cw: age gap (mid-20s/50s), daddy kink, sugar daddy/baby dynamics, f!receiving oral sex, open relationship, angst, alcohol consuption, 18+ mdni
Leave it to you to be depressed on the coast of Italy. Jack had this trip planned for weeks, and you weren’t about to cancel on him just because your little situationship with your neighbor wasn’t going the way you wanted it to. You tried your best to be in good spirits and, for the most part, you were. Italy was beautiful, and Jack kept you entertained with good food, wine, shopping, and stunning views. It was in the moments between that the feelings you had been trying to force away crept back in.
You were lying belly down on the hotel bed, facing the double doors to the balcony that were propped open, letting in fresh air and giving you a fantastic look over the city. Jack was in front of the mirror, attempting to tie his tie to finish getting ready for your dinner reservations, but he was distracted by watching you wallow in the reflection. You had a slight pout on your lips, had been sighing very loudly, and you had seemed distracted the whole day. Worst of all, you were wrinkling the dress he bought you.
Giving up on the tie, Jack tossed it aside and walked up next to you. The mattress dipped as he sat down, and he gently placed a hand on your lower back.
“What’s the matter, baby?” he asked.
“Nothing,” you replied, voice altered by your hand supporting your chin.
“It was ‘nothing’ this morning, too. And yesterday, and the day before that. It’s obviously not nothing.”
You sighed heavily again. “I don’t wanna talk about it.” You couldn’t see how that made Jack clench his jaw.
“Nope,” he said shortly. You looked up at him in confusion, only to be met with his stern face. “We can either talk about it, or you’re going to cut the attitude. You’re not going to mope around on this nice trip over ‘nothing,’ understand?”
You suppose he had a fair point. It’s not that you didn’t want to open up to Jack; you just didn’t really know how to raise the subject of your unrequited feelings for another man.
“It’s just…” You trailed off, trying to find the words that didn’t make the situation seem so pathetic, so juvenile.
“Boy troubles?” he asked with a slightly raised eyebrow. He always saw through you.
“Stop, that makes it sound so stupid,” you whined, hiding your face in your hands.
Jack began to rub your back, fingers soothing the skin exposed by your dress. “Any boy who would give you trouble is stupid, baby. Shouldn’t waste your time with them.”
“But I like him, and I thought he liked me. He does like me; he’s just… scared, I guess?”
Jack hummed. “If he’s scared, that says something about him, not about you. Aren’t a lot of guys who could handle trouble like you,” he teased gently.
You rolled over onto your back so you could look up at Jack without having to crane your neck. He cupped your cheek, and you leaned into his warm, calloused touch that always brought you comfort. No matter how much your heart ached for Robby, you knew that he would never take care of you as well as Jack does. Kind, caring, loving…
“I’m not trouble,” you mumbled against his palm. He smiled softly.
“Nah, you’re not. You’re just spoiled. A little needy.” his hand trailed from your jaw down your throat and rested at the base of your neck. “But you’ve got a man who will give you everything you could want.”
He was right, mostly. Jack could give you all the material possessions, beauty treatments, lavish vacations, and free housing you could want, but you would never have his love. That was the one thing he couldn’t give you.
You pushed yourself into a seated position, keeping Jack’s hand around your neck. You held his wrist gently as you looked at him with wide, bright eyes. That look could crumble Jack to dust.
“How about I help take your mind off this guy, baby. My princess shouldn’t have to worry about anything.” He leaned in a bit closer.
“What do you have in mind, Daddy?” you asked, rising to his flirtations.
“I want to see what you have hiding for me under this gorgeous dress.”
As he laid down in the center of the bed, he pulled you on top of him. You were straddling his waist and, from where his head was propped up on the pillows, he had a perfect view of your body in the expensive dress he bought you. He ran his hands over the fabric, then over your thighs, then he pushed them under the hem and raised it to sneak a peek at your panties. They weren’t new, but they were ones that Jack had gotten you. Hell, most of your stuff was bought by Jack.
They were a nude mesh g-string that paired perfectly with the delicate fabric of the dress. No panty lines. Jack was practically drooling.
“This,” he said, breathy, “shouldn’t be wasted on a guy who doesn’t appreciate it.”
He pushed the hem of your dress into your hands, and you held it up so he could admire all of you. Your thighs, your hips, your lower stomach, your mound.
“I need to taste you, baby.”
He urged you forward, so you walked on your knees over his chest until you were hovering over his face. He allowed the position for a moment so he could look at your ass as well, but then he tugged your hips down so you were resting on his face.
Jack would always start with your panties on. He kissed over your inner thighs, nose brushing your lips ever so slightly, his hot breath fanning over your even hotter center. He focused on everywhere except where you needed him.
His fingers dug into the sides of your thighs and, despite trying to be patient, you were his needy girl. You ground your hips, rubbing your clit against the point of his nose.
“Daddy, please,” you whined. If Jack’s mouth wasn’t occupied, he would have made a comment about his girl already being so demanding.
“Pull ‘em aside,” he instructed.
You reached between your legs, hooked your finger in the gusset of your panties, and pulled them off to one side so Jack could have access to your dripping hole. He lapped up your wetness eagerly and moaned at the sweet taste of you that he craved.
His tongue was relentless as he pleasured you, switching from swirling through your folds, circling your clit, and plunging inside of you. When you began to rock your hips again, he knew you were getting close. He focused more on your sweet bundle, careful not to overstimulate you. You were delicate.
“Daddy,” you breathed. You hated when you got whiny and desperate, found it embarrassing, but you couldn’t help it when it came to Jack.
You threaded your fingers through his freshly styled curls and tugged. The sensation made Jack groan into your pussy, and the vibrations pushed you over your edge. You came with a cry, your body folding in on itself as Jack continued to suck gently on your clit.
He didn’t stop even after your body sagged with relief. He kept tonguing you, and his grip on your hips grew firmer in anticipation of you squirming away. He kept at it until you were cumming again. It wasn’t as powerful as your first one, but it wracked through your body nonetheless.
He helped your limp body up and laid you down on the bed next to him while you caught your breath. It didn’t take you long to recover, and you were reaching for the fly of Jack’s dress pants.
“Don’t worry about me, baby,” he said, sitting up. “I was taking care of you.” He took your hands in his and pressed kisses to your knuckles soothingly. “Let me worship my girl.”
You sat up beside him and smoothed your dress out, not wanting the wrinkles to set in. You basked in the afterglow of your two incredible orgasms while Jack peppered kisses over your forehead. You sat in silence for a while until your creeping feelings of doubt returned.
“What do you do for work, Jack?” you asked. His brows furrowed, and a slight, confused smile formed on his lips.
“Baby, you know I don’t like to talk about work,” he said, stroking your wrist with his thumb.
“I know, but… we’ve known each other for so long, and we know so much about each other, except that. I feel like there’s a big piece of who you are that I’m missing.”
Your words made you cringe. Jack opened a can of worms, getting you to spill your feelings. Jack cared about you; you knew that, but you also knew that he would never have feelings for you past that. You were his companion, not his lover, and if you made things messy and complicated, he would push you away just like Robby did.
“Where’s this coming from?” Jack asked instead of answering. His posture shifted into something more rigid. He was on guard.
“I…” You held yourself back from blowing your whole agreement up. “Really like you, Jack.” You blinked your glassy eyes at him, and he stared back, lips parted. You didn’t need to say the words out loud for Jack to hear them.
“Oh, princess.” He frowned a bit and reached up to hold your face again. “I really like you, too. I love your company. I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” You appreciated the praise, but he delivered it as if he was defusing a bomb. “I just don’t have time for any more commitment than this. Plus, it’s not fair to you to be tied down to some old man while you’re living out the best years of your life.” He snipped the red wire.
“I know,” you replied, voice hollow. You refused to cry in front of him, not over this.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
Jack’s voice mixed with the echo of Robby’s saying the same thing. They bounced around inside your brain, sat as a lump in your throat, and twisted into a knot in your stomach. They were both so worried about hurting you. Did they not realize that by pushing you away, they were doing exactly that?
“Let’s get your shoes on, baby. We’re gonna be late for dinner.”
You nodded wordlessly and swung your legs over the edge of the bed. Before you could get up, Jack was picking your legs up and putting the designer heels he had bought you that morning on your feet for you. He fastened the small gold buckle around the ankle strap with ease, but you weren’t paying attention to his deft fingers. You were studying the deep, twin lines between his eyebrows and his silver curls.
Once your shoes were on, Jack gently lowered your feet to the ground, then helped you up. He slung his arm around your waist and pulled you into his side. Foolishly, you allowed yourself to melt into his hold.
You didn’t eat much at dinner. You picked at the calamari Jack ordered, nibbled on some bread, ate all of the exciting vegetables out of your salad, and had some bites of fish that Jack fed you. You weren’t very hungry to begin with, having spent most of the trip at different cafes and bakeries, but your self-deprecating feelings suppressed any remaining hunger cues.
What you did have, however, was wine. Nearly a whole bottle yourself. Jack was a wine lover, so he bought two bottles for you to sample and share. You couldn’t have cared less about the age, dryness, notes, or price tag. You just wanted, no, needed to get drunk.
Jack regarded you carefully from across the table as you quickly drained your first glass, then moved on to your second. He assumed that you must have really liked it, but as you continued to drink, he grew suspicious that it wasn’t the flavor you were after, but the alcohol content. He advised you to slow down, but you ignored him. Now, you were a bit past the socially acceptable level for wine drunk, at least at a fancy restaurant such as the one Jack so generously brought you to.
Everything was hazy and rose-tinted, and before you knew it, a completely sober Jack was ushering you out of the restaurant before dessert was served. You tried to fight him to stay, but he wouldn’t budge.
“But I want ice cream,” you whined.
“We’re going back to the hotel.”
He firmly held onto your side, more so to keep you upright than to show affection. You were stumbling in your heels, but you didn’t have another pair to change into, and Jack was not going to let you walk the city streets barefoot. He muttered something about needles and hepatitis, but you weren’t entirely sure what he said. You were distracted by the bright lights of the gelato shop you were passing. You squealed and yanked Jack toward the door, begging him to take you in.
“Baby, easy, take it easy,” he said, trying to calm you down. “You want some?”
“Yes, please!” you grinned, easy and wide in the way you only did when you were drinking. Jack couldn’t help but smile at your beaming face.
“Okay, doll, I’ll go in and get you some, but you have to promise to be good and stay right here, got it?”
“I’ll stay right here,” you parroted obediently. He gave you another firm look before he started toward the door.
“I’ll just be right here, okay? I’ll keep my eye on you, so just wave if you need me.”
With Jack inside, you were alone with your thoughts again. Thoughts of Robby freezing you out after sex. Thoughts of Jack, who would never let you fully know him. It was suffocating and utterly humiliating, how you were allowing yourself to be played by these men. No, that’s not fair. They weren’t playing you; they had told you upfront what the expectations of your relationships were. It was your fault for wanting more.
As you were lost in your thoughts, you began to wander down the street. The buildings there were beautiful, but you found it hard to appreciate the architecture and culture in this state. You weren’t sure how far you walked; all you knew was your feet were sore, so you sat down on the front steps of some apartment building. You nearly fell asleep with your head in your hands, too spacey to notice that Jack’s voice calling your name was echoing down the street. Jack’s voice sounded so sweet saying your name. You wished it didn’t make your heart ache so violently.
He said he didn’t want to tie you down, to prevent you from living the life you deserve, but the life you deserved was by his side. Being his girl, his wife. Not just being taken care of, but being loved and getting to love him back. You started to wonder if maybe you were the problem. It had to be statistically impossible for two men to reject you for the same reason. It’s not you, it’s me was the biggest bullshit line in the book. Maybe you weren’t worth more than a fuck, at least not to Robby. Jack thought you were worth spending money on, but not any kind of commitment, not even worth being seen in the daytime.
Tears sting in your eyes, but you could no longer fight them. You were so close to having everything with Jack, but he refused to give you the one thing you wanted most. Now, here you were hours and an ocean away from home with the man who was breaking your heart. However, at home, there was a different man who was destroying you. You thought that drowning your sorrows in fancy wine would make you feel better, but it served to make you more sensitive and needy for something you couldn’t have.
“Baby?” Jack said, voice full of relief when he rounded the corner, holding a cup of strawberry gelato in his hand. “God, baby, I told you not to go anywhere. I looked up, and you were gone.” He sat on the stoop next to you with a groan. “Had me so worried.”
You angled your knees away from him, the universal sign that you were upset. You didn’t want him to see your tears. You didn’t want to have to explain yourself. He didn’t let you turn away; he put the cup of melting gelato on the ground and used his cold, wet hand to turn your face back towards him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Don’t tell me ‘nothing.’” Jack didn’t often break out the Daddy persona outside of a scene, but he knew it would get you to pay attention. You sniffled and discreetly wiped your nose on the back of your hand. He forced you to look at him, but with the way the wine was making your head spin, you found it difficult to make eye contact.
“Boy troubles.” If you were any more sober, you would’ve been embarrassed by your watery voice.
“I told you, baby, that guy’s an asshole. If he can’t see what he has, then he’s a fuckin’ idiot.” He cocked his head to the side and looked at you carefully. As you looked back at him, your lower lip trembled. “A man is supposed to take care of his girl. Make her feel like a princess, not make her cry.” You realized that you were no longer upset about Robby, but about Jack.
“I love him, but he doesn’t want me like that. Don’t know what else I can do.” You had to look away from him; his gaze was too intense.
Jack gently wiped your tears away with his thumb, careful not to smear the makeup underneath. “You’re the sweetest, smartest, best person I know, baby. Don’t waste your time with a guy who won’t give you everything you want.”
As Jack brushed his tear-stained thumb over your lips, he realized what he was saying. He was the one who couldn’t commit. He was the one squandering the opportunity to be with you. He was the one who didn’t love you.
“I-I’m sorry,” he said quietly. He brought his hand back to his side and stared down at his feet with deep creases between his brows. “I think we should get you to bed.”
Jack got you into your satin pajamas with clinical precision, keeping his hands where it was strictly appropriate. He gave you a big glass of water and watched you drink it all before he brought you to the bathroom, helped you brush your teeth and take your makeup off, and tucked you into the center of the king-sized hotel bed. Instead of joining you, Jack took off his prosthetic, stripped to his boxers, and sat in the chair in the corner of the room. He didn’t sleep, wasn’t even tired; he was too occupied thinking about your arrangement.
It’s not that he didn’t love you. He did; you were his whole world, but his world outside of work was very limited. His world was dark, grimy, fucked up, and chaotic, and you were far too precious and sweet to be corrupted by him. You deserved better than what he could give you.
“Jack,” you whined, stirring from your place in bed as you blindly reached for him. The desperate edge to your voice made him ache.
“I’m here, baby,” he said. He used his crutch to make his way over to the bed and lay down next to you, on top of the covers. “I’m here.”
He trailed his fingers over the bare skin of your arm, watching as goosebumps appeared in his path. He felt like a monster for putting you in this position. He was a selfish, lonely old man who took advantage of a young girl. He knew he couldn’t cut you off completely; your entire life would be upended. He pays for your lifestyle. He would continue to do so, but he would have to be careful.
You rolled closer to him and cuddled into his side. Jack was a weak, weak man, because he let himself melt into you. He looked down at your relaxed face, your eyes rimmed with the smudges of your eye makeup he couldn’t remove. You were so sweet, his girl.
“I’m a doctor,” he whispered as he stroked your cheek. He took an oath to protect, and that’s about the furthest thing he was doing for you.
summary: your first encounter with jack, he’s putting a dog collar on you. that should’ve been the first sign. but it’s only later that you come to find out he’s the man you’ve been seeing in your dreams.
content warnings/description: 18+ MDNI, AFAB reader, daddy kink, piss kink (just a few lines of it), puppy play, breath play, noncon collaring -> consensual collaring, unprotected (PIV) sex, oral sex, there is a butt plug, (1) spank, blood mentions, stalking (jack is a creep but reader loves him for it), freak4freak, lite body horror elements, weird dreams, retail hell, fragmented writing, the most obvious animal kingdom reference of all time
author’s note: this isn’t meant to be an accurate (or healthy) representation of what a d/s owner/pet dynamic would look like, so please don’t expect that. jack and reader are just raw dogging things (get it). as usual, the ending is somewhat rushed because this has been consuming all my free time, and it’s time to let it go. tagging @ozarkthedog because i know you’ve been patiently awaiting this <3
You have a recurring dream. Or is it more of a nightmare? You can't tell.
In your dream, your human form transforms into that of something markedly inhuman, a grotesque thing to see unfold behind your eyelids.
Your skeleton shrinks to a size just a fraction of what it is now, the excess skin, with nothing to cling to, spreading in a fleshy pool on the floor. Your spine bends out of shape like a pole vaulter's pole over the high horizontal bar, canted forward at an extreme angle and forcing you on your hands and feet. Bones break; your pelvis shortens, your arms lengthen, and what were two hands become two feet. Like the dinosaurs that evolved to carry their massive weight, you've become quadrupedal.
The excess skin retracts, like the tape of a leash being pulled back, and snaps securely into place. And you have a little tail, starting right around the sacral region, an extension of the canine spine.
Metamorphosis: the worst part of the dream. Becoming something other than human. The simulated pain that comes with it. But after, you're happy. Loved and cared for by a shapeless owner. You're a dear thing to them.
A pet.
But distantly, even while using your baser brain, you can tell that something is wrong. You're not meant to be like this.
And yet, you're happy.
So. Nightmare, or not?
You don't know, but you don't have the time to dwell on it. Your half hour lunch break is almost up, your ramen cup is empty, and today you're stationed at the cash registers.
It's a slow day—slower than usual, at least—though. Pittsburgh is just coming out on the other end of a big, freak snowstorm, and there is but one customer in the store right now.
You clock back in on the employee app and exit the break room to tend to him, tossing your empty cup into the bin on your way out.
"Ready to check out, sir?"
So, even though you told yourself to drop it, as you scan and punch in his purchases for dog food, chew toys, and other assorted items, you think back on your dream.
Being employed here should explain its origin. You see these kinds of owners all the time: people who cherish their pets, spoiling them rotten. Who wouldn't want to be doted on? Loved? Asked for nothing but companionship in return.
Hey!
The snapping of fingers rings out, cutting and sharp.
Are you there? Can you give me my receipt already?
You startle, and you're brought back down to earth. You shake your head.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, sir." You rip the glossy paper from the receipt printer, holding it out to him. "Here's your receipt. Thank you for shopping at Animal Kingdom."
The man scoffs, snatching it out from your hand. He collects the handles of his paper bags and murmurs, "space case," before leaving the store.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
You were daydreaming again. In front of a customer. If your boss had happened to see that exchange, you would have never heard the end of it.
You can't lose this job. You don't have much else going for you.
The next day.
Or the next week.
Does it matter?
Work. Home. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.
That is a short summary of your life as of the past near decade since you graduated high school and have been working at the pet store. It's not much, but you make do. There is the noticeable absence of a social aspect in your routine...
nothing new there, though.
You do not hate your life, but there is not much to love. It flashes by, but it is also stagnant. And it is lonely.
You peer into a tank, sighing when you see a dead one. The black of the comet goldfish's eyes stare inanimately at you. Its brethren clear the way as you scoop it out, then bag it, throwing it into the dumpster in the back of the store.
Goldfish do not have a three-second memory, as the myth suggests, but retain memory for up to three months. Its brothers could be mourning it in its death, for all you know.
Sometimes, you daydream about the ocean. Seahorses come to mind. Being one in a pair of mates. Having a partner for life. It's a heartwarming thought, but you imagine that the ocean is one hell of a scary place for a pair of frail seahorses.
You can't have it both ways. Tank or ocean.
So, then, maybe instead of a seahorse, what you are is a remora in need of a shark. Feeding on its bacteria and dead skin, you'd be set to roam the big blue, accompanied and safe. Survival by way of symbiosis. A sad existence, though, to need a creature so much more than they need you.
Scratch that. Tanks are safe. Not the ones here, but a good owner would take care of their fish.
The PA system squeals with feedback as it's turned on.
Associate to aquatics for tank five cleanup. Associate to aquatics for tank five cleanup.
You sigh. More dead goldfish.
You're stocking shelves in the avian aisle when a customer softly calls out to you. Finches and parakeets chirp in the background, rowdy in their cages.
"Excuse me, miss?" he says, approaching you, his steps audible and heavy.
You turn around and almost drop the bag of birdseed you're holding.
Hazel-green eyes and a sinful scruff. Middle-aged or so.
The man is handsome. More handsome than anyone you've ever laid eyes on in the store. Maybe even in the small world you live in between here and your apartment and the bus ride to the grocery store. You've never seen him before, but you get the feeling that you recognize him from somewhere.
"Let me help with that," he offers, taking the bag from your hands and placing it on the bottommost shelf beside you where it belongs. He shifts his weight to his left foot when he stands to full height again, a flicker of pain sweeping over his features.
"Thank you, sir. You didn't have to—"
"It's not a problem. Mind helping me with something in return?"
You nod, clasping your hands in front of you. "How can I be of assistance?"
The man holds up a dog collar from his cargo pocket.
"I'm adopting a dog soon. Want to make sure that I'm gettin' the right size."
"Oh, well, all our collars are adjustable and should be able to fit any size dog. May I?" You hold your hand out palm up so he can pass it to you, but he shakes his head.
"This one isn't. I think I got the right one, but I'd just like to check."
You're not sure where he got the collar. You look at it more closely and are stumped when, yes, it's a slip-on. Non-adjustable. It tightens when the leash is pulled, a corrective action, and is loose-fitting otherwise when the dog is compliant. There must be a new supply of them that was put up that you were unaware of.
He clears his throat and clarifies, "could you try it on?"
"Try it on?" you repeat, stunned. "Uh, that's..."
Your eyes widen slightly when you catch sight of your boss standing a few feet behind the man, nodding his head and giving you two thumbs up, as if he had heard the conversation and were encouraging you to... try on the collar.
The customer experience is our number one priority.
You gulp. Why does this make you nervous? Just get it over with.
"Sure. Anything to help."
The man releases the tension in his shoulders, relieved that you agreed. "Thank you, miss. You're a lifesaver." He stands closer to you, raising his hands up to your head to collar you.
You duck down a bit to make it easier for him, looking at the gray vinyl floor. You think of your dream, your body breaking and bending and twisting from a force beyond your control.
The dog he's planning on adopting must be a larger breed, because though you would consider yourself to have an average-sized head, it does in fact fit.
It sits, weighty yet comfortably, around your neck. You instinctively touch the cool, metal sliding ring resting at the hollow of your throat with your fingers.
"Beautiful," he says.
You're starved enough for attention that you pretend he's saying it to you and not to the fit of the collar itself.
He winks cheekily. "I think this'll fit my girl nicely."
He's adopting a female dog, then.
"Will that be all?"
"Yeah, I'm ready to check out."
You go to remove the collar yourself, your fingertips brushing the polyester material of the climbing rope, but he interrupts you.
"Here, I got it."
His fingers, thick, you note, graze the sides of your neck when he removes the collar. You smile shyly at him once it's no longer around your neck, your faces a bit too close to be polite.
You follow him to the register to ring him up, making idle conversation, "the weather's been nice lately, hasn't it?" "It sure has. I hope you take advantage of it, miss," and hand him his receipt, and then he's gone.
That was not the strangest thing you've experienced in this store, but it was strange.
You double-check the aisle with the collars, rubbing your fingertip along the circumference of the metal ring of the exact one the man had purchased. You don't know why you felt the need to confirm that they were here.
What attracted you to this position out of high school was that it had decent benefits, decent pay, and it was one bus ride away from your parents' home and then, when you moved out, walking distance to your apartment.
What's keeping you here now, though, you're not too sure. You planned to go to the community college at some point when you had saved up enough money to study something, but that never came to pass. You got trapped in the comfort zone.
A little too late now to regret not having done more for yourself, so you try not to. There's still time if you were to somehow get the courage to change your life.
The bell rings as a couple strolls in. You recognize them as two kids, now adults the same age as you, who went to your high school. It's been years since you've come across anyone from then, and you had almost convinced yourself you were the last of your class in Pittsburgh.
They don't recognize you when you ring up their cat food. A few cans of the wet variety.
It's better they don't. You don't have the fondest memories of your high school years.
"You two are a cute couple," you say, bagging the cans. Not for any reason besides to make some small talk.
Engage with the customers. Communicate. Connect. That's what separates us from them.
"Thanks! We just got engaged," she says, holding her left hand out, a giant, gleaming rock on her wedding finger. "Are you in a relationship?"
"Me?" you ask, almost appalled. "No, I haven't had the, uh, best of luck in the dating department."
She beams. "There's this speed dating event happening soon. I'm one of the organizers. You should consider signing up."
She hands you a flier from her purse, and you skim through the details before folding it up into squares, placing it in your pocket, knowing you'll likely find it in the washing machine later, torn to shreds.
"Thanks. I'll think about it." You pass her the receipt and bag of cat food. "Have a great rest of your day, you two."
Your boss, Mark, tends to hover. And in his hovering, he tends to overhear.
You're eating lunch in the break room with Katy, a woman who's long in the tooth and has a mean bite. She tolerates you, though. You're not sure what that says about you as a person, but you won't shoo away company.
Mark takes a seat beside you in what was an empty chair, and Katy stands up, her chair screeching as it's pushed back. She doesn't like Mark, so her lunch is as good as over.
He stares holes into her retreating back before turning his attention to you. "I happened to overhear that customer inviting you to a speed dating shindig. Are you going?"
You shrug, twirling your soggy noodles over and over again in the cup. "Um. I dunno. I haven't thought about it, to be honest."
"You have to go. How many years have you been working here, and you're still single?"
You're taken aback. "Why does that matter?"
He shoves his phone in your face, a selfie of him and his wife lounging on the deck of a beach bungalow, sick in love.
You remember when Mark went away on his honeymoon last year. You were temporarily assigned manager. It was one of the worst weeks of your life.
"You have to take chances. Put yourself out there. I swore off the apps, but I gave it one more chance, and look. I got married."
You don't know on the dot when you two got close enough for him to speak to you like this. But you are his longest-lasting employee and younger than the rest, so maybe he feels paternal toward you.
You do see him more than your actual father now that you think about it.
You sigh, yielding. "I guess it wouldn't hurt to check it out."
What do you have to lose? The event is Friday, and you're not scheduled to work. You can dip out the moment your anxiety spikes too high.
Mark claps a hand over your shoulder. "Excellent!"
He leaves you alone in the break room, and soon enough you can hear him getting into it with Katy.
Looking down into your cup, you frown. Your noodles are not only soggy but have now turned a ghoulish gray. You wouldn't feed this to your pet.
An elderly man brings in his sick cat, thinking that the pet store is an animal hospital. He's dizzy with worry and scarcely gets his words across. You feel bad for the pair of them and look up directions to the nearest clinic.
The cat, cradled in the arms of its owner like a baby, then pukes all over the front of your shirt and on the floor, some splashing onto the toes of your sneakers. Mark takes over, directing the man two streets down to a veterinary clinic, and you excuse yourself to clean up, using the paper towels in the employee restroom to fruitlessly wipe away the stains on your shirt. Of course you don't have spare clothes in your locker. You smell like cat puke the rest of the day.
One day, you're going to quit this place.
Mark and Katy get into a spat about pricing inaccuracies.
"I only label the prices. I don't set the prices. Don't pin this on me, Mark."
"But you're supposed to check that it matches the one in the POS before you stick them on the merchandise!"
And when you try to break up what is looking to become a fistfight, Katy accidentally slaps you across the face.
"Look at what you fuckin' made me do! Are you okay, hun?"
You're going to quit this place.
Today nothing bad happens. You clock in, and you clock out. But all through your shift, you have this crushing, despairing feeling in your chest because you know you're never going to quit this place.
Tomorrow is the speed dating event. As you think about what you're going to wear while mopping the floor along an aisle, a pair of boots comes into view.
The same ones he had on last time. You look up, and there he is, the man who collared you.
"Hey, there. Remember me?"
How could you forget? That interaction didn't leave your mind for days afterward. Every time you passed by the shelf with those collars, you thought of him.
"Of course. Is everything alright?"
You don't see too many repeat customers. Customers in general, quite frankly. Big box stores and online shopping and pet subscription boxes are forcing stores like these to close. It can be a ghost town at times. The dirt and dust tracked in from the outside are more imaginary than real.
You almost want it to happen—the store closing. Then you'd be forced to move on. You're not so lucky, though.
He rubs the nape of his neck. "I need to return the collar I bought."
You peer out past the endcap and look to the cash registers crowded in the middle of the store, a few aisles down.
Empty.
"Someone should be manning the registers. So sorry about that."
You set the mop and bucket to the side, the wooden handle leaning against a shelf with a wide array of cat and dog treats, and place down a wet floor sign.
He shakes his head. "I'm in no rush."
You lead the way to the registers and process his return, typing codes into the computer. You ask, curious, "is there a reason why you're returning this? Something wrong with it?"
He mulls over his answer. "No, it's not that."
You glance at him, quirking a brow. The cash drawer pops open, and you hand him his cash back, his fingertips skimming yours.
"The adoption fell through," he explains, shrugging. "Have no use for it now."
You wonder what made the adoption go sideways. Was it a behavioral issue, or was it simply a matter of personality? "Sorry it didn't work out. But I'm sure there's a dog out there waiting for you to be their owner."
He huffs a laugh. "You might be right."
You're home, immobile on the couch, when you should be on the bus that goes downtown. There's another one arriving in twenty minutes.
You showered and put on some makeup, but if you don't get dressed now, you're going to be late. And if you're late, you'd rather not go because then you'd be giving a bad impression.
Is anything good going to come out of this, though? Speed dating, as far as you know, is hit or miss. And you're like a magnet for misfortune.
Your phone vibrates in your lap. A text from Mark.
I want to hear all about your dates tomorrow!
You groan. You should've switched your schedule around to have tomorrow off of work.
Though you drag your feet, you get off the couch and get dressed. At the very least, you can tell him you went and showed your face. You make it to the bus stop just in the nick of time and are the last to board.
It rained earlier, and the inside of the bus smells like the aftermath of getting caught in it. Except worse. Like a damp dog instead of damp human skin intermingled with petrichor. You hope it doesn't rub off on you.
The speed dating is held at a small party venue. You feel out of place among the other women, who are dressed in nicer clothing and have bigger, prettier smiles. Your dress is itchy, and your heels pinch your toes. Already, you're regretting this.
You arrived a little too late to get yourself a drink at the cash bar to untangle your knotted nerves. You get signed in and are given a nametag, then are seated at a table by one of the volunteers. You're told to wait.
"We'll be bringing out the other half of the participants soon. Your first date will be here shortly."
The other half being the men, you suppose. The flier said this was a straight speed dating event. Currently only women are seated at the tables.
They must be waiting around in one of the connected rooms. After a few minutes, a set of double doors on the far end of the room open, and a diverse group of men file in. Skinny, heavyset, short, tall, black, white, and everything in between. All in their twenties to fifties. All handsome.
Last to enter is someone you least expect. It's as if he can tell you're watching him, because his eyes cut to yours instantly.
The man from the store heads straight toward you and sits across from you. The man isn't just "the man" anymore, though. His name is Jack, according to the name tag stickied onto his polo shirt. It's funny. How he has known your name from the moment you met, pinned to your work shirt right above your breast, but only now are you learning his.
"This is unexpected," he says, chuckling in a low, deep voice. "Looking for love too, huh."
In this slant of light, much more vibrant than the dull fluorescent in the pet store, his eyes look wolfish, almost. Angled at the inner and outer corners. An almond shape. The outer iris is a dark, forest green with flecks of amber splashed around it. The full, gray head of hair on his head and white, scruffy beard round out the animalistic look.
His shirt fits him like a glove, the bulge of his biceps glaring and distracting. The topmost buttons are popped open, and you sneak a peek at the skin of his chest, flushed pink. A little white fur there, too.
You snort, a heat rising to your cheeks. Your heart is hammering. Meeting him here has to mean something. Doesn't it?
You allow your delusions to take root, your confidence seemingly growing and blossoming from nowhere.
"Maybe I've found it already," you tease. "What are the odds we'd meet again here?"
The corner of his lip ticks up. "Don't get ahead of yourself. Let's see how well you can hold a conversation."
Each couple has ten minutes together before an alarm rings and the men are shuffled to the next table.
Two minutes, everyone! Start wrapping up your conversations!
You've managed to hold yourself above water for eight of them. Jack is easy to talk to, though, so you give him most of the credit.
You're amazed he doesn't just up and leave.
On top of his looks, after learning he's an emergency physician over at PTMC and a decorated combat medic veteran, "medically discharged on account of my leg being blown off. It's okay. You can laugh about it. I do," you think your chances with him are even lower than where they're buried six feet under.
"Do you have any pets?" he asks. "Maybe take advantage of an employee discount?"
You huff a laugh. "There's no discount, unfortunately. But no, my apartment doesn't allow pets."
He hums. "One of the nice things about owning a house."
You nod. And a whole lot nicer to live in than your shoddy apartment, you're sure.
"So, um..." you start, floundering.
Time is running out. You should make the most of the minute and thirty seconds you have left with him, but you don't know what else to say.
He picks up the slack. "A few more things I want to ask, sweetheart."
The pet name stirs up something in you. Makes you feel like a lovestruck puppy. You try to keep calm. "Go for it."
"What would you consider your biggest strength?" His elbows on the table, he interlocks his fingers, resting his chin on his hands.
You choke on a laugh. He arches a brow.
"Sorry. Just feels like an interview question."
He chuckles, the fine lines around his eyes creasing. Your face lights up because you made him do that. You want to see what he looks like when he smiles big and wide, his canines exposed.
"You can interpret it as one. Isn't that what speed dating basically is?"
"Good point." You chew on a fingernail. "Maybe loyalty? I've been at Animal Kingdom for almost ten years and have no intention of quitting." It's not loyalty as much as it is you chickening out of handing in your two-week notice time and time again. You hold back a grimace. "And, you know, if we were to be in a relationship, I'd be loyal to you, too. But that goes without saying."
"Loyalty," Jack repeats, mumbling to himself. "And your biggest weakness?"
"That's… harder to answer," because I have so many, all equally detrimental, you don't say. "I tend to daydream a lot? Get lost in my head," you decide on. "It's a thing at work. My coworkers tease me about it. It's not really been an issue, though."
He shakes his head. "That's not a weakness. I find that endearing. The world needs more dreamers like you."
The alarm sounds out, almost shocking you out of your chair. Time is up.
He watches you for a moment, glued to his chair when he should be moving to the next table.
"Why don't we get out of here?" he asks. "You said you rode the bus, right? I can drive us back to mine."
Your brows shoot up to your hairline. "What, really? Don't you want to talk to the other women?" You gesture around the room.
"I don't need to. I found you, and I'm taking you home, if you'll allow me." He stands, offering his hand to you, and adds, "my perfect match."
Jack brings you back to his house. A one-story rancher with a sleek, gray shingled roof and a manicured lawn. You wonder with his schedule if he does the upkeep himself or pays someone to do it.
During your date, he told you that on the weekends, or his version of them, anyway, he used to volunteer for TEMS as a SWAT physician. He has healthier hobbies now, though. "Got shot one too many times." But with how long his shifts run at the hospital, it's a miracle he has free time at all.
You shut the passenger door of his truck and follow behind him as you walk up the stone path. He unlocks the front door and gestures for you to enter.
As you remove your heels in the doorway, you take in the view of his house. The walls are professionally painted, and the floor is waxed. Open concept with ample room for him to navigate in his wheelchair. The couch is made of natural fabric and is gorgeous, especially compared to the tattered one you have back at home. The coffee table is bare, save for several open and scattered medical journals with their pages dog-eared.
On the minimalist side. Not a photo is hung up in sight, like all he has space for are the bare necessities. A home absent of traces of anyone but him. It seems he's been on his own for a long time.
"Come on," he says, leading you gently by the elbow and nodding his head at the couch. "Sit. Let's talk a little more. You want somethin' to drink?"
"Water, please."
Your glass of water is left untouched.
Conversation is a pretense for what Jack wants to do with you. Part of which involves capturing your lips with his and slipping his tongue into your mouth. Running papillae over the white of your teeth.
When was the last time you kissed someone?
He doesn't let go of you when he guides you toward his bedroom, clumsily walking backward in the hallway, his arms wrapped around your waist and his lips on yours, not giving you a chance to catch your breath.
"Ever been with an amputee?" he asks, parting from you, humor in his voice.
You fill your lungs, chest rising and falling fast. You're so out of practice it's embarrassing. "I can't say that I have," you admit. "But it doesn't bother me at all."
"Good."
You make it to his bedroom, and he gently guides you to sit back on his bed. It dips as he plops down beside you. He lifts his right pant leg and, with a stifled groan, works the socket loose and removes his prosthesis, along with his socks and liner, and massages his residual limb, rough hands rubbing down swollen tissue.
His wheelchair sits by the bedside as well as a pair of forearm crutches that lean against the nightstand.
"I've been on my feet for too long today. Usually take it off as soon as I get home." He tuts. "Skin is irritated as all hell."
"Is there anything I can do?" you ask sincerely.
He smiles wryly, a combination of hurt and relief on his face. "You can come 'ere."
He draws you in with an arm around the waist for another kiss, his other hand cupping the back of your neck. His lips feel warm on yours. Rough from being slightly chapped, too. He bites your lower lip, and you feel those canines you wanted to see in a smile earlier. Hard. You gasp into his mouth.
"Sorry, sweetie. Just got a little excited," he mumbles. The skin of your lip punctures, splits open, and is raw. His teeth are sharper than you would've expected from a red-blooded man. He swipes his tongue over your throbbing lip. "Forgive me?"
You can smell the blood like a bloodhound. You nod. You don't mind the pain.
"Is it okay if we take things further?" he asks, resting his forehead against yours.
"You want to?" Though you feel a bit stupid for asking. What else would he have brought you back for?
"Course. Unless you don't. We can stop here, and you can stay the night, sleep in my guestroom. Don't want you going home at this hour."
"Jack, I'm flattered, but... why me?"
"Why not you?"
You stumble over your words. "I—I dunno. I just. You didn't even give those other women a chance." You shrug. "It's just hard to believe ten minutes was enough to decide you wanted me."
He pats your thigh, giving it a little squeeze. "I think you're special. This was meant to be. Maybe you don't see it, but I do."
You look down at your lap, unsure. He tilts your chin up with his thumb and forefinger.
"Look at me. Don't get lost in your head. Just try to enjoy this. I'll make it easy," he says, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips.
You whisper "okay," wrapping your fingers around the thick of his wrist.
You trust him. Maybe too implicitly.
A tiny drop of blood wells up from your lower lip. He swipes it away with his thumb and brings his thumb to his mouth, streaking red across his lips before kissing you again.
You haven't had the most sexual partners. But of all the ones you've slept with, this time with Jack proves to be the most... white-hot and passionate.
You were more than happy to accommodate any position he was comfortable with. You offered to be on top, but he wanted to "see what you look like panting under me."
A pillow is placed under your hips to give you a bit of lift, which puts less pressure on his knees as they support his lower half, his body draped over yours. His forearms are braced by the sides of your head, and he leans down to capture your lips in a heated kiss.
His thrusts are punishing. You can barely reach far enough into your mind to pause to ask if his stump is causing him discomfort, let alone string together words. He seems fine, though. Or more so focused on your pleasure than on his pain.
Then again, he's been fucking like this for as long as he's had his amputation, and that was some time ago—years of experience under his belt during which you were in high school. The thought spreads more heat to your belly.
Your legs wrap around his waist, pulling him impossibly closer to you. Sweat sticking you together, a drop trailing down the valley of your breasts. His pelvic bone grinds into your sensitive, swollen clit, fat with arousal, insistent with every rock of his hips.
When Jack had undressed and you got sight of his cock, flushed an angry red, you couldn't contain your moan.
He asked, honestly, "see what you do to me?" while stroking himself to full mast. "How can you think I don't want you? Just need some cock to set you straight."
You whimper into his mouth as his cockhead punches far inside of you. Your nails scratch down his back, leaving welts in their wake.
He parts from your lips, breathing out against your ear. "Gonna let me come inside this pretty cunt? Give me a litter?"
You whine, nodding, crystalline tears falling freely down the sides of your face to your ears when the head of his cock hits your cervix. You're distantly aware that you're on birth control, but that doesn't come to the front of your mind when you tell him, "yes, come inside me, Jack."
And he does. His come spits out of his cockhead and sprays your inner walls, flooding your cunt. Your inner muscles work his length, work as much of his come into your womb as they can.
Once your heart rates have settled, Jack rolls over and carefully scoots himself onto his wheelchair by the bedside.
"I'll be back. Need to wash up my leg."
You sit up, covering your chest with the comforter. "Would you like any help?"
He shakes his head. "Don't worry about me—you should rest."
"I'm not worried. I'm offering because I want to."
Your straightforwardness surprises you both.
He smirks, chuckling softly. "Alright, then."
He bends forward at the waist to collect his boxers from the floor, shuffling into them, and then tosses you his t-shirt to wear.
You throw him a toothy grin as you put it on and follow him into the ensuite, willfully ignoring the come slowly leaking out between your wobbly legs.
You slide the glass shower door and help him from his wheelchair onto the shower bench, one of his hands clasped in yours, his other around a grab bar.
You reach for the detachable showerhead and open the tap, check that the temperature is a comfortable warm, and then hand it to him. You sit on the edge of the tub as he proceeds to lather his stump with antibacterial soap, rinse, lather, and rinse again.
He watches you watch him, a glint in his eye. "You're a good girl, aren't you."
"What—what do you mean?"
"Watching and learning my routine, I can't help but think this is you preparing for the future."
"The future? Isn't that a bit presumptuous?"
"No, because I'm hoping this isn't going to be just a one-night stand. I want to take you out. On a real date." He reaches for a towel on the nearby rack to dry off his residual limb, now clean. "One turns into two, two into three, and the rest will be history. You'll let me wine and dine you, right?"
You scoff, though mirthfully, not quite believing what you're hearing.
"So?" he urges. "Don't leave a man hanging."
You shake your head, laughing. "I'd love to go out on a date with you, Jack."
"So, what happened with the adoption?" you ask. It's not been bothering you not knowing, per se, but the question has been bouncing around in your head, and your curiosity has gotten the better of you. "Like, was the dog misbehaving or something?"
He beats around the bush. "We just, uh, didn't see eye-to-eye."
"Explain that statement."
He rubs his palm down your back, kneading tense muscles. "She was more… high-energy than I was prepared for. I don't think she would've been happy with me. It's not good to force a dog into a home."
That feeds your curiosity, though you can't come up with a worthwhile response. You yawn and cuddle up to his side, dropping the subject. His thick fingers manipulate your body with ease, loosening hard muscle that connects to tendon that connects to bone. Sleep takes you.
He prepares you both a light breakfast before he leaves for his double shift. He lets you spend the better half of the morning here, asking that you lock up before taking the Uber he ordered for you home, which will get you back in time to get ready for your midday shift at the pet store.
He kisses you on the cheek goodbye. You capitalize on the moment and steal the shower for yourself. You use his products. They smell like him. Woody sandalwood and vetiver and something inherently masculine. In the bedroom, you get changed into a pair of boxers, a plain t-shirt, and some sweats he left behind for you, your underwear conveniently missing and your dress rumpled from last night.
Your Uber is arriving soon.
You make sure you have your phone and purse before you leave. On the ride home, you have a stupid smile on your face.
The text reads, when are you free for our first date?
You start seeing each other casually.
Matinee movie showings to bottomless mimosas (and manmosas) at brunch. It offends him when you pull out your wallet, so he pays for everything.
Normally one-night stands are just that, but somehow you have beaten the odds.
He picks you up for coffee, and afterward, you both decide to take a stroll in a park a little drive away, which has a number of benches throughout in case his leg aches.
You've been here before when you were but a child. There's a pond in the near distance that serves as the marker for the halfway point for the trail. You rush ahead of him to get to it.
All you hear is the gust of the wind blowing past your ears as you run, excitement bubbling up within you like you're that child again.
Then, he whistles. Loud and piercing; enough to make you stop in your tracks. Birds caw as they fly from the surrounding trees.
You're such an idiot. It's an unconscious thing but a behavior you'll need to correct: leaving him behind because he can't walk or run as fast as you can. On account of the prosthesis and, well, his age.
You turn back around and jog to make up the distance between you.
"I'm sorry, Jack. I wasn't thinking." You offer your hand. "So I don't run away again."
He grunts, interlocking your fingers. "Careful, or I might have to put you on a leash next time."
A farmer's market on a Sunday. You stop at a stall to sample the pierogis, rich and warm, the scent of buttermilk and clean dough lingering like the press of a kiss on your forehead—a cozy, nostalgic kind of scent.
You're a messy eater, you. You get sour cream all over your chin, lips, and fingers and lap the tang clean. He watches the pink tip of your tongue coat itself in white as if hypnotized. Dips his finger into the dollop of sour cream on his own plate and brings it to your lips. You laugh, but then suck the tip of his finger into your mouth, humming around the sun-warmed salt of his skin and sour-fresh goodness.
He pulls his finger out of your mouth with a pop and dips it into the sour cream again. Offers it to you again.
"Lick it this time," he orders. "Slowly."
A blur around you; the stall and the market are too busy for anyone to notice or care that you're licking cream off his finger like a kitten with a bowl of fresh milk. You are in your own world.
He invites you over for dinner on one of his nights off. After some back-and-forth, you wear him down enough that he relents and lets you help him prepare it. Next to the pot, on the kitchen counter, is a film packet of De Cecco spaghetti. On a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, two halves of a loaf of fresh Italian bread with garlic butter spread on top.
You excuse yourself to the restroom while he watches the garlic bread bake and the spaghetti boil, standing in the kitchen on his forearm crutches.
At the dining table, you recreate the iconic Lady and the Tramp spaghetti scene, as cheesy as it is. When your lips meet, it's a little gross: the grease of meaty tomato sauce coating lips, pieces of pasta trapped between teeth, saliva dribbling down your chin when he kisses you like he's trying to swallow you whole.
He chuckles when you pull apart. "You look a mess," he teases. He wipes the lower half of your face with a paper towel.
You can't remember the last time you were this happy. Jack tells you the same.
A half turn of the season since you've started dating. He offers you a key to his house.
You're a bit worried about how fast your relationship is progressing and refuse it, but you're over so often that he says, "might as well," and presses it into your palm.
"Thank you for trusting me." It's not as if he's asking you to move in. Still, you don't take advantage of it. It's left dangling on your keyring, untouched.
That is, until you decide to treat him after a miserable week of work. He should be coming back from his shift in the next ten minutes or so. You spent the morning preparing a feast of all his favorite breakfast foods.
As you dry the last of the dishes with a towel, you hear the jangling of keys and the front door opening. Jack is home.
He calls out your name, sensing your presence, and you smile as you walk up to him.
"I knew it was you," he says, the corners of his lips curling up. His nose scrunches up as he inhales the salty smell of bacon. He looks to the dining table, whereupon lie heaps upon heaps of food. "Sweetheart, did you make us breakfast? For the week?"
You nod, giggling and stealing his backpack from where it's slung over his shoulder and hooking it onto the rack. "I did. And I did it after finally using the key you gave me."
With a hand to the back of your neck, he brings you closer, planting a kiss on the tip of your nose, dusty with pancake mix.
"I love coming home to you."
Your pupils dilate and your heart leaps.
If you had one (dreams don't count), your tail would be wagging.
Man has a total of two hundred and six bones in the body. Canines have approximately three hundred and twenty-one. Yours crack, splinter, pierce internal organs as they fragment to make up for that one hundred and fifteen number difference. In the first few minutes, you feel nothing. You just hear the snap, crackle of collagen yielding to the force of the transformation.
Then, devastating pain. It is the worst pain you have ever felt. And in the liminal space between wakefulness and sleepiness, you can register it all along your body.
You wake up breathless, swiftly scanning your torso and upper and lower extremities under the covers.
Human.
You turn to Jack. He is fast asleep, puffing out soft breaths. You sneak out to the kitchen to get a glass of water, chugging it down to calm yourself.
You return to bed and, after some tossing and turning, fall back asleep, picking up where the dream left off. The pain is gone. You're something dog-like again. Your owner comes into view.
They have a material quality to them now. Not shapeless and indeterminate like they were before; the shape of a man. But like a mannequin in shadow, he has no discernable features.
He pets your head and tells you it's going to be alright. You roll over, show your belly to him. He is proud.
In the morning, you wake with a yawn and a stretch, feeling much better than when you had woken up in the middle of the night.
Jack is looking down at you, resting his head on his hand, his elbow propped on his pillow. He pets your head, swipes his thumb across your sleep-glossed cheek.
"G'morning. Sleep well?"
Lunch at work is spent not with a ramen cup but with finger foods and cake.
Mark is throwing Katy a retirement party.
Though she's been here just shy of five years, she's old enough now to receive benefits and has decided, "I'm fuckin' done with this shit."
Mark was over the moon when she came to him with the news, and he hired someone right away to replace her.
Animal Kingdom is small, one of the smaller branches in the small food chain of stores. There's a total of ten employees, and the others are a mix of full- and part-timers.
Everyone is here today for the party, though. Except the new kid who's watching over the store in the meantime. You feel a bit silly wearing the dog ears headband you were handed at the breakroom door, but the others have them on, and you don't want to be a spoilsport.
You wish Jack were here. And at the same time, you don't. This place has its way of sinking its teeth into you. And he has better things to do than be your shoulder to lean on at a work party that you'd rather clean out litter boxes than be at.
As people gather around Katy as she says a few parting words, "good fucking luck, the lot of yinz," you're tapped on the shoulder.
You turn around, your eyes widening.
"Jack? What are you doing here?"
He regards your dog ears with mild curiosity before his eyes drop to yours. "I thought I'd stop by and bring you lunch. Young man at the register led me back here. Is this a party?"
You pull him by the wrist to the corner of the room before anyone can spot him. "Yeah, one of us is retiring." You look down at the lunch bag by his side. "What'd you get?"
"A sandwich and chips from that place you like."
You hold up your plate of half-eaten pigs in a blanket, sticks of carrots, and sheet cake. "You should've told me you were dropping in. I would've saved my appetite."
He shrugs. "It's fine. You can eat it later. I really just came here to see you. I missed you."
You flash a smile. "I missed you, too."
He jerks his chin toward the group exchanging war stories. "Do you have to stay?"
"I mean, it's either this or I go back to work."
"How about a third thing?"
He encloses your wrist in his hand and leads you out of the room. None of your coworkers notice, too wrapped up in Katy's commemoration.
"Is there a storage closet or somethin'?" he asks, looking up and down the hallway.
You giggle. "Seriously, Jack? Here? I could get fired."
"Would that be so bad? You could just stay home with me," he says nonchalantly. "In fact, why don't you quit? You know I'll take care of you."
"I can't just quit. This job is all I have besides you."
You're joking. But not really. But Jack, he is joking. Or at least you tell yourself that. But he doesn't really seem to be joking, either.
"Uh-huh. Well, tell me where we can get some privacy, and you won't get fired."
You point to a room a few doors down from the break room, walking toward it. You hand him your plate and fumble with your set of work keys, singling out the one to the storage closet. The door opens, and he ushers you inside, locking it behind him.
The plate and the sandwich get set on a shelf among some cleaning supplies. Immediately, Jack is pushing you back against the wall, untucking your work shirt from your slacks, which he then unzips to pull your underwear down around your mid-thigh.
"Fuck, Jack, slow down," you whisper. "We have time. The party won't be over for another, like, fifteen minutes."
"'m sorry. Just want you," he mumbles before pressing his lips to yours.
He frees himself from his jeans and boxers and pumps himself to hardness. You can hear the slick motion of his fist moving up and down his shaft. You clench your thighs, your cunt sticky-wet.
He secures a hand on your hip, and with the other, rubs his cockhead through your folds, gathering your slick to line himself up and sink into your cunt. Once he's to the hilt inside you, his hand goes to cradle the curve of your jaw, his fingers making contact with the temple pieces of your headband.
"Fuckin' love seeing you wear this. So cute. My puppy," he emphasizes with a sharp thrust of his hips. The ears flap with your movement.
His words simultaneously make your stomach turn and a heat spread across your cheeks.
"You like it? I thought it was silly," you half giggle, half moan against his lips.
His hand reappears on your hip to join the other, his fingers bruising your flesh in a tight squeeze as he all but spears you onto his cock. The wall at your back prevents any escape. Your hands grip his shoulders, fingernails digging in, barely contained moans tumbling past your lips.
"Why don't you be a good girl and give me a little bark, huh?"
It's not lost on you how bizarre this is. The headband is bad enough, but Jack's request is a little too on the nose. What was an ambiguous, happy, and horrifying dream is bleeding full tilt into reality.
The dreams have not stopped and, in fact, have persisted since meeting him. Have become a closer mimic of reality, however uncanny.
And yet, you do it anyway. You indulge him with a pathetic bark.
"Ruff!"
He throbs inside of you, picking up the speed of his thrusts. His pubic bone bullies your clit, and you clench down on him, an orgasm pulled out of you embarrassingly fast.
"Fuck. That's it. That's my good puppy. Come on your daddy's cock."
He slaps a hand over your mouth to keep you quiet as you keen, your eyes squeezing shut and your legs shaking like jelly as he fucks you through the tail end of your release.
He spills inside of you, and after, he asks you to "get on your knees, puppy. Wanna gag you on my cock."
When you return to the break room after seeing Jack out of the store, the salt of him lingering on your tongue, the party is over.
"Where have you been?" Mark asks, transferring the leftover sheet cake to the fridge. "You know what? Never mind. Can you take over for the new guy? He let someone walk out with an aquarium."
"Turn around. I wanna see you," he says.
Facing him, the spray hits your back and shoulders. Warm, soapy water cascades down into a swirl at your feet.
Jack is just in front of you, sitting on his shower bench, lathering shampoo onto his head of curly hair. By his side is the detachable showerhead, the flow of water reduced to a trickle. He presses the button, the flow returns in full force, and he rinses his hair.
"You're so pretty, puppy," he says, voice throaty with lust.
After the tryst in the supply closet, the pet name stuck.
His eyes scour your body, and instinctively you cross your arms over your chest and cross your legs, despite him having seen your naked body more times than you can count.
He pats the empty space next to him, setting down the showerhead. "C'mere."
You sit beside him, mumbling, "this is such a waste of water."
He chuckles. "Forget the water. You're right where you belong."
He pulls you closer so you're half seated in his lap and cups one of your breasts, slippery with soap, squeezing the curve of it until the fat plumps up in his hand. He leans down to suck a bruise onto the side of your neck as he thumbs your nipple.
You whimper, your spine tingling, your sore cunt clenching down on nothing. It seems no matter how many times he makes you come, no matter how many times he fucks your cunt full, you can never get enough of him.
Just before this, he took you from behind, his body weight like an anvil on your back, your neck trapped in the crook of his arm. Yet it was tranquilizing, as if you had been slipped something; you were too high off his body heat and the drag of his cock along your walls to know fear.
With one word, one snap of his fingers, one puppy-dog-eyed look, you come crawling. And when he's away during the day, your brain is so wired to him that even the scent he leaves behind on his pillow makes you salivate, your clit throb.
He stops the attack on your neck and angles his head lower to lick along your collarbone, but you pull him by the scruff of his neck before he can get carried away.
You level him with a serious look. "Please don't take what I'm going to say the wrong way, but I feel like... I feel like I'm getting Pavlov'd by you. Calling me 'puppy' doesn't help matters."
He stares at you, unblinking. Like he's stuck processing what you just said. Then he laughs. You laugh, too.
A ridiculous notion after saying it out loud. No, if anything, what you feel for him is closer to love than a response to classical conditioning.
Still, maybe it's easier to swallow, to say you're no better than a dog, than to admit such big, human feelings.
"What are you trying to say?" he asks.
The words fall from your lips before you can stop them. "I think I like you too much. Is what I'm trying to say. It's not a bad thing. It's just. You make me a little crazy. Is all."
He laughs again, his chest spasming against your back. You fight the urge to press your thumb into the tip of his canine to test how much pressure you need to apply before it bleeds.
"If we're pouring our hearts out... I also think I like you too much."
He says it so sincerely your heart nearly beats out of your chest.
After a second, he adds, "I can stop calling you puppy. Just tell me what you want," he murmurs, nosing your pulse point, fingers gripping your thighs to pull them apart.
He thickens beneath you, the head of his cock poking your ass cheek.
"No, I think—" You break on a moan when his fingers run along the seam of your cunt, splitting you in two. You can hear how wet you are with every upward and downward motion, even over the running shower water, and your face feels like it's on fire. "I think it's growing on me."
"Good," he rasps, teasing the rim of your hole before breaching it with the tips of his fingers, stretching you open. "Let's get out of the shower. I want to eat puppy's cunt."
You are at his house more than you are at your apartment. Before his shift tonight, he fucks you nearly into an early sleep.
Puppy, puppy, puppy—
It rolls off his tongue so often you're not fazed by it anymore.
He ruts into you from behind as you lie on your side, cocooned by his strong arms and thick thighs. His chin hooked over your shoulder, he pants heavily onto the side of your neck, licking stripes up along delicate skin, and then the stabbing of possessive, sharp teeth breaks skin, ensnaring you, like he's a dog with a bone afraid to lose the one good thing he has.
Daddy, daddy, daddy—
He comes inside you and lazily grinds his hips against your ass, plugging you up.
Daddy and his puppy. Daddy and his puppy.
After, he sits by the bedside in his wheelchair as you're curled up under the covers, thumbing the apple of your cheek. You worked a closing shift last night and an opening shift this morning. You're bone-tired.
"Catch up on some sleep, puppy. I'll be back to wake you up in the morning. You're off tomorrow, right?"
You nod, murmuring something nonsensical. He presses a light kiss to your hairline, and then he's wheeling out of the bedroom to the ensuite to take a shower.
On the cusp of unconsciousness, you hear him return and rifle through the drawers for his scrubs, roll his liner and socks onto his stump to attach his prosthesis, and return his wheelchair to its spot. A routine so familiar to you, your ears are sensitive to the slightest deviation in it.
It's odd. He's moving slower than usual this morning. By now he would be in the kitchen putting on a pot of coffee and tuning in to the evening news. lagging behind not on account of his prosthesis but as if he were delaying getting to work.
You're already asleep before you hear him shut the front door.
When you stir, you feel something wrapped around your neck.
You impulsively scratch at it with one hand, panic chipping away at the corners of sleep clouding your mind, and with the other, push the covers back to get up to check the mirror in the ensuite.
Why does it feel like...
You stop dead, your eyes popping open, wide awake, once you see what it is that is encircling your neck.
You gingerly press your fingers to the black choker collar, the word "pup" written in cursive across the front of the titanium heart-shaped lock dangling in the center of it.
You must be dreaming still.
You pinch yourself, rapidly blinking at your reflection.
No, you're not asleep. This is life.
A million questions pop up in your head at once:
Did Jack put this on while you were asleep? How did you not wake up? How did you sleep through the night with it on? Why the fuck did he collar you? Again?
With shaky hands, you reach your fingers to your nape, checking for a buckle or clip. You feel bile rising up your throat when you don't, though you guessed as much.
The keyhole on the heart isn't just for aesthetic purposes. You need the key to unlock the pendant and take off the collar, which you suspect Jack has somewhere on his person. The leather band is thick, and unless you want to risk nicking your carotid artery using one of his kitchen knives to cut yourself out of it, you're left with no option but to wait for his return.
Pieces of the puzzle suddenly fit into place in your mind but bring with them more questions.
The collar he had you try on at the store. Was that so he knew what size to get you to fit into this one? But that would mean he had planned to pursue you before that encounter, wouldn't it? The adoption. Was that a lie fabricated to talk to you or a genuine truth that preceded this turn of events? You don't know for sure. His fascination with calling you his "puppy." At least that seems cut and dry.
The implication is becoming clear. All this time, Jack has been waiting for what he thought might be the right time to collar you and make you his.
He didn't bother asking permission to do it. He didn't have to. In his mind, you had already given it.
This is too much. You are disgusted by his violation of your body. And yet, you feel as though you should be more disgusted than you are.
The line is blurring. You ask yourself again, is this a dream or a nightmare?
You grip the sink and take a deep breath, your mind made up, your heart not so much. You've never picked a lock before, but it shouldn't be too hard to learn. At home. You hastily gather what of your things you have sitting around the house into one of Jack's old army bags and order a rideshare back to your apartment.
Just your luck, though, that as you're about to run out the door, he walks through it.
He eyes the duffel bag in your grip and the choker collar around your neck.
"Sweetheart," he drawls, hands held out in front of him, careful to approach, like any sudden movement of his and you'll bolt. "I can explain."
You shake your head. "Let me go, Jack. Why don't you give me the key and—and let me go. Please. This... this isn't working anymore."
He steps closer. "I thought you would be open to it. We've been dancing around this for a while now. Got it custom made for you and everything."
"You can't just collar me while I'm asleep and not expect me to freak out!" you shout.
The skin of your neck itches. Sweat creeps up along your nape. You grip the heart-shaped pendant, pulling it side to side, rubbing your skin raw as the collar rotates.
"Let's talk about this, alright? I wasn't planning for—you woke up earlier than I thought you would." He curses to himself. "I should've been here."
You scoff. "Like it fucking matters whether you were here or not. You don't... you don't do this without discussing it first! Please, just give me the key. Now."
You stare each other down for a few more seconds before he drops his hands by his sides and sighs, digging one into his scrub pocket. He flashes the key and then tosses it to you.
"I wish you'd hear me out, but I won't force you to stay." Below his breath, just within earshot, he mumbles, "I thought you were the one."
You don't respond. Instead, you pocket the key and shoulder past him to rush out the door. A far enough distance away from his house, on the walk down the street where your ride awaits, you sling the duffel bag over your shoulder and fight with the lock to take off the collar.
You feel like you can breathe again once you hear a click. You unhook the shackle of the lock from the loop, and the collar comes loose. You're tempted to throw the collar, lock, and key into one of the neighbor's trash bins, but for some inexplicable reason, you don't.
As you hop into the backseat, tears roll down your face.
Jack was the one good thing you had.
He doesn't reach out to you, and perhaps that's a good thing.
But despite doing what you thought was right in leaving, it hurts that he let you go in the first place. But it doesn't hurt as much as it should because you see him every day. At least you think you do.
On the walk to the pet store, you see a head of curly hair in your periphery, a bit of natural copper clawing through the silver.
At work, you catch a figure passing by the storefront window out of the corner of your eye, too quick for you to be sure it was him. But how else do you explain the sudden swivel of your head if not pure instinct?
On your day off, while at the grocery store picking up ingredients for the week, you stumble into the arms of a man after being pushed by the cart of a rambunctious kid recklessly steering it for his parents. He catches you by the waist, asking, "are you okay?"
You nod absently, turning your head to the apologetic-looking kid behind you. When you face the man again, he's already disappeared, the heat of his hands on your waist gone with him. Only then do you register that his voice sounded familiar.
That same evening, you look out the window of your bedroom. The shrubs bordering the sidewalk shake, and you watch as a man-shaped shadow stretches out along the pavement, growing in size as he walks away from the street light.
You're either seeing what you want to see, or Jack is keeping tabs on you. You're inclined to think the former, but pitiably, you wouldn't be too put off by the latter. Though you tell yourself you're done with him, inwardly you feel conflicted because it's possible you overreacted.
He was right, after all. You two had been circling around a specific dynamic, for lack of a better term. And instead of catching your tail, you tucked it out of his house.
Prophetic, almost, what with the dreams you've been having to enter into a relationship with him. But the way he went about collaring you frightened you, as it would anyone. This fallout could've been avoided had he just communicated his desires better.
Since leaving his house that day, your dreams haven't felt much like nightmares. When you wake, all you remember is the latter part of the dream. Head scratches and belly rubs and endless, endless praise.
What truly is there left to be afraid of, you wonder.
The mold spreading out on the ceiling is the tipping point.
It is fascinating, though, despite it being a nuisance. How little it needs to subsist on to stay alive. How it branches out to seek more decaying organic matter to feed its belly, voracious.
The unit upstairs reportedly left the water in the kitchen sink running overnight, clogging the compromised, fragile plumbing system that runs through your apartment building and causing it to leak into your bedroom ceiling.
When you turned in for the night, there was nothing but an off-white popcorn ceiling. And like magic, when you woke, there was nothing but diseased black and green tucked between all of its bumps and ridges.
For the sake of covering his ass and not for the sake of your health, your landlord is asking that you spend a few nights elsewhere. The mold remediators won't be able to come in for another week.
It's been just over a couple of weeks since you broke things off with Jack and a little less than that since you stopped seeing him in every corner.
You are tempted to call him, but call your father instead. Your childhood home isn't too far from here. You haven't spoken to him in months now, but this is an emergency. You can't afford a hotel.
I'd love to have you, but now's not a good time. You should be able to figure something out. Why don't you crash at a coworker's? You're still working at the pet store, aren't you?
You hang up. It'll be another few months before you call him again, if that.
Another night sleeping under the mold won't kill you, you suppose. But you'll have to figure out something soon.
You fall asleep. You dream. You are already transformed.
Your owner appears, and he—
He went through a transformation, too.
Back when the dreams started, he was incomprehensible—an enigmatic entity that was felt more than seen. Then he was the shape of a man, a mere silhouette. Now he is just man.
He has hair on his head and eyes and a nose and lips. Freckled and sun-spotted skin. Two arms and two legs, one of which is a prosthetic leg.
But maybe he was always this way. You just couldn't see him for who he was. How could you have. You hadn't met Jack yet.
He says something you don't understand, but you know he's disappointed in you; his voice is lower pitched, drenched in resignation.
Bad dog.
You wake up feeling nauseous and have a rotten taste in your mouth.
The mold smells. The mold is alive and breathing and healthy, and it smells. The mold is affecting your dreams.
The mold is why you reach for your phone on the nightstand and call him.
He picks up, and immediately you start.
Can I stay over for a few days? I have fucking mold on my ceiling, and it's making me sick, and I don't have anywhere else to turn.
The line is silent for a few seconds. Then, do you want me to pick you up?
Yes. If it's not a bother.
I'll be outside in thirty.
Both of you are silent in his truck; he steals glances at you at every red light, but you look straight ahead.
Out the window, from the corner of your eye, you see a man walking his dog, which stops at a red fire hydrant so it can take a leak.
As soon as you walk through the front door of his house, you say, "we need to talk."
He nods and gestures to the couch.
You throw your (his) duffel bag stuffed with a week's worth of clothes onto the floor by your feet as you sink into the cushion.
"Do you want to start, or should I?" he asks, settling in beside you, not too close, but not too far, either.
"You can start." You wring your hands. "I'm still figuring out what I'm going to say."
"You sure?"
You nod.
Alright. About what I did—"
"You could've asked me," you blurt out. His maw snaps shut. "You could've asked me what I thought about wearing a collar. About incorporating kink into our relationship. Instead, you forced it on me while I was asleep like a creep."
His shoulders sag. He looks so tired. Lifeless, almost.
He must have been hurting as much as you were in your absence, doubly so because of the guilt you can clearly see reflected in his eyes.
A stab of pain washes over you.
"I'm so sorry, sweetheart. I should've talked to you about it first. It was shortsighted of me not to."
A dry laugh. "It was. I would've heard you out."
He sighs. "It's not an excuse, but a small part of me thought you might run if I had brought anything up." His hand hovers over yours, but after a moment's hesitation, he sets it back on top of his knee. "I fucked up. We were still new and fragile, and I should've waited until we had that discussion. But as soon as I had the collar in my hand…" he trails off. "I was overeager. An old, overeager creep, as you put it."
"I didn't say old," you murmur.
"If all you want is a place to stay, then please, stay. Take the guest room. I won't bother you while you're here." He pauses, his stare burning a hole through you. "But I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss you every fuckin' day."
You're the one reaching your hand to his this time, as calloused, familiar, and warm as you remember.
"I—I missed you, too, Jack. Maybe I should've let you explain your side of the story before storming off, but I was… overwhelmed."
He shakes his head. "No, I get it. I don't blame you for it. It was my fault."
You angle your body more toward his, your knees brushing. "Look. I'm willing to pick back up where we left off. Even… try some things, if you catch my drift—as long as we're on the same page at all times."
He raises his brows, a small smile pulling at his lips. "Yeah? You're sure?"
"Part of why I'm here is because I have no other place to go… but I've also had time to think. I want to do this with you. I guess the mold was the push I needed to clear the air. We'll start slow?"
He brushes his thumb over the pulse point of your wrist. Your pulse ticks.
"Whatever you want."
With that, you gently pull your hand away from his to rifle through your duffel bag, retrieving the collar and giving it back to him.
You reattached the heart lock, though you lost track of the key's whereabouts.
He stares at it blankly for a moment, turning it around in his hands like it holds some world-shattering secret, before meeting your eyes again.
"You kept it?" he asks.
"I couldn't get myself to throw it away," you admit.
"But what do I with it? It was supposed to be for you."
"I dunno. Save it as a memento? It's pretty, but it's not really my style. And I'd like to pick my own."
"Pick your own," he parrots, stupefied.
"If and when I'm ready for one, yes."
You take off work for the week using the last bit of vacation time you have. He does the same (though he has a lot more time to burn than you do).
"I'm not lettin' this week go to waste," he says. "Gotta lot of catching up to do."
That first night, you sleep in the same bed like no time has passed, cradled in his arms, his broad chest rising and falling against your back, soft breaths puffed out along the sensitive shell of your ear.
At sunrise, you feel him hard and insistent, slowly grinding his cock against the curve of your ass, a pathetic wetness pooling between your legs.
"Mornin'," he grunts, anchoring a hand on your hip, drawing you closer into the bulk of him.
"Good morning to you, too," you tease, pressing back against his erection, voice soft with sleep and longing.
Too impatient and with a cunt too empty to take your time, you turn around in his arms and push him onto his back, hovering over him, fumbling to pull his cock out of his boxers.
With some spit and a few strokes of your hand, he's stiff, bobbing up toward the ceiling, pre-come dribbling from his slit.
You peel off your underwear and sink down on him inch by painstaking inch, a pleasurable fullness curling your toes once you're seated on his cock.
You've never felt as complete as you do when he's inside you.
"Take what belongs to you, baby. Fuck, this cunt missed me, didn't she?"
He grabs fistfuls of your ass and bounces you on his cock while thrusting up into you, watching your breasts shake beneath the cotton of your sleep gown, your hard nipples poking through the thin fabric.
"My pretty baby. My pretty baby and her tight, puppy cunt—"
Hearing "puppy" again tightens the coil living in the pit of your stomach, a dormant, hibernating thing if not for Jack. A choked cry, and then you're falling apart, landing on his chest, bawling into the crook of his neck because you have him again.
You do away with slow. You just can't help yourself when it comes to him.
He orders a collar—strictly for play, a removable one—and leash set online. Not custom-made quality like the collar before, but it will suffice.
The material of the collar is black leather with gold-plated metal used for the buckle and the O-ring. The chain of the leash is the same gold-plated metal; the handle is the same black leather.
The set arrives the next day.
Breakfast (and brunch and lunch and dinner) at home because he doesn't want to share you with the world just yet if he can help it, hoarding the sweet, honey-ripe scent of you so no one can get a whiff.
Like a dog caching his prized possession.
And afterward, hands fisting the sheets, face down, ass up, you're a sticky, syrupy mess of sweat and slick.
His hands are like hot stones over the flesh of your hips, deliciously warm, fucking you back onto his cock with every thrust, a pillow placed under his residual limb for maximum comfort, his weight distributed more to his left side to put less stress on his right knee.
You feel him more deeply in this position. Digging through your stomach, clawing up your throat.
He wraps the excess length of the chain around his hand and tugs, forcing an arch to your back, choking you firmly yet tenderly, his grip taut but controlled. You grow lightheaded; it's a difficult thing to breathe around the thick of his cock and the tug of the leash.
Adrenaline pumps through your veins. Your cunt clamps down on him, your hole leaking with nectar.
He loosens his grip on the leash, and your head drops forward onto the mattress. Oxygen enters your bloodstream with every ragged intake of breath.
Your brain feels fuzzy. A warmth settles over you. Your orgasm is indulgent, saccharine, so much so you can taste it: fresh spring air and sifted sugar and milkweed nectar. You're a trembling, twitching thing under Jack, who continues to ram your cunt, chasing his release.
"Who's daddy's good girl, huh? Tell me."
He slaps his hand over the skin of your ass cheek when you don't respond.
Your tongue thick in your mouth, your voice wrecked, but you manage to cry out, "me—I am—I'm your good girl!"
"That's right, puppy."
It starts when the headband makes itself at home on your head. A reminder of the years you spent working with Katy that you brought with you because you knew he'd love seeing you wear it again.
He's thick in his hand, pumping himself as he sits in his wheelchair, cockhead leaking and swollen, a slick glide of his fist along his shaft, wet with pre-come and a copious amount of your saliva.
Kneeling by his feet, your tank top is pushed up over your breasts, your nipples stiffened into little peaks. The chain of the leash dangles between you, clink, clink, as he grips the handle.
You suck on the tip of his cock as you massage his heavy balls with one hand, the other gripping the armrest on his chair. A frothy, milky mess coats the base of his cock, dripping down to his balls and soaking your fingers.
"Sit back," he grunts, his voice a thick rasp.
You obey. Your hands rest in your lap, fingers itching to touch him again.
He continues to stroke his cock with one hand. He stares at your breasts, the saliva dripping down your chin, your glassy eyes, your furry little ears, the collar around your throat. "Fuck, puppy." He spills into his hand, a strangled groan passing between his lips, come sticking to his fingers. He scoops as much of his seed as he can, reaching his fingers to your lips.
"Lick me clean."
And you obey.
The sticky salt of him coats your tongue as you wipe his fingers clean, sucking them into your mouth from pointer to pinkie. He pets your tongue, pressing his fingers into the pink meat of it, and then shoves them as far down your throat as he can until you're a blubbering, choking wreck.
"That's my good girl," he praises. "How about I feed you daddy's come in a dog bowl next time? Would you like that?"
The white of your eyes goes bright, and you nod.
He pulls his fingers out of your mouth, wiping the spit on your heated cheek. "I can't hear you, puppy."
"Ruff! Yes, daddy."
After a scene, there is a comedown.
You bathe together in the bathtub, bubbles floating in the water, foamy, thick, and dreamlike, seated between his legs, your head resting on his chest, your fingers tracing the lines on his palm, reading what offshoots led him to you. To this.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Shoot," he says, his chest rumbling when you adjust yourself in his lap, the hand you're not occupied with, resting on the soft curve of your belly, possessive and protective, squeezing in warning.
"Were you really adopting a dog? When you first told me about it in the store, I mean."
He shakes his head. "No. That was just an excuse to talk to you. And…" He hesitates for a second, and you crane your neck to meet his eyes. "And get a measurement for the collar I had planned for you."
You huff a laugh. He's such a freak.
What does that make you?
"Okay, I thought that might be the case. And when you came back to return it?"
"Another excuse to talk to you," he says, smirking.
"So, then, what about the speed date?"
"That was a happy coincidence. A work buddy of mine forced me to go because he said my loneliness was depressing him. I couldn't get out of it. It took one minute for me to know I had made the right choice in chasing you. The rest of the date was just a bonus."
You sit with that for a moment.
"Where did you first catch wind of me?"
"Take a guess," he says.
"PTMC?"
You last went when a coworker got bit by a dog someone had brought in for grooming and were the one to drive them (in their car) to the emergency room. They ended up quitting, and grooming services were discontinued.
He hums in affirmation. "I was passing by as one of the interns stitched up the dog bite on the patient's forearm. You were there on the other side of them, holding their hand. You caught my attention. Somehow I knew you were who I've been looking for all my life."
"Huh. I guess I was too distracted to notice you," you muse. "But you… you sensed something in me."
"You could say I sniffed you out. Part of me was impressed by how calm you were. It was a nasty bite, but you didn't flinch."
You shrug. "I wasn't the one who got bit, though. I'd have more than flinched if it were me. But dogs bite. That's what they do if they're nervous or scared. It's not fair to blame them for following their nature. All I could do was try to be there for my coworker."
He holds you tighter to his chest, the heat of his palm searing your water-slick, slippery skin. "But you're a good puppy," he whispers in your ear, teasing. "You wouldn't ever bite me, right? Give me a reason to muzzle you?"
You giggle. "I could. Dogs also bite out of love, you know."
"Or possessiveness," he grunts.
He sinks his teeth into the side of your neck, as if proving his point.
What he likes, you like, and vice versa. You feed off each other. One continuous feedback loop of codependency tying you together.
He can't keep his hands off you.
Father-like, in the way that he takes care of you after unmaking you like no father should. Whispers of praise after "taking my cock like a good girl." Epsom salt baths he runs for you and your sore muscles after stretching your body like a rubber band. Feeding you at the dining table because you're still a messy eater and "daddy's messy, messy girl." Like some owners feel their pets are, to them, their children.
Though, at times, it feels like he is the feral mutt.
In his wheelchair parked right at the edge of the bed, he eats you out as you lie on your back, your legs thrown over his shoulders, ankles digging into the wide expanse of his back.
His fingers dimple the fat of your thighs, bruising them in his firm grip. His tongue laps your folds, swirls around your swollen clit; his teeth nip at the delicate, divine crease of skin that separates inner thigh from cunt, half man, half beast. You yank the hair on his head; to push or pull him away, you don't know, but regardless, he doesn't separate from you until you're crying against the flat of his tongue.
He likes you best naked, or as close to it as possible, your body accessible to him at all times.
"This cunt is mine," he growls when he splits you in half with his cock. "No one else's."
His, his, his, his, his.
He likes when you crawl to him naked on all fours, collared, your asshole stuffed with the fluffy tail plug he ordered along with the collar and leash set, the chain of the leash dragging along the wooden floor behind you.
He twists the bulb of it around inside you, pulling a mewl from your lips.
"Such a dirty pup, letting me play with your asshole like this, huh? Maybe I stuff her with my cock next time."
He likes watching you piss yourself on his boot outside in the backyard like the filthy pup you are, a sobbing, hot-cheeked, and humiliated, inconsolable mess after a full day of being plied with water, letting go in just your panties and a little T-shirt that is translucent and clings to you after he jerked off and pissed on your chest. Animals being animals.
You like pleasing him. You like being the sole proprietor of his attention. You like being his.
He whistles as soon as he gets through the door. He left for a few hours, though you begged him not to.
"You're supposed to be on vacation, Jack. You're supposed to be shacked up with me."
"They called me in for an all hands on deck. I have to go, pup. I'm so sorry. I'll be back as soon as I can."
Wearing just one of his oversized T-shirts, you come crawling and stop a few feet from where he stands in the foyer, hooking his backpack up on the rack.
He whistles; you crawl.
"There she is, my good girl," he greets. "I thought about you all day today."
You giggle. "Oh, did you, now?"
"Yeah," he grunts. "And that pretty cunt of yours."
He has a smirk on his face, but a flash of something hurting crosses over his handsome features, and you notice.
You cock your head, your brows furrowing, and drop the act. "Jack. Do you want a massage?"
He sighs, holding his hand out to help you up from the floor to lead you to the bedroom.
"You always know just what I need, sweetheart."
He perches himself on the edge of the bed, and you kneel by his feet, looking up at him with a compassionate smile, lifting the pant of his scrubs to release the locking mechanism on his prosthesis and shrug it off his residual limb.
You step away for a second to retrieve the prosthetic ointment in the ensuite so you can lather it on his skin.
Massaging his limb for him, hearing his groans of "pup" and "that's a good girl," steepling fingers into sore muscle, rubbing prosthetic ointment on his residual limb, on the scar of his suture line, his hand on your nape to tether himself to you, you know this is where you are meant to be.
Your landlord says the mold has been removed, and you can return to your apartment unit.
The past week felt like a fever dream. Skin-to-skin throughout most of it all. Waking up with the sun and falling asleep under the moon together. There's no part of you that Jack hasn't claimed.
But all good things must come to an end. You both will return to business as usual. Though, fundamentally, things have changed.
You're with Jack. And he won't be letting you go. Mold or not, you won't be seeing your bedroom ceiling again except to say goodbye.
On your first day back at the pet store, you're tasked with overseeing the adoption event that has been planned for a few months. A big playpen in the middle of the store near the cash registers, where puppies of various breeds chase each other's tails and nap under the sticky heat of a pet store with the rooftop HVAC unit shorted out.
Perhaps it's the swelter stalling the cogs where your rationality functions, but one puppy in particular stares at you like a baby or a child would when it's processing new information, and it seems to follow you around with its eyes as you circle the playpen to help customers fill out their adoption applications.
There must be something about your face it finds interesting. Or maybe it sees the invisible but common thread between you, as if it knows what you and Jack get up to in your free time.
Laughable how your mind plays tricks on you, but you're a touch unsettled regardless. It's too much, isn't it? Working at the pet store. Walking through the door to a man that calls you "puppy." The dreams.
You hope all of them get adopted today. They deserve good homes.
Yours is with him.
It seems like Jack will be getting his wish, after all.
"I quit."
Mark looks up at you from a stack of paper over the rim of his glasses.
"You quit," he repeats, dropping the paper and interlocking his fingers on the desk. "On the spot, or are you giving me notice?"
Your throat bobs.
Mark has been a good boss to you, but it's high time you get out of here, preferably before you hit a decade spent in this time sink.
"On the spot."
He clicks his tongue.
"I can't say I expected this, if I'm being honest. Especially since we lost Katy not too long ago. But I'm happy for you, truly. The question is how quickly can I find a replacement…" he mumbles.
"You're happy for me?"
"Of course. I think you're a bright young lady. The world is your oyster, and I believe you can do whatever it is you want in this life."
Your brows shoot up. "Oh, wow. That's… that's very kind of you to say, Mark."
He leans back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. "So, what are your big plans?"
Trade one leash for another.
You can't tell him that, though.
"Well, remember the speed date I told you about? Um, I've actually been seeing the same guy for a while now, and, uh, I dunno. I dunno what's in store for me. But he'll be there to help me figure it out."
Mark smiles. "Good for you. Aren't you glad I pushed you to go to that thing? Don't say I never did anything for you."
The dreams have stopped. It doesn't matter why, but you speculate it's because you quit your job and moved in with Jack. There is no reason for a prophecy to mask itself as a dream anymore if it has been fulfilled.
Your dreams are as boring and mundane as they can get nowadays, but at least when you wake, you have him.
Late in the summer, in the Spanish villa he rented out with a view of the sparkling sea just outside the balcony doors; the position you first had sex in all those months ago, except the backs of your knees are hooked over his broad, freckled shoulders.
Over the past two weeks you have done nothing but tan half naked under the sun, sipping on tinto de veranos by the beach with Jack by your side, his standard prosthesis switched out for his waterproof one.
One of your hands held in his, his other around the handle of his cane padded with a sand tip, he strolled with you along the shoreline, gawking at you as you wore the little bikini he then ripped off you later, biting into the sun-kissed skin of your ass and breasts and tracing tan lines with his tongue.
Now, though, he bears down on you, and he fucks your cunt mean, a bit viciously, an arm wrapped under your waist, his other hand gripping the side of your neck, forehead to sticky forehead, your collar glinting against the sunlight streaming in through the window.
He went alone to the local square to get bocadillos for dinner: crusty, fresh bread smeared with tomato pulp and drizzled in olive oil, stuffed with jamón serrano and Manchego cheese.
"I know you're up to something, baby. But fine, I'll indulge you. If I come back to you touching yourself like the horny pup I know you are, we're going to have a problem."
When he returned, you were in bed, naked, and in your hands was the day collar you chose and bought for yourself a few weeks prior—paid for with his money, because you're his pup, his responsibility, his baby—as well as the key and screw that went along with it.
You were waiting until the last day of your vacation, a vacation he couldn't be pulled in to work from, for him to put it on you.
A subtler choice than the one he initially picked for you, a dainty, thin chain laced with diamonds that stops just above your collarbone. No one will bat an eye at it unless they look close and see that the only way to remove it is with a hex key the size of a toothpick.
He dropped the sandwiches on the floor and didn't bother taking off his prosthesis, too emotional about collaring you, about having your trust to wear this symbol of his love and his ownership around your neck at all times. With trembling hands, he fastened the ends of the chain around your neck, tightening the screw with the hex key, and then pressed a kiss to your nape.
You've been wearing the play collar for so long it's become something of a comfort to you. You started to miss the feeling of it around your neck when you were done with a scene and went to bed in his arms.
But now, you have this.
You angle your head down to bite his neck so hard ripe blood pours into your mouth, so hard he groans, his chest rumbling, his thrusts stuttering. Along with the iron of the blood, you taste the meat of him: sun-screened, Spanish sun-shined, and sweat-slicked.
"Fuck, puppy. That's—that's a bad fuckin' girl. This is the thanks I get?" But you know he likes when you mark him. "Maybe what you need is a time-out. Put you in a cage." But you know his threats are empty.
He's a sucker for you. If you were to be thrown in a cage, he'd throw himself right in there with you.
You smile wide at him, your teeth stained red. "I love you, Jack. You can't blame a dog for telling you that in the only way she knows how."
He bites you, too, on your collarbone, on the stretch of skin right below your chain, though a lot more delicately because "I fuckin' love you. My baby, my puppy."
You tremble like a leaf in his arms when you come, and he spills inside you not long after, a trail of your combined release leaking down the cleft of your ass, your legs scrumptiously sore after being folded in half and fucked through the mattress.
Your love for each other, a sick kind of dependency, obligate mutualism. One species can't survive without the other. You need him, and he needs you.
summary: a collection of their first times together. connected to my other shy!reader fic, but can be read as a standalone!
content: explicit 18+ MDNI. smut, oral (f receiving), tad of dry humping, unprotected p in v. brief mention of sexual assault (a patient, not reader), reader is a SANE.
wc: 8.9k
notes: thank u for the love on my first fic!! i thought id write a lil extra fic of this dynamic bc i also adore them.
masterlists
First Date
Jack is a traditional man, you’ve come to realise.
After the kiss, the invisible boundary stopping him from taking care of you the way he wanted had been broken, and he promises to care for you to the fullest extent, for as long as you’d let him.
Your schedules never seemed to align to both have a day off, and Jack was getting antsy at the prospect that he had kissed you days ago, but couldn’t take his girl out for a date.
A particularly stressful case one evening broke his patience.
An MVC trauma case had rolled in just before his shift was about to end, the man was in his late-thirties and the crash seemed to have paralysed his lower limbs. He worked to treat the most imminent problems, but Jack could tell the man knew what had happened to his legs, and was grieving silently.
Not long after he’s finished treating the man, a tall, blonde woman rushes into the trauma room just as Jack was about to exit, and the look on her face was fear followed by complete devastation. He watches her sob as she rounds the table to sit next to her partner, moving strands of hair away from his face so she can lean in and press her forehead against his.
Jack stands off to the side watching the scene unfolds, and his breath hitches as he hears the couples’ cries, their pleas of love for one another, the fear that she had almost lost him; lost him before they could finally get married, he overhears.
The woman promises that nothing could ever change the love she has for him, begging to scrap the big, fancy wedding they’d planned, wanting to elope, not bearing to waste another day of not being married to him.
Something twists low in his chest, patience wearing thin and excuses himself from the room, desperately needing to find you.
He couldn’t wait.
Jack’s shoulders are tight when he exits the trauma room, shaking his head and searching for you, hoping you hadn’t left for the day.
───
You’re zipping your bag up where it rests on your chair, when a low, familiar voice startles you from behind.
“What are you doing right now?”
“Uh, going home and sleeping. You should try it sometime, y’know–” You begin to tease back, turning to look at him, but his face is serious, tight, making you falter. You’re about to ask what had happened, never having seen him so disturbed.
He speaks before you can ask, shaking his head and commanding,
“No. C’mon, we’re grabbing food.” His voice is gravelly as he grabs your bag, slinging it over his shoulder, before picking up your coat holding it out for you to slip into it. Your heart warms at the sweet, domestic gesture. Nervously, and heavily blushing, you turn, and let him drape you in the coat. You move to take the bag from Jack, but he shakes his head, holding it tighter.
“Let’s go.” His voice is low, and you feel his hand rest on the small of your back, guiding you to the exit. You almost just let yourself fall into the comfort of allowing Jack to take over, enjoying not having to think for once.
“Jack– hold on.” You say a little flabbergasted. Shen and Lena give you both an amused look as you pass, clearly they seem to know what’s going on whilst you’re left in the dark.
“We’re exhausted, I look a mess right now– we just finished a 12 hour shift!” You try and reason with him as he hurriedly leads you to his truck.
“So?” He gives you a look that implies what you said has no grounds for protest, whatsoever.
You scoff, completely taken aback, and swivel to face him once you reach his truck, searching his face for an inkling of an idea as to what’s up with him.
“Jack–” You try, but he just leans past you, and opens the truck door for you, nodding his head signalling for you to hop in.
“First of all. You ain’t a mess, sweetheart.” He says, almost offended by the notion.
Once you’ve climbed into the seat, you watch as he reaches for the seatbelt and buckles you in, and before pulling away, he rests his forehead on yours and whispers, “You looking fuckin’ amazing all the time.”
You can't help but let out a flustered whine at his praise, blush covering your face as you meet his intense stare. His expression begins to soften once he looks you over, realising you’re finally here with him. He softly brushes a strand of hair away from your face.
“Diner food okay, doll?”
───
You feel the car come to a stop across the street from a 24/7 diner downtown, it’s cutesy, it has a retro feel to it. You go to open the door, but his hand gently catches your wrist mid-movement.
“Ah ah. Stay.” He commands with a soft-but-stern tone, willing you to obey.
You smile to yourself as you watch him round the hood of the truck, you’ve never received this kind of princess treatment, and your heart clenches. You thrum with anxiety as you wait for him to open your door, begging yourself to not make a fool of yourself and somehow faceplanting out of the truck.
Checking that no cars are passing, he opens the door and holds his hand out for you to take. You can’t stop your smile from growing or the heat covering your face, utterly touched by his gentlemanly gestures.
“You don’t have to do all this, you know?” Your voice is quiet, but slightly teasing as you hop out of the truck, holding his hand. “I already like you.”
Jack sighs when looks down at you, wrapping an arm around you to rest on your hip before moving you to the inner side of the sidewalk, away from the road.
“I ain’t doing this to impress ya.” He grumbles out, bringing his lips to your temple. “It’s how you deserve to be treated, honey.”
You’re speechless.
He needs to stop making you blush, you’re already flustered and overwhelmed by all of his actions within the short span of time you’ve left the ER, and the date has barely begun.
You’re barely able to focus or think straight, which is why when you reach the doors to the diner, you mistakenly make a move to open the door, and Jack almost hangs his head in soft frustration
“Sweetheart, c’mon.” He says in disbelief. You look up at him with a confused expression, watching as he enters your space, and opens the door for you. God, he’s so traditional. Your grin is wide as you stare at him, unable to keep it off your face as you enter the Diner.
You let him order first, as you stare up at the menu above the counter. You’d heard him order a savory dish, something with eggs. It’s healthy, and though you’d wanted something sweet like pancakes you start overthinking, not wanting to look unhealthy or childish in front of Jack, completely baseless worries.
He turns to look at you, seeing your brows are furrowed and a worried look paints your face as you’re trying to decide. He reaches back, squeezing your hand tilting his head. “Honey, get whatever ya want, yeah?”
Your smile is tight and shy again when you order the pancakes, nerves wracking your body for no good reason, just another moment anxiety seems to spike randomly.
“Will that be separate or together?” The cashier asks about payment whilst finishing up the order, and both you and Jack speak at the same time.
“Separate–”
“Together.”
His tone is final as he looks at you with an incredulous expression that you even tried to offer to pay on your first date. You begin to shake your head, feeling guilty about making him pay for you, but he taps his card and gives you a stern look.
While you’re waiting for the food he wraps you in his arms and whispers into your hair.
“Let me take care of you. Please.” His voice is gentle but pleading.
Your heart clenches as you look up at him from where you’re wrapped around him, face touching his chest. Vulnerability flickers in your eyes, unsure if you should admit to Jack just yet, how hard it is for you to let go and be cared for.
But he just smiles, patting your hair, and silently, you think he already knows.
Grabbing your food, you look for a place to sit, but you notice Jack is… walking out? You frown again, catching up to him with confusion painting your face. Did he not want to eat together? Had you completely misinterpreted this as a date? Maybe he just wanted to grab food before going home.
He snorts at the confusion, back tracking a little and cupping your face with one hand, a thumb stroking back and forth across your cheek.
“You think I was gonna take ya to a diner for our first date?” He croons, a smirk tugging at his lips.
“Jesus, kid, who have you been hanging around with before me?”
───
What you hadn’t expected was for him to bring you to a remote spot that overlooked the city. It was still early in the morning, a fresh spring fog coating the city from above as you sat on a bench and had breakfast.
You’re too in your own head, you know this. But you can’t stop. You’re painfully aware that this is a date, you want to act the right way, say the right things, be charming, be funny. But it inevitably leads to complete silence from you and jumpy eyes darting around focusing on anywhere but him.
Sighing, he sets his takeout container on the bench beside him, before scooting closer to you.
“Hey, what’cha worrying about over there?” He nudges his knee with yours. He meets your eyes and finds insecurity and so much shyness. He tilts your head up using his fingers on your chin, making sure you really hear him when he speaks.
“You still get me so nervous.” You breathe out shakily, laughing a little at the prospect knowing he’d already kissed you stupid days ago.
“You got no one to impress, yeah? S’just me.” He teases a little, recalling your words from earlier.
“Plus, I already got a taste of those lips, doll.” This raises a shy laugh from you and you groan while you nudge his knee back playfully, clearly calming down. He has a way of easing you, making you comfortable around him like no one ever has. You lean your head down against his shoulder, bringing your hand to trace patterns on his scrubs.
In the comfortable lull between you both, you break the silence.
“What happened today? Why were you so… worked up?” You ask cautiously, not wanting to break the serenity of the moment by bringing up negative emotions.
Jack pauses, you feel him tense beside you. But he places a hand on your thigh and rubs his thumb back and forth comfortingly, searching for the right words.
“I just… didn’t wanna waste any time.” He admits softly, breathing out a sigh of relief.
“I know what I want, and we’ll go as slow as you want– but I’m not waiting around to miss key moments with you.” He leans down to where you rest on his shoulder and places a gentle kiss on your forehead, lingering there for a moment after his admission.
Your breath hitches at his intensity, realising how serious he is, that he really wants this, wants you.
“Now,” he pauses, using his hand to lift your head off his shoulder. “I’ve been dreamin’ about kissing you again for days.” His rough voice whispers, searching your eyes for permission, any indication you want this as much as he does.
You don’t give him time to find it.
Immediately, you lean in and crash your lips to his, faster and passionate than your first.
Jack is genuinely taken aback by your little show of confidence, and he makes a surprised whine at feeling your lips again.
You pull back, wide eyed and shocked at what you had done. “Fuck–”
He growls at you having broken the kiss. You don’t get time to sit with embarrassment at how desperately you’d kissed him, you notice how blown out his pupils are and he immediately cups your face bringing you back in.
He had so effortlessly taken over, comforting you and pleasing you with one kiss that your worries dissipate, your body relaxes into him, and you let yourself feel it.
For the second time, Jack had kissed you stupid.
First Personality Shifts
Slowly, but surely, Jack was getting you to come out of your shell. He was discovering parts of you he hadn’t known existed, and loved it.
He was encouraging you to grow, to flourish, which is how he discovered how sassy you could get.
The night shift were working overtime, wrapping up cases here and there, during a particularly brutal shift. You’d been working around 15 hours now, exhausted but powering through.
You and Emma, a day shift nurse, were assisting a trauma case led by Jack and Dr. Robby, much to the dismay of Shen and Ellis. It was a particularly tricky case, you’d all been in that room for ages, holding your breath during a risky procedure as the room stays silent.
After a while, you watch Jack and Robby step back from the patient, letting out a breath of relief before Robby raises his thumbs, signalling everything went perfectly. You see them smile, their eyes crinkling from under the mask.
Small cheers and laughs filter through the room, the tension easing out.
“You’ve still got it, man.” Jack praises Robby.
Robby almost looks reluctant to accept the approval.
“Nah man, that’s all you.” Robby retorts, his hand patting Jack’s back whilst Robby went to leave the room.
“Take the compliment, Robby.” Jack raises his voice to reach where Robby was leaving the room, knowing how his friend gets. Robby pauses in the doorway turning to face Jack.
“No, seriously, brother. Everyone could learn a thing or two from you.” Robby says loudly enough so his residents can hear, making it a point.
You hear them go back and forth for a while, your brain is finally slowing down from exhaustion, they do this all the goddamn time, which is why you don’t even process it when you blurt out your next sentence.
“Careful, Jack’s ego is inflated enough as is.” Your voice is somewhat quiet, you really meant it for just Robby and Jack.
The room erupts in small giggles, Robby’s eyebrows lifting in surprise and smirking at Jack. He can’t help but let out a laugh.
“Oof, damn girl.” You hear Ellis joke from behind you.
Your wide eyes shoot up to meet Jack’s, your tired brain catching up and afraid you’d offended him. But he’s stood there, completely still, and grinning so hard. He almost looks proud.
Jack didn’t think he could fall for you any harder.
He was wrong.
───
You had finally gotten comfortable enough to ask for his comfort.
Before you met Jack, you couldn’t imagine asking for help for the littlest of things, afraid of inconveniencing people. Jack had reassured you, time and again, that he wants to be the person you go to when you need help.
So you do.
At first, it was adorable for Jack trying to get you to ask for help. Being a slight tease about it, encouraging you to use your words.
You’d had a rough shift, you weren’t meant to be going to Jack’s place after work, but god did you need him today more than ever.
You’d been in the room for a few trauma cases, neither of which had ended with the patients pulling through, one being a pediatric case. You’d also opted to do an evidence collection for a sexual assault patient, knowing how busy Lena had been tonight, the floor needing her more than ever, so you’d taken over for her.
Safe to say, by the end of the night, you were a wreck. You felt on the verge of tears for hours, like the littlest thing could set you off. You were emotionally depleted, you wanted to just switch off, and you knew Jack could help.
So you approached him quietly, anxiously, your hands fidgeting. He was grabbing his bag out of his locker, so you slid in next to him, your back against the lockers next to him searching his face, checking if he’s too tired, because you wouldn’t want to be a burden.
“Hey, baby.” He smiles at your appearance next to him, glancing over at you.
“Everything okay?” He says gently after noticing your stature. He can tell you’re anxious. He pauses from where he’s gathering his stuff in his lockers, turning to face you fully now. You’re staring into his eyes, you’re hesitant.
“Talk to me.” He commands gently, his hand coming to yours to break apart your nervous fidgeting.
You swallow the lump in your throat, asking for help always ended with tears for you and you didn’t want to cry. Not here, not now.
“Jack.” You just whine, silently begging that he’d understand what you need without you having to vocalise it. Your eyes water slightly, needing his comfort desperately.
“C’mon, baby, use your words.” He coaxes, his hand cupping your cheek. “You can do it.” His thumb brushes back and forth across the apple of your cheek, catching any tears if they fell.
“I need you.” Your voice is shaky, broken. It’s all you can manage without completely breaking down at work.
“Yeah?” His voice is so gentle, like he’s trying not to spook you, but a smirk tugs at his lips. “Atta girl.” His praise causes an involuntary, but quiet whine to leave you.
He’ll stop the teasing for tonight, he sees how much you need him and the fact you had even verbalised your need for him was progress. He’s so proud of you.
“You need me, baby? C’mere.” He opens his arms for you, beckoning you into his hold. You’re a little embarrassed as you hug him, worried someone will find you like this, all vulnerable and mushy.
“You did so good, baby, asking me for help.” He strokes your hair, comforting you. “C’mon. I’ll bring you home.”
A protesting whine escapes you before you realise, the idea of him dropping you home alone upsetting you. You had just said you needed him, hadn’t you?
“Hey, hey.” He says quickly, needing to settle you down before you get more upset. “I meant home. Our home. You’re mine, baby. Imma take care of you now.”
───
However, one particular night, he uncovered an unexpected, but one of his favourite sides of you.
It’d been a rare evening where most of the night shift were off for the day, well at least those fun enough to drink with.
You and Jack hadn’t even bothered to try and hide your relationship around your coworkers, they knew too much. It wasn’t much of a problem anyways, not that either of you were overly affectionate at work.
Lena supported you, but continued to encourage you to err on the side of caution, worried you’ll get hurt. Shen, however, lived for teasing you both.
With a few drinks in your bloodstream, you had shuffled closer to Jack within the booth, searching for his touch. Shen, sitting opposite you both kept giving you knowing looks. It’d started with your thigh against his under the table, a gentle, grounding presence. But drink after drink, it hadn’t been enough. You wrap your arms around his forearm, your head on his shoulder now.
You’re definitely feeling the drinks, tipsy if not drunk, and you’re practically all over Jack. It's like you wanted to crawl into his skin. He’s definitely enjoying how clingy you’re being tonight. He leaves soft kisses in your hair from time-to-time, not trying to go full on PDA in front of his friends. But you were making it very hard for him to keep his cool.
The drinks get to your head, making you both loose-lipped and a little sleepy.
Your eyes fall to his hands. His fingers idly trace around the condensation on his glass as he politely listens to a story Ellis is telling. Truthfully, you hadn’t been clocked into the conversation for a while now, Jack occupying so much space in your mind. Jack. Jack. Jack.
His hands just looked so good. They were so big and veiny, and his fingers were so thick. You don’t know what had gotten into you, but you were so incredibly entranced by his hands.
Without thinking, you slide your hand that rested on his bicep, down his arm until it landed on his hand, gently pulling it away from his glass. He lets you, doesn’t even look down to see what you’re doing, assuming you wanna hold his hand. But you just turn his hand over, palm facing up, and reject his attempt at intertwining your hands together.
You let out a small, short whine in protest. Keeping his hand laying flat on the table while you take your nails and gently trace your fingers in his palm, up his fingers and back down. They were so worn, tough. Nothing like your soft hands.
This touch from you makes him shiver, goosebumps erupting all over his skin. He glances down at your face, your eyes are glazed over and you seem completely infatuated by his hand. He watches you turn over his hand again, and you begin to trace his veins, like you’re completely hypnotised.
His breath comes out shakily, now completely zoned out of Ellis’ conversation.
“What’ya doing, honey?” He whispers quietly into your hair, ensuring no one else can hear him.
You peek up at him from where you rest on his shoulder. God, you’re drunk. He’s so beautiful.
“Your hands are realllyyyy hot.” You blurt out, drunkenly as you continue to toy with his hands. By the power of the universe, the table had erupted into laughter at Ellis’ story at the same time you’d blurted that out, such that no one heard.
He stills at your comment and almost barks out a laugh. He holds it in, not wanting you to get all shy on him. Not when his shy girl has gotten so confident.
“Is that so, baby?” He practically growls into your ear, lifting a drink to hide his smirk.
“Mhmmm.” You hum in affirmation. Your focus shifts from his arm to wrapping both hands around his bicep, it flexes slightly as he brings his drink to his lips. “Y’r arms too. Soooo big. Wanna bite ‘em.”
He genuinely chokes on his drink at that, something possessive stirring in his chest. His shy, sweet girl, completely fawning over Jack.
He blinks around, making sure no one heard what you said, he couldn’t stand the thought of someone else hearing your desired rambles for him. Looking up, he notices Shen’s cocky smirk as he glances between the two of you. Jack’s about to tell him to mind his own business, but you beat him to it, by doubling down.
“Like it's unfairrrrr.” You mumble into his bicep.
“Unfair?” Jack asks, confused.
“How are you sooo– ugh!”
He tilts your chin to look at him, wanting to know where all this flattery is coming from, and you have a lovestruck tired expression.
You pout as you take him in, his curls, his scruff, his face.
Oh.
Something more present and aware flashes in your eyes the longer you stare at him, like you’re realising you spoke the words out loud. Your eyes widen slowly, mortified, and heat rushes to your face as you stare at him silently, replaying everything you just said. In public.
You dart your face around the table and make eye contact with Shen who's laughing under his breath. Oh fuck. You probably just embarrassed Jack and yourself.
You detach from him so quickly it gives him whiplash.
“Oh my god, I’m so–” Your voice is incredibly apologetic, horrified, and you won't even look at him in the face.
“No, hey. none of that.” Jack’s voice is firm. He brings his hands to cup your face, making you look into his eyes. “I like you like this, cheeky, confident.”
You want to be happy at his words, but you can’t help but feel guilt and nausea stir in your stomach. Your drunk brain is making it very hard to think straight. You bite your lip anxiously.
“Do you…” You hesitate, looking into his eyes. “Do you wish I was more like that?” You have to ask. Maybe sober you wouldn’t feel so insecure, but you’re tired and your mouth is still feeling braver than your brain.
“God, no, honey–” He pauses trying to find the right words, his thumb absentmindedly stroking your cheek. “I mean– Don’t apologise for this. I want you, every version of you.” His tone is pleading. You calm down a little at his words, feeling silly at how quick your mind jumped to the worst case.
“Want you even when you’re drunk outta your mind and thirsting over me like this–” He teases which gets cut off by a groan from you. You can’t help but smile as you hide your face into his neck again.
First Time
You’d been dating Jack for a little while now, but you still hadn’t had your first time together. Jack waited for your signal, he wouldn’t push, he’d wait until you were comfortable enough to be with him.
Which you were. You wanted to be intimate with Jack for so long, but there’s a nagging feeling at the back of your brain, stopping you from initiating.
Your past relationships, as Jack had slowly realised, weren’t exactly the best. You weren’t ever cared for like you are with Jack, which extended to sex. Sex had never really been about you and your partner, it’d always been about his pleasure, his needs.
And now you’re with the most perfect guy, you don’t know how to navigate being intimate in a way that isn’t focused only on him.
This thought was really getting to you one evening. You and Jack were at his place, just having finished dinner, and now you sit on the couch with your legs in his lap as you absentmindedly watch TV. His hand is giving you gentle strokes up and down your leg, and you can’t stop thinking about needing to warn him about your relationship with sex.
“Jack?” You ask gently. He doesn’t look over, he continues stroking your leg whilst humming in response.
You bite your lip anxiously.
“Um– I need to tell you something.” Jack’s hand falters his motions on your leg and he turns his head quickly, concern flashing on his features. Your tone, so nervous and anxious, had worried him, his chest twisting.
“Baby, what’s going on?” He coos, but he’s definitely on edge.
“It’s nothing, really. Um–” You pause, realising you hadn’t thought about a way to approach this with him. “I just really wanna have sex with you–” You blurt out.
Oh for fuck’s sake. You wince and close your eyes in embarrassment. That’s definitely not the right way to do this
Jack’s face is even more confused, amusement flashing his features.
“Right. Baby, I’ve been waiting for you…” He reminds you gently.
“No, no, I know.” You huff frustrated. “I– it’s about that. I just– fuck.” Your frustration builds at yourself for not being able to articulate your words well.
Jack sits up now, sensing your discomfort. He brings you closer to him, leaning on his shoulder now.
“Honey, focus, you’re okay. You can tell me anything.” His voice is immediately grounding. You breathe out shakily.
Silence hangs between you both, before you finally admit it.
“I can’t finish during sex.”
Silence continues to permeate the room. You’re so mortified. You don’t turn to look at his face. You can’t.
“You mean– you haven’t or you can’t?” His voice is gentle, a hand coming to stroke your hair. He’s definitely suspicious of your confession.
“I dunno… both, I guess. I’m not saying this to make it a challenge– people have done that before and it just makes it worse. I’m just warning you beforehand my body is wired differently and I don’t want you to feel bad if you can’t make it happen–”
“Oh, honey, is this why you’ve been hesitant to have sex?” He asks softly, interrupting your rambling.
You just hum in affirmation, embarrassed.
Jack mulls over your words, he won’t argue and tell you he will make you finish but he seriously thinks this is a product of your previous boyfriends being inattentive and careless with you. Anger twists in his chest thinking about you thinking you’re somehow inadequate when it was your boyfriends who just took and took.
“Listen to me, baby.” He tilts your face to look at him now. “I don’t care about that y’hear me?” He watches your expression falter, eyes full of vulnerability.
“If you can’t? Fine. I don’t want you any less, I just wanna make you feel loved, baby.” He can tell you’re still hesitant, but you nod.
You smile shyly and cuddle into his side, resting your head on his lap as he plays with your hair.
The days following your conversation you think over his words more, and a few days later, you tell him you wanna do it– be with him.
He checks in multiple times throughout the day, making sure you’re okay, that you’re absolutely sure. But you also notice how much more often his touches linger. You can’t tell if it’s intentional or not, but you can’t stop thinking about him. Everything about him that day is so much more gentle and careful with you.
That evening, when he leads you onto the couch your body is thrumming with anxiety. You know what's about to happen, he knows. Why are you so scared? You’ve never been more tense, more afraid of something going wrong. This is the man you love.
When you both sit on the couch, cuddling like you always do, he doesn’t make a move. Maybe he’s waiting for you. Your leg shakes as you try to figure out what’s meant to happen, what you’re supposed to do.
Before you can overthink it, you drape yourself over his lap and crash your lips to kiss, a hungry desperate kiss.
He returns it, a grunt of surprise before melting into it. Hands coming to gently rest on your face. The kiss is almost rough, your tongue intertwining with his. You can do this, you can make him feel good. Your brain already slips into making sure he’s pleased, unable to shake the habit from the past.
You move against his lap, and he groans in pleasure. The noise he makes thrills you, wanting to hear it again, you’ve never heard him like this. You try to grind again but he pulls away breathless, shaking his head.
“Baby, slow down.” He practically laughs caressing your cheek. He can’t lose his cool already, not when he plans to make you feel good.
Fuck.
Shame floods your chest and your cheeks heat, climbing off of him and curl up next to him. You somehow messed this up, you want the couch to open and swallow you up.
“Oh, my sweet girl. C’mere.” He coos, turning to face you. He realises how his words may have come across like a rejection, and that’s the last thing he wants you to think.
“I don’t wanna rush this” He places a hand on your thigh, dipping his head trying to find your eyes. He can tell how nervous you are, how much you’re overthinking this. “Lemme take over, yeah?” He asks softly.
You meekly lift your head to meet his eyes before nodding. His eyes are blown out, he looks hungry. But there's an edge of restraint, he's holding back.
You don’t even have time to feel guilty before he cups your face and brings your lips to his again, slow, passionate.
He leans forward, crowding you back against the couch until he’s lying over you. Your heart jumps at the closeness, the position you’re in.
You become breathless, almost gasping for air between each kiss.
Jack moves from your lips, placing sweet kisses down your jaw. Your body erupts in goosebumps, you’re practically shivering at the contact. You don’t even register your hand lifting to comb through his hair, pulling him down onto your jaw for more.
You feel his lips twitch into a smirk.
“That feel good, baby?” He rasps. The low grumble of his voice has you bucking your hips into him, desperate for him. You get completely lost in his kisses–
“Words, baby.” He commands pulling away to look into your eyes. He smirks smugly as he sees how wrecked he’s made you with just his kisses.
You blink processing his request, breathless and annoyed he’s stopped kissing you.
“Yeah– please, Jack. Don’t st– ah!” You’re cut off by his lips attaching to a sensitive spot on your neck, just below your ear. You whine as he sucks on your skin, for sure leaving a mark. Your body shivers again with the thought of him marking you that you involuntarily tug at his hair, which provokes a growl from Jack.
He detaches from your neck breathlessly dipping his head like you’ve just wrecked him with a simple tug.
“Do that again.” He commands low, before hungrily returning to your neck sucking more spots over and over.
A surge of confidence fills you knowing you have the capacity to make him feel just as wrecked as he does you. You continue to rake your hands through his curls, tugging occasionally loving his whines, as he sucks spots lower and lower down your collarbone and chest.
His hand trails under your shirt, his cold hand making contact with your tummy and you tense involuntarily. He pauses looking up from where his head rests on your chest.
“You need to slow down?” His tone is so soft, gentle, it almost makes you cry.
“Nononon– please keep going,” you almost beg “Your hand was just cold.” You laugh embarrassed while stroking his hair.
He smirks at your neediness trying not to tease you more.
He holds eye contact while his hands trail up your torso, goosebumps erupting throughout your body once again. You get flustered as he stares so intensely and you try to look away.
“Eyes on me.” He coos, bringing his fingers to tilt your head back to face him. Heat rushes in your face, your body practically shakes with anticipation.
He lifts your top off so slowly, that you almost just beg for him to hurry up, for him to touch you. His hand slowly slides up from your hips up to your breasts, a hand coming to cup you over your bra as he returns to sucking spots at your collarbone. You get lost in the sensation once more, not noticing his other hand working at removing your bra. Once you peel it off he just stares. You almost go to hide, feeling self-conscious under his stare.
“So fuckin’ pretty.” He groans before directly leaning down and taking a nipple into his mouth.
Your hands grip the couch roughly and your back arches into him involuntarily.
“Fuck– ohmygod–” you whine at the sensation of his tongue swirling your nipples. You feel jack smirk against your breast, cocky fucker, before returning to suck on them hard.
You don’t think you’ve ever felt this good, you had no idea kisses and touches like this could wreck you.
His teeth unexpectedly grazes your nipple and you moan. Your body shakes with overwhelm, you bring your hands to cup jacks face needing him to pause.
His lips detach from your nipple and his pupils are black. He looks like a man starved. He tries to go back to sucking but you hold his face steady.
“Need– fuck– need a break, feels too good.” You pant.
Jack blinks and his cocky smirk returns.
“Oh yeah?” He rasps, with a mock condescending tone.
You want to even the playing field a bit so you paw at his shirt, needing him to take it off, which he complies by ripping it clean off so quickly you barely register it. He leans down to capture your lips again, but you push your body upwards into his to manoeuvre you both into sitting position. You’re on top of him now, your turn to wreck him.
His eyes narrow and smiles at your little show of dominance, and he’ll let you think you have the upper hand, for now.
You lean down to return the kisses he gave you. You test out his sensitive spots, kissing and sucking spots along his neck whilst raking your nails along his biceps, his back, his chest.
His breathing is shallow and you hear him whine.
Bingo.
You continue sucking in that spot on his neck, one hand tugging in his hair and another raking nails on his bicep. You love the sound of him falling apart.
You feel his hips involuntarily buck into your and you know you have him under your finger. It’s your turn to smirk against his neck, peppering small kisses up his jaw before locking eyes with him and grinding down straight into his lap.
His hands jolt to your waist, not roughly, but a firm presence. He holds you down as he groans loudly, coming to rest his head on your chest. You try to move again but his hands on your waists prevent it, and he sounds destroyed.
Your smug, cocky victory is short lived.
His hands are on your thighs in an instant and you’re suddenly jolted upwards, your legs wrap around his torso as you let out a startled yelp. He’s carrying you.
“You’re a fuckin’ tease, baby.” He murmurs into your neck as he carries you towards his bedroom.
You’re plopped down onto his bed and you bounce a little. You don’t even get time to speak before he’s on you again, his kisses desperate.
His hands paw at your bottoms, sliding them off in one quick go before he cups your panties.
“You enjoy almost getting me to blow my load in my pants, hmmm?” He teases feeling how wet you are already. “Making me feel like a fucking teenager again–” He growls before latching onto your breast again.
His hand slides your panties off as he sucks you, and it all feels too good you whine as you paw at his belt, wanting him to take his pants off too, to be on equal playing ground.
Groaning, he reluctantly detaches again before quickly working at his belt. The sound of the clink and him sliding it through the loops has your stomach flipping as you breathlessly stare at him from the bed.
As soon as they’re off he’s on you again, his fingers coming to your clit, spreading the wetness from your folds up and making small circles. You jolt a little at the feeling, not expecting his touch there.
“Jack– fuck– what’r you doing? You don’t have to–” You begin to tell him to not waste his time on you, you already know you won't be able to cum.
“M’working you up, baby.” He coos, not slowing his motions. “No pressure to finish, yeah? Just wanna make sure it doesn’t hurt.”
You hesitate, staring into his eyes and you realise he’s being sincere. You swallow a lump in your throat, feeling extra vulnerable at the lengths of care you feel he’s taking for you. You nod before falling back against the bed, just letting yourself enjoy the feeling of his touches.
You feel the way his fingers move slow circles against your clit, how they adjust every time your breath hitches, as he’s searching for the right tempo and pressure to make you feel good.
You can hear how wet you are, you almost feel embarrassed how his fingers glide through your folds so easily. He continues to pepper gentle kisses down your neck as his fingers stroke you, they move lower and lower until they reach your entrance.
You gasp as he pushes his fingers inside you, feeling full.
You let out small whines of pleasure as he thrusts his fingers inside you. He shushes you by placing his soft lips to yours, continuing to mumble sweet words.
“Just let go for me, baby.”
“Thaaaats it.”
“Rub your clit for me.”
You reach down to add pressure to your clit and immediately jolt at the feeling. It feels different. The pressure from his fingers inside you, curling upwards and continuously thrusting at a consistent pace is getting to you.
Your lower stomach twists, he sucks on your neck as he rubs against the spongy spot inside you, you realise the pressure feels good. That the way you’re rubbing yourself as he thrusts into you while whispering is working. You try so hard to keep it there. Keep rubbing. Keep focused on the feeling. Focusing on his words–
It disappears.
“Fuck!” You huff frustrated, tears welling in your eyes. He pulls his fingers out immediately, worried he’s hurt you and you curl up into yourself. “I can’t do it.” Your voice is wobbly as you berate yourself, wiping a tear off your face.
“Hey, easy, baby.” He soothes by rubbing a hand on your back. His heart clenches at the sight of your teary eyes.
“M’sorry, Jack,” you sniffle. “You spent so much time on me and I couldn’t–”
“No. Hey.” He stops you, firmly. “No apologies. M’not mad, not upset.” He coos, moving your hair away from your face.
“I did all of that because I wanted to. You didn’t ruin anything, y’hear me?” He cups your face making you look into his eyes.
You nod shyly, but you’re still feeling low about it, he can tell.
“Jack– It’s okay if you wanna just fuck me now. M’ready. I want it too.” You whisper looking up into his eyes, still on the verge of tears.
He’s shaking his head before you even finish your sentence.
“No.” His tone is final.
He has an inkling that you’re in your own head too much, putting too much pressure on yourself to perform even when he told you there’s no expectations. He can feel your frustration, just wanting to fix this for you. An idea lands in his head.
“I’m not done with you.” He says gently whilst moving down your body again. “If you’ll let me, I wanna try something else, yeah?”
“But–” You begin to protest, feeling guilty he has to try so hard on you.
“It’s for me. Not for you. Humour me, okay?” He asks so politely, you don’t wanna deprive him of something he enjoys. So you nod.
“Lay back for me completely, baby.” You oblige, breathing heavily.
You feel his fingers in your folds again, they linger on your clit before he gently thrusts them back inside you. You lie back, continuing to feel the pressure but you can’t shake the guilt.
You feel his hot breath ghost over your mound. You jerk your head up, he’s staring directly at you before he places his lips directly on your clit and sucks.
Your body jolts, arching your back off the bed, your hand landing in his hair once more. You were not expecting this.
“Jack– ohgod.” You breathe as he simultaneously works his fingers inside you and tongues your clit. He smirks at your reaction.
“That feel good?” He’s cocky, but he’s also checking in on you. You nod fervently and guide his head back down. He obliges wordlessly and gets back to working your clit. You’ve never been made to finish with someone else's fingers, but no one has ever tried this.
He hears your small whines and it takes all the restraint in his body to keep focused on you, as much as he wants to just take his cock and slide it inside you, to watch your eyes widen as he fills you up, he wants you to feel good.
You feel the familiar pressure build in your lower stomach.
You start squirming, your lower half somehow both chasing his mouth but trying to get away from it. You’re getting overwhelmed, your body experiencing too much at once, and this is where you usually tap out, where it dissipates.
Jack senses it. He feels you clenching around his fingers. Feels your whines becoming more high pitched and breathless. He doesn’t want you to think too much about finishing, can’t have you waiting for the build because it’s gonna drive it away.
He doesn’t change his pace, his fingers continue thrusting, and his tongue doesn’t speed up on your clit, he keeps everything consistent.
“Jack–” You whine, feeling overwhelmed but knowing it’s not going to work, edging towards overstimulation.
He glances up to meet your eyes but doesn’t stop his motions, searching your face. He can see you’re wrecked. He’s desperate for you to fall off the edge, you’re right there.
So he distracts you.
In one smooth motion, he removes his mouth. You almost whine in sadness before he replaces them with his fingers, eliciting a stronger reaction from you, and he says, in the most casual tone:
“You finish your charting?”
What?
“My– Jack– what?” You huff out breathlessly but he doesn’t slow his fingers from toying with your clit and thrusting inside you
You try to answer his question, racking your brain.
But you can’t think.
It feels too good.
Your mind goes completely blank.
And you let go.
You fall apart completely. You clench around his fingers and your legs shake involuntarily.
“Fuck–!” You moan loudly. Jack continues to work you through your orgasm, not stopping for a minute.
He pulls the pleasure from your body, the only thing you register is the waves of pleasure crashing down on your body. Your back is arched off the bed and your eyes are squeezed shut as Jack manages the impossible.
You didn’t know it could feel this good.
You finally start squirming trying to get away, and he eases his fingers out of you. You’re practically shaking, breaths coming out heavily as you lay on the bed completely destroyed.
You feel him slide up the bed, tucking himself under you so your head rests in his lap and he just strokes your head, moving strands of hair out of your face from where they’ve stuck to you as you’ve gotten sweaty.
You slowly calm down, coming back to yourself and shyly open your eyes. He’s already staring down at you, smiling so wide.
Despite yourself, you blush. Like he hadn’t just made you completely fall apart.
“My sweet girl.” He coos, stroking your cheek.
You try to hide your face in your arms, feeling impossibly shy at his words.
“Oh, c’mere, baby.” He coaxes you out of hiding. “Y’getting all shy? After I just made you cum so hard?” He teases gently and you groan, turning around to sit in his lap, resting your head in his neck.
“Jaaaaack.” You whine.
“Okay, I hear ya, baby. No more teasin’,” he rubs a hand down your back, then his tone gets impossible quiet, like you’ve never heard before. “That was okay, right, sweetheart?” His puppy dog eyes meet yours.
You can’t help but laugh.
“Okay?” You scoff.
“Jack, that was– everything.” You tell him, kissing his cheek.
He settles down a little after that, the brief shyness leaving him.
“My turn, please.” You beg whilst reaching down to his crotch where you can feel the erection poking through from where you’re sat above him.
He grabs your wrists as you touch the waist band of his shorts, stopping you, you frown.
“Darlin’, believe me. Any other night, absolutely,” He pauses stroking your cheek. “But I need you so bad right now, need to be inside you.”
“Oh.” You whisper, a shy smile coating your face as you realise how wrecked he is. Rising from his lap and allowing him to remove his boxers, you settle back down onto the bed. He’s on top of you in an instant. “Jack– I can get on top, wanna ride you.” You say shyly.
“Fucccck,” he groans. “Baby, I want that, but I’m not gonna last. Next time. Let me feel you this way. Please.” He begs while positioning himself between your legs.
You wrap your legs around him as the tip of his cock slides through your folds. Your breath hitches when it nudges against your clit, the feel of your wet folds sliding against his cock makes it twitch against you, and he lets out a low groan at the feeling. Jack repeats the motion a few times before bringing the tip to your entrance.
You instinctively brace, knowing how painful it always is. Jack sees this, leaning down to kiss your neck and calming you down, relaxing you.
“S’okay, relax.” He coos before dipping his head into your neck, and pushing in.
He pushes in slowly, so slowly he’s losing his restraint.
But it doesn’t hurt.
He’d worked you open so well, kept you so relaxed, you just feel full.
You moan as he bottoms out, a hand tugging at his curls and the other gripping his bicep. You nod fervently,
“You can move, please, move–” You don’t even finish your begs, your permission is all he needs to start letting go and thrusting into you.
You swear you’ve never felt so good in your life, the level of intimacy is unmatched.
“Fuck, baby, you feel so good.” He whines
His eyes meet yours as he thrusts, and as always his stare is intense. His pupils are blown and he looks destroyed.
He fits so perfectly inside you, you’re so full, you can’t help but moan.
You’re clenching around him so perfectly, your breasts bouncing with every thrust and he can’t take his eyes off you.
“You’re doing so good f’me.” He praises even though he looks like he’s on the edge.
Holding himself up on one arm to continue his movements, he brings a second to your clit.
You don’t expect his touch once more, so lost in how full you feel, how heavenly it all is, that you hadn’t realised how close you were again, and his simple touch pulls a second orgasm from you.
You fall apart even more, gripping his hair, nails leaving marks on his bicep as you shake around him, clenching.
That’s all he needs to finish.
Your beautiful moans, the way you don’t break eye contact, the feel of you coming undone on his cock, he’s gone.
His thrusts stagger, becoming more desperate and frantic, his hold on your waist tightens as he grips onto you bringing you down onto his cock. His head lulls next to your head, hot breath in your ear as he groans, his seed spilling inside you.
He’s completely wrecked, his last few after-orgasm thrusts jolt you, overstimulating. He lets his body go and completely crashes down onto you like a weighted blanket, leaving sloppy kisses down your neck.
You’re both breathing so heavily, he’s still inside you as your aftershocks move through you, clenching involuntarily, but he seems to enjoy the feeling even as sensitive as he is.
“Y’were perfect for me, baby.” He whispers into your ear.
Your heart clenches at his words, how soft he’d been with you the whole time. He was so caring, so focused on you, praising you throughout the whole thing, he never took, he just kept giving and giving. He made sure it didn’t hurt. You realise that you’ve been accepting subpar treatment your whole life and just brushing it off.
In your post-orgasmic blank brain, you can’t process the emotions and a few silent tears spill from your eyes at the complete overwhelm of emotions.
Your sniffles are what alert Jack, finally lifting his head to meet your eyes. His heart drops into his stomach, panic flooding him.
“Hey, hey, talk to me.” His tone is so soft you feel guilty for worrying him. He moves to pull out, but you’re not thinking straight and you lock your legs around him, not wanting him to leave.
You just reach around and koala-bear hug him. He settles a little knowing he hasn’t hurt you, that you still wanted him touching you.
“Gotta talk to me, baby.” He pleads, cupping your face.
You’re not silent for much longer, calming down enough to stop his worry.
“You– felt so good.” Your voice is high pitched, almost shy. “You cared for me.” You sniffle.
Jack’s heart practically breaks.
“Oh, baby.” He coos, bringing you into his chest. Peppering many kisses into your hair. “M’always gonna take care of you.” He says so gently you can’t help but let out another tear, but you’re smiling now.
“I love you.” You whisper, eyes full of tears, him still inside you.
He breathes out a sigh of relief.
“Baby you got no idea how long I’ve been waiting to hear that.” He kisses you, soft, passionately.
summary: the new nurse in the pitt has caught jacks attention.
content: fluff, hurt/comfort, yearning, protective jack, age gap, miscommunication, slow burn, he snaps at you, descriptions of reader injury/blood, mentions of abuse (patient)
wc: 10.5k
note: this is my first fic, enjoy :))
masterlists
You desperately wanted to make a good first impression on your first shift at PTMC.
The universe had a different idea, with your plan actively unravelling.
You’re new to Pittsburgh, and unfamiliar with the notorious unreliability of the public transport system, causing you to be 45 minutes late and frantically running from the nearest bus stop into the emergency department.
This is your worst nightmare. You picture everyone looking at you as you walk in, silently judging. Hating the feeling of eyes on you. You’re definitely flushed red in the face, your bag being packed to the brim with items you certainly do not need weighing you down, cursing yourself for packing so heavy.
While running through the entrance of the ER, you’re barely looking where you’re going and end up colliding with a chest, solid and unmoving you almost mistake him for a wall. You stumble a little, losing your footing and almost fall backwards over your own feet.
Warm hands on your shoulder steady you, preventing the horrific embarrassment.
“Oh fuck, I’m so sorry– I didn’t even see you,” your voice is frantic and apologetic, worried you’ve already made an enemy and you hadn’t even started your shift.
A deep, gravelly voice cuts through to you, grounding your panicked state.
“Hey, kid– easy, easy. You’re okay.” His voice is instantly calming. “You our new nurse?” he asks gently, while his hands slip to your arms, fully stabilising you.
You settle down quickly, gathering yourself and finally looking up at him, nodding after a while realising he asked you a question.
He’s incredibly attractive.
The first thing that you notice about him is how big he is. He’s taller than you and so broad, forming a literal wall between you and the ER in this moment, no wonder you crashed into him. He stands so close to you that you have to lift your head to look up at him as he towers over you with a gentle, concerned look. Butterflies twist in your stomach.
You swallow thickly, nerves returning as you realise you probably fucked this impression up by remaining silent and gawking at this man.
Collecting yourself, “Uh– yes! That’s me–” you stumble over your words internally cringing, “I’m so sorry about being late, it won't happen again.”
He chuckles quietly, finding your flustered state incredibly cute, and extends a hand to you.
You notice the size of his arms, his veins, his hands– oh, you’ve got to stop thinking like this. You’re so fucked.
“Dr. Abbot, nice to meet ya, kid.” His voice is low and gravelly, stirring your stomach. “But don’t let it happen again.” His voice is firm, making your insides flip and guilt rises within you.
“No, no of course not. I promise. I’ll be 45 minutes early every day!” Your voice is laced with guilt and you avoid his eyes, whilst shaking his hand, feeling like you’ve already failed before starting.
“Jesus, kid, breathe.” He chuckles, mouth twitching in amusement. “You’re apologising like you hit me with your car.” He soothes, smirking a little at how easily his teasing had gotten to you.
He watches your face fall in relief, and you let out a small, shy laugh. Still holding onto your hand a second longer, it's hard for him not to notice how incredibly soft your hands are in his, how untouched by cruelty, unlike his rough, calloused hands. Something protective stirs in Jack, confusing him, but a drive to keep you safe, keep you soft takes root in him. He needs to ensure this place doesn’t ruin you, doesn’t cause you to burn out like he's seen time-and-time again with nurses and doctors.
“I’m really not usually this much of a disaster– well, most of the time.” You laugh shakily.
You notice his intense stare, like he’s studying you, makes you squirm under his gaze. Your eyes flick down where your hands are still joined, you notice the sheer size difference, how his hand completely engulfs yours. You go to pull away, when he brings a second hand to cup your hand, completely engulfing it, before he pulls away entirely. Your breath hitches, trying to stave off any completely inappropriate thoughts,
Dr. Abbot tilts his head towards central, signalling to meet him there once you’re settled.
“Oh– and, kid?” He drawls, eying your bag as you head towards the lockers.
“We do have supplies here, I promise.” he teases, but his voice is soft and amused, referring to your massively overpacked bag, watching heat flood your face and you nod, completely embarrassed.
Jack watches you scuttle away, shaking his head and chuckling to himself, but his mind is elsewhere, how you were looking at him so shyly, your wide doe eyes ingrained in his mind. Imagining your eyes after kissing you, those eyes looking up at him when– Fuck. This is so unlike him.
Approaching central, he sees Lena and Shen talking in hushed voices. He chooses not to entertain their shenanigans, just crossing his arms and staring up at the patient board, but he catches Lena’s fierce stare in his periphery, alongside Shen’s smirk.
“Stay away from my nurses, Abbot. She’s clearly a good kid.” She scolds, her tone firm and motherly. He can feel her eyes shooting daggers at him.
Jack doesn’t look away from the board, smirking a little.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His voice is low and equally amused, shaking his head gently. “Just being friendly.”
Shen scoffs, “Yeah? Friendly? You look like you wanted to eat her.”
Jack tenses a little going to defend himself before Lena’s sweet voice interrupts him. She walks past Jack making her way towards you where you had emerged from the lockers and placing a protective hand on your shoulder.
“There ya are, honey. I’m Lena, your charge nurse. C’mon, let us give ya a tour, get a lay of the land, yeah?”
During the tour, you notice Abbot seems to never stray too far from you. Always directly behind you, his hand hovering over the small of your back whenever the halls get crowded, ready to move you if needed.
Surely it's just friendly, you tell yourself.
You hope otherwise.
───────
True to your words, you’re never late again.
Always early to every shift, settled down and working by the time Jack clocks in. But he notices since you’re starting to be early, you get closer and closer with Robby, and it wouldn’t bother him, if you’d at least show the same fondness for him.
Every shift, you avoid interacting with Dr. Abbot at all. You tell yourself it's necessary, you can’t let yourself fall for an attending, despite how flustered, frankly, just warm all over, he makes you feel. You love watching him work, his competency and confidence as he works allures you. Especially in trauma cases, when he barks orders to his residents, you imagine him telling you what to do, when to do it, how to do it, guiding you.
However, during a particular trauma, you were meant to be in the background, watching and learning. But you couldn’t stop watching Abbot’s hands work with such fine precision, the way they flex, the veins popping out. You get lost in your head staring at how big they are, how they’d feel cupping your face, your neck, inside you–
That’s when you decided, for your own well being, but most importantly your work, you couldn’t be around him.
From then on, if you needed anything, you went to anyone and everyone, to avoid speaking to Abbot. Even if he was right there, and asking if you needed anything, you’d go quiet, and your quiet, meek voice dismisses him, “Oh, uh, I’m okay, thank you.” Before you turn and scuttle off in the complete opposite direction, towards Shen.
It bugs him.
How you avoid him, how easily you laugh and joke with Robby, or how you always go to Shen for questions or help.
Jack watches right now, as you laugh freely with Robby, gazing up at him as if you’re hanging on to every word. Gazing at him like he hung the moon. He feels an ugly feeling crawling up his throat, and doesn't want to admit jealousy. He’s not jealous. He’s not. He simply wishes you'd talk to him, with those wide, round doe eyes, smiling shyly and getting you to fall apart with the simplest of words and touches.
He’s so lost in his own head, he doesn’t notice Robby walking by ready to leave for the day.
“You got a good one there, brother, might steal her from the dark side if you’re not careful.” Robby jokes in passing, leaving Jack completely stunned. His eye twitches and his breath stops.
No.
His gaze flickers up to you across the ER, your sweet laugh cutting through the air.
You’re his.
───────
Admittedly, you’re making it very hard to make you his.
You’re almost too polite with him. A small, “good evening,” greeting when he comes in, a simple, “see you tomorrow, boss,” whenever you head out. You’re impossible to get time alone with.
Every time he catches you walking down the hall, jogging to catch up to you, asking you how your night is, you get all quiet. You don’t even look at him beyond a polite glance, your smile is tight and professional. Nodding before dipping into the closest room to get away.
He sighs, thinking you could be so focused on your work you may not want to entertain small talk. But he knows that’s not it, seeing how you laugh every time Shen or Ellis make jokes as you walk with them in the hallway.
So he tries to talk to you when you’re not as busy, just charting.
Jack’s leaning against the counter at central, pretending to be looking at the patient board, but his eyes keep drifting over to you, thinking of ways to get you to talk to him.
He watches the way you pout while charting, your brows pulled tight in concentration, and has the sudden urge to smooth the crease between them with his thumb. He wants to gently scold you for mindlessly chewing at the tip of your pen whilst you work, to take his hand and brush the hair covering your face behind your ear–
His body takes him over to your desk before his mind catches up with him, a seemingly magnetic pull driving him to your side.
He slots himself beside you, a hand over the back of your chair, leaning down to look at your screen.
“Oh– Dr. Abbot!” you startle, being caught off guard.
Your mouth dries and your heart rate ticks like a rabbit, having him so close. His face is so close to yours, you don’t turn your head, you can’t. You can hear his breathing, can smell his cologne at this distance. Your mind reels.
He can smell you too. Caramel and vanilla.
The proximity alone has your stomach flipping, his hand behind you becoming an oddly domestic, claiming gesture. Placing a hand on your back, his voice is gentle, low when he speaks.
“This is good stuff, kid, keep it up.”
His praise sends a jolt down your spine and your face reddens instantly. He can feel you twitch under his hand.
You dip your head, hiding your red face and mumble a quick, breathless, “Uh– thank you, Dr. Abbot.”
He watches you fidget, uncomfortable from the praise. Laughing quietly, before removing his hand.
You’re so shy. Shy with him. Oh.
But then you flee, almost running in the opposite direction, and his mind reels. Maybe he’s read this all wrong.
───────
He concludes after a few more nights of avoidance that maybe you just want nothing to do with him at all.
He keeps his distance, returning your polite greetings, but he hates it. The night shift is supposed to flow, be light and less stressful. Jack's spent so long cultivating an environment where people feel free to laugh, ask questions, not be afraid of getting things wrong.
Now you’re here and he’s all confused. He wants you to enter the stream but it feels like wading against a river trying to figure out what to do differently for you.
He decides to just ask. He approaches you during your break one night.
You’re sat in the break room scrolling mindlessly whilst poking at your food.
His quiet, tired voice cuts through.
“S’alright if I join ya?”
You’d been too tired, too into your phone you hadn’t noticed him come in. Nodding fervently you allow him to sit opposite you, his tone of voice sounding different than it does most nights, almost resigned. You actually look at him properly, concerned.
“Listen, kid. I just wanna apologise if I’ve ever done anything to make ya uncomfortable, yeah?” His eyes meet yours, intense and serious.
You pause.
Uncomfortable?
Fuck.
You were avoiding him so much he thought you didn't like him, made you uncomfortable. Your eyes widen in panic, head shaking rapidly putting your phone and fork down immediately.
“No, god, no. You’ve never– that’s not it–” Stop rambling, you tell yourself. Swallowing, taking a deep breath, you realise you need to get over yourself. “M’sorry for the way I’ve been acting. It's not you.” Your voice is quiet, avoiding his eyes.
He tilts his head down to try and meet yours again, concern on his face. His voice is so soft, when he says,
“You sure, kid? You can tell me–”
You shake your head again, cutting him off.
“You make me nervous.” You blurt out in one panicked breath. You squeeze your eyes shut in embarrassment and literally bring your head to the table, groaning.
Abbot lets out a quiet chuckle, amused.
“Honey, hey, look at me.” He coaxes trying to get you to stop wallowing in embarrassment. “Please?”
You lift your head slightly, hands covering your face, peeking at him through your fingers. He’s smiling, like this is funny to him, like you didn’t completely ruin everything–
“S’okay.” His expression softens, voice gentler now. “You never gotta be nervous around me, you hear me?”
Oh.
He misunderstood, thinking you mean nervous of his authority. You can work with that, you haven’t entirely humiliated yourself.
Your hands drop from your face, blush still evident on your cheeks and a shy smile creeps up. You nod in affirmation to his words letting out a deep breath.
“I want you to come to me as well, for anything. Not just Shen, Lena, or Robby. Me.” His inflection on Robby’s name confuses you and makes you giggle a little.
The sound awakens something within Jack, without thinking, he leans over placing a hand over yours where it rests on the table.
“I mean it. Anything.”
───────
He notices how you don’t run from him anymore, don’t push him away, let him exist within your space.
You’re still nervous most of the time, but you push it away, and he’s proud. He wants you to come out of your shell with him.
One evening, Lena calls you into North 7 for a debridement, knowing how much you love mindless, repetitive tasks. It unwinds your brain, picking out thousands of tiny pieces of gravel and debris from a patient's leg, letting you let go and not have to worry about doing something wrong.
You’re about halfway through, the only thing heard in the room is the slow hum of the patient's monitor, and Lena tidying up a cart nearby, when you hear the door open.
You frown, not enjoying having been disturbed and the loud, chaos sound of the ER filters through the door. You keep your attention laser focused onto the patient, until you hear his familiar, gentle voice, checking in.
“All good in here?”
You hesitate, stopping your motions for the first time since you started, before lifting your head up and looking at Dr. Abbot, leaning against the doorframe. Your breath hitches as you make eye contact, his focus entirely on you, not the patient. His head is tilted, and his eye contact is intense, making you nervous.
Lena scoffs to herself. Checking in, my ass.
“Mhm.” Your sweet voice hums in affirmation, the only thing you can manage to verbalise at the moment.
Lena pauses from tidying up the cart, turning raising an eyebrow at you, oh god not you too.
“Good. Can always count on ya to keep things moving smoothly, can’t I, sweetheart?” His voice is sweet, almost cooing.
You’re starstruck. Sweetheart.
You blink, unable to respond, but he’s already leaving with a smug, self-assured smile like he accomplished his goal. You swallow, unable to stop the smile spreading on your face, ducking your head to hide your flushed, red face from Lena.
Walking down the hall, he recalls how much the praise got to you when he complimented your charting, and watching you now?
The knowledge that praise gets to you so much?
Wrecks him.
He feels a sense of power, knowing how much he can get you to fall apart from a few words.
───────
The closer he gets, the more he observes your interactions with everyone else. You’re just as shy and nervous with everyone too. A quiet little thing.
During shift change over one morning, a few night shift and day shift nurses and doctors are gathered gossiping about a particularly rowdy patient you had that night.
You’re off to the side, included, but just about. He notices that's always the position you take, included just enough, but never in the centre, never leading, and never actively involved. He thinks maybe you just like to listen, observe, feeling more comfortable for you like that knowing how shy you are.
He frowns, because the rowdy patient they’re on about? You were the only nurse working with him. He wasn’t dangerous by any means, he was strapped to the bed. Jack would never let you in a room with a patient that’s a danger to your safety.
But the group were already feeding the rumour mill, exaggerating the patients words and actions. He watches you from the corner of his eye where he’s leaning against the counter with a pen in hand, stopping his writing to watch.
He wants you to speak up, correct them, and join in.
He watches your eyes dart around the group, you lick your lips, breathing becoming shallower. You’re assessing for the right time to jump in. You’re so nervous to speak up, his heart aches.
And when you try? You’re so quiet, no one even noticed. Immediately you were cut off.
He watches you blink, swallowing in embarrassment before collecting yourself as if you hadn’t even spoken, smiling along.
His heart breaks.
You’re used to this, being spoken over always happens, you’re just too quiet sometimes, better at one-on-one interactions, not groups. Though you’re a little stung, you push it away, familiar with the feeling. Sighing, you slip into your coat before silently taking your leave.
Just before you can head through the exit doors, he catches up with you.
“Hold up, kid.” You hear him jogging slowly behind you.
You turn, smiling at him, he can see the tiredness and hurt in your eyes even if you’re trying to hide it.
“You leaving without saying goodbye?” he teases lightly, his expression incredibly soft.
You dip your head shyly,
“Didn’t think anyone would notice.” You mumble, trying to laugh it off.
His brows scrunch, a displeased look on his face, almost offended.
“I notice.”
His words are so final, so real. You just stare at him with a vulnerable expression. His words heal something deep, knowing someone cares about your presence. You’re speechless.
He places a hand on your back guiding you outside, noticing your hesitance.
“C’mon. Let me walk ya to your bus stop, you can tell me about the rowdy patient, yeah?”
You nod shyly, trying not to let your eyes well up from his care. It’s a short distance, the sky brightening as you both walk. He’s silent and attentive, actively listening to every word you tell him, like they’re the most important words ever.
When you reach the stop you turn to thank him, but before you can he speaks first.
“Hey. M’proud of ya, for speaking up in there.”
You give him a little confused look shaking your head.
“It didn’t really feel like I did.” You laugh awkwardly, embarrassed to revisit the moment knowing he was watching.
“You did. I’ll always listen, whatever you wanna talk about, yeah?” Your chest tightens painfully at the sincerity in his voice. You can only nod, suddenly too affected to trust your own voice.
“G’night, sweetheart” He drapes an arm around your shoulder squeezing you before letting you board.
On the way home, your head mulls over his words, settling on one detail.
He’s proud.
───────
Being around Abbot so much recently is fucking with you, to say the least.
His constant praise at your actions, you begin expecting and waiting for it. Every time he’s within your vicinity, you wait for his gentle but ragged voice ushering praise.
“Good catch, sweetheart.”
“Don’t know what I’d do without ya.”
“Jesus, you really make my life easier, y’know that?”
And he always delivers.
Aside from the praise, he’s incredibly attentive and observant, knowing what you need exactly when you need it. Encouraging breaks any time he sees you get overwhelmed during the night, telling you to drink water, take a breather.
But he’s also so patient with you, like no one's ever been. With him, you begin to unlearn your fear of being judged for saying the wrong thing, acting the wrong way, because he never judges.
Tonight is no different.
You’re in central 7 with Dr. Ellis, with a very panicked, frantic mother and her daughter. Her child is only around 6 years old, clearly withdrawn and quiet. Her mother explains to Dr. Ellis how she’d been bathing her daughter that evening, when she found a large bruise on the daughter’s back and legs, suspecting her husband’s abusing her.
You immediately make eye contact with Ellis, silently signalling that you’ll call Kiara, the hospital social worker. But before you can step out to do so, a large, loud and drunk man barges through the door, angry.
He’s unsteady on his feet, eyes directly narrowing onto his wife, before pushing past you and immediately going to yell at her.
“You bitch! You have NO right bringing our daughter here without my permission–” He yells spit flying out of his mouth, alcohol clearly on his breath
“Sir–” Ellis tries to calm him down, placing a hand on his shoulder which he shrugs off.
“No!” He shrugs her off
“Your permission?” The mother yells back, cutting him off in disbelief. “You’re laying your fucking hands on my kid and you think I’m gonna let you be near her?” She’s defensive, shrill, adrenaline thrumming through her.
The yelling gets to you admittedly, you’re never good whenever patients of their families raise their voices. They carry on, Ellis begging for them to keep it civil or he will be removed by security
The door opens swiftly with Dr. Abbot and a night shift security guard filtering through to de-escalate.
Drowning it all out, trying to not let it affect you, you turn your attention to the little girl on the bed, all hunched up scared of her parents yelling. You turn her towards you telling her to focus on you. You just try to distract her in any way possible, asking her questions about school, her friends, her hobbies. It works a little, her tiny voice whispering over her parents yells.
The father is finally removed, and the air to the room returns, silence taking over.
“It’s alright, you’re okay.” You comfort the girl placing a comforting hand on her shoulder, testing it beforehand to see if she pulls away.
Jack turns to you then, really looking at you. The way you’re so gentle with the girl, how your focus was on her comfort during her parents screaming match. God, he admires you. But he also picks up on your tense shoulders, the way your breathing is unsettled, your face is tighter than normal.
You step back once the mother sits by the daughter’s side comforting her, you don't realise you walk back into Jack’s hand, which now rests on the small of your back. He leans closer to you dipping down to speak into your ear,
“Go take a breather, yeah?” His voice is soft, gentle.
You look up at him to convince him you’re fine, you don’t need a break. But the look in his eyes is stern, pleading: do not fight me on this.
───
Jack finds you around 5 minutes later in the stairwell, you seem to just be sitting there lost in your own head.
He approaches slowly, groaning as he sits next to you on the stairs, your shoulders touching. He speaks first,
“You did really well there – with the girl.” He nudges your leg with his as he praises you, trying to cheer you up. You can tell he’s looking at you from the corner of your eye but you keep your eyes on your lap. Pedes cases always got to you.
“She shouldn’t have had to hear that.” Your voice is quiet, unsteady. Swallowing down the lump in your throat, but the tears build in your eyes anyways. You dip your head down further trying to hide.
“Hey, sweetheart.” His voice softens, his hand settling on your knee. “Talk to me?” His voice is begging.
You lift your head to look at him, drying your eyes. “It’s stupid, really.” You shake your head quickly, trying to laugh through it. “I just don’t handle yelling very well.”
“Yeah. I thought so, honey.” His thumb rubs back and forth over your knee, comforting you. “That’s not on you.” His voice is gentler now.
“I feel ridiculous.” You wipe quickly under your eyes. “I should be able to handle it better by now.” Insecurity laces your words at breaking down like this in front of an attending.
“No.” His response is immediate, firm but gentle. “Don’t start thinkin’ the answer is makin’ yourself colder.” He aches at the prospect of you removing the brightest parts of yourself, to dim your light to handle the harshness of the world. Absolutely not. He wants to shield you, be the barrier between people's cruelty and your soft, gentle heart.
Your shiny eyes meet his, vulnerability flashing through them. Without even thinking he brings his thumb to brush a stray tear from your cheek. He watches your eyes flutter close and your breath hitching at the gesture, his heart leaping.
“Take as much time as ya need. Come find me at the end of the day, I’ll take you home, yeah?” His voice grumbles, sending a jolt through you.
Your eyes open ready to protest, you can’t possible accept a ride from him, thats asking too much–
“Ah, ah, I’m not taking no for an answer.” He smirks before standing and heading back out to the ER.
───
Before your shift ended that same day, you had asked Lena to show you how to work the medicine cabinet as you’d had trouble returning a vial earlier in your shift.
The day shift starts to filter through whilst Lena is describing the steps to take, making you distracted.
You see Dr. Abbot in your periphery down the hall, talking to another nurse, one you had never seen before, most likely on the day shift.
She’s gorgeous.
She stands tall, confident and makes him laugh. Nothing like you.
Your heart aches, as you stare unapologetically, completely drowning out Lena’s voice. You watch as he also dips his head to catch her eyes, how he touches her arm, how charming he is.
It feels like your heart gave out and fell into an endless pit. Eyes flickering away slowly, realising your hope that the way he treated you was special, is just his charm. His naturally flirtatious personality.
God you’re so stupid.
Lena sighs, shaking her head before closing the cabinet and turning to you, sensing your distraction and sadness.
“Hun, you don’t wanna go down that route.” Her voice is firm, but motherly. Like she’s truly trying to protect you, not wanting you to get hurt.
Your head snaps over to her wide eyed and panicked having been caught.
“Oh– no it’s not like that.” you laugh awkwardly, embarrassed but your excuse is weak and she sees through it instantly. Placing a hand on your back and directing you away from the hallway before you get in your head any longer.
“Trust me, hun. I’ve been around long enough to know, men like him don’t realise the effect they have on girls like you.”
Your brows furrow at her words, girls like me? You reach the lockers before she hits the final blow.
“You’re young, go on dates. Don’t pine over old men like him, you’ll only get hurt.”
She walks off, leaving you speechless. You gather your things, mulling over her words. Is she right? Have you been misreading everything, pining over a man who’s naturally charming and kind to everyone?
You’d completely forgotten Dr. Abbots offer to take you home by the time you’re walking out of the doors. Your mind is only repeating her words and reevaluating all of Abbot’s actions towards you, trying to search for when you’d started to misinterpret things.
Jack frowns watching your hunched up form walking out of the ER from where he stands and talks to Ruby. He excuses himself from the conversation, trying to catch up with you before you leave, but you’re already down the street by the time he’s at the door.
───────
Just as he thought he was making progress, the rug is pulled from under him, and you’re colder than ever.
You’re distant with everyone, clipped greetings and polite words the only things you mutter during your shifts. He watches how you avoid groups, but more importantly, how much harder you’ve been working.
You’ve doubled your workload, trying to forget your feelings by distracting yourself. Always with a patient, never sitting down and charting, avoiding your colleagues asking you what’s wrong. Or, avoiding where Dr. Abbot could find you and make you fall for him all over again.
He notices how you’re no longer early to your shifts, just right on time, jumping straight into cases. Whenever he tries to coax you into slowing down and taking breaks, you brush him off, refusing to admit you need them. But he notices the bags under your eyes, you’re pushing yourself too much and he hates it, he can’t help and it’s hurting him.
But he also notices how late you stay. As you no longer chart during the day, you spend 3 to 4 hours overtime during the day shift charting. Robby allows it, sensing something going on with you but doesn’t want to overstep. Occasionally, you ask to work doubles, staying to around 1-3pm during the day shifts. It’s completely wrecking your body, but you don’t want to think about anything else except work.
One evening, during shift change before you got to work, Robby pulls Jack aside.
“Hey, brother, I gotta ask.” Robby glances over his shoulder towards the door, checking you hadn’t arrived yet, before lowering his voice. “Somethin’ going on with her lately?”
Jack’s brows furrow instantly, worry clenching at his heart. “Why?”
“She’s running herself into the ground, to put it mildly.” Robby sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. “She’s working through till the afternoon, then coming back to do it all again at night. Girl can’t be getting more than a couple hours of sleep.” His expression tightens. “M’worried about her.”
Jack goes still, his stomach dropping.
He noticed, of course he noticed. He just hadn’t realised how bad it’d gotten.
His jaw tightens, hand dragging tiredly across it as he sighs.
“Fuck.” The word leaves him quietly.
“I’ll talk to her.”
───
Later that night, Jack came to find you during a particularly quiet lull around 11pm. He assumes you’d be with a patient, checking with Lena before heading towards south 16. He’s rehearsing his speech to you, over and over.
When he approaches the room, his body stops. He hears you laugh. It’s beautiful, and he doesn’t realise how much it hurt him not hearing you laugh recently.
Rounding the corner he sees you through the glass stitching up a man’s forehead, and you’re blushing. You have that bashed, shy smile as you work, the type that was reserved for Jack. You're standing close to the man from where he sits on the edge of the bed, and he’s looking up at you with desire in his eyes, clearly flirting with you.
He shouldn’t feel jealous, but he does, insecurity clawing at his heart. The man you’re stitching up, he’s definitely closer in age to you than Jack is. He hates the way that fact digs under his skin, the sudden awareness of the years between you two. You’re still soft, bright, and untouched by the world in ways he hasn’t been for too long. He can’t take his eyes off the easy smile you give the man, bitterness twisting low in his chest.
He knows he should leave, but he can’t bring himself to move. Which is why when you turn, putting down the sutures, you see him outside watching you, and your body stills. He watches your face fall, and it hurts him how you’re no longer happy to be around him.
Jack sighs ready to turn and leave, but you excuse yourself from your patient and head outside to catch him.
“Hey–” Your voice is gentle and cautious, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear nervously at Abbot’s expression. “Did you need something?”
Jack’s jaw tightens as he hears your voice, trying to steady himself. This is the first time you’ve chosen to speak to him in ages, and he hates how relieved and conflicted he is right now.
His eyes flicker behind you, to the man in the room sprawled out on the bed scrolling through his phone, and his chest tightens. Possessiveness and insecurity battle within his heart, and he doesn’t even think when he blurts out a cold comment to you.
“Didn’t realise we were entertainin’ patients now.” His voice is clipped, and he regrets it as soon as he says it.
He watches your face fall. Fuck.
Your head shakes rapidly, apologetically.
“I-I’m sorry–” Your voice is meek, he can’t bear that he caused this.
“Just don’t let it happen again.” Jack’s voice is firm, as he walks off. He needs to leave, clearly not in his right mind, he’s hurting you and he’s completely out of line.
───
The way he spoke to you eats him all night, distracting him. He’s completely unfocused during cases, Shen telling him to take a breather during a trauma, get his head right. How is he supposed to make sure you’re okay if he’s also driving you away.
He decides to start small. Around 1am he watches you exit a patient's room, pausing outside leaning against the wall. He can tell you’re exhausted by the way you hold yourself.
He slows as he approaches you, wanting to get you to slow down, take a break. Up close he can see the way your shoulders sag like the weight of the wall is the only thing keeping you together, your undereyes heavy with exhaustion. He can’t remember the last time you sat down.
“Hey– hold up.” His tone is softer, contrasting the way he spoke to you earlier. “You eaten yet?
Your eyes flick towards him briefly, before looking away again.
“M’fine.” You’re short, a little dismissive.
Jack nods awkwardly, he knows he doesn’t deserve your kindness right now.
“It’s quiet, you should take your break–” He tries but you cut him off.
“I said I’m okay.” Though your tone has little real bite behind it, it’s still harsher than he’s ever heard it.
He stills, letting out a deep sigh. The silence between you both hangs in the air thickly. You won’t look at him.
Jack nods, accepting his defeat watching you walk off.
What he doesn’t see is the guilt flooding your face.
───
You need to apologise. He’s your attending and it was extremely unprofessional of you, a nurse, to speak to him that way. Guilt is clawing at your throat and you can’t get rid of it.
You decide that after you finish organising the supply room with Lena, you’ll find him. Explain yourself.
You’re standing on a stepping stool as Lena passes you supplies to restock the shelves with.
“That guy– from earlier? He was a real hottie, hun.” She says while passing you a box of nitrile gloves. Your face scrunches in amusement as you let out a breathy laugh
“That guy who got his head smashed with a beer bottle? Yeah, right. Like I need that kind of trouble in my life right now.” You joke back with Lena about the flirty guy.
“C’mon, you’re young. Live a little! He’s insanely hot, god knows if I was 20 years younger I’d jump his bones–” you cut her off with a real, chesty laugh.
“Lena! You’re married!” You turn towards her with a wide smile.
“I can appreciate beauty when I see it, hun.” She smirks before continuing. “What’s the harm? He’s still here isn’t he? Go get his number, go on dates, have mind blowing sex– just do something to get you outta this slump, y’hear me?”
You sigh whilst organising the top shelf. You don’t want that guy. You want Abbot.
What you didn’t realise was Jack was walking past and heard snippets of the conversation, well, particularly Lena’s grand speech about having mind-blowing sex with the man. He falters in his steps, realising who she’s talking to, who she’s talking about. The ugly, possessive feeling rears within him again. He peeks through the door, watching your face. You’re smiling, like you’re considering it. He can’t handle it. He storms off, childishly slamming the door of the next room he enters, blaming it on the draft.
You jolt at the sudden noise and frown before continuing. “I dunno, Lena.” Your voice is almost sad. “He’s not who I want.”
“You’re still hung up on him, aren’t you, honey?” Her voice is soft, pitying. She watches your sad smile when you nod in affirmation. “M’sorry, hun. It’ll pass, I promise.”
You don’t want it to pass.
───
You can’t seem to find Abbot for the rest of the night, until a trauma comes in around 5:30am forcing you both into the room together.
The EMTs roll the patient in on a gurney as you jog over to Trauma 1, reading off his vitals. Fuck, it’s a kid.
“Pediatric MVC, eight-year-old male, unrestrained passenger. Vehicle rolled twice after being T-boned at a high speed. Drunk driver.” The EMT scoffs.
You begin to glove up as you walk alongside the stretcher, Jack on the other side, his eyes land on you as he actively listens to the EMT, his gaze feels as if he was assessing you.
“Initial GCS was 10 on scene, refrained from intubation. BP 80/52, heart rate 145, satting 92 percent on non-rebreather.”
You watch Abbot nod, cutting through the patient's clothes as Ellis and Shen check current vitals and assess internal injuries. You end up stationed directly behind him, ready to hand him what he needs. But him in action is making you nervous, like he doesn’t want you here.
The EMT cuts in. “Father pronounced dead on scene, mother inbound, no obvious injuries.”
“Decreased breath sounds on the left side, significant bruising across the abdomen and chest. Patient increasingly lethargic.” Abbot begins his assessment. But is being drowned out by an increasingly loud scream from the floor outside the room, his mother arriving.
She rushes to the doors, doctors encourage her to wait outside but she barges in regardless. Her sobs and yells for the doctors to save her son cut through the room, loud and distracting. You take a deep breath at the sound trying to focus, remain unaffected by the scene, present.
Abbot’s jaw tightens as the room erupts around him. The mother’s wailing to his right, monitors beeping rapidly as the boy gets worse, the blood coating his gloves as he presses harder against the kid’s abdomen.
“Pressure’s dropping.”
“BP 78/40.”
“We’re losing him, Abbot.”
Fuck. Each sound and sensation cramming for dominance within his skull, overriding his focus.
And then he glances behind at you, where the station is set up ready for you to hand him things. But you’re spaced out, wide-eyed and pale, clearly overwhelmed by the sounds of the boy crying in pain and grief for his father, the mother’s wailing. Jack’s chest twitches violently. One thing at a time. Save the boy.
“Get her out!” He yells across the room, his voice loud and booming, a couple nurses urge for the mother to wait outside.
But he can’t focus with you standing there looking wrecked, your hands shaking. His focus should be on the boy, not you.
“Gauze.” He commands, a hand outstretched towards you.
Nothing.
The gauze finally hits his hand, a few seconds delayed.
His pulse spikes, the room suddenly feeling too loud. Your presence pressing against the back of his skull.
He snaps.
“I can’t afford hesitation right now.” Jack’s voice cuts sharply across the room, eyes snapping to yours. “If you can’t keep up, leave.”
You feel like you’ve stopped breathing. The room goes painfully quiet, heat rushing to your face instantly at the humiliation.
Your chest feels like it’s caving, shame burning beneath your skin. You swallow hard, blinking rapidly, staving off tears.
You nod once, unable to trust your voice, before stripping off your gloves with trembling fingers backing away from the table.
Another nurse takes over flawlessly, the room continuing like normal around you. You exit the room, tears burning your eyes and threatening to fall.
Lena sees your shaken state from across the room, beginning to make her way over to you. But you duck, scuttling away to lock yourself in the toilet. Needing to break down in private.
You sink against the wall, sliding down until your head rests on your knees.
You know he’s right, you shouldn’t have hesitated. Your throat tightens.
The boy could’ve died because you froze. He still might. For what? Because Abbot didn’t want you near him anymore? Because the sounds of the boys’ mother screaming cracked something open inside of you?
Abbot’s words replay over and over in your head as self-punishment, as you sob into your hands.
───
Jack regrets the words as soon as they leave his mouth.
He watches your face crumple in devastation and it almost knocks the breath from his lungs.
Your teary eyes flicker away, avoiding his fiery gaze. He hates that he’s the one who put those tears there, made you cry. He never wants to be the reason for your pain.
He watches you nod, so meekly it hurts his heart, the tremble in your hands when you pull off your gloves. Every instinct in him screams to go after you. He can’t. He turns back to the table, continuing to work on the boy even more distracted than he was before.
───
You manage to gather yourself not long after, exiting the bathroom and ignoring Lena’s concerned looks, just searching for a simple case to get your mind off what happened. You can hear the chaos continuing in Trauma 1, still working on the boy.
Lena assigns you to a wound debridement, a simple task to recalibrate and gather your thoughts.
You set up your tool table beside you, and you’re lucky your patient isn’t a chatty one. His arm rests on the bed, skin burnt red and white.
You’re utterly exhausted, emotionally spent. Too in your own head to notice how cramped your fingers get around the scalpel.
You try to reposition your grip, but the blade unexpectedly slips from your grasp, falling and slicing a clean gash from your hand down your arm. Pain slices hot and immediate.
“Shit–”
The scalpel clatters into the tray as blood begins to well. Your vision blurs for half a second, before you jerk back sharply, hissing from the sudden pain
“Oh shit you okay, lady?” You hear the patient ask, but you’re already halfway out the room, asking Matteo to finish your case before entering an empty room to sort yourself out.
“God fucking damn it, piece of shit–” You curse violently, voice breaking, trying to hold back tears yet again, whilst setting up the equipment you need to clean your cut.
Your heart beats violently, embarrassed at fucking up yet another thing. Abbot cannot know, he cannot have another thing to chew you out over.
You’re not that lucky.
“Hey, listen, I wanted to say that– what the fuck?” Jack’s voice is shocked when he glances down at your bleeding arm from where he stands at the door.
Your head whips around immediately, eyes wide and panicked but you don’t speak or move. Fear wraps around your heart knowing you’re going to get scolded for being distracted, getting yourself hurt, or creating unnecessary paperwork for the hospital.
The sight of your bleeding arm disturbs him. But what hurts more is the way you look at him, wrecked and terrified, like a child that just got caught for doing something wrong, more worried about his reaction than the fact you’re hurt. He shakes his head stepping inside fully making his way to you.
“Sit.” He commands, his voice tight, clipped.
Your breath hitches at his tone, interpreting it as annoyance for having to deal with this, but you do as he says, not wanting to make things worse.
“You don’t have to–” You attempt to say you’re fine, you don’t need help, it’s a small cut. But when you look into his eyes, you pause, there’s something softer behind them, concern.
“Yeah. I do.” His voice is gentle and strained like it pains him you’re trying to hide your hurt.
You watch his face as he washes out your cut and stops the bleeding. You can’t read him. He avoids your eyes, focusing solely on your injury, you watch as he clenches his jaw and swallows.
He can’t look into your eyes again, the broken teary look you’re adorning right now would completely break him. He feels your pulse thrumming from where he holds your wrist, shaky breaths like you’re trying not to cry in front of him.
“This’ll sting–” He warns gently before bringing a cold disinfectant wipe to your cut. He cleans it so gently, so carefully, you realise how much you’ve missed him. His touch, his care, his smell.
You hiss slightly at the alcohol stinging, and he quickly retracts, gaze flicking to meet yours worried.
“I’ve got you.” He coos, rubbing a thumb back and forth against your hand, avoiding your injury. “You’re alright, sweetheart.”
His soft tone breaks the flood gate, tears flowing freely and you sob. Hard.
“M’so sorry.” Your voice breaks, blurting out apologies, as you try to catch your breath. “I’m sorry, please–”
His heart shatters at the sound, immediately setting the wipes down and cupping your face.
“Hey– No. No, honey. Don’t.” His warm hands ground you, wiping the tears as they fall. He can’t stand the sight of you falling apart in front of him.
You shake your head. “I keep fucking up–” you whisper brokenly, your expression apologetic.
“God, c’mere.” He coos bringing your head to his chest rubbing his hand on your back. “You got nothin’ to apologise for, y’hear me?
His chest aches at your cries, knowing he led you to this, knowing he hurt such a sweet girl. His sweet girl.
“I shoulda never yelled at ya, it weren’t right.” His voice vibrates through your body against him, sniffling into his chest. “You get that? You did nothing wrong, baby.”
Baby.
He pulls back cupping your face again, eyes intense and searching. Searching for something in your eyes that tells him you understand him, that you know you didn’t do anything wrong.
“Is he– is the kid–” You choke out, genuinely terrified that your slip-up had cost the kid his life, and had cost the mother losing both loves of her lives on the same night.
Jack shakes his head quickly, dismissing your worry. “He’s good, he’s stable. Dontcha worry about that. I let shit get to me, yeah? Not on you.”
You sniffle, breathing jagged as you settle down. The kid will be okay. Abbot isn’t mad at you. His hand lifts from your cheek to smooth down your hair on your forehead, tucking it backwards. Looking at you like you're precious.
Unexpectedly, he brings his forehead to rest on yours, whispering:
“I never wanna make you feel like that.” His voice wavers slightly, but you notice. “Never again.”
You stop breathing at his proximity. Realisation crashing down at how stupid you’d been to avoid him all this time, to let insecurity overrun your thoughts. His lips are so close to yours.
“Jack–” You practically whimper his name.
His breath hitches, searching your eyes before leaning in slowly.
He presses a small kiss to the corner of your mouth, testing.
Instinctively, you turn your head towards his lips.
You both pause, staring at each other and breathing heavily. He watches as you dart your tongue out, licking your lips nervously, and he breaks.
He crashes his lips to yours.
It’s hungry, full of apology, and devotion. He brings a hand to cup the back of your head, deepening the kiss. Electric sparks fly down your spine, your mind turning to mush. The emotional toll of the day mixing with the high of finally kissing Jack, you melt.
He finally pulls away, after needing to catch his breath, not because he wants to stop kissing you. He’d kiss you for the rest of the night, if he could.
He takes in your flushed state, catching your breath and looking at him with so much trust. Your red cheeks, dazed and glossy eyes, and plump red lips and he lets a sound akin to a growl out. The look wrecks him.
He shakes his head, pressing a short, quick kiss to your hair before physically stepping back before going too far with you.
“I didn’t– I convinced myself you didn’t want me like that.” Your whisper breaks the silence. “I couldn’t be around you, it hurt too much.”
Oh.
He swallows the lump in his throat before nodding. He understands. Why you avoided him all this time, you must have been going crazy. Hell, you’d affected him so much tonight he snapped. He can’t imagine what living like that for so long would do to you.
“You don’t gotta explain, sweetheart.” He brings the chair to sit in front of you on the bed, and he takes your hands in his, bringing a small kiss to your knuckles. “But you scared me, doll. You gotta take care of yourself.”
Your gaze flickers downwards a little embarrassed, nodding
He turns your injured hand over in his, nodding his head towards it before gently asking.
“How’d this happen?” He refocuses on cleaning and assessing if it’s deep enough for a bandage or stitches.
“Wasn’t–” You pause, recalling how he scolded you last time for being distracted, shaking off your fear, you continue. “Wasn’t paying attention, cutting off patients' dead skin. Hand cramped n’ tried to fix it, blade slipped.”
He takes in a deep breath hearing your shaky explanation.
“Why didn’t ya tell someone, hmm?” He speaks softly, his attention focused on placing small little butterfly bandages along the cut.
You shrug. “Wasn’t thinking straight. Was overwhelmed, on the verge of crying again. Just needed to be alone.”
Crying, again. He hates the recollection that he made you cry that night. That after you had left the trauma room, you’d broken down alone.
He places the last bandage on, setting down the equipment and turning to you once more, placing a hand on your thigh.
“You always come to me when you’re hurting, yeah? I hate that I didn’t know, baby. Hate you were hurt and you tried to deal with this alone.” He begs, squeezing your thigh.
He sighs in relief as he sees your small nod. “Good.”
He places a small, gentle kiss over your cut. “There we go, all fixed up, my sweet girl.”
You flush red, a shy smile taking over your face before you can stop it, letting out a small laugh of disbelief.
“There she is.” He coos at your smile.
───────
After a few months of dating, Jack took a sabbatical, and asked you to go with him.
It was his way of an apology, for snapping at his sweet girl, taking you away from the place that you’d been running yourself into the ground for.
He didn’t tell you much, just to pack your cutest dresses. You obeyed mindlessly, trusting him completely. Truthfully, he couldn’t get enough of seeing you in sundresses after one particular picnic date where he couldn’t keep his eyes off you, or hands. Needless to say, the date ended early, with Jack driving you back to his place to tear off the sundress.
You’re leaning against Jack in his truck as he drives through the country. He had specifically chosen to bring this truck due to its bench seats, needing a hand on you at all times.
The warm breeze filters through the truck windows, and you hum gently along to the faint country rock playing through the truck radio, Jack tapping his fingers against the wheel along with the beat.
Everything felt perfect, domestic, calm.
Until you get deeper into country backroads.
You frown the first time you drive by a small animal on the side of the road, clearly roadkill. It disturbs something in your stomach, seeing the bloody mangled animal alone. You try to push it down, focus on Jack, the trip.
Until you seem to keep passing more animals.
Deer.
Squirrels.
Rabbits.
Foxes.
Every animal seems to twist your heart more and more, saddening you so deeply, wishing you could protect the babies that died alone.
Jack, observant as he is, feels you go quiet against his shoulder. No longer humming or drumming your feet with the music, just looking straight ahead into the dashboard, stiff. Something had set his girl off. He brings his hand that rested on the gear stick onto your thigh, giving it a firm squeeze, checking in on you.
His hand is warm where it rests on your thigh, grounding, as he coos, “Talk to me, sweetheart.” He glances over briefly before looking back at the road. “What’s got my pretty girl all quiet, hmm?” he says, softly.
Your stomach flips, of course he notices. He’s so in tune with your tells by now, you couldn’t even hide it if you tried. You whine a little embarrassed, turning to hide your face into his side.
His heart aches at the small, sweet noise you make and his grip tightens protectively on your thigh. Sensing your shyness, his thumb starts rubbing back and forth on your leg.
“Don’t hide from me, my sweet girl,” his voice is gentle and sweet, the tone he uses when he knows something is bothering you. Gentle fingers tip your chin upwards to meet his eyes momentarily, your stomach twisting as he brushes the hair behind your ear, a silent plea: tell me.
Hesitating, feeling shy and not wanting to ruin the trip you tell him, “It’s nothing, really, It’s the animals–”, your breath hitches as Jack drives by another dead deer on the side of the road. Your voice breaks before continuing, “It hurts”, you whisper sadly whilst immediately ducking your head to not look out the window for too long, the scene disturbing you.
Oh. Realisation floods Jack’s face and his heart clenches, oh, his sweet, sensitive baby.
You hear Jack breathe out a small sigh, before dipping his head and placing a small gentle kiss to your forehead.
“Yeah? That’s what’s gotten my girl all upset?” his voice soothing and rubs his hand up and down your thigh in comfort. Your stomach twists at his sigh, unsure if he’s silently judging.
“They might have had family or friends waiting for them!’’ your voice is whiny, desperate for him to understand as deeply as you do why you’re upset. You sniffle a little, trying not to let tears fall.
Jack blinks, trying not to laugh at his sensitive girl, knowing it’ll upset you more. He doesn’t mean to find it amusing, but your true devastation over deer and squirrels having family and friends, he can’t help but let out a low chuckle.
“You’re right baby, m’sure they’re sat around the dinner table, waiting for ‘im to come home.” He teases gently a smirk playing at his lips.
“Jaaaaack! It’s not funny,” you pout petulantly, hurt. You shift away from his side, scooting over to the other side of the truck, feeling dismissed.
Jack shushes you quickly, grabbing you by your shoulders before you move away, hating the way you curl in on yourself so easily. He pulls you back into his side, coaxing an apology.
“M’sorry, baby, c’mere.” He’s still smirking a little, but knowing he may have teased too much in your sensitive state, he needs to calm you down.
You feel him pepper quick kisses to your forehead, whilst rubbing the back of your neck gently. Your body relaxes instantly at the touch.
You sniffle a little calming down, wrapping your arms around his middle.
“Shh, baby, I know, I know.” He says, his voice softer now, before continuing. “I was so mean for teasing my delicate girl, yeah?” His inflection rises at the end of his question, like he was comforting a small kitten.
Sniffling, you nod at his comfort. “You know I love how my sweet baby feels everything deeply.” he croons, and you feel him run his fingers at the nape of your neck into your hair, petting you.
“You just keep your eyes on me, yeah? Focus on me for the rest of the trip.” He commands gently, shielding you away from the hurt of the world.
The low music continues to hum in the car, yours and Jack’s breathing matching as you sit quietly soaking the evening breeze.
Gravel crunches as you pull up to the cabin, you notice he doesn’t make a move to exit the truck yet. You frown, worried, is something wrong? Before you can even ask him, Jack breaks the silence, with such a soft tone it's unexpected.
“S’why you’re my favourite nurse, baby”. You falter, his words stirring something in your stomach, his praise making you shy. You feel him draping his arm around your waist and tugging you into his lap, straddling him.
Unable to avoid his intense eye contact, you duck your head shyly, quietly asking, “What is?”
For the life of you, you can’t figure out what he means. He ducks his head following yours to look into your eyes, cupping your face.
His voice is low, serious, when he speaks. “Your sensitivity, compassion, empathy.”
You swallow the lump in your throat, uneasy by the intensity of his praise. Tucking your head into his neck to hide your shyness, you quip– “It’s not the sex?”
You hear him chuckle, the vibration running through your body.
“You were my favourite before the sex smartass– no, you have a big heart, biggest I’ve ever known, you care deeply.” You feel him guide your head out of his neck, needing to see your face, his thumbs brush against your cheeks as he watches your wide, doe eyes trying to accept the praise.
“Plenty of other nurses and doctors are empathetic.” You begin shyly, trying to brush the compliment off, uneasy by how seen he was making you feel. Always having been told your sensitivity is a curse, especially in this field, and it’ll wear you down.
Jack immediately interjects, not enjoying how quick you are to self deprecate, diminish yourself.
“Not like you, baby.” His voice is stern, as are his hands gripping your face. Desperate for you to see yourself the way he does.
Those three simple words cut deep, your eyes watering from so much care. He wipes the tears before they fall and watches a shy smile tugging at your lips, hitting him like a punch to the chest.
“You hear me, baby? Hmm?” he coos gently while pressing a kiss against your temple. You nod in his hold, cheeks flushed from receiving so much affection, never having been treated so carefully before.
“You’re m’favourite attending.” You mumble shyly fidgeting with your hands in your lap.
Jack laughs deeply, he knows, of course he knows. He just hadn’t expected that to be what you said. He finds your tone so cute, like you're too shy to admit it.
“Oh yeah? S’not Robby?” He teases, pushing a strand of hair behind your ear, laughing again at your scrunched up face, like the idea is ridiculous to you.
“I know, sweetheart.” He calms you, presses a final, soft kiss to your temple and brings you closer to his embrace.
Outside, the sun sets as crickets chirp around you, the air gets cooler but neither of you rushes to leave the car yet, this moment meaning something so deep to the both of you.
─
Jack is setting down the last of the bags in the bedroom when he hears you yelp from the bathroom. Before he can even ask if you’re okay, you call out for him, your voice startled and afraid.
“Jack!”
His heart jumps, and his mind immediately rushes to the worst idea, that you’re hurt somehow.
Jack runs to the bathroom panicked, “Baby, what’s–” he calls out in fear, until he enters the room, and pauses, blinking.
You’re crouching on the toilet seat like the floor is lava, with one shoe off, in your hand, looking around the floor terrified. You meet his eyes, genuine fear behind them,
“I swear, it's taunting me! It looked me right in the eyes!” you whisper urgently pointing at the small bug in the corner of the room.
Jack laughs for real this time, tilting his head affectionately, “baby, what are you doing?”
You screech as you watch the tiny dark bug scuttle along the bathroom floor and chuck your shoe at it, completely missing it.
“Please– kill it, quick!” you beg him
He smirks at you from where he leans against the bathroom door frame, crossing his arms, and taunts you, “What if his family is waiting for him to come home, hmm?”
You groan as Jack points out your hypocrisy, squealing again as you watch it come towards you. “Jack, I swear to god–”
He hangs his head in, a shit-eating grin spreading across his face before he walks over and stomps on it. He picks you up into his arms and mumbles into your hair.
“Yeah, you’re not lasting ten minutes out here, sweetheart.”
summary: you have a sex dream about your attending that leaves you hot, flustered, late for work, and completely off your game. then things go from bad to worse when gossip spreads and the entire emergency department finds out—including dr. robby.
notes: i honestly haven't been this excited or motivated to write in forever, and i just really hope it doesn't suck. this one feels a little different, kind of like... it just flowed? my writing feels less mechanical, i think? i don't know, i feel like i've been stuck in a rut and even though this isn't perfect, it feels like i finally enjoy writing again. i put so much love into this and tried so hard to get the characters right, i just really hope you guys enjoy! please, please let me know what you think!
warnings: more sitcom than drama (just let them have a good day, i beg you), swearing, italics, reader can drive, medical descriptions, blood, medical procedure descriptions (it's not super graphic though), most definitely incorrect medical information (my friend is a doctor, i am not), implied age gap but never specified, very likely incorrect tagalog (i'm sorry in advance), reader doesn't know tagalog, implied smut but nothing explicit, reader gets injured (and stitches), and making out (on shift, lol, nothing graphic but still, mdni please).
word count: 12763
You wake all at once.
Not slowly, not gently, but with one sharp inhale like you’ve surfaced from deep water.
For a second you don’t know where you are. Your room is too warm, the air too heavy, every inch of your skin flushed and slick with sweat. Heat clings to you, your heart pounding wildly in your ears, sheets twisted tight around your legs, and for one disorienting moment you swear you can still feel him—warm hands, breath close, the dizzying pull of something forbidden and overwhelming.
The echo of his voice follows you up from sleep, low and wrecked and impossibly real.
Dr. Robby.
Your stomach flips.
“Fuck,” you mumble into your pillow, already mortified, already knowing your brain has crossed a line it absolutely shouldn’t have this time.
Because it didn’t feel like a dream. It still doesn’t. Fragments flash behind your eyelids—the way he touched you, his voice softer than you’ve ever heard it, the teasing burn of stubble where he shouldn’t have been close enough to touch.
You roll onto your back and drag both hands over your face, groaning quietly as awareness settles in piece by piece. Your pulse refuses to slow, every nerve still humming like your body missed the memo that none of it actually happened.
You stare at the ceiling.
“…You have got to be kidding me.”
This wasn’t random. Not by a long shot.
It was him. Your attending. The stubborn, overworked, infuriatingly competent man who makes unresolved emotional baggage look hot. The man you have to see in barely two hours.
A small, helpless sound escapes you as you roll onto your side again, squeezing your eyes shut.
This is a problem.
A very real, very immediate, absolutely unprofessional problem.
And yet, you still don’t move. You lie there too long, cheeks burning despite the fact that no one else can see what you’re replaying in your mind. Warmth lingers beneath your skin, pooling low in your belly as you let yourself remember every phantom touch. Every whispered word. The look in his eyes as he’d settled between your legs and—
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
You bolt upright, your hand flying out to find your phone.
You’re still hot, still flushed and sticky. Still half-dreaming about Robby and his goddamn hands—but now? Now you’re late. Horribly late. Because that alarm isn’t your wake-up alarm—it’s your backup alarm. The one that goes off when it’s time for you to leave for work.
“Fuck!”
You throw the covers back and rush into the bathroom. You strip quickly out of your damp sleep shirt, tossing everything on the floor before stepping into the shower without even waiting for the water to warm. Which is exactly what you need, you remind yourself as you hiss beneath the cold spray.
Fifteen minutes later, you’re standing in front of the mirror in your black scrubs, trying to fix your hair and will the colour to drain from your cheeks. But it’s stubborn. Bright. Hot to the touch and utterly telling.
“Jesus Christ,” you sigh, squeezing your eyes shut for a second too long.
A second you don’t have.
With a deep breath, you turn, grab your bag, and sling it over your shoulder, wondering whether running to the hospital might actually be quicker than your usual commute at this time. Traffic is never great—you never truly know which route will get you there fastest—but now you’re about to hit peak hour.
You spend the entire drive trying to think about literally anything other than the dream—patient charts, upcoming shifts, whether your stethoscope is in your bag or your locker—but your thoughts keep slipping sideways, traitorous and vivid.
So vivid.
Stop thinking about his hands.
Stop thinking about his voice.
Stop—
You groan softly and turn the radio up louder.
It doesn’t help.
By the time you pull into the hospital parking lot, you’re almost twenty minutes late. You slam your car door shut, hike your bag higher on your shoulder, and practically run toward the ER doors.
“Woah,” Donnie says, quickly stepping out of your way. “Someone’s in a hurry.”
You don’t reply. You just keep going until you hit central, then slow to a hurried walk—head down, eyes fixed on your feet, praying everyone is already too busy to notice you.
“You’re late,” Dana says.
You stop mid-step, more out of habit than intention.
“Yeah, I’m sorry. I—”
“Shit, hon, you okay?” She steps around the desk, peering over her glasses. “You look like you’re burnin’ up.”
You step back before she can press a hand to your forehead.
“I’m fine, I swear.” You keep backing up. “Just my—my car’s A/C isn’t working and I’m a little warm. That’s all.”
You know she doesn’t believe you. This is Dana you’re talking to, not some brand-new, bright-eyed RN. Dana can see through any and all bullshit, and by the look on her face, she isn’t buying this at all.
“I’m fine,” you say again, forcing a smile before turning sharply on your heel.
Only to turn right into something solid.
Warm. Tall. Unmoving.
“Shit, I—”
You look up.
And your entire nervous system shuts down.
Dr. Robby.
“Sorry,” you blurt instantly, stepping back so fast you nearly trip over your own feet. “I didn’t see—I mean, I was looking, just not—”
His hand is still wrapped around your elbow, grounding you in place, and for one terrible second all you can think about is how close he is. How close he’d felt last night. How real it feels right now.
His eyebrows lift slightly, confusion flickering across his face. “You alright?”
“Yes,” you say too quickly. “Fine. Totally fine.”
You are not fine.
Your face feels nuclear, and you’re suddenly aware of everything at once—his height, his proximity, the way his sleeves are pushed up, the fact that he’s looking directly at you like he’s trying to figure something out.
His head tilts slightly.
“You’re late,” he says, not unkindly.
“I know.”
Neither of you move for a moment.
You can feel your pulse in your throat. Your chest. Lower.
“I—I’m gonna—”
You don’t even finish before you turn away, hurrying down the hall toward the lockers. Every inch of your skin feels like it’s on fire—and every thought in your head is so wildly inappropriate for where you are right now you feel like you might throw up.
“Damn.” Santos appears beside you, her eyes flicking between your face and the tablet in her hands. “Either you’re febrile or you just did something really embarrassing.” She tucks the tablet under her arm. “What gives?”
You shoot her a flat look as you key in the code to your locker. “Nothing gives. I’m fine.”
She snorts. “Sure. That tone is really selling it.”
You take a deep breath and turn toward your locker, shoving your bag inside before unzipping your jacket and shrugging off. You stuff that in too—then sling your stethoscope around your neck, shut the door, and turn back to your fellow R2.
She looks concerned now, brows drawn as her eyes track over your face and neck.
“You’re seriously flushed,” she says. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”
“I’m fine.” You turn and start walking back toward central. “Just running late, okay? Now can I start my shift before—” You stop yourself, his name catching somewhere in your chest. “Before I have an attending down my throat for slacking off?”
God. You could have chosen better words.
“Okay, whatever,” Santos mutters, holding her tablet out again. “Sorry for caring.”
She gives you a sarcastic little eye roll before veering off around the other side of the nurse’s station and ducking into one of the active patient rooms. You watch after her for a second before a voice across the room steals your attention.
He’s on the other side of central, nodding along while Mohan and Whitaker brief him on a patient—and looking entirely too hot for seven-thirty on a Monday morning beneath harsh fluorescent lights.
“Stop it,” you whisper to yourself, pausing at the nurse’s station to collect a tablet.
“Stop what?”
You startle, head snapping toward the man suddenly beside you.
“Jesus Christ, Dr. Abbot,” you sigh. “Are you trying to get me admitted for a heart attack?”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “You already look halfway there.”
You roll your eyes. “Okay, I get it. I’m red and I’m sweaty—can everyone please stop commenting on it now?”
He chuckles. “Sorry. Didn’t realise you’d already been bullied about it.”
You sigh again and turn your attention to the board, tipping your head back to read it.
“Why are you still here, anyway?” you ask.
“Wanted to see my favourite resident,” he says. “You sure you don’t want to come back to nights?”
You huff a laugh through your nose. “I love you, Abbot, but nights aren’t for me.” You glance across the nurse’s station, where Dana and Robby are now discussing the latest incoming trauma. “I just miss Dana too much.”
Abbot snorts. “Dana?”
You look back at him. “Yes. Dana.”
Amusement flickers across his face. “You sure?”
“Yes,” you say, too quickly. “I mean, who—what else would—”
“Doctors,” Javadi interrupts, stepping in front of you both. “Sorry to interrupt, but could I get a second opinion on a patient in South Twenty-One, please?”
Abbot nods, glancing at you. “I’ll go. You settle in.” The corner of his mouth lifts a little higher. “Maybe check in with your attending.”
Then he turns and walks away with Javadi at his side.
You stare after him—eyes wide, pulse racing, wondering what the fuck he meant by all that.
You’ve always suspected Abbot might be a mind reader, but that? That was something else. Too knowing. Too dangerous. And now you need to figure out what the hell he thinks he knows.
“Doctor,” Perlah calls from behind the desk. “Could you check on Central Twelve? She’s still complaining of pain after morphine and Zofran.”
You turn to her, shaking your head as if that might knock your thoughts back into place. “Uh—yeah. Of course. Central Twelve, heading there now.”
She gives you a curious look, brows drawn, but you turn away before she can ask any more questions.
On your way to C12, you pull up the patient’s chart—seen by Whitaker about half an hour ago—and double-check the morphine and Zofran doses she received. You pause just outside the room, drawing a deep breath and reminding yourself that you are at work. You don’t have time to be flustered. You don’t have time to worry about what Jack Abbot may or may not know. And you definitely don’t have time to obsess over the imaginary rasp of Robby’s beard against your thigh that you can somehow still feel.
When you push the door open and step inside, you’re the picture of professionalism. You offer the patient a polite smile, introduce yourself, and start the routine checks that feel more like second nature than work.
After the exam and a brief conversation, you order two more milligrams of morphine, review the labs Whitaker sent, and make a note to check back in fifteen minutes. Then, still intent on avoiding your attending, you bury your nose in your tablet and move on to the next patient waiting in South Sixteen.
Pressure-like chest pain. Diaphoretic, no shortness of breath. Initial ECG normal. Labs pending.
“Alright, Mr. Mullens,” you say, squirting a pump of sanitiser into your palm. “We’re going to get some scans done so we can get a better idea of what’s going on. If the pain gets worse before then, let us know.”
The man nods. “Thank you, Doc.”
You smile, stepping out into the hallway. “I’ll be back soon to check in.”
As soon as you turn around, you look for Robby, making sure you’re not about to run into him again. Literally.
You spot him all the way across central, walking with Santos toward the North hallway. Good. You’re safe. And if all goes well, maybe you’ll manage to avoid him for the entire day. Maybe you won’t have to come face to face with the face you can still see buried between your legs.
Fuck.
Your pulse kicks, heart beating too fast as you remember the way his eyes had watched you in your dream. It’s almost too much. Even the phantom memory of it is making you breathless.
God. If it ever actually happened, you might pass out.
“Why would you even think of that?” you mutter to yourself, stopping at the nurse’s station.
When you finally look up, Perlah and Princess are watching you closely, speculation sparkling in their eyes.
“Sobrang pula ng mukha niya,” Perlah murmurs.
Princess nods. “Hindi lagnat ’yan.”
Perlah lowers her voice even more. “Sa tingin mo ba may kinalaman ito sa crush niya?”
They both laugh quietly, turning away from you as if it isn’t you they’re gossiping about.
“Malinaw,” Princess says.
You give them both a tight smile before glancing up at the board, searching for something suitably distracting and far away from nosy nurses and unfairly attractive attendings.
You’re just about to head back toward the South hallway when a gurney crashes through the ambulance bay doors.
“Trauma Two!” Dana calls. “Robby!”
Abbot is already moving, meeting the paramedics halfway and guiding the gurney toward T2.
He points at you as he walks. “With me.”
“Shit,” you mutter, dropping your tablet on the desk and jogging over.
“Thirty-two-year-old male, MVC, restrained driver,” the paramedic says. “Front-end collision, airbags deployed. No LOC. Increasing shortness of breath during transport. Breath sounds decreased left side.”
“Let’s get him on monitor,” Abbot says, moving to stand opposite you at the head of the bed. “On my count.”
Robby steps in at your side, like he always does—close enough that you feel him before you see him.
His arm brushes yours.
Your stomach flips.
Focus.
“One. Two. Three,” Abbot counts.
You transfer the patient from gurney to trauma bed, and Santos starts cutting away clothes.
“Two large-bore IVs,” Abbot tells Jesse. “Trauma labs. Portable chest X-ray.” Then he looks at you, brows raised. “Breath sounds?”
“Oh—uh—” You fumble with your stethoscope, pressing it to each side of the patient’s chest. “Diminished on the left.”
You reach for the patient’s neck, fingers steady despite the noise around you.
“Trachea midline.”
Abbot nods, then turns to Santos. “Let’s get ultrasound.”
“BP holding?” Robby asks.
The sound of his voice sends goosebumps racing along your arms—and you shiver before you can stop yourself.
“Pressure’s 118 over 76,” Jesse replies. “Stable.”
Robby glances at you, brows drawn. “You okay?”
You nod quickly, without looking up. “Never better.”
“Absent lung sliding on the left,” Santos announces.
“Likely pneumothorax,” Abbot says, looking at Robby.
“Sats dropping,” Jesse calls. “Eighty-nine.”
Robby nods once. “Okay. We’re putting in a chest tube.”
“Chest tube tray. Twenty-eight French. Left side,” Abbot orders.
You try to move out of the way, but Robby’s hand catches your elbow—and you can’t help but look up. His dark eyes meet yours with an intensity you’ve never noticed before, and suddenly your lungs forget how to work.
“You’re up,” he says. “I’ll walk you through it.”
You know there’s no time to argue. You know you can’t. Shouldn’t. This is your job. And it’s not like you could say no to this man even if you wanted to.
You swallow. “Okay.”
Robby nods, then looks at Jesse. “Alright, let’s get some lido. Sutures ready. Hook up suction.”
You turn back to the patient, watching Abbot position the left arm above his head while Jesse preps the area—chlorhexidine swab, sterile drape. The rustle of sterile gowns and the snap of gloves fill the room as you pull on your own and push a pair of protective glasses up your nose. Then you grab the lidocaine from the tray and lean over the patient’s left side, steadying your hand as you guide the needle in.
The room is quieter now—save for the steady beeping of the monitors—chaos narrowing into focus as everyone watches you sink the needle into the patient’s skin.
“A little deeper,” Robby murmurs.
Your breath catches, but your hands stay steady.
You can feel him just behind you, leaning close, his warmth bleeding through your scrubs and setting your whole body on fire.
“Now find the rib,” he instructs. “Stay above it.”
You discard the needle onto the tray and start feeling ribs, counting down until you find the space.
“Scalpel,” you say, refusing to take your eyes off the spot your fingers found.
Jesse places the scalpel in your hand, and without hesitation, you cut a three-centimetre incision.
“Good,” Robby murmurs.
Your pulse thrums beneath your skin.
“Clamp,” you say, your voice almost breaking.
Jesse takes the scalpel from your hand, replacing it with a curved clamp.
You insert the clamp, pushing past muscle layers, and begin to spread. It feels forceful. Too much. Invasive, even though you know this is exactly what you’re supposed to do.
Robby steps closer. “Commit to it.”
His hand covers yours to adjust the angle, add pressure—until you feel the pop. And it takes every ounce of your self-control not to react. Not to whimper at the very normal, very professional way your attending is guiding you right now.
“Now sweep,” he says, so close you can feel the warmth of his breath against your cheek.
You insert your finger into the space, confirming entry into the pleural cavity and checking for adhesions—then nod. You don’t dare turn your head as you hold your hand out for the tube. He’s too close, too warm. You can smell the faint scent of soap on his skin even over the antiseptic and metallic tang in the air.
“Inserting tube,” you say, more to yourself than anyone else.
You start guiding the tube in—slow and controlled—feeling every millimetre of movement.
Until it stops.
Too much resistance.
“Up,” Robby says, his hand covering yours again. “Aim higher.”
He adjusts your wrist slightly, guiding the pressure.
You swallow hard and nod, hoping no one else can hear your uneven breathing—but knowing Robby definitely can.
He helps you apply more pressure, firmer now, angle corrected, and the tube starts moving again.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “Good girl. Keep going.”
Your brain short-circuits.
Heat floods your face. Your chest. Lower.
His voice echoes from your dream. Breathless. Panting. Words whispered against your skin.
Fuck. Now is not the time.
You tighten your grip on the tube and push.
Then—
A rush of air.
“Air return,” Abbot says, a hint of pride in his tone. “Now secure it.”
Robby steps back, and you hear the snap of his gloves coming off.
“O2 sats climbing,” he announces.
“Cool,” Santos says, grinning at Abbot’s side. “I’m doing the next one.”
You barely look up. You can’t. Your whole face feels like it’s on fire. You've never blushed this hard before. You’ve never been this hot in your life. And you’ve definitely never been this horny in the goddamn trauma bay.
“You good to finish up?” Robby asks Abbot.
Abbot nods.
From the corner of your eye, you see Robby step toward the door, glancing over his shoulder with a small, impressed smile.
“Nice work, Doctor.”
You don’t reply. You just nod, lips twitching with a soft smile as you keep your eyes on the patient.
As soon as you finish suturing and securing the tube, you step back, tearing off your gown and gloves as if that’ll somehow give you a reprieve from the heat beneath your skin. Jesse takes your place beside the patient, nodding along to Abbot’s orders while he and Kim start cleaning up.
You shove your gown, gloves, and glasses into the biohazard bin and head for the door without looking back—which is exactly why you don’t notice Santos trailing you.
“That was so cool,” she says, startling you.
“Jesus,” you mutter. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
She frowns. “Sneak? I was right behind you. It’s not my fault you’re all weird and jumpy today.”
“I’m not—” You glance across central to make sure Robby isn’t somewhere in your path to the ambulance bay. “I’m not weird and jumpy.”
Santos scoffs. “Right. And I’m not behind on my charting.”
You don’t bother arguing with her. You just keep walking—and she follows. All the way through the ER and out to the ambulance bay, where you stop just before the curb and draw a deep breath. It isn’t nearly as refreshing as you’d hoped, but a break from the fluorescents is always welcome.
“Okay,” she says, folding her arms. “What is with you today? You’re never this off. I’ve seen you perform procedures you’d only read about without a single assist from the attending. And I know you’ve done a chest tube before.”
You don’t answer. You don’t even look at her. You just tip your head back and stare at the roof of the ambulance bay, wondering whether it might collapse and save you from this conversation.
“And on that note,” she goes on, “Dr. Robby knows you’ve done a chest tube before, so why the hell was he being so patient? I swear he’s got a soft spot for you. Javadi pointed it out a few weeks ago and I honestly don’t know how I missed it. I mean—has he ever yelled at you?”
You finally look at her, brows drawn. “I—uh—no, I don’t think so.”
“Exactly,” she says, stepping closer. “And please tell me I heard wrong, but did he say good girl to you back there?”
As soon as she says it, your cheeks burn with renewed intensity. You can feel your heart in your throat, beating out of rhythm and way too fast for someone who is definitely not in a life-or-death situation.
And Santos notices—because of course she does.
Her eyes go wide. “Oh my God. This totally has something to do with Dr. Robby.”
“Shut up,” you mutter. “It’s not—”
You stop yourself, squeezing your eyes shut and pinching the bridge of your nose.
Santos isn’t going to let this go. You know her. She’s too inquisitive, too nosy, and there’s not nearly enough chaos today to distract her.
“Okay, fine,” you sigh, looking up, face burning. “I had a sex dream about him and now I can’t stop thinking about it.”
She stares at you for a second.
“A sex dream?”
You nod miserably.
Her mouth twitches—then she snorts.
Not a polite laugh. A full, startled snort she tries—and fails—to muffle behind her hand.
“Oh my God,” she says. “I knew you had a thing for him, but a sex dream?”
“Would you stop saying it?” you hiss, glancing nervously around the empty ambulance bay.
She laughs a little harder. “Was he good?”
“Oh my God,” you mutter, dropping your head into your hands. “I regret everything.”
“Hey,” she says, still laughing as she drops a hand on your shoulder. “For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure he’d go there if you asked.”
Your head snaps up. “If I asked?”
She shrugs. “Why not shoot your shot?”
“Because he’s my boss!”
“He’s your attending,” she says. “Technically, Dr. Underwood is your boss. Dr. Robby just supervises you.”
You shut your eyes again and draw a deep breath, trying to steady your pulse.
“Okay,” you say, squaring your shoulders. “I’m done with this conversation. I’m going back to work, and you’re not telling anyone what I just told you. Okay?”
She mimes zipping her lips. “I’m a vault, I swear.”
You nod. “Good.”
Then you turn and start walking back inside, trying not to conspicuously check for Robby on your way to the nurse’s station. Santos is still at your heels, still wearing an amused grin as if your humiliation is her exact brand of humour.
“One more question,” she says, stopping beside you as you grab another tablet from the rack.
You sigh. “What?”
She leans in. “Did he say ‘good girl’ in the dream too?”
Your pulse jumps.
“Goodbye, Dr. Santos,” you say, turning quickly on your heel.
“I’m taking that as a yes,” she calls after you.
You ignore her, turning toward S16 to check on your chest pain patient.
“Hey, Mr. Mullens,” you say as you push back the curtain. “How are you feeling?”
The older man sits up a little. “I’m okay.”
“Good.” You pull up his chart on your tablet. “The pain hasn’t gotten any worse?”
He shakes his head. “No.”
“That’s good to hear,” you say, quickly flicking through his lab results. “Your first labs look reassuring, but we’ll repeat them in a couple of hours just to be safe.”
You glance up, and he nods.
“Thank you, Doctor.”
You smile softly. “If the pain gets worse, or if you start having trouble breathing, press the call button.”
“Will do.”
You offer him one last nod before tucking your tablet under your arm and squirting a pump of sanitiser into your palm as you exit the room.
The second you step into the hall, you take a deep breath, finally feeling like your lungs remember how to work. Like your pulse might finally be settling into something resembling a normal rhythm. Like maybe—just maybe—you can survive the day if you stay distracted with work long enough not to think about last night.
About his voice—low and rough in your ear, whispering something you can’t quite remember.
Except the way it made your spine arch.
Or the moment he’d braced his hands on either side of you, his head dipping just enough that you could feel the warmth of his breath before he—
“Doctor.”
You jerk slightly, heat rushing straight back into your face as the memory evaporates.
“Sorry—what?”
Whitaker, now standing in front of you, clears his throat. “Nothing. I just—you looked a little out of it.”
You shake your head and turn toward central. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m a little off today.”
He nods, falling into step beside you. “Santos mentioned.”
Your head snaps toward him. “Santos mentioned what?”
“Just that you were out of it today,” he says quietly, staring at the floor.
You stare at him. “And?”
He shrugs, but it’s stiff. “And nothing.”
You stop at the nurse’s station and drop your tablet on the desk.
“I swear to God, Whitaker, if she told you—”
“She didn’t tell me anything,” he says, clearly panicked now. “I—I’ve got to go check on a patient.”
Then he’s gone, hurrying off toward the South hallway.
Fuck.
You told Santos barely ten minutes ago and she’s already told Whitaker?
So much for being a vault.
“What’d I tell you about swearin’ on God, little lady?” Dana asks, peering over her glasses from the other side of the desk.
You sigh, resting both forearms on the counter. “Sorry. Rough morning.”
“Tell me about it,” she says, glancing down at her tablet. “Sprained ankle in North Four wants an MRI and a wheelchair escort to the parking lot. Psych hold in B2 tried to climb out the bathroom window. Ogilvie ordered the wrong labs and blamed the computer. And someone—” she pauses, squinting toward where McKay is assessing a patient, “—keeps leaving half-empty coffee cups everywhere like we’re running a café instead of an emergency department.”
You huff a quiet laugh.
“And we’re only on hour two,” she adds, looking back up at you.
“Lucky us,” you mutter.
She sets her tablet down and slides her glasses off, folding them into the breast pocket of her scrubs.
“What’s with you, hm?” She leans in. “First you’re late, then you run out of trauma like you’re about to pass out. That’s not like you, kid.”
You shrug. “Just a little off today.”
She watches you for a second, her eyes narrowing just a fraction. She’s not stupid. She knows there’s more to it than that—but Dana isn’t the type to push.
She hums quietly.
“Alright,” she says. “I’ll pretend I believe that.”
You give her a small, appreciative smile as you push off the counter. “Love you, Dana.”
She just shakes her head, the corner of her mouth lifting as she glances back down at her tablet. “Yeah? Then check on North Four for me and see if you can get ‘em discharged.”
You nod. “North Four, on it.”
You start to turn away, then stop yourself and swivel back toward her.
“Hey—uh—is Abbot still here?” you ask.
“No, he left right after the MVC trauma,” she replies without looking up.
“Oh.”
“Why? You need him?” she asks. “I’m sure whatever you need, Dr. Robby can—”
“No,” you say quickly. “Nope. I’m good. Totally fine. Don’t need anything at all.”
You hug your tablet to your chest and start turning away again.
“Everything’s fine!”
You don’t dare look back. You just keep walking toward the North hall, completely missing the sceptical look Dana sends after you—and the confused look on Robby’s face as he glances between the two of you.
On your way to N4, you pull your phone out of your pocket and tap on Dr. Abbot’s contact, typing quickly.
So much for saying goodbye to your favourite resident.
Then you hit send and tuck your phone back into your pocket.
You’re not actually offended. Not really. This is the ER. People barely have time to finish a sentence, let alone say goodbye.
You’re just… nervous.
Nervous because Abbot thinks he knows something—and you need to figure out what that is before he decides to say something to Robby and make this whole situation infinitely worse.
You stop outside N4 and take a deep breath—your hundredth deep breath of the morning. You can do this. This is the easy part. The patients. The work. The familiarity of what you do every day. You just need to focus on this for the next twelve hours and definitely not the way you can still feel the weight of his hand on your hip, steady and certain, holding you exactly where he wanted you as he—
“Nope,” you tell yourself out loud. “Absolutely not. Focus.”
You shake your head as you step into the room and slide the curtain back, greeting the patient with your practiced mask of cool, calm, and collected. You manage to convince them they don’t need an MRI, since their ankle is only sprained, but you do get Ahmad to escort them out in a wheelchair—and now you owe him ten bucks and a bagel tomorrow morning.
Then you move on to the next patient. And the next.
The next few hours pass by in a blur of minor catastrophes. A migraine that melts away with the standard cocktail of Toradol, Reglan, and Benadryl. A Lego piece extracted from a three-year-old’s nose while Whitaker distracts the squirming patient. Three stitches in the eyebrow of a man who swears he doesn’t drink before 10AM—even though you can smell the alcohol on his breath. An overworked woman with chest pain that turns out to be a panic attack. A teenager with a swollen knee and a devastated look on his face when you suggest he might be benched for the rest of the season.
And at half past noon, you step into C9. Mid-thirties, right lower quadrant abdominal pain, nausea, mild fever—what you can already guess is appendicitis.
“Hi, Ms. Park, how are you feeling?” you ask, squirting a pump of sanitiser into your palm.
She winces. “Not so good.”
“It says here you’re having abdominal pain, nausea, and a bit of a fever,” you say. “When did that start?”
She nods. “Early this morning. Four, maybe.”
You set your tablet on the cart, grab a pair of gloves, and drag a stool beside the bed. “Mind if I take a look at your abdomen so I can get a better idea of what’s going on?”
She nods and tips her head back against the pillow, hands falling either side as you start palpating her lower abdomen. It doesn’t take more than a few presses for her to hiss and lift a hand, trying to push you away.
“Sorry,” she says, voice strained. “It hurts a lot.”
“That’s okay.” You scoot back and rise from the stool, peeling off your gloves. “I’m going to order a CT scan to take a better look, and we’ll give you something for the pain and something for the nausea in the meantime.”
You step around the bed and grab your tablet off the cart.
“A nurse will come in shortly to start fluids too,” you add. “You’re probably a little dehydrated if you haven’t been able to eat or drink much this morning.”
She looks at you with wide eyes. “I don’t know if I want a CT. Isn’t that a lot of radiation?”
“It’s a relatively small amount,” you reply evenly, “and it’s the best way for us to see what’s going on inside your abdomen. I can assure you, it’s very safe.”
“I try to avoid unnecessary radiation,” Ms. Park argues, shifting uncomfortably. “Is there another option?”
“Ultrasound can sometimes help, but it’s not always reliable in adults,” you say. “A CT scan will give us the clearest answer.”
She hesitates, eyes dropping to her lap. “Well—could I please speak to the doctor in charge?”
You open your mouth to reply when someone steps in beside you. Tall. Solid. Close enough to make your pulse skip and your stomach take a nosedive.
“You are,” Robby says, arms folded. “She’s the physician managing your care right now, so we’ll follow her recommendation.”
You step to the side, nearly tripping over nothing, clutching your tablet to your chest.
“Uh—Dr. Robby, this is Ms. Park,” you say quickly. “Thirty-five, right lower quadrant pain since early this morning. Nausea, no vomiting, low-grade fever at triage. Tenderness at McBurney’s point. I’ve ordered labs and a CT abdomen to rule out appendicitis.”
Robby nods once. “That sounds appropriate.”
Ms. Park sighs.
“Alright,” she says, a little more pleasantly now. “If that’s what you recommend.”
She doesn’t even look at you as she says it—her eyes stay fixed on Robby, softening in a way that makes you briefly consider poking her appendix again.
Not that you can blame her.
Your gaze flicks to Robby, wondering if he’s noticed the sudden change in demeanour—or the way she’s practically making heart eyes at him.
But he isn’t looking at Ms. Park.
He’s looking at you.
You clear your throat, quickly glancing back down at your tablet. “Uh—that’s good. Great. I’ll finish the orders now, and a nurse will be by shortly with some pain relief.”
Ms. Park gives you a brief nod before turning back to Robby with a smile that makes you want to roll your eyes. Robby just nods, squirts a pump of sanitiser into his hand, then steps out of the room—and you try not to follow too closely.
You slide the curtain shut before turning into the hall, half expecting Robby to be gone—but he isn’t. He’s still standing there, holding his tablet in one hand while the other scrubs at his jaw in that mildly anxious way it always does.
“Nice work in there,” he says without looking up.
Heat floods your face.
“Thanks,” you say with a tight smile. “And thanks for backing me up.”
He glances at you over the top of his glasses.
“You had it handled.”
You clutch your tablet to your chest. “Well—uh—thanks anyway.”
Then, before you completely lose the ability to function, you turn on your heel and start down the hall—but not fast enough to miss Dana’s voice.
“Careful, Robinavitch,” she says dryly. “You’re hovering.”
“I supervise,” Robby mutters.
Dana hums.
“Uh-huh. I’ll pretend I believe that.”
Hovering?
You tighten your grip on your tablet as you hurry down the South hall, pretending you know where you’re headed.
Robby wasn’t hovering. He was just doing his job. Right?
He hovers around every resident and med student.
It’s not like he was—
You shake your head.
No—Dana’s just teasing. It’s her thing. It’s practically her love language.
You stop short when you reach the end of the hall. Elevator ahead. Restrooms to your right.
Nowhere else to go.
“You okay, Doctor?” McKay asks, stepping out of the ladies’ room.
You blink. “Uh—yeah, I just—”
You’re not sure what excuse to use now—standing in the middle of the hall, staring at the elevator, white-knuckling your tablet like you’re one bad patient away from a psychotic break.
“You look like you’re buffering,” she says, the corner of her mouth twitching. “Why don’t you take a break?”
You shake your head. “I don’t need a break.”
Her brows lift as she gently places a hand on each of your shoulders, turning you back the other way. “Alright. Well, why don’t you go sit down and catch up on your charting?”
She starts guiding you slowly back up the hall.
“Charting,” you echo, a faint frown forming between your brows. “Yeah. That’s a good idea, actually. I haven’t done much all day.”
She nods. “See? I’m full of good ideas. And you are seriously concerning me today.”
You give her a look. “I’m fine. Everyone is just being—”
“Caring?” she offers.
You roll your eyes. “Overbearing.”
She shakes her head, laughing quietly as she steers you toward the nurse’s station.
“Here,” she says, pulling out a chair in front of a vacant computer. “Sit.”
“Yes, ma’am,” you mutter, dropping down at the desk.
She steps behind you, pushes the chair in, then leans over your shoulder.
“Good girl,” she murmurs.
Your entire spine locks.
“What was that?”
McKay straightens, already grinning.
“Charting,” she says lightly, tapping the monitor. “Try it.”
“But—you just—”
She laughs under her breath, already backing away.
“Finish your notes, doctor. You don’t want to have to stay late.”
Then she’s gone, shaking her head again as she disappears back toward triage.
You sit there for a few seconds longer than you should, staring after her while your brain desperately tries to reboot.
“Fucking Santos,” you mutter, finally turning back to the computer.
“You called,” Santos says, appearing on the other side of the desk.
Your eyes snap up. “You.”
Her brows lift. “Me?”
“Yes,” you snap. “You’ve been telling people.”
She tries—and fails—to suppress a smile.
“Not technically.” She leans forward, resting both forearms on the counter. “I only told Huckleberry, but McKay overheard. Can you blame me, though? It’s the most interesting thing to happen around here today.”
“Yes,” you hiss. “I can blame you. And I will blame you if—”
You stop, your eyes flicking past her to where Robby has just stepped out of C8, chart in hand and head bowed. Santos frowns for a second before following your gaze over her shoulder.
She snorts. “Oh my God. You can’t even function.”
“Who can’t function?” Whitaker asks, stepping up beside Santos.
You drop your head into your hands and sigh. “Great. They’re multiplying.”
Santos leans closer. “Hey, what’s the song that plays in your head whenever he walks past? Is it, like, SexyBack, or more… Like a Prayer?”
Whitaker snorts softly, his cheeks turning pink.
You glare at Santos. “Neither.”
“You’re right.” She nods thoughtfully. “I can practically hear the Careless Whisper sax playing in your mind right now.”
Your eyes go wide as you snatch a pen off the desk and lob it straight at her—but she dodges it easily.
“Wow,” she says, still laughing. “I’m on fire today.”
“Is that so, Dr. Santos?”
You recognise the voice before you even see him—because of course you do. You dream about that voice.
“That would mean you’ve caught up on all your charting and discharged your patient in North One?” Robby asks as he steps up beside Santos.
Her grin drops. “Uh—yeah. Actually, I was just on my way to North One.”
Her eyes slide back to you as she pushes away from the desk, lips pressed tight to keep herself from laughing.
“Dr. Whitaker,” Robby says. “Are you hovering?”
Hovering?
Whitaker glances up. “Oh—uh—no. I was just finishing some orders.”
“Good. You can finish them on your way to discharging South Twenty.”
Whitaker nods, barely even glancing at you as he grabs his tablet off the desk and turns toward the South hall.
Then Robby looks at you, holding up the pen you threw at Santos.
Your pulse stutters.
“Think you lost this,” he says, leaning forward to drop it on the desk.
“I threw it,” you blurt.
He hesitates, the corner of his mouth twitching before he turns away.
“I know.”
You watch him go until he turns a corner and disappears—then you look down at the pen.
“Fuck,” you sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose. “I need today to end.”
You slide the pen aside and force your attention back to the computer—to the cursor blinking patiently beside the single word you’d managed to write since sitting down.
Right.
Charting.
You manage exactly four more words before you’re interrupted again—something about your abdominal pain patient in Central Nine.
With a sigh, you push away from the desk, grab your tablet, and head for C9.
After confirming Ms. Park does indeed need an appendectomy and contacting Garcia for a surgical consult, Dana stops you in the hall to ask if Mr. Mullens can be discharged from South Sixteen. Then Javadi grabs you to present a calf laceration that you end up supervising while she sutures it, and after that Whitaker calls you in for a second opinion on a dizziness patient in North Five.
The hours start to blur together. You bounce from one room to another, just barely finishing your notes in between patients and med students and reviewing labs. By the time you finally make it back to the desk again, you’ve almost—almost—forgotten about why your heart is still beating a little too fast.
“Back to charting?” Princess asks.
You nod. “The never-ending task.”
She gives you the same quiet, speculative smile she gave you this morning.
“You seem off today,” she says.
“I’m fine,” you mutter. “Just tired.”
“And red,” she adds before turning away.
You frown, pressing a hand to your ridiculously hot cheek as you turn back toward the computer. If this keeps up, you’re more likely to end the shift as a patient than a doctor.
With a small sigh, you scoot your chair closer to the desk and pull the chart back up. Your eyes flick to the corner of the screen, to the little clock telling you that you only have a few hours left. A few hours to finish your charting, discharge a couple more patients, and keep avoiding Dr. Robby. Then you’re free. Then you’ve got at least eight solid hours to sort yourself out before you’re back here tomorrow.
Just as you position your fingers over the keyboard to start typing, your phone vibrates in your pocket—and your pulse jumps.
Abbot.
You quickly pull it out, swipe up, and open the notification.
Sorry. Too busy mourning the loss of my status as your favourite attending.
Your stomach drops.
What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
You stare at the text for an unreasonable length of time—heart pounding, face burning, thoughts racing. Abbot definitely thinks he knows something. Something he shouldn’t know. Something he’s probably very wrong about. Something you need to figure out and shut down immediately.
Before he decides to say something to Robby about whatever it is he thinks he knows.
“Hey,” Dana says, stopping on the other side of the desk. “Thought you were working?”
You clear your throat. “Uh—yeah. Sorry. Got distracted.”
Her brows lift. “Distracted, huh? That’s exactly what we want in emergency medicine.”
Then she shakes her head and walks away.
You tuck your phone into your pocket and turn your attention back to the chart in front of you. The chart of exactly five words—the first of many unfinished charts standing in your way of going home on time.
And today is not a day you want to stay back.
Your fingers hover over the keyboard again, eyes flicking over the few words already written. It takes a minute—probably longer than it should—but eventually you remember how to do your job and start typing.
The ER fades into background noise—monitors beeping, nurses chatting, the rumble of beds rolling past—and for the first time all day, you feel focused. Steady. Until—
“Robby,” Dana calls, “can you come over here for a sec?”
Your fingers slow over the keys—and against your better judgment, you glance up.
“Mrs. Alvarez,” Robby says fondly. “What brings you here?”
Your brows draw together as you study the older woman sitting on the bed. She looks familiar, and Alvarez rings a bell, but you can’t quite place it.
“Perlah,” you say, without fully looking away from the woman. “Who’s Mrs. Alvarez?”
“She used to work here,” Perlah replies. “She was the night shift charge nurse before Lena. Partially retired a couple years ago, but she’s covered a shift or two since then.”
You tilt your head. “Oh.”
“She probably asked for Robby,” Princess chimes in. “She always had a soft spot for him.”
Perlah tries to muffle her laughter. “Katulad ng ibang kakilala natin.”
Princess laughs behind you, but the sound barely registers. You’re too captivated by the scene unfolding in front of you. The very normal, very professional interaction that is hardly out of place in an ER—yet for some reason, it feels like you’re watching an adult film made specifically for you.
Mrs. Alvarez’s bed is parked up against the wall—a sight that would normally remind you to look for patients to discharge, but right now that’s the furthest thing from your mind.
Robby has pulled a stool up beside her, leaning in while she talks, forearms resting loosely on the bed rail. He nods along as she explains what’s wrong, his expression soft, his posture relaxed. There’s absolutely nothing obscene about it—but your pulse is still racing.
There’s just something about the way he listens—really listens—that makes it difficult to look anywhere else. That makes it difficult not to envy Mrs. Alvarez right now.
“Let’s take a listen,” he says after a moment, voice low and steady.
Your stomach does a strange little flip.
It’s such a normal sentence. Completely harmless. Totally professional. You’ve probably said the same thing yourself at least three times today. But hearing it in that voice—calm, warm, just rough enough at the edges to carry across the department—does something deeply unhelpful to your concentration.
He slips the stethoscope from around his neck, the tubing sliding through his fingers with the kind of easy familiarity that only comes from years of doing the same motion over and over again. The movement is quick, practiced, almost absentminded.
Still, your eyes follow it.
They follow the way he leans forward, one hand bracing lightly against the mattress while the other presses the diaphragm of the stethoscope gently against Mrs. Alvarez’s chest.
“Deep breath for me.”
Your pulse stutters.
Because suddenly—unhelpfully, vividly—you remember exactly how those hands felt in the dream.
The same steady fingers. The same calm voice, dropped just a little lower when he leaned close enough that you could feel the warmth of his breath near your ear.
His hand had been wrapped around your wrist—firm but careful—guiding your hand above your head and pinning it against the pillow.
“Hold still,” he murmured.
The memory is sharp enough that for a second you can almost feel it again. The weight of his body pressing into the space between your knees, the quiet authority in his voice when he spoke, the way his fingers tightened against your skin just enough to keep you right where he wanted you.
Your hands had curled into the bed sheets as his lips traced the line of your jaw, his voice dropping again—softer now, almost thoughtful.
“Look at me.”
Your breath had caught in your throat when you did.
Because he was watching you the same way he watches patients—calm, focused, completely absorbed—except the attention felt different in the dream. Slower. Heavier. Like he was studying every reaction you gave him and deciding exactly how much more you could handle.
Your pulse had started racing the second his gaze dropped to your mouth.
It wasn’t subtle.
Just a brief shift of his eyes—thoughtful, almost curious—but the heat that followed it made your stomach tighten.
His thumb found its way back to your jaw, tracing slowly along the curve of it as if he were considering something. Following the line of your chin as he tipped your head back just slightly beneath his hand.
You hadn’t realised you’d stopped breathing until his fingers stilled.
“Breathe,” he said quietly.
The word brushed over your lips.
You remember the way your chest rose when you obeyed him—slow, unsteady—and the way his gaze followed the movement before drifting back to your mouth again.
God.
The corner of his mouth had lifted slightly then, like he’d noticed exactly what he was doing to you.
Like he wasn’t in any hurry to stop.
His hand slid from your jaw to the side of your throat, fingers warm against your skin, thumb resting just beneath your chin as if he were holding you there—not tightly, just enough that you stayed exactly where he wanted you.
And the entire time he watched you with that same quiet concentration.
Like this was just another thing he was very, very good at.
“Hey,” Santos says, appearing beside the desk. “Your abdominal pain in C9 just went upstairs.”
You blink at her. “Already?”
She shrugs. “Garcia signed off.”
You nod once, shifting awkwardly in your chair as you turn back toward the computer, trying very hard to ignore the heat pooling low in your belly.
“You good?” Santos asks, as if you haven’t been asked that enough today.
You clear your throat, eyes flicking briefly back to Robby and Mrs. Alvarez. “Yeah. Fine.”
She follows your gaze, the corner of her mouth twitching.
“Wow,” she says. “You’re down bad.”
You glare at her. “I’m charting.”
“You’re drooling.”
You quickly lift a hand to your mouth, swiping at the corner.
Santos grins. “Well, it depends who you’re asking, because if you ask—”
“Santos,” you warn.
She laughs. “Come on. It’s just a joke.”
“Isang biro?” Princess says, smiling. “Walang nakakatawa sa paraan ng pagtitig niya kay Robby.”
Your stomach drops.
You might not understand Tagalog, but you sure as hell know what that last word was.
“Santos,” you say, slowly rising from your chair. “How many people have you told?”
She presses her lips together sheepishly. “Again, technically? Just Huckleberry.”
“And—and I haven’t told anyone,” Whitaker adds quickly.
“Ano ang pinag-uusapan nila?” Perlah says behind you.
Princess shrugs. “May alam lang na sikreto si Santos.”
Your eyes widen. “Santos, I swear—”
“Relax,” she says. “They’re not talking about the dream. They were talking about your staring.”
Princess steps forward. “A dream? What dream?”
You bury your face in your hands. “Oh my God.”
“Wait,” Perlah says. “Did she have a dream about—”
Santos smirks. “Yep.”
“Oh,” Princess gasps. “That’s why she’s been so weird today.”
Perlah snorts.
Princess mutters something else in Tagalog that makes them all laugh again.
“Oh my God, Santos!” you say again, louder this time. “I’m just trying to get through the day without my attending finding out I had a sex dream about him and you’re telling the entire emergency department?”
Silence.
Perlah is staring at you.
Princess is staring at you.
Whitaker looks like someone has just pulled the fire alarm inside his head.
And Santos—
Santos is very carefully not looking at you anymore.
“What?” you snap. “No more jokes?”
No one answers.
Instead, Princess’s eyes flick slowly past your shoulder.
Whitaker clears his throat.
Santos presses her lips together, the corners twitching like she’s fighting for her life not to laugh.
“What?” you repeat, glancing over your shoulder.
And there he is.
Your attending—standing just a few feet from the nurse’s station, tablet still in one hand, glasses sliding slightly down his nose as he looks at you over the top of them.
Your stomach drops so violently it feels like all your organs have fallen out of your body.
He clears his throat.
Once.
“Alright,” he says evenly. “Back to work.”
That’s all it takes.
Perlah and Princess busy themselves on the other side of the nurse’s station.
Whitaker rushes off toward triage.
Santos lingers just long enough to give you a look that promises she will never let this go before she slips away too.
And then it’s just you.
And him.
He doesn’t say anything for a moment. Just adjusts the tablet in his hand, pulls his glasses off, folds them into the pocket of his scrubs, and turns away.
And as he steps away, you could almost swear you see the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth.
Almost as if he’s fighting a smile.
But that would be ridiculous, right?
It takes an embarrassingly long time for you to remember how to move.
How to function.
You can feel Perlah and Princess watching you. Waiting for you to do something other than stare at the spot your attending had been standing when you announced your sex dream about him to the entire department.
God.
This has to be some kind of HR violation.
Robby is probably on his way to find Dana right now so she can tell you to go upstairs and talk to someone about misconduct. If you’re not fired, you’ll be transferred.
Or worse—night shift.
You gasp and fumble for your phone, pulling it out of your pocket.
Abbot's message thread is already open when you swipe up and start typing.
What’s that supposed to mean?
Then you hit send and tuck your phone away again.
It’s a ridiculous thought, but maybe if you can talk to Abbot and explain that this was all just one giant misunderstanding, maybe he can convince Robby not to hate you for it. Maybe he can convince Robby to let you finish your residency at PTMC without it being painfully awkward for both of you.
Because as funny as this is to Santos and the nurses, you’re not so sure Robby will see it that way.
Not when you’ve let it affect your work.
Not when you just embarrassed him—and yourself—in front of the entire emergency department.
You draw in a slow breath and grab your tablet off the desk.
All you can do now is your job.
All you can do for the next hour is avoid Robby and pray Abbot will hear you out when he comes back on shift.
You turn deliberately toward the North hallway and pull up the lab results for Whitaker’s dizziness patient, keeping your eyes fixed on your tablet as you walk.
The department hums around you like it always does—monitors beeping, beds rolling past, nurses calling out vitals—but you can still feel eyes on you. Whether it’s the nurses or the med students, or even a patient who overheard your outburst, you know you’re being watched.
Whispered about, probably.
But if you don’t look up, it doesn’t count. Right?
By the time you circle back to central, Mrs. Alvarez has already been discharged, which you take as a small mercy. Then you duck into South Fifteen to check on a teenager with a sprained ankle who is mostly interested in whether he can still play soccer this weekend. After that it’s a quick review of labs for a chest pain patient in Central Ten—normal troponins, thank God—and a brief stop at the nurse’s station to sign off on discharge instructions Dana has already printed.
None of it requires you to look up very much.
Which is ideal.
You spend the next half hour moving steadily from room to room—listening to a set of lungs for a persistent cough in North Three, answering a worried daughter’s questions about her father’s blood pressure in South Twenty-Two, and checking a set of repeat vitals on a dehydration case Princess flagged earlier. Every task is perfectly ordinary. Completely routine.
And through all of it, you make a very conscious effort not to look for your attending.
Not that you’re avoiding him.
Obviously.
You’re just… busy.
You still see him, though—across the hall, talking to patients, nodding along while med students present. He doesn’t look up. Never looks at you. Just keeps walking, keeps working, keeps nodding.
Like nothing happened.
And somehow, that’s worse.
You’re on your way back from dropping discharge paperwork at the front desk—walking a little slower than you should as you wonder how long until the end of your shift—when McKay calls out from triage.
“Hey, you busy?”
You stop mid-step. “Always. What’s up?”
“Can you grab me a suture kit?” she asks. “I’m out in here.”
“Of course. What size?”
“Four-oh nylon. Whatever's closest.”
You nod. “On it.”
“And maybe send a med student to grab more from supply,” she calls as you walk away.
You don’t reply. You just duck into Trauma One—thankfully empty—grab a kit, then call out to Ogilvie on your way back, telling him to go get more suture kits for triage as soon as he’s free. You don’t even wait for him to answer, but you do hear him turn to a nurse and ask where supply is.
You wedge your tablet under one arm as you head back toward the triage bay. With the kit held against your chest, you start peeling back the sterile packaging—since you know McKay’s already halfway through cleaning whatever it is she needs to suture up.
You’re just being helpful.
But the plastic seam is stubborn, and just as you turn into the bay the wrapper gives with a jerked tear—and the scalpel slides free.
You shift to catch it, but the blade grazes the inside of your upper arm before you can pull away.
“Oh—shit.”
It’s not dramatic. Just a sharp sting at first, and for a second you assume it’s nothing more than a scratch.
Until the warmth starts to trickle down your arm and drip from your elbow.
“Damn,” you sigh, watching a small droplet of blood hit the floor.
McKay glances up, eyes going wide. “What the hell happened?”
She quickly takes everything out of your hands, and you lift your arm to inspect the damage.
“Scalpel slipped.”
McKay winces. “That’s going to need stitches.”
Ignoring the confused patient still sitting in the triage chair, she grabs a wad of gauze off the cart and presses it against your arm.
“Hold this,” she says. “I’ll go get someone to take over here, then we can—”
“It’s alright,” a familiar voice says from somewhere behind you. “I’ll deal with this.”
Your stomach drops.
“Oh.” McKay glances over your shoulder, the corner of her mouth twitching. “Thanks, Dr. Robby.”
Fuck.
You turn slowly, one hand still clamped over the gauze on your arm.
He’s already so close—barely half a step away—and you have to tip your head back to look up at him.
“Let me see,” he says, voice low.
You hold your arm out obediently.
His fingers brush yours as he peels back the gauze, and your pulse jumps.
“Alright.” He nods once, something indistinguishable flickering across his face. “That needs stitches.”
Before you can respond, his hand closes lightly around your wrist, guiding your arm back toward your side as he turns you with him.
“Come with me.”
The touch is brief, professional—but when his hand shifts to the small of your back to steer you out of triage, the warmth of it makes your heart stutter out of rhythm.
“Dana,” he calls, walking quickly through central. “What’s open?”
Dana looks up from the desk just as the two of you pass. Her gaze flicks from the gauze on your arm to Robby’s hand still resting lightly at your back, and something sharp and knowing slides into her expression immediately.
“Central Eleven just got cleaned,” she says.
Robby nods once. “Thanks.”
Dana’s brows lift just a fraction as she watches the two of you step into the room, like she’s just connected several very interesting dots.
You move automatically toward the bed, trying not to feel disappointed when Robby’s hand leaves your back. He shuts the doors on both sides of the room, then slides the curtain closed—and every move makes your heart rate climb higher.
“Lay back,” he says.
Your whole body flushes with heat as you adjust yourself on the exam bed, trying desperately not to think about the other circumstances in which he might give you that instruction.
He rolls the stool beside the bed and reaches for your arm, turning it out gently.
His fingers are warm as he removes the gauze.
You try not to think too hard about his fingers.
“It’s a clean cut, at least,” he says after a second.
You nod. “Sharp blade.”
Like he didn’t already know that.
He releases your arm long enough to pull on a pair of gloves and gather what he needs from the tray beside the bed. You watch him move around the room with that same quiet efficiency that has been ruining your concentration all day—steady hands, calm voice, not a hint of hurry even though the department outside the door is probably chaos.
“Come a little closer,” he says, almost absentmindedly—as if he doesn’t know what saying something like that is going to do to you.
You shift against the mattress while he lifts your arm again, angling it under the exam light.
He’s so close now you can hardly breathe. You can feel his breath against your cheek, his warmth bleeding through the thin fabric of your scrubs, every touch careful as he starts cleaning the cut.
The antiseptic stings enough to make you tense.
“Easy,” he murmurs, steadying your arm. “It’s not that bad.”
“I’m aware,” you say quickly. “I do actually work here.”
“Yes,” he says mildly. “I’m aware of that too.”
You risk a glance at him then—and immediately regret it.
He’s standing now, leaning close enough that you could count every fleck of grey in his beard. Close enough to notice the way his glasses have slid slightly down his nose while he concentrates on the wound. His fingers move with careful precision as he prepares the needle driver, completely focused.
Completely calm.
Completely unaware that your brain is still stuck somewhere between the nurse’s station and a very inappropriate dream.
“Hold still,” he murmurs.
Your stomach flips—and when you squeeze your eyes shut, that exact moment from your dream flashes through your mind again.
The lidocaine burns for a second when he injects it, and you suck in a breath before you can stop yourself.
“Breathe,” he says automatically.
God.
If he could stop with the direct quotes from your dream, maybe you would actually be able to breathe.
You clear your throat, staring stubbornly at the wall now while he begins the first stitch.
“Try to relax,” he adds quietly.
You let out a short, incredulous laugh. “I’m trying.”
His hands pause for the briefest moment.
Then he glances up at you over the rim of his glasses.
“You of all people should know better than to open a suture kit while walking.”
You let out a small, embarrassed breath and shift slightly on the bed while he works, trying not to react every time the needle passes neatly through the edge of the cut.
“Sorry,” you mutter. “It’s been a weird day.”
“Mhm.”
The sound is absentminded, the same one he makes when a patient is explaining symptoms he already understands. His attention stays on your arm while he ties the knot and reaches for the next stitch, movements calm and precise, like this is the most ordinary thing in the world.
“You seemed a little distracted earlier,” he adds after a moment.
Your stomach tightens.
“Busy department.”
He hums again as he adjusts your arm slightly.
“Not exactly what I meant.”
You stare at the ceiling again, your pulse racing dangerously fast.
“It’s not unusual, you know,” he says after a moment, his voice calm and thoughtful as he works. “There’s actually quite a lot of research on it. In high-stress environments people’s subconscious tends to latch onto someone they admire rather than… straightforward attraction. It’s a way of organizing all that pressure—long hours, constant adrenaline, the need to trust the people around you.”
He pauses briefly to adjust the stitch.
You feel like you’re about to throw up.
“Hospitals are particularly good at creating that kind of dynamic,” he goes on. “Everyone’s exhausted, everyone’s relying on each other, and if there happens to be someone who seems steady in the middle of all that—someone people look to when things go wrong—it’s very easy for admiration to blur into something else.”
Another small pause, the thread tightening neatly under his fingers.
“It’s rarely intentional,” he adds, quieter now. “Most of the time the person experiencing it doesn’t even realise what their brain is doing.”
You finally look at him. His face is barely inches from yours, close enough that you can see the faint crease between his brows while he concentrates on the last stitch, all of his attention focused on closing the cut.
“Wait,” you say slowly. “So… I—I’m not fired?”
His hands still for the briefest moment before he glances at you, genuine confusion flickering across his face.
“Fired?”
You swallow. “For… you know. The thing I said. Out there. To the entire department.”
He huffs a small laugh—barely a breath.
“Why would you be fired?” he says mildly. “Embarrassing yourself in front of the nurses isn’t exactly grounds for termination.”
Your face burns.
He sets the needle driver down and reaches for the scissors, his tone settling back into that same calm, matter-of-fact rhythm.
“You shouldn’t have let it distract you from your work, though,” he continues. “That’s the only part I was concerned about. But one off day doesn’t suddenly erase an otherwise solid record.”
You stare at him.
“Concerned?”
“Mhm.”
He snips the suture, then reaches to adjust your arm slightly under the light, examining his work.
“First you were late,” he says, almost absently. “You were flustered during the chest tube. You’ve been avoiding traumas all day—” His eyes meet yours briefly. “And your attending. You’ve barely caught up on your charting, and you’ve unintentionally encouraged the nurses’ gossiping.”
Your stomach drops.
“Not to mention,” he adds, just a little drier now, “the pen you threw at Dr. Santos for—what? Teasing you, I presume.”
Your brain short-circuits.
Because suddenly, Dana’s voice echoes through your mind.
Careful, Robinavitch. You’re hovering.
Hovering?
Like the way he’d stood so close while you placed that chest tube. The way his hand had settled at your back when he guided you out of triage.
Why was he even there to begin with?
Santos’ voice cuts through your mind next.
I swear he’s got a soft spot for you.
I’m pretty sure he’d go there if you asked.
And suddenly the entire day looks… different.
Not like an attending keeping an eye on his resident.
Like a man trying very hard not to make it obvious he was paying attention to you.
Robby smooths the edge of the dressing over the sutured cut, pressing it down carefully as he glances back up at you.
“Keep that dry for the next—”
And that’s the moment your brain finally catches up.
Before you can talk yourself out of it, your hand shoots out and grabs the front of his scrubs, fingers bunching the fabric at his chest as you pull him the few inches closer.
Then you kiss him.
It’s not graceful.
It’s barely even planned.
Just a quick, impulsive press of your mouth against his—warm and startled and over almost as soon as it begins.
For half a second, he doesn’t move at all.
“Oh—fuck. I—”
You drop his shirt like it’s suddenly on fire and lean back on the bed, horrified.
“I’m so sorry,” you blurt. “I don’t know why I just—”
The apology dies halfway through, because Robby hasn’t stepped away.
He hasn’t leapt back, shocked or offended. He’s just… there.
Where he was when you grabbed him—close enough that you can still feel his warmth, with one hand resting lightly near your arm where he’d been finishing the dressing. For a second he simply watches you, studying your face with the same quiet concentration he uses when he’s working through a diagnosis, like he’s trying to decide whether the last thirty seconds actually happened.
Your pulse is hammering.
“I shouldn’t have—” you try again.
His hand lifts.
The movement is slow, deliberate, and before you can finish your sentence his thumb and forefinger settle lightly around your chin, tilting your face upward just enough that you have to look at him.
Your breath catches.
He hesitates for the briefest moment, his gaze moving across your face as if he’s still weighing the decision.
Then he leans in.
The first contact is firmer than you expect—his mouth warm and solid against yours, the faint scrape of his beard against your skin as he adjusts the angle. His glasses are still on, the frame nudging the bridge of your nose when he shifts closer. His nose bumps yours before he tilts his head, finding a better position.
For a second it’s almost restrained.
Then it isn’t.
His grip on your chin tightens a fraction as he deepens the kiss, tipping your head back against the pillow while he leans over you. The change is sudden enough that your hands catch the front of his scrubs again without thinking. The fabric bunches in your fingers as he moves closer, the pressure of his mouth shifting—slower now but more certain, like he’s stopped pretending he’s about to pull away.
The beard you’d been trying not to notice all day brushes your cheek again when he moves, softer than you expected, and when his teeth graze your lower lip for half a second the sound that escapes you is embarrassingly honest.
He exhales quietly through his nose against your skin.
Not stopping.
If anything, the opposite.
His free hand comes down beside your shoulder on the mattress to brace himself as he leans over you, the movement tilting your head back further while his mouth finds yours again—deeper this time, the rhythm of it suddenly practiced enough to make your stomach flip.
Like this is something he hasn’t done in a while.
But definitely knows how to do.
And the entire time his thumb stays lightly under your chin, holding you exactly where he wants you while he kisses you like he’s still trying to decide whether this is a mistake—and losing that argument by the second.
You barely notice when he shifts closer again, the movement subtle but unmistakable, his hand tightening slightly against the mattress beside you as if he’s about to lean in further, about to let himself forget the door, the department, the fact that this is an exam room in the middle of a shift—
The curtain whips open.
“Been looking for you, Robinavitch—”
Abbot stops dead.
For half a second no one moves.
You’re still on the bed, Robby bent over you, your hands fisted in the front of his scrubs while his hand is still braced beside your shoulder.
Abbot’s gaze flicks from your grip on Robby’s shirt, to Robby’s face, to the dressing he’d just placed on your arm.
His eyebrows climb slowly toward his hairline.
“Well,” he says after a beat. “I wish I could say I'm surprised, but…”
Robby straightens immediately.
Not panicked. Not flustered.
Just very, very still for a second before he adjusts his glasses and steps back from the bed like he’d simply been finishing a routine procedure.
“Jack,” he says evenly.
Abbot folds his arms, the corner of his mouth already curling upward.
“Michael.”
The silence stretches just long enough for the humiliation to fully settle in.
Abbot glances at you again, then back at Robby.
“Should I come back later,” he asks mildly, “or are you two… just about done here?”
The heat that floods your face is instantaneous, and you slide off the bed so fast you nearly fall.
“Don’t get it wet for twenty-four hours, stitches out in a week unless there’s redness, swelling, drainage, fever—I know the drill,” you ramble, slowly backing toward the door.
Robby has already turned back to the tray, calmly disposing of the suture needle like none of this is remotely unusual. Only the faint redness creeping up the back of his neck gives him away.
Abbot doesn’t move. He just stands there, arms folded, with a look of deep theatrical satisfaction on his face.
“This,” he says pleasantly, “is exactly what I meant, by the way.”
Your stomach drops.
“What?”
His brows lift.
“Your text.”
Your eyes widen.
Abbot tilts his head, studying you for a moment before glancing toward Robby again.
“I mean, honestly,” he adds. “I leave you two alone for what—ten hours?”
“What day shift does is none of your business, Dr. Abbot,” you mutter, trying to slip past him.
Abbot’s mouth twitches.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he says. “It seems very much like my business now.”
You snort, the sound escaping before you can stop it.
“Don’t be jealous,” you say, glancing over your shoulder as you step out the door. “He’s still your boyfriend.”
Behind him, Robby drops the gauze into the bin and gives a quiet shake of his head, laughing softly despite himself.
“That’s my girl,” he murmurs.
Abbot’s eyebrows shoot up.
“Your girl, huh?”
Robby scrubs a hand over his beard and turns away.
“Shut up.”
You’re not sure you were supposed to hear that last bit—but it makes your heart race anyway.
The second you step into the hallway, the emergency department crashes back in around you—monitors beeping, nurses calling for labs, a stretcher rattling past that you have to dodge. Almost like the last fifteen minutes never happened at all.
“Hey, Doc,” Princess calls from the nurse’s station. “North Five, dizziness patient’s daughter is looking for a doctor, but Whitaker’s stuck in chairs.”
“And Javadi needs you in South Seventeen,” Perlah adds. “Something about a rash.”
“Oh—and imaging’s back on your sprained ankle kid,” Santos says. “He’s asking when he can get out of here.”
You nod. “Uh—right. Okay, yeah. I’ll just—”
“Hey,” Dana cuts in, appearing beside you. “You okay? How’s the arm?”
You blink down at the fresh dressing like you’d almost forgotten about it.
“Oh. Yeah. It’s fine.”
She studies it for a second before her gaze drifts up to your face—and her brow lifts.
“Uh-huh,” she says slowly.
You frown. “What?”
“Nothing,” she says lightly, starting to walk away. “Just thought that looked like beard burn.”
She gives a small shrug, then glances back over the top of her glasses.
“But I know my doctors are far too professional for that.”
Your entire face goes hot.
You open your mouth—then close it again, because there is absolutely nothing you can say to that without making it worse.
Santos leans across the desk at the nurse’s station, squinting at your face.
When your attending asks you to house sit while he’s away on a three-month sabbatical, your harmless crush slowly spirals into fantasies you can’t stop. Sleeping in his bed, eating at his table, and living in his space… none of it prepares you for his unexpected early return.
warnings/tags: smut & angst, minors DNI, porn with plot, suicidal ideation, depression, mention of death (from a child patient), mental health issues, complicated relationships, jealousy (hiii Noelle), emotional hurt, age gap (no specified), fingering, piv, no aftercare
You dragged the sleeve of your scrub across your forehead, wiping away a layer of sweat. The ED had been a war zone today, one brutal trauma after another, codes and families collapsing in the hallway. Six hours in and it still felt like the shift was nowhere near over. Your stomach let out a loud, embarrassing growl, reminding you that you hadn’t eaten since before dawn. With a tired sigh, you slipped into the staff lounge, desperate for five minutes of peace and the slightly squashed turkey sandwich waiting at the bottom of your bag. The moment you dropped into one of the chairs, the door swung open behind you.
You didn’t need to turn around. The scent hit you first, unmistakably masculine, the cologne he always wore. Then came the familiar rhythm of his stride. Your body recognized him instantly, a traitorous flutter blooming in your stomach despite your best efforts to ignore it.
“Caught you,” Robby said. You glanced over your shoulder and found him leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed. His eyes flicked to the half-eaten sandwich in your hand. “Eating on the run again?”
You swallowed quickly, offering him a sheepish smile. “Gotta fuel up somehow, Dr. Robby.”
He chuckled, stepping fully into the room. The lines on his face were deeper today, and you wondered if it had anything to do with his sabbatical and how much he needed to rest after years without taking any real time off. Three months away from the Pitt still felt surreal. He’d been your teacher ever since you began your residency two years ago, and with Robby not being here felt like the ED was losing its spine.
He watched you for a beat, then rubbed the back of his neck. “Listen… I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
You raise an eyebrow, setting the wrapper from your sandwich down. “Shoot.”
“As you already know, I’m heading out for my sabbatical soon. House is just gonna sit empty. Thought maybe you’d want to house-sit for me while I’m gone.”
The words hung there. You blinked, caught off guard. “Me? I thought you’d have someone else in mind. Abbot, maybe?”
Robby shook his head, a tired smile tugging at his lips. “I was gonna tell Abbot, yeah. But then I thought about you. You’ve been crashing with Santos, right? This could be a good way to save on rent for a few months. And you’re responsible. I trust you not to burn the place down or throw ragers.”
You let out a laugh. The offer felt too good, a quiet space, no Santos blasting music at 2 a.m, or worse, hearing her and García going at it for hours when you were trying to rest. You’d have actual privacy, at least for three months. But the offer also felt intimate in a way that made your pulse tick up.
House-sitting for Robby felt like crossing a line you could never uncross. He wasn’t just your boss or the attending who had mentored you through the worst shifts of your life, the patients you lost, the nights you thought you wouldn’t make it through. He was the man you’d been quietly, desperately in love with for the last two years. The man you had watched from a careful distance, with your heart aching in silence, convinced nothing would ever happen. You’d told yourself a thousand times that your feelings were one-sided, that your late-night fantasies would stay exactly that… fantasies.
“So… you want me to live there?” you asked, clarifying the offer. “Not just go there and water the plants and grab the mail?”
He shrugged casually, but his eyes met yours. “You can do what you want. Crash in the guest room, use the kitchen. I’ll give you the keys later and show you around after shift. Just a few rules: No smoking, no parties, no pets, no babies. And if I don’t come back, you’ll have a swinging bachelor pad all for yourself. Deal?”
You froze mid-breath, “If I don’t come back.” Robby had said it so casually, the same way someone might say if it rains tomorrow or if the coffee’s cold. But you heard the weight behind it, like he’d already flirted with the ides more times than you wanted to count. Like part of him had already started rehearsing the absence. Your stomach twisted, you knew that tone, you’d heard it before. You were no stranger to Robby’s shadows, anyone who paid attention could see them if they looked close enough, but you… you studied him. Maybe too closely. The way his smiles never quite reached his eyes anymore, the way he rubbed at the back of his neck when the weight of the department felt like too much to hold.
All the classic signs were there, PTSD, burnout, the creeping depression he tried to outrun, but he hid them so well behind camouflaged jokes and not-so-innocent comments, that most people missed it. You never had, because you couldn’t stop noticing, couldn’t stop caring.
The question slipped out before you could stop it. “But you’re coming back, right?”
Robby paused, looked at the floor, and then he laughed, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ll find you after shift to hand over the keys and show you around. Sound good?”
You nodded. He didn’t bother answering your question, just pretended it never happened. But you didn’t push, you cared about him, deeply so, but you still didn’t know him enough to make him talk about something he clearly didn’t want to address. “Sounds good, Dr. Robby.”
He gave you one last look, almost fond, before heading back out into the chaos of the ED. The door swung shut behind him, leaving you alone with your thoughts. Three months in his house. Just you, in his space, with whatever he was leaving behind.
You couldn’t help feeling special, it was almost embarrassing. Robby had thought of you. Not Abbot, the man who was basically his brother, not Dana, who he’d known for years, not any of the senior residents who’d been here longer. Not even Noelle, the case manager nurse you heard from whispers he’d been seeing for at least over a month. He thought of you.
By the time the shift finally ended, Robby found you in the parking lot like he’d promised, shrugging into his jacket. “Ready?” he asked.
You nodded, grabbing your bag. “Yeah. Lead the way, Dr. Robby.”
You trailed Robby through the quiet streets, your hands steady on the wheel as your headlights stayed steady on the taillight of his bike. You kept a careful distance, your heart beating a little faster every time he leaned into a turn. He never looked back, but you knew he was aware of you.
He signaled a turn onto a tree-lined avenue in a nicer part of the city. A few more blocks and he slowed, pulling into a private drive beside a modern building. You parked behind him, the condo complex rose three stories in glass and dark brick. It wasn’t flashy, but it was clearly well-appointed.
He swung a leg over the bike and pulled off his helmet, running a hand through his hair. He glanced over at you as you stepped out of the car.
“Home sweet home,” he said dryly. “For the next three months, anyway. It’s yours.”
You followed him inside. He held the door open for you without a word. The lobby was warm, with polished floors that gleamed under the light, and a long leather bench that sat against one wall. You followed him to the elevator, and the two of you stepped inside. As it rose to the third floor, the small space felt even smaller with him in it. The elevator opened onto a wide, carpeted hallway with only four doors. His was at the end, unit 302.
He unlocked the front door and held it open for you. You stepped inside, straight into a wide living room with high ceilings and hardwood floors. A big sectional couch faced a fireplace, bookshelves lining one wall crammed with books and framed photos you didn’t let yourself stare at too long, but you could catch a glimpse of a younger Robby in them.
“Kitchen’s through here,” he said, flipping on lights as he walked. The kitchen consisted of granite counters and stainless steel appliances that looked barely used. “Help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge before it goes bad.”
Upstairs, he showed you the guest room, simple, with a queen bed, a dresser, and a window overlooking the city skyline. “This is yours if you want to stay here. Sheets are clean. You have a set of towels in the bathroom.”
The master bedroom was at the end of the hall, with a king bed, dark wood furniture, and a small balcony door leading out to a view of the street. You lingered in the doorway while he pointed out the thermostat, the tricky window locks, and the frequency with which you needed to water the plants.
Back downstairs, he dropped a set of keys into your palm. “Garage code is 1971. Wi-Fi password’s on the router. If anything breaks, text me. I might not answer right away… but I’ll leave you the building’s manager number too just in case.”
You closed your fingers around the keys. He was really leaving. This was goodbye. Three months on the road, on that stupid motorcycle, chasing whatever peace he thought he could find away from the Pitt. He headed for the door, grabbing a duffel bag he’d left by the entryway.
You follow him out to the building hallway. “Robby,” you said quietly as he called the elevator.
He paused, turning back to you. Those eyes, tired, carrying the weight of every person he’d lost, met yours. “Please drive safe,” you told him. “And wear the helmet. I mean it. I’ve seen what happens when people don’t.”
A ghost of a smile crossed his face. He nodded once. “I will.”
You swallowed hard, then added the rest before he could turn away again. “I’ll be here waiting until you return. The house will still be standing, promise.”
He stood there a moment longer, studying you like he was memorizing the scene, then he gave you a small, crooked smile. “Take care of the place,” he said. “And yourself.”
With that, he stepped into the elevator, the doors closing behind him. You stood in the hallway long after he disappeared, the big empty apartment waiting behind you. Yours for three months, until he came back again.
The first night without Robby felt strangely monumental. You locked the door behind you, and for a long moment, you stood in the entryway, just breathing in the scent of his personal space. You chose the guest room because it felt like the respectful thing to do. You unpacked a few things and showered in the bathroom before crawling under the sheets. Sleep came eventually, but every unfamiliar creak of the house made you think of him, out there on the road, hopefully with his helmet on like you asked, chasing whatever demons he needed to outrun.
By the second night, curiosity won. You told yourself it was harmless. You were just… getting to know the space better. Making sure everything was in order. That was what a responsible house-sitter did, right? After another long shift, you stood at the threshold of the master bedroom, the door already ajar from when he showed you around. You pushed it open fully and flipped on the bedside lamp instead of the overhead light. The room felt more intimate in the warm glow, and it still smelled just like him. The king bed was neatly made, and you hesitated only a moment before sitting on the edge of the mattress.
Your crush on him had been simmering for months, maybe longer. Maybe from the first time he corrected your technique during a procedure, maybe because of the way he looked at you when you were presenting a case, like he was really listening. He was handsome in that lived-in, capable way. And what you loved the most was how brilliant he was, steady when the whole world was falling apart, like he was the one holding all the pieces together.
You stood up and started exploring. The dresser drawers were mostly organized, with socks, pants, and t-shirts folded neatly. In the top drawer, you found a small envelope of old photos: Robby much younger, laughing with friends, with a little kid and a woman, you supposed Jake and Janey. You put them back exactly as you found them.
The closet held a couple of dress shirts, a suit that looked rarely worn, and a leather jacket. You ran your fingers along the sleeve for just a second. Then you moved to the nightstand, the drawer slid open and revealed a couple of books, a spare pair of reading glasses, a small bottle of melatonin, and, tucked toward the back, a box of condoms. An opened box of condoms.
Your face heated instantly. You stared at them longer than you should, imagining things you immediately tried to push away. Robby, capable in every way, apparently.
The thought sent a guilty thrill through you,he’d trusted you with his place, and here you were, snooping through his personal items.
You sat back down on his bed, then lay back against his pillows. The mattress dipped under your weight in a way that felt welcoming, like you belonged there in his bed. You pulled the comforter over yourself, still fully clothed, and just breathed. It was just you, in Robby’s space, surrounded by pieces of the man you’d quietly wanted for so long.
That night, you slept in his bed for the first time. It became a habit faster than you expected. By the end of the first week, you’d moved most of your clothes into the guest room closet, but you were spending every night in the master. You told yourself it was because the bed was better, the room quieter, and the balcony door let in nice morning light. But the truth was undeniable, being here felt like being closer to him.
You woke slowly in Robby’s bed, stretching, your arms reaching across the wide empty space beside you, brushing cool fabric where another body should be. Where his body could be. Your mind, still hazy with sleep, slipped easily into the daydream that’d been growing stronger every night you’d spent here. It started innocent enough, but it never stayed that way for long. Not when it was about Robby.
You imagined him waking up first, he’d roll toward you, sliding one arm across your waist, pulling you back against his chest before you were fully awake. His beard would tickle the back of your neck as he pressed a lazy kiss there. “Morning,” he’d murmur softly, just for you.
You’d feel the solid heat of him all along your back, his hand splayed wide over your stomach, tracing idle circles. Tangled together like that, just the two of you in this big. You turned onto your side, hugging his pillow tighter, letting the fantasy unfold in vivid detail. In the daydream, you’d stay like that for long minutes, your bodies warm, your legs intertwined. Eventually, he’d kiss your shoulder, then your jaw, then your mouth, slow at first, then deeper, the kind of kiss that said he’d been thinking about you all night too. He’d slip his hand under the hem of whatever shirt you’d stolen from his drawer, and you’d arch into him, whispering his name, Michael, because in this version of your life, you got to call him that.
Then came the moment where you two would shower together. In your mind, steam filled the bathroom as he guided you under the spray. He’d wash your hair first, massaging your scalp with surprising gentleness. You’d return the favor, soaping his broad chest, tracing the lines of his soft muscles. His hands would wander down your back, over your hips, pulling you close so you could feel exactly how much he wanted you. The kiss under the water would turn heated as he lifted you just enough to press you against the cool tile, his mouth on your throat, your collarbone, and then lower.
Breakfast would come after, because Robby was the kind of man who made sure you ate. You imagined the two of you in his fancy kitchen, still damp from the shower, wearing nothing but robes. He’d stand at the stove flipping eggs or pancakes, competent here too. You’d lean against the island, stealing bites from his plate, and he’d pretend to be annoyed before pulling you in for another kiss. He’d ask about your patients from the day before, really listen when you vent about a difficult one or a missed diagnosis, offering advice without ever making you feel small. “You’re good at this,” he’d say, the same way he did in the pitt, but here it would mean something deeper. “I see how hard you work.”
The fantasy deepened as the day progressed in your mind. You pictured coming home together after a long shift. Both of you exhausted, walking through the front door at the same time. He’d drop his backpack in the foyer, pull you into a hug right there against the door, murmuring, “You did good today.” Then the two of you would unwind, maybe a glass of wine on the balcony if the weather was nice, or just collapsing on that big couch with takeout and whatever was on the TV.
He’d rub your feet without being asked, those clever hands working out the knots from hours on the floor. Conversation would flow easily, and he’d open up to you in ways he didn’t with anyone else, because you were the one he chose, the one he trusted. And at night… Your breath caught as the daydream turned explicitly intimate. You imagined him fucking you right here, in this very bed. In the fantasy, the room was dark except for the glow of the bedside lamp. Robby would be above you, shirtless, his body moving, kissing down your neck, your breasts, your stomach, murmuring praise against your skin. “That’s it… just like that.” His hands would grip your hips with strength, guiding you exactly where he wanted you. When he finally pushed inside, it would be deep, locking his eyes on yours so you could see every flicker of pleasure cross his face.
He’d talk you through it, telling you how good you felt, how long he’d wanted this, how perfect you were for him. The rhythm would build slowly, then faster, the headboard knocking softly against the wall as you both chased release. He’d make sure you came first, always, because that was who Robby was, attentive, making sure everyone in his care is taken care of. Afterward, he’d pull you against his chest, both of you sweaty and sated, stroking patterns down your spine with his fingers while he kissed your temple and whispered that he loved you.
You lay there in the quiet house, with your heart racing and your thighs pressed together as the fantasy lingered. It felt so real you could almost hear his laugh, almost feel the scrape of his beard against your inner thigh, almost taste the salt on his skin after a long day. In this imagined life, the pitt still existed, but it was not the only thing. There was balance. There was him waiting at home, there was someone who saw how hard you tried, who respected your mind and wanted your body, and chose you every single day.
You rolled onto your back and stared at the ceiling, a secret smile tugging at your lips. You know it was just a daydream. Robby was somewhere on the road, and he had his own complications: Noelle, the weight he carried from work, the reasons why he needed to leave. But God, it felt good to imagine. To pretend the capable, handsome man who taught you everything might one day love you back the way you already loved him.
As the days passed, they blurred together in Robby’s house. Mornings started with coffee in his kitchen, you watered the plants on the windowsill, collected the mail, and kept the place neat, exactly as a house-sitter should. And every few days, you texted him.
You: Plants are thriving. They all have new leaves out.
You: Got your mail sorted. It was mostly junk anyway
You: Shift was brutal today. I hope you’re having a better time than we are, lol
You: I stocked your fridge this morning. Took the liberty of throwing out your expired milk.
No replies, not a single one. The silence gnawed at you more than you wanted to admit. Every unanswered message tightened the knot in your chest. You started keeping your phone volume up at work, checking it obsessively between patients, but the screen stayed dark. By the end of week three, the worry had settled into something heavier, you needed to talk to someone before it ate you alive.
You texted Trinity on a rare mutual off-day: Hey, want to come over for dinner? Robby’s kitchen is actually decent. No ramen for you tonight.
Her reply came fast: Hell yes. Address?
She showed up at seven sharp, carrying a six-pack of beer and a suspicious look on her face.“Damn,” she whistled as she stepped inside, scanning the open living room and kitchen. “Robby’s got taste. This place is way nicer than our shoebox. You’re basically living the dream.”
You rolled your eyes. “It’s temporary. Come on, I made pasta, Robby had this really expensive spaghetti.”
You both ate at the kitchen island while Trinity tore into the food like she hadn’t seen a meal that wasn’t cheap ramen in days. Between bites, she teased you mercilessly about the setup. “So,” she said, smirking as she twirled pasta on her fork, “how’s it feel sleeping in Robby’s bed every night? Bet you’ve got a little shrine to him in there. A picture of his face on the nightstand?”
Your face heated instantly. “I’m not… It’s just a better mattress.”
“Uh-huh.” She leaned forward. “You’ve had a crush on Robby since like, week two. And now you’re living in his house, sleeping in his sheets… Have you gone through his drawers yet? Found anything interesting?”
You thought about the condoms in the nightstand and quickly shoved the image away. “Shut up.”
“Oh, I’m just starting.” Her grin turned wicked. “Be honest. Are you writing little fanfictions in your head every night? Chapter one: Dr. Robinavitch comes home early and finds you in his bed, wearing nothing but his scrubs. Chapter two: He teaches you a very hands-on lesson in anatomy.”
You laughed despite the heat flooding your face. “Shut up. It’s not like that.”
“Uh-huh. So no wet dreams in the sacred chief bed? No imagining him coming back all rugged from the road, pulling you close and—”
“Trinity!” You threw a dish towel at her, which she caught one-handed with a cackle. “We are not doing this.” The teasing faded as you pushed your plate away and finally voiced what’d been weighing on you. “I’ve been texting him updates about the house,” you admitted quietly. “Little stuff. How the plants are doing, mail, and how work is. He hasn’t replied once. Not in three weeks. I’m starting to get worried. What if something happened?”
She waved a hand dismissively, cracking open another beer. “He’s on his magical self-discovery motorcycle trip, right? Riding across the country, finding inner peace, growing a long beard, all that crap. Guy probably hasn’t charged his phone in days. Or he’s in some dead zone in head-smashed-in-buffalo-whatever.”
You fidgeted with the label on your bottle. “Yeah, but… what if he crashed? Or worse? I keep thinking about how tired he looked before he left. He… he didn’t look like himself.”
Trinity leveled you with a steady gaze. “If something happened to him, we would’ve found out by now. Someone from the pitt would know. Abbot, or the hospital admin, someone would’ve called. Relax. He’s coming back. It’s only three months, remember?”
You nodded, but the knot in your chest didn’t fully loosen. Trinity watched you for a beat, then kicked your foot lightly under the island. “Hey. He trusts you enough to give you his keys. That’s not nothing. Just keep the place nice, water the damn plants, and stop spiraling. When he gets back, you can hand over the keys and go back to staring at him longingly like normal.”
You managed a small laugh. “Thanks for the reality check.”
“Anytime.” She clinked her bottle against yours. “Remember, he asked you because you’re reliable as hell and not a total disaster. Not because he wants daily check-ins. Give the man space. He’ll come back when he’s ready, probably with a new tattoo and some profound life lesson about not letting the pitt eat your soul.”
The conversation drifted back to work, to hospital gossip, to Garcia cancelling her last “date”. For a few hours, the big empty place felt less lonely. But later, after she left and you locked the door behind her, you climbed the stairs and slipped into Robby’s bed again. You pulled out your phone one last time.
You: Santos came over for dinner. No crazy parties, just pasta and a few beers. Miss having you around to keep us all in line.
You: Text me back when you see this. Just wanna know you’re safe.
Another week passed. It’d been a month now since you started living in Robby’s place. Every night you slid into his king bed, wearing nothing but one of his old t-shirts you “borrowed” from the closet and a pair of simple panties. The shirt was huge on you, soft from many washes, and you told yourself you wore them because it was just practical. Tonight was no different, you showered, pulled on his shirt, and crawled under the duvet.
Sleep came fast, deep, and dreamless for once. Until it didn’t. A soft sound pulled you out, floorboards creaking in the hallway, the click of the bedroom door opening wider. You snapped your eyes open in the darkness, your heart slamming into your ribs before your brain could catch up. A tall shadow moved near the doorway, someone was in the room.
You screamed instinctively and bolted upright in bed, clutching the duvet to your chest. The shadow froze, and a familiar voice cut through the dark.
“Shit—hey, it’s me. It’s Robby.” The scream died in your throat. He flicked the bedside lamp on a second later, bathing the room in a warm light. And there he was, standing just inside the doorway, his duffel bag dropped at his feet, his motorcycle jacket still zipped halfway, his dark hair tousled like he’d been riding for hours. His beard was a little longer and scruffier than when he left.
Your heart was still hammering inside your chest. “Robby?”
He raised both hands slowly with his palms out. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought you’d be staying in the guest room. I was just going to drop my bag and crash.”
You stared at him, your brain scrambling to catch up with all this new information. He was here. He was here early. The sabbatical was supposed to be three months, and it’d barely been one. “What are you doing here? It’s only been a month.”
He exhaled, running a hand through his hair, looking a little uncertain. “I know. I just… decided to come back early. The road was good for a while, but it turned out I missed the noise more than I thought I would.” He flicked his eyes around the room, taking in the book still on the nightstand where he left it, the slight disarray of clothes you’d left draped over the chair, the way the bed was clearly occupied. “Didn’t mean to sneak up on you like that.”
You were suddenly painfully aware of how you looked. Sitting up in his bed, your hair messy from sleep, wearing nothing but his oversized t-shirt and a pair of black panties underneath. The hem of the shirt had ridden up your thighs. Heat flooded your face as you tug the duvet higher, clutching it like a shield. “I’m so sorry… I just… I liked this mattress better. The guest room one is fine, but this one is softer, and I sleep better after bad shifts and—I swear I was obviously gonna wash the sheets before you came back. I’m really sorry, I know I should’ve stuck to the guest room, I crossed a line—”
“Relax,” Robby said gently. He took a small step closer, then stopped, like he was giving you space. “It’s fine. It’s not such a big deal. You’ve been taking care of the place. The plants look good. It’s still standing. I appreciate it.” He glanced toward the hallway. “I’ll go stay in the guest room tonight. Give you some privacy to… go back to sleep.”
He started to turn, reaching for his duffel. “Wait,” you blurted out, the word tumbling out before you could stop it. The relief crashed over you so hard it stole your breath, because he was here, and he was safe. No wrecked motorcycle on some remote highway, no disappearing into the darkness he was carrying when he left. Just Robby, standing in his own bedroom, looking tired but whole. “I’m so glad you’re back. And you’re safe. I was really worried… You didn’t answer any of my texts. Not once. I thought maybe something happened, or the sabbatical was… I don’t know. I missed having you at the pitt. Everything felt a little off without you there.”
You pushed the duvet aside and climbed out of bed before your brain could talk you out of it. The shirt fell to mid-thigh, but it was obvious what you were wearing underneath. You crossed the room in three quick steps and wrapped your arms around him in a hug. It was awkward. God, it was so awkward. You’d never had any kind of physical interaction with Robby before, not beyond the occasional shoulder brush during a resuscitation or the professional pat on the back after a good save. He was your chief, your mentor, and also the man you’d been secretly fantasizing about while sleeping in his bed.
Your arms went around his waist, pressing your cheek against his chest through the leather jacket, and you held on tighter than you probably should. His body was solid and warm under your hands, broader than you even imagined in all those daydreams. Robby stiffened for half a second with surprise. You felt his hands hovering uncertainly at your sides, not quite returning the hug but not pushing you away either. His breath caught just slightly when he registered exactly what you were wearing: his shirt, and the bare skin of your thighs brushing against his jeans.
He tried very hard not to react, you could tell his jaw was tight, his eyes fixed somewhere over your shoulder. But you didn’t let go. The relief of seeing him alive was too big, too overwhelming. He was back, safe and sound, with you. You buried your face a little deeper against his chest. “I’m really glad you’re okay.”
You stayed wrapped around him in that awkward, desperate hug. This was it. The only real opportunity you’d ever had to be this close to Robby. Before you could talk yourself out of it, before the rational part of your brain could intervene, you tilted your head up, rose onto your toes, and kissed him.
Your lips met his softly at first, tentative but determined. Robby didn’t react immediately. His body stayed tense under your hands, his shoulders rigid and his arms still hovering uncertainly. He didn’t pull away, but he didn’t exactly kiss you back either. His mouth remained still against yours, unresponsive, like he was processing the sudden shift to this unexpected intimacy.
You didn’t stop, this might be your only chance, so you pressed closer, sliding one hand up to the back of his neck, threading your fingers gently into his brown, slightly overgrown hair. Your lips moved against his with soft and slow kisses that begged him to respond.
You kissed the corner of his mouth, then full on again, pouring every unspoken “I’ve wanted this” into the contact. You could feel the internal war in the way his breath hitched, but he finally settled his hands lightly on your waist, resting there as if he was deciding what the hell to do with his resident currently kissing him in his own bedroom while wearing his clothes.
The silence between kisses felt deafening, broken only by the soft sound of your mouths meeting and your own quickened breathing. But you kept going, kissing him deeper, tilting your head, letting your tongue trace the seam of his lips in a plea. Another kiss, slower this time, molding your body against his taller frame. The hug had dissolved into something else entirely, your chest was pressed to his, one of your legs shifting slightly between his as you tried to get even closer. The fantasy versions of this moment flooded your mind: his big and strong hands on you, his voice murmuring praises, the weight of him in this very bed. You wanted it so badly it ached.
Then, after what felt like an eternity, Robby reacted. A rough sound escaped his throat, and his mouth finally moved against yours. He started kissing you back. Tentatively at first, then with growing certainty. He parted his lips, meeting your rhythm, the scrape of his beard intensifying as he angled his head to deepen the kiss. It wasn’t gentle anymore, it felt like pure hunger.
Robby tightened his hands on your waist, then slid them lower, one of them cupping your ass over the fabric of your panties, digging his fingers in with just enough pressure to make your breath catch. He massaged the soft flesh slowly, kneading it in circles that pulled you harder against him. The other hand joined soon after, both palms gripping and squeezing, lifting you slightly onto your toes as he explored the curve with appreciation.
His touch was confident, brushing the edge of your underwear, spreading your buttcheeks to claim more of you. Each squeeze sent heat straight between your legs, your body was responding instantly to the contrast between his rough hands and your soft skin. Robby kissed you harder now, sliding his tongue against yours in a stroke that made your knees weak. The kiss turned messy, heated, as he tilted your head back, taking control of your entire body.
Flushed against his body, you felt the growing hardness pressing through his jeans, and it made you moan softly into his mouth, the sound swallowed by another deep kiss. You tugged his hair with your fingers, hard enough to draw another groan from him.
With surprising strength, he walked you backward a few steps toward the bed. The backs of your knees hit the mattress, and you tumbled down onto the rumpled sheets. Robby followed immediately, climbing over you with grace, his taller frame caging you in without crushing you. The weight of him above you was everything you’d fantasized about and more, it felt solid and warm, but most importantly, it was finally real.
He didn’t say a word, but his mouth found yours again in a deep, consuming kiss as he settled his hips between your parted thighs. The denim of his jeans pressed against your bare skin, and you arched up into him instinctively, sliding your hands under his jacket to grip the back of his shirt, but Robby was already moving, breaking the kiss only long enough to grip the hem of the t-shirt you’re wearing, and tugged it upward. You lifted your arms willingly as the fabric slid up your body and over your head.
The cool air hit your bare breasts, and he found your nipples already tight from how aroused his kisses had gotten you. Robby tossed the shirt aside without looking, dropping his now dark eyes to your chest with hunger. Still silent, he lowered his head, closing his mouth over one breast, swirling his tongue around the sensitive peak before he sucked it deeply. The sensation made your back bow off the bed, a moan escaping you as he worked your nipple with pulls.
His free hand came up to the other side, cupping and massaging your flesh with his large palm, brushing his thumb back and forth over the hardened nipple, rolling it gently before pinching just enough to make you gasp. The contrast was overwhelming, on one side the wet heat of his mouth sucking and licking one breast, while on the other side, his rough hand working the peak in firm strokes.
Your hands flew to his hair, threading through the strands, holding him to you as waves of pleasure rolled through your body. This was Robby, your Robby, not the one from your perfect fantasies, but the real one, the one you’d been in love with for two long years, the one who’d taught you everything you knew, now devouring your tits with hunger.
He switched sides without pause, latching his mouth onto the neglected breast while he continued massaging the first, slick with his saliva. The suction was perfect, deep pulls that made your toes curl, then flicking his tongue rapidly over the bud before he sucking it again, harder. You were panting, soft cries falling from your lips as the ecstasy kept building. This was really happening. The man you’d fantasized about while sleeping in his bed, was finally touching you.
Robby’s free hand began a slow, inevitable descent. It trailed down your side, over the curve of your hip, hooking his fingers briefly under the waistband of your black panties before sliding lower. He cupped your pussy with his palm, over the fabric first, applying enough pressure that made you jerk your hips up into his touch. He rubbed you there in broad circles, pressing the heel of his hand against your clit while his fingers stroked along your covered folds. The fabric quickly grew more and more damp under his touch, and the friction became maddening, teasing, but never quite enough.
It was better than every daydream, every stolen fantasy while you wore his shirts and pretended to be his woman while lying in his sheets. Tears of pure overwhelming pleasure pricked at the corners of your eyes as you moaned his name softly “Robby…” but he still didn’t speak.
He finally slipped his hand inside your panties. Two fingers gliding through your slick folds, parting them with care. He gathered the wetness there, spreading it upward to circle your swollen clit in strokes that got your thighs trembling. The pleasure was sharp, and it made you chase the contact right away, bucking your hips against his hand. Robby responded by pressing harder, rubbing tight circles around your clit before sliding lower again.
One finger teased your entrance, circling it once, then twice, then slowly pushing inside you, stretching you open with a smooth thrust. You cried out in response, arching your entire body as his finger filled your hole. He curled it expertly, stroking that spot inside while his thumb continued working your clit in a steady rhythm. He added a second finger after a moment, stretching you further. Suddenly, the wet sounds of his fingers moving in and out of your soaked pussy were filling the quiet bedroom.
His fingers were thrusting faster now, he was curling and scissoring them gently enough not to hurt you, but deep so you could feel every inch of them. You fisted your hands in his hair, rolling your hips desperately against his hand as moans spilled freely from your lips. You were so wet it was embarrassing, shaking, gasping, whimpering, completely lost in the overwhelming pleasure of finally having the man you loved touching you so intimately, so expertly. Tears slipped down your temples from the sheer intensity of it all.
“Oh my God, Robby…” you gasped before your voice broke as the pleasure coiled tighter in your core. “It feels so good… your fingers… fuck, they’re so deep. I’ve wanted this for so long… wanted you for so long…”
He didn’t answer with words, but his response was immediate. He curled his fingers deeper against that spongy spot inside you, stroking it with precision while he pressed the heel of his hand harder on your clit. His mouth switched to your other breast, sucking deeply, his teeth grazing just enough to send sparks shooting down your spine.
“I want you so much,” you moaned, tightening your fingers in his brown hair. “You’re so good… so fucking good at this. Please don’t stop… I’ve dreamed about you touching me like this… God, Robby, I’m so close—”
The pressure built until the point of unbearably, until it finally snapped. Your orgasm crashed over you with blinding intensity. A broken cry tore from your throat as waves of ecstasy ripped through your body. Your pussy clenched rhythmically around his fingers, pulsing and fluttering as he kept stroking you through it, drawing out every last shudder out of your climaxing body. Your thighs were shaking violently around his hips, your toes curling, your vision whiting out for a few blissful seconds. It was this intense, and overwhelming bliss taking over you because it was Robby making you cum, it was finally him.
He didn’t stop until the last aftershocks faded, only then did he gradually slow his fingers, gentling their movements as your breathing evened out. Robby eased his hand from your panties, leaving you slick, pulsing, and utterly spent in the best way.
You watched him sitting back on his heels for a moment, looking down at you, flushed, bare-chested, panties askew, legs still trembling. Without a word, he reached for the zipper of his jacket and shrugged it off, tossing it toward the chair in the corner of his room. His shirt followed quickly, revealing the broad chest and arms you’ve only ever glimpsed under scrubs. His chest was dusted with a perfect scattering of silvery-gray hair that looked impossibly soft against his skin. Not too much, not too little, just enough to scream man in the most intoxicating way. Your fingers itched to touch it, to feel the texture of it beneath your palms, to press your face against the heat of him and breathe him in.
Your gaze drifted lower, and heat flooded your entire body. A soft, rounded belly curved gently over the waistband of his pants. God, the sight of it made your mouth go dry with want. You’d imagined this so many times, running your hands over that giving flesh, digging your fingers in just to feel how real he was, pulling him closer until that belly pressed flush against you, skin to skin. A dark, tempting happy trail started just below his navel and disappeared beneath his waistband, leading exactly where your mind had already gone.
Then his hands moved to his belt. He pushed his jeans and boxers down in one smooth motion, kicking them off the edge of the bed. His cock sprang free, looking thick and heavy, and already fully hard. It was huge, both in length and girth, the head flushed dark and glistening with a bead of precum at the tip. The shaft was veined and perfectly proportioned, curving slightly upward in a way that made your mouth water and your freshly-orgasmed pussy clench with need. It was gorgeous. Intimidating and beautiful at the same time, exactly like the rest of him.
Your breath got caught at the sight, the heat flooded your face and core all over again as you stared, unable to look away. This was Robby’s cock, big, hard, and ready for you after all those lonely nights imagining it. He leaned toward the nightstand, the same one where you’d once nervously discovered the box of condoms, and opened the drawer. He pulled out a foil packet, tearing it open with his teeth in a quick motion. You almost wanted to beg him to skip it, to fuck you raw, to feel every inch of him skin-to-skin, filling you completely without any barrier.
The words hovered on your tongue, “Please, Robby, I want you bare… I want to feel all of you,” but they stayed trapped behind your lips as he rolled the condom down his impressive length with steady hands, sheathing himself completely. Once the condom was securely in place, Robby settled back between your thighs, one hand bracing beside your head while the other gripped the base of his cock. The thick head nudged against your slick entrance, teasing your folds with shallow strokes that made you twitch with anticipation.
He finally broke his silence, his voice gravelly from arousal. Robby locked his brown eyes onto yours. “Are you sure?”
You nodded quickly. “Yes… I’m sure. Please, Robby.”
That was all he needed. Robby pushed forward slowly, only the head of his cock parting your slick folds and sinking into you inch by inch. The stretch was intense, his girth filling you so completely that your mouth fell open in a silent gasp. He was huge, and even with the latex barrier you felt every ridge and vein as he pressed deeper, until his hips were flush against your ass and he was buried to the hilt inside your pussy.
A rough groan escaped his throat, the first real sound he’d made since he started kissing you back. He dropped his eyes immediately to your breasts, watching them rise and fall with your quick breaths, the flesh still glistening from his mouth. He stayed there for a long moment, buried deep, letting you adjust to his size while his gaze stayed fixed on the way your tits moved every time you inhaled.
Then he started to move, his thrusts began slow and deep, pulling almost all the way out before sliding back in with force. The wet sound of your pussy taking his thick cock filled the room as each stroke dragged against that perfect spot inside you, making moans spill from your lips.
His grip tightened on your hips, his thrusts growing just a fraction harder. “It feels so good,” you whimpered, breathy and broken. “You’re so deep… so big… God, Robby, I’ve wanted you inside me for so long… You don’t know how many times I imagined this.”
He answered with another groan and a particularly deep thrust that made your toes curl. His pace stayed steady, with strong strokes that rocked the bed beneath you, making the headboard tap against the wall in time with his movements.
You craved his eyes on yours. In this raw, breathless moment, more than anything, you wanted Robby to see you. Not just your body, but the way he was unraveling you, the overwhelming pleasure flooding your veins, the terrifying depth of what this meant to you. You wanted to lock gazes with him while he moved inside you, to share this perfect, fragile second and know he felt even a fraction of what you did. But he wouldn’t give it to you. His eyes stayed glued to your chest, mesmerized by the way your breasts bounced and jiggled with every deep thrust.
His jaw was tight, lips slightly parted, breath coming in grunts each time your bodies slammed together. Every so often, he dropped his gaze lower, fixated on the filthy sight of his thick cock sliding in and out of you, your slick, swollen lips stretching obscenely around his shaft, glistening with your arousal. The visual seemed to rip a primal sound from his throat almost involuntary.
The lack of eye contact stung even as it turned you on. It felt like he was hiding. Protecting himself. Keeping this physical, safe, compartmentalized, the same way he kept everything else. Without thinking, your hands flew up to his face. You cupped his bearded cheeks, your palms warm against his flushed skin, and you gently but firmly tilted his head up. For one devastating heartbeat, his eyes met yours. The connection hit like a spark, you saw the storm in him. Your own eyes were glassy, brimming with tears of overwhelming pleasure and emotion. In that single second, everything felt exposed.
Then his lashes fluttered, Robby squeezed his eyes shut and turned his face down again, breaking the connection. His hips never faltered, if anything, they drove into you harder, deeper, as if he could fuck away whatever had just passed between you. He dropped his forehead to rest against your shoulder, while locking his gaze once more onto the hypnotic bounce of your breasts and the joining of your bodies.
Robby suddenly pulled out, making you whine at the sudden emptiness you felt without his cock filling your insides, but before you could complain any more, he was already moving you. He used his strong hands to flip you onto your stomach, then gripped your hips and pulled your ass up so you were on your knees now, with your chest still pressed to the mattress. This new position left you completely exposed, with your ass raised, your back arched, and your used pussy dripping and ready for him.
He didn’t hesitate, just lined himself up and thrusted back in with one powerful stroke, burying himself even deeper than before. Like this, Robby could hit spots inside you that made stars burst behind your eyelids. A moan ripped from your throat as he bottomed out, pressing his hips flush against your ass, his cock was so deep it felt like he was reaching the deepest parts of you.
“Fuuuck—” he groaned. From behind, the fucking became even deeper. “Goddamn it,” the words were barely leaving his mouth as he drove into you harder.
Robby was gripping your hips tightly, pulling you back onto his cock with every thrust, until his pelvis met your ass in a punishing rhythm. Each stroke felt long and powerful, pulling almost all the way out before slamming back in, making the tip of his cock drag perfectly against your g-spot over and over.
You were crying out with every thrust. “Robby—oh God, it’s so deep… you’re so deep like this… don’t stop—”
He groaned again, louder this time, and quickened his pace, snapping forward with more urgency. Robby pressd one hand between your shoulder blades to keep your chest down while he kept the other clamped on your hip, holding you exactly where he wanted you. He stayed mostly quiet, other than for his broken groans, and occasional curses
“Shit.” He let out when your pussy clenched around him particularly tightly. “Fuck.” The words escaped his lips, almost as if he didn’t mean to let them out.
His breathing grew ragged, the slap of his hips against your ass growing louder and faster. Robby kept staring down, at the way your tits were squished against the mattress and jiggling with every thrust, at the sight of his cock sliding in and out of your dripping pussy, your ass rippling every time he bottomed out.
“I’m yours… I’ve always been yours,” you whispered breathlessly as he pounded into you. “Cum for me, please… I need to feel it. Cum inside me.”
“Fuck me…” He cursed under his breath as he lost his rhythm for a moment. This angle allowed the head of his cock to grind against that spot inside you until you were shaking.
The way you shook, the way your pussy fluttered and pulsed around him, it made his rhythm falter more and more, his thrusts were becoming shorter, harder, more desperate. Robby tightened his grip on your hips almost painfully as he drove into you again and again. With a final, deep groan, he finally came.
His hips stuttered and he pressed them flush against your ass, spilling inside the condom. His release was warm, and you could feel the pulses even through the latex. His cock throbbed deep inside you, shuddering as he rode out his orgasm with several shallow and grinding thrusts. Low sounds escaped his throat, groans and curses, while he kept you pinned in place, holding you tight as he emptied himself.
He stayed buried inside you for several long seconds afterward, breathing hard against your back. When he pulled out, the loss of him made you whimper softly, you felt empty once again. You heard the snap of latex as he pulled the used condom off, tying it quickly and tossing it into the trash bin beside the nightstand.
The mattress shifted as he climbed off the bed. His bare feet pad across the floor toward the master bathroom. The door clicked shut behind him, but you still didn’t move. You stayed lying there on your stomach, with your cheek against his pillow. From the bathroom, you heard the steady stream as he peed. The faucet running. The rustle of paper towels or a cloth. The toilet flushing. He was cleaning himself up, wiping away the evidence of what you two had done, washing his hands, probably splashing water on his face.
You closed your eyes and let the reality settle over you. This had really happened. Robby came back, he kissed you back, and you two slept together.
The bathroom door opening again snapped you back into reality. Robby walked back into the bedroom completely naked, he didn’t look at you directly, his expression was unreadable… tired, maybe a little distant. He didn’t say anything, simply lifted the edge of the duvet on his side of the bed, and climbed in.
As he settled onto his back, Robbby rested one arm across his stomach, the other by his side. He stared up at the ceiling for a few seconds, there was no reaching for you, no pulling you against his chest, no soft kiss to your shoulder or murmured “come here.” The space between your bodies stayed empty, with several inches of sheet separating you.
You stayed on your stomach, turned slightly toward him, watching him from the corner of your eye. Part of you wanted to scoot closer, to curl into his side, to feel his arm wrapped around you the way it did in all your daydreams. But you didn’t.
Robby’s voice finally broke the quiet, barely above a murmur. “You need anything? Water?”
You swallowed, feeling your throat dry from all the moaning and gasping earlier. “No… I’m okay. Thanks.”
He nodded once, almost imperceptibly. That was it. No further conversation, no questions about what this meant, no acknowledgment of the fact that you were sleeping in his bed, or that you just had intense sex in the middle of the night.
Robby exhaled slowly, his eyes drifting shut. Within minutes, his breathing evened out completely, and he fell asleep fast, just like that. One moment, he was awake beside you, the next his face had softened into sleep.
You lay there watching him for a long time. The king bed felt enormous with the two of you in it, but not touching, no cuddling, no spooning. Just the two of you sharing the same space after something that felt life-altering to you and… something else entirely to him. The fantasy had been so vivid: waking up tangled together, his arms around you, soft morning kisses. Reality was quieter, messier, more distant.
You woke the next morning, and for a disoriented second, the events of last night felt like one of your daydreams. The pleasant ache between your thighs and the faint soreness in your hips confirmed it was real. Very real. But the bed beside you was empty. The sheets on Robby’s side were rumpled but cool, no warm body, no arm draped anywhere near you.
Your clothes from last night were scattered. You found the black panties twisted near the foot of the bed and pulled them on, then located the t-shirt you’d been wearing and slipped it over your head. After running your fingers through your messy hair and splashing water on your face in the bathroom, you headed downstairs. Robby was standing at the island, back to you, dressed in jeans and a plain dark t-shirt, his hair still damp from a shower, and his beard looking a little neater than it did when he arrived last night.
He turned when he heard your footsteps. There was no awkward smile, no heated glance over your body in his shirt. Just a small nod of acknowledgment. “Morning,” he said. “House looks good. You took real good care of the place. Thanks for that. Appreciate it.”
The words were simple, professional, the same tone he used when you two were at the pitt. You stepped into the kitchen, crossing your arms loosely over your chest. “You’re welcome. It was… nice, getting a little break from Trin… don’t tell her I said that.”
He nodded again, taking a sip of his coffee, leaning back against the counter. You gathered your courage. “Why did you come back so soon? Wasn’t your sabbatical supposed to be three months?”
Robby drifted his gaze to the window, overlooking the backyard for a long moment. He set the mug down, tapping his fingers once against the granite. “Just… wanted to end it.”
You blinked, processing his words. “You mean… the trip to end?”
He stayed quiet for a while, longer than felt natural. You watched the way his jaw clenched, like he was chewing on the words before deciding how much to give you. Finally, he said, simply, “Yeah.” The vagueness sat between you two.
The sabbatical was supposed to help with that heaviness you knew he was carrying, but he never named it outright. Coming back after only a month didn’t feel like success. You leaned against the opposite side of the island, trying to keep your voice light, but you sounded concerned anyway. “Are you gonna start working again? Back at the pitt?”
“Probably,” he answered, still not elaborating.
You nodded, pushing a little more. “Did you… find what you were looking for out there? On the road?”
Robby flicked his eyes to yours briefly, then away. He shrugged one shoulder, the movement tight. “Found some quiet. Some miles. That’s about it.”
The answers were so vague they felt like deflections. You could see the exhaustion lingering in the wrinkles around his eyes, the way his shoulders carried so much tension even in his own kitchen. The worry you’d been holding since his unanswered texts bubbled up.
You softened your voice. “Are you okay, Robby?”
He looked at you then, really looked, with those warm brown eyes that could undo you in just a second. A small, tired half-smile touches his mouth, the kind that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m here, right?”
You shook your head gently, not letting him off that easy. “That doesn’t really answer my question.”
For a second, something flickered across his face, maybe acknowledgment, maybe irritation at being pushed, but it smoothed out quickly. He picked up his mug again, taking a slow sip before setting it in the sink. “You should get going. You’re gonna be late for shift.”
The dismissal was polite, but clear. He didn’t want to have no deeper conversation, no processing last night. The distance he was putting between you two this morning, and his careful vagueness made everything feel unsteady. “Yeah… okay.” You paused, then added quietly, “I’ll pick up my stuff when I get back from shift.”
“Thank you again for taking such good care of the place. I appreciate it more than you know.” Robby paused, like he was remembering something. He reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a small object, a simple metal keychain with a little buffalo charm attached. “Wait,” he said, holding it out to you. “Got you something.”
You took the keychain, turning it over in your palm. It was surprisingly thoughtful, it meant Robby thought of you enough to pick this up somewhere along the road and bring it back. He brought you a gift. You felt special once again, the way you did the night he first asked you to stay here. “Thank you,” you said softly, closing your fingers around it. “I really like it.”
He gave you a small shrug, almost dismissive, but there was a faint softening around his eyes. “Least I could do.”
You clutched the keychain a little tighter, gathering the courage to say more. “I’m really glad you’re back, Robby. The pitt needed you. It felt… different without you there. We all missed having you around.”
Robby leaned against the island. “I’m sure the place still stood. It’s bigger than just me. You all did fine.”
“Maybe,” you replied, stepping a little closer. “But we still missed you. The place feels steadier when you’re there. I missed you. I was worried when you didn’t answer any of my texts.. I thought maybe something happened on the road. I kept checking my phone like an idiot.”
Robby exhaled through his nose, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “Yeah… sorry about that. Wasn’t really in the headspace for replying. Didn’t mean to make you worry.”
You nodded, accepting the half-apology even though it didn’t fully ease the knot in your chest. “Well… I should leave for work,” you said finally, gesturing toward the door. “Give you the house back. Let you settle in.”
You slipped the keychain onto your own keys, the little buffalo charm dangling beside your apartment key. It felt special, proof that he thought of you while he was gone, but the lack of any reference to the intimacy you shared last night left an empty ache in its place. “Take care of yourself, Robby. If you need anything… I’m around.”
He gave you another small nod. The house felt both familiar after a month living there, but suddenly foreign again. You turned and headed back upstairs to change into your clothes for the day. Last night had felt like a crack in the wall he kept so carefully maintained, but this morning, that wall was back in place.
A week had passed since you’d slept with Robby, and your mind still wouldn’t let you rest. Every quiet moment replayed it like a fever dream you couldn’t shake. The weight of his body pressing you into the mattress. The rough hunger in his hands as they roamed over your skin, like a man who’d been starving for a month on the road and finally found relief. You could still feel the scrape of his beard, the heat of his breath, the way his fingers had dug into your hips hard enough to leave faint bruises you’d traced alone in the shower the next morning. But the memory that hurt the most was the way he’d refused to look at you. Even buried deep inside you, moving with that rhythm that had you crying out his name, Robby never once met your gaze. And when you’d forced him to, just for that fleeting second… he’d shut down. Closed his eyes, and turned you away.
Then came the cold shoulder afterward. The way he’d rolled off you, cleaned up in silence, and acted the very next morning like nothing had happened. Polite but distant. As if the night had been nothing more than a physical release. Now seven days had gone by with no sign of him at work. No one seemed to know he was even back in town, only you and Trinity. The absence gnawed at you constantly, an anxious hum beneath your ribs that made it hard to breathe.
You’d picked up your phone at least a dozen times, your thumb hovering over his contact. What could you even say? “Hey Robby, how are you? You coming back to work anytime soon? Do you still remember the way you fucked me until I cried… because I can’t stop replaying every second of it?”
Every draft felt wrong. Pushy, pathetic, and desperate. If he wanted to talk about that night, about anything, he would have reached out already. You knew him too well. The same man who deflected every question about his month away, who shrugged and changed the subject the moment you tried to ask how he was really doing… that man didn’t want to be reached. He was avoiding you the same way he avoided everything else that mattered.
You arrived early for your shift today, swiping your badge and pushing through the glass doors. You’d barely slept, Robby had invaded your thoughts all night long. You told yourself to focus, you were a second-year, you had patients to see, people whose lives depended on you. You could do this. But the moment you stepped into the ED, you felt the change.. Robby was already there.
He was back in his element like he’d never left, standing at the nurse station, reviewing a chart on one of the computers, giving instructions about an incoming transfer. You kept your distance at first, throwing yourself into your assigned cases, but every time you glanced over your shoulder, Robby was there. It should’ve felt good to finally have him back, to know he was okay. Instead, the memories of your night together twisted something painful in your chest.
Around mid-morning, during a brief lull between patients, you were charting when you heard their voices. Robby and Noelle. They were standing just outside the glass doors of the trauma room, partially hidden from the main floor but close enough that you could hear their conversation if you paid attention.
Noelle was leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, a playful smile on her face as she talked to him. “I knew you weren’t gonna last the full three months,” she said teasingly. “Motorcycle, open road, ‘finding yourself’, please. You made it what, five weeks? I should’ve put money on it.”
Robby let out a low chuckle, leaning one shoulder against the wall opposite her, his arms crossed in a mirror of her posture. “What can I say? Figured the pitt would fall apart without me.”
Noelle lauged softly, reaching out to lightly play with the collar of his scrubs. The gesture was casual, intimate in its smallness. She looked comfortable around him, familiarized, like two people who shared history. So different from the way you acted around him. “You should’ve told me you were back. I would’ve brought over dinner or something. Saved you from whatever sad frozen meals you’ve been eating.”
The flirting was effortless, and Robby didn’t pull away from the touch. Instead, he tilted his head, his eyes crinkling with amusement. “Dinner sounds better than the leftovers I found in the freezer. But I’m still catching up after a month away. I haven’t finished unpacking, needed a while to get settled.”
Your heart squeezed painfully. You remembered the way his hands felt on your bare skin, the way he touched you while kissing you, the deep thrusts that had you moaning into his pillow. And now he was standing here joking and flirting with Noelle like none of it happened.
Her smile widened. “Well, if you’re free tonight… my place? I’ve got that bottle of red you like. We can catch up properly.”
Robby paused for half a second, then shook his head with a small and regretful smile. “Can’t tonight. Still need to get settled at home. But Saturday… Saturday I’m free.”
Noelle’s eyes lighted up, clearly pleased. “Saturday it is. My place. I’ll text you the time.”
“Sounds good,” Robby replied, lingering his gaze on her a moment longer than necessary. They shared one more quiet laugh before Noelle pushed off the wall and headed back upstairs.
He waas going back to her. The sex between you meant nothing to him. Not enough to mention, not enough to change anything. He’d fucked you, and then he went right back to his comfortable situationship with Noelle like it was the most natural thing in the world. No awkward conversation, no “we should talk”, no acknowledgment that he’d had his cock buried inside you less than a week ago. He gave you a silly little keychain as thanks for house-sitting, and now he was making Saturday plans with the woman everyone knows he’d been seeing.
The sadness hit you like a wave, suffocating. Your eyes burned, making you blink hard to force the tears back before anyone could see. This is what you got for letting the fantasy run wild while you slept in his bed. For believing, even for a moment, that the way he kissed you back, the way he touched you, the way he fucked you meant something more than a momentary lapse after a long, lonely ride home.
Hours later, you stepped through the door of the cramped apartment you shared with Trinity. You’d kept your head down, done your job, and somehow made it through without breaking in front of anyone. But the moment you pulled into the parking lot outside your building, the tears you’d been swallowing all day started leaking out again. You kicked off your shoes in the tiny entryway and dropped your backpack with a thud.
Trinity was sprawled on the couch in the living room, where she had been since you left, enjoying her day off from work with shitty reality shows in the TV she claimed to hate. She glanced up when she heard you, narrowing her eyes immediately. “Whoa. What the hell happened to you?” she asked, sitting up a little. “You look like you’ve been crying. You killed someone today or what?”
You hesitated in the doorway. Trinity was the closest you had to a friend, and right now, you needed someone to vent. “If I tell you,” you said quietly, “you can’t tell anyone. Not a single soul. Promise me.”
Trinity raised an eyebrow, her expression shifting from concern to skepticism. “Look, if you’re gonna be all dramatic and make me swear on my future fellowship or whatever, then maybe just don’t tell me. I don’t do secrets that come with conditions. Either spill or don’t. I’m not a priest.”
You stood there for a long moment, part of you wanted to retreat to your room and cry into your pillow alone. The other part, the part that’d been carrying this alone since last week, needed to say it out loud to someone. You walked over and sank onto the opposite end of the couch, pulling your knees up to your chest.
“I slept with Robby.”
Trinity stared at you. Then she let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “Yeah, right. Funny. Try again.”
“I’m serious,” you insisted, meeting her eyes. “I slept with Robby. For real.”
She studied your face, her smirk slowly fading as she registered how wrecked you look. “Wait… you’re actually serious? Like, with Robby? Our Robby?”
You nodded, swallowing past the lump in your throat. The words started spilling out slowly, the pace of the night replaying in your mind as you spoke. “The night he came back… I was already asleep in his bed. He walked in late, scared the shit out of me. I screamed, he apologized, we talked for a minute. Then I hugged him because I was so relieved he was safe. And… I don’t know what came over me. I kissed him. He didn’t kiss me back at first. He just stood there, but then he started kissing me and… we… we did it.”
You left out the explicit details, you didn’t need to paint the full picture. Her eyes were wide now, finally catching up on what you were telling her. “Holy shit. You actually slept with Robby.”
You nodded again, feeling the tears threatening to spill again. “Yeah. And the next morning he acted like nothing happened. He thanked me for taking care of the house, gave me this stupid little keychain he picked up on his trip as a thank-you gift, and that was it. No mention of the sex. Not a word. Then today at work… I saw him talking to Noelle.” Your voice cracked on the last part. “They were flirting… laughing, made plans together for this weekend. He’s going back to her,” you whispered, wiping at your eyes. “Like what happened between us meant absolutely nothing. He pretended it never happened, and now he’s making plans with Noelle like everything’s normal.”
Trinity was quiet for a long beat, then she leaned back against the couch, letting out a slow breath. Her tone was blunt, the way it always was when she was being brutally honest, no matter how much it might hurt you. “Okay. Real talk? He obviously regrets sleeping with you.”
The words landed on you like a slap. You flinched visibly, but she continued, not softening the truth behind her words. “Think about it. He comes back from a month on the road, probably horny as hell after being alone with his motorcycle in the middle of Canada. You’re there, in his house, in his literal bed. You basically offered him your pussy on a silver plate. Men are weak. They can’t say no to that, especially not when they’ve been away for weeks. It was a moment of weakness. He took it. And then in the morning he realized it was a mistake. That’s why he didn’t mention it. That’s why he’s acting like it never happened. He’s going back to Noelle because she’s the safe, familiar option.”
You stared at her, fresh tears spilling over. The sarcastic edge slipped out before you could stop it. “Wow. You’re a great friend, Trinity. Really uplifting.”
She shrugged, completely unfazed. “I’m honest. You know it’s true. I’m not gonna sit here and feed you some romantic bullshit just because you’re crying. You wanted the truth.”
You pulled your knees tighter to your chest, your voice breaking. “I thought it had been amazing. I felt… great. I thought he did too. The way he kissed me back, the way he touched me… it didn’t feel like a mistake. It felt real.”
Trinity gave you a long, almost pitying look. “He has a penis, of course it felt good for him. Men are simple creatures, you put a warm hole in front of them and they’ll take it every single time. That doesn’t mean it meant anything deep. It was just an easy fuck. He’s an older guy, been around the block dozens of times. He’s probably had plenty of good fucks in his life. This one happened to be convenient because you were literally living in his house. Doesn’t make it special.”
The tears came faster now, and you found yourself incapable of holding them back anymore. They rolled down your cheeks as the weight of her words sank in, mixing with your own exhaustion and the ache in your chest that’d been growing since that night.
“I really love him,” you whispered. “I’ve loved him for so long. Not just the sex. Him. The way he teaches, the way he looks out for everyone, how steady he is even when everything’s falling apart…”
Trinity groaned softly, running a hand over her face. “Are you seriously crying over Robby? Come on. He’s our boss. He’s emotionally unavailable, and clearly still tangled up with Noelle. You slept with him once, and now you’re devastated because he didn’t suddenly fall in love with you? That’s not how this works.”
She didn’t move to hug you, she just sat there, watching you cry. You buried your face in your knees, your shoulders shaking with quiet sobs. Trinity sighed after a long minute, softening her voice just a fraction. “Look… you’re gonna be okay. It sucks right now. But crying over Robby isn’t going to change the fact that he went right back to Noelle. You need to decide if you’re going to keep pining after him or if you’re going to pull it together and focus on not tanking your residency because your feelings got hurt.”
You shook your head slowly. “I can’t just let it go now. We slept together, Trinity. It wasn’t some random thing. It was… it was the best sex I’ve ever had in my life. The way he touched me, the way he looked at me… I felt like he saw me. Really saw me. Robby’s it for me. I’ve been in love with him for over a year, and now that it actually happened, I can’t pretend it didn’t.”
Trinity stared at you for a long beat, her expression unchanging. She let the silence stretch, and when she finally spoke, it was as if she was explaining a difficult diagnosis to a patient who didn’t want to hear it. “Robby’s just a guy,” she said. “That’s the part you’re forgetting. He’s not some tortured romantic lead in whatever fanfic you’ve been writing in your head. Your brain is doing that thing where it confuses really intense emotions with really good sex. You built this whole fantasy while you were living in his house, sleeping in his bed, sniffing his cologne or whatever. Reality was just a quick fuck. Your hormones are lying to you right now.”
You felt the sting of her words like a slow burn spreading across your chest. “It wasn’t quick. It wasn’t convenient. It felt… real. I thought he felt it too.”
Trinity gave you a small, almost pitying shrug. “That’s the crush talking. You’re romanticizing it because you’ve wanted him for so long. But it was just a convenient nut for him. You really thought sleeping with him once after you basically ambushed him with a kiss was gonna change anything?”
You bit the inside of your cheek hard enough to taste blood. “So… he wants nothing to do with me?”
She snorted. “Obviously not. If he did, he would’ve said something that morning instead of handing you a touristy keychain. Let’s be real, he’s probably relieved you didn’t make it weird at work. And it’s kind of a miracle he’s lasted this long with Noelle anyway. The man has the emotional availability of a brick wall. You’re better off pretending it never happened and moving on before you make it awkward for both of you.”
You stared at the floor, tears slipping down your cheeks again, slower now but steady. After a long minute, you lifted your head again. “What does Noelle have that I don’t?”
Trinity let out a dry laugh. “Where should I start?” She shifted on the couch, turning more toward you, clearly settling in for the full list, like she was ticking off boxes one by one. “First off, she’s insanely pretty, put-together in a way we’re not. Noelle shows up at work in actual suits and high heels. She does her makeup, and she has that stupid ponytail with every single little hair in place. We roll in all sweaty and looking like we just ran a marathon and haven’t had a good night of sleep in ages.”
You swallowed hard, wiping at your face again, but you didn’t interrupt. Trinity kept going, her tone matter-of-fact. “She has a good job. She’s closer in age to him, too. He wouldn’t want to deal with the drama of dating someone way younger who’s also his resident. Noelle gives him what he wants without any of the emotional baggage, that’s why he keeps coming back to her. She doesn’t look at him with puppy-dog eyes; meanwhile, you text him worried little updates about his house plants.” Trinity paused before she delivered the final blow. “You? You’re a complication. A big one. You’re emotionally involved. Like, deeply. Noelle is safe. You’re not. He’s not going to choose the complication. He’s going back to easy.”
The words hang in the air between you, each one landing heavier than the last. Your eyes burned again, but this time the tears fell silently, tracking down your cheeks without the full sobs from earlier. Part of you wanted to argue… to insist that the sex was more than that, that the way Robby gripped you and kissed you back meant something, but the exhaustion and the heartbreak made it hard to find the words. So you stayed quiet.
She reached over and patted your knee, a half-comfort gesture, the closest of comfort you could get. “That’s the truth,” she said simply. “Whether you want to hear it or not.”
You felt suddenly exposed and foolish. Robby was back at the pitt. He was making plans with Noelle. And you… You were just the stupid resident who thought one night could change everything.
The next day at the pitt feels like walking through a minefield. Your eyes were still a little puffy from last night’s conversation with Trinity, but you’d done your best with concealer and cold water. You kept repeating her words in your head like a mantra: focus on residency, stop the stupid crush, he’s just a guy. It didn’t help much. Every time you blinked, you still saw flashes of his body over yours.
Robby glanced up as you approached, offering you a small, professional nod. Nothing more. He stood there completely unaffected, while you were quietly falling apart, knowing the sex meant nothing to him.
After working on a patient together, you and Robby were left alone for a moment while the trauma room cleared. You couldn’t stop the words from slipping out, trying to sound normal even though your chest ached with every heartbeat. “How have you been settling back in? It’s… really good to have you back here. The pitt feels different when you’re around.”
“It’s been okay. Still catching up on meetings. It feels weird… being back after a month away.” He offered you a polite smile before turning away, ready to leave the room.
Your heart hammered against your ribs so hard you were sure he could feel it. This was it, now or never. Robby was standing right there in front of you, close enough to touch, if you didn’t speak now, you knew you never would. The words would rot inside you, unspoken, until they poisoned everything.
“I was meaning to ask you… Do you have a minute to talk? In private?”
He stopped, turning to face you. His expression was calm, for a split second, you thought you saw something flicker there, recognition, maybe wariness, but it was gone before you could be sure. “Is it about work?” he asked. You hesitated, then shook your head. “Not really.”
Robby exhaled slowly, running a hand through his hair. “Look, I’m really busy right now. If it’s not work-related, it’s going to have to wait. We’ve got three pending admits and a full board. Only work stuff today, okay?”
The dismissal was polite but firm, it landed like a door closing in your face. You felt the sting spread through your chest, he wouldn’t even give you five minutes. Not after everything. You nodded once, forcing your expression to stay neutral even as your throat tightened. “Yeah. Okay.”
You made it through the first half of the shift on autopilot, but that was before the worst part hit. A six-year-old boy, MVC passenger, ejected from the back seat. He came in unresponsive, CPR already in progress from EMS. You threw everything at him, intubated him yourself, pushed epi, called every medication, every intervention. For forty-three minutes, you fought alongside the team. But he didn’t make it.
When Robby finally called time of death, the room went quiet except for the flatline tone that seemed to go on forever. You stood there frozen for a second before you ripped your gloves off and walked outside of the trauma room. You made your way behind the ambulance bay, leaning against the cold brick wall. Your breathing came in short, ugly gasps. Tears streaming down your face, no matter how hard you tried to wipe them away. You just needed a minute. One minute to fall apart before you had to go back inside and pretend you were fine.
You were crying for the boy you couldn’t save, for the innocent life that had slipped through your fingers, no matter how fast you moved, how hard you pressed, how desperately you begged him to stay. But you were also crying for yourself, because everything in your life felt like it was crumbling at the seams. You couldn’t fix the boy. You couldn’t fix the growing distance with Robby. You couldn’t fix the ache in your chest that had only gotten worse since the night he’d touched you like you mattered and then pretended you didn’t. No matter what you did, no matter how much you cared, some things simply refused to be saved. And right now, it felt like you were one of them.
Footsteps crunched on the gravel behind you. Once again, you didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. “Leave me alone,” you choked out before he could speak.
Robby stopped a few feet away. “It wasn’t your fault. You did everything you could. I watched the whole code. You ran it clean.”
“I said leave me alone.” The words came out sharper this time. You kept your back to him, arms wrapped tightly around yourself like you could hold all the pieces together. “Don’t talk to me. Just go.”
He didn’t leave. “You did good in there,” he said quietly. “Kid had injuries we couldn’t fix. Massive head bleed, internal bleeding… you kept him alive longer than most residents could have. That matters.”
The kindness in his voice, that low tone he used when he was teaching or comforting a family, only made it worse. You spun around suddenly, tears running down your face. “I don’t want you here!” you shouted, your voice breaking on the last words. “Just leave me alone! Don’t talk to me, don’t comfort me, don’t do anything! Go back inside!”
Robby furrowed his brows. He took one careful step closer, searching for your face. “What’s wrong with you? What happened? This isn’t just about the kid.”
You laughed, a harsh, ugly sound that turned into a sob halfway through. “You happened!” The words exploded out of you, it was a mix of two years of longing and the last few days of humiliation pouring out all at once. “You came back early. You walked into your own bedroom and I kissed you and you let me and then we had sex and it was the best night of my fucking life and I thought, I actually thought, it meant something to you. Because why else would you ask me to house-sit instead of Abbot or Noelle or anyone else? I took care of your house, I slept in your bed, I watered your stupid plants, and then you fucked me and the next morning you acted like nothing happened. You gave me a keychain and ignored me after it!”
You were crying harder now, your chest heaving as the words tumbled over each other. “I saw you with Noelle the other day. You two looked fine. Like nothing had changed. You don’t care. You never cared. I was just convenient. I was there, in your bed, throwing myself at you, and you took what was easy. And now I can’t even look at you without remembering how good it felt and how little it meant to you.” Your voice cracked completely on the last sentence. You were shaking, tears dripping off your chin.
Robby stood there, completely still. He opened his mouth once, then closed it. For a long moment, the only sound was your ragged breathing and the distant wail of another ambulance approaching. Finally, he rubbed the back of his neck, the familiar gesture you’d seen a thousand times. “Look… I gotta go back in there. They need me on the floor. We’ve got another incoming.”
He took one step back, then another, his eyes still on you like he was not sure whether to stay or leave. You didn’t say anything else, just turned your face away, pressing your forehead against the cold brick as your shoulders shook with silent sobs. Robby lingered for another few seconds, then he turned and walked back toward the sliding doors, leaving you alone with the sound of your own broken heart, somehow still beating.
Three hours later, the shift finally ended. You clocked out mechanically, and headed toward the locker room to change. You were almost at the doors when a familiar voice stopped you.
“Hey. Wait a second.” Robby said. After everything you screamed at him outside earlier, you expected him to avoid you. Instead, here he was, blocking your path to the parking lot. “Look,” he started saying, like he was delivering bad news to a family. “I’m sorry if I was confusing. Or if you misinterpreted anything that happened that night.”
You stared at him. The apology sounded practiced, he was being gentle, but it still landed like a punch. He continued, rubbing the back of his neck the way he always did when he was uncomfortable. “I was tired. Really tired. That’s not an excuse, but it’s the truth. I should’ve said no when you kissed me. I didn’t. That happened, and I’m sorry if it gave you the wrong idea. Or if asking you to house-sit made you think there was more to it. You’re an extraordinary physician. You’re smart, you’re capable, you care deeply. But that’s all there is. I’m not looking for anything right now. I couldn’t even mentally handle anything resembling a relationship.”
The words hang between you, sounding final. You felt your eyes sting again. The grief from the lost patient mixed with the humiliation you were feeling until it was hard to breathe. “Except for Noelle,” you said quietly, the bitterness slipping out before you could stop it. “You seem to handle that just fine.”
Robby let out a surprised laugh. He shook his head. “Noelle and I are not together. At all. We never were. It’s… casual. Very casual. She understands exactly what it is and she’s okay with that.”
“But you still see each other on the daily. You slept with me and didn’t even address it the next morning. You gave me a keychain and talked about the plants like nothing happened. Why is it one way with her and another with me? Why does she get the easy understanding and I get… this? I get nothing.”
He exhaled slowly, looking older than his years. “Look… Noelle knows how this works. She’s not looking for more, and neither am I. What we have is simple. I’m sorry I let things get too far with you. That was my bad. I should’ve stopped it before it started. You’re a resident. I’m your attending. It was a mistake on my part to let it go that far. I take responsibility for that.”
His tone was steady, almost kind, but every word felt like another layer of distance between the two of you. You stood there, watching the man who had you pinned to his mattress, who made you come so hard you cried, now apologizing for “letting things get too far” like it was a procedural error.
Tears pricked at your eyes again, but you blinked them back fiercely. “So that’s it?” Your voice was small. “I was just a mistake because I was convenient?”
Robby’s expression softened just a fraction, but he didn’t reach for you, he kept his hands in his coat pockets. “I’m not saying you’re a mistake. You’re not. But I’m in no place to give anyone what they deserve right now. My head’s not right. Hasn’t been for a while. The sabbatical didn’t fix it the way I hoped. I’m sorry you got caught in the middle of that. You’re a great girl. You are. You’re smart, you’re responsible, you work hard… you’re going to find someone. But that person isn’t me.”
“Yeah,” you said, above a whisper, the hurt turning into something bitter. “I was just convenient. I was there, in your house, threw myself at you, and you took it. That’s all it was.”
Robby looked away for a long moment, then back at you. “It wasn’t… look, I’m barely keeping my head above water right now. The pitt, the department, everything that sent me on that sabbatical in the first place… I’m drowning. I came back early because the quiet out there was worse than the noise here. I can’t deal with this shit on top of everything else. I can’t.” The silence that followed was long and painful. He glanced toward his bike, then back at you. “I gotta head out. Try to get some rest. And… if you need to talk about the kid from today, my door’s open. As your attending.”
The professional offer felt like throwing salt in the wound, but you nodded once, unable to trust your voice. Robby gave you one last look, tired, a little regretful, but final, and then turned and walked away.
Trinity appeared at your side almost immediately, as if she’d been just a few feet away, quietly waiting for the conversation between Robby and you to end. She was unusually quiet for once. “You okay?” she asked, surprisingly soft.
You shook your head, your eyes burning as you watched Robby disappear on his bike around the corner. “No,” you whispered. “Not even a little.”
A/N: Your support genuinely means so much to me. Nothing makes me happier than reading your comments and thoughts about my fics, and if you don’t feel like writing anything, just know that a reblog takes one second and helps writers so much🩷
I’ve had this idea sitting in my brain for such a long time. I thought about it a lot and had so many scenes already fully pictured in my head, and I finally managed to put it into words.
I know the ending might feel a little underwhelming. I’m not really used to writing endings that aren’t happy😭 I honestly don’t know if I’ll write a second part or not, but just know that even when I don’t write sequels, my stories always get a happy ending in my head… because if you’re not happy, then it’s not really the end. I hope you enjoyed the angst, it’s been a while since I last wrote something like this.
I know all of you love unprotected sex and creampies, and trust me, I do too. I don’t think I’ve ever written a fic where the characters use a condom (sue me lol). But in this case, it felt necessary. I wanted the sex between them to feel colder, more distant, more emotionally detached. Using a literal barrier that prevented full skin-to-skin contact just felt perfect for what I was trying to convey. I wanted people to feel some of the same frustration reader was feeling, wanting to feel Robby fully, wanting that closeness, but not being able to have it.
pairing — michael robinavitch x fem! doctor! reader
summary — you’ve always had a problem integrating yourself into situations, not quite understanding how other people do it so easily. you spend a lot of time in your own head, and can confirm it’s not always a lovely place to be. it’s one of robby’s favourite places to be, if you’d just let him make space.
word count — 8.6k words
warnings — reader is very lonely, brief brief mentions of panic attacks, ermployee/boss relationship, age gap (robby’s early 50s reader’s late 20s), mentions of child loss (not reader or robby, she has a 7 year old patient who doesn’t make it), probably cringe and melodramatic but who cares
note — sorry for falling off the face of the earth whoops!! started working on this + an abbot fic + a carter fic (yay) and got tunnel vision i hope it’s long enough that it makes up for my absence <3333
The human body is mostly even.
It comes with a lot of pairs; eyes, lungs, hands, they’re all paired all the way down to the chromosomes. Bilateral symmetry develops in the womb, most human beings are reflections of each side, separated vertically. A line right down the spine - not perfect mirrors, but close enough to the naked eye.
It shows in the way you examine newcomers. Two pupils needing checking, breath sounds are equal, two hands able to grip the same. But you don’t treat pairs. One patient at a time - well, two every hour as Robby loves to remind you. One heart, tachy but normal. One consciousness, words slurring under the morphine. One person who arrives whole and will leave uneven.
The body wants to be divisible by two. You’ve wondered why that is. Why one heart failing feels louder than two lungs breathing.
Or, in the case of the fourteen year old girl you have sitting in North-5, one lung breathing and one lung hypoventilating. You’re looking at her x-rays now, knowing you’re going to have to get her into surgery and bracing yourself to tell her parents.
“They’re lungs.”
Robby is standing behind you, squinting down at you under the flickering hospital lights. He’s not wearing his glasses, so you almost want to hit him back with a quip about how does he know they’re lungs, old man. Your mouth is dry and you sit there for too long that it wouldn’t be witty if you did say it.
“You okay, kid?” He presses when you don’t respond.
You know you’re being strange, can’t help it when you feel like this (though exactly what this is, is up for debate. Amongst yourself), and you have to scramble to say something. “Yeah, hi. Sorry. Lungs.” Your voice sounds strange. Too soft. Inauthentic.
“One’s got a pneumo?” He asks.
You nod, practically shoving the pictures into his hand. “Yeah, I’m getting her up to the OR now.” He examines the lungs for a moment, long enough that you think something must be wrong. Confidence in your diagnoses is something you struggle with - you assume (there’s still that voice in the back of your head that tells you confidence isn’t the problem, instead it’s the diagnoses that need working on). Every time Robby or Abbot or even Shen, who doesn’t really feel like your boss, checks over your work your pulse starts rushing like they’re going to decide you’re actually such a bad doctor that there’s no point in you even completing your residency so you might as well go home now.
“Good, yeah, she needs it.” Robby nods affirmingly, passing you back the images. His eyes linger on you for a second longer than they should. You’re the one who has to break eye contact, not liking the way that his eyes seem to bare straight into you.
You don’t like it when Robby looks at you, not like that anyway. Not in like, a HR violation way, just like he’s examining you in a way you aren’t ready to be seen in.
“We’re going to round for handoffs soon.” He speaks up again, softly. “You’re off the rest of the week aren’t you?” Robby’s voice goes high at the end of his sentence and he shoves his hands in his pockets.
You really do like Robby, there’s a reason you turned down the night shift residency offer you got from Gloria. It had been a tempting offer too.
It’s a rare moment of quiet in the ER, and you’re hoping silently to yourself it stays that way. Not daring to actually utter the hope, not wanting to jinx it. You’re not necessarily superstitious, but you’re not going to utter the Q-word so close to the end of your shift.
“Yeah, three whole days off.” You try and say it casually, but the words don’t sound right coming out of your voice. You have a lot of different voices, a lot of pitches and tones. You genuinely have no clue which one is your natural state.
Robby sounds even when he talks, a sound you could pick out with your eyes closed. “That’s good. You deserve it, you’ve been running on fumes.” There’s a tenderness that catches you off guard. Robby’s not a mean boss, he’s exceptionally kind. But he’s also not comforting if he doesn’t think you need it, not the type to throw out pleasantries for pleasantries sake. “Any good plans?”
It’s not something you’ve thought about, it feels kind of pathetic to admit. Like, having plans is actually something you haven’t considered. You work long hours, about sixty most weeks, so it makes sense that on your few precious days off you like to spend it resting and recuperating. Catching up on your laundry or your sleep, or even a TV show that everyone is talking about. Those things are just as important as going out and seeing friends.
If they’re easier and more accessible, then that’s just an added bonus.
“Uh,” you have never felt more unnatural than in this moment. You’re certain Robby can tell you’re not being entirely truthful, as if he has some sort of innate sense for when people are doing things for the first time. It’s the teacher in him. “Yeah, maybe. I’m not a hundred percent sure what I’m doing yet.”
You feel so transparent it’s as if he’s looking directly through you. Perhaps he is - already looking for ways out of the conversation, ways to speak to someone more interesting. Someone who isn’t pretending to maybe have plans.
Someone who regularly had plans wouldn’t be embarrassed to admit they don’t have plans. It could be cool, casual: “No, not this weekend. I have a date with my couch and some take out.” Instead, you’d given what feels like the only wrong answer to a question about yourself.
“I hope you have a good time,” Robby nods at you.
The ER is cold, especially at night, especially in December. You’d discarded your jacket when you had entered, worried about being sweaty so early in your shift. Going to get it feels silly now, like you’d made the wrong choices.
Most of your coworkers make something of their scrubs. Javadi has a collection of pastel hoodies she rotates between, jewellery more often than not sitting under the neckline of her top. Santos has tattoos and wears graphic tees under her scrubs rather than just the standard block colours. Mel doesn’t even usually wear scrubs, instead opting for one of her own shirts without the added layer.
Your scrubs are standard, your undershirt is black, your winter coat is thrifted and warm but a neutral navy. You’d liked it when you bought it, but you feel silly whenever you wear it.
You slip it on at the end of your shift, grabbing your backpack. You can hear Santos and Mateo chatting amicably about how a music artist they both listen to is coming to the city the week after next and how they both have tickets and are thinking of coordinating.
You shut your locker, keenly aware of the other people in the room and even more astute to the fact that none of them are looking at you.
You slip out the doors, not bothering to untangle your earbuds until you’re down the street.
I’m not cold, I’m not cold. The woman singing has a lovely voice. It hits you like thorns down your ears, scratchy and uneven in a way that is only beautiful. The burn masks the sting of your eyes. Take my hand, take ahold.
—
You take the train to and from work. The station is close enough to your house that the dishes in your kitchen cabinet rattle when a particularly zealous one goes past. You were told when you moved in that eventually you wouldn’t even notice the noise - it would become apart of you and you would absorb it and be able to go about your day.
You wake in the late hours of the night from the tremors, convinced you’re going to die.
You’re not entirely sure what time the train stops running. You never check the time in the moment.
The apartment you’ve lived in your entire residency has been good to you. You had applied for a lot of places, starting out in Allegheny west and eventually settling for Bethel Park. It’s nice and small, not too much to clean after a long week. You’re on the third floor so laundry is a bit of challenge lugging your basket to the basement but you also get a fire escape which is nice enough that you like being so high up.
Days off have become a sort of anomaly in your life. You never quite know what to do with them. Your coworkers always have plans, both together and separately, you’ve noticed. Santos and Whitaker live together, the nurses all seem close, even Robby and Abbot talk about going to the Pirates games together.
You walked a lot when you first moved in. Pittsburgh has been your home for the last eight years - from student housing in Oakland during med school, then into your current place - but it hadn’t always been.
There are lots of pretty places close to your apartment. Even more the further you walk, corner stores and community gardens. Sometimes you leave your phone at home and just wander, taking note of each and every street. Every facade, every storefront, every alley. It all stayed in your head. You could recreate the city in your sleep. Well, the city within an hour’s walk of your apartment.
The deli on Library road is open when you finish work. Sometimes you get off the Blue early and go sit in the stark white of the fluoros. The floor is linoleum, speckled with colours too small to identify but you know they’re there.
You sit cross legged by the window at one of the two tables in the shop. It shakes under your elbow every time you shift, and the guy behind the counter, nametagged as Jeffrey, eyeballs you strangely every time it makes a noise.
Your sandwich is misshapen in your hands. Red and white paper wrap up the second half, ready for you to stash it in the work fridge behind one of Langdon’s Redbulls. It’s printed real small on the bottom of the laminated menu they’ve taped to the table - $4.99 for a sandwich with a random assortment of ingredients on it. You’ve always been indecisive, this had felt like a nice way to make a choice without making a choice.
They pick something different every time, condiments, vegetables, protein, even fruit sometimes. Once they’d given you one that included both mangoes and ranch. That hadn’t been your favourite.
The one you have now is nice, though. Mozzarella, turkey, chips for some crunch, some other stuff you haven’t really cared to identify, all on pumpernickel. You’re not working tomorrow; you might eat both halves now.
There’s an empty chair on the other side of your table that you’ve dumped your bag on. It’s meant for two people, and sometimes when it’s a bit busier than just you and Jeff you feel bad for taking it. You’ve got nowhere else to be though, and you’d like to sit and eat after twelve hours of not getting to do either.
You don’t usually come on your off days, but you’d felt like you were going crazy holed up in your apartment all day. You’d done your laundry, washed all your matching scrubs and the few other clothes you wore. Tidied, caught up on your Instagram feed, and when you’d gotten to the bottom of the Hulu menu without anything jumping out at you you’d shoved on your shoes without another thought.
It’s late, Friday night, and people are coming home from the clubs. You’re not particularly close to any, but the people who go there don’t seem to mind. Small gaggles stumble in every once in a while, giggle over the menu, and order an egg and cheese that they’ll probably barf up before they get home.
God, you sound bitter.
You gather your things when you finish the first half, can sense a group of drunk guys weighing up the effort of coming inside from where they hang out across the street. One of them is smoking a cigarette, and the other three seem to be caught up in a heated discussion.
It’s not snowing. You toss up taking the bus the rest of the way back. You’d walked here.
You hear your last name, ‘doctor’ preceding it, and whirl around. On a very rare occasion you’ll get recognised on the street - people don’t tend to forget the person who saved their life, or their daughter’s or brother’s or cousin’s life.
You’ve never seen Robby outside of work, not wearing the standard Pitt black scrubs. He looks nice in a collared plaid button down with a thick fleece over it and the top few buttons undone. You’ve never seen him wear jeans before. In your head Dr Robinavitch doesn’t exist in the same world where jeans also exist.
You don’t know what to say to him. You end up saying nothing. Robby doesn’t even bat an eye at your silence - used to your oddness, the way it seeps into every interaction.
“Thought that was you.” He’s smiling, wide and crooked like he does on the rare occasion he has a reason to. “What’re you doing out here so late by yourself? It’s almost midnight.”
“Dinner,” you say lamely, holding up your wrapped up sandwich.
He looks at the checkered lump in your hand then back at your face. He looks different in the dark, the planes of his face look more severe in the light of the hospital. Maybe that’s why you like the harshness of the deli, so bright it brings you right back to work.
“You always eat so late?” He asks. You feel silly with your coat hitting your chin, your work shoes, and your sandwich in your hand. You look like a doctor - a med student. Robby looks like a man.
The sensory feeling of the paper in your hand is suddenly too underwhelming and you can’t stop yourself from digging your nails in - needing a desperate anchor of your hand. You’ll regret that later when you go to eat it and it’s smushed, but later doesn’t matter more than the underwhelm in your palm.
“I work in the ER,” you point out. His hands are in his jacket pockets but one of them is clutching an opaque white plastic bag with something heavy weighing it down. Robby laughs, crinkling the handle of the bag in his hand in his pocket. “What are you doing here? Didn’t you work today?”
He nods like he’d already forgotten about it. Like it did not matter to him in a moment he was not actively experiencing it.
“Abbot’s sick- not bad, just all stuffed up.” He gestures vaguely with the hand not holding the bag at his nose/mouth area. “Only thing that ever makes him feel better is soup from PJ’s.” He nods down the street from the direction he’d just come where a neon sign is just being turned off.
“What a diva.”
Robby laughs again. “Yeah, he’d never admit it. Rather suffer in silence.”
It feels like the wrong thing to have said. You don’t know Dr Abbot well enough to make jabs at him, especially not to Robby.
You want to be out of this situation, it all crushes you at once. You’re in the dark, fifty minutes from your apartment, talking to somebody whom you intrinsically do not understand. You are a hollow body, your skin is translucent and you can see every organelle and every shift of the movement of your organs. You can see all the hallways and gears and caves in your anatomy. Every link in every chain that tugs on each and every thought that spins through your head. How your life started from birth to now and a timeline for why every facet of your personality and your soul has ended up the way that it is.
Robby is solid, and in front of you, and you will never understand him.
You’ve broken your nose trying to walk through him - he will remember this about you for as long as the two of you know each other. That you put your words where they do not belong, and that you think Jack Abbot is a diva.
Robby opens his mouth to say something.
“I should head home,” you jab your thumb somewhere behind you. You live in the direction Robby is standing. You’ll loop around the block to avoid passing him. “I’ll see you at work, Robby. Hope Abbot feels better.”
When you circle the street, Robby’s gone. The walk home is long, the walk up the stairs to the third floor is longer. You arrive home a little before one in the morning. You don’t bother with the lights, coming to sit on the floor in the kitchen. The clock blinks on the oven with each passing minute.
It lights your skin up red, and if you look close, you can see the flow of your blood.
You unwrap your sandwich.
—
Shen’s on the next time you work. He greets you casually, a “good morning” around a drink from his water bottle and barely gives you a second glance. Your shift passes without incident - the other doctors treat you normally, when you speak they listen. Javadi initiates small talk with you and you do your best to return the sentiment.
At one point Santos reads a 9 as a 6 aloud to you and gives you a look. “Whoops,” she snickers, looking at you like the two of you share some sort of secret.
You like Santos. The two of you are about the same age, you’re only a few years older than her, the same number of years further into your residency. The two of you talk sometimes between patients, but that’s bound to happen when the two of you spend so much time in an enclosed space.
She has a way of making everything feel like an inside joke. You know she struggled a little when she first started, hitting the wall with the other doctors when she first started her residency. You wouldn’t know that now, seeing the way she interacts with the rest of the people here. Her and Whitaker are so close they’re practically in a sitcom, Shen’s taken a special liking to her, and you’ve even seen her and Mel giggling by the lockers after shifts.
The two of you barely speak about anything that isn’t work. Which is fine, she’s your coworker, you guys don’t have to be speaking about your personal lives. But she has this soft little spark about her like she’s created a world to be in and it’s the most important place to be.
“That thing you did with the guy in Central 13?” She sidles up to you towards the end of your shift, hanging behind the monitor you’re using to finish up the chart for that very patient. She lets out a heavy breath. “Wow.”
You’d inserted a double lumen tube during an intubation. Nothing super fancy, but you know that Santos probably hasn’t done a whole lot of intubations in general. Shen had raised his eyebrows at your suggestion but hadn’t stopped you, and when you’d finished he’d grabbed your shoulder and squeezed, muttering a “sick, good job,” and then heading out.
You look up, genuinely startled. “Thanks.”
“I’d never even heard of the thing you did,” she doesn’t let up. “I wouldn’t have thought to do it. That was really cool.” Her voice drops and she looks down at your hands. You’ve gotten compliments before, but all from people above you in the food chain, Langdon, Abbot, people who are kind of obligated as your educators to give you praise. Santos is a PGY-1, so unless she’s sucking up you’re not sure why she’s being so nice. You’re not high enough up that sucking up would be worth anything.
You have fifteen minutes of your shift, no incoming ambulances, nothing urgent in chairs, all your patients are stable.
You feel sick - not the type of sick that would get you sent home, or even to the staff lounge. It’s normal at this point. You genuinely don’t remember a time you haven’t felt like this.
“You’re only an intern,” you say, trying to be empathetic without sounding condescending. “You’ll get there.”
She nods, low and slow. She’s already got her jacket on, thick and leather and dark brown. Santos watches you finish up your chart and you try to shake the feeling of being observed.
“I’m, uh, I think I might head down to the Hills,” she leans her elbow on your table. “There’s this bar on Liberty street. They do live music sometimes, they have a killer plate of nachos, some cool cocktails.”
You log out of the system and stand from your chair. You’re about to round and want to head to your locker first. “That sounds great.”
Santos smiles at you, shoving her hands in her pockets. She bounces when she walks and she follows you on your way to your locker. “Yeah, I found it right when I started here. I’ve been trying to get Samira to go with me but I don’t think she likes me much.”
You open your locker. Coat on, backpack on, shut locker, look back at her. You really like Dr Mohan; she’s kinder than most of the other doctors, and the two of you started on the exact same day so you’ve always felt like a special kinship with her.
“She does,” you tell her honestly. You think she does. You don’t know Samira very well - if she disliked Trinity she probably wouldn’t be telling you about it. “She just prefers to keep to herself I think.”
Santos nods, rocking on her heels and biting her top lip. “Yeah, maybe. I don’t know, I think there’s only so many times you can ask someone to hang out and have them say no before you gotta accept they’re just not into it.”
She’s not wrong. It’s very much something you have to play by ear, you’ve learned. Some people are busy, some people don’t know how to say no without worrying about sounding impolite.
People are gathering for rounds, you can see at the end of the hallway. It’s the only thing standing in front of you and a huge nap. Santos is digging in her locker for something.
“I hope you have a good time,” you tell her earnestly. “Nachos sound great, I might have to get some on my way home.” You feel nauseous. The idea of eating anything, let alone a bunch of cheese and meat, makes your stomach turn. You just want to be home. You miss your couch.
Santos doesn’t say anything as you walk out towards rounds. When she reenters the room, she doesn’t join you, she comes to stand shoulder to shoulder with Mel.
—
The little girl in Trauma-2 is going to die.
Today was meant to be a day off. Robby’d called you a little after five, apologising for waking you and asking if you could come in to cover. You’d said yes, sitting out on your fire escape and painting your nails. They’re clear - it stops you from biting them.
It had been a fairly quiet morning. Most people won’t spend their Saturday in the ER waiting room unless they really have to so you have slightly less of the patient type that maybe didn’t have to come into the ER at all.
Then the ambulance had dropped her off a little over a half hour ago, and you’ve been fairly convinced that she’s not going to make it since you’d seen her.
You were the primary doctor on the case only because you were the only one around at the time. Now, Robby and Collins are there, and they’ve taken over. Robby practically shoved you out of the room and told you to take a break.
You’re sweaty. You’ve ducked into the bathroom to swap your long sleeves for a t-shirt under your scrub top and taken a well earned cry into the mirror.
Robby’s standing outside Trauma-2 like he’s on guard. The girl’s parents are out in chairs, and you really don’t want to have to be the person to tell them. You know Robby will do it if you ask, but you don’t want to have to ask. Don’t want to have not yet asked, don’t want to ask, don’t want to have asked.
The time will pass anyway. You just wish you didn’t have to get pushed along with it.
“Ah-ah,” Robby snaps as sharp as he can without any real bite. You’re hovering in the doorway to the room, watching as Collins works on her. “You’re not going back in there.”
You failed to save her. You are the reason that two parents have lost their only daughter. He’s not mad - can’t be mad that you did your best to save someone who couldn’t be saved. But sending you in there when you’d already done no good would be a waste of time. A change in tactic, a change in doctor, is probably necessary.
“Well where can I go?” you snap back, much harsher than he’d been. You want him to tell you, don’t want the mistake to be yours. Working in the ER and being mostly self guided you feel a lot of aimlessness. The pulling behind your navel that dulls to a low throb most of the time, signalling when you’re making a bad choice. Making Robby tell you what to do means that feeling goes away, just for a little.
Robby gets this look about him sometimes, when he’s tired and trying to brush someone off without them asking him what’s wrong. “You can get some air.” He raises his eyebrows, tone light and sarcastic. He lifts an arm to point out through the dark tunnel of night streaming through the open ambulance bay.
Your feet move on autopilot, taking you out into the cold. Your arms hurt from the change of temperature, but you made the choice to take your long-sleeves off, so you don’t complain about it even internally.
Robby follows behind you just close enough for you to hear him. “Are you okay?” He puts the emphasis in strange places in his sentences sometimes. In the middle instead of one of the edges.
You nod. “Yeah, Robby, I’m fine.”
It’s quiet in the way outside only is right when you step out into it. The noise from the ER bleeds into your veins and when the ambulance bay doors shut behind you it takes getting used to the difference. It almost feels like submerging yourself, for a brief second the world shifts, and then it goes back on kilter.
Robby looks at you for a long time. You still do not understand him, he’s impossible to get a read on. He could be waiting for you to say something.
“I’m parking you,” he says finally.
Your mouth drops open. “P-parking me?”
“Doctor’s orders.” Robby nods with finality. “Stay here. I’ll come and get you.”
You want to shout something back at Robby as he goes inside - angry with him and grateful for him both at once. How dare he not think you’re up to doing your job? You’re not, but you don’t want him thinking that.
You watch an ambulance pull up, both the paramedics ignoring you as they haul a gurney in through the doors. They know enough about the job that it’s clear you’re not waiting for them.
It was her birthday in three days. You’d seen it on her chart right when she first came in, the little girl who would be taking her final breaths inside the room you’d have to continue working in. Her life would end in that room. How many had? How many had died where you were standing?
Surely, with how long humans had been inhabiting the earth, someone had died on this spot. People had stood here and spoken. Perhaps a bed had been placed here, centuries before the hospital was even conceived of. A couple had laid in the grass, hand in hand, watching as the untouched space stretched on.
In a hundred years, would someone stand on this exact spot again and cry as you were trying not to?
She was seven years, eleven months and twenty-seven days old. You don’t even remember what you were doing that long ago. The thought dredges you up, lifts you like the moment right before the fall, when you’re anticipating. Awaiting another birthday.
The human body comes in a lot of pairs, a lot of symmetry, a lot of even numbers. And then suddenly it can be zero. Reduced to nothing but the meaning someone else gives it. A period, a full stop.
You take a shuddering breath in. It’s a morbid way to think of your own life, but you wonder sometimes what will continue to happen when you finally take your last breath. The last breath is usually out. An even way to close. Nothing remaining, no leftovers.
Robby’s hand finds your shoulder. “Hey, kid.”
You don’t know how long you’ve been out here.
“I’m ready to go back in,” you say, because you feel like you’re meant to be. You’re not sure if you’ve ever been ready to go in.
Robby just shakes his head gravely. “It’s 7:03, you are officially relieved from duty.”
Relieved. It’s such a strange word. You feel like you’re bordering on pretentious. You wonder who the first person to ever say the phrase was, and how it got picked up enough that it’s commonplace now. If they had to explain themselves, or if the other person knew what they meant by it.
Relieved implies a weight lifted from you. A lightness. Perhaps you left it in Trauma-2.
Robby follows you as you grab your stuff from your locker. You’re acting on autopilot. Tonight you will not get food on the way home. You will take the train, you will walk home, you will shower and change and climb into bed and you will wake up the next morning with your alarm. You do not have the capacity to make any more choices for yourself.
When you step back out through the ER doors, you can see Princess, Jesse, Whitaker and Santos sitting on the benches. You’ve never been to their after work wind-downs, but you’ve heard enough people usually go that it’s fair to assume there will be one after whatever shift you’re finishing.
Robby is still behind you. “Hey,” he says. His backpack is slung over one shoulder. He’s wearing a thicker jacket than you’ve ever seen on him. It suits him. “Come on.”
You follow him. “Where are we going?”
“Dinner,” he says simply. “You haven’t eaten this afternoon, and I know how tempting it is to just want to go to sleep. You need food.” He walks like he expects you to follow behind him; you do without complaint. The sureness required to make an assumption about a coworkers needs and to be correct, you don’t think you could ever muster it.
You walk for almost fifteen minutes, which is less than you usually walk, but by the end your cheeks are red and you’re trying to quiet your breathing. Robby walks faster than you, with a difference bounce, smoother and softer. You’re slower but it’s stilted. Unbalanced - sometimes your left knee behaves funny. He walks like where he’s going is the most important place to be, and you’d believe it.
He stops in front of a place you’ve never seen before. A diner, real and busy, not an out of the way spot only he knows about from his wanderings. A staple; there are families here.
“Hey,” you say as you reach the door. Interrupting the flow, trying to pause. A period, a moment, or whatever you’d been thinking less than half an hour earlier. Your feelings never make sense when you’re not actively experiencing them. It’s why you could never get into journaling. “You know you don’t have to-”
Robby doesn’t even let you get the words out. “I want to.”
Want is harder to argue with than obligation. It shuts you up in a way you’re not fond of.
The lights are golden, warm in a way your eyes have to adjust to after the bright whites of the hospital, and there’s a handwritten sign taped to the inside of the window advertising that you can get four pierogies for a dollar.
Robby leads you inside without another word. It smells like coffee and oil, and it’s louder than you’d expected. You’re not a huge fan of noise, but working in a hospital you’ve gotten used to it. You realise with a start that it has been so long since you’ve heard volume that stemmed from love. Parents chastising their kids for giggling too loud. a group of high schoolers that look like they’ve just come off stage from a school play - taking up two booths and beaming like they’ve just headlined the Tony’s, couples on dates.
“You come here a lot?” You ask as Robby sits down at a booth in the corner.
He nods. “The food’s good, and they don’t look at you weird if you order something and can’t eat it.”
The vinyl squeaks with every shift of your legs, but it’s loud enough in here that it doesn’t make you feel self-conscious. Noise born from love, it wraps you in it.
“Get whatever you want,” Robby says like it’s a no-brainer. You know instinctively that he’s not offering to pay for your dinner - though he probably would if he thought you’d want that. You don’t. Him paying obligates you to order, eat and enjoy something. He’s telling you to ignore the conscious thought, all the brain stems, all the lines shooting off in a mind map - focus on the core idea. The want. It gets clouded by the mind sometimes.
“Soup is not a food,” he says helpfully. “Not right now at least.”
“I know that,” you say, defensively. You don’t want soup, and you know he’s suggesting you eat something solid, but it slips out before you can question why. The soup they have on the menu seems semi-clear, more like broth. Incorporeal, translucent. The essence of a food. Robby’s steering you away from it like he knows how you feel about things that are concrete. Your ego hasn’t quite recovered from trying to barrel through him with your assumptions the last time the two of you were alone together.
“I’m sorry,” you say it because you are, not because you think you should be. The two feel indistinguishable sometimes. You should be sorry, so you are. You’re not sure where the line comes but it’s somewhere between you and Robby. “I’m not good at this.”
“Eating?” Robby asks.
“Being a person after work.” Or before work, or during work. But admitting that means drawing attention to it, and you’d rather him think you’re oblivious. “I’m… sensitive.”
Robby doesn’t say any of the usual things; you’re not sensitive, it’s fine, don’t worry about it. You really like him for it.
He leans forward, elbows on the table. He’s not looking at you like he’s your attending. He looks completely different in warm lighting; different in the way the noise is coated with affection. It suits him. “I like that about you. It’s not a character flaw, you know that right?”
You snort before you can stop yourself. “Yeah, okay, put it on my performance review.”
“I will,” he says dryly. When Robby laughs the sound feels like it’s had holes poked in it, gravelly and messy, the punctures letting something soulful out with the sound. “Second guesses her authority figures.”
You huff. “Wow.”
“I’m dedicated to accuracy,” he says seriously.
The waitress understands you both immediately; the scrubs, how you’re kind of leaning on the table. Robby slaps down a ten and orders twenty pierogies and a cup of coffee. You flounder under her gaze, having not even looked at the menu, and Robby smiles at you in a way that feels conspiratorial and not polite.
“Can I get like, half of what he got?” You ask. “Is that a thing?”
She nods kindly and takes the menus from your table, ducking back into the kitchen.
With everything between you out of the way, Robby leans forward more. “One time, after a rough shift, I took apart my kitchen cabinets just so I could feel myself putting them back together. To prove I could.”
You mirror his posture. “This feels infinitely healthier.”
“Low bar, but I’ll take it.” You clasp your hands together to keep from picking at your nails.
Robby gets you talking without you realising. First about work, then about not work. You’d read something, probably way back in college, about how some sculptors, instead of taking a block and adding their intricacies to it to make their art, they’d instead sculpt away from the finished product until all they had was art left. That’s how talking to Robby feels as you get your dinner. You talk about everything until all that is left is the little girl in Trauma-2.
“You did everything right,” he says, right when you need it. “No one could have saved her.”
“Doesn’t matter,” you shake your head. “I still didn’t.”
Robby looks at you very seriously. When he speaks, it is firm. Solid. “It mattered. It mattered that when she closed her eyes she wasn’t alone in that room. It mattered that her parents knew someone was fighting for her, that someone cared about someone that was theirs. The outcome isn’t the only metric that counts.”
You feel heat behind your eyes. “You really believe that?”
Robby nods, serious and stern, leaning forward to take your hand. “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t believe it.”
The food arrives, sitting between you two like something to share instead of something to separate you both.
Loneliness eats at you on your worst days. You thought you knew how it felt to be real and truly lonely, and then you moved to Pittsburgh. You’re not homesick, per se, more sick for a life you feel belongs to you. You miss being tied to places, no one here holds memories with you in them.
At home, you can walk down Main street and practically provide director’s commentary: There’s the cafe I lost my scarf in when I was a kid, there’s the movie theatre I saw that in, there’s the restaurant that didn’t hire me in high school. You miss being somewhere where you are as much a part of the place as the culture is a part of you.
In Pittsburgh, you cease to exist the moment you leave a place.
“I’m really glad that I got to steal you from Abbot,” Robby says through a mouthful of decaf. “I know you got offered a night shift spot, and I have to admit I was a little worried for a bit. I thought you would take it up.”
That had been a long time ago, back when you were just starting your second year of residency. It was a really tempting offer. You’d declined it because, at the end of the day, you really love the people you work with, even if they exist in the bubble of the ER.
“I thought about it,” you admit, ripping apart a pierogi in your hand. “But, to be honest, I’ve been feeling kind of… isolated?” You muse over your word choice. “Sometimes I feel so small in this city, and I figured being asleep when most of the people who live here are awake would just take me out of it that much more.”
Robby chews slowly, using it to formulate a thought. “You leave a very strong first impression.”
You blink. If you were eating you probably would have choked. “Excuse me?”
“Abbot’s always talking about you whenever you work a night,” he says, like it’s something worth holding on to, not to keep but rather to let you follow him as he keeps going. He looks so tired, always older after a shift than before one. It looks good on him, he wears age handsomely, and you wonder - not for the first time - how he fares. It feels inappropriate to think of your boss that way, especially just because he’s being so nice to you. “You were the first one that really got through to Santos, you two are clearly close” Are you? That makes you sad, that you’ve missed a closeness that you haven’t understood. It feels like something you will never get back. You have missed it. You will miss it.
She hit a bit of a wall when she started, you’d been able to see that. You wonder, for the first time, how many times she had broken her nose trying to walk through you.
“And I…” he flushes, scratching the hair at the back of his neck. “I worry about you.” It lands, heavy and warm.
He worries about you. That should make you feel worried - what have you been doing to worry him? Instead, it strikes you right in the heart. Worry, as gnawing of an emotion as it is, requires space to hold it in.
Space you take up in his chest when you are not in the room.
“You don’t have to,” you say. “I’m a hard person to be around a lot of the time.”
Robby, to his credit, does not correct you. This whole conversation he has spent not saying the things you are ‘meant’ to say to someone confiding in you, and each time he has said exactly what has sparked something in your chest cavity.
“You’re worth the effort, though.”
You laugh, startled and a little breathless. “You make it sound like I’m like, a piece of IKEA furniture or something.”
“A kitchen cabinet,” Robby jokes.
Robby relaxes against the vinyl, and pushes one of the containers of pierogies towards you. It sits heavy inside you as you eat, and you feel like maybe it’s filling something inside you that you didn’t realise you didn’t have. Closer to whole than you have felt in a while - almost like you’ve forgotten. Further away from zero.
He talks more than you do, and you believe it’s a kindness. He tells you a story of a med student he had years ago who insisted on calling him Dr Robinavitch - you never realised you didn’t know Robby’s first name until that very moment, and you can tell he also realised that. “One time he had a patient throw up on him and he threw up in response.”
You’re deadpan. “Probably picked the wrong career path, I won’t lie.”
He laughs over his coffee. There’s a pile of napkins between the two of you, helping with the oil of your hands as you eat with them, not even noticing it through the conversation.
“I mean, I’ve been there,” you say, wiping your hands for the fifteenth time.
You’ve been there for almost an hour, unworried. The sign above the counter says they’re open past midnight, so you don’t have to worry about them closing while you’re sitting here. Robby’s been looking at you with soft eyes and pink cheeks for the better part of thirty minutes.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says. “Worst thing about you is your terrible self-esteem, you’re great, shut up.”
You laugh. “Bedside manner is dead,” you say, pushing your plate away from yourself, full and happy. “And we killed him.”
“Why is bedside manner a man?” Robby asks. “That feels unlikely.”
You leave a little after nine. Robby walks to the train with you and then gets on without saying anything. You have no idea where Robby lives, but you know he walks to work. The two of you share a bench, thigh to thigh. Neither one of you mention where you are at any point, how close your respective places are, where you both need to go.
You probably do the less walking than any night in recent memory. The city has shaped itself around your solitude, your routines, almost crushing in the way it attempts to fold itself around you.
When you stand on the T, he stands with you. He’s so close, he smells like something warm and heavy, and he seems to be drinking you in. He laughs at almost everything you say, even when you don’t mean for it to be funny.
The conversation stays steady, it doesn’t lull like you’re always terrified of. They’re not your strong suit, speaking with people. It comes with a feeling of sparity, it’s easy to feel like you are the remaining essence. The human body is naturally paired, but your human experience is roughly singular.
Robby walks with you like he wants to share the same space.
You think a lot about numbers. Odd being defined almost lazily, as though no one could bother to think of a better descriptor, not being divisible by two. You wonder, in your quietest nights, if you were to be split open, would you be divisible by two? You feel often like a remainder, not to be dramatic. But everyone else seems to gravitate naturally to other people, snapping together like magnets.
It’s something you’d always struggled with. You’re not sure what people clock about you that solidifies it. You don’t just feel uneven, you feel odd. It’s something that festered behind your ribs when you were a child and as you grew, so too did it. The version of the word lodged in your bones. Like there is a correct way to be a person, everyone else learned it - learned it enough to know which rules to follow and which to break. It takes a deep and intimate knowledge of how something works in order to go against the norms and have it still work, and it feels like everyone you’ve ever met is able to do that.
And people notice. They’re not cruel, that’s almost worse. They’re not trying to judge, but pattern recognition dictates that it is human nature to notice when something is off.
Robby’s arm brushes yours and he makes no effort to move away. Two feet on the pavement, two people walking together. Your footsteps are half a beat after his.
You wonder how long until he sees the error. A small part of you hopes he has already - that this is him noticing.
Robby says something—you don’t catch all of it—and you answer a second too late, your words stepping on the edge of his sentence. He doesn’t seem to mind. He never seems to mind. That almost makes it worse, how easily he accommodates you, like you are something fragile or precious instead of incorrect.
“This is me,” you say as you reach your apartment building. You have no idea how Robby is getting home.
He sighs morosely. “Are you sure?”
You look up at your window, pretending to think. “Pretty sure.” He squeezes the top of your arm and in moving his hand down, almost touches your fingers. “I don’t think I’ve ever had someone walk me home before. It’s not something I usually do.”
“It doesn’t have to be a thing, if you don’t want?” His tone lightens at the end, and you’re high enough on the night air that you are determined to interpret it in good faith. Him prioritising your comfort. You become acutely aware of the space between you — not empty, exactly, but loaded. Charged. Like something left on overnight.
You shake your head. “No, I liked it. I just…” you’re going to end the night being vulnerable. Robby has done nothing to indicate he does not like you. You will not be the kind of pathetic person who argues with someone when they show they like them. “Is it selfish to say I want to matter to someone?”
Robby steps impossibly closer to you. “Not selfish at all. In fact, bare minimum.” His gaze drops to where his breath is fogging the air between the two of you. It’s freezing. You don’t feel so silly in your thrifted winter coat. “I would go as far to say you already do.”
Robby looks different under the glow of your street light - different than at work, different than at the diner. You think you might start to understand him. He is still direct in front of you, solid and unmoving. But he shifts in the light: kitchen cabinets with their doors taken off.
There are so many things you could say to him. Thank you. I’m sorry. Please don’t forget me when the sun comes up and it’s loud again and I am still quiet.
You think of all the times you have spent standing in this very spot, feeling temporary in your own life.
Robby falters. You realise with a start it’s not the first time you’ve seen him do that. If anyone had asked three hours ago you probably would have answered as honestly as possible that you’d never seen it. How many times had it happened and you hadn’t seen it?
“Can I-” he stumbles over his words. Reconsiders. “Do you want me to kiss you?”
You feel rooted to place. The honesty of his voice hurts. “Are you asking permission or if I have the audacity?”
He laughs and you feel it against your face. “The first one.”
Robby smiles, warm and unmistakably fond. When he kisses you it’s soft and coursing with something you can’t name. He tastes like decaf coffee that you didn’t realise was shitty now you’re still tasting it almost two hours later. You can feel his beard against your face and the scratch is electrifying. You’re just two people. His hands settle into your waist, palms against your scrub top under your coat. It’s just the two of you and the quiet hum of the city you live in.
“You should get some sleep,” he mumbles against your mouth. He lets you kiss him for another few minutes, seeming like he’s indulging himself more than letting you have what you want. It’s dizzying, the idea of being wanted, and by someone like Robby.
The kind of guy you think might’ve liked you even if you didn’t like him back.
You’re working tomorrow. You’re pretty sure he is too. You hope, as well, that Santos is and that she’s in a good mood. The seed of an idea plants itself within you hopefully, and you decide tomorrow will be the shift you ask if she maybe wants to get drinks after work. The thought of her saying no terrifies you, but the thought of her saying yes terrifies you a little less than you’d first thought.
“I’ll see you soon,” he pulls back, flushed and seemingly just as enthralled as you. Soon. Continuously. “Text me when you get up there, need to make sure you’re awake enough to lock your door.” He doesn’t walk away until you’re up and locked away in your apartment.
The oven clock blinks at you as you turn the overhead lamp on. You shoot him a door’s locked text that he heart-reacts to.
The train rushes past. It rattles the handles of your drawers and the doors of your cabinets.
genuinely couldn’t have predicted that the realization that I’m not alone in feeling like a poor imitation in every group situation I’m in would come in the form of an x reader fic on Tumblr.com
I’m unsure and a little concerned what that says about me LOL
⤷ michael robinavitch x fem! resident! reader || 4.8k
synopsis. Robby tells himself he's paying attention because you're his resident. The explanation gets harder to defend with time.
warnings. attending/resident relationship, mutual pining, workplace romance, age gap, explicit sexual content, protected sexual intercourse.
The trauma bay smelled like antiseptic and the end of things, and you were at the sink, back to him, hands under the tap, humming.
He'd clocked it forty-three minutes ago. Done absolutely nothing useful with the information since.
Robby kept his eyes on the chart. He was, objectively, a man capable of extraordinary focus under extraordinary pressure — this had been proven, repeatedly, in rooms far worse than this one — and yet here he was, reading the same line about magnesium levels for the fourth time because you were humming something without any apparent awareness of his existence.
That was the thing that got him, if he was being precise about it. The total lack of awareness. Like you were alone in the room. Like the fact of him standing eight feet away was information your nervous system had simply not received and wasn't particularly interested in processing.
"Are you signing off on Martinez or are you planning to stand there all night?"
You turned around. Hands still wet. "Her oxygen sat's been stable for two hours. I was doing one last check." You reached for a paper towel, unhurried. "Good evening."
"It's nearly midnight."
"Good evening, Dr. Robinavitch."
He did not look up. He was very deliberate about not looking up. "Paperwork first. Pleasantries second. Order of operations."
"I'll keep that in mind." Perfectly pleasant. Not a trace of sarcasm. Impervious. Like being curt with you was something that happened to other people and simply bounced off you. He'd watched it happen across an entire shift — residents trying to one-up each other and you deflecting it with some mild observation about coffee going cold, a nurse coming at you frazzled and leaving calmer, and him, standing at the nurses' station, doing the thing where he read the same line four times.
He watched you cross the bay to get the chart, moving through the wreckage of twelve hours like you had a fundamental dispute with the idea that any of it had been hard.
He looked back at the magnesium levels. They remained uninteresting. Across the bay, you turned off the tap and the humming stopped, and somehow that was worse — the sudden awareness of its absence, the way the room rearranged itself around the quiet.
Robby set the chart down. Picked it back up. Read the magnesium levels a fifth time.
He'd been an asshole. He was aware of this with the specific clarity of someone who knew and had decided, at some point, that knowing was sufficient.
It hadn't started that way. He'd been neutral in the beginning, the way he was with most residents — professionally indifferent, appropriately demanding, nothing beyond. And then somewhere between you explaining to a thirty-seven-year-old construction worker why he needed to stay still and not, in your words, be a hero about the needle, because you'd dealt with actual heroes today and they had all, uniformly, behaved themselves — something had shifted. Slowly. The kind of shift where you don't notice until the geography's already changed and you're standing somewhere you didn't plan to be. And by the time he'd noticed, the only thing he knew how to do was be curt about it.
The curt had escalated. He corrected your charting when it didn't need correcting. He'd sent you to the Mathers consult — a three-hour admit, the kind that hollowed a person out — and watched you handle it with the patient attentiveness of someone who didn't know there was another option. He'd told himself it was assessment. He'd told himself a lot of things.
Then was the supply closet.
Pediatric case. Bad, in the quiet way. He'd delivered the news himself and sent everyone back to their stations and gone to chart it, and he couldn't find you anywhere. He checked the on-call room. Then, following some dim instinct he chose not to examine, he tried the supply closet.
You were on the floor, back against the IV bag shelf, knees pulled up, crying.
He stood in the doorway. Thought about leaving.
You looked up. And then — immediately, the reflex of it — you said "I'm sorry" and started to wipe your face. Then you tried to smile at him. Eyes wet, nose red, and you assembled a smile. Like you'd built one in advance for whoever came through the door so they wouldn't have to deal with the crying. Like you'd gotten efficient at this.
That ate at him. He couldn't name it more precisely. Something about the apologizing, and then immediately the smile, in that order, bothered him in a way he didn't have a word for.
He stepped inside and let the door close. "You don't need to be back out in thirty seconds."
"It's unprofessional."
"You're a resident. First one?" He meant the loss. You understood, nodded once. "Then it's biology. Not a failing."
He wasn't good at this. He knew that. There was a box of tissues on the shelf nearest him and he handed it to you, because it was the only object in reach that might approximate the gesture of offering something, and you looked at it and then laughed — barely, a wet sound, but a real one.
"That's not what I—" he started.
"No, I know." You took one anyway, turned it over in your hands. "Thank you."
He stood there another minute. Couldn't leave. Watched you put yourself back together the way you apparently did everything — methodically, without drama, heel of your hand to your eye, one slow breath, and then back. Like a person who had practice.
He went back to his charts and was sharp with two nurses and a second-year before he'd made it to the bay, and didn't connect the two things until weeks later.
Then was the case of the blueberry muffins. In a container with a lid that didn't close properly, and every time there was one sitting on the counter near the coffee maker, and every time an attending found their way over within twenty minutes. He'd eaten four of them across separate occasions. He never planned to acknowledge this.
You hummed when you were focused. A different song every shift, always half-familiar, always just past where he could name it. It was maddening in a way that defied professional articulation.
Every patient remembered your name. Not just remembered — asked for you specifically, used it. He'd had a seventy-three-year-old man with a hairline hip fracture ask him to send back "the nice one, who explained the scan thing." He'd known immediately. He'd sent you. He'd told himself this was about patient outcomes.
He started cataloguing things. Unconsciously, the way you develop a reflex. The way you always sat down to explain a diagnosis — never stood over them. The fact that you took notes by hand on rounds and had told him, unprompted, early on, as if expecting to be corrected, that you retained it better that way. He hadn't corrected it. The snack bars you kept in your coat pocket and distributed to nurses around hour eight without making anything of it. The way you said thank you to orderlies. The way you phrased bad news — he'd noticed the phrasing, catalogued it, thought about it.
He had no use for any of this information. He kept it anyway.
There was a morning, somewhere in the middle of all of it, when he'd been post-call and running on three hours and you'd appeared at the nurses' station with coffee you handed to him before he'd asked, or looked like he needed it, or given any outward indication whatsoever that he was capable of human wants.
"How did you know I take it black?" he said.
"I didn't." You were already walking away. "I just figured if you were you, you probably didn't want anything done to it."
He'd stood there for a moment with the coffee in his hand.
He'd been annoyed about it. The presumption of it, the casual intimacy of the gesture, the fact that you'd got him right. He'd been annoyed about it right up until the moment he'd taken a sip and thought, with a clarity that three hours of sleep had done nothing to dull, that he was in actual trouble.
The Torres chart hand-off happened on a Tuesday. You came up behind him at the nurses' station and he smelled the muffins before you'd said anything.
"Torres hand-off. She's been stable since fourteen hundred hours, no fever. I flagged a note about the blood pressure trend — it's within normal, I just wanted to document I'd been watching it."
"I can read."
"I know you can read." Still pleasant. "She also wants me to tell you you have a nice voice."
"She's seventy-one and on morphine."
"She said it before the morphine." You set the chart down. "There's a muffin on the counter."
He took the chart and didn't look up, and he stood there for a moment after you'd gone and thought, with some irritation, that he'd been tracking Torres's blood pressure every two hours all shift. He hadn't flagged it. He fixed the formatting error at the top of page two — not because it was egregious, it wasn't — and didn't tell you about it. He told himself this was efficiency and moved on before he could disagree with himself.
Jack waited until the lounge was empty. In retrospect, Robby should have taken that as a warning.
They were both doing charts. Fourteen minutes of workable silence, which was the best kind, and then Jack said without looking up, "Kowalski was at the nurses' station again."
Robby said nothing.
"Third time this week. Ortho. No clinical reason to be down here three times in a week." A pause. "He keeps asking about her."
"Her who?"
"Your her."
"She's not — she's a resident. She's on shift."
"That's not what he's asking." Jack closed his laptop. That was always the tell — the deliberate setting-aside, the signal that you were in a conversation now, predetermined. He looked at Robby with the patience of a man who has decided to wait you out. "You want to say anything about that?"
"I don't have anything to say about Kowalski."
"No. But you've been short with her."
"I'm short with everyone."
"Not the same short." Jack leaned back. "You corrected her on a splint she did correctly. I checked afterward."
Robby set his pen down. Picked it back up. "I don't know what you want me to say."
"I don't want you to say anything." Jack opened his laptop again. Closed it. "You know what I think?"
"No. But I suspect you're going to—"
"I think you've been so busy being her attending that you forgot she's going to leave and be someone else's problem in about eight months." A pause. "And I think that bothers you."
Robby looked at the coffee. Then the chart. Then some middle distance between the two.
"He's going to ask her to dinner. Kowalski."
The coffee in Robby's mug was still warm. He looked at it.
"Let him," he said.
Jack made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "Sure," he said, and opened the laptop for the last time.
He went to the attending lounge because it was past two in the morning and he needed somewhere to sit that wasn't the nurses' station, and you happened to be there when he opened the door.
Asleep in the chair by the window. Your chart was still open in your lap. Pen loosely between your fingers. At some point, the sleep had simply won.
He stood in the doorway for a moment.
There was a warmth in his chest that was entirely inconvenient and he looked at it sideways, the way you look at something too bright. You'd been here since seven that morning. He knew this without meaning to know it — knew which admits you'd taken, what you'd ordered for the woman in bay three, that you'd eaten something from the vending machine at fourteen hundred because you'd complained about it to Dana with the mournfulness of someone deeply wronged by a sandwich. He'd started logging your schedule without any conscious decision to do so. That was a recent development he hadn't examined closely.
He should go to the couch. Do his own charts.
He stood there another moment. You looked cold. He picked up the green blanket — the ones you sometimes used, which he had no reason knowing — and draped it over your body. Tucked under your feet for good measure.
Then he stepped back and eased the door shut, very quietly, and stood under the fluorescent light of the hallway, and thought: oh.
The acknowledgment of something he'd been refusing to file anywhere useful for long enough that the refusal had become its own noise. Oh. Right. He understood now why Jack had closed his laptop.
He was reviewing a discharge summary in the corridor, and you stepped out of the lounge with the green blanket under your arm and walked directly into his eyeline. He wasn't staring. Sure, he wasn't.
"Were you out here when I fell asleep?"
"Yep."
"You didn't sleep?"
"I checked the lounge. You were in there."
"That's not an answer."
He'd underestimated you in that specific way, in the beginning — the quiet refusal to be redirected. You did it without any sharpness, without confrontation, like you'd noticed it and decided not to. It surprised him the first time. It had never stopped surprising him, exactly.
"I didn't want to wake you," he said.
You stopped. Something crossed your face that he couldn't quite catch the shape of. "That was actually very considerate of you."
"You sound surprised."
"A little." You tucked the blanket more firmly under your arm. "You've been different lately."
"I'm professionally consistent."
"Dr. Robinavitch." Very patient. "I watched you make a first-year cry over a documentation error."
"His documentation was wrong."
"Mine had a formatting error on the Torres file. Page two. You didn't say anything."
He said nothing.
"You fixed it yourself." Still not accusing — just noticing. "I saw the edit timestamp."
The corridor was quiet. A monitor beeped down the hall in its steady automated note.
"You didn't have to do that," you said. Softer now. "I would've caught it."
"I know you would have."
A pause. You were looking at him with that look — the curious one, the one that felt like you were trying to work something out carefully, without making a production of it. Like he was a thing worth figuring out. Like you'd decided to be patient about it.
He found he had nothing useful to say to any of that. You opened your mouth and he thought for a second you were going to say something that would require him to respond in kind, and he wasn't ready for that, not in a corridor at three in the morning with the green blanket under your arm and his chest doing what it was doing.
"Get some sleep," he said. "In an actual bed. Not a chair."
"Are you worried about me?"
"I'm concerned with your clinical function tomorrow if you're running on four hours in a—"
"Robby."
Just his name. Without the professional buffer of the title, and the way you said it — quiet, slightly tentative, like you were testing whether it was allowed—
"The blanket," you said. "In the lounge. Was that you?"
He looked at you.
You looked back, and there was nothing confrontational in it, nothing probing, just — curious, and underneath that, something that was almost gentle. Waiting.
"Go to sleep," he said, and walked back toward the bay.
He didn't quite remember, in the moment, how you got here.
That was a lie. He remembered exactly — you'd followed him into the on-call room with a consult chart, and you'd asked him something, and he'd turned around and you were closer than he'd expected, and the chart had ended up on the floor, and something that had been accumulating for a long time finally hit a pressure it couldn't sustain.
You'd kissed him first. Barely. More like you'd tipped toward him and he'd closed the remaining distance, which meant they were equally responsible, and he was prepared to argue this point at length.
Now your back was against the on-call room door and you were looking at him like he was slightly terrifying and very interesting, which was, objectively, the most appealing combination of expressions he'd seen in some time.
"Are we—"
"Yes."
"Okay." A breath. "Okay."
"Stop saying okay."
"What am I supposed to say?"
He pressed his mouth to the side of your neck and held it there — not moving, just breathing you in — until you went very still under him. He felt your pulse against his lips. He stayed there until you made a sound, small, involuntary, the sound of someone trying not to make a sound and losing the effort.
"Something more useful," he said against your skin.
Your hands found his collar. Fisted into it without quite pulling. "What do you want me to say?"
He pulled back enough to look at you. Already undone, and he'd barely started — the flush high on your throat, the way you were holding his shirt like it was the only fixed object in the room. Something settled in him that he recognised, distantly, as the opposite of the thing that had been sitting in his chest for months.
"Tell me what you want," he said.
You looked at him. Then sideways. Then back, with something stubborn in it underneath the flush. "You."
"More specific."
"Robby—"
"Dr. Robinavitch," he said, and watched your face cycle through several things.
"You cannot possibly be serious."
"I'm always serious." He undid the first button of your scrubs. "More specific."
Your breath came out uneven. "I want you to touch me."
"I am touching you."
"You know what I—" The thought didn't complete. He undid the second button and whatever you'd been about to say dissolved. "I want your hands on me. Properly."
"Properly," he said. "There you go."
He walked you back to the narrow bed and sat you on the edge of it. Then stood there for a moment — just looked. He had spent a professionally inadvisable amount of time not looking at you, deliberately, as a sustained practice, and he was going to allow himself a moment now that the situation had changed.
You looked back. Flushed, lower lip caught between your teeth.
He got your scrub top off, then the undershirt, then reached around and unclipped your bra. When you moved to cover yourself, he caught both wrists.
"Don't."
"I just—"
He pressed your wrists to the mattress, one on either side, gentle but deliberate, and held them there. You let him immediately. He filed that away. "Keep them there."
He took his time. He'd earned the right to take his time — all those months of being deliberately removed, of watching you from across the bay and looking back at his charts — he had accumulated a significant amount of patience that was now going to get spent in one place.
He put his mouth to your collarbone and worked down slowly, and every time you moved he said stay and felt you try, felt the effort of it in the tension running through you, your hands gripping the mattress. He got his mouth to your nipple and felt you arch up sharp, and he pulled back just enough.
"Stay still."
"I'm trying—"
"Try harder."
"Robby, please—" And there it was — the specific texture of your voice when you were overwhelmed, the thing he'd catalogued and refused to think about directly. The way it went soft and raw at the edges. Your eyes had gone glassy. "Please. I need—"
"Tell me what you need."
"You know what I need—"
"I do. I want you to say it."
You made a frustrated sound that turned into something else when he dragged his thumb along the inside of your thigh and stopped before it got useful. "I need you to touch me. Please. I need—please."
"Where?"
"You know where—"
"Where?" Quieter. Final.
"My cunt," you said, and your face went red saying it, and he pressed his mouth to your stomach to have somewhere to put the expression that wanted to happen. The slight mortification and the fact that you'd said it anyway. He was going to be thinking about that for a long time.
He pulled your scrubs down and the underwear followed, and he sat back on his heels and looked at you spread across the narrow mattress, flushed to your chest, thighs pressed together out of some residual instinct toward dignity, and thought with a startling clarity that you had absolutely no idea what you'd been doing to him.
He pressed his mouth to the inside of your thigh and felt you exhale shakily. Pressed it to the other. Kissed up slowly, felt you start to tremble, your thighs trying to close around him.
"You're already so wet," he said against your skin, and heard you make a sound. "I've barely done anything."
"Don't say it like that —" you whined.
"I'm just statin' what I see." He pressed his mouth to you properly and felt you gasp, felt your hands go immediately into his hair. He worked you slowly, his tongue flat against your clit and then pointed, then flat again, and two fingers pressing inside you, curling — and you made sounds he was going to be hearing in his head for years, the pitch of them, the way they went higher when he changed the pressure. He brought you right to the edge, felt it in the way you tightened around his fingers and your thighs started shaking—
And he stopped.
"What—" The outrage of it, immediate and genuine. Your hips chased nothing. "I was so close, I was right—please—"
"Tell me what you want."
"I want you to make me come," you said, without hesitation this time, and your voice was wet at the edges and your eyes were wet, actual tears on your lashes, and he pressed his mouth to the inside of your knee and held it there for a second.
"Please," you added, smaller. "Please. Robby."
He put his mouth back, and this time he didn't stop. He held your hips down with his forearms and kept the pressure steady and relentless, worked two fingers inside you in a rhythm that he'd figured out about four minutes in and was going to use mercilessly, and you came hard — shaking, properly shaking, both hands fisted in his hair, his name said so many times it became something else. He kissed your inner thigh through the end of it and felt you go loose by degrees.
He straightened. You had tears running down your temples. He kissed them away without entirely deciding to, and you laughed weakly.
"I'm just bein' thorough." He got his scrubs off, found the condom from the pocket he'd put it in on a hope, and looked up to find you watching him with red-rimmed eyes and an expression of dazed, complete attention.
"Stop looking at me like that," he said.
"Like what?"
He didn't answer. He settled over you and paused — his forearm beside your head, his weight on his knees — and just looked at you for a moment.
"Robby." Breathless. "Please."
"I've got you," he said, quietly, and pressed in slow.
He felt you exhale under him, felt you shift to pull him deeper, felt your legs wrap around him before he'd done anything. He set a pace that was, he'd admit only to himself, not particularly controlled — the months of it had a way of making themselves felt when the situation finally changed. He pressed his mouth to your ear and told you exactly what you felt like — and he was precise about it, anatomical in a way that made you shiver, hot and tight and so fucking wet that he'd had to think about something else when he'd first pushed inside you — told you what he'd been thinking about, in terms that left nothing abstract.
You made a sound into his shoulder that he was going to think about for a long time.
"You've been thinking about this?" you managed.
"At length."
"How long?"
"Longer than is appropriate." He pressed deeper and felt you gasp. "Considerably." He pulled back and pushed in again, slow, deliberate in the way that he could feel you registering — the way your breath caught, the way your nails pressed into his back. "You want me to tell you how long?"
"Yes," you said, slightly desperate.
"When you had the Torres admit. You were at the nurses' station and you leaned over to get a chart and your scrubs—" He stopped for a second because the memory had found him at an inconvenient angle. "I had to go chart something."
"You left because of me?"
"I left before I did something professionally unsound." He pressed a hand to the back of your thigh and pushed it higher, changed the angle, felt you make an embarrassingly gratifying sound. "Stop talking."
"You were the one who—"
"Stop talking," he said, and moved, and you did.
You cried through the second orgasm — actual tears, the way he'd half-expected, your face buried in his shoulder, both arms around his neck, holding on. He kissed the side of your face. The corner of your eye. Felt you clutch at him like you'd decided he was staying.
When he followed he was considerably less composed than he'd planned, face in your hair, your name said once, very quietly.
He hadn't meant to fall asleep. He understood this approximately fifteen minutes later when he woke to find you beside him, awake, looking at some mid-distance point with the expression of someone slowly processing a sequence of events and finding it, on the whole, acceptable.
"You fell asleep," you said.
"I rested my eyes."
"For fifteen minutes."
He looked at his watch. "Thirteen."
"Fifteen." You turned your head. Still flushed. He was not going to have feelings about that. "Should I—" You gestured vaguely toward the door.
"In a minute." He pulled you back before he'd consciously decided to, and you went without resistance, settled against him like you'd considered the geometry and found it reasonable. "Stop thinking so loudly."
"I'm not thinking loudly."
"You are." A pause. "Say it."
"I was just going to say." You seemed to be choosing words with some care. "This doesn't have to be weird."
"It's not weird."
"You've been weird about me for a while."
He looked at the wall for a moment. "Months," he said.
You lifted your head. Looked at him. He looked back with the equanimity of a man who had made a decision and was now on the other side of it.
"Months," you repeated.
"Don't make it a thing."
"You had a crush on me." The laugh was already happening, quiet, against his shoulder. "You've been making my shifts difficult because you had a crush."
"I don't have a crush. I'm almost fifty."
"You made a first-year cry."
"His documentation—"
"Was wrong, yes." You were laughing properly now, helpless, into his skin, and he let it happen and did not find it as irritating as he should have. "You fixed my formatting error. You ate four muffins."
"I ate one. Maybe two."
"Dana counted. She has a tally."
He absorbed this.
"Dana has a tally," he said.
"Apparently she's been running it since March."
He sat with that for a moment. The cart with the squeaky wheel went past outside, its regular circuit, the one maintenance had been promising to fix for weeks. He'd started timing the rounds. He wasn't going to tell you that.
"Robby," you said, quieter.
"Mm."
"The blanket." A pause. "It was you."
He said nothing.
You pressed your face back into his shoulder. He felt you smiling — actually felt it, the shape of it against his collarbone — and didn't say anything about it.
"Thank you," you said, very small. "For not waking me up."
He didn't answer.
You settled more completely against him. Outside, the hospital kept going — someone called down the hall, a monitor beeped its steady note, the cart made another pass. He listened to the intervals and thought this was probably fine. More than probably.
A thought occurred to him, belatedly. "Did Kowalski ask you to dinner?"
A pause.
"Last Thursday," you said.
"What did you say?"
Another pause. Longer. He could feel you deciding whether to make him ask twice.
"I said I was busy," you said.
"Were you?"
"No." You shifted against his shoulder. "But I had a feeling I'd be busier."
He didn't say anything. Outside, the cart went past again with its squeaky wheel.
"Robby," you said, half-asleep already.
"Go to sleep."
"Everyones's going to know."
"Hmm."
A pause. "Does that bother you?"
He thought about that for a moment. Dana had apparently been running a tally since March. Dana had apparently noticed before he had. That was its own kind of information about the past several months that he chose not to examine too closely.
"No," he said.
"Is that okay?"
He looked at the top of your head. "Go to sleep," he said.
a/n - thank you for reading. comments and reblogs are appreciated.
