pairing: jesse/fem!reader
genre: fluff + smut
w.c.: 10k
a/n: i got so carried away with this one but consider it a fix it fic <3
summary: You've been living in Jackson for almost a year, you think you're in love with your best friend, and you're a virgin. Dina meddles.
c.w.: 18+ MDNI, friends to lovers, slow burn?, virgin!reader, kinda oblivious!reader, soft!jesse, dellie being nosy, past dina/jesse, oral (f receiving), loss of virginity/first time, p in v, riding, jesse practicing his pull out game, mentions of alcohol, no y/n
read below or on ao3 here <3
You didn’t fit in yet.
You had only arrived at Jackson about 3 months ago, hiding behind a group of 6 people that took pity on you at least 100 miles ago with nothing but a rusty knife and the tattered clothes on your back.
The people of Jackson were kind, hospitable. They fed your entire group and kept you warm. It was frightening—being around so many new different people, in a town that you assumed looked too similar to how it was before the outbreak.
Now that the group was safe, surrounded by towering walls and hot food, it gradually disbanded. You found yourself feeling strangely hollow sitting at a table all by yourself in the food hall, the soup in front of you almost too warm and too good, or in your house, because all of the people you came with grouped off and found others they preferred to stay with.
Similarly to how you were surviving on the outskirts of the state of Wyoming, you were all alone again.
It was almost comforting, strangely reassuring, as you silently agreed to whatever tasks were available by the time you rolled out of bed just after sunrise. The town was already bustling with energy, people shouting good mornings to each other, and it was almost like there was nothing horrifically disturbing happening outside of these walls.
You got tasked with clearing out the stables one sunny day. You didn’t mind—you loved animals. They never judged you and they actually craved to be in your presence. It was nice to be wanted for once.
You were told to ask for a Jesse. When you arrived, there was already a group of three other people around your age; two girls and a guy.
The two girls were huddled around an auburn horse that was nuzzling into their open palms, giggling at the tickling whiskers. You watched as their shoulders bumped together, trying to ignore the ache you felt bloom in your chest at the mere sight of them.
“Hey,” the boy calls out to you, voice deeper and smoother than you expected, and approaches you. “Did Maria send you?”
He was tall, all broad shoulders and thick arms. He was pretty, in a boyish way, with sparkling brown eyes and a polite smile. The cold winter air bit at his face, causing his cheeks to look a bit pink.
You nodded, the instructions that Maria had left you with dying in your throat. He must have been Jesse.
“Dina, Ellie, come on. Let’s get started.” Jesse doesn’t even bother waiting for them, or for you, and makes his way to the storage closet around the corner.
You’ve seen the three of them around Jackson before. Either huddled together in the corner of the mess hall or laughing and shoving at each other when you were walking through the main street. Everyone in town seemed to step aside for them, whispering amongst themselves about Ellie and the rugged man she came with several years ago. You never caught what it was about, but you didn’t really care.
Dina greets you with a warm smile while Ellie gives what you can only describe as a grimace as they pass by.
The rest of the morning is spent in a similar manner. The three of them talk, argue, bicker, and you’re off to the sidelines. You feel awkward, like an outsider. There’s an obvious sense of comfort the three of them bring each other, and you don’t want to ruin that.
And yet, when Dina makes a joke at Jesse’s expense, she looks at you. When you couldn’t find the farrier tools, Ellie appeared at your side and was able to dig them out behind a pair of old boots for you. When you found yourself actively listening to a long-winded story Ellie was telling about a comic book series that she loved, you found Jesse was blatantly staring at you out of the corner of your eye.
When Dina invited you to have dinner with them by time you’ve finished, you found yourself agreeing.
But then you kept getting invited—most of the time by Dina with a friendly shoulder bump, sometimes by Ellie with a nervousness that you found almost endearing, and occasionally by Jesse, wearing that polite smile that eventually continued to thaw away.
The next several months pass like that.
You would wake up alone in your house that was much too large for one person. You would go do your job for that day, either helping out at the store or at the garden, have your meals with the three people that you have suddenly realized you considered friends, and then home again.
You found yourself looking forward to mealtimes, even if you weren’t contributing much to the conversation. They were used to it by now and thankfully didn’t mind. Besides, watching the three of them bicker with each other about the most inane topics was entertaining enough.
You found that ache in your chest slowly dissipating. You were smiling more, talking more, and whenever you laughed, you could’ve sworn the three of them would make eye contact with each other as if having a silent conversation you weren’t privy to.
But you didn’t care. How could you care about what they were thinking when you found yourself looking forward to the day, contributing to the community, and hopeful that you’ll be ready to go out on a patrol.
And then there was Jesse.
You weren’t blind—you and the rest of the girls in Jackson knew he was handsome. Anyone could have told you about the strong cut of his jawline or the broad width of his shoulders as he helped with the construction of the town. He was quiet, not as quiet as you, but appeared to be just as content as you to watch Dina and Ellie squabble.
Often times he would join the conversation, and that’s when you noticed the strange history between him and Dina, though you know they tried to hide it.
So you try to shove down the stirring of emotion you get when you notice the way Jesse glances at you from across the table, eyebrows drawn together like he’s not quite sure what to think of you just yet. You ignore the way his hands would dwarf his handgun while cleaning it when you were hanging out in Ellie’s room and the expanse of skin that would reveal itself every time he stretched, the flex of muscles evident even through his shirt.
It's almost summer when you get invited out to the Tipsy Bison for a couple of drinks.
You usually prefer not to step foot in the dingy bar, instead much rather enjoying laying out on your couch to work through the dusty novels on your bookshelf. And you were about to decline Dina’s offer, citing that exact reason, but then she says something that has the hair on the back of your neck raise.
“Jesse said he was looking forward to seeing you there, but, oh well.”
And that’s how you found yourself huddled in a booth, Jesse brushing up against your left side and Ellie on the other.
It was absolutely packed tonight due to an event that you didn’t even realize the bar even had the capacity to hold. The rancid smell of moonshine and grilled meats permeated through the air, while the live band playing off-key and the animated chatter of the rest of the patrons filled your ears.
The rest of them were in the middle of gossiping, something juicy happening on someone else’s patrol, but you couldn’t even bother to pretend you were paying attention. You were staring holes at the glass of water in front of you, sweating from the bar’s humidity, and trying and failing to not think about what Dina meant when she said that Jesse was wanting you here.
So far, he hadn’t given you any special indication he was waiting for you when you arrived. He just gave you that warm and genuine smile that has been inexplicably making your chest hurt more and more, and stepped out of the booth so you could sit inside rather than out on the edge. Because he knew you didn’t like the chance that someone could bump into you during the night.
You and Jesse were friends, good friends even. He made sure to check up on you at the end of the day, always giving you the last bite of his bread during dinner, and always offering to walk you home after a night out at the bar or even from Ellie’s.
And again, there was that… thing he had with Dina. You could’ve sworn you saw them talking in private the other day, facial expressions open and hopeful. They were clearly dating, or talking, so you weren’t sure why they hadn’t told you yet. Not like it was technically any of your business.
You’re suddenly aware of a lull in the conversation and multiple pairs of eyes on you.
When you glance up from where you were staring at a droplet of water racing down the side of your glass, your assumption was correct. Dina and Ellie were watching you with equal amounts of concern and amusement dancing in their eyes while Jesse was making his way back from the bar with a new drink in hand.
You blink, not even noticing that Jesse had gotten up. “What?”
Ellie’s mouth twists, as if trying to hold back a laugh. “We asked you a question.”
“Sorry, I was thinking about something else.” Which wasn’t entirely untrue, you thought as you tried and failed to glance at Jesse out of the corner of your eye as he settled in next to you while taking a sip from his drink. “What was the question?”
“The question was,” Dina whispers, nearly conspiratorially and leaning into the table. You and the rest of the table unconsciously follow. “When was the last time you had sex?”
Suddenly, Jesse splutters out his drink, spraying the table and all of your hands. Ellie immediately yelps in disgust, swiping her hands on her jeans, while a burning heat crawls up your neck.
“What?” You hiss, yet it embarrassingly comes out like a squeak.
Jesse’s coughing, the corners of his eyes tearing, while Ellie has to stand and lean across the table to try and slap him on the back. It all would’ve been comical if it weren’t for the lazy eyebrow Dina raises and the smirk she’s wearing, as if she can see right through you.
“Don’t tell me… you’re not a virgin, are you?”
Blood rushes through your ears, dulling the music and the way Jesse hisses at Dina, most likely a warning. You can’t even be bothered to wonder why he would do that, react like that, because the hot flare of embarrassment blooms in your chest and up to your face. Your nails dig into your palms from how hard you’re clenching your fists underneath the table and your mouth gapes, opening and closing like a fish.
“Uhm,” is all you can manage out.
You know it’s nothing you technically should be embarrassed about—it was the end of the world. But it’s also been the end of the world for over 20 years now, and you’ve been living in Jackson for almost a year so you’re not sure if that’s an excuse anymore.
You’ve heard the other girls in the town gossiping, talking about sex so casually it was as if they were talking about the weather. And it’s not like you were a complete prude—you’ve seen the dirty magazines that were passed around in the groups you had to join for survival, the noises people would make when they thought everybody else was asleep. Only recently did you start experimenting with your own body, fingers silently dipping underneath your panties and adamantly trying not to think about soft brown eyes and thick biceps.
“You’ve had your first kiss at least, right?” Ellie looks concerned, eyebrows pinching together.
“Of course I have,” you mutter, avoiding everyone else’s eyes. You fail to mention that it only happened as recently as last year and with a boy who barely pressed his mouth to yours, and then had mysteriously disappeared the next day.
There’s silence. When you lift your head, the three of them are still watching you, waiting. They’re being nice, considerate, letting you open up as much as you want to. They’ve been so patient and welcoming, you don’t feel like it’s a chore at all when you heave a sigh, shoulders slumping forward as your eyes fixate on an old scratch on the table. “Yes, I’m a virgin. It’s kind of hard when the world is ending to find the right person.”
It’s a poor attempt at a joke, but you can hear the lack of conviction in your own voice. No one laughs. In fact, no one says anything for several seconds, long enough where you feel your ears start to burn.
You’re wondering why no one is fucking saying anything, not budging from where you’re staring a hole into the table, when Dina seems to take pity on you.
“You know, Jesse’s a great kisser.”
It doesn’t process at first, your ears still ringing from anxiety, but then you hear Jesse say a very dumbfounded “What the fuck, Dina,” and then it’s like time begins moving again. The music rushes through you like someone just raised the volume, you’re suddenly aware of how fast your heart is pounding, and you can feel Jesse’s warm thigh pressed up against yours underneath the table.
You suddenly feel like you’re being excluded from some inside joke as you watch confusedly as Jesse and Dina argue over the table. He looks embarrassed, a flush decorating his neck that you’re starting to wonder if it was due to the alcohol or something else, while Dina is wearing a poorly hidden smirk.
Because why would Dina bring up the fact that Jesse was a great kisser when they were dating? It’s not like she was the type to brag or rub it in people’s faces. In fact, she’s never even told you that they were dating in the first place besides it being a well-known fact throughout the town.
Maria suddenly appears to discuss a patrol-related issue with Jesse, and then it’s like nothing ever happened. The rest of them continue casual conversation as if Dina didn’t drop a nuclear bomb into your brain.
You try not to ruminate over it, not wanting to make the night more awkward than you felt like it already was. You attempt to participate with the group shenanigans and gossip, but it all feels stilted.
By the time you guys call it a night, citing an early patrol for some of them, you’ve come to terms with the fact that Dina had said that because she had already had too many drinks and was just making a poor attempt at flirting.
“You ready?” Jesse asks, throwing his coat over his arm to carry. You ignore the way you can see the flex in his arms as he leans against the booth. He’s stopped asking you whether he can walk you home or not, knowing that you would politely decline anyway, and has just decided for himself that he would whenever he could.
You nod wordlessly, tamping down at the fluttering in your stomach.
The both of you say bye to Dina and Ellie outside the bar. You watch with a slight frown when Dina whispers something in Jesse’s ear, causing him to hiss at her again and elbow her in shoulder. She laughs, loud and full of delight, and you manage to tear your eyes away at something that was clearly a private moment between them.
You were happy it was almost summer—warm enough where the snow has long since melted, but still a refreshing coolness in the air as you and Jesse walk side by side. The air smelled crisp, the smell of a bonfire starting to become familiar and comforting, and you were looking forward to the summer heat after months of snow.
Despite the late hour, there were still people milling around Jackson, coming to and from the bar or just huddling around a group to joke around. You wonder if this was what it was like before the outbreak—people able to just stand outside without worrying about being heard by clickers or attacked by raiders.
Jesse’s arm continues to brush against yours with every step, the heat from his body nearly burning you from the inside out with every second of silence the passes.
It’s always nice to spend time with Jesse, even if it was only for the five-minute walk to the main street to your house. You’re content to have him all to yourself, even if it was only because your house was along the same route to his. He usually doesn’t bother talking to fill up the silence and you don’t mind, the sounds of your steady breathing and the noises of Jackson being enough.
Except today.
“So,” Jesse says suddenly, nearly causing you to jump. “You seeing anyone?”
The question almost stops you in your tracks, but instead you trip over your feet and nearly fall flat on your face.
His hands reach out, as if to catch you, but you’re able to stabilize yourself before letting out an incredulous laugh, head whipping around to face him. “Are you serious?”
To his credit, he looks embarrassed, looking off to the side and setting his shoulders. He’s been embarrassed a lot tonight. “What? I’m just curious.”
You take his word and assume that he’s right. He’s just being curious, or maybe even a bit protective, but there’s an annoying nagging feeling at the back of your brain that says otherwise. “I think you would notice if I was dating someone since you guys are my only friends.”
You’re grateful that Jesse doesn’t wince like anybody else would. Instead, he laughs, shoulders dropping as if in relief. The sound makes something warm settle in your chest. “Just wanted to make sure you weren’t lying about being a virgin.”
The comment makes you flush, the near crudeness making your heart skip a beat. You try not to let it show, but you don’t think you do a very good job with the way Jesse tilts his chin to look at you. His gaze is dark, sending a strange shiver down your spine.
“I’ve barely even had my first kiss, I don’t think you need to worry about that,” and then you’re desperately rushing to change the subject, suddenly able to sense his curiosity. “Well, what about you? Are you and Dina still dating?”
For a moment, Jesse doesn’t say anything, and you start to think that you’ve overstepped a boundary. It makes sense since neither of them have even confirmed they were dating in the first place.
And then he’s chuckling, a low sound that doesn’t help the sharp desire crawling up your throat. “No,” he says. “Dina and I aren’t together.”
You hum, partly because you weren’t quite sure how to respond without giving away the sudden relief you felt but also partly because you’ve made it to your front porch. The stairs creak with every step and you’re glad that you had remembered to turn the porch light on, not confident that you would be able to have steady legs with Jesse at your side.
If him and Dina weren’t dating, what has all the whispering and nudging been about?
Both of you stop in front of the door, quiet besides your soft breaths. It’s awkward, or maybe it feels awkward to you and it’s all in your head, because you don’t think Jesse and the word awkward can even exist in the same sentence.
And yet, as you stand on your front porch to your too-big house, you don’t think you’ve ever seen Jesse like this. A pretty tinge of pink plastered on his neck, thick fingers wringing together, shoulders tense as he shifts in place.
You’re struck with how handsome he looks like this, his hair ruffling from the faint breeze and boyish despite how much more experienced he was then you in probably all aspects—within the community, combat, and even in relationships, romantic or otherwise.
You’re not sure where you get the surge of confidence from, feeling spectacularly sober, but the way Jesse’s eyes flits to your lips and then back up has you feeling dazed like you had knocked back five drinks.
“Do you want to come inside and help me?”
You know you don’t have to clarify about what when Jesse’s eyes widen, lips parting, before he nods.
As you open the front door, breaths unsteady and hands nearly shaking, you wonder if he could somehow hear the concerningly erratic rate your heart was racing at.
The stale scent of dust and the fire you had burning last night immediately envelops you as you both toe off your shoes. The house was sparsely furnished since you were the only person living in it; an old couch with a cracked coffee table in the living room, a wobbly dining table with only one mismatched chair, and a worn mattress upstairs. There were a couple of bookshelves filled with the dusty novels you've been working on and random knickknacks that you hadn't had the heart to toss out.
The house is still unfamiliar to you, not quite a home yet, so you feel a strange sense of anticipation as you turn to face Jesse, your socks sliding against the hardwood.
You hadn’t bothered to turn the lights on, so the only way you were able to see was due to the street lamps bleeding through your windows and casting the empty living room with a warm glow.
You clearly hadn’t thought this through, not sure what to say or what to do next, and felt suddenly inadequate.
Because what if you do everything wrong and mess it up somehow? Or worse, you don’t even get that far and Jesse changes his mind, not finding you desirable in the same way you find him and avoids you around Jackson for the rest of your life?
Your racing thoughts come to a startingly quick stop at the brush of Jesse’s hand against your cheek, soft and warm. You meet his eyes from where you were staring at your feet, and you find yourself unconsciously holding your breath when you notice how close he suddenly was.
He’s unbearably gentle as he cradles your cheek, your jaw, as if you were a skittish animal. You catch a glimpse of the softness in his brown eyes, honeyed from the light filtering in from the street. His voice is low, raspy in a way that had lightning shoot up your spine, when he asks “Can I kiss you?”
You nod, barely a tilt of your chin, and then he’s leaning in and finally pressing his mouth to yours.
His lips were soft, just like you predicted, and so much better than the boy you had kissed last year. It’s clear Jesse knows what he’s doing too, with the way his large hand tilts your head to kiss you better, his other hand coming up to land on your hip.
He tastes like his drink he had at the bar, spicy and like caramel, incredibly intoxicating and enough for you to place your palms on his sturdy chest. You resist the urge to grab him by the collar and tug him closer.
When he pulls away and you open your eyes, not even realizing you had shut them in the first place, he’s watching you with an expression so fond it steals the breath from your lungs.
“How was that?” he asks, a nervous smile tugging at his lips and drawing your attention to them.
You could feel the erratic thumping of his heart underneath your palm, nearly matching yours, and you’re starting to realize that maybe your feelings weren’t all completely one-sided.
“I think I’m going to need more practice,” you attempt to joke, however the breathiness in your voice gives you away.
He smiles then. “I guess I can’t say no to that.”
You feel less awkward when he kisses you this time, exhilarated at the heady sensation of his mouth against yours, and you’re not even aware you’re stepping in closer into his embrace until your body is pressed up against his.
He hums, his hand tightening on your hip and tugging you even closer, and the sudden onslaught of pleasure that thrums through you when his muscular thigh settles against your core has you gasping in his mouth.
And it’s like a dam breaks. His hand leaves your jaw to grab at your hips, tugging you until your back was pressed up against the wall. He immediately delves into your mouth, deepening the kiss, and the feeling of his tongue lightly brushing against yours was new but not unwelcome. In fact, you fist at the fabric of his sweater, pulling you into him so his chest was pressed against yours.
By the time he pulls away, you’re gasping for air but following his mouth for more. His head dips to press tenderly along your jawline and then up to nip at your earlobe.
It’s nearly ticklish with his warm breaths and his hair brushing against your face, but you can’t help the whimper that escapes when he starts pressing open-mouthed kisses along the column of your throat. A familiar coil of heat starts at the pit of your stomach, only intensifying with each brush of Jesse’s clothed thigh in between yours.
“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” he whispers against your neck. “Whatever you want.”
It’s sweet, and so earnestly like him to make sure that you were comfortable that it makes you smile.
You don’t think you’ve ever trusted anyone more than you trusted Jesse. The few times that you went on a practice patrol with him, just barely on the outskirts of town, you knew you were safe. He always treated you with kindness, more than you ever deserved, and you knew this was no exception.
“Can we go upstairs?”
He presses one last kiss on your bare shoulder, the collar of your shirt skewed, and pulls back to lean his forehead against yours, eyes squeezing shut as if he needed a second to breathe.
When he opens his eyes, arousal runs hot through you when you notice the way his pupils were blown and nearly swallowing the honey brown of his eyes. Lips parted with heavy breaths, he searches your gaze.
You’re not sure what he finds or what he was looking for, but he swallows and nods. “Okay.”
When he steps away, leaving your body significantly colder than before, you take a hold of his hand to intertwine your fingers with his to pull him upstairs and into your bedroom. You think you notice him try to hide a smile.
If your living room was sparse, your bedroom was even worse—an old twin bed tucked in the corner, an empty desk, and all of your clothes spilling out of your backpack instead of hung up in the empty closet. Even though it’s been several months since you’ve been in Jackson, you weren’t quite ready to hang your clothes up.
If Jesse notices, he doesn’t say anything, instead crowding against you with large hands on your hips until the back of your knees collide against the edge of the bed. He captures your giggle with a chaste kiss, and then another, and tugs you close until you were flushed against him.
You feel him fidget with the hem of your shirt and it causes a sudden spike of anxiety in your stomach, overpowering the steady hum of arousal.
Jesse must notice because he pulls back, pausing. “Is this okay?”
Now you were crossing into unknown territory, but rather than being scared, the tenderness in Jesse’s eyes did nothing but comfort you, your nervousness slowly ebbing away.
You nod and move your hands to grasp at the edge of his shirt, his fingers still ghosting over the hem of your sweater. “You first.”
He huffs a laugh at that, rolling his eyes fondly, and then lifts his shirt off to throw in the far corner of your room.
Any words you were going to say die in your throat. You knew Jesse was in shape, evident by how often he was called on for construction duty, but seeing it in person with no clothes and in the privacy of your bedroom was a whole different story.
Fair skin riddled with scars dusting over his chest and his stomach, the muscles of his abdomen jumping out at you. Before you could stop yourself, you brush your fingers across his chest to trace a predominant scar before trailing down. You watch, entranced, as he shivers, stomach tensing and goosebumps rising along his skin.
He sucks in a sharp breath, breaking you out of your reverie, and when you glance up at him, he looks nearly dazed, eyes wide and searching.
When you lift the hem of your shirt off and over your head, you jump at his hands suddenly coming to run along your ribcage, fingers brushing against the stiff underwire of your old bra. He deftly unclasps it, letting it fall away, as he mutters a curse under his breath at the sight of your breasts.
“On the bed,” he rasps, eyes still fixated on your chest.
It makes you want to giggle, maybe preen a little, because he’s being such a boy, but then he steps away to unbuckle his belt and you spot the noticeable bulge pressing through the crotch of his jeans. Your breath stutters, fingers twitching with curiosity, before eventually obeying and climbing up your bed until you were laying with your head on your flat pillow.
He’s on you a moment later, crawling up the length of your body until he’s hovering over you. His arms are on either side of your head, his warm breath fanning over your face. You wrap your arms around his shoulders, finally allowing yourself to run your fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. He makes a noise, almost akin to a purr, and nudges his nose against yours, causing a grin to form on your face.
He studies you for a moment, eyes wide as if in awe despite the clear arousal swimming in them. He reaches up to tuck a stray wisp of hair behind your ear, the pad of his finger brushing along your cheekbone. The action sends your heart flipping in your chest.
“You know this is more than me doing you a favor, right?” he whispers, as if worried that speaking any louder would break the daze you felt.
If possible, your heart nearly seizes. You had your suspicions, having difficulty justifying the plain affection Jesse wore as soon as he stepped through your doorway. It explained the deliberate way he sought you out in the food hall or how he seemed to always find you when you were on your way back from the store, silently falling in step with you.
It certainly explained the now obvious way Dina was trying to set you two up.
The revelation has you grinning, fondness for the friends you’ve made here in your new home fluttering in your stomach. Maybe Jackson wasn’t too bad after all.
Jesse’s brows furrow in confusion, and before he can climb off of you thinking you were hesitating, you tug at his hair. A thrill runs up your spine at the way his eyes flutter shut, a rough groan tumbling out of his mouth that sends molten arousal between your thighs before you say, “I know.”
You tug him down to kiss you, this time your lips parting easily as if to convey just how sure you were.
You think he can tell, knows, by the way he hums into your mouth, tongue brushing against yours briefly before making his way down your jaw again, your neck. His warm breaths and the way his teeth skims along the column of your throat, the dip of your collarbone, has you feeling dizzy and distantly wondering if he’ll leave a mark if you ask for it.
“Fuck,” he mutters, muffled against the base of your throat, the low hum of his voice causing you to press your thighs together. His hands splay along your sides, thumbs brushing along the underside of your breasts. “You’re so pretty.”
His words warm you from the inside out despite the way you want to immediately shake your head and adamantly deny it. He doesn’t give you the chance to before he’s kneading your breasts, groaning under his breath again, and then dipping his head to wrap his plush lips around your nipple.
A broken gasp escapes you as you arch your back to push your chest further against him. The ache between your thighs flares further as the hard heat of his cock straining his jeans presses against your inner thigh. He swirls his tongue around the nub before flicking it with the tip before moving to your other breast and giving it the same amount of meticulous attention.
“Jesse…” you breath, mind muddled with the amount of pleasure humming through your veins. You’re not sure what you’re trying to tell him, whether to keep going because it feels so good or to stop because you’ve only just started but it feels like he’s been touching you for hours.
He pulls away with a lewd pop. “What is it, baby?” he murmurs, his lips faintly brushing against your nipple and causing you to whine. “Use your words, tell me how you feel.”
The pet name nearly sends you into a heart attack. Your hands move to grab onto his broad shoulders, the firmness of him somewhat grounding and giving you enough strength to answer him. “Feels good…”
“Yeah,” Jesse whispers before pressing a brief open-mouthed kiss to your nipple that has you sharply exhaling. “I always want to make you feel good.”
He kisses down your stomach, the warmth of his hands following, and then his lips stop at the waistband of your jeans. He glances up at you then, pretty brown eyes wide, and you’re not sure how you suddenly found yourself in your shitty bed with your best friend peering up at you between your thighs but you’re certainly not complaining.
“You don’t have to…” you whisper, a sharp edge of insecurity digging into your chest again. You’ve never had someone go down on you before.
He presses a chaste kiss to the skin right below your navel, sincerity dripping from his voice as he says “Of course I want to.”
But he’s still gentle, cautious as if you were on the verge of running out of the room, as he unbuttons your jeans and slides them and your panties off. You balk at the obvious spot of wetness in the crotch of them, nearly sticking to your pussy, but Jesse doesn’t seem to mind. If anything, it spurs him on even further, watching the way your slick leaves behind a string of your arousal.
And then he’s laying in between your legs, head perfectly framed between your thighs and mouth so achingly close to your core. You could feel his warm breath fanning over your pussy, your inner thighs, and a whine threatens to come out of your throat at the way his hands dig into them.
“Just tell me if there’s anything you don’t like, okay?” He’s staring at your pussy, the way your puffy folds glisten even in the darkness of your room, but eventually peers up at you for your answer.
You prop yourself up on your elbows and shakily nod. Jesse gives you a grin so nonchalant, carefree, as if he wouldn’t be anywhere else in the world except for in between your legs.
He starts by kissing your inner thighs, open-mouthed and gentle, and it already has you slightly arching your back. Your hand reaches out to take a hold of his where he has it wrapped around your thigh. The immediate way he threads your fingers together over your lower stomach has your heart threatening to burst.
You know he’s not trying to tease you, most likely wanting to take his time with you, but fuck if you aren’t impatient, aching like you’ve been teetering on the edge all day.
He spares you, most likely just as impatient, and leans in to slowly swipe his flattened tongue up your seam and against your clit.
Your reaction is immediate—a shiver running through you and your mouth falling open as a low sound comes out of you. Your elbows give out, your head falling back onto your pillow.
That must have been what Jesse was waiting for because his grip on your thigh tightens and then he’s delving in, deliberately parting your folds with his tongue to gather your wetness and tasting you. He groans, the sound muffled in between your thighs, as he dips his tongue briefly in your entrance before coming up to circle around your clit.
It feels like fucking heaven and you’re not sure how you’re going to go about your day, your life, without the feeling of Jesse taking his time with you between your thighs imprinted in your brain. The warmth of his wet mouth, the eagerness and expertise of his tongue, and the way he’s pressing his face into you, like he can’t get enough of you, has you lightheaded.
He’s slow, unhurried, but you can tell he’s holding back from immediately fucking you with his tongue, eating you like he was a man starved. He’s trying to make it good for you, and he was, but the thought of him ravenously devouring your pussy until he had to hold you down by your hips to take it has you bucking your hips and whimpering into the open air.
Jesse makes an approving noise against your cunt, the vibrations sending heat curling up your spine, and then he’s trailing the tip of his tongue through your folds before flicking against your clit.
It feels like he just started, but already you feel the unfamiliar coil of your orgasm forming at the pit of your stomach. It’s been nearly months since you had your first orgasm, wretched out of you in your half-asleep daze with your blankets wrapped around your thighs and pressing against your pussy, and the way you were throbbing like how it was then has you breathless and dizzy.
“Jesse,” you gasp, eyes squeezed shut and your grip on his hand tightening. Your hips jerk up, chasing the heat and expertise of his mouth, and he just lets you. “I think I’m—”
His resolve fractures, because he doesn’t hold back as he essentially makes out with your needy pussy—suckling onto your clit before leaning down to fuck you with his pointed tongue, his hand that was gripping your thigh coming to rub firm circles around your clit, slick with the combined wetness of your arousal and his spit.
When you peer down at him, he’s already staring back at you. A particularly well-timed thrust of his tongue against your entrance has you coming with a shout, the tension in you snapping harder than you’ve ever thought possible. You felt your hips grind down unashamedly against his face as you cry out, your pussy desperately clenching around nothing.
He works you through it, tongue gently running over your folds as you catch your breath. Your thighs are still trembling when he crawls up your body to hover over you.
The entire bottom half of his face was covered in your slick and the sight sent something hot zinging through your body, your arousal now reduced to a soft hum between your legs. He was smirking and the scent of yourself on his face, so close to yours, was new. But then he’s licking his lips, tongue flicking out to capture the rest of you, and he looks so fucking sexy.
You surge up to capture his mouth in a kiss and the taste of yourself has you whimpering, kissing him harder as if he could tamp down the flare of all-consuming desire that was starting to overwhelm you.
When you pull away, you snake your hand down between your bodies to wrap a hand around his cock. He’s thick, velvety smooth, and weighs deliciously heavy in your hand as you curiously stroke him once.
Jesse grunts in surprise, hips jerking forward involuntarily and thrusting his cock into your fist. “Fuck, that feels good.”
The sound of his voice, already low and smooth like molasses, rasping in your ear because of you had you craving for more.
You attempt to wiggle your hips down the bed, hitching your legs around his waist and blindly trying to aim his hard cock against your entrance when Jesse stops you with a large hand on your wrist.
Before you could anxiously ask whether you were going too fast or coming on too strong, he presses his lips to the corner of your mouth and gives you a soft smile despite the sticky trail the head of his cock leaves against your inner thigh. “Sit up for me?”
Curious, you sit up and maneuver around so he could take your spot in the center of the bed, propped up and leaning back against the headboard. He was broad, taking up nearly all the room on your ratty twin mattress, and you stare at the flex of his thighs as he spreads them a bit and the pearly string of precum his cock leaves against the hard planes of his stomach.
“Come here,” he whispers, tapping his bare thigh.
You swallow, throat dry as you watch the bob of his cock and wonder what he would taste like, but you listen. You crawl up the bed until you’re straddling him, hovering your pussy over his cock with your knees on either side of his hips and your hands holding onto his shoulders.
You release a breathy sigh when you drop down briefly and feel the smooth skin of his cock against your aching pussy. You’re tempted to just move your hips back and forth, allowing your slick to coat his cock as he rubs against your seam.
And you think, why the fuck not, and lower yourself down to rub your pussy against his length. You gasp at the way his shaft rubs along your clit and how the continuous slick leaking out of you easily coats him and allows him to glide against you seamlessly.
Jesse groans at that, dick twitching against you, and his head falls forward until his forehead was pressed against yours. His hands fly out to clutch at your hips, torn between pulling you back and forth against his cock or up so he could fuck into you. “Fuck, baby, you’re killing me here.”
You bite back a smile. The thought of you, inexperienced and eager, causing Jesse to feel overwhelmed made you feel a bit smug, even a little prideful. It was flattering to know that Jesse was as hopelessly head over heels for you as you were for him.
Your smile is wiped off your face when you feel the head of Jesse’s cock slide along your entrance, dipping in quickly before sliding through your pussy and nudging against your clit.
It’s overwhelming, the heat underneath your skin nearly burning you from the inside out, so you lean forward until you’re panting, lips brushing against the shell of Jesse’s ear. His breath hitches, hands tightening on you, and then you whisper, “Please fuck me?”
He releases a strangled noise that sends heat straight between your thighs before he’s grabbing the base of his cock and notching the tip against your entrance. He stills, the muscles in his stomach tensing as you slowly bring yourself down on.
You bite your lip, face scrunching up at the initial stretch. It’s uncomfortable, burning just a little, but the barest hints of pleasure were there just out of reach.
“Breathe,” he says, voice strained from holding himself back from fucking into you immediately. When you open your eyes, eyebrows still furrowed as you slide down his cock, Jesse’s watching your face with such open concern and affection it has your heart thudding painfully.
You release a shaky breath that you didn’t even realize you were holding, nodding as you take a deep breath. You feel your lungs expanding, concentrating on the cool air filling them, as you lower yourself fully onto his cock until he was buried all the way inside of you.
He throws his head back against the headboard with a light thud, eyes screwed shut in pleasure, and you’re able to see the thudding of his pulse in his neck. His hands are clenched into fists against your hips, biceps flexing with the effort of holding himself back from running his hands all over your body.
And that won’t do, you think, craving his touch so much that your chest ached.
So you circle your fingers around his wrist, catching his attention as he lifts his head up to look at you curiously. You raise his hand until his palm is on your breast, and you smile when he instinctively molds his hand around you, fingers squeezing around your flesh. “You can touch me, you know.”
“I just want to make sure you’re okay,” he rasps. His eyes run over your entire body, drinking you in and lingering on where he could see his cock disappearing in your cunt.
“More than okay,” you whisper before leaning in to kiss him.
The slight change in angle nudges his cock deeper inside of you, causing your lips to part against his in a sigh, and he takes that opportunity to kiss you deeper with a hand cradling your cheek. The plushness of his lips and his harsh breaths fanning over your face was a nice distraction, allowing your tight pussy to adjust to him.
After several minutes, you experimentally rock your hips forward. The action immediately causes you to moan into Jesse’s open mouth, heat fizzling up your spine.
“Yeah?” He whispers, allowing you to continue moving your hips back and forth. The sensation of his cock rubbing against your walls, nudging against spots that you didn’t think were possible, made your head fall back. He takes the opportunity to dip his head forward and lick and nip at the delicate skin of your neck. “That feel good, baby?”
You nod, not trusting yourself to speak without rambling. The stretch has faded to a dull ache, blending into the one you felt at the pit of your stomach. The coarse hair at the base of his cock rubbed against your sensitive clit, just on the border of being too much, so you straighten up a bit on your knees.
You lift yourself up with your hands on his shoulders, moaning at the delicious friction of his cock dragging out of you, before dropping yourself back down. It’s a little graceless, clumsy even, but fuck does it feel good. You repeat it, pulling yourself off and then back down on his cock with your knees pressed against your flimsy mattress until you were riding him at a steady pace.
Your knees and thighs were already starting to ache, possibly due to the fact that you haven’t been as physically active since you arrived at Jackson, but the strangled noises Jesse was making with each thrust made you think that it didn’t even matter.
His hands were all over you now—fingers tracing every freckle and palms running over your curves. His hips have started moving alongside yours, timing his thrusts perfectly to make sure his cock was driving into you as deep as it could get each time you dropped down onto his thighs.
He was staring at you again, eyes flickering all over your face and your body, catching on your breasts every time they bounced or when you licked your lips. He was vocal, which you appreciated—groaning deep from his chest every time you decided to grind against him or whispering praises about how good your pussy felt squeezing around him that made your face heat up.
It hits you then, as Jesse rubs his thumbs back and forth along your nipples, that he must have chosen this position for you.
He wants to make it good for you, not caring if he gets off at all or if you’d return the favor. Realizing the extent of how much he cares about you and making sure the first time you were physical with someone was pleasurable and exciting made you smile from feeling a little giddy.
“What are you giggling about?” he asks, an amused smile playing at his lips. He’s not even out of breath the same way you are, clearly more in shape than you based off the thickness of his arms and the deliberate way he was rutting his hips into you without so much as a sweat.
“Nothing,” you say, smile growing wider for some inexplicable reason. Maybe it was because you’re realizing that Jesse, seemingly unobtainable Jesse, has shown you more kindness than you thought was possible to exist in a person. Or maybe it was because the reason he always offered to walk you home was so he could spend more time with you.
Or maybe it was from the way he was rolling his hips up, making sure the thick head of his cock was nudging against a spot inside of you that had your eyes rolling into the back of your head and your hands to squeeze his shoulders “Oh, fuck.”
His grin widens, dark eyes glinting underneath the moonlight, and then he’s pulling you down until you were laying on his chest and your face was nestled into his neck. He grabs you by your hips and manages to scoot himself down until he was lying flat on the bed, not once letting you off his dick. He takes a hold of your thighs and lifts you up an inch, and then he’s driving his cock back into you.
You have to bite back your moan, aware of how close you were to Jesse’s ear, but you can’t hold back the high pitched whimpers seamlessly leaving your throat out of your own accord.
He fucks up into you, relentlessly, hips snapping against yours in a frantic rhythm that belies how on edge he’s been the entire night. “Fuck, you take my cock so pretty, baby.”
And the filth of his words, so sudden, has you shuddering, moaning softly as heat crawls up your spine and your walls clench around his length.
You try to sit up, your hands pressing on his chest, but the white-hot pleasure running through your veins has you feeling weak and your arms give out immediately. You knew you were getting close, can feel it in the throbbing of your cunt, and you didn’t want it to be over yet. You wanted to see him.
“Oh, just like that,” he moans, his thrusts faltering and turning sloppy from how tight your pussy was clenching around him. “That’s my perfect girl.”
The possessive edge in his words lights you up, stoking at the fire burning under your skin and in your stomach. You groan directly in his ear, your breath fanning against the side of his neck, as he somehow fucks you harder, faster.
You’re distantly aware of your poor bedframe, already on its last legs, creaking forebodingly, the lewd sounds of skin slapping against skin, but your orgasm is creeping up the length of your spine, just barely out of reach.
You manage to straighten up, gathering enough strength in your arms until you were sitting up, your knees pressing into the mattress next to his hips and his cock deep inside of you. His rhythm doesn’t stop, doesn’t even falter, and you’re dazedly snaking a hand between your legs to rub your clit.
You don’t get the chance to as Jesse bats your hand away, replacing it with the pad of his thumb. You’d feel embarrassed at how wet you were, your slick coating the insides of your thighs, if it weren’t for the fact that it allowed him to glide effortlessly through your folds until he was dragging careful circles around your clit.
Your entire body jerks at the sensation, muscles tensing and your cunt clenching around his cock impossibly tighter. Blood roared in your ears as you reached out to grab his wrist, as if to stabilize yourself. “Jesse, fuck—”
His dark eyes don’t stray from your face, his thumb expertly dissolving you into nothing but a moaning, shaking mess. His lips are parted, face flushed and only now slightly out of breath as he continues fucking into you so hard your breasts jolt with every thrust. “You gonna come for me, baby? Let me feel that pretty pussy come on my cock.”
When your orgasm finally takes a hold of you, it’s stronger than the one coaxed from Jesse’s mouth. Your breath catches, jaw dropping open in a silent scream, your grip on his wrist tightening into a near death grip as you pulse around him.
Jesse curses, biting out your name as your pussy clenches around him, nearly pulling him in even deeper. He still makes sure to slow down the motions of his thumb, helping you ride it out until you were twitching and shuddering on top of him, but his thrusts quicken, turning almost sloppy.
You could tell he was close based off the deep grunts accompanying each thrust and whispers mixed with curses and your name. You try to blink away the daze in your eyes, wanting to watch the way he fell apart right below you—needed to witness it, as if you wouldn’t be able to believe this whole night even happened if you didn’t.
His hips stutter, exhaling like his breaths have been punched out of him, and then he’s thrusting into you once, twice, before scrambling back. You gasp wetly when his thick cock slips out of you, but your mouth snaps shut and your eyes widen when his large hand wraps around his cock, turning into a blur as he strokes himself.
And then he’s coming with a guttural groan, voice so deep it sends another shiver through you. You watch as ropes of his come shoot out, landing on the puffy folds of your pussy and dripping down your thighs, landing on his stomach and thighs.
Your legs are trembling from where you’re still kneeling above him, nearly screaming out at you until you finally sit down on Jesse’s thick thighs, your knees still on either side of his hips. The entire lower half of your body was sore, your pussy deliciously so, and you’re ready to just pass out while nestled into a certain man’s strong arms.
You’re still catching your breath when Jesse leans over the edge of the bed to grab his shirt and then he’s diligently wiping away his release from your skin, eyebrows furrowed as he makes sure he’s gentle with you.
He balls up his shirt and then tosses it aside before suddenly leaning over to wrap his arms around your midsection and pulling you up to him. You squeal, giggling as he manhandles you until you were lying on your side and he was flushed up behind you, his softening cock nestled at the base of your spine.
“You need to get a bigger bed,” Jesse mutters, face buried at the nape of your neck. The combination of his arms still wrapped around your midsection, giving you a gentle squeeze as he tries to get impossibly closer to you, as well as his warm breath against your skin has the beginning seeds of arousal sparking in your stomach again.
“You going to get me one?”
“If it means I can cuddle you without the threat of falling off the side of the bed, then yes.”
You smile, wrestling your arms free from where he’s essentially got them pinned at your sides so you could intertwine your fingers with his. He presses a kiss behind your ear, his lips soft, and the action causes your eyes to droop shut.
“As long as you’re the one paying for it.”
You feel Jesse’s laugh before you hear it, his chest shaking against your back, as the heat emanating from him and the low hum of chatter outside your window lulls you to sleep.
-
You wake up before him the next morning, beginning streaks of sunlight breaking through your curtains and shining into your face.
He’s still pressed right up against you, spooning you with his face tucked into your neck as if neither of you had moved an inch throughout the night. However, your thin comforter was thrown over the both of you, and combined with Jesse being an absolute furnace, you were nearly sweating through the sheets.
You’re blinking the sleep from your eyes, anxiety already curling around your heart and mind beginning to race that maybe this was a mistake or that Jesse didn’t want anything to do with you anymore.
You don’t have any friends besides essentially his friends, everyone in town seems to steer clear from you, and you’ve never been in a relationship before. Hell, you’ve been here for several months now and you still can’t think about actually being assigned for patrol and picking up a gun without your hand shaking.
You’re about to untangle yourself from him, suddenly craving the cold tile of the bathroom against your skin in an attempt to calm your pulse, but then he’s exhaling softly and squeezing his arms around you. He stretches his legs out, ankles popping, and then he’s mumbling something you can’t quite hear.
“What?” you say, heart nearly jumping in your throat.
He lifts his head, just enough so his words weren’t muffled against your neck as he says “Stop overthinking. Go back to sleep.” He nuzzles his face against your skin again, pressing his chapped lips to the curve of your throat that sends your pulse flying down to settle in between your thighs, and then he’s falling back asleep.
His soft snores right in your ear comfort you in a way that you never thought was possible before, warmth floating in your chest as his breath deepens.
So you fall back asleep.
-
It’s past afternoon by the time you two crawl out of bed. It wasn’t your fault that Jesse was particularly handsy and needy in the mornings.
Your knees are knocking together underneath the table as you eat your late lunch in silence, the bustle of the dying lunch rush filling your ears. You’re trying to keep your smile off your face, nearly giddy with excitement and affection, but you don’t think you do a very good job based off the way Jesse continues to glance over at you with a similar expression.
When Dina and Ellie arrive, already in the middle of a conversation, you don’t pay them much mind and instead focus on the last remnants of your stew sticking to the edges of your bowl.
But then Dina takes one good look at you, eyes roving up and down and taking in the oversized sweater that swallowed you up and smelled faintly like pine. Her gaze lingers somewhere above your chest before her face splits into a wide grin.
“I see you got to experience how good of a kisser Jesse is.”
Your heart drops, because you think Dina’s going to be mad, but then she’s cackling so loud it echoes through the building, and Ellie is snickering behind her hand, and Jesse leans over to swat at her shoulder, pretending to look irritated but instead appearing endearingly sheepish.
“Dina,” he warns, voice low.
“Relax, I’m just teasing,” she says, eyes comically jumping between you two. “Pass the salt?”
And just like that, conversation flows like nothing even happened. Like it was any other day where Dina and Ellie would touch each other more than usual, you would take advantage of the sunny weather and spend your day at the stables, and Jesse would pretend that he was assigned at the same station that day anyway.
Warmth settles deep within your bones as you throw around the fact that if your friends didn’t take you in like they did, you’re not sure how you would’ve survived the deep-seated loneliness that threatened you every time you walked through your front door.
Jesse places a broad hand on your thigh, essentially breaking you out of your thoughts. He’s studying you curiously, concerned.
You give him a soft smile, place your hand over his to intertwine your fingers together, and think about how maybe staying in Jackson doesn’t sound too bad.
Series Summary: Taking Lena under your wing leads to you developing a relationship with her Uncle Pope. You might be just the thing they've needed to feel like a real family.
Chapter Summary: You make good on your promise to help Lena out with makeup and it makes Pope pay much closer attention to you.
Tags/Notes: retconning (pope didn't do That Thing He Did), fluff, parent!pope, slow burn, girly girl reader, tall reader (not specific but taller than pope in everyday heels)
Content Warnings: discussions of canon-typical content
Author's Note: nobody be mean to me about the skincare/makeup i wash my face with a 3-in-1
Word Count: 4.2k
For reasons you aren’t necessarily ready to unpack yet, you get extra dressed up on Friday before your shift. Even though you always go to work in something cute with a full face of makeup, today you take extra time with your hair, add a bit more sparkle to your eyes and cheeks, and pick out a baby blue skirt that might show off more of your plush legs than usual. And, when you see Pope and Lena stepping through the doors right around closing time, you double-check yourself in the closest makeup mirror you can find.
Lena clearly also dressed up, adorably enthusiastic, wearing a summery yellow two-piece set that’s so much more fashionable than what you wore at her age. She’s also rocking a pair of crisp white shoes with chunky speckled yellow laces that you immediately clock as Lanvin curb sneakers, which means Pope definitely gives her carte blanche when it comes to shopping. Even though he’s accompanying a preteen wearing a four-figure outfit, today Pope’s dressed in jeans and a basic white tee, looking much less intimidating than he did wearing all black in that big-ass car of his.
Buzzing with a huge smile as soon as she spots you, Lena skips over and nearly bowls you onto your ass with the force of her hug. She squeals, “I’ve been so excited about this all week!”
“Lena, hey! Me too; this’ll be super fun.” You duck down to return her hug and then address her uncle, too, “Thanks for bringing her. I’m sure this is a little out of your comfort zone.”
“What, me? C’mon, I know all about-” Pope squints at a nearby wall of products with an adorable wrinkle between his eyebrows, which go up in true confusion “-serums. And balms. Right up my alley.”
You snicker and give his arm a squeeze. “You’re so cute, Pope.” Then, as the apples of his cheek tint pink because it’s been a very long time since a girl called him that, you wave toward the lounge part of the store and offer, “Now you can go sit in the corner with all the dads and boyfriends while us girls have our fun.”
But he shakes his head and insists, “No, I wanna learn, too. So I know what stuff she likes and what’s good.”
Lena’s unfazed by the fact that her uncle just said something that sets him apart and above 75% of father figures, so you know that Pope must always be like this with her. The picture of care.
So you tenderly agree, “sounds good,” and lead them over to the skincare section, where you explain to Lena, “To start off, you need a solid skincare routine; that’ll help you keep your face healthy while you grow up, which is super important. Even though you don’t have pimples or anything now, building those habits will help you keep your skin glowy and soft no matter what. I always say ‘the best routine is the one you stick to,’ so it’s not about using tons of products. Really, all you need is a good gentle cleanser, moisturizer, and especially a nice lightweight sunscreen living down here.”
While you answer Lena’s questions about different products and let her try out samples, Pope removes a small Moleskine notebook from his back pocket and takes notes on what you’re saying, writing down details about sustainable makeup removing wipes, cleansers for sensitive skin, and the benefits of cream vs. gel moisturizers. Honestly, you might as well shove him into a corner and start making out with him because it’s just so endearing. His expression is so soft and so intensely focused on Lena’s every reaction that your heart skips a beat.
Once you’ve helped Lena pick out a solid basic routine, you lead her through aisles of makeup, saying, “Okay, now let’s focus on getting you a wide variety of fun things you can play with since you really don’t have to worry about foundation or contour or anything like that for now.”
Toying with a bottle of thick foundation, she furrows her brows and asks, “Why not? You always do those in your videos.”
“Here, come look in this mirror.” You bend down over her shoulder so your faces are at the same level. “You have perfect skin, Lena. Covering it up right now would just be silly and clog up your pores unnecessarily.”
From behind, Pope can see up your skirt to the lacy pink panties beneath. It takes all of his willpower to focus on the parenting moment in front of him instead of the way your huge heels make your calves and thighs look. God, he didn’t realize how tall you are until now. In the heels, you probably have an two inches on him, and he wants you to step on his
“Right, Pope?”
You’re looking at him with expectant eyes and he rips his eyes from your body. He has no idea what you’re talking about, but he’s pretty sure you’re probably right, so he nods. “Yeah, exactly.”
“See? In the next year or so, you can start with something gentle like a tinted moisturizer to even out any redness you might get, but you definitely don’t need to worry about things as heavy as contouring yet.”
Lena asks you reluctantly, “But wouldn’t contouring make my cheeks look less fat? Maya Jenkins says I have fat cheeks like a chipmunk.”
Pope growls under his breath, but you’re quick to argue first: “Well she sounds like a mean girl and you should never listen to mean girls because they’re always wrong and they’re ugly down to their souls, which is the worst kind of ugly.” You touch her chin, tilting her face to the side in the mirror. Hoping she’ll see what you see, you tell her, “Soft features are really pretty. They’re timeless like women in classic paintings. And versatile. You can look cute and you can look elegant.” Her expression softens as she looks between her face and yours, so you add seriously, “As for her calling you fat? There’s nothing wrong with being any different size. Skinny girls and big girls can all be just as pretty as each other. We girls need to lift each other up, not tear each other down.”
Considering it seriously for a moment, Lena meets your eyes and decides, “That makes sense. I don’t like how Maya talks about my friends, so she’s probably wrong when she talks about me, too.”
“You’re really smart, Lena.” You give her arm a quick squeeze and continue, “Alright, after-school-special time over. Let’s get shopping.”
Pope lets out an amused little snort as your demeanor flips back into the bubbly light one you usually have on.
“So, when I think about makeup,” you tell Lena as you show her different brands oriented more toward girls her age, “I think about two things: Spending time taking care of yourself and having fun being creative with self-expression. You don’t need to be glam all the time or learn all these crazy skills right off the bat. Showing up to school with a full face is honestly no fun anyway because it’ll get cakey and sweaty and you don’t want to be worried about reapplying during lunch or after gym and stuff.”
Lena explains the kind of things she wants to learn to do – mainly fun eye looks with lots of glitter – so you pick out some palettes in colors you think would complement her eyes and make her personality pop. You choose a handful of mini eyeliners so she can try different applicators. A few times, you try to check with Pope to make sure it’s okay when you reach for nicer products, but he just waves you off with a gruff ‘whatever you think’ every time. So eventually you stop asking, getting used to the ease that comes with not having to worry.
After about half an hour, Lena’s got enough makeup in her bag to satisfy any tween’s Pinterest board goals – plus, more importantly to Pope, a huge smile on her face and buzzing with energy to get home and start trying things out. As you ring up the sale, internally cringing at the price even though you know Pope is okay with it, Pope leans forward across the check-out desk and asks quietly, almost bashfully, “Do you make commission on sales?”
Reading him wrong, you quickly reply, “Um, yes, I do, but that’s definitely not why I’m-”
“That’s not what I meant,” he cuts you off, equally as nervous to make sure you understand each other. With his hands in his pockets, he drops his gaze and orders, gentle but still stern, “Pick some stuff out for yourself, too. So I can say thank you.”
“I have plenty of makeup already,” you assure him, trying to ignore how the soft intensity in his hazel eyes has heat creeping up your chest. “I’d never want to take advantage of how generous you’re already being.”
Flummoxed by that response because he’s used to girls mostly being receptive to him because of money, Pope offers with a nod toward the men’s section, “Okay, then get some of this skincare stuff for me. My skin’s shit.”
“Well, I’ll never say no to an opportunity to turn a man on to skincare, you giggle. Coming around in front of the register again, you ask, “What’s your current routine?”
“Ah,” he replies, clearly embarrassed by the truth, “I wash my face in the shower, usually, I guess.”
Horror draws slowly across your features. “With your body wash?”
“The way you said that makes me think it’s wrong.”
“Very, very wrong.” You rest your hands on his shoulders and make deadly eye contact, “Like, mortal sin wrong.”
He smirks and shrugs. “I’m sure I’ve done worse.”
“Impossible.” You hold his face between both hands and murmur, “Here, let me look at you up close.”
When his eyes flick upwards, you catch a quick, fleeting innocence in them. It goes away as soon as he settles, but it was definitely there. Something sweet and wholesome inside him. As you scrutinize his T-zone, Pope can’t deny the way his heart rate climbs in his throat.
“First of all,” you announce like you’re admonishing him, “you really need to start putting on sunscreen every day. Red hair and freckles. No excuse.”
He pouts, “I don’t have red hair anymore.”
“It’s auburn and it’s as handsome as the rest of you.” Then, before he can process the compliment fully, you collect a few products for him. You can’t meet his eyes even though you feel them watching your every move; it’s not like you to be confident and flirty, really, especially not with someone who you already know has a kid and a dark side. But you can’t help it. He’s just so fucking handsome and so good with Lena. When you turn back, it’s with full hands. “Dr. Barbara Sturm sunscreen because it’s lightweight, long-lasting, and hydrating. Wear it every single day. Seriously. I’ll be able to smell it on you; if you skip it, I’ll beat you up.”
A laugh punches out of him. “Couldn’t have that.”
Inspecting him very closely, you order, “Now, tell me what you do for work.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Trying to figure out if I’d be a good sugar daddy?”
“Trying to figure out how you have so much skin damage when you’re, what, 35?” Turning his face side to side in your hands, you muse, “Construction, maybe? Landscaping?”
“I own a skatepark,” he says, searching your expression to see how you’ll react. “Half inside, half outside. We do outreach for kids who’ve been in juvie, no parents, shithead parents, whatever. Kids like me and my brothers were. If they show me that they’re in school every semester, they get in for free. I try to keep ‘em fed, help with whatever I can. A lot of the time that means sweating in the sun, which I guess isn’t good for my face.”
God, does he have to be so perfect? Rugged and sexy and soft? That should be illegal, to be frank. You swallow hard, trying not to get flustered at how big your crush is getting all of a sudden, and present him with, “Paula’s Choice toner and exfoliant every other day to get all that outdoors and sweat off your skin and Medik8 peptide serum to prevent even more damage.”
He nods seriously, treating your word as law, and asks with a furrowed brow, “What the hell is a peptide?”
“They’re amino acids that build collagen,” you explain, “so they act as, like, a tiny blueprint to tell your skin to make more of the good stuff and less of the bad stuff.”
He examines the bottle and murmurs, “You’re smart.”
“The boutique owners paid for me to take a couple cosmetology classes,” you tell him with a modest shrug. You’ve never been comfortable accepting compliments, so you quickly hand him one more jar and say, “Finish with this La Mer cream; it’s nice and light for summers here, but it’ll still make sure you’re smooth and soft and touchable.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “Touchable?”
Your lip twitches up into a smirk. “Yeah. Touchable.”
“I guess that’s a good thing.” With an adorably furrowed brow, he asks, “Do I need anything else? Be thorough.”
“That’s a good basic routine to start,” you assure him. “But, y’know, if you want to be fancy and impress someone now that you’re going to have such nice skin, this-” you pick up a classic amber bottle of YSL’s Tuxedo “-is my absolute favorite scent for men.”
He doesn’t even glance at the $300 price tag, stuck staring at the way your lips mold around each word and smile. “Sold.”
All the while, pretending to look at magazines by the checkout, Lena sneakily watches with a small, mischievous smile on her face. She’s never seen Pope look at a girl like this and she’s already daydreaming about ways to meddle.
Pope and Lena live in a beautiful house right on the shore. It has four bedrooms; Lena has the primary suite with a walk-in closet and en-suite bathroom while Pope sleeps in the smallest room closest to the front door. Another bedroom is Pope’s ‘home office,’ which consists of free weights and a laptop. The last bedroom is completely empty save some boxes and plastic totes for storage; Pope explains that he didn’t care how many bedrooms the house had because, quote, Lena picked it out. He just wanted her to be happy – to the tune of a couple million dollars.
It’s an easy evening between the three of you. Pope insists on ordering a veritable buffet of food from your favorite local place, which Lena then insists on actually eating around their dining room table. She says that was her mom’s rule before she died, so they still do it now. You’re surprised how easy it is to talk to them both at once. Pope is an amazing listener, Lena is an absolute chatterbox, and you land somewhere in the middle.
Once you’ve all eaten, Lena gives you a tour of her huge walk-in closet and bathroom, clearly proud of how everything’s color-coded and organized. You just keep throwing Pope incredulous looks, which he responds to with sheepish shrugs. For how absolutely spoiled she is financially, Lena is still a normal, insecure preteen looking for approval from adults and friends alike, so she takes your first makeup lesson deathly seriously.
For two full hours, you teach Lena a few basics about blending colors, pulling straight eyeliner lines, and taking care of her skin. All the while, Pope watches absently. He’ll stand in the doorway for a few minutes in between cleaning the house and making phone calls or he’ll actually come in, sit on the edge of the bathtub, and ask about what you’re doing. He’s particularly nervous about Lena putting so many pointy things near her eye, but you remind him that women have been doing this for thousands of years, so he can calm down. And he grunts. You’re growing to quite like all his little grunts. It seems like most of the time it’s just too much work for him to find the right words while also making eye contact with you, which is clearly a bit of an effort for him, so he makes some absent noise to fill the space of a response.
You can tell he likes you. It’s obvious in the way his eyes can barely hold yours when you can tell he’s usually big into staring. Or, at the very least, he thinks you’re hot, which is a much lower bar since you’re perfectly aware that you are. Still, though. You’re definitely not going to be the one to make the first move because you don’t want to make things weird for Lena, but it’s a fact you file away close to your butterfly-filled stomach, somewhere by your heart, for safekeeping.
After Lena’s in bed (with very clean and dewy skin, thank you very much), Pope drives you home in his ridiculous, huge car. There’s a few beats of awkward silence after he backs out of the driveway before he says, “Thank you again. I know hanging out with a tween and her weird uncle probably wasn’t your ideal Friday night.”
“I actually had a lot of fun,” you promise. “Lena’s a great kid. And you’re not as bad to be around as you think.”
“Thanks,” he replies, sounding almost choked up with his eyes trained forward on the road so he doesn’t have to look at those pretty lips of yours again. “It means a lot. To, ah, to have a woman to- for you to- Fuck.” He shakes his head and tries again, “I just- I’ve got no idea how to do this. Being a girl’s only parent when she’s starting to get into makeup and shit. She asked me for a bra last week. I mean, what the hell am I supposed to do with that?”
You snort and shove him on the arm. You swear he flexes his bicep when your hand lingers, but you don’t point it out. “Buy her a bra, genius.”
He scoffs, “Like it’s that simple.”
“It is that simple. They sell training bras at, like, Target. It’s not rocket science.” But he looks at you like it is, in fact, rocket science, so you roll your eyes and add, “You’re useless; I’ll go shopping with you two. They’re just T-shirt sizes. You won’t even have to talk to anyone or go to a Victoria's Secret or anything.”
“I’m not useless,” he pouts adorably, eyes flicking briefly over to yours, “but your, ah, your, y’know, feminine touch-” You crack up laughing at how foreign the words sound on his tongue and he does, too, shaking his head at himself. He smiles and corrects, “That would be great. Thank you.”
“It’s no problem,” you assure him once again. You can tell the burden of parenting is heavy on his shoulders. Something about him and about Lena makes you want to help. It’s nice to feel like your knowledge matters. Like you’re not just some pretty brainless thing the way so many guys have treated you. Softer, knowing how good it would be for all three of you, you tell him, “It’s really nice to be around a family like you and Lena. I’ll watch her any time you need, Pope.”
He considers that, huffing, “It’d definitely be good to stop pawning her off on my brothers.”
“I overheard you saying they’re, ah, maybe not the best role models.”
“Craig’s a burnout idiot with a newborn,” Pope confirms, “and Deran’s…fine, I guess, but he’s always at his bar, and I’m not going to risk my custody dropping a kid off there.” He runs a hand through his curls and sighs out, “Half the time Lena has to come to the skate park with me to do her homework and shit because she’s not old enough to stay home alone yet and I can’t- I can’t handle the idea of her being home alone, anyway. She never complains about it because her dad didn’t exactly set good standards, but that doesn’t make it the best thing for her.”
There’s a beat of heavy silence, then. His fear of Lena being alone. His fear of failure. His fear of opening up the cracks in his family that you might be able to fill. As Pope pulls into a space in front of your apartment complex, you turn to him and tentatively ask, “Would you mind walking me up? It’s getting awfully late to be alone.”
He swallows hard and nods tightly. As if he would’ve let you walk out of his sight by yourself. “Of course.”
While you collect your bag and jacket, Pope hops out first and opens your door, offering his hand because it’s basically a fifty-foot drop. You take his hand tightly in yours and clamber down, telling him with a huff as you wobble on the dismount, “You should really get a smaller car if you’re gonna be driving pretty girls in high heels around.”
He chuckles stiffly, hand on your lower back a few moments longer than necessary as you stabilize, “If a pretty girl in high heels ends up in my car a few more times, I’ll consider it.”
You giggle and shove him with your elbow. “How the hell does Lena even get in this thing?”
Pope holds his ribs in mock pain. “By helicopter.”
“Oh, so you’re rich rich,” you tease. Then, dropping your voice a bit more seriously, you press, “Where’d you get all your money anyway? Don’t tell me you think I’m dumb enough to believe you own a house like that with your skate park that’s basically a non-profit.”
He follows close to you as you head into the building and toward the elevator. Reluctantly, he admits, “I own a couple properties, too.”
You gasp dramatically, “You’re a landlord?”
“Yes,” he goes on hastily, “but I actually do all the repairs and I follow the local union’s cost guidelines and-”
“I can tell you’re a good man, Pope, don’t worry.” The two of you drop into silence for a few moments as he fights not to disagree with you. That’s something he’s worked on in the court-mandated therapy to keep custody of Lena as a felon and he’s been trying to comply, trying to play by the rules for once, trying to be good. For her and for the world he wants to create for her. Behind the elevator’s closed doors, you ask, “What happened to them – Lena’s parents? Your brother?”
Pope shakes his head. “You don’t want to know.”
“I do.”
“It’ll scare you off.”
“It won’t.” When he still stays quiet, you needle, “If I’m going to be part of her life, you should tell me this kind of stuff. What about her dad?”
Pope just shrugs. “He left.”
“He’s still alive?” You balk, “Shit, what an asshole. Does she know anything about it?”
“Yeah, she does.” Pope glares at his shoes as he remembers aloud, “He packed his shit and dropped her off at my apartment. Middle of the night. Out of nowhere. She was half asleep and he was high as fuck.”
You let out a long breath; somehow, you can still be surprised by how people will treat their children. “You don’t think there’s any chance he’s coming back?”
“No. He’s got a new family down in Mexico. His son’s around Lena’s age.”
“Jesus.” At your floor, you slowly walk down the hall toward your apartment. “What about her mom?”
Pope winces like he’s picking an old wound open. “My mother happened.”
“Smurf, right?”
“Yeah.” Pope wrestles with how to put it for a while. He wants to be honest. He wants to let you in. But that doesn’t make it easy. “Well, she’s…I don’t even know how to put it. She’s not a good person. And we all grew up with a lot of illegal shit happening. Stealing, drugs, prostitutes, all sorts of things.” He leans on your door frame and says quickly, “Anyway, she didn’t like Lena’s mom. Thought she was betraying our family and working with the cops. So she, ah…”
His voice trails off in a way that makes it clearer than words ever could.
With your heart slamming against your ribs, you whisper, “Does Lena know?”
“No,” he sighs back. His eyes are far away and glassy. Lost in memory and lost in the future. “Maybe when she’s older. I don’t know. I don’t want to ruin even more things for her. She doesn’t ever want to talk about it; I don’t even know what the hell her dad told her.”
“You have one hell of a life, Pope Cody.”
“Yeah. I do.” Then he shakes his head as if he’s pushing thoughts away by force. After a beat, he lifts his eyes to yours and murmurs gently, like it’s a secret, “My name’s Andrew. My real name.”
Nibbling your lip for a second, you check, “You prefer to be called Andrew?”
“By you, yeah.”
“By me?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” You bend forward and press a soft kiss to his cheek that he’s going to feel the rest of the night, if not the rest of his life. “Thanks for getting me home safe, Andrew.”
In lieu of my ko-fi, please consider donating to my mother's long-term dementia care fund.
A/N: I really need us to not examine too closely that I’ve gone my whole life saying I don’t have daddy issues and then I fall in love with the character in The Pitt like my dad right down to the prosthetic leg and military experience. I swear guys Shawn is just an oomf!! Might do a smut part 2 we will see; I've been busy finishing up my Adrian series and working on some bat boy fics !! Thank you @vigilantexreader for the beta!
Summary: Reader is a night shift nurse and in an attempt to get Dr. Abbot’s attention: she's got him a cowboy hat after Gloria called him an “E.R. Cowboy’ one too many times.
Masterlist
She knew she’d had worse ideas before, but this was just such a public idea. It was admitting something was there - at least on her side to him. It also meant admitting it in such a public place at work.
There was not much she could do to hide the brown leather cowboy hat in her hands.
The hat was already heavy in her hands as she made her way through the chaotic emergency department. Fighting off eye contact from others who were most certainly questioning why she had the hat in the first place. She had come in early for her shift, something she was positive that Dr. Abbot did as well as she made herself towards the break room, hoping to catch him. The man was relentless, constantly needing to fill the quiet with something to do.
There was an ache that she could sense in the behavior. It wasn’t a fear of being alone, he seemed fine on his own but it was the silence of not being needed that the older man couldn’t seem to stand.
The way he moved with such confidence and expertise, knowing when and where to push the system had immediately drawn her in. His protection of the nurse staff and general charm had drawn her in even further.
Now she was head over heels, trying to justify to herself why she just spent over a hundred dollars for what should be a bit. Hell, she could’ve just gone to the dollar store and got him a fake plastic one and the intent would still be there, but some part of her wanted to show him in any way she could that he was starting to mean more to her.
That there was some weight to those stolen glances and guiding hands. But at the end of the day, she was still just a nurse, and he was the night shift attending. Sure, she was pretty sure Dr. Robby had dated one of his senior residents in the past, and had a weird little thing going with one of the student doctors that was the talk of the rumor mill, but this was Dr. Abbot. He was so careful about boundaries and making sure everyone was okay that a rational part of her brain was screaming at her that he was just nice and that she was reading way too much into the little actions.
But this was admitting something, and the moment she saw Dr. Abbot in the break room, she felt as if she was going to throw up. The hat felt like it weighed a million pounds as he made eye contact with her, a smirk playing on his lips.
“Who’s the hat for?” he asked, setting down his coffee mug. One that she knew had too much sugar to probably even be considered coffee anymore.
“It’s for you,” she said gently, holding it out towards him as she avoided his gaze. Her heart pounded as he let out a huff of laughter, as if he couldn’t believe she was doing this for him. As if he didn’t understand what he did to her.
She completely missed the way he softened looking between her and the hat, his smirk turning into a genuine smile.
“Wow, what’s the occasion?” he joked as he took the hat from her hands to look it over, taking in the careful stitching and nice quality of the hat - something past what a joke would be.
“I just…after the Pitt Fest shooting, I know it was hard on everyone and I overheard Gloria call you and Dr. Robby ER cowboys and I just…every cowboy needs a hat,” she said, shrugging as if it was really that simple. She finally glanced up at him, his expression stunned her as he looked at her as if she hung the moon.
“Thank you,” he said softly and the genuineness of his response made her feel as if her heart was going to beat out of her chest. At least if she goes into cardiac arrest she’s already in the emergency room and in the room with the doctor she trusted the most.
“Well, are you going to try it on?” she asked, trying to diffuse the tension in the room.
Unfortunately somehow Dr. Abbot looked even hotter with a cowboy hat as he slowly placed it on top of his head and looked at her.
“Whoa,” she whispered, taking a tentative step closer to him, one that he almost immediately mirrors. His dark scrubs almost matching the hat, she missed his gray curls that the hat now hid, but somehow the expression on his face made it all worth it.
“That good, huh?” he teased gently.
“Yeah,” she murmured, reaching to brush a curl behind his ear, and he smiled at her boldness.
“Might look good on me, but it probably looks even better on you,” he said, reaching for the hat as she shook her head.
“Oh! No, I got it for you to keep Dr. Abbot,” she said, shaking her head while he chuckled.
“Call me Jack,” he said smiling.
“Jack, it’s your hat,” she protested, his name tasting foreign and new on her tongue, a privilege that she had been craving for so long.
“Yeah, but you know what they say about a girl wearing a cowboy’s hat, right?” he asked, voice scratchy and deep as his eyes sparkling as he moved the hat from his head to her own. He put the hat firmly on her head while he smiled.
“I don’t,” she said. “I don’t know much about cowboys if I’m honest and I-”
“Sounds like I’ll have to teach you a lot, but when a cowboy gives a girl his hat…well it means she’s his,” he whispered, and she fought back a gasp as his hand rested against her cheek, his thumb barely brushing her lips.
She watched him with careful eyes, not wanting to blink even for just a second and it seemed like he had the same feeling.
“Hey! We got trauma one incoming! Dr. Abbot, we need you out there,” Dr. Ellis interrupted and she jumped back as if they were just caught naked in the workplace. Considering their conversation they might as well have been in her opinion.
“I’ll be out there in just one second,” he said, his eyes not leaving her, his hand still in the air where her face used to be.
“What’s with the cowboy hat?” Dr. Ellis asked.
“Don't worry about it, it’s mine,” he said, gently taking the hat off her head and placing it back on his. “It’s all mine,” he said, winking at her.
“Yeah, all yours,” she murmured back as Dr. Ellis frowned, but finally left the two back alone.
“We’ll have to talk about this at the end of the shift, you got plans for after?”
“For when I get off at six in the morning? I hadn’t thought about it,” she joked, having a hard time believing he wasn’t already picturing heading home and crashing after their long shift in the ER.
“Well, you have plans now,” he said, patting her shoulder before he left her shell shocked in the break room. Cowboy hat still firmly on his head.
you feel a deep affection for the little girl who wanders into the store you work at unaccompanied and a deep vitriol for her seemingly neglectful father. when she is given over to the custody of her uncle, it's easy to see he's way out of his depth. less easy to see how completely obsessed with you he is. ( 9.6k words )
warnings : gun mentions, clear neglect of lena on baz's part, reader has an extremely strained relationship with her father, parental abuse, food insecurity, age gap (reader is twenty eight, pope is thirty-nine), mandatory tag for employee/boss relationship but mostly not really 18+mdni cw smut, reader is a bit of a perv (just a bit!!), female masturbation, voice kink/voyeurism? not sure how to tag it? inappropriate use of a platonic voicemail?
note : back to my roots with a long pope fic this is the first full length fic i've written since valentine's day why did nobody tell me???? i do intend for this to be a multi-part fic but that depends on if anybody reads this so if you like it please consider reblogging/commenting i actually worked so hard on this one and i'm really proud of it so i hope you enjoy!!!!
The craft store on Fern Road has been there ever since you could remember. Nestled between a hair salon and a bakery right in the middle of Main Street, it doesn’t get a whole lot of natural light once you venture past the huge open windows. Surrounded by a U-shape of shelving around all three of the back walls, most of the middle of the store is taken up by display tables or large metal crates of stock. There’s a system, so meticulously organised you could probably recreate it with your eyes closed.
Notebooks go on the left wall; A5 bullet journals on one end and A2 canvas sketchbooks on the other and everything else in between. Planners, calendars, to-dos to stick on the fridge, everything had a place. On the right wall were the art supplies, paint at the back and crayons at the front, organised by skill level, price point and colour. The back wall was for the more novelty items, mostly things that you only buy one or two of. Hot glue guns, easels, even a sewing machine that’s been collecting dust since you were in high school.
It had been there the day you got the job; fourteen years old and itching for something to keep you occupied outside of your house. Mrs. Rayskel had been a lot more involved in the operations of the store back when you had first started as its only other employee, but now she mostly leaves you alone.
The middle sections are the ones most likely to entice a child, you think. Huge metal crates of stuffed animals, short, open cabinets of bracelet making kits and paint by number books. There’s a table right as you walk in that has hundreds of different types of pens in dividers on the outside, the entire area of the surface taken up in thick sheets of paper meant for testing pen types, but really just being a place for kids to draw.
You’re assuming that’s what brought in the little girl sitting on the carpet now. It’s pouring with rain outside, early afternoon in the middle of the week, and you haven’t had anyone come in all day. You don’t mind the slow periods. You keep your work station clean and organised (one of the perks of being the only employee is you don’t have to worry about someone else fucking up your shit), you have your crochet projects to keep you company at the desk. Most of the time you put on a calming playlist of royalty-free music and mind your business until the early evening when you close. Mrs. Rayskel only works weekends now, so you’re in every other day from 8:30am to open until 3:30pm to close. You’ve got about two hours until you need to start your sweep (assuming anyone comes in at all), checking the pen caps have been put on, replacing sample paper, rotating stock for visibility, when you spot her.
She’s quite small, can’t be older than seven, sitting on the plush rug by one of the windows. You hire a carpet cleaner every three months to treat the floors here, and you know it hasn’t been very long since the last time. Still, when you approach, you only bend down on your knees. “Hi.”
You hadn’t heard her come in, and you’re not even sure if you were in the store when she did. You could’ve been in the bathroom, or taking a few minutes out the back door, or completely zoned out at your desk.
“Hi,” she says back, shy. She’s wearing a purple raincoat that seems to have done a very good job of protecting her from the downpour, her dark hair sitting loose around her shoulders. In her hand is a stuffed unicorn toy, and discarded in front of her is a pegasus. “Am I in trouble?”
You frown. “No, of course not. You’re not in trouble.” Where are her parents? You’re not sure if she’s old enough to be in school yet, but it’s close enough to midday that she should be there if she is. It’s not particularly cold outside but water is flowing down the gutters like rivulets, and you haven’t seen anyone walk by in almost an hour. “What’s your name?”
She shrinks in on herself slightly. “I’m not supposed to say.” Right, don’t talk to strangers and all that. That doesn’t help you.
You nod slowly, careful not to come on too strong. She’s quiet, most unaccompanied kids you get in here are little hurricanes, impossible to miss. You’re not even sure how long she’s been here. Surely not longer than ten minutes.
You tell her your own name as a gesture of goodwill, pointing to the name tag clipped to your sweater. “I work here,” you wave your hand awkwardly at the rest of the store.
She likes knowing your name, you can tell. She says it softly, stuttering over one of the syllables, before eventually shuffling in her seat and speaking up again. “I’m Lena.”
Okay, you can work with that. Step one is establish trust, step two is locate her guardians. Step three might be call CPS if you can’t get those two done before you close but the likelihood of that happening is extremely low. You have kids wander in here by themselves all the time, just not usually quite so young.
“Hi Lena,” you say gently. “Can I sit with you?”
She nods politely, still looking like you might scold her, and your heart aches for this girl. “I’m sorry for touching your toys,” she says as you cross your legs.
You couldn’t care less. “That’s okay. Do you want to play?”
Lena perks up, still hesitant. “Can I?”
“Sure!” You try to give her your softest, kindest smile. “Do you want me to play with you?”
That’s what really gets her, like she hadn’t been expecting you to offer your time. “Can we play with the ponies?” When she smiles one of her bottom teeth is missing. You never want to let her go.
“We can play whatever you’d like.”
Lena carefully gathers the unicorn and pegasus into her lap, examining them with great care. She hands you the pegasus. “This one is yours,” she says, smile threatening to take over her entire face.
You accept it seriously. “What’s her name?”
Lena looks at you like you haven’t been paying attention properly. “She doesn’t have one. Her name got taken by the evil magic unicorn.” She holds up the unicorn for emphasis. “She has to get it back.”
You haven’t played pretend like a little girl since you were one, but it was pretty easy to get back into the swing with Lena. Never just a game, always a full world with rules that spring forth fully formed, buried beneath layers of stories of princesses and ghosts. You remember how it felt to hold all of that in your head all at once, never about good prevailing over evil and instead how it felt to be betrayed, or forgiven, or loved.
You let her hold onto that for the next thirty-eight minutes until the bell above the door rings again.
“Lena.”
Lena smiles up at the man dripping onto the welcome mat just inside the door. “Hi, Daddy.”
Pretty much all bravado you’ve had about tearing Lena’s guardians a new one, simmering and stewing the longer this poor girl sat here with only a stranger for supervision, disappears immediately when you look up at Lena’s dad. He smiles politely at you in a way that scares you more than anything, barely glancing at his daughter. You’ve been yelled at by customers before, but based on the lump on this guy’s left hip you think this man might not be the yelling type.
“I thought I told you not to wander off,” he says, uneasy smile on his face. You think you might have read him wrong; not the type of man to yell in front of someone else.
Your metaphorical grip on the little girl in front of you tightens in panic. You had thought this entire time that what you wanted was for Lena’s parents to come and collect her, and of course you don’t want for them to have abandoned her. But there seems to be no secret third option where they just misplaced her and they’re worried sick and they took their eyes off her for a second and when they looked back she was gone. “We need to get home.”
Lena looks up at him like for a second she doesn’t recognise him.
This man is clearly her father, or at least another relative. They bear a striking resemblance, the features Lena is still growing into looking sinister and cruel on the older man. You wonder briefly if he’s always looked like that. If there had been a time when her father had been a kind and loving man.
Right now at least she looks like she knows different than to argue with him. “Okay, daddy.”
She looks at you, the same smile on her face that he’d given you. It looks lovely and gentle coming from her. “Thank you for playing with me.”
You don’t want to let her go - least of all without offering some big act of kindness. You want her to remember you, if she ever needs something to hold onto.
“Do you want that one?” You gesture at the unicorn in her hand and hold out the pegasus. “You can have them both.” You’ll take it out of your paycheque. Hell, you’d give her the whole damn crate. She had been so excited to have someone to play with.
Lena’s dad is already halfway out the door as she stands up, brushing her knees off. “No, that’s okay.” She leaves the pony on the floor. “Thank you for playing with me.”
She’s gone before you can figure out what to say.
You close up quietly, doing all your normal checks. You’re not quite sure what to do with yourself, mind stuck on the little girl with the purple coat. You don’t know what’s going on between her and her father. There’s a high likelihood that he’s just having a bad day, that he’s usually warm and affectionate and not someone his daughter has to be scared of. You don’t know this man, and you don’t know his daughter.
But you recognise the look on her face when her father showed up. She’s so small, barely up to your hip. You can’t imagine being her parent and not being obsessed with her. She’s clever, and articulate, and the story she dreamed up with those two stuffed toys shows that. Her father had a gun on him on a Thursday afternoon, in the middle of Main Street. She’s so little, she can’t comprehend cruelty.
She has to make up evil creatures to process things.
You think about her for a few days after she leaves. You kept both the stuffed animals behind the counter; it felt wrong to put them back on display. Who knows, maybe you could have been reading way too far into it anyway.
——
You never really learned how to shop. It wasn’t really a skill that you thought you’d have to learn, you supposed. Adults know how to do it, you’ll probably figure out how to eventually. At twenty-eight, you figure it’ll come to you any day now.
The store is always too bright, even though you always come in the evenings. Harsh, fluorescent lighting makes you feel like you’re somewhere more important than in your body. You’ve been standing in the cereal aisle for longer than you need to, one hand down by your side holding your basket against your calf, the other hovering over a box you’ve already picked up twice.
$4.49
You turn it over, reading the nutritional label like you’re expecting anything called ‘Cinnamon Raspberry Crunch’ to be even a little healthy. Most of the other cereals, less sugar, sit right beside it, all about a dollar cheaper.
You put the first box back.
Your basket has exactly three things in it: bread, milk, and a packet of penne that goes on sale every two weeks. You don’t need anything else, you never really plan on getting much. But you’ve been thinking about this stupid cereal for days now, since you last came in and passed it on your way out. You could just buy it. You’re almost thirty.
You can’t explain it, can’t verbalise, can’t even articulate for your own peace of mind the unease that comes from that box of cereal. Your chest constricts and you can’t form any rational argument other than the fact that thinking about buying it makes your head hurt.
Your phone starts ringing. The timing is almost funny.
You let it ring two full times, trying to control your breathing. You never understood how some people can just take a deep breath before doing something and feel braced for impact. It’s never really worked for you.
“Hi, dad.” Your voice wobbles.
Your father doesn’t bother saying hello on the other side, instead waiting. You think it might have been the amount of time it took you to answer the phone, but you don’t bring it up because you hear how ridiculous it sounds even in your own head. “You took your time.”
You shift your weight, glancing the other direction down the aisle to make sure there’s no one else around. “I’m at the store.”
“At this hour?” You can practically hear him deciding what version of himself he wants to be today. “I suppose you are a busy girl.” You don’t know what to say to that so you say nothing.
He doesn’t need you to talk to keep the conversation going. “Making good choices?”
“Yes, dad.” You feel like a little girl. Your father never knew what much to do with a girl. He’d call you sport and drag you places like fishing. “I know.”
“You have a few bad habits,” he says, like he’s spoken to you face to face even once in the last five years. You don’t think he could pick you out of a lineup if the cops asked him to. “Never quite grown out of them,” he says gently.
You stare at the shelf in front of you like it might save you from this conversation. “I know.”
There’s that silence again.
“You don’t have to stop,” he says, voice dripping. Disappointment slides into his tone like it knew it was expected. “I’m trying to help you.”
“I didn’t mean to snap.” It’s been a long day and you know you have a pile of laundry to fold when you get home. “I’m sorry.”
Your father exhales, long and slow. You have the entire time to ruminate while he’s making his mind up. There really is no rhyme or reason to him sometimes, it is left purely up to his whim. Sometimes a mood you think is a good one can sour in an instant. You’ve known him for how long and you just can’t get a read on him.
“Anyway,” he breezes past it. “I called because I realised you never paid me back for your electric bill last month. Remember? I covered it because you were short.”
Your car had died and you’d blown most of your savings on getting it fixed, leaving you short on your electric bill for the month. Your father had been practically a last resort, first spending hours researching all possible public transit routes to see if there was any way you could make it work. You’d given him the money back immediately when you’d been paid. Asking your father for anything has always made you feel like you’re disappointing him and when it comes to your dad disappointment can look like a lot of things.
One time when you were really little there had been a party at your house. You don’t remember what it was for — just that it had been really important because your dad said it was, and that meant everything had to be right. You remember more of the buildup than the party itself if you’re honest. The air was tight, so quiet that not even the house dared settle. Every day you would take the school bus home and every day you’d drag your feet longer and longer, anything to avoid getting home.
Your father is a perfectionist, you tell people now. Highly strung. Particular.
You remember being made to eat dinner on the porch that week, plastic plates balanced on your knees. You weren’t allowed at the table, your dad insistent you would make a mess. You didn’t think you were a messy child but your dad isn’t the kind of person you argue with. He hated cleaning up after you — that part, at least, had always been made clear.
The night of the party, the house filled up in a way it never had. There had been too many people, all too loud, all of them laughing like your house wasn’t riddled with landmines intentionally set to detonate around your father. You stayed outside, sitting on the stoop, watching the older boys from the neighbourhood ride their bikes up and down the street under the orange glow of the streetlights.
You could hear everything going on inside. Glasses clinking, voices rising, your father’s laugh louder than you had ever heard it before. Then a sharp sound, one that you knew could only come from the vase on the dining table being knocked over.
You had known what that meant, even back then. Something small goes wrong and everything else follows. The night would fold in on itself, people would leave too quickly.
You could hear someone inside begin apologising and all you could picture was your father standing there, shoulders tight the way they would always be right before he snapped.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, like it was nothing at all.
You didn’t come inside until you were sure the last person had left; nobody came to make sure you were in bed. You have never been sure of where you stand with him.
So you’re careful when you speak up again. “I did pay you back.”
He hums. “I don’t think so.”
You’ve barely been able to afford gas this month because of the extra money being taken out of your account. Your job is consistent and pays you pretty well but you still work retail
“I did, I transferred it. I’ll check-”
He cuts you off with your name, sharp and steady. “Okay, calm down. You don’t have to get upset. If you say you did then I’m sure you did.” He clearly doesn’t believe you. You don’t mind him being wrong, but to assign you facets of yourself that don’t really exist is what spikes your heart rate.
“Dad-”
He doesn’t let you cut him off. “No, I won’t keep you. If you can pay me back when you get paid, I’d appreciate it. Maybe this will take you to be a bit more responsible with your money, hey? Love you, kiddo.” He hangs up after you repeat the sentiment weakly, leaving you staring at the cereal, burning up under the fluorescent lights.
——
You’ve become somewhat of a creature of habit as you enter your late twenties. You have your small, solitary hobbies — your crocheting, your crafts, your scrolling through social media and seeing which of your high school friends are getting engaged. Spring breaks into summer and you spend the next couple of weeks preparing for the summer rush. The rain settles, giving way to a dry heat that has you grateful your car’s air conditioning hasn’t gone yet.
The store’s air conditioning is fairly reliable and since you’re the only one who works no one ever messes with your settings. The store is kind of a hangout spot for some younger kids who have clearly been set loose for the first time. They come in for the ever-rotating collection of board games, and you become somewhat of an unpaid babysitter.
You don’t mind, though. Most of them are polite and well-behaved, and you’ve always loved being around children. Most of the time they’re a lot nicer to be around than adults. There’s no small talk, no worrying about filling the silence, or being annoying. Most of the time, the type of kids who want to come into a quiet store and draw or play chutes and ladders for hours, they just like when adults pay attention to them. You hope you can make them feel important, even if it’s just for an afternoon. Education had been something you’d considered going into once you graduated high school but the workload and the student loans and the decisiveness of the whole thing had been too daunting and eventually you’d put it off for so long it didn’t seem worth pursuing anymore.
You keep the two ponies under the counter, kept safe from stock rotations and curious children by your careful hands. You protect them from dust, keep them safe. It feels a bit silly to keep them there, keep them clean and ready. You can’t bear to separate them.
The summer rush comes and goes and with it comes the back to school rush. You end up paying your father back a second time, too busy with work to have the energy to deal with the stress of it. You don’t think he has your address, but you also didn’t think he had it the last time he’d shown up at your place.
It’s perhaps the first day of the slow season, early in the afternoon, right after all the kids have gone back to school. You’ve done all the restocking, you’ve done all the normal cleaning, all the normal admin. You’ve even gone as far as to dust all the baseboards, you’re that desperate for something to do. Muscling through the boredom, you’ve finally settled in your comfy chair behind the desk, crochet project on your lap and calming music playing through the speaker connected to your phone.
The bell twinkles as the door is shoved open and you don’t even really have the time to look up before your name is being called, bright and warm. She’s not wearing her purple raincoat but you would recognise Lena anywhere. She looks at you sheepishly, like she’s just considered the idea that you don’t remember her.
You’re sure it must be something awry with you. So desperate for connection, to find the innate good, to understand everything in your life, you’ve always been incredibly quick to attach. Perhaps not attach exactly, you think, you’re probably less attached to Lena than perhaps the idea of her. You don’t have the best memory, it’s not photographic or eidetic or anything, but you remember faces and names. You remember people in your kindergarten class, and adults who showed you kindness, and customers you had completely mundane interactions with. You wonder often what it says about you the memories your brain has decided to latch onto, what has shaped you into who you are. Your preschool teacher scolding you for talking during nap time when you hadn’t been, being abandoned at the bus stop by a friend who promised she’d wait for your bus before beginning her walk home. One time, you had been maybe seventeen, down by the waterfront after a vicious fight with your father. You don’t recall what the fight was about, but you remember the little boy you had seen by the water’s edge. He had a bucket filled with seashells, and his grandmother was sitting on the sand helping him decorate a sandcastle with his findings. Eventually she’d stood up, dusting herself off, and told him they had to head home for dinner with his mama. The boy had cried something awful, tears and sobs, begging his grandma to just help him find one more shell. One more, just one more. Is it odd you can recall the moment with perfect clarity, feeling your own heart split in two just at the sound of his upset?
Lena has grown since you last saw her, and if she hadn’t referred to you by name you would’ve thought you’d projected her likeness onto a new girl. She beams at you with a missing tooth, skipping forward as if it’s been five minutes instead of five months.
She’s flanked by a man who is new to you, not the same guy who had come to collect her last time she’d been in. He’s staring at you when you look away from her, holding the door open for her to come inside and making sure he catches it before it slams. Blue eyes stare straight into you deeper than you think you’ve ever really looked into yourself, and he doesn’t look away at being caught.
He’s thick, broad in the shoulders and stocky in the chest. You squirm under his gaze, feeling suddenly like you’re doing something wrong by looking at him. Your chest stirs and you’re completely aware of every single one of your limbs.
“Hi, Lena.” Her smile widens impossibly far for such a small face. Your heart does the same thing. “How are you?”
She seems more forthcoming this time, telling you all about how she’s just started second grade, the friends she’s been making, how hard the classes are. She talks with a level of familiarity about her life the way only a second grader could, like it would never even occur to her that you wouldn’t have anything to compare it to. You discard your crochet project, scooting your chair forward and leaning over on your elbows to make sure she knows you’re giving her all your attention.
Well, almost all of your attention. The man she came with stands directly behind Lena, arms crossed as if he’d expect you to try and hurt her, and his eyes stay trained on you. You’re not sure if he’s just a starer — some men are; how creepy it is depends on how long it goes on before he tries to talk to you — or if he’s watching for something.
You kick off where you’re leaning, wondering if he might stop if you move. “I have something for you,” you feel foolish already. Chances are she’s forgotten, or she doesn’t even like horses anymore, or she didn’t even at the time but they were her only option. “People bought all the other ones but I remember you liked these ones.” You look like a fool holding out the two stuffed animals in your hand, not even knowing if she wants them. Lena’s eyes light up at the sight of the ponies but she doesn’t move towards them.
Instead, she looks up at her bodyguard. “Can I, Uncle Pope?”
Lena’s uncle Pope finally tears his eyes from you, looking down at her. His mouth pulls into a small smile, strained like he’s not used to doing it but fond like he can’t help it anyway. “Yeah,” his voice is crackly and quiet. “How much are they?” He looks back to you.
You wonder if he thinks you’re going to quiz him on your eye colour or something. You shake your head, practically tripping over your own actions to get ahead of yourself and skip through the first part of interactions. “No, it’s fine. They’re for her.”
Lena gasps, collecting them both into her chest with an iron grip. She thanks you and doesn’t have to be reminded, eyes shining. You get the idea that Pope has heard about the two of them before. He watches her glee, affectionate an albeit untrained smile widening on his face. “Do you want your pen things?”
Her eyes widen to saucers. “I can still have them?” Pope nods and Lena practically shoots off towards the stationery section, leaving the two of you alone. He turns to orient his body towards her instinctively, but he’s standing so close to you that you can smell his aftershave. It sends a hot feeling from your chest to your stomach.
His hair is thick and unruly, such a rich copper it almost looks brown in the warm lighting of the store. His curls look well loved but less well maintained and you find your mind stumbling forward again; what hair products does he use? Does he like it touched? Does he have anyone there to touch it? What would it feel like?
“She talks about you a lot,” Pope says, sounding like whatever the opposite of conversational is. He speaks like he regrets it retroactively, aching for solitude but subjecting himself to small talk with strangers. “Practically begged me to come here since she has a half day. I told her if she did all of her homework she could get some of those pens.” He mimes using a pen. “Y’know the ones, they smell like all the different stuff? Bananas and apples and crap?”
You nod. They’re just called scented markers, but you don’t feel the need to correct him. You picture him at a kitchen counter, trying to coax his niece into finishing a reading log with scented markers. You know Lena has a father, a man that she at least called ‘dad’ five months ago. What happened to him? Why isn’t he bringing her to get sniff pens? Is he still around, with his concealed carry and his seemingly cold indifference? That’s probably unfair, you don’t know this man, and Lena had clearly loved him.
But she looks far happier today than she had the last time you saw her, you can’t lie to yourself about that.
“She’s a good kid.” You have to assume. She’s lovely, incredibly easy to be kind to, but you don’t know her when it really comes down to it. “Seemed like she was having a hard time last time I saw her.” You shrug with an indifference that feels completely unnatural. “I wanted to do something nice for her.”
Pope looks over at her, taking the caps off the sample markers to smell them, then down at you. You feel real juvenile with your little crochet stars in your lap, you’re planning on making bunting out of them, sitting there in your work outfit. He’s clearly older than you by a significant amount, he’s probably got a respectable job, maybe a wife. You wonder what kind of family they are, both of them so different from Lena’s father. Perhaps you’re being unfair, maybe it wasn’t a gun, and maybe he’d just been having a bad day. You want to ask Pope about him, but you bite your tongue.
“You didn’t have to,” he says gruffly, looking down. He doesn’t have a wedding ring on, and the fact that you have noticed makes your cheeks warm. “Lot to do for someone else’s kid.”
You feel a little bit scolded, shrinking into him. This man clearly cares a lot about his niece, perhaps more than her father, you want him to think you’re good for her. Want him to like you.
You’re sure it has nothing to do with the fact that his biceps are too big for his shirt and when he’d been staring at you all the blood in your chest had stalled.
“I didn’t mean to overstep,” you say cautiously.
He blinks at you. The expressions that he’s shot your way have been nowhere near as emotive as the ones he’s given Lena which is to be expected on a certain level, but he’s really been giving you nothing.
He looks at you for so long you have to be the one to break eye contact. Lena bounces up to the counter, marker pigment around her nose with a pack of scented felt tip pens. “Oh, Lena,” you say, eyes darting back over to her uncle. He’s looking down his shoulder at her. “You’ve got pen on your face.”
“Sorry,” she frowns, scrubbing at her nose with the back of her hand. “’S’it gone?” She juts her head back to present to you.
You bend down to rummage through your purse, fishing out a pack of face wipes from the bottom. “Here,” you pull one out of the package and present it to her. “Do you mind if I wipe it off?”
Lena shakes her head, curls bouncing wildly. She’s got beautiful, dark hair, and she clearly didn’t get that from her dad. She doesn’t look much like Pope at all, and you don’t remember her father’s face with as much clarity as you’ll recall her uncle’s, but you don’t see much of a family resemblance between the two of them. He could be from her mother’s side but given that Lena is clearly mixed you’d made an educated guess that the two of them were brothers.
“Thank you,” she enunciates, nodding slightly on each word. You wipe away the pigment gently, catching sight of the way Pope watches you out of the corner of your eye. You’re not sure if you’d been overstepping when you’d brought it up but you’re pretty sure it qualifies now. You finish up, curling the wipe in your hand and sitting back. Lena looks up at Pope with a toothy smile. “All better?”
He nods at her. “Be careful with them. We can’t go to grandma’s if you’ve got pen all over your face.”
He doesn’t have that way about him that people who spend a lot of time around kids usually do. None of the fake niceties in the voice, there’s clear affection there and he’s good with her, but there’s a level of clumsiness there. The love had come naturally but the mannerisms are still forming themselves. Easy and wrought with the deception of labour in the same breath.
He’s holding a twenty out to you and you realise with a start it's for the pens. “Right.” Your face gets hot and you stand up to escape the feeling. You take the twenty, your fingertips tingling where they’d connected with his. They’re rough, calloused, and they don’t shy away from yours. You reach for the key to unlock the cash drawer in the till to get him his change.
“Keep the rest.”
He says it in a way that makes you not want to argue with him. You ignore that instinct.
“They’re four dollars.”
He stares at you again. “You have a tip jar, don’t you?”
Technically, sure. There’s a jar there that’s labelled for tips, but people rarely leave cash in it. You know his name but you feel wrong saying it. Yours is displayed on the badge you have clipped to your top. You tell him anyway, changing the topic.
Pope blinks, eyebrows furrowing. “Everyone calls me Pope.”
“Well, Pope,” you say as if you hadn’t collected that and tucked it away the second that Lena had referred to him. “That’s like a two hundred percent tip, so.” You turn the key and the drawer pops out. You tuck the twenty away and hand him back a ten. $5.15 with tax, $4.85 tip. "Happy?” You dump the coins in the jar. He frowns, which is more of a reaction than you’ve gotten the entire rest of the time, so you take that as a success.
Lena tugs on his sleeve. “Are we going to Grandma Smurf’s now? She said I could go in the pool, s’long as I wear sunscreen.”
Pope’s frown deepens slightly but he manages to fix his face before he looks down at her. “We can go now. You sure?” Lena nods resolutely.
You watch them go, Lena turning around to wave at you at the door. Pope looks right at you and raises an arm in goodbye. There’s a vein that runs down his arm and you have to duck behind the counter, mortified. When you make your ascent they’re gone but your face is still hot.
You spend the rest of the night thinking about Lena’s uncle Pope. You wish you’d introduced yourself with your surname so he’d been inclined to do the same. He hadn’t given you any indication that he had liked you in any way, so you’re not sure exactly why he’s got you all hot and bothered. He’s at least a decade older than you, if not more, but you can’t argue and claim that’s not your type.
He probably wouldn’t have captured your attention so severely if he hadn’t been so good with his niece. It had been something that you’d realised rather suddenly a few years ago; that you were no longer a girl but rather just a woman. You’d felt your whole adolescence that you were too young to be an adult. Mrs. Rayskel had hired you two days after you had turned fourteen, so when you woke up one day and realised that you were actually an appropriate age to be working, in your mid twenties. That you’re not a young adult, instead, an adult. An adult who thought she would’ve been in a relationship secure enough to at least be thinking about having children. Men your age don’t want to settle down, at least none of the ones you’ve ever met have.
But an older man with a niece he clearly adores? You have to slap yourself in the middle of stirring your pasta to stop yourself from perving on this poor man. You wonder if he’d mind.
——
You spend maybe two weeks having your heart race every time the door to the shop opens, and are rewarded for your diligence when eventually Pope does return, this time without Lena in tow.
You’re actually working this time, restocking the board games in the corner. You’re mostly hidden behind a shelf so you’re able to pretend you haven’t seen him and thus, act adequately nonchalant as he finds you.
“Oh, hi.” You’re kneeling on the floor restocking the bottom shelf and despite the fact that your skirt ends at your calves you tug it down self-consciously. “Lena’s uncle, Pope, right?”
He nods slowly, so slow it’s like it’s something he needs to process. He looks marginally less happy this time and you know it’s probably because his niece isn’t with him but there’s a small spark in the back of your head that whispers his frown is directed at your outfit. You’re being ridiculous, he doesn’t give a shit what you’re wearing. He offers a hand and you don’t even think before taking it. His hand is so much bigger than yours, and the vein on his arm bulges as he helps you stand. “Everything okay?”
You dust yourself off, looking down at your ruffled socks against your boots. It’s still been fairly warm during the day but you have errands to run after sundown. You’ve come to the conclusion about Pope that he might just be a quiet man. It’s not any disdain for you or anything you’ve done, he’s just a pensive man.
“What…” he clears his throat. Pope leans up to tug on a patch of his hair at the back, centring himself and speaking up again. “What do you do when you’re not at work?”
You perk up a little bit. There’s no way… he’s not asking you out, right? It’s probably that he wants to know which crafts you engage in, maybe he needs gift ideas for Lena. The answer is embarrassingly sparse, and you definitely paint yourself as a bit of a homebody. “Crochet, drawing, I watch documentaries sometimes…” you need to work on how you present yourself. If he wanted to go out with you before he probably won’t after this. “Then errands mostly.”
“You don’t have a boyfriend? Kids?” He asks bluntly.
“Uh… no. Why?”
He has the good sense to look sheepish at his abruptness. “Lena’s my brother’s daughter.” You can hear every breath he takes, heavy and with a heaving chest. That answers that question then. “I don’t know how to take care of her, thought this shit was meant to be easier. Thought all the hard parts about parenting were diapers and tantrums and she’s got neither of them. All I had to do was make sure she ate and did her homework and said please and thank you.” He lets out a hot rush of air. “’S not like that at all.” He shakes his head, looking up at the ceiling.
You have no idea what he wants you to say. Did he come to vent — for parenting advice? Did he assume you must have kids based on how you acted with her?
“All that shit was fine when she had her mom and dad but now,” he looks down at you, and for the first time since you first met him there’s a different emotion behind his eyes. You don’t have very much to go off, can’t even name his baseline, but from the fluttering eyelashes and the furrowed brows this looks very much like a man out of his depth finally confiding a fear. “Now I have to look after her. Have to, get to.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know how he did it. But I have to work, and she needs someone to watch her after school, and the sign out there says you guys shut before four in the afternoon.”
You raise an eyebrow at him, more surprised than anything. “You want me to… babysit her?”
Pope seems to realise that this is an odd request. Perhaps not the most appropriate, either. He clears his throat and pulls again at the curls on the nape of his neck. “You can tell me to get lost.”
“No, just…” you feel like if you don’t shut your mouth he might realise how strange this is. Most people would like to vet a babysitter, I’m a random adult you’ve met once, how do I know you’re not insane and won’t just dump her here and run away? “You want me?”
Pope gestures to you, your pretty skirt, your general disposition. “She likes you.” He shrugs stiffly like the action is something unfamiliar to him.
“When would you need me?” As much as you like Lena and as much as the thought of having him in a position where you’d need to see him every day makes your heart palpitate against your ribcage, this is your job. You can’t quit it for this, definitely not before you’re sure it’ll shake out. “Like after school? I’m usually here until four-ish.”
“She finishes school at three forty-five, it’s only three blocks. You have a car?” You nod. “Good, a license?” You nod again. “If you need to stay here to finish up she can take the school-bus here, stops down the street.” He points out the window, you’re too preoccupied looking at the way his shirt strains at the arm to see the bus stop. “If you can, you pick her up from school, bring her back here or to your house or the park or my apartment or wherever. Keep her entertained, make sure she does her homework and eats her veggies. Sometimes I’d need to work late, so she’d need to spend the night with you and you’d have to take her to school. You can do it at my place or if you want to keep her at your apartment that’s fine. School starts at nine but she can go in at eight if you need to be here. Plus weekends. Not every day, and not always that late. I just…” he looks almost embarrassed to need the help. “I can pay you.”
You’d hope so, for all that.
“Lena mentioned her grandma?” You ask gently. “Do you think Lena could stay with her some days?”
He looks at you as if he’s surprised you would bring her up. “No, I don’t want her around my mom.” He sniffs, looking away from you. “If you don’t want to just say it. Don’t have to make shit up to help me. I could give you fifty bucks an hour — what do you make here?” It’s not fifty bucks an hour, you can say that right now. “Double on weekends and for nights. Plus money for anything she needs, gas money for you to pick her up, money for dinner and whatever.” He’s almost breathless. “I can pay you.”
What the hell does this man do?
“Pope. It’s a lot to ask,” you say. “I can definitely take her on the weekends, and probably a couple of days after school. I don’t know about nights, but depending on where you live I could maybe swing by in the morning and help her get ready for school, drop her on my way?”
Pope looks back at you, some semblance of a smile twitching the corner of his lip upwards. It’s the kind of smile that makes it impossible for you to not smile as well, which is surprising considering it still doesn’t make him look particularly happy. For a guy this steely, you suppose any amount of joy on his face makes you smile.
“Why don’t I give you my phone number, and we can talk about this while I’m not at work?” What Pope and Lena probably need is a nanny, or at least someone who can full time devote themselves to Lena. You have a job that, while it awards you a lot of freedom, is something you couldn’t live without. And while you adore Lena, and you’re sure that’ll only grow with time, you need the money desperately.
Pope reaches for you and after drawing a complete blank, you realise he wants your phone. “Oh, sorry. I left it on the desk.” Your father has been calling you, upset that you’d fallen asleep last night and forgotten to reply to his message. You know what it’ll be, either asking you for something or scolding you. You haven’t the energy to entertain him at the moment. The two of you swap information and when he hands you your phone back he lingers.
“Do you like this job?” He asks quietly, cocking his head and studying your face. You nod, lost for words with him so close. One step further in and you’d practically be chest to chest. “When you were a kid you wanted to be a… craft girl?”
You can’t hide your snicker, ducking your head, and he frowns like you’d yelled at him.
“No,” you admit. “This isn’t what I wanted to do when I was little. I wanted to be a teacher.” You’ve never really told another person that, never had another person to tell. By the time you graduated high school you were lucky if your father noticed you hadn’t been home in days, and when you finally moved out at twenty he’d looked at you like he’d forgotten you even lived there. Now he calls you every week, which is nice of him, but you wished in the decade it’s been since you last saw his face you’d developed a thicker skin. Or at least the ability to not cry whenever he hurts your feelings.
Pope’s eyes light up. “See, you’re perfect.” He tilts his chin down to mirror yours like the two of you are sharing a secret. “This is basically like being a teacher.”
You laugh again and this time he doesn’t seem so offended. “Goodbye, Pope.”
This time when he leaves he doesn’t turn to wave at you, but it gives you ample time to watch him cross the street to his car. There’s a man there who snickers and punches Pope’s chest when he gets in, but Pope doesn’t even bat an eye, pulling the car out and meeting your gaze right as he reaches the edge of the window.
You look down at your phone. “Pope Cody…” you muse, looking at his contact information. You’re surprised he offered his surname at all, the longer you speak to him the less he seems the type. You smile down at it and startle, caught, at the sound of the bell. Your phone slips from your grasp and you bring up your other hand to catch it before it hits the floor. The app closes in the fuss, and with it goes his unsaved contact information. “Shit.” You hiss, looking up at the customer, a mom and two little boys who thankfully don’t look like they heard your expletive and put your phone down on the counter. You can only hope that he texts you first, you suppose you’ll find out if he expects you to make the first move.
——
It’s late when your phone rings. So late, you know it’s not Pope. So late you’re going to regret this in the morning when you have to get up and clean your apartment in the morning. You’re not not going to sleep, you’re just not trying very hard. You’re sprawled out on your bed, watching the ceiling fan spin, trying to fight off a headache.
It’s your father, he’s the only man with the audacity enough to call you at midnight on a Friday night. You’ll call him back in the morning, he has no way of knowing you’re awake to ignore him. You’re so exhausted, your sheets are so warm and smooth, you’ve been teetering on the edge of consciousness for a while now. The vibrating doesn’t even catch up to you until it’s almost finished ringing.
Your phone screen goes black again, plunging the room into the sub-darkness that only comes from the whole city being asleep. Then, it lights up again with a text.
Huffing, your face pressed against your pillow, you slap the mattress on your side until you finally wrap your hands around the device.
You have 1 New Voicemail.
Your father has never left you a voicemail. Spam callers might, but usually they’re unintelligible. Your phone will have taken a transcript as best it can, and you squint at the brightness. It streaks right past your retinas and into the core of your brain, making your headache worse.
Uh hey it’s pope Cody—
You scramble up until you’re on your knees, heart rate spiking. You can’t be laying down, not with your ears ringing the way they are. Based on the paragraph it’s not a super short message, and you bite your lip with delight when you see it’s almost a full minute.
There’s a feeling in your chest you can’t get rid of, can’t deep-breath or count-to-ten away. Itching for movement, you feel your hand start wandering up of its own accord from where it’s resting on your thigh upwards, slipping under the hem of the big t-shirt you’d been intending on sleeping in and finding your nipple. You toy with it almost distractedly, stuck in limbo of being desperate to rake your eyes over his words and wanting to hear him.
God, how tragic are you? Your nipples are both hard already and perhaps it’s just from the breeze drifting through the open window but you also feel a throb of neediness light up your core. You roll onto your back, clenching your thighs together. This is a line you shouldn’t cross. Sure, it’s late, you’re horny, whatever. But this guy is about to be your boss, you should be able to listen to a voicemail without needing to touch yourself.
He’s such a serious man, you can’t imagine what he’d say if he saw the state of you, shirt lifted just below your breasts, soaking a damp patch into the front of your panties. The only way you’re going to be able to get through the message is going to be to get yourself off first like a teenage boy trying not to get a boner on a first date.
Pope’s also painfully awkward and it really does it for you. From the way he moves, to the faces he makes, to the way he talks. Fuck, the way he talks. You let your phone rest on your chest and your other hand finds its way down underneath your panties.
You haven’t been fucked in a while but you’re way more turned on than you have any right to be. You don’t bother teasing yourself, pressing the flat of two fingers against your clit. Your hips buck at the feeling, clearly more untouched than you thought.
Your fingers aren’t as thick as his, and you can’t help the perversions that cross your mind at the thought of Pope. How would he touch you? Would it be clumsy? He’s pretty assertive, perhaps that would overtake the awkwardness. You let a whine escape your bitten lips into the darkness of your bedroom as you rub your clit.
Fuck this, you reach for the phone blindly, half blinded with the vision of his hand shoving yours out the way. You fumble for the button, but after a little while his voice rings out in your bedroom.
“Uh,” he coughs. “Hey, it’s Pope Cody.” Two of your fingers slide inside, your other hand coming to replace the fingers at your clit. The position is awkward but you can’t focus on anything but the sound of his voice, already humiliatingly close. His voice is low and the phone quality crackles but it mimics the grooves of his voice well enough you don’t even care. “Look, I know it’s late but do you think you can call me in the morning? I don’t know how this thing usually works, the whole babysitter thing.” His fingers would probably get deeper than yours, but you curve them slightly until they hit your sweet spot.
Frustrated with the limitations the fabric is giving, you pull both your hands out and shove your underwear down your legs, letting it slip off your foot and onto the floor of your bedroom. “And you sound like you know what you’re talking about.”
“Fuck,” you hiss, drawing your fingers from your hole and fucking them back into yourself slowly. He seems like the type of man who would take his time, or maybe that’s just you projecting for slowing down so you don’t cum before he’s even done talking.
“And I’m sorry about ambushing you at work, it felt like the best place to come talk to you. I won’t come by again, if you don’t want. But I want to see you.”
You’re only halfway through it and you can already feel an orgasm forming. It’s downright sinful the things you want him to do to you.
“I need to talk to you, I mean. About Lena. And about… yeah. I know this is probably stupid as shit but I’m way in over my head here so… Whatever it is you want to do, I’ll do it. You want more money?”
You bring the hand rubbing your clit up to your mouth to sink your teeth into the back, instead grinding on the palm of the hand you’re using to finger yourself. The walls in your apartment are thick enough you don’t have to worry about making a small amount of noise, but you don’t need Erin and Carlos from next door to hear you whining. “Anything you want. Anything.” You can practically feel him breathing into your ear. Anything you want.
He says your name, low and deep and you tip into your orgasm, back arching against your sheets and tears pricking at the corner of your eyes. They’re clenched shut, white filling your vision, and his face lives on your eyelids. Those big, sad eyes. Thick fingers and thicker arms.
He’s gruff, and unsmiling and awkward and stiff, but Pope doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to get hung up on rules. He’s older than you, and he’s about to be your boss, and you realise with a thrill that you don’t think that would stop him if he wanted you.
“Or if you don’t want or, or you can’t or whatever. Then if you know anyone, or like, a way I can find a babysitter? I don’t fuckin’ know… Thanks for the help. I’m around, if you want to call me when you’re not asleep. Okay.” He ends the message without a goodbye.
Your eyes are practically glued shut, walls fluttering around your fingers as your breathing slowly returns to normal. How the fuck are you meant to work this job? You can’t even listen to the man talk for a full minute without soaking through your underwear.
You don’t remember falling asleep, you wake up with a rumpled shirt and a new pair of panties you must’ve slipped on in a daze. It’s a Saturday, so you don’t have to get up if you don’t really want to. You have chores to do and sleep to catch up on, you can hear the faint sound of rain picking up outside. Perfect circumstances for a day at home, resetting and fixing yourself up on one of your two days off.
Instead, you roll over and immediately reach for your phone.
Hey, sorry! I fell asleep and didn’t get your call. I’m free today, I’d love to see you. You chicken out and tack onto the end and Lena! I can come over to your place or we can meet somewhere else?
You barely have time to close your eyes again before your phone is vibrating in your hand, once, then twice. The first message is an address. The second: give me an hour.
You roll back onto your stomach and try to stop yourself from screaming into your pillow.
Summary: The second born daughter of King Viserys I Targaryen and Queen Aemma is just as brave, beautiful and stubborn as her older sister but cannot deny her growing love for a certain red haired knight who just so happens to be a dear friend’s brother.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
Part Ten
Shameless Obsessions @shameless-pope - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
