Bucky Barnes x Reader | Word Count: 1.1k | bucky barnes is feeling soft this sunday morning
Warnings: 18+ Sexually suggestive content. Slight angst. Depictions of scars. Very fluffy.
a/n: long time no see :))) just something short to get me back into the swing of things i.e. i’m feeling soft and idk how else to cope with that aside from writing. i’m typically a show, don’t tell kind of person when it comes to love, but sometimes you just need to hear it, y’all feel?
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Few feelings rival it.
That tickling warmth along his spine, around his shoulders, and up his cheeks as they pull into a smile. A long held stretch with pale morning sun hugging his skin, and an arm curled around his waist that tightens when a soft moan escapes his lips.
Bucky can’t claim to know feelings well—even now, when he feels so much all the time, he has trouble understanding them. Half of the time he wishes he could hide from them under the covers forever. The other half of him can get so overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude and loss that rattles his bones, puts him on edge, makes him want to peel mangled skin from his body and burn it all to hell. Maybe cry too, if he let himself.
Feelings and what it actually means to feel again is a careful dance in a dangerous minefield. Everyone, even he knows it: be careful around Bucky. And yeah, that’s not a good feeling. One of the worst actually.
This, this he’ll take over that—over anything, really—any day.
He doesn’t know why stretching in the morning feels so good, but fuck does it. Slow pull of stiff muscles and cracked bones, Bucky lets a rare smile tug the corners of his blushed lips wide. Dark, thick eyelashes filter in the morning bright and flutter across the high planes of his cheeks.
There are times when Bucky is beautiful. The kind of beauty that hurts somewhere deep in your chest and makes you feel sick. He’s menacing and soft, guarded and kind, dangerous and hurt— so many things at once and it truly is beautiful to see him like that.
But in the morning, in bed with you, he’s just a pretty boy. Warm and unbothered— happy. Few will ever see him like this, even fewer that he’d let see him like this.
You are one of those people. One who has never been careful around Buck, even when they maybe should. One who kisses him just as often hard as soft. He can hardly put into words what that means to him. And on mornings like these, when he is laid bare in the sun and content to stay warm there— sometimes you see his scars and say nothing, other times you marvel and kiss at them so tenderly.
Bucky doesn’t know how exactly you do it, but it’s always the right time for each.
A part of him that shrinks and grows depending on the day, doesn’t think he deserves it. Your eyes soften often, but are softest with his image reflected in them. Like he’s something to coo at, a baby rabbit cupped in your hands that you just want to squish against your face— you’ve described it to him in those exact words before. He is decidedly not that and something closer to a reformed murder-bot (so Sam says).
“You’re doing it again. Stop.”
It comes out muffled, a grumble spoken between layers of white cotton and feather down. If Bucky weren’t a super-soldier enhanced just about everywhere, he might not have heard it at all.
A hand marbled with the swirling imprint of the tight space between sheet and skin fumbles its way out of the mountain of covers, smacking down to splay wide across his furrowed brow and frown. Bucky reaches up and takes hold of the wrist, thumb rubbing fond circles across its soft inside.
“Doing what?”
The other hand, the one wrapped around him, pinches at his side. Then, a head pops out from under the duvet, pretty and scowling. Bucky’s lips instinctively curl into a soft smile as he brings your wrist to them.
“Thinking,” you huff as if it were obvious, snatching your wrist from his kiss and straddling him so as to better stare him down. You lean over him, hands placed on either side of his head and sporting a cute pout. Oh how he loves you and that pout.
Bucky’s hands rub up and down your thighs, fingers curling to press into the backs of them, “Some of us like to think from time to time.”
“Har har,” you punch his shoulder.
Bucky grunts but fails to hide the hum of laughter on the tail end of it. You sigh, curl your fingers into the sheets, and that fond look in your eyes makes his mouth go dry and his gut stir, “You do it too much.”
He hums as your fingers map the lines of his face, reading the story of where he’s been and what he’s felt and when he nicked his chin shaving yesterday. You trace the wrinkles in his forehead and follow the laugh lines from his nose down to the corner of his mouth, thumb pressing into blush lips.
“You could help me stop,” Bucky’s smirk falls as you pinch the corner of it, “Ow!”
“Mr. Barnes! On the Lord’s day no less?” you jokingly chide him. Even still, you can’t help the way your fingers move across his skin in sultry lines.
There’s no urgency to it. It’s the soft and slow kind of loving, the kind of simmering heat that only just begins to bubble in the pit of his gut. Your lips leave damp trails on either side of his chest, lingering a beat on the raised pink line in his ribs, the missing chunk in his flesh arm. Then, the darkened burns of his right hip where your teeth press in.
Bucky’s not sure at what point his eyes took on a certain watery shine, but he chokes out a laughing sob when you come back up to smile into the jagged line across his heart.
Your love used to only make him feel worse about himself.
When he couldn’t reconcile the image of him that existed in your mind, with what was in his. He’d close his eyes and clench his teeth, only just managing to bear the shower of your affection— hating himself for even wanting it, depending on it.
Now, the vibranium-firm hold on the back of your neck brings your lips back up to his. His other hand palms the flesh of your ass to coax a surprised and delighted hum from the back of your throat and into his hot panting mouth.
“I love you,”
He manages to clear the little, sweet whimpers from his voice as your thumb brushes the smallest of tears from under his eye. The teasing coo that escapes your smirk almost ruins it.
A sneaky hand with wicked intent slithers between your bodies, that Bucky struggles to ignore in favor of affectionately rubbing his nose along the side of your own. For all your cheekiness, you’re just as often earnest with your love. Pulling away, you look at him in such a way that you don’t even have to say it— he just knows.
But you say it anyway, so that it sticks, “I love you too.”
⤷ "glitter pens and hot chocolate." master list ! ☕
jason todd x fem!reader ✚ platonic! damian wayne x reader ✚ platonic! jason todd x damian wayne 🍵
summary ⊹₊ ⋆ Damian has a family. He finds one more with you two. And in a way, Jason accepts the one he has. 🖍️
suni's ᯓ★ navigation ⭑.ᐟ 𓏲 ๋࣭ ࣪ ˖🎐
⤷ authors note .ᐟ.ᐟ started as a one shot... anyways live laugh Damian and Jason. To be clear, these chapters will not be posted in chronological order as most can be read as one shots, however here, they will be listed in order. Once completed, I will add scene numbers.
scene ✗ : coming soon ! you smell like home and you feel like my mother
scene ✗ : Just us two…" "Oh, that would be wonderful!" "…Three?"
scene ✗ : glitter pens mean we are family
scene ✗ : 'parent'-teacher meeting part 1/2.
scene ✗ : 'parent'-teacher meeting part 2/2.
scene ✗ : coming soon ! damian is not doing split custody
scene ✗ : coming soon ! happy birthday
ᵈⁱᵛⁱᵈᵉʳ ᵇʸ ᶜᵘʳˢᵉᵈ⁻ᶜᵃʳᵐⁱⁿᵉ
authors note! I hope you enjoy and if you want to be put on a tag list for ALL my works comment and I will add you! ദ്ദി˶ｰ̀֊ｰ́ ) my asks are always open just to talk or ask questions please please please let me know what you think it gives me so much motivation to write and you will be getting a new work sooner if you do ; (◞‸◟)
Series Summary: You have made peace with loving Jack Abbott quietly.
Chapter Summary: The past never goes away, but maybe there’s a place to find steady ground.
Rating: Explicit (E)
Word Count: 16.2k (I probably should have made another part, oh well)
Tags/Warnings: hurt/full comfort this time, slow burn, solid pay-off in this part, friendship, lots of cursing, angst, the mortifying act of falling in love, the terrible tension and discomfort that goes with moving from friends to lovers, tenderness and also overwhelming emotions, sex!!!! it’s not really smut so much as weirdly intense sex with lots of love.
Author’s Note: it’s done!! The response from y’all has been astounding. A true honor. Please enjoy this last chapter. It’s long as hell. Sorry about that but making a part five seemed silly at this point.
-- -- --
Jack asked you on your first date by sending a bouquet of flowers to your desk with a simple card that said: “Can I take you out this weekend?” It was sweet if not a little overwhelming. The flowers didn’t really fit in your small office; they had been banished to awkwardly sit on the floor next to the only window in your small space. Though the card had been slipped into the cork board next to your desk, something you’d be able to see each time you sat down.
You weren’t sure when you had ever communicated or hinted that you might be a flower person, but the bouquet staring at you from your office floor was distracting. You chose to do your morning charting after rounds in the conference room. Maybe then you would be able to think without a peony staring you down questioning if you were really doing the right thing.
Despite your own reservations, you trusted Jack when he said that Darcy wouldn’t be upset or angry with the way things had developed. No matter how traitorous your brain tended to be, you knew without a shadow of a doubt Jack would never tarnish the memory of his late wife. Which meant this weird guilt and uncomfortable transition was yours and yours alone to deal with.
God you missed Farah during moments like this. Even if she didn’t have some helpful advice, she would at least know how to make you laugh about it. Now you were just stewing in your anxiety while pretending to write up notes on an antibiotic regiment for an ICU patient. You started biting your nails again; it was something you hadn’t done since you were applying to medical school.
Your phone went off with a page. Thank god, you thought. Until you saw the department and corresponding attending.
“Shit, fuck, shit,” you grumbled angrily pushing your hair out of your face.
The trek from your eighth floor office to the basement of the hospital where the Pitt was located was quick. It was only a hallway and an elevator until you arrived at the back of the chaotic department. You saw Robby and Jack hunched over a computer. They didn’t often overlap–their respective expertise needed to be spread out, so it was rarely good when they appeared to be working on one problem together.
“You rang?” you asked the men as you approached.
“You’ll want scrubs for this,” Robby said without looking up.
A perk (well, for you) of an ID position instead of an ER position, both of which you were qualified for after you left MSF was that in ID you were mainly researching, doling out medication regiments, and keeping up with MRSA and sepsis protocols. This meant that you rarely need to wear scrubs when coming to work. You loved a good sweater.
“Do I get a hint about what I’m walking into?”
“We think it might be a particularly virulent strain of the flu,” Jack replied grimly. “Have you heard anything from the county?”
“No, and I haven’t heard anything about the flu being particularly bad this year, either,” you said pulling up your hair.
You sat your belongings on the counter next to them and walked back to the scrub dispersal machine. Within a few minutes you were back in black scrubs. You caught Jack’s eyes roving up and down your body. The scrub pants were a bit more snug that you would have preferred but beggars can’t be choosers. Apparently, Jack was unconcerned with the fit of the pants if his eyes on your ass had anything to say about it. It was almost claustrophobic to have his eyes glued to you like this. His gaze rested heavy on you and you weren’t sure you could handle it much longer.
“I’ll go in and get the swabs and blood tests. I’ll also do a physical examination and take a history,” you told Robby and Jack.
“A full history or normal ER history?” Robby asked.
You rolled your eyes, but couldn’t begrudge the question. He had limited space and too many patients. “Closer to ER history, but longer than what you would normally find acceptable.”
Robby sighed, “I guess that will be fine.”
“Generous,” you remarked, making Jack smirk.
“Jack’s on point for this case, but we have three more in the waiting room with symptoms. We’ve separated them as much as we can, but answers sooner rather than later would lower my blood pressure substantially," Robby told you.
“Got it. I’ll get you a differential asap,” you told him.
“The scrubs look nice on you,” Jack said after Robby was out of ear shot. He was leaning a little too close, elbow braced on the counter beside your laptop.
“Not at work,” you mumbled looking down at your laptop.
“Did you get the flowers?”
“Yes, and the card.”
“And?”
“Saturday?”
“It’s a date. Can I pick you up?”
Jack was leaning forward towards you, a spark dancing in his eye. On a different day, in a different mood, you might have read it as mischievous. Today, in this mood, feeling extremely off-kilter and unprepared for how your relationship had changed, it seemed over eager. It made you want to run.
“Sure, 7?” You forced yourself to say.
“Perfect,” he grinned. He shrugged off his jacket and held it out to you. “I know you get cold down here. Return it when you’re done.”
You grabbed the fleece jacket and he was gone. He had bounced off with the same restless energy that had encapsulated your interaction. The jacket in your hands was warm from his residual body heat; it smelled like him too. You couldn’t help but slide your arms into it. The nerves that had been building all day seemed to quiet. Behind his exuberance, the man you cared about was still there and still going out of his way to make sure you were taken care of.
The jacket accompanied you for the next hour and a half you spent in The Pitt and you were grateful for it. The ER was freezing on a good day and while you liked the cold, you preferred to be inside where it was warm instead of battling out the frigid winter temperatures in the basement. Every so often, you would turn your head and catch a whiff of the jacket. It felt like Jack was right next to you.
When you changed back into your normal clothes, you found Jack charting. You were halfway tempted to keep the jacket, but you saw the goosebumps on his arms and the idea of making him cold just for his jacket seemed silly. Plus, half of the pleasure was the residual body heat he left when handing it to you; that had long since dissipated, replaced with your own.
You draped it around his shoulders, and gave him a light squeeze.
“Tests have been taken and sent to the lab. I’ll keep you updated when I get the results back. Based on the symptoms, I don’t think it’s the flu. I think it’s a virus of some kind. They aren’t running a high enough fever.”
“Okay, thank you,” he said, looking up at you. He gave you a small smile and brushed the top of your hand with his fingers. “I’ll keep you updated if their status changes.”
“Make sure people mask up around them. There was a lot of coughing,” you said as your farewell.
It took you the rest of the day and most of the next to figure out what the mysterious ER patients had, but Robby was relieved when you delivered him the results and a clear treatment plan. They were not dealing with a new version of COVID or particularly vicious strain of the flu. It was a freak upper respiratory bacterial infection that was circulating in the Northeast. Once armed with the treatment information, Robby visibly relaxed and you were reminded why you like this job so much.
You were a doctor, yes, but really your job was to help other doctors and that was your favorite part. It was encouraging to know that you made another colleague’s life a little easier. It was nice to know that the patients were going to get clear information and a concise treatment plan. Today had been a good day; you felt good.
So why was your stomach still in shambles? Why did the thought about the weekend make your throat constrict? Wasn’t this what you wanted for so many years?
In a way, it wasn’t. You hadn’t lied to Jack about the way your feelings manifested. They were so ancillary to your everyday life, it wasn’t until they were brought up or triggered that you even remembered you fell in love with Jack Abbot fifteen years ago. You hadn’t let yourself fantasize or imagine or pretend. There had been no yearning, just the quiet acceptance that you would always love this steadfast, kind, and peculiar man.
So there had never been any wishful thinking about what could have been. You never thought about what it would be like for him to take you on a date or to kiss you—that wasn’t exclusively true, there had been a handful of dreams and daydreams over the years, but they were always squashed as soon as you caught up with your brain. Now that you were facing down a date with a man; you worried it would crash and burn.
There was so much history between you. You weren’t sure how to go from friends with clear boundaries and roles, to...whatever this was. Jack had confessed he was falling in love with you and instead of being thrilled, it had made your knees buckle and panic over take your system. In a way, him seeing you the same way you saw him broke your heart a little bit. You were safe in your gilded cage where you’d locked these feelings away, but now they were out in the open and the air chafed them raw.
You spent the rest of the week on edge. More than one of your finger nails had been chewed to the quick and bled. You didn’t overlap with Jack for the rest of the week and couldn’t help but be grateful. Your friendship was not one of phone calls and texting. Both of you preferred to see each other in person. This meant that most of your week was absent from the man so frequently plaguing your thoughts.
When Saturday rolled around, you spent an ungodly amount of time standing in front of your closet before pulling on a basic black dress. It was one that clung in the right places, but the fabric was soft and worn. It looked good but felt even better. It hadn’t snowed recently so you wore nicer boots than your standard thick winter ones. The heel clicked and it made you feel a little bit more in control.
You paced while waiting for Jack. There was going to be a divot in the floor of your entry way where you had walked the length back and forth. Hank, ever the perfect companion, laid in the doorway to your living room watching and supporting from afar. Your nerves were running haywire and you worried that if you didn’t calm down, you’d start shaking.
Before you could permanently destroy the flooring in your home, a knock sounded at your door. Hank bounded down the entryway and let out an excited bark that confirmed exactly who was on the other side.
You opened the door and…wow.
Jack Abbot cleaned up nicely. You rarely saw him in anything fancier than a ratty pair of jeans. Tonight, he wore a white button up with his winter coat over it. His paints were dark charcoal and tight across his thighs. Even with the uneven tilt in his hips–he had been putting off going to his prosthetists for a while–you couldn’t help but be in awe of the wiry muscle he had built up over the years. The collar of the shirt was open just a hint to see a dusting of wiry grey hair. This is why you never let yourself fantasize.
Having this image of Jack Abbot in your head would have kept you awake at night. It was going to keep you awake tonight. Even though you knew that you could “have him” it still felt weird to allow yourself the luxury of swooning over him. You always found him attractive, from the moment he stood in front of you with blood on his cheek and fire in his eyes in Syria, you’d known he was your type: intense, blunt, thoughtful.
But he had been married. He had been safe territory only ever as your friend. So you never let your mind wander. You never pictured his hands on your waist or his mouth on your throat. You built walls, you stored those thoughts in a locked box. You convinced yourself you did so out of respect, and perhaps that was part of it. But perhaps it was also about survival. Imaging what it would have been like to have him when he was so unattainable would have irreparably haunted you for the rest of your life. It still might.
Because if you let yourself out of your locked box, out from behind the walls you erected over a decade ago, you weren’t sure you could protect yourself. Was the chance of such heartbreak worth the risk of a potential with him? What if you lost him all together? What if the breakup was so painful neither of you could overcome the grief? You blinked, desperately trying to keep yourself from spiraling.
“You look…” Jack trailed off.
“Yeah, same,” you managed, a little choked.
“The dress is…it looks amazing on you.”
“It has pockets,” you said weakly, making Jack laugh.
“Grab your coat, the truck is running already,” he said.
You kissed the top of Hank’s head and pulled on your coat. The dress went down past the knee high boots but you found yourself grateful you added a pair of leggings underneath as you stepped out into the chilly winter air. Jack beamed at you as you both stood on the porch. With delicate hands, he zipped your coat up and let his hand trail down your arm. It made your lungs freeze in your chest.
He opened the car door for you and in the few seconds it took him to jog around the front to the driver’s side you realize he had cleaned it out since the last time you were in it. Based on the vacuum lines you spied on the carpet, the detail had been recent. It warmed something in your heart you couldn’t bear to name just yet.
“Ready?” He asked.
You nodded and asked, “Where are we going?”
“Some French bistro Robby recommended,” Jack said. “Needed reservations and everything.”
“Fancy,” you replied softly. In a different world you might have joked with him but the leaden feeling in your stomach hadn’t eased.
The French bistro was small and warm, air humming with soft music and clinking glassware. Jack held the door for you, his palm hovering at the small of your back but not quite touching. You were seated at a corner table set with flickering candles and linen napkins that felt much too formal.
Jack tried. He launched into a story about a patient who had come into the ER convinced he’d been poisoned by his neighbor, it had even had dramatic reveal that the patient had in fact been poisoned but by his wife. You nodded, smiled faintly, but the words caught in your throat every time you tried to follow up. The silence that fell after his laugh faded stretched too long, until he cleared his throat and reached for his water glass.
“How’s work?” he asked, as though he didn’t already see you in the hospital once or twice a week.
“Busy,” you said simply, fiddling with the edge of your napkin.
“Yeah, same.” He chuckled, but it sounded forced.
The entrees arrived and you focused on the food, grateful for something to do with your hands. Jack kept tossing out threads of conversation—new hospital gossip, a movie Robby had made him watch, a memory from med school—but everything died between you. The warmth you’d sometimes found in quiet moments with him wasn’t here; this silence was brittle and almost suffocating.
When the server asked about dessert, Jack shook his head quickly, glancing at you with a strained smile. You just folded your napkin on the table. The ride back was no better—Jack tapping the steering wheel while you stared out at the blur of winter lights.
When he finally pulled into your driveway it was barely 9pm. The date hadn’t even been two hours long.
“That sucked,” Jack said.
For the first time that night you laughed, the tension began to leak from your body and the truck felt less like a prison cell.
“Not our best work. Not my best work.”
“What happened? Did I do something?” Jack asked hesitantly.
You shrugged. “It’s just hard to go from nothing to this, I think. Also the flowers freaked me out.”
“I came on too strong,” Jack realized. You nodded.
“Little bit.”
“Can I make it up to you?” He asked and the pleading in his voice made sure there was no way you could say no.
“Sure.”
“Can I come in, order us some truly unhealthy food and we can watch that shitty show you like so much?”
“It’s not shitty,” you immediately protested, “but yeah. I think that sounds like a much better idea.”
And it was. After the food arrived, Jack gave you first pick of the wings, and it made your cheeks warm. For a couple of hours, it felt normal. You sat side by side, joking about the characters, about hospital shenanigans, about Hank’s prize winning puppy dog eyes. It was shaping up to be an overall positive evening until Jack looked at you during the credits of the last episode and asked,
“Can I ask you something and you won't get upset at first?”
“Oh, hate that,” you replied.
Jack had since unbuttoned part of the starched shirt and the thing undershirt beneath was poking through. It did nothing to hide the muscles of Jack’s chest. There was no longer a moratorium on staring, but you still couldn’t let yourself. He had turned to face you on the couch.
Still in your dress, you had tucked your knees up under yourself and so you turned to face him as well. You weren’t quite touching each other but were less than a few centimeteres away from the other. You could smell the cologne on Jack and it smelled comforting and familiar despite the unnerving question.
“Please?”
“Okay, you can ask,” you said hesitantly.
“How did you manage not to say anything for fifteen years? Because I couldn’t manage a month,” he asked quietly.
“You were married,” you replied quietly. He nodded and looked away. You found yourself missing the intense stare.
“But not always.”
“No, not always,” you agreed.
“So why not, later? I know you said because I was depressed and, you know, suicidal, and I was. But, I haven’t been that bad for awhile, so why not–? Did it…was it…” he trailed off.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to ask me,” you said quietly.
Any ambient noise had been sucked out of the room at his question. Even Hank’s soft snores had gone silent. Jack was still facing you, but his eyes were looking at his lap where his hands fiddled with the wedding ring still on his finger. It was never something you were going to ask him to take off.
“I think maybe I’m not asking anything,” he finally said. “I think I’m angry with you for not saying anything.”
“Oh.”
That surprised you.
“I think I’ve cared about you like this for a while and I just hadn’t slowed down enough to realize. I think I’m angry that there was time we missed because you weren’t willing to let me in,” he told you in a hoarse whisper. Jack sounded more heartbroken than angry.
“I don’t know what to say to that, honestly,” you admitted. “I thought I was doing the right thing for both of us.”
“Why should you get to make that choice for me, though?”
Well, fuck.
“I hadn’t thought of it that way. It always just felt like, well, my problem.”
“Problem?”
“I would like to re-visit the fact you were married,” you reminded him. “And then your wife died. It’s not exactly like I’ve been carrying a torch for you while you remained single this whole time.”
“No, I guess not,” he sighed. “I just don’t know how you could view this as a problem.”
“It’s not that simple, Jack,” you said.
“Try to make it easier for me then, because for the past five years I’ve been more than functional,” he said sharply. You didn’t miss the brittle tone in his voice.
You rubbed your fingers over your sternum, trying to ease the ache that had been building in your chest as he looked at you with raw hurt scrawled on his face. This is what you were trying to avoid.
“It had been so long at that point, that the chances of you feeling the same way seemed beyond farfetched,” you started.
Jack scoffed, a wounded sound. “So you decided for both of us.”
“I decided for me,” you corrected softly. “Because I knew I couldn’t take it.”
“Take what?” he asked, frustration sharpening the words. “Rocky, we’ve survived war zones, death, our own brains—what could be worse than any of that?”
You hesitated.
“This,” you whispered. “Wanting you and losing you.”
Jack blinked. He looked as if you’d physically struck him.
You swallowed. “It was one thing to love you quietly. To love you knowing you were my friend, knowing that was safe. I could live with that. But if I told you—and you didn’t feel the same—I don’t think I would have recovered. I couldn’t lose you, Jack. Not even a version of you.”
His jaw tensed, eyes going glassy with something fierce and aching. “You think I would’ve left you?”
You shook your head slowly. “No. I think you would’ve stayed. And I think it would’ve killed me if had to watch you move on with someone else.”
Jack went very still.
His voice, when it came, was barely a breath. “You think so little of me?”
Your eyes widened. “What? No—Jack, that’s not—”
He shook his head, the motion jerky. “You think I wouldn’t try? You think I wouldn’t fight? You think I’d look at you—you—and feel nothing?”
The heartbreak in his voice made your chest cave in.
“It wasn’t about you,” you tried. “It was about me. I didn’t trust myself to survive the fallout. You’re already—God—you’re already one of the most important people in my life and I didn’t want to risk that on a maybe.”
Jack stared at you like he was unraveling. His next words came out cracked, small, desperate.
“You didn’t think I was worth the risk? You don’t think I felt the same way these past few weeks. The terror that if you didn’t feel the same way we couldn’t go back to what we were? I…god, I care about you so much, I can’t keep it to myself. And I don’t understand how you could. You always go for what you want. Why not this? What about me wasn’t enough for you?”
You squeezed your eyes shut. “Jack. I don’t know how to tell you that this wasn’t about you.”
The TV had long since turned black, the room only illuminated now by a couple lamps that did more to add shadows than any light. Jack’s hands sat clenched tightly on the thighs of his pants as he refused to make eye contact with you.
“But it was. Because at first there was my marriage and then I was…suicidal, but there had been so many good years where you could have said something. We could have tried this before I felt so–” he trailed off.
“So?” you prompted terrified of the answer.
“Angry. Bitter. Resentful.”
Your fingers curled into the couch cushion at the sting of the words. Jack’s breath huffed out of him. You watched him struggle—battling between understanding and the deep, childlike wound of not being chosen. He scrubbed a hand over his mouth, then pressed his thumb at the corner of his eye as if to physically hold something in.
“I don’t know what to say, other than I am so sorry I hurt you,” you managed quietly. You couldn’t look at him, so kept looking at your raw and nail bitten hands.
“If I hadn’t said anything, would you have?”
“If nothing changed, no. I would have kept it to myself,” you said, softly.
Jack was silent, but his jaw clenched. “I don’t know why I asked that when I knew the answer and I knew the answer would upset me.”
“I’m sorry,” you said quietly.
“I don’t want an apology,” he snapped. “I want to understand how you could live your life so closely intertwined with mine and never think I could feel this way about you. I want to understand why you thought I would treat you so poorly it would break your heart.”
“It isn’t that simple,” you started. You curled your knees against your body, feeling to vulnerable to sit any other way.
“It is!” He exclaimed. “You didn’t trust me. You didn’t trust me with your grief. You didn’t trust me your feelings. What have I done to show you that you can’t trust me? Is it just me? Am I untrustworthy?”
“No! No, Jack,” you said. You reached out to touch his arm on instinct, but he flinched away before you could make contact. “You have your faults, but trustworthiness isn’t one of them.”
“Then help me understand why. I’ve seen you face down scarier and powerful people than me on a bad day without flinching. But I’m different? That’s…you’re a coward,” he said shortly, angry.
“I am,” you admitted. “I am a coward. I love you and I was too scared to be told no, but I was also scared to be told yes.”
“Why?”
“Because of this!” You said gesturing helplessly between you both. “This sucks! I feel like I’m on a date with a stranger and it shouldn’t feel like that, right?”
“I don’t know,” Jack replied, the fight seemed to have blown out of him.
He leaned back, one hand rubbing the space above his brow as if warding off a headache. Silence fell like a sandbag. Neither of you looked at the other. You picked at your thumbnail until it stung. Jack’s leg bounced restlessly. Hank shifted on the floor, sensing the tension but not understanding it.
“Do you think feelings are enough?” You asked after a bout of suffocating silence.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…” you trailed off picking at the nail on your thumb. “We care about each other, sure. Maybe even love each other. But is that enough? We seem to be remarkably good at hurting each other like this.”
“I don’t know,” Jack replied.
He reached over and grabbed your hand with his. There was emotion in his voice you were unprepared for. When you looked over at him he had his eyes closed and head tilted up towards the ceiling like he was trying to keep tears from falling. Maybe this was a colossal mistake. Weren’t first dates meant to be full of butterflies and laughter? This evening had just been awkward and full of hard conversations.
“I don’t know if I could handle you breaking my heart,” you said quietly horrified at the way your voice broke.
“Is that not what this feeling is?” He asked with a mournful smile.
“I think we both know it’s not.”
At first, Jack didn’t reply. Then his posture collapsed. His eyes were back on you and for one terrifying second you saw the fight leave him. He looked older and tired. Like he was about to gracefully bow out of the clusterfuck you both created.
But he took a deep breath and then slowly straightened. It was amazing watching his brain work through the nuances of his posture alone. He re-laced his hand in yours, holding tighter. He looked at you with clarity and stubbornness.
“I don’t think I’m ready to give up,” Jack finally said.
“Jack–”
“I know,” he interrupted. He pivoted on the couch so he was propped up on one knee and grabbed your face in both of his hands. His eyes bored into yours. His attention wholly transfixed on you used to be a dream, now it made you cringe. “I know, but I told you when we started this that I’d believe enough for both of us and I am a man of my word.”
His thumbs gingerly swept the soft skin across your cheeks and he took a deep breath before continuing, “You are tenacious and brilliant and tough as hell. The fact that you even humored a broken mess like me is astounding. I can’t pretend I understand why you chose what you chose, but what ifs don’t change anything. You deserve to be wanted. And I want you.”
“I want you, too,” you managed; your heart was pounding in your chest.
“Give me one more chance to make you feel special and if it crashes and burns again, we’ll say we tried. That’s your thing, right? Trying?”
“I don’t like it when you turn my words on me,” you replied, quietly.
He smiled a soft smile and said, “Let me be the brave one, okay? I can take it.”
You found yourself nodding. “Okay.”
-- -- --
There were no grand gestures that followed. Instead, small things that reminded you of Jack followed. When you were paged into the ER the next week Jack wasn’t on shift, but he had conscripted Robby into handing you a simple folded up sticky note.
“I don’t want to know,” Robby replied, already sounding exhausted.
“How do you know it’s bad?”
“He’s a bad influence on you,” Robby stated.
It surprised a laugh out you. “Am I not a good influence on him?”
“No,” Robby replied shortly. “Whatever weird dance you both have going on is going to give me more grey hairs.”
“Fuck off,” you said. “I’m going to send Dr. Banks if you’re not nicer to me.”
“See? Bad influence. You know I hate Dr. Banks,” Robby replied.
“That is a fair point, actually,” you replied.
“Take the note. Go do your job. Don’t let a super bug take over my ER, please,” he said walking away.
“Aye aye, Captain!” You called to his retreating form. He flipped you off as he walked away making you snicker.
Around the corner, as unobtrusively as possible, you opened the bright yellow sticky note and the only thing inside was a hastily scribbled heart that had Jack's name signed at the bottom. When you got back to your office it replaced the card that came with the flowers. There was something about the simple note that made you smile more than any bouquet or expensive date ever could.
On days when Jack worked night shifts but you weren’t on call, you rarely overlapped. Most mornings you would arrive right after he left. So you weren’t expecting to find him in your office. He was sitting in your office chair studying your cork board next to your desktop. On your desk were two cups, one had clearly been Jack’s but the other had a plastic stopper in it to keep it warm.
“Good morning,” you said.
“Good morning,” he replied, not taking his eyes off of the board. “I forgot about this picture.”
You walked around your desk to see what he was looking at. It was a photo of the two of you taken shortly after you left MSF and took a part-time job at PTMC while caring for Farah. You and Jack were both looking at the camera with goofy smiles on your faces.
“It’s one of my favorites,” you replied leaning against your desk next to him.
He turned to face you. “I see you got the note.”
“Much to Dr. Robinavitch’s chagrin, he did deliver it,” you snorted.
“I got so much shit for that,” Jack chuckled.
“Worth it?”
“Yeah, especially now that I know it has a place of honor in your office.”
“It made me smile,” you told him.
He gave you a tired smile and let out a sigh.
“How was your shift? Are you okay?”
“Mostly,” he replied, shrugging. “Not your problem.”
“Jack, I’m still your friend, please tell me,” you said, reaching for him.
“There wasn’t one thing,” he sighed. “It was just a long shift and I missed you.”
He pulled you over to him and wrapped his arms around your thighs, pillowing his head against your stomach. You felt his exhale against your blouse. The arms around your thighs were tight, but you knew you could pull away if you wanted. Instead, you relaxed your body and ran your fingers through his curls. They were damp from whatever the night had entailed, but based on the hum Jack released, the contact was welcome.
It was strange to touch Jack like this. It was strange to be touched by Jack like this. It wasn’t sexual by any means, but it was perhaps the most intimate contact you both had shared. Rather than allowing yourself to panic or ruminate or ruin whatever this moment was, you took a deep breath and continued to rake your nails across his scalp.
He exhaled before pulling back. When his eyes lifted to yours, you caught the look on his face, and it knocked the air out of you. Sitting there on his face, plain as day was unguarded want. Absolutely unfiltered, as if exhaustion had stripped him of every layer of restraint.
You blinked, stunned, your hand still tangled in his damp curls. The sight made your chest tighten in a way you weren’t ready for. For years, you’d disciplined yourself not to want this, not to see him this way, not to imagine what it would be like if he ever looked back. And now, here it was—on his face at work of all places.
The pull was undeniable, but so was the guilt that shadowed it. Darcy’s memory hovered at the edges, and you could still feel the weight of all those years you’d told yourself this could never happen. You swallowed down panic and stepped back. Your legs knocked against the desk and Jack pulled away. He stood, but still looked so…vulnerable, that you couldn’t help but lean forward and place a soft kiss against his cheek.
Your lips met the faint day old stubble along his jaw. This was beyond your comfort zone, but you couldn’t ignore the effect he had on you. It was meant to be quick, only a small gesture, but you felt him still under the touch—his breath stuttering, his hand instinctively gripping yours. When you drew back, the imprint of his skin lingered against your mouth, and his eyes found yours with a look so unguarded that it left you even more unsteady than the kiss itself.
He cleared his throat and slid past you towards the door to your office.
His cheeks were awash with color and he looked almost bashful as he said, “I’ll let you get started with your day.”
“Sleep well, Jack,” you replied as he opened the door.
“No chance of that now,” you thought you heard him say as he left.
-- -- --
The second date was far more successful. Jack took you, along with Hank, to a holiday festival. It was the exact amount of cheesy and wholesome that you liked. There were enough activities that neither of you felt the pressure to be “on” during the date, instead there were carolers, make your own ornaments, markets, and plenty of food and drinks to choose from.
You found yourself leaning into Jack’s touch instead of away from it. There were more laughs and smiles that night than there had been in your relationship for weeks. By the time you both headed home, his hand was clasped within you while Hank bounded beside you both. Your dog had seemed perpetually pleased at Jack’s increased presence.
With surprisingly little cajoling, Jack had even managed to get Hank to wear a pair of elf ears long enough to get a picture of the two of you. He didn’t think you saw, but from the corner of your eye—semi-pretending to be distracted by a light display—you saw him put the photo as his phone background.
By the time you both managed to pile back in Jack’s truck, you were pleasantly warmed and smiley. The anxiety that had been perpetually building in your gut seemed silly as you both joked about the off key carolers or slightly irreverent ornaments.
When Jack finally pulled into your driveway he said,
“Thank you for giving me another chance.”
You gave him a soft smile, even as Hank whined to be let out.
“It was a lot of fun,” you told him.
“I figured out where I went wrong the first time,” he said conversationally.
“Oh?”
“I wasn’t lying when I said you deserved someone to make you the center of their world, but I also didn’t hear you when you said that wasn’t what you wanted. You don’t want grand gestures,” he told you.
“No,” you said quietly.
With a smile, he picked up your hand from your lap and wove his fingers in between yours. His hand was slightly bigger than yours, and definitely rougher, but it was warm. His thumb ran along the back of your hand and you couldn’t help but stare at the contact. Slowly, giving you time to pull away, Jack brought your joined hands to his mouth and pressed a soft kiss to the back of your hand.
If this is how he felt when you kissed his cheek the other day, then you certainly understood why he looked so…open afterwards. His lips brushing against your skin sent shockwaves down your arm and you couldn’t help but shiver. WIth the hand that wasn’t intertwined with yours, he cupped your cheek and said,
“You deserve the world, but I’m more than happy to give you a silly little note with a heart on it.”
“I liked that note,” you managed.
He shifted forward, “I know.”
“It makes me smile,” you continued.
“I know.”
“...You make me smile,” you finished.
“Yeah?”
You could only nod. There were mere centimeters separating you both and Jack’s eyes kept glancing down to your lips. You had been around the block before, you knew what that meant. Your stomach did a somersault and you couldn’t tell if it was a good or bad nervous. Did you want this? Were you willing to let this man who had the capability to destroy you finally kiss you? You knew there was no going back to that.
When Jack leaned forward, instinct took over and you jerked back. Jack looked nothing short of crestfallen.
“Okay,” he said quietly. You could see the devastation on his face and you let out a quiet growl of annoyance at your own behavior.
“I’m sorry!” you said harshly. “I’m sorry! This isn’t you. It’s me. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Nothing is wrong with you,” Jack said, still holding your hand in his, though you noticed the grip had slackened.
“No, no. I just…” you trailed off letting out a harsh breath. Looking at Jack, you said, “You. Stay.”
“Okay?”
You let out a hysterical laugh at the look of both Jack and Hank cocking their heads at you in confusion.
Ignoring the chill in the air, you stepped out of the truck into the cold night air and covered your mouth with your scarf and let out a tiny scream of frustration. You could imagine Jack’s concerned face in the truck, but instead of looking at him you began a small circle of pacing.
“This could hurt,” you told yourself. “It probably will at some point. But that’s life. You can’t go around hoping you never get hurt. You don’t get good things that way and this could be a good thing. And you trust Jack. Motherfucker doesn’t do things by half. Deep breath, buck up. You can’t be a coward anymore.”
Taking a deep breath, and then another, you opened the car door and were greeted with the exact concerned face that you imagined Jack wearing just moments ago. Settling into the seat, you took a page out of his book and looked him in the eye–more eye contact than you would normally go for, but you wanted to be clear.
“I know that you think I’m naive sometimes, seeing the world the way I do. Always choosing to hope in the fact that something good can happen. But, it’s how I’ve survived; it’s how I’ve made a difference. You see yourself as a fighter Jack, and I do too. So, maybe I needed a bit of a pep talk, but I’m going to fight for this. Because…because fuck it!”
You leaned over and grabbed his face in your hands, his warm face was chapped from the cold but you were sure your frozen hands were more of a shock to his system than his warmth was to you. Your hands burned and you weren’t sure if it was from the temperature difference or from the sheer fact that you were about to kiss Jack Abbot and every nerve in your body was on fire.
Without letting your conscious brain feed you any more anxieties, you leaned forward and pressed your lips against his. The center console was pressing uncomfortably against your stomach, but it was so unimportant compared to the sound of surprise that Jack let out as he kissed you back. It was tentative at first, nothing more than a simple press of your lips on his. You pulled back slightly, but before you could go much farther, Jack’s hands–warm from the inside of the truck–wrapped around your waist and the back of your head, cradling your body.
The contact sent sparks through your skin, even through layers of clothing, as you realized that he was pulling you closer. His fingers curled in your hair and you gasped into his mouth, feeling him smile against your lips. His lips were chapped and tasted like hot chocolate and whatever cinnamon candy you both had before leaving the festival. Each movement against you, each breath and gasp set your body alight. You tried to memorize the feeling of his lips on yours; you felt drunk.
Before the kiss could proceed much further, a wet, cold nose pressed between you as Hank nuzzled his way into the front seat causing you both to separate. Jack looked bewildered, but you couldn’t help but let out a small laugh that eventually turned into full on cackling. Hank’s tail wagged as he licked at Jack’s frozen, surprised face eliciting even more laughter from you.
“You’re the worst,” Jack said to Hank, scratching under his chin. But there was a small smile on the man’s face.
“He looks so proud of himself,” you laughed. You knew that the situation wasn’t quite as funny as you were finding it, but part of your laughter allowed a release of all the tension you’d had curled in your body for the past month since learning of Jack’s feelings.
“He really does,” Jack replied fondly, but he was looking at you. “That was one hell of a pep talk you gave yourself.”
You smiled and looked away from him and shrugged, “I guess, I got tired of being scared.”
Jack grinned and traced the lines of his lips with his fingers. Something about that movement felt so endearing to you, watching him be just as impacted by a simple kiss as you had been. Jack grinned. Jack joked and was sarcastic. But rarely did Jack have a small sweet smile on his face. Right now, however, he was looking at you with the most gentle expression you’d seen him hold and it was like every fear and anxiety was briefly silent.
They would be back, of course. But for now, you smiled back and leaned back in.
-- -- --
The first kiss didn’t flip a switch, but it made you less hesitant and better able to quiet the anxiety when she reared her ugly head. But it wasn’t until your first real fight that you realized, maybe the other shoe wasn't going to drop.
“I don’t understand what we’re even fighting about!” Jack exclaimed exasperated.
You ground your teeth. You actually didn’t either. It clearly showed on your face because Jack said,
“Oh my god you don’t even know why we’re arguing.”
“I—“
“You’re so annoying sometimes,” he grumbled sitting next to you on the couch. “Did you think picking a fight with me would push me away.”
For a moment you were riled. It was an offensive and childish accusation. The more you thought about it, the more accurate it seemed to be. Fuck.
“I think I did. Oh my god, I’m the worst,” you realized.
To your surprise Jack snorted and then started laughing.
“It’s so nice not being the only person with weird baggage in this relationship. But Jesus, Rocky, stop picking fights please.”
“I’ll do better,” you said.
Jack smiled at you and said, “I believe you.”
He leaned over and pressed a small kiss to your lips. Physical contact with Jack wasn’t as frightening or anxiety inducing anymore. You found yourself leaning into his warmth and comfort.
“Will you watch the new John Wick movie with me?” He asked.
“But you shit on how unrealistic they are the whole time,” you complained.
“Yeah of course I do. He wouldn’t survive any of that. But it’s still fun. Please?” He asked.
“Fine but you’re buying dinner.”
“Deal,” he grinned.
Neither of you had made the move to have sex. It was odd; you weren’t a prude by any means but something about having sex with Jack was daunting. You cared more than ever if he found you pretty or alluring. You worried about having bad breath or the weird razor rash that sometimes popped up on your inner thighs.
As much as neither of you had made the move toward sexual intimacy, it had not meant a lack of physicality. At work, no one was any the wiser. There were no superfluous touches or contact. Instead, when Jack would come to your place or vice versa, he was always touching you. His hand in yours or on your lap. He would wrap and arm around you and hold you tightly or sometimes curl himself into your lap.
You likened him to a needy cat—he wanted contact and attention even if it was as simple as being pressed up next to each other as you both watched TV. You had, almost immediately, placed a moratorium on the god forsaken police scanner. This meant the nights you spent together were spent curled in each other’s embrace and you would bet money it lowered your blood pressure.
-- -- --
While some key people and HR knew about your relationship, it was not something either of you were keen to advertise. But sometimes, you needed a hug and you had promised to let Jack in.
“Can you spare Jack for 10 minutes?” You asked Dana. Jack was working the odd day shift today.
“Sure,” Dana said. You didn’t think your day had shown on your face but the ease with which Dana agreed to your request begged to differ.
“I’ll be in the north stairwell. It’s not an emergency,” you said.
“Uh-huh,” she replied eyeing you up and down. “You might want to fix your makeup before going back upstairs then.”
“Fuck,” you said. The was a small crack in your voice. Without sparing a second glance Dana handed you a small single packet make up wipe. “Christ, you’re Mary Poppins.”
“You flatter,” she replied grinning.
“Thank you,” you replied quietly. Dana just nodded as you beat a hasty retreat while pulling out your phone to see what damage your day had done to your makeup.
You were only in the stairwell for a few minutes before Jack walked in. You had sat down on the stairs and wiped off all the makeup that you had so precariously placed that morning. You were grateful for it, because the moment you saw Jack you immediately teared up.
“Hey, hey,” he said rushing over to you. “What’s wrong?”
“Long story,” you said sniffling trying to regain some amount of composure. “Can I just…get a hug?”
“Course, c’mere,” he said, pulling you up.
The embrace was everything you’d hoped it would be. It felt like curling in front of a fire with a blanket and a book. It held the comfort and protection that you had been responsible for providing for yourself for many years at this point. Now, you collapsed into his arms and buried your face against his neck.
His stubble scratched lightly against the side of your face. You felt a few tears leak out and you breathed in and out against him. With slow, deliberate movements, Jack rubbed your back occasionally murmuring, “I got you,” as you sniffled against him. Despite the lack of words shared between you, being held in Jack’s arms made the day feel bearable.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I lost a patient I really liked,” you said quietly.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said cupping the back of your head softly as we continued to rub circles on your back.
“I just needed a hug,” you continued.
“Happy to oblige,” Jack nearly whispered.
“You smell really bad,” you said tearfully.
“It’s been a messy shift,” Jack replied laughing.
“Oh gross, I can’t believe you hugged me in my nice clothes,” you grumbled, not letting him go. His arms tightened around you and he said,
“This is what you get for not wearing scrubs in a hospital,” he replied, placing a soft kiss on your temple.
“I’m behind a desk seventy percent of my day,” you replied, soaking in the feeling on his body pressed against yours.
“But not today?” He asked.
“No, today I was in peds ICU,” you told him.
“Oh,” Jack said softly. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“It hasn’t been a fun morning,” you said, attempting a joke but it fell flat as more tears blurred your vision.
“You have me for at least another five minutes,” Jack told you. “Longer if Dana has anything to say about it.”
You let the tears flow as Jack kept his arms around you. The pain and anguish of losing your patient—one you and the team of other doctors had worked so hard to save—felt bearable with Jack holding you. It wasn’t just you holding up your world anymore, but he was there to help.
“Will you come over tonight?” You asked sniffling. You knew the ten minutes you asked for was nearly up and despite the fact you wanted to go home and cry in bed, you also had other patients and duties to attend to.
“Anytime you want,” he said.
“I know we said no kissing at work, but…” you trailed off.
He cupped your face and wiped away your tears with his thumbs.
He pressed a soft chaste kiss on your lips and then a lingering one on your forehead.
“I’ll see you tonight, okay?”
-- -- --
“What do you want to do?” Jack asked after he showered and found you lying on top of your bed. You were still fully dressed. It seemed you hadn’t moved since he’d stepped into your en suite.
Now that he spent so much time at your place, some of Jack’s accessibility equipment had migrated into your home, including the walking crutch he used once his prosthetic came off. He was wearing a pair of drawstring shorts—clearly cut from sweatpants—and no shirt.
You froze, a surprised wheeze releasing from your lungs.
Jack was not a particularly tall or broad man, but he was dense—made of muscle and scar tissue and enough stubbornness to challenge a house and win. His shoulders were thick with muscle just like his chest; visible veins ran down his arms. Damp curls clung to his temples, water still glistening on his collarbone. The silver in his chest hair caught the lamplight like frost.
You didn’t even realize you were staring until his brows pinched.
“You good?” he asked, concern in his voice.
“Yes,” you said too fast, cheeks burning. Your voice wobbled. You prayed he didn’t notice.
His gaze lingered, searching your face, before shifting away just a little. He stood awkwardly for a second, weight shifting on his crutch. His free hand brushed unconsciously over the raised scar tissue, as if making sure everything was as expected. He didn’t say anything, but for a moment, he seemed tense. Vulnerable in a way he rarely allowed himself to be.
He cleared his throat.
“Want help undressing?” he asked casually.
“Huh?” you nearly squeaked.
He blinked. “You had a bad day,” he said slowly, gently. “Do you want me to grab your pajamas?”
“Oh. Yeah. Yes, that would be helpful.”
He gave you another concerned look, as if making sure you actually meant it, that your weird behavior wasn’t indicative of something more concerning. Then, he limped over to your dresser—favoring his residual limb the tiniest bit more than usual. Without asking which drawer to open, he picked the one with your pajamas and tossed a big T-shirt at you. Your old college shirt—thin, oversized, all but worn to threads.
He meandered back to the bed and pulled you into a sitting position. His hands were warm on your hips. With practiced ease, he tugged your sweater over your head—and for a second you tensed, instinctively bracing for embarrassment.
But Jack didn’t gawk. He moved gently, like he’d been undressing you for years. He slipped off your bra and slid the T-shirt over your head and helped you guide your arms through.
You had expected it to feel clinical, but it felt warm in an unexpected way.
Frankly, it was weird being so taken care of while blatantly eye-fucking the naked torso of your…boyfriend? Lover? Something. Whatever the label was, you were openly ogling him—the ridges of muscle, the scars, the soft silvery hair trailing down his stomach, the way the lamplight shadowed every line of him.
He nudged your shoulders and you let yourself fall back against the bed. Part of you wanted him to unbuckle the crutch and just crawl over you, caging you against his body and kissing you until you forgot how to breathe.
Instead, he unbuttoned your work pants with careful fingers and tapped your hips.
“Lift,” he murmured.
You did. The pants slid down your legs, leaving you in plain cotton boyshorts. Unflattering, but comfortable and practical for a long day at work.
Jack’s eyes went dark.
He didn’t smirk or tease. Instead, he gazed at you like he was memorizing the sight of you in bed. His Adam’s apple bobbed heavily as he swallowed, and he reached out, hands warm and large as they curled around the outsides of your thighs.
You felt a little like a deer being watched by wolf from the woods. But you desperately wanted that wolf to pounce.
He didn’t squeeze his hands against you. He didn’t drag you closer. He just touched, barely stroking his thumbs absently along your skin in slow, reverent passes. It made your heart skip a beat.
There was nothing overtly sexual about his hands on you like this, but his pupils were blown wide as he stared down at you, hungrily. The growing tension coiled beneath his skin like he was holding himself in check.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, clearing his throat. His voice was rougher than before. Not unaffected.
“Fine,” you lied, shrugging weakly. Your pulse was racing.
“Want to finish the Christmas movie we started the other night?” he asked.
“Yeah,” you said. “Can we watch it in bed? I don’t want to move.”
“Sure thing. Need anything before I lay down?”
“Nah, I have my water bottle.”
“Very millennial of you,” he muttered as he lowered himself to sit on the edge of your bed.
“I think it’s Gen Z with the water bottles,” you replied.
His hand went to the strap of his leg. He hesitated—just a second—glancing at you like he was checking for discomfort.
“Take it off,” you prodded.
“It doesn’t…” he trailed off, looking away from you.
“Your leg is a part of you. It doesn’t scare me. Also I’d be a piss-poor doctor if it did.”
Jack didn’t reply but unbuckled the prosthetic from the crutch. The moment the weight came off, he let out a barely audible sigh of relief.
“But we aren’t doctors right now and I just wanted to make sure that you weren’t bothered by it.”
You leaned over and placed your hand on his knee; his leg ended a few inches below.
“Not bothered in the least.”
You eased back down and patted the empty space opposite you. Jack had to crawl over you to reach it. There was a moment—brief, excitedly breathless—when he hovered above you, palms sinking into the mattress on either side of your ribs. His body trapping yours. His chest brushed against your bra-less chest. You could feel the warmth of him, smell the clean soap on his skin, see the uncertainty flicker in his eyes like he wanted to kiss you but wasn’t sure if he should.
He hovered.
You held your breath.
Then he exhaled and rolled onto his side next to you instead.
You tried not to feel disappointed.
Nestled in close, Jack pressed play, the movie washing the room in soft light. For a while, it felt deceptively normal—the kind of normal you used to have before everything shifted between you. But even in the quiet, you felt the way his body responded to you—his muscles tightening when your thumb brushed over the ridges of his abs, the subtle hitch in his breathing when your knee pressed lightly against his legs.
He tried to keep his arm casually draped over your shoulder, but every now and then his fingers flexed, tracing idle shapes on your upper arm as though fighting the urge to pull you even closer. He didn’t say anything, but the tension radiating off him was warm and coiled and hungry, and it made your pulse skip in ways you couldn’t disguise.
The bed shifted and you felt his hand dip just an inch lower on your waist—just enough for you to hold your breath. He froze like he’d been caught doing something untoward, then retreated, resting his palm safely against your ribs as though he were terrified of overstepping.
It disappointed you in a way you didn’t expect. He wanted you—every line of tension under your hand made that clear; however, he was holding himself back so hard it was practically painful.
The movie droned on, forgotten, and the quiet between you sharpened. You could feel every breath he took, the way his heart was beating just a little too fast under your cheek. He tried to act relaxed, but his body was telling another story. His fingers played with the hem of your shirt once, twice, like he was testing the temperature of water before diving in. You didn’t stop him. But when he realized you weren’t pulling away, he still withdrew—nervous, disciplined, uncharacteristically hesitant.
You wanted to touch him back. Really touch him. Not just the safe places. Not just his chest or his arm.
So you shifted, letting your hand trail over his stomach, following the defined line of muscle down, down—until you rested your palm on his thigh. The touch was still decent, but closer to sensitive places than you had touched much before. He inhaled sharply, blue eyes snapping down to where your hand lay warm against his skin. You felt him wrestle with himself—hope warring with restraint.
And then, slowly, deliberately, you moved your hand just a few inches further: onto the end of his residual limb.
Jack flinched so hard the mattress moved. His hand flew to your wrist instinctively. It was only a grip; he didn’t push you away. Still, his shoulders tensed, and for the first time all night, he wouldn’t look at you.
“Don’t—” he said, voice low and strained. “You don’t have to—”
“I know,” you said softly.
His breath stuttered. You didn’t move your hand away. You didn’t press harder. You simply kept your palm there. Eventually, your fingers traced small patterns on his skin. Slowly his grip slackened. Some of the tension remained, but he was no longer fighting the urge to run.
Jack’s eyes stayed fixed on the TV, but he wasn’t seeing it. You felt a twitch in his thigh. His jaw clenched, the muscles feathering under his skin, and there was something raw in his face that made your heart ache. He seemed caught between shame and longing—like part of him needed you to stop before he came undone, and another part of him needed this more than he could admit.
When he finally spoke, his voice was barely there. “It’s not—pretty.”
You swallowed. “Jack.”
His eyes flicked to you, vulnerable and sharp-edged all at once.
“I want you,” you whispered. “All of you.”
He winced but let go of your wrist. His hand hovered over yours for a beat, trembling, before lowering to rest on top of it.
You squeezed his thigh gently. His breath escaped in a shaky exhale, and beneath your palm you felt the tension begin to melt—bit by bit—like ice thawing under the warmth of the summer sun. He turned toward you, and there was so much emotion there you could barely stand it.
He leaned forward just a fraction, like gravity was pulling him toward you. His hand slid up your side, lingering on your waist, then settled—hesitant—against your ribcage. He touched you, but barely. You could feel the heat of his palm even through your shirt.
“You’re sure?” he asked quietly.
You nodded once, your own fear curling in your stomach like a fist. “I’m sure.”
The hesitation in him released.
He closed the distance, his forehead brushing yours first before his nose nudged your cheek in the gentlest move of affection. His lips barely grazed your temple, as though one wrong movement might shatter the moment completely.
“I love you,” he breathed.
And for the first time, your fear didn’t win.
Without overthinking, you shifted closer and tangled your legs with his—residual limb and all. His breath caught. You felt him go so still and then he melted, exhaling a sound so soft and happy it nearly undid you.
His arm curled fully around you, pulling you flush to his chest. No more polite distance. You were on him, against him, part of him.
The movie kept playing, but neither of you cared.
“I really enjoy this, you know?” Jack whispered by your ear as you both settled into the new position.
“Hmm?” you asked.
You were facing each other, bodies aligned under the covers, and Jack’s arm was snug around your waist, holding you close. In a way, you were grateful you’d never let yourself fantasize about a moment like this—because nothing your imagination could have conjured would have felt this sweet. Jack’s breath was a little warm and a little terrible, and somehow even that made you want to laugh and stay exactly where you were.
Shifting his arm, he slipped under your shirt, fingertips tracing light patterns across the small of your back. The gesture wasn’t even overtly sexual, but it sent tingles up your spine all the same. Outside, freezing rain rattled against the window, and the radiator clanged in the corner as it struggled to keep up with the cold. Even so, you were certain if the room had been freezing, Jack’s body would still be the warmest place to exist.
“Laying in bed with you, watching a movie, doing nothing,” he murmured.
One of your hands slid beneath his arm, mirroring the way he held you. His chest was bare and warm under your palm, and when you trailed your fingers down his spine, you felt the raised scars there—faint but unmistakable reminders of what he’d survived. He tensed, just for a moment, at the contact, but then exhaled and leaned into your touch like a stray dog who knew your hands to be kind.
“Romantic at heart, aren’t you?” you asked.
“I think I am. Hard not to be when I am in the bed of the prettiest woman in the state,” he said, pressing a soft kiss to your lips.
“Just the state?” you teased, smiling.
“Oh, so sorry,” Jack said with a quiet laugh. “The world.”
“Thank you,” you replied primly.
He huffed another soft laugh and kissed you again. Then again. Then again—quick, sweet pecks that made your heart flutter until you huffed a frustrated noise.
“Stop pulling back,” you grumbled.
“Make me,” he whispered, voice suddenly rough.
You leaned in to deepen the kiss, but he pulled away playfully. This time, you caught his bottom lip lightly between your teeth, a soft scrape. Jack groaned—a surprised, rough sound—and all the air left your lungs.
“How was that?” you asked, releasing his lip.
“Incentivizing,” he said, dazed.
You laughed, running your hand up his back and scratching lightly at the hair at the nape of his neck. He hummed into your mouth as he finally let himself kiss you deeper, tongue brushing gently against yours. Your anxiety flickered in the background like static—but you shut it out, focusing instead on the steady warmth of his palm on your back, the weight of his body pressed along yours, the quiet sounds he made into your mouth that felt like pure contentment.
Pulling away just enough to breathe, Jack murmured, “I think I could do this for hours.”
“Christ,” you huffed a laugh, noses brushing. “You are a cheesy romantic. I could only do this for an hour at most.”
“Rude,” he said, mock-affronted, nipping at your mouth.
“What can I say,” you answered between kisses along his jawline. “There’s a perfectly good neck here.”
Beneath your lips, you felt his pulse jump, and his grip tightened on your waist. You alternated featherlight touches with firmer bites, lingering at the sensitive spot just under his jaw. Jack let out a strangled laugh that melted into a low, unguarded groan as you sucked gently at his pulse point.
“Yeah,” he breathed. “This is great, too.”
“Glad you approve.”
You made your way back to his mouth, and this time when he tangled his arm tighter around your waist, there was nothing playful about it. His kisses turned hungry—less controlled, more frenetic. He shifted, half rolling you beneath him, but kept most of his weight off, as though instinctively trying not to overwhelm you.
His hand—previously trapped awkwardly between your bodies—slipped free and slid under your neck, cradling your head with surprising gentleness. His other hand trailed along your side, palm warm against your skin where your shirt had ridden up. He didn’t push boundaries—never strayed too high or too low—but the rough drag of his calloused thumb across your waist made you gasp anyway.
“Fuck,” you whispered, arching your neck as he mouthed at your throat. When his teeth scraped just under your ear, your whole body shivered.
“Feel good?” he murmured against your skin.
“So good,” you breathed.
“What about doing this for hours?” he teased, his smile vibrating against your neck.
“Sure, whatever you want,” you said as he nipped along the shell of your ear.
“Dangerous thing to promise a man,” he said with a low chuckle, voice thick with desire.
“Not promising a man,” you whispered, cupping his face and guiding his gaze back to yours. “Promising you.”
Jack went utterly still.
His sucked in air but didn’t exhale. His fingers froze where they gripped your waist. The humor vanished from his eyes, replaced by something stunned and awestruck. You watched his throat work as he swallowed, hard.
For a second, he didn’t speak. He just looked at you, really looked at you, like he was trying to memorize everything about this exact moment.
His voice, when it finally came, was barely a whisper.
“Jesus Christ, Rocky.”
And he kissed you like the words were the one thing he would never forget.
His leg, you weren’t sure which, slotted itself between your thighs, the pressure warm and solid, and you suppressed a shiver. He wasn’t even touching you where you were aching for it, but the implication was there. His weight, his heat, the way his breath hitched when your hips shifted even slightly.
You were wrapped around each other in a tangle of limbs and lips and wandering hands, so close you could no longer distinguish where your body ended and his began. Each movement dragged skin against skin, each breath came out shared, and the anticipation built low and hot inside you.
You splayed your fingers against his torso and slowly trailed them upward, mapping the planes of his chest like you had all the time in the world. The steady drum of his heartbeat thrummed under your palm. You brushed your thumb beneath one of his pecs and felt him dip lower to mouth at the tender spot at the base of your throat. When your thumb flicked gently over his nipple, his whole body went still against you—frozen, breath caught, muscles locked.
“No good?” you asked, sliding your hand away.
“Very good,” he croaked, voice deep and broken. “Don’t want to do anything you don’t want.”
“Jack,” you said softly. “Look at me.”
He hesitated for a beat—just long enough for you to realize how hard it was for him to lift his head—and then he pulled back, settling on the pillow so you were face to face again. You could see every detail: the blown pupils, the flush climbing his neck, the unhindered affection in his eyes that made you ache.
“Anything you’re willing to give tonight, I want.”
His breath caught. The arm looped beneath your neck was starting to cramp—his shoulder flexed with the strain—but he didn’t move it. He stayed, holding you like his life depended on having you this close.
“And if I’m willing to give everything?” he asked.
You smiled, leaning in to press a soft kiss to the tip of his nose. You watched with grinning satisfaction as color bloomed across his cheeks. “I want that, too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I really want you to touch me now, though,” you said.
He grinned, eyes darkening as if he’d been waiting his whole life to hear that. “Happily. Can I roll you on your back?”
“Sure,” you said, letting him guide you down into the mattress.
“God, you’re breathtaking,” he said.
You could feel his gaze sweep over you, slow and amazed. The blankets were twisted at the bottom of the bed, long forgotten, leaving you in just a ratty shirt and boyshorts. It wasn’t glamorous, but Jack looked at you like you were the most enticing thing he had ever seen. The tent in his shorts only reinforced the point.
“I think you’re beautiful,” you replied, warmth rising to your cheeks.
The flush already climbing his neck deepened. “You’re flattering.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t mean I’m lying. Did you not see me short circuit when you came out of the bathroom earlier?”
“I thought it was just a long day,” he said.
You hooked one leg over his good hip and pulled him down against you. His weight settled deliciously, pelvis aligning with yours, and you couldn’t stop the hum that vibrated in your throat. He was hard against your pussy—it was more than encouraging.
“It was, but I’m capable of higher thinking on bad days. Less so when you come out of my bathroom wet and shirtless.”
“Yeah?” he asked, breath hitching.
“Mm-hmm. I wanted to bite you,” you admitted.
He laughed and buried his face against your neck. The sound was weak but absolutely delighted. One of your hands found the back of his head, fingers tangling in short curls, and Jack let out a choked groan as his hips flexed, pressing harder into you. For a suspended moment, you both just lay there, chest to chest, breathing each other in. The noise of the world faded until there was nothing but body heat and safety and the realization that you had never felt as held as you did in his arms.
“You’re so soft,” he mumbled while mouthing at your shoulder.
“I think it’s the lotion you refuse to use,” you said.
He snorted and lifted his head, eyes heavy-lidded. “Doesn’t make what I said not true.”
“Okay, whatever,” you laughed.
You dragged him back down by the nape of his neck and kissed him slowly, relishing the feeling of his on yours. Your blunt nails grazed down his spine, and his entire body shivered against you. He sucked in a breath.
“Can I take your shirt off?” he asked.
You nodded, heart pounding, and let him help you peel it away. Left in just your underwear, your skin prickled under the cool air exposed, but the second his eyes landed on you, the nerves were nearly drowned by the heat in his expression. Jack looked thunderstruck. Kneeling between your thighs, he dragged his hands over your bare arms so lightly it left goosebumps in their wake.
“Can I touch?”
“Please,” you said, squirming under his gaze.
“I’m a lucky bastard,” he murmured, dipping down to press the softest kiss to your sternum.
Even knowing how loved and safe you were with him, fear of the vulnerability still crawled up your spine. But Jack’s hands soothed over your skin with such veneration that the fear melted, replaced by warmth and want. He palmed your breasts, thumbs brushing over your nipples before his mouth followed. Your back arched off the bed with a gasp, hands grabbing at his biceps.
God, his arms. You had always known he was strong—lithe, compact muscle built like a boxer—but feeling those arms flex under your grip? Something animal roared to life in your blood. You could feel yourself growing wetter at the thought of being held down by them.
“You’re so good at this,” you breathed. “Your arms. Christ, Jack.”
“Yeah?” he asked, another kiss to your sternum.
“Why do you keep doing that?” you asked.
“It’s where your heart is,” he said, like that explained everything.
“And?”
“And you let me in. I wanted to thank you for giving me a place to go,” he said.
Emotion punched the air from your lungs. To your horror, your eyes stung. “How fucking dare you say something so sweet.”
He grinned. “I may not be able to give you the universe or the world or more than a decent dinner, but I can give you my love.”
“You motherfucker,” you whispered, voice breaking as emotion balled in your throat. “I love you Jack Abbot, you romantic asshole.”
You grabbed his face and pulled him into a hard and certain kiss. One arm wrapped tight around his neck to hold him there, the other slid down his torso and toyed with the waistband of his shorts.
“Please let me touch you,” you said between kisses.
“Anything you want,” he replied haltingly, the words raw with devotion.
In between frantic kisses and the clumsy knock of teeth, your hand slipped beneath the waistband of his shorts—and you realized he wasn’t wearing anything underneath. The knowledge settled in your gut, filling it with zings of desire: he’d been like this all evening, easy to touch if you’d only reached. A sound escaped you that wasn’t quite a laugh and wasn’t quite a groan; Jack shuddered at the feel of your breath against his mouth.
He was braced over you, one forearm sunk into the mattress by your shoulder, the other hand cupping your breast like he was memorizing the peaks and valleys of your body. When his lips trailed down your throat again, you wrapped your fingers around his cock and squeezed.
“Fuck,” he breathed, abandoning any pretense of composure.
Burying his face into the crook of your neck like he was trying to hold himself together there, his hips jerked helplessly into your hand. The noise he made was dazed and grateful and immediately addictive.
“You feel so good,” you whispered, stroking him slow, luxuriant. “So hard for me.”
A shaky laugh broke in his throat. “You have no idea the self-control I’ve exhibited tonight with your stupid Winnie-the-Pooh shirt.”
“Winnie-the-Pooh?” you echoed, delighted despite yourself.
“Shirt, no pants,” he grumbled, reverent even while teasing. His mouth skimmed your collarbone. “I wanted to feel you so badly. To taste you. To learn what you sound like when you fall apart in my hands.”
“That’s so hot,” you breathed—and your rhythm faltered because now your own body was too keyed up to behave.
He groaned when your thumb circled lazily around the tip of his cock, his forehead pressing to your shoulder.
“Not as hot as your hand on me,” he managed, barely. “Neglected man, here.”
“Neglected, huh?”
“I wasn’t exactly…pursuing anything,” he said, the admission quiet.
“Am I the first?” The question slipped out before you decided if you wanted the answer.
“No,” he panted, and you felt the truth of it in the way he chose the words carefully. “There was a…mistake. Conference in 2019. I was drunk. I think I cried.”
“Oh, Jack,” you said, soft with sympathy, though a helpless puff of laughter betrayed you.
“Are you—did you just laugh at me?” He pinched lightly at your nipple and you squeaked.
“No?”
“You can’t laugh at me,” he said, laughing anyway, and the embarrassment melted right out of his voice.
“I’m sorry it was so bad,” you murmured, smoothing a hand over his jaw. “But I’m glad this—us—doesn’t have the same…expectations, I guess.”
“Hurdles, perhaps?”
“Hurdles,” you agreed, grinning. “Kinda slutty to hook up at a medical conference.”
“You suck,” he grumbled—then gasped when you tightened your hand around him and sped up your ministrations. “Never mind. You’re perfect. Keep doing that.”
At some point his shorts were gone, a forgotten heap somewhere near the foot of the bed, and you were nearly naked together. Every brush of skin was molten. You heard your own voice more than you expected; you poured your praise into his mouth, his shoulder, his hair. His body trembled above you, and you felt powerful and in love and a heady mix of desire and desperation.
He looked at you like you were a valuable painting on display at the Louvre. Every touch was followed by a declaration of care. It bordered on unbearable, yet you never wanted him to stop.
You didn’t realize you had been moving against the hard line of his thigh until he stilled you gently with a hand on your hip and slid your underwear off.
“I want to feel you,” he said, and it came out like a plea.
The underwear was gone. His knee slotted high between your thighs, and when you rocked down, your moan tangled with his. His hands bracketed your hips, guiding, supporting.
“God, you’re—” He broke off, voice rough with wonder. “You’re so—spectacular.”
“I could probably…” You tried to laugh but it sounded more like a heave. “I could probably finish like this. I’m—god—I’m really worked up.”
He nodded, pupils dark, rocking with you, drawing you close to the edge—then stopped. You whined, cheeks flushing, and he kissed the sound from your mouth.
“Sorry,” he said, not sorry at all. “I want to…can I—please?”
“What?”
“I want you to taste you on my tongue,” he said, so earnest. “I want to taste you so bad.”
“I’ve never…” You swallowed. “I’ve never finished from that.”
“That’s okay.” His hands slid lower, coaxing you down the bed with care. “Let me try. I want to learn you.”
The want in his voice pulled the ground from under your feet. “Yeah,” you whispered. “Okay. Yeah.”
He settled between your knees like a penitent, bending your legs to hook his arms beneath them, big hands anchoring high on your thighs. The feeling of his grip on your thighs was something you committed to memory. Apparently you had a thing for the way his strength felt when it was harshly gripping your body.
“Your arms are criminal,” you managed as his mouth mapped the inside of your knee, then toward your core, slow and unhurried.
“They’re strong enough to hold you tighter,” he said against your skin, grinning up at you.
You groaned. “That was painful.”
He just smirked, laughter and love dancing in the expression on his face.
“Ready?” he asked, and the teasing dropped out of his voice.
You barely nodded before the heat and softness of his tongue and mouth touched you. He was thorough in the way he was with everything: attentive, patient, determined. He listened with his mouth, adjusted with your breath, learned by the tremor in your thighs when his pace was right. The first time you gasped his name, his hands flexed on you like he was trying to control himself.
“Shit,” you hissed, spine arching. “Oh my god—don’t stop.”
He hummed something you felt more than heard. He sucked and licked at you in a way that showcased his adoration—saying to you without words: tell me what you need and I’ll give it. To your surprise, you felt the building of an orgasm deep in your body and your shaking intensified.
He broke away only long enough to say, voice ragged, “I want you to let go. For me.”
Your fingers found his hair and buried themselves.
“Hand,” you whispered, half-gone. “Give me your hand.”
He reached up without hesitation and you laced your fingers tight with his, grounding yourself there as his other hand, careful and sure, joined his mouth, deliberate and overwhelming.
He worked you like he knew you by heart and could recite it from memory: rhythm, pressure, angle, all tuned to elicit moans and gasps, while your hips chased him helplessly.
“Please,” you heard yourself say, surprised by the desperation in it. “Please don’t stop. I’m close.”
“Good,” he murmurs against you, and the word felt like a balm to your sensitive nerves. “Let go for me, sweetheart.”
The world narrowed to the slide of his mouth and the safety of his hand in yours. The climax arrived in a rush; for one suspended heartbeat you hovered there—and with an expertly laid suck, Jack pulled your orgasm from the depth of your body. Shocked at the sudden feeling, you cried out his name, your fingers clutching his like a lifeline. He didn’t stop until you pushed weakly at his shoulder, laughing in disbelief.
“That was—God, that was—”
“So hot,” he says, utterly sincere, kissing your thigh like he’s thanking it.
“I can’t feel my legs,” you groaned, dazed.
“Incredible,” he murmured, voice rough and happy.
He crawled back up with unhurried kisses, leaving a trail of warmth along your skin, never losing your hand. When his mouth again found yours, you tasted yourself and him. It was tender and a little messy. You wanted to stay in this moment forever.
He pulled back just enough to meet your eyes, breathing hard. His face was a mix of smugness and wonder, like you were something he had found after years of looking and couldn’t quite believe he got to hold.
“You okay?” he asked quietly, thumb brushing your cheek.
“Amazing,” you said.
His face softened into a look that was so sweet it gave you a toothache.
“You’re incredible,” he whispered, and you realized he was not praising your body—he was praising you. The way you trusted him. The way you let him in. The way you didn’t run from something that might one day hurt.
You kissed him again because you could, because the fear in your chest couldn’t survive his gentleness. His hand curled at your hip, firm and unyielding. Yours slid to his jaw, your thumb finding the stubbled patch of skin on his cheek like it was made for your hand to rest there. He blushed when you smiled against his mouth, and it was ridiculous how much you loved the heat of it under your fingers.
“Come here,” you murmured, tugging him close, and he came without hesitation—like he always does, like he intended to keep doing, like love was an action he had decided on.
“Anything you want,” he said, still a little breathless, still a little awed. And for once, the promise didn’t scare you. It settled into your bones like the warmth of a hearth.
When feeling returned and the oversensitivity faded, you stroked his face with the back of your fingers and heard your voice come out softer than you expected. “I want to feel you inside me.”
He made a helpless sound against your mouth.
“Please.” His forehead tipped to yours. “Condoms?”
“I have an IUD and I’m clean. At this point, I don’t think I care for one unless you do.”
A groan rumbled through his chest where it was pressed to yours, his breath ghosting over your lips. “I would do anything you asked me, but—God—that makes me a little hot.”
“Anything?”
“Anything,” he whispered, the words sure. “As long as I’m doing it with you, I couldn’t care less.”
“Jack.”
“I’m serious.” His eyes searched your face like he wanted to memorize this exact version of you. “You’re not by yourself anymore. I want to be there when things get hard and when they get easy. I want to make out with you after a terribly cheesy Christmas movie. I want to show you how much I love you.”
“You’re an insufferable romantic at heart, Dr. Abbot,” you murmured, cupping his cheek. “I hope you know I’d do the same. I’m your steady ground.”
“I like that,” he said, voice gone low as he eased back between your thighs.
At your nod, his fingers slipped through your growing wetness, and you had to bite back a gasp. You were still tender, still buzzing, but with a sweet ache. He stretched you out with one finger, then two, and finally three. Each additional digit added to the building tension in your body. The sound of him slowly fingering you and staring at where his fingers disappeared in you was something you were going to jealously guard.
He watched you like a scientist, studying his subject. His brows furrowed as he flicked his wrist and you released an undignified squeak. You opened for him without effort and he grinned.
“One day,” he said, removing his fingers—you whined even though you knew what was coming next—“I want to watch you fall apart on my fingers.”
“Jack,” you groaned helplessly. God, you really wanted that, too.
He braced his forearms by your ribs and you felt the subtle pause you had learned to recognize: an old hesitation, the quick inventory of his body. His thigh tensed; his jaw worked. You slid your palms to his shoulders, then down—over the plane of his chest, the narrow taper of his waist—further, to the strong line of his hip and the scarred ridge where some his body had been taken from him. You held him there, like you were anchoring both of you to the same shore.
His eyes flew back to yours. You didn’t speak. You just kept your hands where they were and watched the tightness in his face dissolve into something tender and pained but grateful all at once.
“Will you keep looking at me, sweetheart?” Jack asks, voice rough with need and something softer beneath. The nickname spread warmth through your belly. “I want to see you.”
“Maybe I want to see you, too,” you breathed.
He nodded, a little shaky, and then you felt the blunt, hot press of his cock at your entrance. Your whole body tensed, thighs tightening at his hips, arms grasping his biceps, a helpless tilt of your pelvis that was meant to pull him inside. He pushed slowly, inch by inch, and the stretch stole your breath; your hands clutched at him because there was too much to feel all at once. Months of holding back, of careful lines and half starts, collapsed into the simple fact of him sliding home.
Emotion hit first—sharp and bright—then the heat. You made a sound into his open mouth; he swallowed it like he was starving.
“Oh, that’s perfect,” you hummed, and your voice shook. He bowed over you, thighs trembling between yours, forehead coming to rest against yours like he needed the contact to stay present.
“I love you,” he said, reverent, the words a vow as his hips rolled. The friction was deep and delicious, but it was the way he stayed close—chest to chest, nose brushing yours, eyes open—that nearly unmanned you.
“Just like that,” you moaned, and he did, slow and sure, a rhythm that let you feel everything. Sparks popped behind your eyes with each measured stroke. He groaned when you dragged your nails lightly down his back, his thrust faltering as your body tightened around him.
“God,” he breathed, gaze locked to your face like you were the most beautiful sunrise he’d seen. “Look at you, gorgeous. So warm and wet for me. What an honor. Keep your eyes on me, sweetheart.”
You tried. It was hard when he moved like that—unhurried and purposeful, a careful grind that found the place inside you that made your vision blur. You blinked up at him, dazed, while willpower held him together in front of you by frayed threads.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispered, voice shaking like the word hurt to hold in. “So fucking beautiful.” His thumb traced your bottom lip. “You always have been. But looking so flushed, breathless, looking at me like that…this is better than any fantasy I could have conjured. You’re so much better than anything I could have dreamed,” he swallowed, the confession ragged.
The intensity in his gaze made your skin feel too tight; suddenly you wanted to hide and climb inside him in the same breath. He felt it, somehow, and slowed his thrusts. His palm slid up your side, fingers splaying beneath your breast, warm and steady.
“Hey,” he murmured, thumb drawing slow circles into your skin. “Come back to me.”
“I’m here,” you managed, though your voice trembled. Your eyes stung. “I’m just…feeling a lot.”
“I’ve got you.” His hips pressed deeper, the angle changing, the pace unhurried. You squeezed around him; a small, helpless sound escaped you. He rested his forehead to yours so you could feel his breath against your lips. “Trust me to catch you.”
A fresh wave broke through you. Your pulse beat where you were joined; your thighs quivered around his hips; your fingers knotted in the hair at his nape and held.
He nosed along your cheek, asking softly, “Can I say something dumb?”
You smiled. “Isn’t that most of what you say?”
He kissed the corner of your mouth, slow as his pelvis found your clit on the next stroke, a pressure that made you gasp. “You’re lucky you feel so good. I’m going to ignore you’re snark.”
“Magnanimous,” you said, groaning as his hips pressed into you. He stretched you out so well, you found yourself uncaring for another orgasm as long as this feeling could continue.
“Clearly, not doing a good enough job, if your using such big words,” he said, sliding a hand in between your bodies. At the touch of his fingers on your clit, you tensed, your eyes fluttering closed. “There we go. I love watching you lose yourself. I feel so safe with you and I want to make you feel safe.”
“I make you feel safe?” you whispered, as his fingers continued working your clit.
He nodded, groaning as he sank deeper, voice thick with want and relief. “Always. You’re my steady ground, right? You’ve never let me down. And I doubt you’ll start now.”
Something inside you broke open. For years you had braced for the worst, waiting for the loss, rationing hope. But his weight was warm and real on top of you, his body buried in yours, his words wrapping around a part of you that had never been held and staying. The fear didn’t vanish—but it moved, making room.
You grabbed his face with trembling hands and kissed him hard, a little feral. He groaned into your mouth and thrust deeper, and heat spiked through you so fast you arched into him with a sound you had never heard from yourself.
“Just like that,” you whined. “You’re so good to me.”
“Only for you,” he ground out, losing a little of that careful control. His pace quickened, still not rough, just needy. “I want to be just yours.”
He moved in you deep and steady, but with a force that belied that he had been waiting a decade to let himself have this.
“I love you,” he groaned, voice torn. “God, I love you.”
“I love you too,” you gasped, clinging to him. Each movement inside you felt like another thread of connection between you both. Joined like this felt like weaving a tapestry of your lives together.
His rhythm started to splinter; his breath stuttered against your mouth. His fingers sped up against your clit. It wasn’t perfect, but the combination of pressure and thrust made your whole body tense, heat coiling tight and bright in your gut.
“I want to feel you,” he hissed, the words almost begging as he worked you. “Please—let go for me.”
“Jack—” you could hardly breathe “—please don’t stop. Please.”
“Never,” he said, and you believed him.
You didn’t so much fall as collapse into a supernova of feeling. The world narrowed to the steady weight of him, the slide and press and praise, the way his hand didn’t falter as the first sharp wave hit. Your orgasm ripped through you in a white-hot shock that arched your back off the bed; you clamped down around him, crying his name into his mouth. He choked on a groan and drove deep, once, twice; his hips stuttered as heat pulsed through him. You felt it—his whole body trembling above you, the helpless, almost pathetic noise he made when he tipped over with you—and your aftershocks rolled on and on, milking him until he collapsed.
There was a moment where you both had largely come down from the high and you found his lips. He was panting and the sloppy, heartfelt kiss sent you soaring in a way you had never felt with another partner before.
“God, that was beautiful,” you whispered when you could find words, your palms smoothing up his back as if your hands could calm the tremors out of him.
“I can’t move,” he mumbled, boneless, burying his face against your neck.
“Please don’t,” you said, and you meant it. You wanted the weight. You wanted the feeling of him still inside you. You wanted proof of him, here, breathing hard into your skin, not going anywhere.
He let out a laugh that was barely audible and shifted just enough to keep from crushing you, still inside, still close, still holding you tightly. His cheek rested against yours; his thumb found your bottom lip again, tracing it absently. After a moment, you felt the old coil of self-consciousness tug through him—the faint pullback of his thighs, the almost-flinch at his own body—but you answered it the way you had all night: you slid your palm down, over scar and lack of limb, and held.
His breath caught. He turned his mouth to your temple and kissed you there, a soft, grateful press. When he spoke, it was hoarse and almost shy. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For letting me be here,” he said simply. “For letting me feel safe. For letting me love you like this.”
“Thank you for being brave and telling me. I’m trying to be brave, too.”
He kissed you soundly before settling back against your bare skin.
You closed your eyes and breathed him in. Outside, the world kept turning. The freezing rain continued to pelt the window and the radiator continued its harsh clangs. Yet in this bed, your hearts slowed together. He stayed exactly where you asked him to, heavy and warm. For once the future didn’t feel like a cliff you could fall off. Instead, it felt like a door you would both open, one stubborn act at a time.
Series Summary: You have made peace with loving Jack Abbott quietly.
Chapter Summary: The slow descent of falling in love with a friend, what could be and could have been.
Rating: Mature (M)
Word Count: 7k
Tags/Warnings: hurt/some comfort, grief, slow burn, no pay-off in this part, friendship, lots of cursing, deeply incorrect medical information, jealously, yearning, angst, the mortifying act of falling in love, very very very brief mention of some actual war crimes–I have put the characters through Trauma™ (pls don’t read if that would be upsetting).
Author's Note: The response to the first part of this was insane. You guys are so kind. I haven’t had the time to read/respond to everything but I am going to try and get to it! I hope this delivers in the angst and yearning department.
-- -- --
Jack's panic attack started with plumbing of all things. You were leaning over the counter aiming a flashlight at the underside of Jack's kitchen sink.
"Why am I doing this and not Robby? Isn't this male bonding or something?" You asked bored.
"Are you saying that women aren't allowed to be interested in plumbing? Not very feminist of you," he said.
"Christ," you grumbled.
"Move the flash light up just a bit," Jack directed. You did so and couldn't help but feel like a twelve year old holding a flashlight for a father with whom they had a tense relationship. At least Jack offered to buy you pizza for your help. Although, how much help you were really being remained unclear.
"What's the point of the patriarchy if I can't have it work for me?" You grumbled.
"A lot of complaining for someone who values helping their friends," shot back Jack from under the sink. There was some muffled cursing and then he said, "Turn it on for me."
You let out a theatrical sigh (which resulted in Jack huffing at you from under the sink) and turned the faucet on. It spluttered to life and Jack let out a triumphant laugh from his position on the ground.
"Are you done now?"
"Sure am! You're now looking at the proud owner of a touchless kitchen faucet," Jack said proudly. You looked at the unobtrusive stainless steel faucet you "helped" Jack install for the past two hours.
"Exciting. However will you celebrate?" You grumbled sarcastically.
"I can install one for you too, if you want?" He asked, ignoring your sarcastic jab.
"I'm content with using a handle to ask my indoor plumbing for water. I've not exactly been struggling with the concept as of late, but I know old age sneaks up on everyone differently."
Jack whacked your thigh as he slid out from under the sink.
"I'm not going to buy you pizza anymore."
"I'm a doctor, I can afford my own pizza."
"Help me up?" He asked from his place on the floor. You reached down and hoisted him up as he managed to put his good leg under him.
"Thanks for keeping me company," Jack said.
"Robby was busy?" You asked knowingly. This was, afterall, a very male bonding activity.
"Jake finally called him," Jack replied.
"Ah, hope that works out for them."
"You and me both. I'm tired of listening to him sit on my couch and complain about it."
You snorted. "No you're not."
Jack released a heavy sigh and said, "No, I'm not. And I will still buy you pizza."
"I know."
"God, you're a dick sometimes."
You just grinned at him as he began to clean up the tools and trash left over from his installation of the kitchen faucet. You had just finished bagging up the trash when a car loudly backfired outside. You jumped and looked out the open window. It had been years since you heard a car backfire that loudly--modern cars never really did that.
You were about to crack a joke to Jack when you saw him frozen next to you, his whole body gone rigid. His shoulders were locked, breath stalled high in his chest, eyes fixed on nothing. You felt the shift instantly, the air in the room tight as a wire.“Jack?” you asked softly.
He didn’t blink. His breathing was shallow, fast, verging on hyperventilation, his shoulders jerking with every attempt at air. His hands twitched like he meant to reach for something, then curled into fists so tight his knuckles turned a pale white. You dropped the trash bag, and slowly crossed the kitchen to move next to him.
“Hey—hey. It’s okay. Just a car. You’re safe.” You kept your voice low, even.But he wasn’t hearing you. His whole body shook. Eventually, his knees buckled, and he braced himself on the counter, fingers clawing into the stone. His eyes were glassy, darting quick and sharp, but never landing on you. You knew he wasn’t here.
“Jack.” You put your hand over his forearm, firm but careful. “It’s me. You’re here. You’re safe.”
He gasped then, a ragged, broken sound, and staggered back until his shoulder hit the wall. He slid down into a crouch, both hands clenched in front of him. You moved slowly, trying not to spook him, and sat next to your friend.
His chest heaved, breath coming in short, strangled bursts that didn’t look like enough to keep him upright. "I'm going to take a deep breath and I need you to mirror me when you can, okay?"
He didn't nod but for the first time in a tense few seconds, his eyes finally found yours. You remained crouched in front of him with your hands on his fists--they were ice cold. In a dramatic exaggeration, you breathed in and out until Jack began to mimic you.
"You're in your kitchen. You just finished replacing your perfect good faucet with one that was so expensive. You're in Pittsburgh. You're safe, okay?"
For a long, terrible moment, nothing changed. His chest still stuttered, his whole frame still rigid with terror. But then, slowly, you felt his grip tighten around your hand—faint at first, then with more strength, clinging like you were the only thing tethering him. His head dropped forward, landing on your chest.You wrapped an arm around him and said, "I got you. You're safe."
Minutes passed before his breathing shifted—still ragged, but no longer hyperventilating. He dragged a shaking hand down his face, eyes bloodshot and wet, and let out a hollow, bitter laugh.
“Christ,” he rasped, his voice shredded. “Christ, I’m sorry. That was…” He shook his head, unable to finish.
You squeezed his hand. “Don’t apologize. Let's move you to the couch."
Slowly, you got Jack back on his feet and over to his couch where you sat him down. He went about pulling his prosthetic off while you went to the kitchen and got him a drink of water. You waved your hand in front of the faucet and it turned on; it was cool even if you would never tell him that.
"Drink this," you said sitting on the ottoman in front of him.
You began to catalog him as he came down from his panic. He was clearly still shaky, but overall seemed to be back to a relative normal. He sipped at the water you gave him and then sat it on the side table.
"Can you..." he trailed off.
"Want me closer or farther?"
"Closer," he said. You nodded and moved from the ottoman to the couch next to him.
"Want to talk about it?"
"Getting chat up lines from my therapist?" he asked.
"Wasn't an answer," you said softly.
"No, it wasn't."
"I'll guess if you want?"
Jack snorted. "I was back in the army for a minute there."
"Ah."
"I see them every time I close my eyes, you know," he nearly mumbled.
You stayed quiet as he toyed with the frayed edge of his t-shirt.
"The people I killed and the ones I couldn't save. It's a real mind fuck taking an oath to do no harm, but knowing that you've stopped someone's life."
"I'm sorry you had to experience that. It wasn't fair."
"Sure, but not for me. It was fair to the kids who were on the other side of my gun. They were barely in their twenties. I don't think they were shaving. And I killed them. Their lives ended because of me," Jack replied, his voice breaking.
You were looking at him, but instead of the intense eye contact he was known so well for, he closed his eyes and tilted his head back up at the ceiling, desperately trying to keep tears at bay.
"You're right. It wasn't fair for them, but the U.S. Military recruits from poor areas for this reason. You enlisted because you thought it was your best shot. It probably was," you told him. "You were a victim just as much as they were."
"No," he said sharply. "No, I wasn't a victim."
"Jack," you breathed. The emotion on his face made your chest ache. "Can I touch you?"
He nodded, but didn't respond. You grabbed one of his hands and wrapped both of yours around it.
"You don't have to believe me. That's fine. I don't think this feeling will ever fully go away, unfortunately. But know this: the fact you feel it means that you are a good person who didn't revel in the violence you were told to enact," you paused and squeezed his hand tightly between yours. "I have met people who enjoyed the violence. Who enjoyed death, and that's not you."
"I am so tired of feeling like this," he told you rubbing his face with his free hand. "It's been over a decade and yet I'm still...a mess."
"I fear you're just human."
"Even worse," he grumbled, making you quietly laugh.
"I can't make it go away, but I'll sit in it with you," you said.
You settled back next to Jack and kept his hand in yours. For a few minutes the only sound in his house was the synchronized sound of your breathing. At some point, you noticed tears on Jack's cheeks, but you just kept your hands on his and clutched them tightly in your lap. There weren't words for this.
"Do you see them?" he asked, his voice thick with emotion.
"All the time."
"How do you cope? You're so not a mess?" he asked.
"Of course I'm a mess. I'm an emotionally avoidant workaholic who hasn't had a stable relationship in years," you replied humorously. Jack didn't laugh.
"You don't talk to me about it," he said.
"I thought we hashed this out already?" you asked, slightly uncomfortable.
"Sure, but if I promise to not be an absolute dick, will you...will you let me in?"
You took in a breath.
"I mourn the ones I saved whose lives probably weren't any better," you finally said. "I've seen the result of war and hate. I think what has stuck with me the most was a young girl who had suffered severe mutilation at the hands of her own family. Sure, I kept her from dying from an infection but what happened to the rest of her life? She was stuck in a place with such little opportunity and yet, I got to leave. I abandoned them, or it feels like that sometimes."
"Can you find out?"
"No, I doubt it.” You paused. “But more than that, I'm afraid to try."
"What a pair we are," Jack replied. "And yet we keep going."
You chuckled a watery sort of chuckle. "Just because I'm riddled with survivor's guilt doesn't mean that giving up would change anything. The only thing that changes the world is action. So I keep going. I must. It's the only way I can make things better."
"What if you can't make things better?"
"Then I'll have tried."
Jack took those words with him into his next few weeks. Every time the world seemed to press down on him or his grief threatened to swallow him whole, he would think back to the conversation on his couch and say, "Then I'll have tried."
It became his refrain. It became the refrain he taught his students. When they lost a patient, when they questioned the point he told them the same thing: "Then you'll have tried and that's better than giving in, even if it doesn't work."
He saw you differently after that conversation. Up until now, he had never been under the impression your life was easy or without burden. But he hadn't known to what extent the horrors you'd seen and experienced weighed on you.
The way you bare knuckle boxed life made more sense than it ever had before. While he always admired how head strong and tenacious you were, now he was in awe in a way. You saw the options life handed out and refused to accept them. You made your own outcomes--you fought for what could be.That's why he was happy to see you in the ER when he called for an ID consultation. Though, he had been working hard to be nicer to the ID doctors so you wouldn't be inconvenienced as often. He hoped that you hadn't been called in on your day off again.
“You paged?” You asked, stepping off the elevator.
“I had the resident page so you wouldn’t be forced to come in I swear,” Jack said immediately.
You laughed. “I’m on call, Jack. What do you need?”
“I have a kid with antibiotic resistant strep,” he told you grimly. But he was relieved to have you on the case and at his side. The world seemed far less heavy when he was next to you.
“Ah, not great,” you replied, pulling out your laptop. “What meds have they been on?”
“All the frontline drugs. I just don’t know the best next steps with a kid his age,” Jack said. “He’s young and the parents are…stressed.”
“Got it,” you said.
He watched as you shrugged off your white coat that had your name and department embroidered on it. It left you in your wide legged trousers and sweater. He was almost jealous you didn’t have to wear scrubs. He doubted you got random bodily fluids sprayed on you without warning.
Once you looked less like a doctor, you clipped your badge to your pants and wrapped your stethoscope around your neck. He found himself following your movements with rapt attention. He had always noticed you, he hadn’t lied about that.
Now, however, something in his brain had shuddered awake. He noticed the way your hair was so artfully pulled away from your face, the ways your eyebrows were so expressive and conveyed your moods, the ways your eyes twinkled at times. He cringed even thinking about your twinkling eyes, but when you showed him a new medical gadget and began explaining how useful it would be, what else could he say?
He noticed the curve of your fingers, the shine of your nail beds, he even noticed the way your jewelry rested on your ears and collarbone. Sometimes, he would find himself tracking the way you frowned with a furrowed brow at your laptop—trying to parse difficult notes or a specific medical question. He noticed you a lot lately.
It hadn't been a sudden change, but ever since that evening on your porch. The unspoken "what if" between you both, Jack's brain had been watching and studying. He observed everything you did, but now things that he normally wouldn't have paid attention to were sticking out to him.
Today he noticed the easy smile you wore as you walked into the exam room, introducing yourself and putting the family at ease. Strictly speaking, he didn’t have to follow you, but how could he not?
“So, Dr. Abbot has been telling me that none of the antibiotics have been working for our little friend here, is that right?” You began.
The mom immediately launched into a long and well prepared speech, clearly assuming the doctors wouldn’t believe them. Her wife placed a hand on her arm and quieted the anxious woman. She held the little boy on her lap.
“I can’t imagine how stressed you both are right now,” you said softly. “Dr. Abbot and I are going to do everything we can to make sure you guys leave here with a plan that has the best chance of success. To do that, I’m going to need a ton of information from you both and unfortunately will likely need to run a blood test. How is he with needles?”
“He’s never had his blood drawn before,” the first woman said tearfully.
Jack stepped in, “We’ll put our best nurses on it. Jesse never misses a vein and Lena has a high success rate with distracting children. She’s a one-woman Bluey show.”
“Antibiotic resistance is scary, but not new. We’ve been seeing cases like this more and more. There’s even a strep vaccine in development. The first thing we’re going to do is draw blood and start and IV. I think he’s dehydrated and if we get fluids in him, the rest will be easier,” you said.
Jack watched as you explained the rest of the plan to the little boy’s parents. At one point, you softly gripped his second mom’s shoulder. Jack could feel the phantom caress of your hand on his own shoulder.
Perhaps it was because he had only recently begun to learn about what your time with MSF was really like, or maybe the conversation on your porch sparked some errant connection in his brain, but watching you calmly explain the realities of the situation along with the plan, Jack realized how good you were at your job. You were calm and comforting, but clearly you also knew what you were talking about.
Frequently, you joked that there was no else other than Jack you’d want working on you during an emergency. Jack couldn’t help but think the same. If he came down with some bizarre, untreatable illness he knew without a shadow of a doubt there was nothing going to stop you from finding the best treatment.
As you both left the exam room, Jack placed the orders and debriefed with Jesse and Lena before they entered the room. Jack watched you drum your fingers on the counter of the charting station, thinking through treatment options. It was as if he could see the different medications and options flying through your brain being sorted into their appropriate categories.
“I’m in awe of you sometimes,” he said.
You looked up at him, startled. “What?”
"You're fantastic at your job. I feel like I’m watching Sherlock Holmes put together a mystery.”
You narrowed your eyes. “Uh-huh, and what do you want?”
“Nothing. Damn, can’t a guy just give his friend a compliment?” Jack scoffed.
Your eyes remained narrow but eventually you said, “Okay, fine. Can you order the fluids then?”
“Sure,” he replied, badging into the computer next to you. A bout of companionable silence passed between you both and then Jack asked, “Why didn’t you introduce yourself as ID?”
“If you were the parent of a young child and a doctor from the infectious disease department came in would that make you feel good?”
“Ah, probably not,” he replied.
“Most of my patients aren’t introduced to me with my department title. Dr. Al Ahmadi in pediatrics introduces me as a superhero fighting against evil bacteria. She even bought me a cape.”
“How come I’ve never seen the cape?” Jack asked.
You snorted. “I haven’t worn it.”
“Kill joy. You should dress up for Halloween,” he said.
“Working,” she replied.
“Me too, but I’m still dressing up,” he replied.
“As what?”
“Pirate, obviously,” he said.
“Obviously?”
“I have a peg leg.”
“Christ,” you said but he saw the hint of a smile on your face.
“C’mon dress up with me. I got Robby to do it.”
“What did you get me to do?” asked Robby, approaching with an iPad in hand.
“Dressing up for Halloween apparently,” you supplied.
“Oh right, we’re going to be pirates. He got me a parrot to put on my shoulder,” Robby replied half paying attention.
“Charming,” you replied with a wry smile. Then you said, “I’m going to run up to my office and do some research while we wait for his test results.”
You stood and closed your laptop. Once you’d pulled your white coat back on, you gave Robby’s arm a light squeeze in goodbye and waved to Jack. Jack couldn’t help but focus on the contact with the taller man next to him. There was an odd swoop in his stomach he couldn’t identify and he felt his eyebrows furrow.
“I’ll page you if I find anything, Jack,” you said.
He nodded but couldn’t focus on your face. Instead he watched how your hand went from wrapping around Robby’s forearm to picking up your laptop. The grip was soft and firm, delicate even with the technology. He thought about that contact for the rest of the day and couldn’t, for the life of him, figure out why.
They had to admit the boy to the ICU. You would stay on the case, but now it was out of Jack’s hand. It was a shame. He enjoyed working with you, even if he did badger you about how slow you moved. Each choice had at least two citations and one case study. Still, he summoned you twice more that shift; infectious diseases seemed to be in the air.
The last one was a case he tried to avoid, but if the patient wanted to make it through the week you had to come down. Jack couldn’t help but hover when you came into the room. The patient had no idea that your nerves were on edge, but only Jack could see a tremor in your hands. The hands he hadn’t stopped thinking about.
The woman in the bed before you had an aggressive form of cancer, but her chemo port was infected. It required delicate cleaning and special antibiotics to ensure nothing worse came of the infection. You tried to avoid cancer patients if possible, but this woman was twelve hours away from being septic and nerves were nothing compared to a young woman’s life.
“Are you sure? I can track down someone else,” Jack said quietly as you excused yourself to change into scrubs.
You smiled sadly. “I can do it. She doesn’t have the time for me to feel sad. But…” you hesitated.
Jack silently begged you to ask.
You took a deep breath and continued, “It would be incredibly helpful if you were there with me.”
Jack controlled his grin down to a small smile and placed both of his hands on your shoulders, hoping the touch was grounding. You seemed to sag against him.
“Nowhere else I’d rather be.”
Working on impulse rather than careful, thought out decision making—par for the course really—Jack wrapped his arms around you and cradled the back of your head and neck in his hand. You tucked your nose against his neck and the feeling of your breath against the sensitive skin of his neck sent a zip of electricity down his spine.
He held you tightly for one beat, then two and then released when you pulled back. Your eyes were a little glassy, but the stiff tension seemed to have left your frame. With a deep, gut filling breath you relaxed your shoulders and gave his hand a quick squeeze, nothing more than a thank you, as you disappeared around the corner to change.
When you came back, the view of you in ER black scrubs was charming, if not novel. Together you both donned the appropriate PPI. Jack had Dana run interference from any nosy residents who wanted to use this as a learning opportunity. There would be another day and a different doctor on call.
“Well, Ms. Dixon, we got you the best infectious disease doc this side of the Mississippi,” Jack said grinning and the young woman. He was hoping to pull some attention away from you, but you eased into the room with Perlah at your heels—Perlah had always been your favorite ER nurse.
“Will it hurt?” Ms. Dixon asked.
“I’m going to numb you up pretty thoroughly, so it shouldn’t hurt but you’ll likely be able to feel it,” you said softly. “So Dr. Abbot is going to stick around and keep you company. I’m afraid there weren’t better options.”
Jack almost signed in relief at your jab. A joke from you meant confidence, and confidence meant you were going to make it through. He knew you would, but confirmations are always nice.
Once the procedure finished, Perlah finished the cleaning and care of the wound while you pulled off the disposable gown. Your hands weren’t shaking but the gentle hands that had helped the patient and been much of the focus of Jack’s day were stiff and harsh. Your nail left a scrape against your arm as you ripped off your gloves.
Instead of letting you go back to the locker rooms, Jack guided you to an empty storage room near the back of The Pitt. You tried to move toward the elevator, but he physically blocked you and nearly shoved you inside the empty room.
“You did great, Rocky,” he started saying. “I know that must have been hard but you did it. I’m so proud of you.”
“Jack,” you started.
You had your hands wrapped around your middle and Jack found himself rubbing his own hands up and down your shoulders trying to get you to look him in the eye.
“I’m being serious. I know that was triggering for you but you survived it and the patient’s infection will get better.”
“Jack, I—“
“Listen to me,” he said softly. You were pulling away from his grip.
“Please shut up,” you said in the smallest voice he’d ever heard from you.
He immediately closed his mouth and before he could decide what to do with his hands, you wrapped your arms around his middle and rested your head on his shoulder. He wished your face was tucked against him, but instead you sniffled against his shoulder. Once again, he pulled you tight against his body and tried to convey every ounce of care and support he had for you with this touch.
Jack couldn’t have guessed how long you both stood in the storage room, only that it was enough time for your breathing to even out and his prosthetic to start rubbing awkwardly against his residual limb. The discomfort was worth it, as long as you were put together by the time you left the floor.
“You’re a good friend, Jack,” you said, partially muffled by his shoulder.
“Thank you,” he said.
Yet something about the statement didn’t sit right with him.
-- -- --
Perhaps the beginning of the end for Jack was the first night shift of fall that you were in the ER. You had always run cold, but something about the first chill in the air always had you shivering. This year, the season’s first cold snap took you by surprise and despite it being warm enough to wear a light linen blouse in, the ER was freezing and Jack found you shivering while trying to type up consult notes.
“You’re going to vibrate off that stool,” he said. “Go upstairs and get your jacket. The laptop will be here for you when you get back.”
“Took it home to wash and forgot it this morning,” you grumbled rubbing your hands together.
Without thinking, his modus operandi at this point, he went to his locker and grabbed his ER branded jacket. He frequently ran warm and rarely used it, so it smelled like stale locker. Instead of letting you smell like slightly bad crackers and gym shoes, he sprayed some of his cologne on it to hopefully counteract whatever was growing in his locker.
Upon his return, he slipped the jacket over your shoulders and missed the slightly startled look you sent him. He didn’t miss the way you slid your arms into the fleece jacket and took a surreptitious smell from the collar. He really hoped it didn’t smell bad. Whatever you did smell, wasn’t worth a comment from you.
“Thank you,” you said quietly.
Jack was positive that one of the nosy nurses had spied his kind act of chivalry but he doubted you cared about what nurses in a different department would say about it now that you were shivering. For the next few minutes the two of you charted in silence until your phone vibrated next to your laptop. Out of habit, Jack looked over and saw a text pop up:
Miles (Hinge): Had a great time last night! Can we do it again? I still can’t feel my legs. ;)
Jack kept his eyes fixed on the glow of your phone for a beat too long. The words burned themselves into his head before he could look away.
Miles.
Hinge.
Last night.
He shouldn’t care—you were free to do whatever you wanted, to whomever you wanted. You were free to laugh, love, and let yourself be pulled into someone’s orbit. Still, the text dug itself into Jack’s chest like a rusty nail—the comment about not feeling his legs, it was a rather crude way to reminisce about a physical relationship, in Jack’s opinion.
Unfortunately, he could picture it too easily: you flushed and loose-limbed, the sharp wit he knew so well softened into something playful, something given to another man. He forced his eyes back to his computer screen, telling himself that he was just feel protective over a friend. You had not been lucky in love and Jack didn’t want to see you needlessly hurt.
Even though he cared about you and wanted the best for you, he knew it wasn’t his place to care. He knew it, and yet the knowledge didn’t stop a weird, unsettled feeling crawling under his skin. Too suddenly, he felt raw and restless, leaving him wondering when exactly he’d started measuring other men against himself and finding the deficit unbearable.What’s worse than all of the what ifs and circumstantial evidence he built a case with, was seeing the way you smiled down at your phone. Jack loved your smile and yet this sunk in his stomach like lead.
And he couldn’t figure out why.
-- -- --
He heard about your patient through the doctor grapevine. You had sent him a text that morning saying your shift was miserable and you were going to sleep for the next 24 hours before talking about it. He appreciated the communication effort. Unfortunately, he learned the details before you had even woken up.
A patient had come in through The Pitt with a heart attack. Cardiology had taken them almost immediately. Everyone thought the surgery had been a success, until the patient started showing signs of sepsis. It was the infection surgeons lived in fear of.
It was difficult to beat as patients were already weak and fragile, typically having sepsis as a result of a primary illness. It meant ID was almost always contacted and the collaboration between doctors needed to be expertly handled.
The rumor mill was unclear exactly what went wrong. The one thing that everyone agreed on, was that Gregory Schmidt, cardiologist and major ego maniac, had fucked up tremendously. It was discovered, or rather you discovered, that he had left an errant suction tip in the patient's body cavity. Unfortunately, by that time the patient was too unstable to operate on again; he died a few hours later.When you confronted him one thing led to another and apparently you had given him a proper shiner. You were suspended for the rest of week. Schmidt was somehow still in the building, though most doctors were giving him the cold shoulder. Every department interacted with ID; it was important to keep them on your side.
No one was quite sure what the confrontation between the two of you entailed, but whatever it had been must have been exceptionally terrible. Jack knew the boundless limits of your patience--he frequently tested them, so someone finding them and it landing him with a black eye was nothing short of astounding.
Jack knew you wouldn’t be bragging about finally knocking Schmidt down a peg; everyone in the hospital wanted to. Instead, he knew you’d be mourning the patient, turning the loss over and over until it wore you raw. He could picture it even before you woke up—your shoulders tense, the way you’d fold in on yourself when you thought no one was looking, convinced you’d failed somehow when everyone else knew where the blame belonged.
That thought unsettled him more than the fight itself. He hated the idea of you carrying that kind of weight alone, hated that he wasn’t there to stop you from shouldering it in the first place. And beneath that worry, creeping in like an ache he couldn’t quite shake, was the realization that it mattered too much to him. Your grief sat heavy in his own chest, as though it belonged to him too, and Jack wasn’t sure when exactly that had started to happen.But as soon as his shift was over, he went to your favorite diner and picked up food. You were on your porch when he finally pulled into your driveway. The chairs had since been replaces with a porch swing. Hank was laying across it with his heavy head in your lap.
When he saw Jack, he jumped up and danced around the man's legs as he approached you on the porch. He offered up the food before saying anything.
"You're a good man, Jack Abbot," you told him.
He couldn't help but remember the last time you both had been here. The night he had almost brought up what could have been a different life. Even now, the potential sat heavy in his heart.
"My mother always said that the way to a woman's heart is through food," he replied.
"That's not the saying," you replied snorting, but happily tucking into the pancakes.
"Obviously, it's what my mom told me," he replied. You chuckled and he could only just barely hear the twinge of sadness in your voice.
"How long have you been out here?"
"An hour or so? Hank wanted to run around and play, so we went on a walk and then making back inside seemed silly when it was so nice outside."
Nice was relative. It was a chilly autumn evening and normally he would be walking into his shifts about now, but he had been covering for another attending out on maternity leave. The late afternoons and evenings had a real bite to them now. You wore a thick sweatshirt and sweatpants. He couldn't help but find it...well, cute.
"Aren't you cold?"
"Nah, Hank is a good blanket," you replied.
Jack eased down next to you on the porch swing and began rocking the seat back and forth. There was no longer room for Hank on the seat so he settled on top of both of your feet.
You both ate in silence until Jack finally said,
"Heard about your patient that passed away."
"Hmm, that was fast," you replied without emotion.
"Also heard you were suspended."
"That is correct," you sighed. Jack leaned closer to you, cold himself.Your shoulders pressed together, solid and warm, and the contact sent a jolt through him he hadn’t been braced for. Suddenly, he was aware of each breath you took, each shake of your head, or shiver of your body. He was overwhelmed by the kind of awareness that made his chest feel too tight and his pulse stumble. He told himself it was nothing, just the cold, just the long day, but the heat of your arm against his was enough to make him forget what he’d meant to say next.
"Dana wanted me to congratulate you," he finally said once his body had calmed down slightly. "But I told her you wouldn't want a congratulations when someone died."
"You know me well."
"Want to talk about it?"
You took a deep breath, your arm shifting against his.
"I don't know."
"Will you be okay?"
"Yeah."
"You sure?"
You turned and gave him a small sad smile. "Days like today feel hopeless, but I know I can keep going."
"Ever the optimist," Jack said, nudging you with his elbow before wrapping an arm around your shoulder.
"Maybe," you admitted. "Or maybe I just know that I've done it before. And I know I can do it again."
"It is what it could be, yeah?"
"Exactly."
You lapsed into companionable silence for a while until Jack asked,
"Did Schmidt crumple to the ground as soon as you hit him?"
"Oh my god, almost immediately. I think the dramatic fall hurt him worse than my fist."
"Ha! Serves him right. I hate that man."
-- -- --
At the all attending meeting Schmidt was still sporting a deliciously bruised eye that Jack couldn't help but revel at. You had returned to work the day before. The patient's family had sued the hospital and part of the settlement was your immediate reinstatement. Incredible how fast the hospital administration could move when there were legal threats on the horizon.
Jack followed Robby only half paying attention to the other people filtering into the giant auditorium. They only met like this once a quarter and no matter how many times Jack tried to get out of it, Robby would physically make him come.
His friends were irritating as hell.
He and Robby sat toward the back, the way they always did, but Jack found it impossible to settle. His eyes kept flicking to the aisle, tracing every figure that came through the door, waiting for the familiar shape of you. Each new face was a letdown, and the longer it went without you appearing, the tighter the restless pull in his chest grew.
It was absurd. He was a grown man, with a decorated service record, years of ER chaos under his belt, and still he was half-holding his breath just to see if you’d choose the empty seat beside him. When you didn’t materialize, he felt the disappointment curdled in his stomach.
Nearly making him jump out of his seat, your voice said behind them,
"I got you both coffee."
You shimmied down the row and Jack didn't look away fast enough before getting an eyeful of your ass as you moved past him to sit down at the empty seat. It was ridiculous how fast his pulse jumped, how the heat crawled up the back of his neck like he was some kid caught staring.
He jerked his gaze toward the stage, anywhere but you, but the image stuck stubbornly in his mind. By the time you settled in beside him, sliding a coffee into his hand like it was the most casual thing in the world, Jack still hadn’t quite gotten his breathing under control. It was nothing, he told himself—just the cramped row, just the long morning.
"You're a live saver," Robby said, reaching around Jack, oblivious to his inner turmoil.
"I also made bingo cards to keep us entertained," you whispered, handing both Jack and Robby a small note card with a half dozen small boxes written out in your weird chicken scratch.
Gloria reiterates "the budget!" with her hands on her hip
Gloria actually makes a good point about the budget but its not our department and out of our hands
Connie from Ortho is going to ask a dumb question
Robby will ask a joke question that makes Gloria roll her eyes
At least one person visibly falls asleep
Someone fakes a page to leave early
"I don't think it counts if I can make something happen," Robby said.
"You're taking this too seriously," you murmured as Gloria and the administration team brought the meeting to a start.
The meeting passed in a blur. Robby had, of course, asked a smart ass question that resulted in a quiet snort from you and a tittering from the rest of the room, but otherwise it was as tedious and boring as it always was.
Other than the fact your thigh was pressed up against his the whole time. It wasn’t much, but it felt like a live wire to him. Every time you shifted to jot something down or leaned forward to readjust, the brush of contact sent a rush of heat straight through him.
Jack kept his eyes fixed on the projector, willing himself not to move, not to give away how badly he wanted the pressure to stay exactly where it was. By the end of the hour, he couldn’t have repeated a single item from the agenda, but he knew the shape of your leg against his with startling clarity.
"Lunch?" You asked as the meeting ended and the doctors began to filter out.
"Nah, I'm wiped," Jack said. Robby narrowed his gaze at him over your shoulder.
"Next time," you said, shrugging.
Jack tried not to physically react when you lightly squeezed his arm--your go-to way to say goodbye in a familiar but not unprofessional way.
Once you were out of earshot, Robby meandered back up to you and simply said, "Christ, Jack."
"What?"
Robby just shook his head.
-- -- --
Jack was knocking on your door at 9am sharp. The sun was shining, the air was crisp and he was determined to cheer you up. The fallout from your and Schmidt's dust up had been long lasting and frequently resulted in a meeting or communication with HR. This week had been no exception and by the end of it, it was clear you were over it.
You opened the door blearily to find Jack standing in front of you, the picture of bright eyed and bushy tailed. Jack happily marched into your house without waiting for your greeting. He sat the coffee he bought you on the table and looked at you with a smile.
You were wearing an oversized t-shirt and your hair looked sleep rumpled. He didn't let his brain entertain a single thought about what that meant.
“Jack, why are you here?” You finally asked. Your voice was husky, like you had just woken up.
“Why are you still asleep? It’s 9am?” He ignored your question.
His eyes scanned your living room. He saw a leather jacket he knew did not belong to you slung over one of your kitchen chairs. There were large boots by your door. You were normally quite fastidious with your housekeeping, so the fact there was scattered clothing throughout your living room meant...oh.
Jack's chest might as well have caved in.
“I had a late night,” you groused. “Once again, why are you here?”
“You had a bad week, I was going to surprise you and take you to the fall market thing downtown,” he said. His voice sounded off even to his own ears.
He was staring a little too hard at the heap of clothes by the couch, jaw set. The air between you both felt tense in a way that Jack was afraid to put into words. He tried to find a joke or to ease the tension but nothing came out of his mouth.
It was silly of him to think you wouldn't have an active social life without him. He wondered briefly if it was the Miles he had seen on your phone. A sour feeling stirred in his chest.
“I’m currently entertaining a guest,” you said vaguely but immediately winced at the double entendre of your words. “Please forget I said it like that.”
Jack smiled a brittle smile. “Never on your life, Rocky. I expect a full report when you’re unoccupied.”
Before Jack could hastily retreat out of your house, he heard your bedroom door open and the deep baritone voice of a man said, “Babe, I thought you said you were going to sleep in?”
“Babe?” Mouthed Jack. You flipped him off.
“Give me a second, a friend dropped by unexpectedly,” you said. You sounded remarkably nonplussed by the situation. Despite the awkwardness, this wasn't as earth shattering to you as it was to him.
“Oh shit,” Miles said, walking around the corner to see Jack in your living room.
Miles was tall, taller than Robby, with dark brown skin that shimmered under the soft lamp light in your living room. He was well defined and only wore only boxers. Jack wished he could disappear. This was the worst morning of his life.
“Ah, so sorry,” Jack said awkwardly. “She didn’t put the metaphorical sock on the door. I’ll…uh…see myself out.”
Jack was gone before you or Miles could say anything more.
Jack realized a few things when he left your house that morning. Most importantly, he would never stop by unannounced again, not if he valued whatever fragile equilibrium you both had left. His pulse was still pounding, each beat carrying with it the image of Miles stepping into the room—bare skin lit by the soft lamp glow, casual in his boxers, casual in the way he called you babe. The word had cracked and hollowed out something in Jack’s chest. He could still feel the way his stomach dropped, nearly choking on his own tongue.
The morning air was sharp against his face, but not sharp enough to cut through the burn of humiliation, jealousy, and something darker threading through him. It didn’t feel like his standard depression, this felt wilder, angry even.
He told himself—always told himself—that you were his friend. You were the one person who refused to let him brood unchecked. That was all. That had always been all.
But the truth had been unraveling quietly these past weeks, each time you let him in a little closer, each time you showed him some tender sliver of yourself he thought no one else got to see. And now the final thread had snapped. The sudden awareness of what you meant to him—of what you had come to mean—was overwhelming, a hot rush in his chest that left him shaky.
Holding you after an intense patient visit, bringing you a jacket—his jacket, passing notes during all staff meetings, these small happenings that made up a bigger tapestry he didn’t know he had been weaving.
He wanted you. And he was too late.
His mind betrayed him as he walked down your steps, conjuring images he hated himself for: your skin lit by the same warm lamplight, your mouth soft with sleep, your body curling toward Miles’s. He wondered how you looked when you kissed the Greek god of a man, when you let yourself be seen in a way Jack had never dared imagine.The thought made his throat close, shame rising thick and hot.
You weren’t his to picture like that. You never had been. He shoved the images down, but they lingered, leaving him flushed with guilt and a bitter ache that hollowed him out from the inside.The ache in his chest was unbearable, a sick combination of longing and loss, as though grief had found a new shape to wear. And for the first time in years, Jack Abbot couldn’t decide if he was angrier at the world for moving you out of his reach, or at himself for never seeing what you were to him until now.
when you finish a fic that was everything you could of hoped for and you click on their user to see that they’ve written dozens of fics for that pairing
summary: what could go wrong with a non-refundable honeymoon and a broken engagement?
warnings: MATURE (mentions of sex but no sex scenes), exes to lovers, idiots to lovers angst, fluff, there was only one bed MULTIPLE times, jealousy!! (like a lot), slow burn, no use of y/n, so much use of the word fuck, a little toxicity, some facts about landmarks are inaccurate for the plot, lots of arguing and making up, miscommunication, seasickness, patrick & reader kinda have no social awareness, a lot of hotels and buses, alcohol, hurt/comfort, happy ending.
word count: 18.4k
author’s note: this was so much longer than i expected it to be, but i loved writing it so so much and i'm gonna be sad to see this pairing go! also, a special thank you to the tour website whose itinerary i used for their trip. i hope you enjoy!
JFK AIRPORT
You scrolled endlessly on your phone as you sat at your gate, trying your hardest to fight off the combination of sleepiness and anxiety that had been slowly creeping up on you for the past hour.
You should be happy—excited to spend the next month of your life traveling throughout Europe on the trip that you had dreamt about since you were a child. Instead, you were filled with dread at the prospect of your quickly approaching trip, leaving your leg bouncing and your eyes flitting between the device in your hands and the entrance of the gate, anxiously anticipating the arrival of a man that you really really did not want to see.
Once it was announced that first class was boarding, you quickly hopped out of your uncomfortable seat, hoping that if you boarded quick enough, you might be able to miss your unwanted companion. As you stood in line, you tried your best to be casual about your endlessly swiveling head and wondered if it was too late to simply call the whole thing off.
Boarding had gone smoothly enough, and as you settled into your seat, you still hadn’t seen any sign of your former fiancé. For a second, a spark of hope lit up in you. Maybe you’d get to experience Europe without that pest in your ear after all. Maybe you could even arrange a friend to come fly out and be with you for a few days, or find someone to have a romantic summer fling with.
But just as soon as your hope arrived, it departed with the sound of a familiar voice walking down the aisle and directly towards you.
“They wouldn’t let me switch my seat.”
You couldn’t believe that those were the choice of words the man you’d intended to spend the rest of your life with had decided to start with. After months of radio silence. No apologies, no awkward small talk, no sugar-coated words about your situation, just a complaint about the conditions the two of you would be in for the next eight hours. Classic Patrick.
“That’s too bad,” you replied, already annoyed by his presence. You had underestimated how much of a challenge this trip was going to be, solely based on the speed at which your negative feelings had come to the surface.
“Yeah, no shit,” he muttered under his own breath, putting some luggage into the overhead bin above your seats.
“You’re the one who insisted we still go,” you argued, not wanting him to get the last word—even if his last words were meant to be a snarky comment to himself more than anything else.
“The hotels, tours, and all the other tickets were non-refundable!” he argued right back to you.
“So?” you shot back like a petulant child.
“So I didn’t want to waste your money.”
“Oh, how considerate,” you scoffed sarcastically before beginning once more. “You’re rich! You don’t even have to be here!”
“Just because my family is comfortable doesn’t mean I want to waste my money.”
You openly rolled your eyes at his words. Comfortable was the understatement of the century. “So you didn’t actually want to waste my money. You didn’t want to waste your own.”
“Why can’t it be both?” he asked, sounding exasperated by your line of thinking. You hated when he did that. You kind of hated most things he did now. Maybe you just hated him.
“I never said it can’t be both, I just think you should stop trying to act like you’re so charitable for doing me a favor. As if our relationship wasn’t filled with me doing you favors.”
“Do you really want to be having this conversation right now?” he asked.
“Sorry, you’re right. We have the next thirty-five days to talk about it.”
The two of you sighed in a synchronized breath at the mention of the amount of time you had to spend together. You hated that the two of you were still in rhythm after everything you’d been through. Or maybe you just hated Patrick.
“Who plans a thirty-five day honeymoon anyway?” he huffed.
“Us, apparently. I mean, you were all for it, what? A few months ago?”
“Only because you wanted it.
“Oh, how could I forget. The ever-charitable Patrick Zweig. Taking a month-long break from hitting balls to be with me. I’m forever in your debt,” you mocked with a dramatic hand to your forehead. “At this rate, you’re gonna send me a list of all of the nice things you’ve ever done for me. What do you want me to say? Thank you for doing the bare minimum as a boyfriend?”
“Fiancé,” he corrected you, earning a very nasty side eye from you in the process of doing so.
You were beginning to get dirty looks from your fellow first class passengers, which temporarily shut the both of you up. It was never a good idea to piss off people on a plane. You didn’t want to end up on the no-fly list just because you couldn’t bite your tongue around your ex.
“Remember when you said we could still be friends after this?” Patrick spoke once more after your moment of silence.
“Of course I remember, but you stopped that from happening when you…” your voice trailed off as you made eye contact with a very displeased looking middle aged woman “Whatever. Let’s just… try to get through this flight. And try not to make any more of a scene.”
“Fine,” he replied, shrugging in your peripheral vision.
“Fine,” you said back, not wanting him to have the last word.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“That thing where you think you win every argument just because you said the last thing.”
“I’m not doing that,” you lied. “You think you know me so well.”
A familiar agitated smile broke out on his face, something that you unfortunately missed seeing. “I do know you well, though. I see right through you.”
“You actually don’t, though.”
“I do,” he insisted, the smirk creeping onto his face telling you that he knew you were actively proving his point.
“Not really,” you dismissed and attempted to casually pull the headphones that were currently sitting on your neck up to cover your ears. You were always grateful to have noise-canceling headphones when you were traveling, but they were coming particularly in handy for you to win this argument. You tried to hide your self-satisfied smirk as you pressed play on your phone, but you could instantly tell that you were failing.
When you looked back up, Patrick was clearly saying words to you that you weren’t able to hear. Knowing him, he was probably saying something along the lines of, “Real mature.”
The truth was that he wanted the last word more than you did–which made it particularly rewarding when you gestured to your headphones before throwing your hands out in a shrug to indicate to him that you couldn’t hear him.
Your vacation was already off to a chaotic start. You couldn’t help but fear what the next thirty-five days would be like.
BARCELONA, SPAIN
Despite the flight only being eight hours long, you were absolutely exhausted by the time that you checked into your hotel room. So exhausted that you failed to remember to request to switch rooms to one with two beds rather than one.
This predicament only came to the forefront of your mind once you and Patrick had already swiped into the room, suitcases lying on the floor and one king-sized mattress presented in front of you.
“Should I go back down to the front desk?” he asked as he looked from you to the bed.
“I’m too tired to get a new room,” you replied. You could handle one night next to your ex. You’d slept in a bed together for years. Granted, during those years you were also sleeping together, but this wasn’t all that different.
“Fine. Don’t complain if I hog blankets, then.”
“Fine,” you replied. “Just stay on your side of the bed.”
You shucked your backpack from your shoulders and walked over to what was typically the side of the bed where you slept when the two of you had been a couple. Not wasting any time to get ready for bed, you began to take off your clothes and search for your pajamas. Once you glanced over your shoulder, you were quite displeased to find Patrick rather openly ogling at you.
“Stop looking at me,” you demanded.
“What? It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.” He said with a smirk.
“You’re such a creep,” you muttered, throwing on an old shirt and crawling into bed.
As you laid in bed and texted your friends and family that you’d arrived at your hotel safely, you took a peek of your own at your former partner as he got ready for bed. He seemed to be going with his classic bedtime attire of just boxers. Bold move.
Your eyes were momentarily stuck on his abs and enticing happy trail. You’d planned your trip during Patrick’s off season while he was training for his upcoming season, so you were pleasantly unsurprised that he was in such good shape. Your breath caught for a second as you thought about the rest of him, and you desperately tried to repress the low, fiery feeling rising in your stomach.
“And I’m the creep?” he asked with a laugh, pulling you away from your objectification as he got into bed next to you.
“Yeah,” you replied, as if you hadn’t just given him the same treatment he’d given you.
“Well… like what you see?”
You scoffed at his audacity, though you did like what you saw. “I’m not fucking you. Goodnight.”
You hit the light on your nightstand and you swore you heard a quiet sound of disappointment come from Patrick. Bastard.
You turned your back to him and closed your eyes, finding that sleep took you under surprisingly easily.
When you woke up in the morning, you were greeted by a far too familiar feeling. Despite your request for Patrick to stay on his side of the bed, the slow, steady breaths being breathed into your ear and the solid wall of body behind you indicated that he had not only traveled into your space over the course of the night, but was actively spooning you.
You were shocked to find that you didn’t necessarily mind it. Yes, you were mad at Patrick for everything that had gone down between you, and because he was such a pain in the ass, but you also hadn’t realized just how much you missed being held. Particularly, how much you missed being held by him.
The more alert you became, the more you realized that you couldn’t really move. Despite that, you found that you didn’t really want to move. Sure, you were beginning to get uncomfortably hot, and yes, you could feel Patrick’s morning wood pressing against your ass, but none of it was particularly unpleasant.
Part of you wondered if your trip would go differently than you expected. Regardless of how you acted towards one another, you clearly both missed each other.
Your shrill phone alarm suddenly went off, startling Patrick awake behind you.
“Mmm, fuck, sorry,” he sleepily slurred as he rolled away from you. You turned over to look at his tired face, eyes still lidded and speckled face looking far softer than you remembered.
Out of the blue, he opened his eyes, catching you in the act of looking at him with barely-concealed affection. Before he could make some sort of snarky comment, he shot out of bed, adjusted his boxers, and made an urgent beeline towards the bathroom. All of which would’ve been far funnier if his actions hadn’t been disrupted by the loud message ping of his cellphone.
You weighed out your options. You were curious about what was waiting for him on his phone, but you weren’t sure that you’d have time to properly snoop. As if the universe was listening to your thoughts, the sound of the shower began, telling you that you had all the time that you needed to do some adequate investigation.
You wondered who was texting Patrick so early in the morning. Knowing him, it was probably his mother, checking in to make sure he made it to his destination safely. You were sure that whatever message she left would also be inquiring about you. She’d always had a bit of a soft spot for you, especially compared to some of the other people that Patrick had brought home. That, of course, was an observation shared to you from Patrick, so you couldn’t be sure how much of it was flattery compared to truth.
Regardless, her fondness for you had carried into the end of your relationship, with her occasionally messaging or calling you to make sure that you were still doing well, and more importantly, to check in on the status of your relationship.
Much like you and your friends, she’d been holding out hope that your relationship may repair itself. With you and Patrick being as passionate as the two of you were, you were no strangers to seemingly serious arguments that resolved themselves in a matter of days. While calling off a wedding was far more drastic than any of your other disputes had been, after being together for years, it was hard to imagine a world where the two of you weren’t a couple.
But his call never came. You didn’t hear an apology or explanation or even an excuse from Patrick—just a suggestion of when you should pick up the items you’d left at his place.
You hated to admit it, but there was a naïve part of you that was still holding out hope that this trip would be exactly what you needed to reconcile. And maybe that naïeve part of you was less delusional than you might’ve originally thought. Surely cuddling into the morning and Patrick’s poorly hidden morning wood were signs that this vacation was already going in the right direction. Maybe being in such close proximity was exactly the push you needed to get your relationship back on track.
After a halfhearted internal debate, you grabbed his phone from the night stand on his side of the bed. Attempting the passcode he’d been using while you were together—the digits of your birthday—you were pleased to find that the password hadn’t changed and that you were granted access into his phone. What you weren’t expecting to see was Tinder on the homepage of his cracked device.
You paused for a moment and attempted to reason with yourself. Your former fiancé probably didn’t even use the app. He’d likely been pressured by his rebound-obsessed friends to download it, and hadn’t even opened the app since setting up his profile. Besides, you didn’t get on his phone to see what new apps he’d downloaded, you were snooping to see what his mom had to say about you.
When you opened his messages app, your mouth promptly fell open in shock. Patrick had always been loyal to you—at least to your knowledge—while the two of you were together. Seeing him be so openly flirtatious and suggestive with an attractive woman that you hadn’t ever heard of was more than jarring.
Your stomach churned as you scrolled through the conversation, flirty messages and images from both sides that left little to the imagination disturbing you in a way that you hadn’t ever realized was possible.
In the midst of your distraught state, you nearly missed the background noise of the shower coming to a halt, informing you that your time snooping had come to an end.
You set his phone back down where you’d found it and desperately tried to push down the bile in your throat that was tasting more and more like jealousy and anger by the second.
You knew it was irrational for you to be feeling this way, considering that the two of you had been broken up for a few months. Nothing legally or morally tied the two of you together anymore, but that didn’t make you feel any less unsettled by what you’d just seen.
It was just that… you weren’t sure you’d ever be able to fully move on from Patrick. He’d been part of your life for so long, and the way things ended had been so abrupt that it almost didn’t feel real. Even if you did move on, it was going to take you more than three months to do so. It wasn’t fair that Patrick’s name seemed to pop up every week in your therapy sessions, while he was sending pictures of himself in gray sweatpants to random hot women.
You wanted to shrink into the mattress and never come back up. You wanted to yell at Patrick the moment he stepped out of the bathroom. You wanted to turn on your side and wail dramatically, at least until all of your big feelings felt a little smaller.
But you were in Europe on vacation. You were on vacation, damnit, and you weren’t going to let one mildly disturbing text thread ruin your entire experience. Better yet, if Patrick was already moving on, there was no reason that you shouldn’t do the same.
You told yourself this as you rolled out of bed and dug in your suitcase, pulling out a sundress that had driven Patrick wild in the past. While you may have packed it with less than realistic expectations, your goal was far more grounded now.
Both of you could play this game.
You stepped out of the bathroom fully dressed after a shower of your own and instantly registered the almost cartoonish look he was giving you. You guessed that some things never changed, even when the two of you had decided to actively pursue other people.
“The tour guide said to meet in the lobby soon, so I’m gonna head down,” you explained, not giving him a second look as you began to search for your purse.
“The tour doesn’t start for another half hour?” he replied, sitting up from where he was laying on the bed.
“Well I wanna socialize with the people we’re gonna be traveling through Europe with,” you said a little snappily, still a little perturbed about what you’d found on his phone earlier. You conveniently left out the fact that you wanted to scope out any potential summer flings.
“I’ll come with you,” he insisted.
“You really don’t have to. Remember, this isn’t actually a honeymoon,” you slipped on some comfortable shoes and headed to the door. “I’ll see you around.”
You were probably being far more rude than you really needed to be, but your anger had only intensified as you showered and put on makeup. At this point, you were fully pissed—even if you didn’t have the right to be.
You made small talk with the people you met in the lobby as they began to filter into the room, and tried your absolute best to dispel the anger that was flowing through your veins. That proved harder than you anticipated, as Patrick was one of the last people to join you all in the lobby, and for the life of you, you couldn’t stop imagining him sitting in your shared hotel room and sexting his mystery girl.
Luckily, you couldn’t dwell on that ugly thought for too long, as your tour began soon after. Your friendly guide took your group around the city, explaining rather riveting information about the landmarks you visited and the city itself.
After being dismissed for a quick break, you found yourself sitting on a bench and chatting with a man in your group. He wasn’t really your type, but he was extremely conventionally attractive, and from the peripheral glances you caught of Patrick, you could tell that he wasn’t exactly pleased with what was going on.
While making him jealous, or annoyed, or whatever it was that he was feeling, wasn’t your expressed goal, it did feel nice to give him a taste of his own medicine. What felt less nice was glancing over and catching him typing on his phone furiously. You could only imagine whose boobs were on the other end of the line.
Reacting out of a bit of desperation and frustration, you began to play things up. You leaned over more to show off more cleavage, laughed a little harder at jokes that weren’t all that funny, and set a scandalous hand on his arm. You were determined to have that vacation fling now, and you were going to get it by any means necessary.
You laid it on thick for the rest of the afternoon, sitting next to him during lunch and flirting casually with him as your group walked through Park Güell.
You wondered if he noticed you throwing glances in Patrick’s direction after every interaction. You hoped that he didn’t.
It felt good to be getting even with Patrick—but not as good as you expected it to feel. The realization sunk in as a portion of your group visited a bar that was apparently very popular with the locals. Or at least, that’s what a very handsome man purred into your ear after sitting down next to you at the bar.
You’d been keeping an eye on Patrick as he socialized with a couple that he’d been talking to for the majority of your day, but you almost instantly lost track of him as you became consumed with this handsome stranger.
Everything happened in a bit of a blur—one moment you’d been nursing a Marianito, and the next you were holding the hand of a man whose name you couldn’t remember as he led you to his apartment.
By the time you’d left his apartment, you were nothing short of a mess. You were pretty sure that the only way you could’ve been more obvious about what had just happened to you was if you had the words “JUST HAD SEX” written across your forehead—and with the way the people in your hotel elevator were looking at you, you couldn’t be completely sure that those words weren’t on your face.
You made it back to your room safely, quietly opening the door and doing your best not to make too much noise, since at this hour, Patrick was surely asleep.
It did feel weird to be going back to his bed less than an hour after you’d been with another man, but you couldn’t necessarily say you felt bad. Patrick had started it, and you simply finished it off. If he didn’t have any issues with seeing other people, there was no reason for you to have an issue with it either.
Your efforts to be quiet had proved themselves to be for naught, as Patrick was very clearly wide awake, sitting up in bed and already looking at you disapprovingly.
You weren’t sure what possessed you to speak, rather than ignoring his presence and heading straight to the shower, but your mouth was open before you could stop yourself.
“Were you just gonna wait here until I got back, like I’m a kid who just snuck out or something?” you asked in disbelief, partially annoyed because of his action, but more ashamed to have been caught in such a state. It couldn’t have been more obvious to Patrick what you’d just done, considering that he’d seen you in a similar state hundreds of times.
“Baby, we are on a whole different, unfamiliar continent,” his tone was condescending and cold and it made you want to crawl out of your skin. “Why wouldn’t I wait to make sure you got back safely?”
“Don’t call me pet names. And I would’ve been fine. We were just at the bar,” you lied. Going to the apartment of a random man you just met probably wasn’t your brightest idea, but you made it out alive, and that was what mattered.
“Huh. The bar?” he smirked at you in a way that screamed that he was pissed, without really having to say a word.
“Yes, I- what does it matter to you anyway?” you hoped that the question would be enough to get you out of the situation. If you were going to argue, you at least wanted to argue after you were showered and in pajamas.
“What does it matter to me if you fucked someone else?” he asked, sounding like he was in complete disbelief.
“Yeah, Patrick. Why does it matter if I fucked someone else? We’re not together anymore. Did you forget? I mean, it seemed pretty obvious to you when you stopped speaking to me completely a few months ago.”
“Please, enlighten me. What did I have to speak to you about?”
“I don’t know! Maybe an ‘are you okay?’ would’ve been nice. Or something. Anything, really. We were together for six fucking years and you just dropped me like I was dirt!”
“I…” he trailed off, catching you by surprise. He almost always had a quick clever response that managed to piss you off in a way no one else ever could, so seeing him not knowing what to say next caught you off guard. “If our relationship meant that much to you, why were you all over that guy? I mean, seriously. I’ve never seen anything so desperate. You were practically rubbing yourself on him in the park like a bitch in heat.”
Contempt dripped from his words. You had never been so enraged.
“Are you joking?” you laughed out of sheer anger. “Patrick, you started it! How many Tinder girls have you seen since we broke up? And don’t you dare fucking lie to me. I saw everything you’ve been sending to Amelia. Amelia, I’m so lonely. Amelia, I’m so horny. Amelia, I love you so much,” you mocked.
“You went through my phone?” he asked in disbelief, not even bothering to address the rest of your statement. “Fuck. You’re unbelievable.”
“I’m unbelievable? How long did it even take you before we split for you to start seeing other people? I mean, knowing you, you were probably just waiting for the day we broke up to go get your dick wet.”
“That’s not true, and you know it,” for a second, he looked genuinely wounded—something you were only able to recognize after years of being in a relationship with the man. You didn’t like that you were actively hurting him, but he’d been inflicting pain on you from the moment you broke up.
“Fine,” you conceded on that front, knowing that he was right. It wasn’t completely true. If you hadn’t gone through his phone, you never would’ve guessed that he had already moved on. “But you’ve still been seeing other people.”
“We’ve been broken up for months now,” he replied, as if that was supposed to make things any better or more reasonable.
“Then why do you care so much about me having sex with someone else? It’s fine when you do it, but suddenly it’s an issue for me?”
Patrick’s face immediately paled. “You really fucked him?”
“Well, yeah,” you paused. “Well, not who you’re thinking of.”
“You fucked someone else?!” The hurt and disbelief buried under his words made your stomach churn. “You were flirting with that other douchebag all day, I don’t-“
“You’re acting like I’m some whore for reacting to something that you did first!” you cut him off.
“And you’re acting like I wanted to get rid of you this whole time!” he shot back out at you.
“Clearly you fucking did,” you hissed.
“Fuck you,” he huffed.
“Fuck you,” you shot right back. “I’m leaving.”
“Good,” Patrick replied with a shrug as if he didn’t care, although you were very sure that he cared. “Go run back to your little fuck buddy.”
“Yeah, maybe I will,” you replied as you gathered your items back into your suitcase. “He was better than you, by the way.”
“Yeah, I bet,” he said snarkily as he watched you pack up your items. Luckily, you didn’t have much to pack up and were already heading towards the door.
“He had a bigger dick, too,” you said as you swung open the hotel room door, fully satisfied with a lie that you knew would bother Patrick.
While leaving your hotel room seemed like a wonderful idea in the moment, as you went down the elevator, you started to realize that you really did not have many options for where you’d sleep that night.
You figured your best bet was the hotel lobby. Maybe you could pretend to be someone who’d drank too much and passed out on the first floor before you made it up to your room. You sat down in a comfortable looking chair and grabbed your keycard—in case anyone asked you to verify who you were—then set a floppy hat on your head to cover your face from the bright hotel lobby lights while you attempted to sleep.
Sleep was already going to be difficult to accomplish, thanks to the argument that you were certainly going to be ruminating on for days to come. That was only made more difficult by the uncomfortable seating and position you’d found yourself in. Somehow, you managed to fall asleep, being woken up by a hotel employee and a friend you’d made from your tour group.
“Long night, huh?” she asked you with a playful smirk.
“Mm, something like that,” you mumbled sleepily.
“Well, you can sleep on the coach. It just got here, so we’ll have the best pick of seats. C’mon,” she extended her hand out to you and you gladly took it, in desperate need of something grounding.
You dozed off on the coach once you’d gotten settled, headphones securely on your ears and sunglasses covering your closed eyes. You were vaguely aware of people boarding the vehicle around you, but didn’t pay much mind to anything. Eventually, you heard the faint sound of someone taking attendance of the people on the bus, followed by the commotion of someone getting on the bus late.
Something compelled you to open up your eyes, and when you did, you were displeased to find that Patrick was the source of all of the drama. Likely thing for him to be. He scrambled down the aisle, looking desperately for empty seats. To your own horror, you realized that the seat next to you was vacant, and perhaps the only vacant seat on the entire coach.
As if your minds were connected, you watched Patrick face that very same dilemma as he eventually decided to sit down in the only empty seat, right next to you.
Neither of you said anything at first, not addressing your blowout argument the previous night, or your awkward current situation.
“You look like shit,” Patrick finally said as the bus took off.
“Thanks,” you replied, mentally preparing yourself for a continuation of the argument you’d had just a few hours ago. It was only a matter of time before he brought up your promiscuity or started blatantly texting his Tinderella.
But none of that ever came. In fact, he just looked a little sad. It was weird to see Patrick so openly defeated. He was always one to put on a smirk or a challenging smile when you argued, letting the façade fall once he was alone, or once the two of you finally discussed what the issue was like adults.
You weren’t sure that you liked it. You preferred annoying asshole Patrick to sad, moping Patrick.
“You look like shit, too,” you added. “Which is crazy, since you had access to a shower and I didn’t.”
“And whose fault is that?” he asked, looking at you with the slightest hint of that devious smile. You had to fight the slightest inkling of a smile on your own face.
You felt ridiculous knowing that your mood was still being influenced by your former partner. Even when he was insulting you. Even after he’d spent the night arguing with you. Even after you’d slept with someone else. Even after the two of you had a messy split.
You still loved him.
“Yours, mostly,” you shrugged and put your headphones back on.
PARIS, FRANCE
Despite your brief conversation on the bus, you and Patrick didn’t speak to each other for the entirety of your commute. Although you clearly cared about him, it didn’t change the fact that he had upset and hurt you deeply. And even as upset as you were, you knew that you’d hurt him just as badly.
You had a particular dread for what awaited you in France, knowing that this part of the tour was very couples-activity heavy. When you’d scheduled your trip, this aspect of the tour felt like a major selling point. The two of you always seemed to be falling more in love with each other, and having a candlelit dinner by the Eiffel Tower felt like an exciting way to kick off your marriage.
Now, you just felt like an idiot.
The two of you did your absolute best to avoid getting paired up with each other for all of the activities that you could. You found yourself spending most of your time with a solo traveler who was close in age to you. She made a surprisingly fun companion to your cheese and wine taste test, popping cubes of fragrant cheese into your mouth and making a competition out of who could detect the most accurate notes in your wine.
While you found luck in your first few activities, you weren’t so lucky when it came to an evening ride of the Roue de Paris. Whether it was fate or just bad luck, after the pair in front of you had dipped out of line for reasons unknown to you, you had the shocking realization that Patrick had been in between them the whole time. So much for meeting new people on the massive ferris wheel.
You tried to look busy so he wouldn’t notice that you noticed, and did your best to think of some sort of game plan. Although you’d essentially been giving each other the silent treatment in the hours leading up to this moment, you’d caught Patrick looking at you multiple times throughout the day—something you only noticed because you’d been looking at him as well.
After a moment, the two of you were let into an empty passenger car. Sitting across from one another, it was hard to ignore the very obvious elephants in the room, but that didn’t mean you wouldn’t try.
At first, you simply looked out the window, not saying a single word as the ferris wheel began to move.
“You should put that safety belt on, just in case,” Patrick commented from his side of the car, pulling his eyes away from the window to look at you.
“I doubt anything will happen,” you shrugged. “It’s fine.”
He eyed you suspiciously for a moment, before leaning over and strapping you in anyway. Your breath caught in your throat, his simple action putting you into serious psychological pain. It wasn’t lost on you how much Patrick liked to take care of you. It was far more obvious when the two of you were dating, with him covering the bills for dates and doing your laundry for you. It had been so ironic to you at the time, how a man who could barely take care of himself always went out of his way to make sure that you were going to be okay.
Now, his small act of kindness just made your stomach turn. But it wasn’t like you could express any of those feelings.
“Thanks,” was all that you managed before looking out of the window once more.
An awkward, heavy silence filled the passenger car once more as the ride began to take the two of you higher.
“The view is so beautiful,” you commented, unable to remain silent anymore and hoping that your words were neutral enough not to stir any pots.
“Yeah, it’s really nice,” his gaze remained fixed out the window, before he looked at you once more as if there were words on the tip of his tongue.
“I honestly don’t know how we managed to get in line in time to see the sunset,” you continued with your boring, neutral small talk.
“I’m glad we did. This is the perfect spot to watch it.”
“Yeah,” you agreed, continuing to look out the window instead of at the man across from you. “It’s so pretty tonight, too.”
“It is,” he agreed.
The two of you sat in silence again, only the sound of a soft whirring filling your ears. Then suddenly, all at once, the whirring stopped—and so did your passenger car.
“Are we stuck?” you asked, looking out nervously at the very tall height that the two of you were currently definitely stuck at.
“We can’t be. It’ll probably start back up in a second.”
It didn’t start back up in a second. In fact, after a series of announcements in French, an announcement in English suddenly declared that it would be at least an hour before the ride could be fixed.
At the sound of the announcement, both you and Patrick sighed aloud, still synchronized even after everything you’d been through.
“Maybe this is a sign,” Patrick piped up.
“What are you talking about?” you laughed at him, hoping desperately that this didn’t mean that he wanted to continue arguing with you. You genuinely did not have it in you to do so again. You also didn’t have it in you to sleep in another hotel lobby.
“Well, I’ve been wanting to talk to you all day,” he confessed.
“Is that why you were staring at me all day?” you teased, a weak, slightly hopeful smile creeping onto your face.
“I was looking at you because I could feel you staring at me,” he clarified, as if he was setting the record straight. “I don’t want things to be like this between us anymore.”
“Yeah?” you asked, the pit of nerves in your stomach tightening at wherever he was going with his spiel. The anticipation of his words alone made you nauseous.
“So I think that we should talk about last night,” he suggested.
That was exactly what you didn’t want to hear him say. You had barely processed the argument yourself, let alone think about anything else that you had to say to Patrick that didn’t involve trying to hurt him as much as he hurt you.
“We don’t have to. It’s fine. The past is in the past,” you dismissed.
“It’s not fine, though. Not really,” he countered, all earnestness. You didn’t detect any harshness to his words or any blood in the water that indicated to you that he wanted to do anything more than have an honest conversation with you. “I was so out of line. I can’t- I don’t want you to think that I really believe the things I said about you.”
“Patrick, please…” you trailed off, hoping that he would understand that you didn’t really want to talk about this. Though, you were relieved to learn that he’d only said those things out of the heat of the moment.
“No,” he stood his ground. “We need to talk about this if we ever want our relationship to improve.”
“Fine,” you gave in. “But you start, so I can collect my thoughts.”
“Of course,” he leaned forward so he could get a better look at you, and you were immediately drawn into some intense eye contact with him. “I’m sorry for acting like a dick yesterday. I shouldn’t have treated you the way I did, and I really shouldn’t have let you leave our hotel room. That was really stupid of me. I worried about you for the rest of the night and spent the morning looking for you.”
This was surprising information to you. While you did find it to be a bit of a dick move that Patrick would just let you leave like that after lecturing you about being unsafe in a new country, you hadn’t realized that he’d been late to boarding the coach because he’d been searching for you. You could only imagine the sick feeling he had as he realized he couldn’t find you anywhere.
“I’m sorry for what I said, too. Insulting you for trying to move on was really unfair of me. I was just… hurt, I guess. When I don’t even have the right to be.”
“You do, a little. We were together for a really long time, so it’s gonna feel weird that we’re starting to see other people,” you shrugged. “That was an excellent apology, that I accept, by the way.”
“Thank you. I really got a chance to practice my apology skills with the last woman I was with,” he explained. You tried to repress the feeling of jealousy that was already bubbling up in your stomach at the mention of another woman.
“Yeah?” you asked, hoping that he didn’t notice the brief twitch of your eye.
“Yeah. She’s super opinionated and outspoken, so we would butt heads a lot. But that was always something I really liked about her. That, and her magnificent ass.”
Finally, it occurred to you that he was talking about you. You rolled your eyes and shook your head, despite the fact that you were secretly very flattered by the way he was speaking about you. “Ew. Shut up,” you laughed.
“Well, if you’re done objectifying me, I would love to apologize to you too.”
“All done objectifying you. For now, at least. Go ahead.”
You were a little nervous about the words that were about to come out of your mouth. You just had so much to say, and you weren’t sure that it was all going to come out correctly.
“I’m sorry for the things I said last night. I genuinely did not mean what I said, I just got caught up in the moment. And I’m really sorry for going through your phone, because that’s seriously none of my business. It was such an unnecessary violation of trust, and I understand if you’re still pissed at me for that. And it was really ridiculous for me to overreact the way that I did over you seeing someone else, because again, it’s really not my business. I feel like I’m kinda the worst,” you confessed.
“You’re not the worst,” he countered.
“Fine, I guess. Maybe you just bring the worst out in me,” you joked, trying to lighten the mood slightly.
“That sounds more accurate. We bring out the worst in each other.”
“Right. That’s why we’re such a good pair,” you paused, then corrected yourself. “Of friends.”
“Is that what we are now?”
“I never said we were good friends.”
“Frenemies?”
“Something like that,” you said, before the familiar whirring sound of the ferris wheel began once more.
“Huh. Who would’ve thought that the only thing the wheel needed to function was an apology to each other?”
“You’re so annoying,” you laughed and shook your head. “How are we gonna make it through the rest of this trip?”
LONDON, ENGLAND
Your final few days in France had been made far less awkward by your conversation on the ferris wheel. Deciding to fully embrace the couples activities the tour had reserved for you, the two of you were having a good time re-establishing your friendship.
Your trip to London had gone mostly without a hitch, with your group arriving in the city in the evening and immediately checking in to your hotel. At this point, you had given up on even attempting to get separate beds. It seemed like every morning now you woke up cuddling with Patrick, but you weren’t necessarily mad at the unintentional intimacy.
In some ways, your relationship was beginning to feel similar to how it felt before the two of you broke up. While you were sure that things wouldn’t be exactly the same—especially since you still hadn’t addressed the elephant in the room that was your breakup—it was nice to return to the comfort you’d found in your relationship with Patrick.
Like clockwork, the morning after your arrival in London, you woke up with Patrick pressed up against your back, nose buried in your hair. As he woke up, he pressed a gentle kiss to your hairline out of what you were sure was just habit rather than genuine affection.
“Morning,” he greeted you groggily, rolling away from your side.
“Morning,” you replied, turning to face him. You ran a hand through his messy morning hair and looked at him fondly. It was taking far more self control than you had to not lean over and kiss him. “What time is it?” you asked, in part to distract yourself, but also because the digital clock was on his side of the bed.
“It’s…” he trailed off as he went to read the time. “Oh shit, we’re gonna be late.”
“What?” you asked, shooting up from your relaxed position.
“It’s 8:25,” he explained, already rolling out of bed.
In a rush, the two of you got dressed in record time, making it down to the lobby in the five minutes that you had to make it on time. You shared a high-five in the lobby, and tried your best not to dwell on how the simple action felt far more domestic than it needed to.
Your tour began not too long after that, getting your day off to a strong start. Your day of exploring London was by far your busiest. You were sure that you’d accumulated thousands of steps as you went between large museums, beautiful parks, and massive landmarks. By the time that you returned to your hotel room, you were pretty sure that your legs were mush.
You returned earlier than Patrick, who had gone out to a gastropub with a group of tourists in your group that he got along well with. You took this as an opportunity to have some alone time, taking a long and steaming hot shower, frolicking around the room in a soft hotel robe, and watching a movie while you waited for your room service to arrive.
After you’d thoroughly enjoyed your alone time, finishing off your room service and opting to scroll on your phone, the door cracked open and Patrick strolled in.
“Looks like you made yourself right at home,” he observed.
“I had to after today’s tour. So much walking,” you groaned.
“It wasn’t all that bad,” he shrugged, sitting down next to you in bed.
“Well, not all of us are professional athletes,” you laughed. “How was the pub?”
“Fun. It’d be better if you came.”
“I’m sorry, I was exhausted,” you sighed. “You could’ve stayed in with me and had a spa day.”
“We can have a spa day anywhere. We can have a spa day right now.”
“Mm, I’m all spa’d out. But the water pressure in the shower is excellent, so you should definitely check that out.”
“I will in a little bit,” he said. “Did you try out the actual spa here?”
“They were closed when I checked, which really sucks, since I was in desperate need of a massage.”
“Do you still want one?” Patrick asked.
“Yeah. I’ll probably try to stop by when they’re open tomorrow and get one.”
“No, I mean, do you want a massage now?” he added.
It had been a long time since Patrick had offered you a massage—or to put his hands on you in any capacity—but you remembered him being criminally talented at giving them. You also remembered his massages usually making for great foreplay that left your knees weak and your brain a pile of jelly, but that clearly wouldn’t be the case now, and you needed to get your head out of the gutter.
“I mean, sure. That would be nice,” you tried not to sound too excited, though the prospect of a massage from him sounded very, very nice.
While the prospect of a massage sounded nice, the actual massage was heavenly. You were sure that years of having personal trainers and physical therapists work knots out of his body had made him an expert at finding knots and kinks in your own, which was now leaving you sighing happily as he ran his hands over your back.
You tried your best to ignore the dull, fiery feeling growing in your lower stomach that was surely a result of experiencing a type of intimacy that you hadn’t in quite some time. As you let out an involuntary soft sound at a particular knot being rubbed out of your shoulder, you wondered if this massage was affecting him nearly as much as it was affecting you.
You promptly received an answer to this question when something hard and phallic brushed up against your leg. You turned your head to glance back at Patrick, and his face immediately grew red.
“Sorry. I can stop, if you want. It just happened because of the noises you’re making and- whatever. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
Part of you felt a little satisfied knowing that you still had that type of impact on him. It gave you a tiny glimmer of hope to know that you were still, at the least, physically attracted to one another.
“It’s fine. I’ll shut up.”
“You don’t have to. I want this to be as relaxing as possible for you.”
“Well you’re doing a great job, if you couldn’t tell from all of the moaning and groaning on my end.”
You both somehow made it through the rest of the massage without spilling all over the bed, but as you melted into the bed, feeling every muscle in your body relaxed from your excellent massage, you couldn’t help but note the suspiciously long time Patrick was spending in the shower. And maybe it was just your imagination, but if you listened hard enough, you swore you could hear the sound of a soft chanting of your name coming from the other side of the bathroom door.
While part of you regretted not suggesting that the two of you help each other out with your mutual problems, you were pretty sure that it was for the best. You genuinely didn’t know where the two of you stood, as far as your relationship went. Hooking up would surely further complicate an already complicated situation, since you were pretty sure that ex-fiancés didn’t typically sleep together. But then again, ex-fiancés also didn’t usually go on a honeymoon despite not being together. Your complicated feelings on the matter only further proved to you that you made the right choice by not giving in to your baser desires.
By the time Patrick joined you in bed, you were already half asleep. Yet, even in your delirious state, you didn’t miss the way he came up behind you, pulling you into a loving embrace. It brought warmth to your chest to know that he couldn’t even wait for your automatic sleep routine to hold you, and that he felt the need to take matters into his own hands.
You were pretty sure that exes didn’t do that either.
AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS
You didn’t know what you expected from your first ferry ride, but being face deep in a barf bag while soothing circles were rubbed into your back was certainly not it.
Given that you weren’t a frequent rider of large vessels on bodies of water, you had no clue going into the ride that things would go so sideways so quickly for you. If anything, you thought you might have the opportunity to stare peacefully out into the water, or to force Patrick to take a few cute pictures of you. Unfortunately, you were currently doing neither of those things—and it didn’t seem like you’d be doing them any time soon.
You heaved once more, now almost totally sure that you had nothing left to give. Patrick continued to hold your hair out of your face with one hand and use his other to comfortingly rub your back, not at all fazed by your sickness. If you weren’t currently fighting off another wave of nausea and didn’t have the taste of bile lingering in your mouth, you probably could’ve kissed the man.
Once your brain finally told you the coast was clear, you leaned your head back and took several deep, gasping breaths of air.
“You alright, honey?” he asked you, and you didn’t even have the strength—physical or mental—to correct his use of a pet name.
“I could be better,” you replied, pinching the bridge of your nose as you tilted your head back. “There’s medicine for this, right?”
“Yeah. Let me go see if I can find some.”
As you fought off a war of nausea and headache that was currently beating you on all fronts, you could faintly hear the sound of Patrick asking the people around you if they had any medicine for motion sickness. He eventually returned after what felt like a lifetime, but was probably more like a few minutes, carrying a bottle of Dramamine.
He helped you take the pill, putting it in your mouth then holding a bottle of water up to your lips to help you swallow it. The action felt oddly romantic, though it was more of a matter of practicality compared to anything else. You were clearly not in a stable enough space to get the pill down on your own, so his assistance wasn’t really anything for you to be over analyzing.
“Look at you, keeping that down,” he teased, running his hand up and down your arm. The motion was soothing, a bit of bodily comfort amongst a plethora of other awful physical pains you were experiencing. “You’re doing great.”
His soft caresses turned into a full-blown hug, with Patrick pulling you into a tight embrace. While the action itself was rather cute—especially since it seemed to be completely impulsive on his part—it instantly brought on a new wave of nausea.
“Pat?” you squeaked.
“Yeah?” he asked.
“You’re sweet. But if we stay like this, I am going to be sick all over you.”
He pulled away from you with concern, careful not to move too quickly to set off another bout of sickness. While he let go of your body, he continued to hold your hand, as if he were attempting to ground you. With how anxious he was looking, he might’ve been trying to ground himself as well.
It was cute seeing him so worried about you. You tried your best not to read too much into it, and luckily, your slowly fading nausea was the perfect distraction from doing so.
“Thank you for the drugs. It was fun watching you scramble all around asking people for help. You’re such a good…” you paused, not really knowing what you were or what to say. “Ex.”
Now wasn’t exactly the ideal time to have the, ‘what are we?’ conversation, but Patrick didn’t seem to mind. And if he did mind, he was doing a damn good job at hiding it.
“Only the best for my ex.” Maybe you’d just been imaging it, but you swore you sensed a bit of hesitation on his end as he called you his ex. Admittedly, it would be significantly easier for both of you to be calling each other spouses, or even partners. But alas, you weren’t either of those things to each other anymore.
As if you’d read each other's minds, the two of you quickly moved on from that conversation.
After you’d arrived and gotten settled into Amsterdam, you set off to explore the city. When presented with a few options of things to do, Patrick insisted that the two of you go on a bike tour, much to your own chagrin. As much as you weren’t sure your legs could handle any more strenuous physical activity, you’d known that Patrick had wanted to take this bike tour since your trip was an actual honeymoon. Who were you to deny him of that?
As the two of you toured the very beautiful city, Patrick made sure to make a show out of his biking skills. While he was no professional cyclist, he certainly had the ego of one—which translated to him going a little too hard at times and nearly falling off of his bike more than once.
Each time he almost fell, you found yourself also almost falling, the onset of laughter at the ridiculous man riding next to you nearly being too much to handle. Without fail, every time the two of you did your almost falling, then break into a howling laughter routine, you were given dirty looks by your fellow tour mates. Unfortunately, that only made the situation funnier to you and Patrick.
By the time the tour had wrapped, it was clear that everyone was sick and tired of you. But at least this time, the people around you were sick of the girlish giggles Patrick pulled from you, rather than the rude words he provoked you into saying, like he’d done on the plane.
It was refreshing to be spending time with him like this. In the time that you’d been so upset about your break up, you forgot about just how good it felt to be around Patrick when your relationship was going well.
It was also nice to be spending some alone time with him, away from the rest of your tour group. As the two of you looked at strange knick-knacks in an antique store, you realized just how much you missed being alone with him. While it was nice that the two of you had made friends within your group, your dynamic as a duo was obviously something really special. Maybe that’s why the two of you had been together for so long.
You spent the majority of the afternoon doubled over in laughter, playfully teasing Patrick, or being on the receiving end of subtle, gentle touches. As you really began to think about it, this day of travel had been your favorite—by a long shot. It also happened to be the day that felt most like one from a honeymoon.
Although it had already been clear to you for some time that you still had feelings for Patrick, the day you had spent together had completely sealed the deal. Once Patrick had surprised you with a beautiful bouquet of flowers over dinner, you’d only been more sure that you were sick with love for your ex.
It was a small miracle that you’d rounded out the day without confessing your feelings, particularly since you ended the evening with a movie playing on the television of your hotel room that the two of you barely paid attention to, as Patrick held you and talked about some of the things you’d missed while the two of you were separated.
In the morning, you woke up to the soft sound of chatter, rather than your loud alarm clock or the sound of deep breaths in the shell of your ear.
From what you could faintly make out from the words and the lack of a warm body beside you, Patrick was on the phone with his mother. You wanted to feel bad for eavesdropping, especially since you’d just had an argument with Patrick over your snooping habit just over a week ago, but it was far too difficult not to listen in.
“I’m glad you liked the picture,” you made out from the muffled words behind the doorway. You were sure he was referencing the selfie the two of you took in front of Big Ben a few days ago. You also liked the photo a lot, with the two of you looking particularly good and particularly happy. You’d also taken a more baity photo of him kissing your cheek, specifically to send to his mother who he knew would be overjoyed to see you. While Patrick had explained the idea behind the picture as his mom simply wanting to see you, you knew the more accurate statement is that his mom wanted to see the two of you together.
After a beat, there was a soft chuckle. “No, we’re not back together. No mom, there’s no ‘yet.’ I know. I’m an idiot, I know- aren’t you supposed to take your child’s side? Well, I don’t know if you know this, but we never ended up getting married, so no, she’s not your daughter. How could she possibly be your favorite child! We just talked about this. I’m gonna hang up. I’m serious. Alright. Love you, bye.”
When Patrick returned, you were already sitting up in bed.
“Can you tell your mom I say hi next time?” you asked with a cheeky grin on your face, still coming off of the high that was the romantic outing you’d had the day prior.
“I’m sure she’d love to hear that,” he replied, getting back into bed beside you. “She probably wants to hear from you more than she wants to hear from me.”
You laughed and shook your head, not bothering to argue with his words since you both knew they were pretty accurate.
“I mean, I’m sure she’ll be inviting you to Thanksgiving and Christmas long after we’ve moved on with other people and have our own families.”
Your heart dropped to your stomach. You were sure of it. You thought you could genuinely feel the movement of your most vital organ slowly sinking into a pit of stomach acid.
You tried not to let your smile falter, considering that Patrick was looking right at you with a sweet look of his own plastered on his face. You wondered if this was some sort of test, to gauge how you felt after a day of rekindling the love the two of you thought had burnt out.
Or maybe, more realistically, he’d already come to accept the reality that you’d been stalling on accepting: your relationship was truly over. One fun day wouldn’t change the fact that your wedding had been called off, and that the two of you said things to each other that would alter the foundations of any solid relationship for years to come.
Your heart was such a traitor. She refused to accept the simple fact that Patrick wanted to move on, and that your relationship was a thing of the past. Maybe, if you couldn’t convince your heart to accept that truth, you might be able to force your brain to.
“And I’ll still be accepting that invitation, thank you very much,” you stated, trying to sound confident in your words. “In the meantime, let’s get ready before we miss this bus. You can tell me what your mom’s menu is gonna look like this year on our ride over.”
SOMEWHERE IN CENTRAL GERMANY
It was stupid for you to be torn up the way that you were over just a few simple words, but the more you thought about it, the worse you felt.
In reality, it wasn’t just what Patrick had said to you in the hotel room. It was the fact that he’d been actively trying to move on with other people since who knew when, and the way he seemed to frequently verbally reiterate the fact that your relationship was over. By holding out hope that you might somehow be able to repair your relationship, you were being much more naïve than you even realized.
You felt stupid. But you also felt confused, because as much as Patrick swore he was over you, and pursued other people, he was also far too comfortable acting like nothing had changed between you two. After all, he was the one flirting with you, and trying to attach himself at the hip to you as you traveled. He was the one who always managed to end up spooning you over the course of the night and woke up kissing whatever part of your body he was closest to. For god's sake, he’d just told you yesterday about how he’d searched high and low to find a bouquet of flowers that he thought you would genuinely like. And most damningly, you hadn’t forgotten the look of hurt on his face when he found out that you had slept with someone else. That wasn’t the behavior of someone who was over their partner.
To say you were receiving mixed messages was a complete understatement. You couldn’t understand how it was possible that the man who was currently leaning against you very affectionately, despite being on a cramped bus, was also totally over you and wanted to move on.
You didn’t know what you wanted to do about the situation, but you were sure that you couldn’t keep going like this.
Your bus stopped somewhere in Germany for the evening, letting you all out to have dinner and do some light sightseeing before regrouping in the morning and heading to Prague. Somehow, that translated to going to a bar to try out German beer for you, Patrick, and a few of the friends you’d made while traveling.
After a brief intermission of checking into your hotel room, your small group met up in the lobby, then set off to find a bar.
Drinking while you were feeling a little upset probably wasn’t your brightest idea. The speed and volume at which you were consuming alcohol was a little concerning, but not nearly as concerning as how much Patrick was drinking. Eventually, even in your drunken state, you realized that you should probably slow down—if nothing else, to take care of him.
But the two of you continued on, going from bar to bar, getting drunk at a level that probably would’ve been acceptable when you were younger, but was certainly going to take a major toll on you now.
Forgetting about the repercussions of the future, you two were having a great time. Despite you being out with a group, it felt a little bit like the two of you were in your own little bubble. Nothing else in the world seemed to matter as the two of you took shots and danced together. Not the people around you, not the fact that you had to be up early the next morning to make it onto your coach, not even the fact that Patrick had implied that the two of you would move on and have families with other people only a few days ago.
By the time that the rest of your group had called it quits, explaining that they wanted to be up and functional in time for your ride the next morning, you and Patrick were still in your own little world. It was only after you’d shared a few drunk cigarettes that the two of you decided that the fun should end, and that it was time to head back to your hotel.
Unfortunately for you, midway through your trek back home, your drinking buddy had given up on walking, leaving you tasked with literally dragging him all the way back to your hotel. While a sober version of yourself would’ve been annoyed by the inconvenience, all you could really think about was how nice it was to have his body so close to yours.
After a tumultuous journey back, the two of you finally made it back to your hotel room. You had only been in the room for a matter of seconds before Patrick collapsed onto the bed and let out a loud sigh of relief, followed by an even louder yawn, as if he was the one who had just carried you down the road.
It was annoyingly endearing.
You had half the mind to at least get somewhat ready before getting into bed, shedding your outermost layer of clothing before joining Patrick in bed.
“Thank you,” he said to you once you laid down next to him.
“Mhm,” you hummed, your head still pleasantly buzzing from the alcohol. “But I’m never doing that again.”
“Aww, why? We had so much fun,” he practically whined. “I always have so much fun when we’re together.”
“I had fun, but you’re so heavy. You’d never guess it. All those muscles,” in the midst of your complaining, you reached over to grab his bicep to demonstrate his point.
He laughed, which made you laugh, though you didn’t exactly know what you were laughing at. Then, out of the blue, he randomly said your name in a very serious tone.
“Can you help me with something?” he asked, sounding very genuine and giving you a look that you couldn’t quite place in your drunken state.
“Anything,” you replied earnestly and meant it. You would probably do literally anything that he asked you to do at that moment. Move a mountain? You’d start pushing. Marry him? You’d wake up an officiant and come up with vows on the spot. Help him hide a body? You were sure you could find a shovel somewhere.
“Can you help me get my shoes off?” he lifted a foot as he spoke to demonstrate his point, a little pout on his lips. You were a little disappointed that he hadn’t asked you for anything else, but you also weren’t quite sure what it was that you wanted him to ask you for.
You groaned playfully, a long and drawn out sound that you hoped would communicate that you were exhausted after dragging him through the city and comfortable where you were laying. Still, you leaned over and untied his shoes before gently slipping them off. When you looked back up at Patrick, his pants were newly half undone and halfway off, but it looked as if he had given up fully taking his pants off.
“Need help with that too?” you asked, though you were already working on slipping the article of clothing off of his legs.
Though you tried to push the thought out of your mind, you couldn’t help but recall a similar night the two of you shared several years ago. Your relationship was still relatively new, but you were already very obviously in love. So in love that you’d gone out of your way to set up a surprise party to celebrate a particularly successful tennis match, decorating your apartment with photos of him with trophies and other tennis paraphernalia and inviting as many of his close friends that you could track down. Still riding the high of winning and his all-consuming adoration of you, Patrick had partied a little too hard, leaving you in charge of tucking him in at the end of the night.
After bringing him a glass of water, the man snuggled into your sheets and slurred out a comment about how they smelled like you. You felt your cheeks warm as he continued on in a disjointed ramble, talking about how much he appreciated you and how no one had ever gone out of their way to make him feel like that before. He ended his monologue with a request for you to help him take his clothes off, and you happily obliged. It was tender and far more intimate than you’d expected, and ended in a drawn out kiss that left you giggling as you told Patrick that he tasted like Smirnoff Ice.
Even as inebriated as you currently were, the nostalgia made you feel a little dizzy.
By the time you’d finished helping him get his pants off, Patrick had clearly given up on getting his shirt off, too. Once again, you moved your hands up his body and helped him out with the piece of fabric.
“Look at that. All ready for bed,” you commented, setting a hand on his bare chest. The small action made your heart soar, and you promptly decided that it was probably better for you to avoid touching him altogether.
“My watch?” Patrick asked, lifting his wrist up to show you the accessory.
“You can take your watch off yourself,” you replied, leaning back into bed and finally laying down.
“Fine.”
“Night, Patty,” you said, reaching over to turn out the bedside lamp.
“Wait,” he paused pensively, as if he was digging deep in the recesses of his mind to conjure up what he was about to say. “A kiss?”
“Patrick!” you gasped, sounding far more scandalized by the proposition than you actually were. Of course you would give him a kiss, you just weren’t sure you were ready to open up that can of worms, especially after you’d had a minor crisis at the realization that he genuinely wanted to move on.
“No goodnight kiss? C’mon. Fully commit to tucking me in,” Patrick insisted, as if it was the most logical thing ever. As if either of you had the self control to not let something as simple as a kiss spiral out of control.
“Fine,” you sighed before pressing a gentle peck to his forehead, figuring that was the safest place to do so. A forehead kiss was about as platonic as it got with you. “Sweet dreams.”
“Thank you,” he said, rather sweetly as his eyes shut. “Love you.”
Those words instantly gave you pause, causing you to suddenly feel very alert and very sober.
“Sorry, what did you just say?”
“I said I love you?” Patrick repeated, looking at you with confusion. “What?”
“Nothing,” though it was very much not nothing. In fact, if his confession was true, it would change everything. “Go to bed.”
“Wait, what?” Patrick grabbed your arm, looking very worried in the low light of the room. “You’re mad. You’re mad that I love you?”
You didn’t even know how you were supposed to react to that admission. While it had been exactly what you’d been dying to hear from him for months, it only further complicated your already very complicated situation.
“I’m not mad, I’m… I’m just tired. Let’s go to sleep, okay?”
Your explanation seemed to placate Patrick enough to let it go and go to sleep. He shuffled around to get comfortable behind you, before pulling you in to hold you as he’d done for the entirety of the trip. Except, tonight, it didn’t feel quite right. The mixture of his frequent rejections of you, paired with his casual confession that he still loved you made your head spin.
The following morning, you woke up with a pounding in your head and a gross taste in your mouth—only one of which, you could fully attribute to the drinking you’d done last night. You clumsily reached for your phone, and found yourself pleasantly surprised to find an announcement about the delay of the next bus you would be getting on.
You got out of bed with a grunt, your entire body aching with the reminder of having to drag Patrick through the city last night. Somehow, the sore muscles didn’t hurt nearly as much compared to the memory of being told that Patrick still loved you.
You slowly paced back and forth around your hotel room, desperately trying to organize your racing thoughts. Did Patrick actually mean what he said last night? Or had been caught up in the heat of the moment? If anything, the latter seemed more likely, since he’d been very obviously trying to distance himself from you. But had he really been distancing himself from you, or just talking about distancing himself from you? If his care for you on the ferry had been any indication of how he really felt about you, it was possible that his drunken words were more honest than you were trying to convince yourself that they were.
Finally, you decided to stop annoying the person staying in the room under you with your increasingly frantic pacing, and to go outside to walk. Some fresh air would be good for you anyway.
“Where’re you going?” a muffled voice, heavy with sleep asked. You paused the tying of your shoes to look over at the bed, where Patrick was currently squinting at you.
“I’m just going for a walk,” you told him. “Go back to sleep. The coach is coming late.”
“Wait for me. I’ll come with you.”
That was probably the last thing you needed or wanted. After all, the whole purpose of your walk was to help you sort out your thoughts about Patrick. To say he wasn’t a welcome addition to your trip was an understatement.
“Okay,” you said anyway, against your better judgment. It seemed like you hadn’t been using much of your judgment at all on this trip. What was one more poor decision on top of a series of poor decisions?
You watched him get ready from where you were sitting, quietly impressed with his ability to get up and be functional despite surely being just as hungover—if not more—than you. He also seemed wholly unaffected by the conversation you’d had last night, which was something that you certainly couldn’t say for yourself.
With sunglasses perched on your nose and the weight of your entire relationship placed on your shoulders, the two of you headed out into the city, walking on the same sidewalks that you’d practically carried Patrick down the previous night.
“Last night was fun,” Patrick commented, making small talk with you as you began to head down the street.
“Some parts,” you agreed, hoping that he’d recall you grunting as you lugged him down the street, rather than your shock when he told you that he still loved you.
“I honestly don’t remember most of the night,” Patrick said with a chuckle that almost sounded a little forced. You couldn’t be sure if he was being honest or searching for a cop out for the things he’d told you before you went to sleep, but you weren’t sure that it really mattered.
“Unfortunately, I do,” you replied.
“Oh no. I hope I wasn’t too much of a pain.”
“You were like, slightly above average in terms of being a pain. Nothing I’m not used to.” You figured that maybe you could banter your way out of this situation. Perhaps if you just pretended that everything was okay, things would magically become okay.
But that didn’t feel alright. In fact, it wasn’t alright. If you ever wanted to improve your relationship with Patrick, you had to stop beating around the bush with him. You were both adults. You’d been together for years, yet you felt like you wasted far too much time not being straightforward with your thoughts and feelings. If there was going to be a next time for the two of you, you wanted things to be different.
“You did say something kinda interesting last night, though.” While it had been easy to talk up a big game in your head, you immediately regretted the words that came out of your mouth. Regardless, it was too late for you to back out.
Patrick laughed nervously before asking, “what?”
“You just… you kinda told me you still have feelings for me, or whatever. I just think, maybe we should talk about it. Or at least talk about us.”
The man next to you paled at your words. Your regret for bringing the topic up immediately grew exponentially.
“I don’t think there’s anything to talk about,” Patrick said, though he was lying through his teeth and both of you knew it. You wanted to approach this topic with civility and an open mind, but his blatant lie was making that a rather difficult task.
“Are you kidding? We’ve been tip-toeing around it this entire trip.”
“We’re broken up. You called off our wedding. I don’t think it gets any more straightforward than that,” he dismissed with a gross simplification of the state of your relationship.
“That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it. And even if it was, all I said was that I didn't think I was ready to get married. You put the final nail in the coffin when you told me you fell out of love with me. But I don’t know how I’m supposed to interpret you not being in love with me anymore when you still act the way that you act with me.”
You could tell the direction this conversation was going, your discussion quickly veering into argument territory as Patrick began to invade your space as he always did when you argued.
“And how exactly do I act with you?” he challenged, though you were sure he knew exactly what you were talking about.
“Do you want me to give you a list or something?” you asked, his anger becoming contagious.
“Sure, why not,” he said drily.
“Fine. Let’s start with the cuddling, then. Please enlighten me, do you know any exes who spoon regularly? I mean, I certainly don’t. I don’t even touch my friends like that. So I don’t know what that really makes us. Or maybe how jealous you got when you saw me with someone else. I really can’t think of any sort of platonic explanation for that, and trust me, I’ve tried. And while we’re at it, I guess I should mention those showers. I respect the hell out of your faith in the thickness of these hotel walls, but I actually can hear you moaning my name while you’re in there. I’m honestly a little flattered, but I’m mostly confused.”
“Like you’re not doing the same,” Patrick scoffed. You knew him well enough to recognize that he was masking his true feelings with hostility, and though you wanted to engage in an actual conversation with him, you weren’t sure you would be able to take the high road in this conversation.
“Sure, but I’m not the one in denial of what’s going on here!”
“I’m not in denial. Have you ever considered that maybe I want to move on?”
“Do you, though?” you asked, pausing on the sidewalk.
“Clearly, I do,” he stopped right along with you, now really getting in your face.
“Clearly,” you repeated with a laugh. “Maybe you should start acting like it.”
“Maybe you should stop clinging to the past.”
His piercing gaze was unwavering as he waited to read your reaction. You knew how he liked to play this game, looking for an indication of any sort of weakness from you. You refused to give him that, though his words cut deep.
“Okay,” you said calmly, though you were very much not feeling calm on the inside. “Well, thanks for letting me know how you really feel. Or how you think you feel. I don’t really know anymore. And I don’t think you know either.”
PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
If you had known that telling Patrick that he drunkenly confessed to loving you would’ve broken the already very delicate relationship the two of you had built back up, you never would’ve said anything at all. As it turned out, having some of Patrick was better than not having him at all.
The contempt he now felt for you had become so strong that he didn’t even seem to be able to look at you. He sat next to a different person on the bus to Prague, not even sparing you a glance. When you arrived at the hotel, he made it a point to ask for separate rooms—something the two of you hadn’t done the entirety of your trip. As your tour began, he seemed to make a strong effort to separate himself from you, standing in the back of your group when you were in the front and vice versa.
Usually, even after your worst arguments, you’d been able to find the time to talk out your feelings, but now it seemed like Patrick couldn’t even find it in himself to give you that.
You wanted to be mad at Patrick too. You were mad at him. But you missed him more than you were angry with him, and you yearned to be with him, no matter how crazy his constant antics drove you.
Part of you felt frustrated that your relationship had become so cyclical since your breakup. You weren’t sure you could handle another cycle of fighting to the point of real anger, then making up with your relationship still a little more strained than it was in the past. You just wanted Patrick. Why did things have to be any more complicated than that?
You desperately clung on to any bits of hope that your relationship might persist, coming out of this argument altered, but still existing. You snuck peeks at Patrick while you toured a beautiful castle and tried to bite your tongue until you stopped thinking of how badly you wanted to grab him and joke about his home looking like that castle. You wondered if he wanted to put your initials on a lock and put it on a bridge as much as you did. You wished you could ask him if he missed the warm body in bed beside him the way you did.
But every time you looked at him, he was pointedly not looking at you. As your group paused on the bridge to allow couples the time to make their own locks, Patrick didn’t even spare a glance in your direction. You were sure that even if he did miss you in bed, or wherever else, he would never tell you about it.
You didn’t want it to be over—but you couldn’t keep clinging to hope that it wasn’t.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
Getting to view the breathtaking scenery of the Swiss Alps as you sat on a cable car had been a dream of yours for years. What wasn’t included in that dream was dodging the glare of your ex-fiancé as the two of you sat in silence on that very gondola.
Unluckily for the two of you, you were stuck together for the afternoon. Private skiing lessons in the Swiss Alps sounded like a great, even romantic, idea while you were planning the trip, but it was far from romantic now.
The two of you stood on opposite sides of your instructor, the tension between you so thick that in the midst of his safety spiel, he paused to ask if everything was okay between you. After a stilted reply of yes, your instructor looked at you both skeptically before carrying on.
Seeing as Patrick was an athlete who spent his childhood school breaks in Aspen, he was pretty decent at skiing already. Far better than you, a novice who was moving a little bit like a giraffe standing on its feet for the first time.
While it wasn’t your first time skiing—that had been on a family vacation you’d tagged along on with the Zweigs—you certainly were not experienced enough to be keeping up with Patrick, who had the experience and the ego to give even your instructor a run for his money.
It was entertaining to watch him in his element, his competitive side coming out despite the fact there was no competition anywhere to be found. He was significantly faster than you wherever you went, and skied with a confidence that you doubted you would ever be able to exhibit. In the past, this behavior may have been slightly endearing to you, but right now, it was mostly a little annoying.
You and your instructor stood above Patrick, watching him effortlessly glide down the mountain in front of you. If you weren’t so agitated, you might actually have been impressed. As if your instructor was actively reading your mind, he leaned over to say something to you.
“I think he’s trying to impress you,” he said quietly, though the subject of your conversation was an entire slope away.
You nearly choked on your own saliva at the observation. “No way.”
“What do you mean no way?” he laughed. “Trust me, I’ve been doing this for years, and I’ve seen it all. Couples, crushes, friends, coworkers. I know posturing when I see it.”
“Trust me, he could care less.”
He looked at you with a doubting squint. “Why don’t we go down there and ask him?”
“Absolutely not,” you laughed. The thought of asking Patrick anything after the interactions you’d had seemed absolutely ridiculous. At this point, you wouldn’t even ask him what time it was.
“Sorry. Let me rephrase that. That was me telling you that it’s time for you to go down the slope.”
You looked downhill at where you needed to go, noting that it was far steeper than what you’d been practicing on leading up to this point. You had been looking for an excuse to stall going down it, but now that your instructor had said something about that, you couldn’t not go.
After taking a deep breath, you began to go down. Gaining a bit of speed, you also found yourself growing slightly more confident, closing your eyes and feeling the cold air press against your body. While you were enjoying your speed at first, it was quickly growing out of hand, and you began to panic as you realized just how fast you were going. Desperately trying to pull your skis into a V shape to slow down, you were horrified at the realization that you were far too late, and actively heading towards a cluster of trees. You didn’t know what to do other than to accept your fate, and everything had happened so fast anyway that you found yourself tumbling into a tree, a searing pain on your ankle and tailbone as you laid out on the rocky ground.
Everything felt like it was moving slowly and quickly at the same time. One second, you were alone in the snow, and the next, Patrick and your ski instructor were hovering over you, goggles on their foreheads as they looked at you with concern.
“Are you okay?” you were finally able to make out once the slight ringing in your ears had ceased.
“Did you see how hard she crashed? Of course she isn’t fucking okay,” Patrick’s voice huffed, though slightly muffled from your helmet covering your ears.
“My ankle,” you said, as if that gave them enough context. You wondered if they could see the tears beginning to pool under your goggles. The pair looked at your limb, though with your snowsuit covering it, they really couldn’t see much.
“Can you walk?” your instructor asked you.
“I haven’t tried, but I’m gonna go with no.”
“We’re gonna have someone check you out. Don’t worry, they’ll be here soon,” your ski instructor told you. You blinked a few times and mustered all the strength you could to nod.
The longer you sat, the more you began to realize how badly everything hurt. From your head down to your surely swollen ankle, you weren’t feeling too hot. You closed your eyes, suddenly feeling very exhausted. Maybe a quick little nap was exactly what you needed to feel a little better.
“Hey, don’t do that. You hit your head pretty hard when you fell, so you might have a concussion.”
“I don’t, I’m just tired,” you explained, though you didn’t know for a fact that it was true. In fact, with the pounding in your head, you more likely than not had a mild concussion.
“Well, you kinda have to stay awake,” Patrick told you, though he surely knew it was easier said than done. You were surprised when you felt his gloved hand take yours and squeezed your hand softly. “Hey, why don’t you tell us a story?” he suggested, clearly just trying to keep you awake.
“Do you wanna hear the story about how he proposed to me?” you asked the instructor. You weren’t sure why that was the first thing to pop into your head, but it was a long enough story to keep you awake until help arrived. You wished your goggles were slightly less tinted, so you could at least see the scandalized expression Patrick was probably making. You loved when you made him react like that, since the roles were usually reversed.
“Well, yeah. Of course,” your instructor responded with a hint of a laugh. “You guys are engaged?” he directed towards Patrick.
“This is our honeymoon,” you replied before Patrick had an opportunity to respond. You wished you could see the confused look that your instructor was surely making.
“So what happened?”
“When he proposed?” you asked to clarify.
“...Sure.”
“Well, for a little context, Patrick here is a professional tennis player. He’s really good too. So given my athletic ability, as you got to see today, I never really played with him. Like, he would always ask me to just play a fun, quick little round and I would always tell him no. Mostly because I knew he would crush me. I did play a little bit back in the day, but I was nowhere near his level. I mostly preferred to be on the sideline while we dated. I mean, I came to every single one of his games. I’m pretty sure my office introduced remote work to us because of me, since I was traveling all the time to see him.
“Anyway, one day, after a day of buttering me up, and I mean, he was really laying it on thick. I don’t know how I didn’t think something was up,” you laughed as you recalled the day, how Patrick had scheduled a nail appointment for you, then wined and dined you during a very romantic midday picnic. “But he asked me to play a little bit of tennis with him. I think I just thought he spent the day buttering me up so that I would play tennis with him, not that I would agree to marry him, but I digress.
“We get to the tennis court and Patrick’s nervous like I’ve never seen him. He was a little jittery all day, but this was a different beast. Looking back, I really don’t understand why. He should’ve known I was going to say yes. Anyway, we’re playing, and somehow I win, even though I’m extremely rusty and have absolutely awful form. Obviously I knew Patrick threw the match for me, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t gonna gloat at him.
“So I’m doing my victory spiel and I walk over to his side of the court, where he’s digging in his bag. He’s so quiet, which should’ve been a sign that something was up, and I’m thinking he’s about to pull out more tennis balls and tell me we’re doing a rematch, so he can really crush me. Instead, he pulls out a box and gets down on one knee. He gives me a speech about how he didn’t care if he never won another game of tennis in his life, because as long as we were together, he was a winner. It was really sweet. Obviously I said yes.”
You finally looked over at Patrick, though you couldn’t perfectly read his expression through the darkened lens of your goggles. You wondered if he felt any of the same feelings that were currently simmering in your own chest. Though, you didn’t get to stew too long, as help arrived just as your story came to a close.
You were taken to an infirmary and given a series of tests, some to see the state of your head and other to see how the rest of your body was doing. Surprisingly, you made it out without too much serious damage. Your ankle was sprained, but nothing that would make it take too long to heal. You had a concussion, which surprised you, given your ability to recall so many details earlier in the day, but it was a very mild one. At least you’d made it back into your hotel in one piece.
You really just wanted to relax for the rest of the evening, and you had plans to do exactly that, when there was suddenly a soft rapping at your door.
You got up, and with help from the crutches you were provided, you hobbled to the door and opened it. On the other side was Patrick, who you were both surprised and unsurprised to see.
“Hey. I got your room number from the front desk,” Patrick told you. “Do you mind if I come in?”
“Sure, but I’m probably going to sleep soon,” with some effort, you sidestepped the doorway to let him in.
“Do you need anything? Want anything?” he asked as he made himself at home in your room, evaluating what you already had.
“I’m good, I think.”
“How’re you feeling? They wouldn’t let me see you at the infirmary.”
“I’ve been better,” you shrugged, sitting down on the foot of your bed to take some pressure off of your aching ankle.
“I bet. Are you icing that?” he asked, gesturing to your most obvious injury.
“I haven’t been able to make it out to the ice machine,” you confessed, though the doctor had suggested ice for the inflammation.
“Let me go grab some for you,” he said before disappearing out into the hallway. Once he left, you laid back in bed, letting out a sigh of relief at how much better being flat felt.
You’d be lying if you said you didn’t like being taken care of this way. It seemed like no matter how bad things got between the two of you, you would always care for one another in some capacity. You wondered what had gone through Patrick’s mind when he saw you hurt yourself. You wondered if that changed anything in the way he felt about you.
He knocked on the door once more to tell you he was back, though the door was already unlocked.
“If there’s anything else you need, I mean anything at all, just call me. I’m just down the hall from you,” he told you as he bagged up the ice he retrieved.
He sat down on the foot of the bed, where you’d previously been sitting, and tenderly set the bag of ice on your ankle, clearly not wanting to hurt you any more than you were already hurt. He looked at you a little sadly before standing back up, not wanting to linger in your presence too long.
“I’ll let you get some sleep,” he explained, already turning to head towards the door.
“Thanks, Patrick,” you paused, looking for any other words you had for him. “Good night.”
“Night.”
SOMEWHERE IN ITALY
The next few days in Switzerland had been extremely boring. Due to doctor’s orders, you mainly stayed in bed, avoiding screens by reading books, and looking out the window to view the mountains that you were currently missing.
Although you had to miss a lot of the fun your tour was going on, like a cheese and chocolate tour, you somehow still received an anonymous delivery of cheeses and chocolates—though, you were pretty sure you knew who was responsible for that.
Patrick didn’t seem like he wanted to overstep any boundaries, which you respected, though you really could’ve used some company whose ear you could talk off. Hell, you’d even take another nasty argument over the resounding silence of your room.
Luckily for you, by the time your group was traveling once again, you were starting to feel slightly better, concussion and ankle-wise. Though, your head was starting to hurt from listening to a person at the front of the bus go on about how much they needed the bus to pull over somewhere.
After a period of incessant complaining from someone on your bus, the vehicle finally came to a stop at a small rest stop in the middle of the Italian countryside.
Not willing to pass up an opportunity to stretch your legs, you got off at the stop, briefly stopping inside the building to look at what they had to offer before stepping behind the building, watching the wind blow through the overgrown weeds.
Your attempt at enjoying the quiet, idyllic countryside was disturbed when you were joined by a smoking companion.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” he said.
Before you could stop it, a sad smile appeared on your face. The two of you hadn’t spoken since your brief conversation in your hotel room, despite the mystery snack deliveries and the promise of coming if you called.
“I’ve been worried about you,” he said plainly.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” you dismissed.
“You’ve spent the last few days all alone in a room with a concussion.”
“It’s mild.”
“You fucked up your ankle.”
“It’s healing. It’s not all that bad.”
“Well, I’ve been worried anyway,” he passed you his partially smoked cigarette and you took a drag from it, though you were sure that was one of the things you shouldn’t be doing with a concussion.
“Thanks, I guess.” you said. “So is this just a wellness check, or…?”
“No, well, yes. Obviously I was worried about you physically, but I also was wondering about how you were in general.”
It was strange to see him clumsily mince his words, given how bold he usually was.
“Oh? What changed between here and Germany?”
“What changed? What changed was that I watched you almost die.”
You laughed aloud at his over dramatization of the event. “Patrick, I did not almost die.”
“How would I have known that? I just saw you flying downhill out of control and crashing and it terrified me. I couldn’t imagine a world without you in it.”
You weren’t sure how you were supposed to interpret his words, especially after the wild ride you’d been on throughout the trip. You weren’t sure you could handle another emotional bait and switch.
“Pat, maybe we should talk about this later. The bus is probably taking off soon.”
“No,” he stopped you with a hand on your arm, calling you back with a desperation you hadn’t seen in him in a long time. “I don’t want to waste another second without you.”
“Okay,” you said, though you weren’t sure that you should buy into it yet. “Go ahead, then.”
“I can’t keep pretending that I don’t want you or don’t want to be with you,” he confessed, which genuinely took you by surprise. With the way he’d been dodging your attempts at building a connection, you certainly didn’t think he’d tell you something like that.
“Then why have you been pretending?” you asked, hoping that your somewhat harsh words didn’t betray your genuine curiosity behind his behavior.
“I don’t know,” he said. It was a terrible, unsatisfying answer. One that didn’t explain a single reason behind his behavior. “I guess I just can’t wrap my head around the idea that anyone would want to keep me around long-term.”
You looked at him with shock in your eyes, your mouth slightly agape at the confession. You couldn’t imagine Patrick, overconfident, bold, and self-assured, who you’d been dating for years, not feeling secure in your relationship–to the point where he’d been actively trying to push you away out of anticipating how you’d feel about him.
“When you told me you weren’t ready to be with me, it just confirmed everything I’d been worried about—that one day you would wake up next to me and realize that I wasn’t the guy you wanted. I guess it just happened sooner than I anticipated.”
You almost couldn’t believe what you were hearing. “If you felt like that, then why’d you tell me you weren’t in love with me anymore?”
“I thought if you were gonna leave me anyway, I might as well beat you to the punch.”
You were giving it your all to keep it together at this point, feeling slightly vindicated to know that Patrick was lying about no longer loving you, but mostly devastated that your whole relationship had been uprooted over an assumption that Patrick had made about you.
“I… I don’t even know what to say,” you looked out into the grass, then back at Patrick. “I wish you’d stop assuming that you know what I want all the time.”
“Hey you two, last call for the coach,” your tour guide suddenly interrupted, looking very obviously annoyed that the two of you were holding the bus up.
“Sorry. We’ll head back now,” you apologized to the guide. “We’ll continue this conversation later?” you directed towards Patrick.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
VENICE, ITALY
Putting a hold on your conversation probably wasn’t the wisest idea you’d ever had, considering that your next few days in Italy were set to be your busiest this far.
Between gondola rides on different boats and exploring historic palaces, the two of you didn’t have much time to stop and have as serious of a talk as you wanted to have. Even if you did somehow manage to pick up where you’d left off, there were so many people around you that it didn’t even feel worth it.
Luckily for you, your hotel had a private beach attached to it, and as you spent your evening by the beach, watching the sun go down, you were pleased to find that you were joined by familiar company.
At first, Patrick didn’t say anything as he sat down on the same chair next to you. The two of you enjoyed the serene sunset and privacy that the beach afforded you in silence, though you were sure that things wouldn’t stay that way for long.
“I love you, you know?” he finally piped up, breaking the silence with a very bold declaration.
You looked at him calmly, though you weren’t feeling very calm on the inside. You’d been waiting to hear those words from him from the moment that the two of you broke up. You weren’t sure how you were supposed to react to it now, though the confession was better late than never.
“I love you too. I never stopped,” you told him simply, as if the realization that you were stuck on him hadn’t been haunting you for months now.
“I never did, either. It was cruel of me to ever tell you that I did.”
You nodded in agreement, wondering if Patrick would ever understand the full extent of the damage his words had done to you. “It was, but I understand where you were coming from. If I had known that you didn’t think I was going to stick around, I would’ve gone about what I did differently,” you began to explain. “I think it came across as me not wanting to marry you at all. Of course I wanted to marry you. There was just so much else going on in my life then that the timing didn’t feel right.”
“But the timing might be right someday?” Patrick asked, a hopeful lilt in his voice.
“The timing will be right someday. Maybe sooner than either of us know,” you shot him a wink, then broke into a grin as he pulled you into a firm, loving embrace.
ATHENS, GREECE
The rest of your time in Italy mainly consisted of making up for lost time, with the two of you partaking in far more PDA than what was ever necessary and thoroughly documenting your time abroad together as a couple.
Thanks to your injury, you were slightly slower than the rest of your group. But that certainly didn’t stop Patrick from lagging along with you, letting you lean on him for support when you needed it and pausing to sit and take breaks with you whenever you noticed that walking was taking too much of a toll on you.
It was nice to be back with him, to not have to feel stupid for feeling what you felt or feel the pressure of knowing that you should probably be trying to move on. The only unfortunate part was how little time the two of you had left on vacation, with you heading home after spending a few days in Athens. If only the two of you had been upfront about your feelings earlier, then you could’ve been having as great of a time as you were having now during your entire trip.
The two of you briefly floated the idea of having somewhat of a shotgun wedding, but scrapped it after realizing that you would prefer to have your family and friends there to celebrate with you. After all, many of them had been on the emotional rollercoaster that was your relationship right along with you.
For the time being, the two of you were perfectly content with being together, and knowing that neither of you had any intentions of leaving.
Somehow, that made your last few days of vacation feel infinitely better.
ATHENS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
You scrolled endlessly on your phone, sending out a few messages to friends and family to let them know that you were heading back home. While you typically felt a few nerves before boarding a plane anywhere, you couldn’t help but feel a renewed sense of excitement, both at the thought of being able to go back home and sleep in your own bed, and at the potential your newly reformed relationship had.
Your scrolling was interrupted by Patrick’s presence, carrying a coffee and a breakfast sandwich in his hands with a slightly goofy look on his face.
“Sorry for taking so long. I think everyone and their mother wanted coffee today,” he explained as he sat down, passing you your items as he got comfortable next to you.
“No worries. I’m just glad you were running late to grab us breakfast, instead of trying to switch our seats like last time.”
The two of you shared a laugh before Patrick said, “That feels like a lifetime ago.”
“It basically was,” you dismissed.
Once it was announced that your group was boarding, the two of you stood up quickly, attempting to gather your bearings before getting on the plane.
“‘Till next time, Europe,” you bid the country goodbye as the two of you made your way to the line.
“Should we come back to Europe? I was thinking our next honeymoon should be somewhere else. Maybe Bali.”
“Oooh, Bali sounds nice. I think anywhere warm and with a beach is good,” you explained, though you really didn’t care where you went, as long as Patrick was there by your side.
Abstract: “It’s midnight,” you whispered, lips tingling with the aftermath of his hungry kisses. He looked down at his wrist, where a watch would be but the skin sat empty, and then turned his head slightly to look at your watch. His mouth was bruised as he licked his lips, a light furrow crossing his brow as if he could not believe the audacity of time to interrupt him. You leaned in - the distance was not really distance, his frame still caging you against the counter - and pressed a quick, almost ridiculously chaste kiss to his cheek. “Happy birthday, sweetheart.”
Words: 5.7K
Content: f!reader; pre-outbreak + post-outbreak, show timeline but references to the game, a lot of kissing, suggestive language but nothing explicit, mentions of child death, mentions of death in general, reader has a broken leg, guilt, angst, a little bit of hurt/comfort, some fluff, joel gets Clingy
A/N: who’s surprised? not me. the original idea was longer but i ended up trying to compress everything in a single one-shot because i have no chill.
also on AO3 - masterlist
feedback is always greatly appreciated. you can send it here, too
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Happy Belated Galentines Day, Suz! 🧡 💜💗
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Bucky Barnes x Reader | Word Count: 1.1k | bucky barnes is feeling soft this sunday morning
Warnings: 18+ Sexually suggestive content. Slight angst. Depictions of scars. Very fluffy.
a/n: long time no see :))) just something short to get me back into the swing of things i.e. i’m feeling soft and idk how else to cope with that aside from writing. i’m typically a show, don’t tell kind of person when it comes to love, but sometimes you just need to hear it, y’all feel?
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Few feelings rival it.
That tickling warmth along his spine, around his shoulders, and up his cheeks as they pull into a smile. A long held stretch with pale morning sun hugging his skin, and an arm curled around his waist that tightens when a soft moan escapes his lips.
SORRY IM JUST SEEING THIS NOW! thank you sm, glad you liked it 🧡 been fighting hard to re-find my interests lately and some good ole bucky boy fluff was just what i needed! :)
Summary: Steve meets a new friend and an old hobby on his Sunday morning run.
Warnings: This is just fluff galore, folks. With a dash of Sam and Bucky causing problems on purpose
A/N: Happy Valentine’s Day!! Lots of love to my wonderful readers today and every day.
Star Spangled Bingo 2021 Square Filled: Mutual Pining
It started with Sundays.
Steve was feeling that itch beneath his skin again. He wasn’t regretting his retirement exactly, but he’d never been good at feeling useless.
Sam said he needed to find something fun to do, something personally rewarding to occupy his time and help him feel like a person again. Like Steve Rogers: Personal Pain in the Ass (affectionate).
Bucky said he needed to find something less annoying to do than disturb the peace and quiet of poor park-goers by “sprinting down the paths like a bull possessed by a sugar-high toddler.” The response he earned by pointing out that there was usually no one in the park when he went for his morning runs is better left unrepeated.
But one particular Sunday, there actually were people in the park. Seven people, ranging in ages from young 20-something to somewhere in the neighborhood of 75, were sitting in a loose circle on the grass, made cozy by blankets, cushions, and a single camp chair for the elderly woman. Each person was set up with art supplies, mostly sketch pads and pencils, though one man was attempting watercolors on a cluttered lapdesk.
Steve was undoubtedly curious, but he did not slow his pace, not wanting to disturb the group.
