried to escape the Le Domas property in your first wedding. Titus’s hand covers them completely, and you moan in a combination of pain and pleasure as he grips you hard enough to leave a bruise. The shape his hand covers the marks caused by others, he’ll reshape every wound into a mark of love from him
“Please,” you whine, voice muffled slightly by the sheet. “Please, Titus, just fu—ahh!”
He cuts you off with the rough slamming of his cock inside, every inch filling you instantly, until you feel his hips against you. “What was that, Baby?”
You don’t have it in you to snark back to him, not when you finally feel so full. All you can respond with is a stilted, broken scream into the bed, as Titus pulls out and then fucks back in, slow rough strokes that take your breath away.
But that won’t do for Titus, he wants to hear you, wants to know how good he makes you feel. As he starts to fuck you harder, quicken his pace, he grabs you by the back of your head, turning so your cheek is pressed to the bed instead, and every sound you make echoes around the room.
“That’s it, little Lamb, let me hear you,” Titus groans. His fingers rake down your back, over every bruise, as he fucks you at a brutal pace.
All you can do is scream, eyes running with tears, body on a sweet, delicious fire, as you allow yourself to be used, to just feel, everything.
With one hand, Titus grabs your arms and twists them behind your back locking you in, completely at his mercy. With the other he reaches between your legs, rubbing at your clit. “Tell me how much you like it.”
“Fuck,” you whine, the new angle it creates on your body sending bolts of pleasure up your spine. You still don’t really know what’s come over you, what thing has woken inside you, what insatiable hungry envelopes your very soul, but you feel in this moment that Titus is the only one who could ever feed it. “Fucking, love it.”
You don’t have to look at him to know he’s smiling, can feel it in the tone of his voice when he responds, “Yeah, that’s fucking right. Tell me.”
He rubs circles on your clit, leans down to kiss up your spine, settling on your shoulder where his teeth bite down, hard, the skin breaking as you moan. He licks at the wound, sucking on it until a red and angry mark is left.
“Love the way your cock feels,” you whimper, “Feel so fucking full. Feel...oh fuck I’m gonna—"
Your legs start to shake, vision blurring as ultimate pleasure over takes you, and with a shout of his name, you’re coming, cunt clenching down on his cock as he fucks you through it. Your shouts turn into light grunts, Titus doesn’t let up for a second, as wave after wave of your orgasm rushes through your body.
For a moment, you think you might pass out, only his voice comes in close to your ear, anchoring you to reality. “That’s it Little Lamb, give in to me.”
The warmth of his body leaves as you start to come back to yourself, and he sits up, fingers leaving your overstimulated clit to grab your ass instead. His eyes dart down, watching where his cock enters your body, mesmerized by his own movements.
He’s distracted, you can tell, studying the way you feel inside, how your pussy welcomes him, warm and wet, fitting him like a glove. Has he ever had it this good?
You start to struggle against his grip, and finally manage to get your arms out of his grasp, and you twist your torso, grabbing him by the chin to pull him into a snarling kiss. You want to show him you can fuck him good too, you can free all the tension from his body with pleasure.
Your hand comes down on his cheek in a crackling slap! and the shock of it sends him reeling. He pulls out, falling back with a wild smile, mouth red from your blood, and your body shivers with glee. You go to hit him again, but he catches you, pulling you towards him, mouth latching onto your neck. You let him kiss you there, suck another mark into your skin over one left by someone else, but when he goes to move again, you scratch down his chest.
The nails finally break the skin and he groans at the feeling, puffing out his chest for you to do it again. He’s just as much yours as you are his, after all.
“Yeah, Baby, mark me up.” Titus pants, an adorable pink blush crawls up his skin.
But you have other plans. You slap him again, giggling at the petulant smile he gives you. Instead of scratching him up, like he so clearly wants, you use all of your strength to shove his body down on the bed.
He looks absolutely delighted when you climb on his lap, and he reaches up to grab you, but you fight to press his wrists to the bed. His hips jerk up, cock leaking out, your strength driving him wild. This is what he wanted, this is who he imagined watching the footage of you besting your would-be murderers.
“Stay,” you command, voice low and dark, as you release his wrists.
The expression on his face as he willfully does what he’s told, as you sink down onto his cock again, can only be described as animalistic, devoted.
You whimper as you sink down, until you’re all the way on his lap, and the tow of you moan in unison. You test a roll of your hips, gasping at the feeling, pressing your hands onto Titus’s strong chest for balance.
“Touch me,” you request in a whisper, starting a slow pace.
Titus doesn’t need to be told twice, hands flying to your hips as he plants his feet, meeting your every movement. He grunts at each upward thrust of his hips, eyes darting between yours and the slight bounce of your tits. There’s already hickeys forming around your nipples, and he licks his lips at the thought of making more.
All he wants is more, wants his hands everywhere, his mouth and his tongue and his teeth, wants to devour you. A small part of him wants to tear up every shrine in the Danforth homes to rebuild them all to you.
“Love the way your hands feel,” You whimper, guiding those very hands to grab your breasts, as you roll your hips down onto his cock. “So strong, so rough, wish I could see what you can really do with them. Wish you were allowed to kill those fuckers out in the game today.”
“Believe me, fuck,” Titus groans, snapping his hips up into you. “I would have torn them apart to get to you. Would have ripped their limbs off and bathed in their blood to get to you.”
“Fuck,” your body speeds up, pussy clenching at the thought. Your mind races and your voice is breathless as you moan out, “I want to see it. I want to see you feral and brutal. Fuck, Titus, wanna see you fight for me.”
He rears up at your words, bringing your chest to his face as you bounce on his cock. “I’d kill a hundred people for you, my baby.”
You rake your fingers through his hair, whimpering when his mouth finds your nipple again, and you hiss when he bites down. You claw at his back, and you know the skin is breaking at the way Titus hisses into your skin. You kiss his temple, down his cheek, and then dip your tongue into his mouth.
And there’s a moment, the two of you breathing deep into each other’s mouths, eyes blown dark and wide and staring deeply into each other’s souls, where everything fades away. It’s nothing but heat and fire and blood and you feel...powerful. You feel valued. You feel loved.
Titus licks up from your chest to your neck, the trail of his tongue leaving goosebumps in its path. “I’d burn this whole world down for you.”
You suck in a breath, body going still. Those words more than anything, with the real power behind them, should terrify you. They should be the final straw to break you out of this trance, to stop all this and fucking run.
But you kiss Titus instead, moaning and whimpering into his mouth, holding him tight and close, as your bodies mold into one. He flips you over, back landing on the bed, and he pushes your legs practically up to your ears.
Everything from there is a blur of biting and licking and screaming. He leaves angry marks all over your neck and your chest, while you bite and scratch him all over in return. Your cries of pleasure echo through the halls of the Lodge, probably keeping up every single person who dared to stay the night. Your throat is filled with a scratchy pain from the screams, but there’s nothing you can do to stop them.
Titus’s hand roughly grasps your face, keeping your eyes on him as he fucks you harder. “Wanna come again, little lamb?”
“Yes, please,” you cry out, body contracting, back arching.
And he cracks a satisfied grin at just how lost in it you are. But Titus knows he hasn’t got much more hold left in him, it’s taken everything in him to hold it out this long. He reaches his hand down between your legs, fucking your harder as he rubs your clit, swallowing every whimper and moan you release into his mouth.
“Come on, baby,” Titus grunts, losing his rhythm. “Come for me. Give me what I want.”
Your vision whites out again, hands gripping hard to his biceps, leaving moon shaped indents into his pink skin. “Titus—”
“Yeah,” Titus pants into your mouth, hand slipping to wrap around your throat, pride and pleasure swelling in his belly when you clench around his cock. “Yeah.”
With one final scream, your body convulses, juices spurting from your pussy as your second orgasm of the night rips through you, heightening every touch that remains from your husband. Your eyes roll back until they shut, tears prickling the edges.
“Fuck, that’s it, that’s what I fucking want,” Titus moans. He can’t stop the loud, whiny chants that escape from his mouth as he fucks you through it. “Gonna come, little lamb, gonna make you mine.”
He braces himself with one hand on the bed, as he suddenly pulls out, crying out your name as he jerks his cock, moaning as he finally lets himself come, thick ropes of spunk decorating your tummy, marking you for the final time.
The whole world slows down for a moment, only the sounds of your breaths filling your ears. When you finally open your eyes, he’s looking down at you the same as he has all day, like you are the answer to every prayer he’s sold his soul for.
Titus leans down, placing an almost too gentle kiss to your cheek. “Told you I’d be the one to get you.”
Tears flow down your cheeks, tracks circling around the sleepy, giddy smile you’re left with. You feel absolutely spent, almost floating away, every part of you that was marked by Titus’s teeth and hands and tongue is glowing.
He’s still holding himself above you with one hand firmly on the bed, bicep flexed from the effort of strength, and he looks just as fucked out as you. His gaze glides down your body, taking inventory of every place he made you his.
“Titus,” you finally whine, wanting his full attention back. Your voice is raw, throat sore from the screaming. “That was—"
“Shh,” he hushes, finally letting himself fall to the side, resting on his elbow, while his fingers ghost over your skin. “I know, Baby, but take it easy for me.”
You hum and nod, curling up into his side. You feel him turn away for a moment, and look up to see him on his phone, expression impatient and stern.
“Run a bath, hot but not scorching, same things you used before, and I better not see any of you in there. Set it up then get the fuck out. Thank you.”
You raise a brow. “What was that?”
“Wanna take care of you, but don’t wanna be disturbed. They don’t get to see my new wife like this,” Titus says, and at first you think he’s playing, but the look in his eye says he means business. He’s not sharing any part of you with anyone tonight.
“You’re so considerate,” you say, sitting up to give him a kiss. “I don’t think I’ve ever been fucked that good.”
His lips press into a proud smirk. “Well, get used to it, Little Lamb. I don’t ever do anything halfway.”
It’s not long until he gets the notification that your bath is ready, and he carries you all the way across the hall to the lavish bathroom, even fancier than the one you’d been bathed in before your wedding.
He carefully places you down in the water, in bathtub that might as well be called a mini pool, and grabs the same soaps and salves that had been used to clean away your wounds earlier. His rough, calloused hands, that had held you down and gripped you so hard they left heavier bruises, were miraculously gentle as they wiped you down.
You’re both quiet as he cleans you, stripping away any final remnants of injuries you’d acquired from the others, leaving only memories of the ones he’d left in pleasure. You almost wonder how this man, who touches you like some precious treasure, can do such brutal things. You can’t wait to see how.
As he finishes up your care, and takes you back to bed, the final lingering thought on your mind, as you fall asleep in his arms, is that this brute, this dangerous, violent man, is all yours.
+
You can’t think of the last time you had a full service breakfast in bed.
Actually, no, you’ve never had this.
Just as you were waking up, nude body covered in bruises and scratch marks and love bites, hidden mostly by the black silk sheet of Titus’s bed, a row of servants trailed in with silver serving carts of just about every classic breakfast food you could imagine.
The smell is what stirs you, and you hum as you rub the sleep from your eyes, smiling up at Titus who is already sitting up against the headboard. His body is mostly on display, modesty only barely covered by the corner of the sheet, but he’s got a leg propped up, elbow resting on his knee, and he’s lighting a cigar as he directs the servants where to leave everything.
“Good morning, Mrs. Danforth,” Titus muses, tapping the ashes off the end of the cigar into a crystal plate sitting on his bedside table.
“Good morning, Mr. Danforth,” you smile sleepily up at him, left hand crawling up his chest.
The sheet slips off your body, so more of your bare back shows to the last servant still on his way out of the room, and Titus’s smile falls into a scowl when he catches the servant’s eyes rake up and down your bare skin. “Leave.”
The servant’s eyes widen in fear, and they scurry quickly out of the room, shutting the door behind them. You chuckle, tapping your fingers over the still angry bite marks on Titus’s neck. “You know, I’m pretty sure everyone in the whole compound heard us last night—well, this morning.”
“Fine with me,” Titus says triumphantly, then echoes his words from last night. “But that doesn’t mean they get to see it.”
“You’re a very jealous man, aren’t you?” You ask, settling up next to him, peppering kisses to his neck and cheek. “Don’t like it when others play with your toys?”
He blows out the smoke of the cigar away from you, smirking. “You’re not a toy, Little Lamb.”
“Don’t you forget it,” you hum. You plant a quick, chaste kiss to his lips, before rolling over to survey your many breakfast options. “Wow, it’s so fancy, it’s like I’m at a hotel.”
“It is a hotel, my dear,” Titus chuckles, but he’s not teasing or patronizing you, no, he’s showing off.
“Oh right,” you say with a shrug, settling on a piece of toast with strawberry jam to start with.
Titus’s eyes watch the way the jam runs down your chin, and how your tongue licks it up, a chill running through him as it reminds him of your blood filled kisses from last night.
“So, where should we go tonight?” He asks.
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” he grunts, stamping out the cigar on the plate, and scooting down the bed to join you, to take back some of your body heat again. “We’re newly weds,” he starts, pressing soft kisses to the back of your shoulder. “And as unconventional as our matrimony may be, we still get a honeymoon, don’t we?”
“What did you have in mind?”
Titus clicks his tongue. “No, no, no, this is about what you want. We can go anywhere you wish, and we can honeymoon for as long as you like. Let Ursula handle the exchange of power, that’s the boring part anyway.”
A giddy smile forms on your face. “Well, I was looking forward to the Le Domas ancestral home in France that Alex was going to take me to. And I believe it is legally mine now.”
“Little Lamb, even if it wasn’t yours, I would make it.”
“Hmm,” you smile, licking some of the jam off your spoon before meeting his lips in a kiss. “There is something else...Alex had promised we’d join the mile high club on our way there. I know you just said you’re not much into public sex...”
“Actually, I said I don’t want people to see you,” Titus retorts, licking the little bit of jam that had trickled onto your chin. “So, thank the devil you now own several private jets, I think that wish can be fulfilled.”
Your cunt pulses at the thought, thighs twitching and rubbing together. The fact that only days ago, the idea of you on a private jet, sipping champagne and getting fucked out of your mind by some hot, rich older man would have just been a fantasy. Now it’s your whole itinerary for the evening.
“I’m so glad I chose you,” you muse, running your fingers into his soft, silver hair. Not just for the riches, but the freedom. The ability to do whatever you want, be whatever you truly are, and have a man who is obsessed with you for it.
“As am I,” Titus says, as though he can read your mind. Giving you the world isn’t a metaphor for him, after all.
“I’m so glad I won that stupid Hide and Seek game. There was one second, when Alex had me on the alter table, about to sacrifice me, when I thought, fuck, I should just give up,” you confess. “But then something just...something was roaring inside me, telling me I can’t let them win. I had to make it, I’d come so close. And even after all the shit last night, you make it so fucking worth it.”
A small muscle in Titus’s cheek twitches, and his smile drops into a frown. He had seen on the security footage that it was indeed Alex Le Domas who was the final one to try to sacrifice you, and you’d fought back like hell to win. What an idiot, that stupid boy was. But his mistake is now Titus’s triumph.
Yet still, there is a pit in Titus’s stomach that hasn’t been resolved. He’s known inside and out the rules of the Le Domas’s Hide and Seek his whole life. He knows the ins and outs of every High Council Family’s rituals, his father made sure of it. Titus and Ursula trained from early childhood to be winners of any violent game they were put in, especially their own.
It’s part of the reason he and Ursula never committed to serious relationships, and put all their focus into keeping the family strong as it is, as their birthright as twins.
But looking at you, entering this new state of being, finding your true self because of another High Family’s failing, and yet still in the dark of this world you now rule. Titus doesn’t like complicated, he doesn’t want to twist you in a web. He wants to respect the person whose soul aligns with his. Whose monster wants to embrace his. The one person who could love all of him and his demons. He cannot lie to you. He wants to worship you.
“There was another way for you to win your game with the Le Domas’s.”
“What?” Your fingers stilling where they’ve been twisting into his short curls.
Titus clears his throat. “Your husband could have chosen you, just like tonight when we chose each other.”
“But...” your mind starts to race. “But I thought if I lived they would all die, even him?”
“Well,” Titus takes your hand in his, kissing your palm, lips touching the place the Lawyer had cut, the place where your blood mixed with his. “Mr. Le Bail likes loyalty, that’s why he plays these games with the families under his power. But loves contracts. Marriage is a contract.”
You can feel your heartbeat skip as realization dawns on you. All that trouble. All that death. And your heartbreak at the hands of Alex Le Domas...
“If your husband had chosen to honor his contract to you, if he had chosen to help you and save you, then at sunrise, he could have sacrificed the head of his family, his father, and with you, become the new head of the Le Domas family under the contract of Mr. Le Bail. One reason Ursula and I never married is to avoid that. If we chose to save our spouse, we’d have to sacrifice Father, or each other. We couldn’t bare it.”
You shake your head in disbelief, breaths coming out ragged. “M-Maybe he didn’t know that.”
“Maybe not,” Titus says in a voice that isn’t completely reassuring. “But he gave up trying to save you. He gave up his loyalty to you, the one he had chosen, the one he signed a contract with. And so at sunrise the offer was never given by Mr. Le Bail. You could have even killed Alex and married that brother that helped you instead. Didn’t you notice Mr. Le Bail didn’t do anything to him when that brother helped you get away?”
“H-How do you know all of this?” you ask.
“We all have our rituals, my Lamb,” Titus shrugs. “Every family has their way of welcoming new members. The Danforths are duelers and gamblers. When you marry into our family, you pick a card from a special deck, and if you pull a number, then you simply are welcomed into the ranks. But if you pull a face card, you must fight a corresponding Head Family member to the death. My father represented the King, my mother before her death was the Queen, a spot now taken by Ursula, and I am the Jack.”
“I’m assuming the times this has happened, they’ve pulled your card more than anyone else?” You ask, licking your lips at the thought.
“Yes well, when I was younger they pulled the King almost every time, but yes, since I’ve become a man, the times a face card has been pulled, it has been mine,” he explains with a smile that is a mixture of amusement and pride.
“Fuck, I wanna see that,” you say hungrily. “Ursula said there is footage.”
“Oh yes, we keep all the security footage of our rituals,” Titus smirks. “You want to watch me duel to the death? Want to see how strong your husband is? How ruthless? How brutal?”
Your eyes flutter shut, heat sparking in your belly as your pussy pulses. “Yes. Fuck I want to see that so fucking bad. You’ve gotten to see my monster, I want to see yours.”
You connect your lips to his in a kiss, breathy and hard and desperate. You open to allow Titus’s tongue to lick into you, to deepen the kiss, but after a moment you pull back for air and another question.
“How often does this happen? Like, how many people are in the Danforth family?”
Titus chuckles breathlessly. “My father was the oldest of seven boys and four girls, and after my father won the High Seat, they all signed their souls to follow him. And they all had way more children than him, and then most of those children have had children. It’s come up quite a bit. Mr. Le Bail probably enjoys trying to thin out our herd.”
“So it’s probably going to happen again, then? This ritual?”
“Most likely,” Titus says with a shrug. “There’s a Danforth wedding every couple of years.”
“And so then, since your father is dead, and we’re married, does that make you the King? And so would I be the Queen now? Or is Ursula still the Queen, and I’m, like, the Jack? How will we kno—"
“You are my Queen,” Titus grunts, forceful and stern. His hands come to your cheeks, holding you steady. “The rest we will let the Lawyer figure out, and he can tell us when the time comes. But I am the King. And you are my Queen, little lamb. No matter what.”
You smile into the kiss this time, as Titus pushes your body back down the on the bed, using his legs to shove yours open to make room for him. A spike of pain elicits the smallest squeak as you feel Titus’s teeth reopen the bite wound on your mouth. It only spurs you on. Your hand trails down his bare chest, but before it can reach its destination, you have a terrible realization, and push him back.
“Wait. We just got married. Don’t tell me that means I’m going to have to pull a card and do this all over again.”
“No, Little Lamb,” Titus assures you, chuckling. He raises your left hand, kissing over the rings he’d placed on your finger last night, and looks down at you with a darkness, a deep adoration, in his eyes. He wipes the new blood droplets from your lip with his thumb, sucking the dark liquid into his mouth like a nectar from the gods. “The contract is reset. No more games to play. You’ve already won.”
FIN.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
a/n: welllllllllllllllll I cannot believe i let that get as long and lore heavy as i did!!! the last little bit does incorporate a personal theory of how Le Bail's game worked in the first movie, a theory that i think can still hold with the added lore from the second! loved coming up with the Danforth marriage ritual because they didn't say what it was in the movie and im so curious!!! also got to make a Titus is Jack joke that possibly only amuses me and that's okay :)
anyway reblog and lemme know if you enjoyed! idk if i'll do another long fic but perhaps tiny little spurts of scenes from this world if you ask nicely :)
summary: when you go against medical advice after a nasty fall down the stairs, dr. park takes matters into his own hands.
content warnings/description: 18+ MDNI, AFAB reader, forced proximity (but it’s just park making himself at home with reader because he wants to), mildly dubious consent, light stalking, light exhibitionism, mean!park who is a softie underneath it all (kind of), divorced!park, unprotected (PIV) sex, oral sex, anal fingering (fem!receiving) (like, one sentence of it), park can carry/lift reader, wrist and clavicle fractures, medical inaccuracies
author’s note: the ending is rushed, and i apologize. i just wanted to be done with this! also, i didn’t feel like writing a long, drawn-out smut scene, so i hope what i did instead (multiple, shorter scenes) is okay. i hope you enjoy!
It was stupid. Something that was preventable and would not have landed you in the E.R. or required surgery if you had just used your brain.
But you didn’t use your brain, and in the rush to get to work, after the elevator in your apartment went out of service one morning a week ago, you rushed down several flights of stairs.
You had almost made it out of the building without so much as a scratch until the last flight, when you tripped on your new pair of heels and flew over tens of steps until you reached the bottom floor with a thud. And that wasn’t the worst of it. No, you had instinctively reached your arm out to grab the railing a little too late and landed on your dominant arm, the force of the impact snapping your wrist, radiating up to your clavicle, and snapping it as well into several pieces.
Or so the E.R. physicians explained as they stabilized you as best they could, referred you to surgery, and sent you home with a splint and a sling.
A week now since your fall, the orthopedic surgeon operating on you recounts to his students the events that led you to his table as well as the injuries you sustained. You’ve been given a nerve blocker for the pain, and you don’t feel your wrist and clavicle shattered into the small pieces I’ll be putting back together. Understand? Nod your heads if you understand, Dr. Park barks to them, drawing you from your thoughts.
He is not the nicest person. You got a sense of that during your pre-op consultation with him two days ago, but, to be honest, all you care about is getting through this surgery.
You do feel sorry for his students, though.
Once Dr. Park finishes his lecture, he addresses you, telling you, we’re about to start. Take some deep breaths.
Glancing at the diagnostic display by your side, the x-rays of your wrist and clavicle in full view, you breathe in and out through your nose. With a flourish of Dr. Park’s hand, you’re told to count down from ten and are put to sleep by the anesthesiologist. As you count down, the last thing you see is the intense cut of Dr. Park’s eyes and his harsh brows, the bulk of him taking up space in what feels like a cramped operating room, a nurse handing him a clamp—
and then it’s lights out.
He goes over post-op care with you once you wake up, lying in the bed of one of the patient recovery rooms, which you find odd, as this is not something you would expect the booked and busy surgeon to do.
You’ll need to keep your wrist in the cast for two weeks and your arm in the sling for six weeks. After two weeks, we’ll switch the cast into a brace. There’ll be a follow-up around the four-week mark to check your progress. Remember that someone will have to drive you home tonight. Take the medication prescribed to you if you find the pain to be too severe.
“You have someone, right?”
“Huh? Someone…?” The lingering effects of the anesthesia are affecting your concentration. You were so focused on trying to pay attention that you weren’t paying attention.
His eyes narrow. Dr. Park is the embodiment of impatience, but you suppose surgeons have better things to do than repeat themselves, and, from the looks of the dark circles under his eyes, a feature you admittedly find attractive and intimidating, he’s running on fumes.
“Do you have someone to take you home. No one came in with you.”
“Sorry, I—” You shake your head. “—my neighbor... he’ll be picking me up this evening.”
Dr. Park raises a furrowed brow. “Your neighbor. The one that found you on the ground?”
“My friends... well, they all had plans tonight, but he was available.”
“What about a boyfriend. Roommates.”
“I’m single. And I live alone.”
The room goes deathly quiet, and all you can hear is the beeping of monitors, the rolling of carts from the hallway outside, and your own breaths. Dr. Park watches you for a second, and you shift in the bed, uncomfortable being the subject of his scrutiny. But the silence doesn’t stretch for long. He speaks again, and it’s as if no time has passed.
“As long as someone takes you home. We’ll set you up for discharge—” He checks his watch. Your eyes travel from his wrist up his arm to his bicep, huge, as wide as your head, “—around seven p.m. A nurse will see you out.”
“Okay. Thank you, Dr. Park.”
He stands up from the comically small stool by the side of your bed and stares his nose down at you.
All he says before leaving the room, shouldering past a fresh-faced and green observing intern, is, “don’t run down the stairs again.”
Curbside in a wheelchair, you wait for the neighbor who called for and rode in the ambulance with you last week to pick you up.
You’ve bothered him enough; you nearly gave him a heart attack when he found you splayed out, crying on the ground and clutching your forked wrist, but despite it all, he was more than happy to do you this favor.
But... he’s late.
The nurse, overworked and past the time for her to clock out for the end of her shift, grinds her teeth and taps her foot against the pavement as she waits with you.
“I’m so sorry for holding you up. I can just wait here alone,” you say, glancing up at her over your shoulder. “He should be here soon.”
“I can’t leave until you’re picked up.”
“I won’t say anything if you don’t.”
She thinks on it for a second, chewing on her lower lip. Sighing, she says, “alright. Just sit tight. I’ll see if I can find another nurse to wait with you. If he gets here before then, then problem solved.”
You nod. “I will.”
Five, ten, fifteen minutes pass, and your neighbor’s nowhere to be seen. He hasn’t answered your texts. Another nurse hasn’t come by, either.
You’re about to give up hope and just call yourself an Uber home when—
what are you still doing here?
You turn your head to find Dr. Park approaching you. Though you know the logical explanation is that his shift is over and he’s leaving, you can’t help but ask, “Dr. Park? What—what are you doing here?”
“I asked you first,” he throws back.
“I’m, uh, waiting for my ride home. Josh, my neighbor… he’s late.”
“Late, huh.” He stands still, giving you the once-over, before pulling his keys out of his scrub pocket, telling you to “just wait here,” and walking off into the lot.
You were already waiting, so nothing new there. But, suddenly, you hear the rev of an engine and watch as a big, shiny truck pulls out of its parking spot, one of the ones designated for employees, and circles the entrance before coming to a stop in front of you.
The passenger-side window rolls down, and from across the seat you can hear his voice.
“Get in.”
Oh.
This… hm.
You have no doubt that this is against the rules. But, at the same time, you would like to get home. And not have to spend a fortune on an Uber, or if worse comes to worst, figure out what buses you need to take to get you home.
“Do you need help, or can you get in yourself like a big girl?” he asks, impatience clipping his tone, after you take too long staring at his shadowed figure.
He rolls the window back up, blocking himself from your sight.
You stand from the wheelchair, a little loopy still, but manage to close the distance to open the passenger door with your free hand and settle in your seat. You struggle with your seatbelt, and he pulls off before you hear it click.
The ride home is uncomfortable.
You told him your address immediately after getting in, but after that it has been complete silence between you two. Words don’t come easy.
From the moment you met during your pre-op consultation, you’ve been on a cliff’s edge with him. He has a somewhat stifling energy. You would roll down the window to cut some of the tension, give yourself air to breathe, but you’re sure that would earn you one of the glares you’ve become familiar with.
After a series of oppressive red lights, he speaks up when you reach the front entrance of your apartment building.
“Give me your phone.”
You’re a little shocked by the suddenness of his demand. “Uh... why?”
“I’m giving you my personal number. Patients tend to have questions during their recovery. Better to ask me instead of strangers on the internet.”
That’s actually quite... thoughtful of him.
“Oh, that makes sense.” You dig your phone from your purse, unlock it, and hand it to him. “Do you do this with all your patients?”
Drive them home after their surgery, give them your personal number, make them feel as if they’re the snow in a snow globe, shaken up and studied.
“You’re not special, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Your mouth parts in offense, and you see the corner of his mouth lift as if he were about to laugh. It is odd that him saying that makes you feel... not so good, like it matters what he thinks of you.
“Do you think you are?” he asks.
“What?”
“Is it the anesthesia, or are you always this scatterbrained? Do you think you’re special,” he repeats.
Holding back your scowl proves impossible. And you thought he was being nice in offering you his number. You answer carefully, lips drawn in a straight line, “no, I know I’m just another patient. If anything, I’m being a burden. Thank you for driving me home. I do appreciate it.”
He grunts in response as he creates his contact in your phone. The electronic device barely fits in his hands, and you can’t help but wonder what they would look like on your body. It frustrates you that the thought crosses your mind.
He’s not worthy of a crumb of your attention. He’s strict and borderline cruel. Like a cutthroat surgeon would be. And you’re his patient. You don’t want to think about what he might be like with someone he hates. Or loves enough to be more of himself in front of, if he is capable of such a thing.
When he’s finished, he casually tosses your phone back into your lap and then dismissively says, “we’re done here. See you soon.”
You hop out of the car and turn around to say goodbye, with a lightness and a kindness he does not deserve.
“Well, hopefully not too soon, right?”
He watches you for a moment, his eyes searching your face and down your body to the strap of the sling on your shoulder and the cast on your arm and lower. To your croc-and-sock-covered feet and back up to your eyes. All in a blink. So fast you might have imagined it. Then he reaches over to close the passenger door himself, throws out a quick “if you do as you’re told, we won’t have a problem,” and peels off, nearly running over your feet and landing you another visit to the E.R.
He’s a strange one, Dr. Park.
As you make your way up to your floor—the elevator was restored to working order soon after your accident—you scroll through your contacts list and do a double take.
Did he not make one for himself?
But, upon further inspection, you realize his name, Brendon Park, with a shark emoji right next to it, one you know for certain doesn’t belong to anyone you know, is in your phone.
Brendon Park.
Not Dr. Park.
Your surgery was performed Friday afternoon, so you take the weekend to recover, hoping against hope that you will feel well enough to at least get yourself to work on Monday. You stay home and don’t push yourself. Saturday night, you order takeout instead of dining on microwave meals.
When you make your way downstairs to pick up your food, you feel eyes on you through the lobby glass, as if someone were outside in wait to watch you and specifically you. But you don’t see anything but shadows and chalk the feeling up to nerves. Having been home all day watching true crime doesn’t help your paranoia.
It’s the same thing Sunday night. You treat yourself to a second night of takeout, and again, you feel eyes on you as you pick up your food. But you ignore them.
Before you head to bed, you make sure the door to your unit is locked, though. Checking once, twice, three times. Just in case.
Your boss, as was expected when you had told him about your accident over the phone last week, was not happy that you missed work without the required notice for time off.
In the morning, you get ready and drive one-handed to the office, which, granted, goes against the medical advice that Park gave you. But it’s a close drive, and all you do is ride a desk.
It isn’t worth your job or getting on your boss’ bad side if you can manage fine. The brain fog from the anesthesia has worn off by now, and your days are mostly filled with phone calls and meetings, so your injuries aren’t detrimental to your productivity. The work you do serves as a nice distraction for the persisting itch of the cast padding rubbing against your dry skin.
You’re pushing yourself, though. The pain creeps up, sharp and sinister, closer to the end of the day. You swallow down some of the painkillers prescribed to you to alleviate it. The post-op pain is dreadful compared to the pre-op pain, which had already lessened after a week of waiting at home.
Once the workday is done, you step out of the office to head to the parking lot, your purse slung over your shoulder and your car keys in your free hand.
You don’t expect to see his truck pulled up right by the side of the building.
Park steps out and stalks toward you, a deep frown on his face. The sun sets earlier in the day, and his figure casts a long shadow to the side of him.
“What the hell are—” you start.
“—What am I doing here? What are you doing here?”
You have the urge to throw his words from the other night back in his face, but you’re, frankly, too flustered to.
“This—this is where I work.”
“You aren’t supposed to be working. You’re supposed to be resting,” he grits out.
“How did you know I was here?” you exclaim, throwing your hand up.
A few of your colleagues step out of the building behind you, and you temper your frustrations to avoid a scandal. Maybe there is a reasonable explanation for this, but you’re coming up blank.
He grabs you by your free arm and leads you to his truck, opening the passenger door, and essentially manhandles you in, buckling you in to your seat—only because of the cast and the sling and because he’s impatient, because otherwise it’d be too kind of him to do so.
If it weren’t for the fact that he’s a surgeon, your surgeon, the one that had his hands inside you and fixed your clavicle and wrist, you would be kicking and screaming right now.
“I’m taking you home,” he says once he slides into his seat and starts up the car. “Couldn’t sit still for two fuckin’ weeks?”
“Are you going to answer my question?” you ask, voice pitched high and incredulous. “I think you should answer my question, doctor.”
You regret the sass immediately. He pierces you with a glower, and you shrink in the soft leather of the passenger seat. It molds to your shape, as if you’re the last person to have sat here.
As he peels off in the direction of your apartment, he answers, “I check up on all my patients. Part of the job. Would’ve been here earlier if I didn’t have surgeries I couldn’t get out of.”
You don’t think it is a part of the job. Not to this extent. And it doesn’t explain how he knows where and when you work or that you returned to the office in the first place.
You rack your brain trying to recall if you had mentioned anything of the sort during your pre- and post-op meetings with him, but it’s either still fuzzy from the anesthesia or there is nothing to recall. It’s possible you could have said something while under, but you doubt it would have been something as coherent as the details of your employment.
And speaking of employment—
“So, are you not supposed to be at the hospital right now?”
“I cleared the rest of my afternoon. I didn’t think you’d go AMA. I bet you’re in pain, huh.”
“No,” you murmur, turning your body to face the window. “I’m fine.”
He scoffs, glancing at you quickly before returning his eyes to the road.
“You were crying your eyes out when you were brought into the E.D. I bet you were crying at your desk today too. Boss should’ve sent you home in your condition. Would’ve saved me the trouble.”
“I fell down the stairs and shattered bone. Who wouldn’t cry?”
Your face feels hot. You don’t like his patronizing tone, though you’re just as amazed you made it through the workday without feeling sorry for yourself and shedding a tear or two.
You don’t get it. What any of this means. But you’re afraid to hear the answer, so you’re almost glad he keeps his mouth shut on that front.
All you dare ask is, “what about my car?”
“I’ll pick it up later.”
The rest of the ride is silent.
This time, Park does not simply drop you off at the entrance to your apartment building.
He parks his truck in guest parking, follows you into the building, and with a searing paw on your hip, you ride the elevator up to your floor, and he walks in behind you through the front door.
It isn’t until you’re standing in the middle of your living room when you ask, “stalking isn’t something in the job description, is it? Because that’s what this feels like. You stalked me, and now—and now you’re in my apartment.”
You’re aware you didn’t put up much of a fight, but what were you supposed to do against the wall that is Brendon Park?
He crosses his arms over his chest, a loose strand of hair broken free from the cast of gel coating his scalp, casting a shadow over his eyes.
“You disobeyed my rules. I’m here to babysit you.”
He seems to think that is enough of an explanation and takes the opportunity to look around your apartment. From the look on his face, he is disgusted.
You do what you can to spruce it up with an assortment of plants, thrifted vintage decor, fairy lights, but ultimately, you’re not living in the best Pittsburgh has to offer.
The walls are stained with cigarette smoke from the previous tenant and are peeling. The heater is on its last leg and makes a clanking sound every other second. Your restroom and bedroom down the hall are a claustrophobe’s worst nightmare, the latter barely fitting your bed, dresser, and desk.
Park trudges into the open kitchen and looks inside your fridge and through your cabinets, scowling.
“This place is a shithole. How do you live like this?”
You ignore his comment and instead ask, “what do you mean by ‘babysit’?”
You watch, jaw going slack, as he opens your freezer and proceeds to peel back the plastic seal, tossing out all your instant meals in the nearby trash can.
“I need to make sure you don’t undo all my hard work. Better get used to me hanging around these next two weeks, Trip.”
“You’re not welcome here. And don’t call me Trip.” Raising your palm in surrender, you say, “I’ll stay home for the next two weeks as advised, alright? Please, just... get out.”
“I’ll make sure of it, because I’m sticking around; that’s final.”
Your eyes nearly pop out of their sockets.
“But... why? Are you not—do you not have a family or… or a wife to go back home to? A pet or something? What about work?”
“I’m divorced,” he grunts. “I’m still clocking in for my shifts, but I’ll be coming home to you. Spending my days off here. Really, I’m doing you a kindness.”
The fact that he’s a divorced man doesn’t come as a surprise to you. Not that what you feel about it matters.
“This is absolutely absurd.”
“You should’ve listened to orders.”
He’s an immovable object. He won’t listen to reason. He is also literally immovable, and three of you couldn’t move one of him out of here.
You chew on your lower lip and hang your head, defeated, but it won’t lead to a different outcome. You don’t see him changing his mind.
Apparently done taking inventory of your kitchen, he walks back into the living room, closing in on you, and gestures for you to give me your keys. I’ll pick up your car.
You mindlessly toss them to him—the confusion of how he knows what your car looks like distant in your head—while working out the logistics of this. The how and why of it all still nags at you, but before you can ask him, yet again, for proper answers, he says, “I’ll be back,” and walks out the door.
By the time you hear his footsteps outside the door, it’s been a little over an hour. You’re not sure how he got there, if he’d called a rideshare or something, but the office is a ten-minute drive from your apartment. You suppose with rush hour traffic and having to go back and forth, it would take him longer to get back. You instinctively locked the door after he’d left, and you can hear him jangling your set of keys, figuring out which one is the one to your unit.
You haven’t done much except text your boss and overthink on the couch, picking at a loose thread on the sweats you changed into. You thought you might order takeout again since Park tossed your instant meals, but, being the kind person you are, you thought to wait for him to return to see if he wanted anything.
It’s ridiculous of you to have done so because he’s your surgeon and is forcefully squatting at your place because you can’t “follow orders,” and yet, you are willing to consider what he wants for dinner.
You heard about him and his reputation from some of the nurses during your short stay at PTMC. Park the Shark. He’s a good doctor despite his character flaws, someone you avoid if you can, or you risk getting bit.
As unconventional as this situation is, though, he’s not here to put you in any harm. Quite the opposite, in fact, if he’s to be believed.
As he walks through the door, you notice that he’s in different clothes; is holding multiple bags of groceries—the paper handles twisted up between his fingers; has his backpack slung over his shoulder; a drawstring bag slung over the other; as well as a duffel bag halfway zipped and spilling out with what seem to be his personal effects.
It is then that you realize why he had taken so long to get back. He must’ve made a stop for groceries and his place to get his things.
He leaves his stuff littered on the floor by your feet and starts to put away the groceries.
“I parked your car right out front where you’ll see it. Not that you’ll be goin’ anywhere.”
“Thank you for that, I guess,” you mumble, standing from the couch and joining him in the kitchen. “I see you got… groceries.”
“For dinner. All you got are frozen food and snacks. How are you alive?”
Through the crinkle of the paper bags he sets down on the countertop and rifles through, you can hear the judgment in his voice.
“I’m not much of a cook,” you say, slightly embarrassed, shifting on your feet. “And I thought I would just order something.”
“You’re eating what I make you.”
“It’d better be good then,” you throw back, rolling your eyes.
You’re not sure what to do. Hover or give him space? Is it worth trying to make conversation? Ostensibly, he’s your roommate for the next two weeks. A board-certified roommate that will make sure you don’t fuck up the screws holding your distal radius and clavicle together.
“Do you want me to leave you to it?” you ask, hesitant.
He doesn’t look at you when he responds, instead focusing on the slabs of meat he’s seasoning with your condiments.
Garlic and onion powder. Black pepper and salt.
He opens your fridge and pulls out a stick of butter to melt into a bowl and then washes his hands in the sink. Scrubbing down his wrist and beneath his nails, like he’s prepping for surgery.
“It’s your place. Do what you want,” he says, voice flat and uninterested. “I’ll call you when it’s time to eat. In the meantime, rest. Keep your arm elevated.”
“I know. I’ve been doing that for the past three days. Since you discharged me?”
He says nothing, his attention focused on his hands. His fingernails are clipped and neat, fingers thick, knuckles littered with patches of light hairs, working deftly to coat the meat in the seasonings.
For someone who is adamantly encroaching on your space, he seems to not want you to be here. You don’t want to subject yourself to his prickliness, so you hide in your bedroom and scroll on your phone until dinner is ready.
This is so weird. So, so weird.
When dinner is served, you take a seat at the dining table, where he is already seated beside you. Awkwardly staring at your plate, fork in hand, you’re unable to draw up conversation.
At least, this is awkward for you. You think Park prefers not speaking after spending so much time with colleagues and patients. You wonder if he performed your surgery in absolute silence. There hadn’t been any music on before you were put to sleep, but if there had been, you could take a good guess for some sort of heavy metal or rock.
When you first noticed your dinner plate, you were a bit taken aback. He had cut your steak up into pieces for you, mindful of your physical limitations.
“Do you need help,” he asks when you don’t make a move to eat.
“No, I think I can manage a fork just fine, thank you,” you answer, stabbing at a piece and taking a bite.
“Can you?”
With the sling and short arm cast on your dominant side, you’ve been forced to rely on your non-dominant hand, and Park can apparently pick up on the slight lack of finesse you have with it because he thinks you’re eating wrong, if that’s even possible.
“You’re as helpless as a baby.”
He takes your fork from you, guiding a piece of steak that he mixes with a helping of mashed potatoes to your mouth.
But you object because you’re well capable of feeding yourself. Smashing your lips together and turning your head away from the fork only irritates him more, however. With his other hand, he grips your chin with his thumb and forefinger, curling them inward to secure you in place.
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” he grunts. “I’m not against shoving this down your throat if I have to.”
So, you give in. It’s humiliating to be fed like this, but he’s doing this because he’s a good doctor, you think, to make sense of his behavior in your head, and eating well is important for your recovery.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” you ask between shoveled mouthfuls. You’re not sure if the crease in his brow is because of your noisy chewing or what, but you don’t care. It’s his fault for feeding you like he’s being chased.
“Not now.”
With only a few bites of it remaining, it is safe to say that the meal is delicious. A lot better than what you had expected. Judging by his bulky and muscular form, you knew he must eat well to maintain it, but you didn’t think he’d be a decent cook.
After he washes and puts away the dishes, you ask from your seat at the dining table, “you’re not actually staying the night, right?”
Though unlikely, you ask on the off chance that he’s had a change of heart. You don’t know him. Not well enough to allow him to stay here overnight, and it would weigh on your conscious if you didn’t at least try to make him reconsider.
“If you insist on monitoring me, maybe you could just visit me once a day. Or I could check in with you over text. While you were out, I texted my boss. After seeing how I was today, he agreed that it’d be best I follow medical advice. I’ll be sitting at home for the next two weeks, not fucking up your hard work.”
He watches you, wiping his hands on your dish towel, and then throws it on the counter. “I’m sleeping on the couch.” He walks past you to the living room to pick up his drawstring bag, slinging it over his shoulder, and heads to the door.
You’re shocked into a short silence after being dismissed so rudely. After a beat, you ask, “where are you going?”
“The gym.”
From his pocket he pulls out and shakes your keys, taunting you with them. You forgot he still had them. If it came down to it, though, you think he’d probably pick the lock on the front door.
“In case you lock me out again.”
The door slams shut behind him, and, though he just left for the second time tonight, the reality is dawning on you that he is here to stay.
You’re in the restroom about to take a shower when you hear your front door open and close. Not but a moment later, Park barges in, and you whip around to face him, holding your towel tighter against yourself, your cast wrapped up in plastic.
He worked up a sweat at the gym. His muscle tee is drenched, and he is shiny with that post-workout glow. Your eyes drift over the corded muscle of his arms, the veins in his forearms leading to the ones on the back of his hands, a prominent blueish-green against his pale skin.
“I need to shower.”
“Well,” you make a little high-pitched noise in the back of your throat, annoyed, “so do I. Your gym doesn’t have one you could’ve used?”
He can afford the luxury of a gym that has a sauna and a shower integrated all in one, let alone just a plain shower. Why he would come back and want to use yours is beyond you.
He looks you up and down, spending a particularly long time staring at your feet, toes polished with a light pink.
“Cute,” he says, teasing.
You chew on your lower lip and shrink in on yourself, hating the attention he gives you in such a vulnerable state.
He meets your eyes again and crowds in on you, your back digging into the towel rack behind you.
“Makes more sense if we take one together. I can help scrub you down,” he offers nonchalantly.
You have the feeling this isn’t as much of an offer as it is a demand. The audacity and confidence with which he says the most out-of-this-world things is quite astounding.
All you can squeak out is “what?”
“You heard me. I really hate repeating myself. Stop making me do it.”
He steps forward and wrenches your towel away from you, hanging it on the rack.
You screech, “Dr. Park!” covering what you can with your hand, but it’s a pointless thing.
“Brendon,” he growls out. “That’s the name I put in your phone, isn’t it? I couldn’t give less of a fuck about you naked.”
He says that, and yet, you can see his eyes not-so-discreetly raking over your bare breasts and cunt, his tongue moving beneath his lips and scraping over his teeth as if he’s looking at you like he wants to eat you.
You aren’t overreacting as much as reacting to the behavior of a hungry predator.
He reaches past you to start the water, opening the shower curtain, and guides you in with a hand on your lower back. You squeal when the water hits your skin.
“Cold! It’s fucking cold!”
He huffs a laugh, undressing himself and joining you, amused by your suffering, apparently.
“Means we’ll get out faster.”
While you two are under the spray, you don’t dare look at him. Your back is facing him, and your eyes are screwed shut. At least he has the sense to keep some distance between you two so you don’t feel him pressing up on you.
You learned his first name a few nights ago. Today he’s divorced.
You’re curious as to how recent it was. Though there’s the obvious lack of a ring, you made out the faintest tan line that hasn’t faded away just yet on his ring finger as he was cleaning up in the kitchen earlier.
And now, as doctor and patient, you’re showering together, medical ethics be damned. You haven’t even considered the fact that he’s around two decades older than you.
At least you think he is.
“How old are you?” you ask suddenly.
“Why.”
“I just—I just want to know. You know my age. Where I live. Where I work. My medical history. What I look like naked. It’s only fair you tell me a bit about yourself.”
“Forty-one.”
So, he’s not quite two decades older than you—you suppose the stress of his job makes him look a bit older than he is—but the point stands.
He’s old enough to be a young father of yours.
You worry his wanting to shower together is coming from a place of ill intent, but if he does have such intentions, he makes no sign of it. All he does is as he said he would, which is help you.
He scrubs with your washcloth, with a harsh and heavy hand, down your back and places that would take twice as long to scrub if you did it on your own. But as helpful as he may be, you can’t get over how flustered you feel that this is happening to begin with.
“Thank you,” you murmur once you’re both squeaky clean, apprehensively turning around. You make a conscious effort to keep your eyes on his and not anywhere else on his body.
His expression is neutral as he reaches over your shoulder and shuts off the water, your nipples pressing into his chest. You hold back something that is a strange mix between a moan and a noise of discomfort. He opens the curtain and reaches for your towel from the rack, carefully wrapping it under your arms and around you. He doesn’t shy away from looking at your bare body, but you keep your eyes on his.
“Showering has been time-consuming, to say the least.”
“Need help gettin’ dressed too?” he asks, oh-so casually.
Your mind’s image of him, on his knees, helping you step into your underwear, makes a heat creep up your cheeks.
“No, no, I’ve got it. Thanks.”
He hums in acknowledgement, stepping out, wrapping the other towel on the rack around his waist, and leaves you in the restroom.
You try not to imagine him from the waist down, naked, getting dressed in your living room.
You sleep in your bed a hallway away while he sleeps on your couch. This entire day has already felt like a dream.
The first few days of your cohabitation go by shockingly smoothly.
Not without some initial bumps, of course. Namely, being awoken by Brendon blending his morning protein shakes and then being poked and prodded at when he bursts into your room to check up on your wrist and clavicle if you had rolled to your side in your sleep or if your sling had fallen off overnight.
You don’t have the irrational fear anymore, though maybe you should, that he’s going to murder you in your sleep. That is to say, you’re finding you somewhat enjoy his company. Whether that’s due to being cooped up with little to do or you’re lonelier than you thought, you don’t know.
You don’t know much about Brendon, either, still, but at the very least you’ve learned about his habits living with him and a few things here and there from what scraps he gives you when he comes back from work and tells you about his day. For the most part, though, he’s quiet. He reserves his energy to speak for when he’s checking up on you in the mornings and before bed or when you can’t stand the silence during dinner and blurt out something that he cares enough to respond to.
You managed a chuckle out of him last night when you had told him how unreasonably hot you found all the staff at PTMC to be. When he’d asked who you found the hottest, you, of course, answered that he was. If only to not be fed like a bird, like he’d threatened.
Correct, he’d said.
Every evening since he’s been here, he’s gone to the gym, and by the time he gets back, you’re in bed, ready to fall asleep. Sometimes you’re not, though, and while he prepares and eats his dinner, you watch television.
Over the past two nights he has brought it to the couch to eat and begrudgingly watched your show with you.
But tonight, the fifth night of his stay, he lets it be known his distaste for your choices.
“This is your idea of entertainment. A dating show,” he asks. “Where everyone is cheating on their partners with other people?”
“I get what you’re saying, but it’s not really cheating. I mean, these couples are already in dire straits if they’re signing up to be there. It’s entertainment. Don’t take it too seriously.”
“It’s ridiculous, is what it is.”
“What do you consider entertainment, then, Shark? Nature documentaries, maybe? World’s Deadliest. You’re a blood and gore kind of guy, aren’t you. You obviously like bones.”
He sets his plate down on the coffee table with a clatter, and you know you should’ve just kept your mouth shut.
He drags you down the couch by your ankles, his big hands wrapped like shackles around them, and rearranges you so that your head is resting in his lap. It happens so quickly and with ease and without jostling your slung arm that you’re not only out of breath afterward but also worryingly turned on.
It isn’t the first time he’s shown off his strength in the past few days. He doesn’t lose his breath lugging your big and heavy vacuum across your carpet while vacuuming, for one. For two, you’ve slowly started to come out of hiding while he cooks dinner, and instead of watching from the dining table, he lifts you onto the countertop so you can watch him work his magic right there in the kitchen.
Watch closely; you might learn somethin’, he’d said, your calves banging against the lower cabinets as you kicked your feet.
You’re not complaining, per se; he’s not flaunting just to flaunt, but you don’t think you should enjoy it—him—this much, given the circumstances, and yet you do.
He retrieves the remote trapped between the cushions and flips through the channels, landing on a nature documentary.
As luck would have it, the segment is covering great white sharks.
“Are we seriously watching this?” you ask, head turning to the side to watch the TV instead of his face.
“You brought it up. And better this than that reality TV crap.”
Your heart skips a beat when he starts to pet your head, digging his fingers in slightly to massage your scalp. It feels... nice. Relaxing. Not something you thought you could feel around him—relaxed. A few more minutes and you’re about to fall asleep, but you open your lidded eyes and watch the screen when he says, “look. It’s us.”
Another segment. A lion encounters an injured gazelle. They’re opportunistic feeders, so he’ll eat her.
You’re not sure if he’s suggesting you’re his next meal or if he sees you as a frail thing to nurture back to health. It’s clear he’s the lion in this scenario.
Either way, it’s a fitting comparison, you think.
It’s not like you want to be stuck with him day after day in this domestic thing you two have going on, sorting laundry together on his day off, you putting it into separate piles, and him folding once it’s out of the dryer.
(Why’d you and your wife get divorced?
Why’re you asking?
I’m just curious.
We weren’t in love anymore. Simple as that.
...Do you think you’ll ever get remarried?
...Not yet. It’d be too soon.)
It’s been hard to make plans with your friends, and Brendon has made it clear that any outing comes with the risk of injuring yourself and setting your recovery back. But maybe you’re partly to blame for your isolation. You’ve been relying on him too much. He does the heavy lifting of the chores and pays for your food and answers the questions you have about your injury. There’s no need for you to go out or do much of anything when he’s here to do the hard stuff for you.
You’ve been a bit of a vampire during this time, but it is kind of nice to be such a sloth while you’re at it.
Brendon continues to hop in the shower with you with the excuse that it is time and resource efficient. He likes to shower in the mornings before his shift and again after his gym sessions, and he’d rather you take it with him in the mornings so he can get helping you out of the way. It is an odd routine to share with someone you have only known for a short time, but you have yet to see anything below his waist—though your resolve not to is fracturing quite pathetically—and he isn’t making passes at you under the guise of cleaning you up. He’s just scrubbing where you can’t and making sure you don’t trip in the shower, Trip.
You’ve convinced him to change the ice-cold temperature to lukewarm, at least.
During the day you graze and laze like an animal, but a week into this arrangement with him, a childhood friend of yours has some free time and makes plans with you for lunch.
It has been a week of sitting at home with Brendon, and you use the opportunity to slip away as a distraction from rubbing the itchy skin under your cast raw. Just under a week and you can switch into your brace and slowly start using your sling less and less, but even this past one has felt like ages.
Today’s a warm winter day, and you and your friend sit outside a little cafe walking distance from your apartment, eating lunch. You make idle conversation, catch up on life, and discuss high school drama that you’re beyond over by now but find entertaining to rehash every once in a while.
As you take a sip of your lemonade, the fine hairs on your nape rise, and you feel a presence coming up from behind you. Then he pulls up a chair and sits at the table.
Your friend is surprised but not necessarily annoyed by his intrusion. If anything, and by anything you mean the batting of her lashes and the giggly offer of her name, which Brendon ignores, his eyes locked on yours, you think she’s attracted to him.
“You’re here,” you say, polite but in a shrill tone. Your eyes widen, and you hope he can understand what you’re thinking.
You shouldn’t be here.
He doesn’t say anything to you and instead turns to your friend. “I’m taking her home. I’ll pay for lunch.”
“Oh, are you two...?” Her question goes unasked. She gives you a quick glance, pushing her chair back to stand, a crease between her brows. “Well, alright, then.”
“You don’t have to—”
She shakes her head and peeks at the time on her phone. “—It’s fine. I have an appointment I need to get to soon, anyway. Let’s meet up again once you’re healed up, yeah?”
She packs her phone into her purse and walks down the sidewalk, turning the corner and disappearing from view.
You face Brendon with a scowl. “If you don’t tell me what’s going on, I’m going to call the hospital and get you fired for harassing your patient.”
Which, to be fair, you should have done just that a week ago.
“You’re being dramatic.” He pauses, stealing a fry from your tray, then answers, “I turned on location sharing when I put in my phone number. That’s how I knew you went to work that Monday and how I know you’re here today. I don’t have a lot of time to spare, so let’s get going.”
You blink.
Location sharing?
And then check your phone to confirm that what he says is the truth.
Which it is.
Had he planned to crash at your place from the start? He couldn’t have, because he had only come to you when you went to work that Monday. But now you’re remembering the eyes you felt on you in the lobby over the weekend and—
you don’t know.
If you had just stayed put like he’d ordered, would he have left you alone?
“Wow. I don’t... I don’t even know what to say.”
“Are you gonna throw a temper tantrum? I deal with enough of those with my other patients.”
As much as you should throw one and run in the opposite direction, he has been helpful thus far. You could go as far as to say that you’re thankful he’s been around. He wants to keep you on the road to recovery, however stubborn and unyielding he is about it, and, beyond this week, he has no intention of sticking around any longer.
He pays for lunch, and you both walk back to your place.
He holds you with a firm grip on the wrist and walks in front of you, possessive, dragging you along like his prized possession, his injured gazelle.
After a week of sleeping on your couch, Brendon has well and truly ruined it. He’s just so bulky and heavy that the cushions have completely deflated under his weight.
That night, a few hours after you get walked home and when Brendon returns from his shift, you offer reluctantly to share your bed with him.
“You’re sure.”
“Yes.”
When it happens, you let it.
Because you’ve been living so close to one another.
You’ve showered together. Shared meals together. He’s fed you with his bare hands and helped you floss the remains from your teeth after he had said waiting to use the restroom so you could finish your lengthy nighttime routine was stupid, deciding rather to use it at once.
Once, he took a piss as you gargled mouthwash, and he grunted, you can look if you want.
You didn’t, but you did want to.
You wake up with a chill.
The heat is out, broken like the elevator was two weeks ago, and though Brendon is next to you, the furnace that he is, you’re cold.
Your bed is a queen, but considering how large he is, you knew that in offering to share it with him, you would be stuck to each other like glue.
He grumbles, and you realize he’s awake. Or at least partially awake.
He doesn’t say anything, though. Just turns on his side and hooks an arm over your waist and pulls you in closer, warming you up, the heat of his palm seeping through your night slip.
It seems he’s too hot. In a second, you’re jostled as his shirt gets discarded, thrown over the edge of the bed.
You are still cold.
“You’re shivering,” he mumbles.
“Because it’s freezing in here.”
He hums. “I know a way I can warm you up.”
“How?”
“You always ask such stupid questions,” he puffs against the side of your neck. You shiver. “Isn’t this what you wanted to happen?”
You gasp when he lifts the hem of your slip and the pads of his fingers tease the fabric of your underwear.
“Brendon,” you warn, though it is a weak attempt.
Your tongue feels heavy in your mouth, your limbs limp. With your free hand you encircle his wrist to stop him, so thick you can barely touch middle finger to thumb.
“Shut up. Lemme do this.”
His words are slurred. He is on the brink of falling back asleep.
He rubs your clit through your underwear slowly, just teasing, before pulling your underwear to the side.
“Brendon—”
He shushes you, throwing the closer of your legs over his waist, exposing your cunt to the room, his fingers dimpling the skin of your thigh. Then, with the same hand, he frees himself from his boxers and guides his cock to your hole, sinking in to the root.
You pant into your shoulder, breath wet and hot.
The position is awkward: on your back, one of your legs spread over his waist, the other over the opposite side of the bed, half seated in his lap, impaled on a fat cock.
“Jesus,” he grunts. “Just slid in. Are you always this wet?”
“S-sometimes.”
“Yeah? With the right person, maybe?”
Your traitorous cunt clenches down on him as if answering, with you, in the affirmative.
“Keep doing that, Trip, and see what happens.”
“I can’t—I can’t help it, you’re—”
“My cock feel too good for you?”
He rubs your clit, and your pussy flutters around his rigid cock.
“Stop, wait—Brendon.”
You can feel his cock twitching inside you with every pulse of your cunt.
If he doesn’t stop touching you like that, you’ll—
Your cunt spasms with the pressure he applies persistently to your clit, and you come with a pathetic whine.
“That’s it. Jus’ like that.”
Your cunt clenches down on his length, and, in turn, his cock jerks inside of you.
When he comes, his release is thick and sticky and so much that it seeps around his cock and down between your legs.
This is okay, you think distantly, tiredness and the sticky heat of your orgasm pulling you toward the edge of sleep. He’s your doctor. He knows you’re on birth control.
“Should be warm enough now.”
He pulls out, and you fall asleep with a cunt full of fresh come.
You don’t speak about it in the morning. But when you two shower, you know things have already irrevocably changed.
Facing the showerhead, you turn around to face him instead and look down at it. At the cock that was inside you just several hours ago.
There’s no point in not doing it at this point. And you’re curious.
Your suspicions are confirmed when you see that he is both big and thick.
You felt it, after all.
The hair on his pubic bone is trimmed and neat, darker at the base of his shaft. His cock jerks against his thigh from your rapt attention to it.
He grunts out, voice husky with remnants of sleep, “touch me.”
Your face heats, and you hesitate for a moment but ultimately wrap your fingers around his hardening shaft. Even at half hardness, it’s so heavy that when you let it go, it droops and sticks to his inner thigh.
You clench your thighs, remembering that it was stuffed to the hilt inside your cunt.
You slowly pump him to full mast, and he groans, squeezing one of your soapy, slippery breasts in one hand and the nape of your neck in the other, pulling you closer to him so he can lean down and suck bruises into the side of it. You almost get down on your knees but think better of it. Not in the shower and without your other hand to stabilize you to the wall.
He gently pushes you by your hips to the wall of the shower, plastering you to it. He steps close, grips himself, and presses inside you, water droplets dripping from his hair onto your chest, his come from last night still inside you, lubricating his way.
You fall apart when his pelvis grinds against your clit with every thrust of his hips.
Too easily, you note to yourself.
He’s not even touching you. His hands are on the shower wall by your sides, his mouth panting by your ear, interrupted by the occasional groan or curse of fuck, baby, sound so pretty when you come.
He comes inside you, scrubs himself and your shaking body down, and then leaves you alone in the shower to watch his seed drip out of you and stick to the shower drain.
In a few minutes he returns, fully dressed, shuts off the water, and towels you dry.
“Wear this.”
He pulls one of his cotton t-shirts, left hanging on the towel rack, over your head and your arms through the holes, careful to avoid bumping your slung arm.
“No underwear. We clear?”
The rest of week two passes by in a haze. When he’s not at work, he takes you all over the apartment.
You wake to him heavy and hard behind you, lifting your leg over his waist as he drives home, barely awake though he’s been up for hours watching you sleep.
So good, you’re so good, he slurs. All mine. Mine, mine, mine.
You can barely understand what he’s saying over the sound of skin on skin, your brain mush from sleep. Brendon, he… he doesn’t know what he’s saying. It’s just dirty talk.
This is just… temporary. To pass the time.
Isn’t it?
Regardless, being fucked awake on his cock isn’t a bad way to start the morning. Moreover, when he presses his fingers to your clit and strokes your swollen bud until you pulse around him with a broken chant of his name.
While making you both dinner, he couldn’t help himself. You were seated on the counter, watching him prepare the veggies and red meat for dinner, the outline of your cunt visible through the short shorts that had ridden up your thighs.
At some point, they were torn away, and you were pasted to the fridge.
The backs of your thighs are slung over his forearms, and the whole fridge shakes with every one of his thrusts, knocking down boxes of cereal. Cocoa Puffs and Frosted Flakes, along with his healthy alternative, Raisin Bran. You can barely stabilize yourself, your free hand gripping the fridge handle, the other with its fist clenched within your cast.
He can bear your weight, though, so, despite the fridge threatening to topple over at any moment, all you have to worry about is taking his cock like a good fuckin’ girl.
On the couch, your back laid against the armrest, your legs thrown over his shoulders as he eats you out, someone knocks on the door.
Maybe—maybe I should—ngh—get that.
You make to move, but Brendon harshly squeezes your hips, locking you in place. Your eyes widen when they meet his, deadly and pointed, his upper body sprawled over the couch and his lower half, what with how massive he is, on the floor, his mouth shiny with your slick.
Don’t you fuckin’ dare.
But the knocking persists, so with a slap to your slick cunt telling you to stay put, he unwillingly separates from you with a growl and prowls to the door, roughly opening it without so much as a thought as to who it might be.
In your lust-drunk, on the verge of orgasm daze, you gather enough willpower to peek at the doorway. Brendon’s body is blocking the entrance, but you can tell from the visitor’s voice that it’s your neighbor.
He’s a bit older than you but younger than Brendon. Kind.
You thought he had a crush on you as recently as when he had offered to drive you home from your surgery, but when he didn’t show up or bother following up with an excuse as to why he hadn’t, you dismissed that thought.
He asks for you.
“Hi... is—is she here? I wanted to check up on her. See how she was doing.”
“You were supposed to pick her up, weren’t you, Josh?” Brendon asks, ice in his tone.
“Uh, who are you?”
“Her friend,” Brendon answers. “She’s fine. I’ve been taking good care of her.”
Brendon moves to the side, and Josh, confusion etching his features, takes a look inside to see you, half naked on the couch, scrambling to get decent, your shorts hanging off one ankle.
Brendon then slams the door in his shocked face, huffing a laugh.
Fuckin’ Josh.
“Have you ever taken a cock in here, Trip?”
His hand disappears from wrapped around your neck and reappears near your rump, his fingers brushing over your puckered hole when he leans over you on his other elbow and fists a handful of your ass in his palm, spreading your cheek.
Your cunt flutters around his cock. Your fingers clench the sheets. Your body is sore.
The itch under your cast is unrelenting, but the pain and the pleasure help to quiet the urge to scratch.
For as long as Brendon kept you from the outside to keep you from stalling your recovery, he sure likes to push your body to its limits.
“N-no,” you whimper as he continues to thrust into you, your legs wrapped around his waist, toes curling.
He brings his thumb up to his mouth and sucks, covering it in his saliva, before pulling out of you with a wet slap of his cock against his thigh and sinking it slowly inside your hole.
You mewl at the foreign but not unwelcome feeling.
“We’ll work up to it.”
The night before you’re free of your cast, the end of week two, what should be the end of this... arrangement, he fucks your throat and cunt sore on the carpeted floor before hauling your used and come-leaking, sweat-slick body to bed.
In the face of all the emotions overwhelming you, you ask something stupid before either of you has the chance to fall asleep.
“What happens tomorrow?”
“We wake up, fuck, I make us breakfast, and then we head to PTMC to get your cast switched out for a brace.”
You sit with that for a moment.
“And... after?”
“Don’t worry about it. Go to sleep.”
Then, pressing a chaste kiss to the side of your neck, he whispers when he thinks you have dozed off, “I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
The next morning, in his office at PTMC, he double-checks and ensures that the cast did its job over the past two weeks and that the new brace is well-fitted to your wrist.
Your wrist is recovering as it should, and so is your clavicle, though you will need to wear the brace and continue with the sling for another four weeks.
Now seated across from each other at his desk, he confirms, “you don’t need the cast anymore, and the brace is good to go.”
You don’t need me anymore, is what you think he’s really saying.
It makes you more sad than you’d like to admit that this is over. You’ll go back to work on Monday and come home to an apartment without Brendon.
Your shoulders droop, and you sink a little further into the plush leather of the chair. “So, our... living situation. We—it’s done, right?”
His brows furrow. His jaw ticks. He looks almost angry. “Is that what I said?”
“No, but—”
“—Don’t make assumptions. I called you an Uber home. Pack a bag and wait for me to get back. We’re staying at my place tonight.”
“Your place,” you parrot, confused.
“Can’t stand that shithole apartment of yours anymore.”
You shake your head. “You... you want to keep seeing me?”
“What do you think,” he asks, cocking his head at you.
“I think... you planned this from the very start.”
He huffs a laugh. “Things just happened, Trip. ’s not like this was some elaborate scheme to steal your heart.”
You scoff but don’t deny that he may have taken a small piece of it, at least.
“Maybe. But you certainly took advantage of my situation.”
“You complaining?”
“Nope.” Grinning, you add, “I really am special, aren’t I?”
The solitary great white shark, too, can feel lonely, you suppose.
