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a beginner's guide to starting a family | MASTERLIST
John Price x Reader
Lately, you’ve been thinking about having a baby.
Or: the fertility clinic au
tags: Size Difference, Size Kink, Explicit Sexual Content, AFAB reader - Freeform, Fertility Clinics, Strangers to Lovers, Slow Forced Cohabitation, Breeding Kink, Pregnancy, Very Mildly Dubious Consent
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
Extras
MOODBOARD · AO3
a beginner's guide to starting a family
Lately, you’ve been thinking about having a baby. Or: the fertility clinic au Part 2 masterlist
You walk around town like it’s written on your forehead that you’re about to let some strange man get you pregnant.
It might as well be a scarlet letter pinned to your breast. A sign taped to the back of your shirt. Kick me. I’m letting some guy knock me up. Or better yet, I’m with stupid, with the arrow pointed up at you.
Obviously that’s not true. You’ve done a good job at keeping this under wraps for the most part, not even your closest friends hearing about the man that propositioned you in the fertility clinic waiting room. You might've had half a mind to call one of them about it on the drive home, but by then you’d already filed it away as future gossip material, imagining bringing it up at drinks to the shock and delight of your friends.
Then night falls, and you grow weak.
You wake up with post-text message clarity the next morning, but there’s little you can do to backtrack now. You gave the man your name and number. You spoke to him on the phone about it, albeit briefly. Sure you could call John again and tell him that you thought it over a little more and decided against it, but then—
“It’s gonna cost four thousand dollars.”
Your coworker lets out a hissed breath, wincing. “That’s not cheap.”
It’s a pea-soupy summer morning, all hot and humid with the sky tinted a yellowish colour from forest fires up in the country, the hazy light seeping in through the windows in the office kitchen. Not a cloud in sight. You wouldn't call it a particularly pleasant morning, with the weather as overcast as your mood, but it could always be worse.
She’s the first person outside of a few close friends that you’ve told about going to the clinic at all, but she reacts exactly as you thought she would. It’s both affirming and annoying; it’s not so bad hearing from someone else that four thousand dollars is a bit pricey for a single person, but part of you wishes she’d try to convince you to go through with it. You need someone to push you in a direction—in any direction.
You nod, mouth screwed into a grimace. “And that’s only for a single try. I think she said it would be closer to, like, twelve thousand dollars altogether.”
“So are you gonna do it? Or are you gonna keep looking around?”
“I have another appointment next week,” you half-answer, getting cagey all of a sudden.
The truth is, that appointment isn’t the only thing you’ve got on the books. There’s another dot in your calendar for a few days before, one that seems to glow ominously when you stare at the date as it slowly approaches, lumbering forward one ground-shaking step at a time.
You wonder how long you can go without telling anyone. Theoretically, you could keep up this ruse for the rest of your life, pretend you always went through with the treatment. Lie through your teeth when your friends ask you if you know anything about the donor. No, they didn’t tell me anything, I just picked a profile with a good medical record and family history.
Don’t think about how you live in the same city. Don’t think about the likelihood of running into him around town with the baby in tow.
You shake your head. Those are concerns that you can foist off onto a future version of you. All the current you needs to worry about is making this all a reality.
You don’t know what to wear out to dinner with him. It’s both a date and not, more of a prelude to the later events of the night. Part of you wonders if you should just text him your address and tell him to skip the preamble and come on over.
The only reason you don’t is because a little voice at the back of your mind insists that you at least do your due diligence and screen him a little more over dinner. You can always back out at the last minute if a few too many red flags pop up.
(You tell yourself that as if a strange man offering to knock you up within five minutes of meeting weren’t a big enough red flag on its own.)
John meets you at the restaurant looking every bit as handsome as the day you met him, once again nearly taking your breath away. A little more buttoned up this time though, actually quite dashing in a proper dress shirt and suit jacket, even his shoes polished.
You have a second to think about calling it off. A second to consider turning tail and getting as far away as possible. Maybe, with enough time, you could scrape together the money for IUI. You could wait a year, or take out a loan with your bank, or pray for a decent enough raise to manage it on your own.
But then, as the time before, he turns his head and locks eyes with you.
It would probably be a good idea to take a picture of him, maybe even a picture of his ID, and send it over to one or two of your friends, on the off chance that he turns out to be a dangerous man, but you don’t need to be inundated by a barrage of text messages and phone calls from your friends trying to talk you out of it. You’ve made up your mind.
Walnut and burgundy furnishings decorate the large room, and the amber glow of candlelight and antique wall sconces saturates the restaurant in a dark, sensual bloom. A server guides John and you to a table right in the middle of the room, a better table than you might’ve hoped to get on your own. You eye him sideways when he pulls your chair out for you.
His demeanour is so relaxed that if you didn’t already know the purpose of this dinner, you could be forgiven for assuming that you were out on a real date. John certainly acts the part.
“You know, we didn’t have to do this,” you start awkwardly, eyes gliding over the room to look at all the other well-dressed patrons, some presumably out on actual dates.
“Call me old-fashioned, but I was taught that dinner comes before the rest of the evening.”
“I just mean you didn’t have to. I would’ve been fine just…” getting right down to business, you leave unsaid, hoping that he doesn’t make you spell it out.
“We’re two civilized adults. I thought we might get to know each other first.”
“Well, what do you want to know about me?”
“This is as much for me as it is for you—don’t you want to know anything about the father of your children?”
You wish he’d keep his voice down. He isn’t wrong though; it would be a good idea for you to take his candidature more seriously, actually ask him questions about himself and his parentage. He already emailed you a recent STI panel and bloodwork results, both done through the fertility clinic back when he was still keen on donating, but it wouldn’t hurt to learn a little more about him.
“Alright. How old are you?”
“Forty-six.”
You nod, pleased with yourself for guessing it right. “What do you do for work?”
“Just some work for the government,” he says, brushing the question off. “What else?”
That piques your interest though. “Oh, come on. What are you, M16 or something?”
“No, nothing like that,” John laughs, genuinely amused enough for you to believe him.
You roll your eyes when he doesn’t elaborate any further though. “Fine, leave me in the dark. Anything else you want to know about me?”
“Where are you in your cycle?” he asks, blunt as a hammer.
A classic spit take moment. It’s a good thing you haven’t ordered a drink yet.
“I think it’s, uh…it’s coming soon actually. Um. Next week or so.”
He chews on that for a second, mulling over the timing. “That’s fine. We should still be able to make it work.”
There he goes again, making comments that leave you fish-mouthed and stunned, jaw slack with disbelief. Never able to conjure up a good enough retort.
When the server comes by to take your drink orders, both of you still deliberating over your food, John orders a beer for himself and a mocktail for you, not even bothering to consult you about it.
“No alcohol,” he reminds you before you have a chance to ask.
To be fair, the spicy blackberry-basil concoction that the server comes back with a few minutes later is a refreshing burst of fruit and fresh herbs, but that doesn’t excuse the overstep. You ignore it only because you know there’s no use getting worked up when you’ve already made your mind up. It’s a peccadillo in the grand scheme of things considering what he’s doing for you.
Conversation flows surprisingly well over dinner, but at the back of your mind, you can’t stop thinking about how at the end of the night, he’s going to take you home and fuck you. It creeps back in whenever you let your guard down for a split second.
So, do you have any hobbies? (In three hours, this man is going to strip you naked and have sex with you)
Do you have any siblings? Any twins running in the family? (In two hours, this man is going to climb on top of you and fuck you until he puts a baby in you)
It’s a lot to keep in your head at the same time.
“How long have you been thinking about doing this?” John asks apropos of nothing, the earlier thread of your conversation evaporating on the spot.
“I mean, I’ve wanted to have kids for a long time, but actually planning to have them…maybe a couple months?”
“Why now? Why not wait a little longer? Wait for someone to start a family with?”
You’re not sure why he’d ask you that, why it would matter. It’s none of his business, quite frankly. You almost want to tell him that, let yourself get righteous, get angry, but you find you can’t fully commit to the anger. It wouldn’t change anything. You aren’t being forced to answer him.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“I’m not much of a family man myself. ‘Least not when I was younger, when it counted. Never had the time nor the inclination. Work took me all over—it just wouldn’t have been fair if I had a wife or kids waiting around for me. But since it didn’t seem like having a family was in the cards for me, I thought it would be a waste of good genetics.”
“Oh.” It’s arrogant, but it’s as good an answer as any.
He waits a beat then lifts an eyebrow when you don’t reciprocate. “So? Why didn’t you wait?”
“I did try, but there wasn’t much out there, and I wanted a baby more than I wanted to be with someone, so…”
Leave him to fill in the blanks. He met you at the culmination of that longing after all, even changed the course of it, disrupted your plans to place himself at the centre of them.
At the centre for a time, you remind yourself. Not forever.
After that, he keeps the conversation light, only delving into superficial topics to help pass the time. You excuse yourself after finishing your meal to go to the bathroom, and come back to two coffees laid out on the table with sugar and cream in pretty porcelain cups laid out between them. John must have ordered for you again in your absence. Good thing you like coffee.
The bill is also there, discretely tucked under John’s napkin, and that makes your stomach flip, realizing that only a coffee now sits between you and the end of this night.
Then, at a certain point, when all that’s left in your cup is the dregs, sugar spoon bone dry on your plate, John gives you a look from across the table that says it’s time for you both to go.
Well, here we go, you think a little hysterically as you push back your chair to stand, nearly jumping out of your skin when his hand comes down on your back.
At your car, you sway back and forth on your heels. “You can, uh…follow behind me, if that works.”
“Why don’t you give me your address and I’ll meet you there?”
You bite your lip, pretending to deliberate, then acquiesce.
Let him think he’s pulling one on you. You’re bringing him home instead of the other way around because you don’t want to have any memory of a man’s bed when you think about your pregnancy journey. If it’s going to be you alone, then it should be about you alone. Your decision to go out and pick a man to father your baby.
His participation will be a short blip in your life. A minor footnote. You’ll remember it in bursts throughout the rest of your life: staring at a carton of cream in the dairy aisle of the local grocery store; garden spade buried hilt-deep in a plot of soil, blue bigleaf hydrangea in a pot beside you, sweat dripping down the bow of your lips; your baby’s face, for the rest of your natural life.
In your foyer, his hands glide around your hips, pulling you into his chest, and you realize abruptly that ‘short’ might not have been the most accurate interpretation of what’s about to happen.
(Honey, you’ve got a storm coming)
“This off first,” John rasps, pulling the bottom of your shirt up and over your head, blinding you for a split second before he yanks it over your arms.
“Getting right to it, huh?” you joke nervously.
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asks, staring down at you assessingly, as if staring into your soul. That cuts the humour from the moment. Vacuums it from the room, leaving behind only the crackling, blistering heat of his gaze and his intentions.
“Yes,” you whisper. Neither of you mention the tremble in your voice and how unsure you sound.
It doesn’t stop him from undressing you though. Bra pulled down under your breasts, pushing your tits up into his face like an invitation, one he accepts without question, pulling your nipples into his mouth one by one, hands on your hips to hold you in place when you try to squirm away. Not that it’s bad—it’s amazingly good after all, toe-curlingly good to have a man run his tongue over your areolas and suck each sensitive nipple to a stiff peak, until you’re on the verge of coming—but it’s a lot, a lot that you have to wrap your head around, your bra pinched off shortly after that and underwear next.
Your touch is hesitant at first, fingers barely gliding down his arms and fisting in the fabric of his shirt to jerk it up, but he makes it easy for you to get lost in it, your nerves fizzling out in the heat and fervor.
You don’t even notice that John has walked you backwards into the bedroom until he pushes you down onto the bed, the mattress bouncing under you. “One second, love—need to get all of this off myself.”
You watch transfixed as the suit jacket comes off first, shrugged off and discarded. He undoes only a few buttons before wrenching it over his head, eyes on you the whole time, his stare never breaking. Scalding hot.
That’s how you know that despite all his lofty words, this isn’t some favour he’s doing you. He wants this just as badly—wants it with a vigour that you don’t even know if you’ll be able to handle, aware that you are just flesh and blood. There’s a prickle at the back of your mind, a whisper reminding you that nobody knows that he’s here, that he’s a hot-blooded man about to slake his lust with your body.
Then he slides the elastic waistband of his boxers down his thighs and your mind goes blank when you see the flushed, heavy shaft droop between his legs.
The two of you work together to shove a pillow under your hips, John fetching it from the top of the bed and you lifting your hips to give him easier access. You don’t have to ask why.
Nestled between your thighs, John looks up at you with heavy-lidded eyes and says, “Let’s get you all softened up to start, alright, love?”
The first touch of his lips to your sex sends a lightning bolt up your spine, and then it’s practically an open mouth kiss. Tongue running up the seam of your lips, pushing into the clenched hole at the centre, the bristles of his beard scraping up the insides of your thighs and the thin skin of your labia.
It’s good, but it’s taking too long and your heart is a rabbiting mess and you can barely think or see straight, so you tangle your fingers in his hair and try to push his head away. “That’s okay, John, I just wanna—oh fuck, can you please just put it in?”
“No, baby, it’s good if you come first,” he murmurs. “Helps it take.”
That floods your system with a frenetic, crazed exhilaration. Baby fever bubbling and boiling, frothing spilling over the top like a pot left on the stovetop for too long.
You gasp when he tucks a couple fingers into your hole to stretch you out, a perfunctory, almost clinical motion. Just enough to loosen you up for him, unmindful of the way you squirm and whine, rolling your hips to get him to go faster. He does not.
It doesn’t take much effort on his part after that to get you to come, too worked up and wound up, core squeezing his fingers like a vice until he gives your clit a suck and you squeal, oh, too much, breath ripping through your chest.
They’re wet when he pulls them out, and he dries them off by rubbing them on your belly.
The shadow of his body draws over yours as he climbs on top of you. It’s as physical as it is visual though, John’s hands always on some part of your body, dragging up your legs and over your arms, fingers spreading over your belly before he runs a hand up between your breasts and over your throat, lingering there just long enough to close around your throat and hold for a second, then skating up to cup your jaw.
And then he’s all big body on top of you, coaxing your legs around his hips, one hand squishing your cheeks when he bends down to kiss you. You can taste yourself on his lips, the tongue pushing into your mouth musky with the flavour of your cum. You’d protest if you could, but you can’t, his mouth slanted over yours and demanding.
“C’mere,” he mumbles against your lips when he draws you in for another kiss, sawing his cock up and down between your folds, coating his length with your juices, until it’s there suddenly, breaching you.
You have to grab him, loop your arms around his shoulders and squeeze to ground yourself. It’s a lot to take in. He’s a lot to take in.
“I know, love, I know,” John murmurs soothingly. “Deep breaths, okay?”
You listen to him, letting a shaky breath out. It helps you relax. Barely, but enough to ease the strain a bit.
He nuzzles his nose into your temple, his breath fanning out against your ear. “A little more, love, alright? You gonna be brave for me?”
“Oh—just get on with it,” you gasp when he eases in another inch, and John laughs in your ear.
It feels genuinely romantic like this. Your arms wrapped around his neck and his hips slowly rocking into you, whispering sweet nothings like, there we go, you’ve got it, that feel good, love? When he fits his hand around the back of your neck and lifts your head up for a kiss, you swear you see stars.
The kiss is too much. Too intimate. You wish you would’ve set that boundary ahead of time. It feels pointless now, trapped under the heavy weight of his body and impaled on his member, sucked into it, lips slotting and melting over each other, his tongue running over yours. He’s a good kisser at least, practiced from a lifetime of it. No awkward schoolboy tonguing.
Too good. You wonder distantly how many other women he’s slept with (probably more than you have any business knowing). If he’s ever gotten anyone else pregnant. Your nails dig into his back instinctively at the thought and he gasps a wet and guttural sound, hips bucking harder.
He gets rough enough to loosen a bolt of fear in your chest. All of a sudden, it becomes bright and clear in your mind. There’s a grunting, sweating man over you, all two hundred plus pounds of him laid out on top of you, with no protection between you. Raw cock plunging into your pussy. You can barely get a full breath in.
“Fuck, I’m close,” John grunts, and your eyes flick down instinctively, trying to see past the dense mass of hair on his chest towards the length of his cock sliding into you. He’s pressed too close though. When he catches you looking away from him, he clamps his hand around your face again, forcing your gaze back up. “No, none of that. Eyes on me.”
You think you must gasp. Some horrified sound must escape you because you can feel the aftereffect of it, the big hollow where it used to be.
His other arm wedges under your back to pull you closer to him, thighs spreading to brace his weight against the mattress before driving into you harder, deeper, the big, concentrated energy of him inescapable.
You can sense it the second before he’s about to come, his eyebrows digging in and his jaw going tight, the vein in his forehead prominent.
“Christ, you’re gonna take it, aren’t you?” he snarls. “All this fucking cum.”
On the next stroke in, you dig an ankle into the muscle of his ass and squeeze your inner muscles around his length, grinning hazily to yourself when that makes him shout.
And then, oh, he surges in and you feel it, hear it, sense it all around you, his fingers from the hand wedged under your back digging hard into the side of your breast. Hips forcefully pumping into you and pushing his cum in deep, your own orgasm lost somewhere in there, a small, forgettable part of it all.
Eventually, he stops moving over you, letting his cock slip out of you on the next stroke out. You hiss when he does, clenching up involuntarily. With nothing plugging it inside though, his cum leaks out, dripping down the crack of your ass and onto the pillow under your hips.
John’s hot breath fans over your face as he pants, slowly winding down as well, the red flush in his cheeks still stark, though gradually fading. It’s only in the cooldown that you realize how claustrophobic it is being trapped under him, the sheer weight and heat of his body flush with yours becoming more and more uncomfortable, almost unbearably so.
When he slumps off to one side, you can finally breathe again, the air rushing into your lungs. There’s sweat in your skin and tears in the corners of your eyes, everything tacky and humid, the frantic beat of your heart only beginning to slow down. The stiffness in your shoulders only dawns on you after a few minutes like that, and you push yourself up onto your elbows just to try to work some of it out.
“No, don’t get up, love. We’re just gonna lie here for a bit,” he instructs, pushing your shoulder back down. “Better chance of my boys getting the job done if we keep it all in you.”
Of course he just wants to make sure that it takes. That way, you don’t have to do this again. “Oh yeah. I, uh, I didn’t think about that.”
He doesn’t just mean lie there, of course, though your body would like nothing more than to sink into the plush embrace of sleep. Instead he means keeping your hips propped up on the pillow now saturated with cum, and curling you into his side, separating your thighs again to palm your cunt, sliding his fingers through the wet.
It’s a goopy, sticky mess that John plunges his fingers into, pushing it back up inside of you and shushing you when you whimper, a little gaped from his cock but sore to the touch.
For much longer than you anticipated, he lies there on his side beside you and keeps two fingers pushed up inside you, blocking any cum from leaking out.
“How long do we have to do this for?” you ask, voice all high and tight in your throat.
John hums, unconcerned. “Ten, fifteen minutes.”
True to his word, he keeps you there for the full fifteen minutes. Only the sound of your breathing fills the room, quiet otherwise aside from the enormously large weight of his presence, too familiar now with the private corners of your world.
He doesn’t warn you before idly circling your clit with thumb. You jerk, nearly biting through your lip. “John!”
“Relax, honey, I’m just making you come again.”
“I know that, John—ah, ah, ah—”
A leg hooks over yours, his thigh heavy enough to keep you pinned without even much strength behind it. His fingers don’t so much as twitch inside of you, buried to the fattest knuckle while his thumb circles the tight bud of your clit over and over again until you—
You haven’t finished the thought by the time he draws his fingers out, pearlescent strings of cum webbed between them. He hums approvingly when he sees that, pulling your thighs further apart to admire his work. “Gorgeous. That ought to do it for now.”
Your heart skips a beat and you stare up at him, exhausted, the sweat on the back of your neck now cold.
For now.
a beginner's guide to starting a family
Lately, you’ve been thinking about having a baby. Or: the fertility clinic au Part 1 masterlist
It must be the mother of all quarter-life crises for you to be as torn up about this as you are.
(‘Mother of all’—what an apt phrase for a time like this.)
Two of your friends have babies and suddenly it’s all you can think about. Chubby cheeks and wrinkly fingers; diaper bags stuffed to the brim and shrill baby screams piercing through the house.
You try to help them out as best you can in those first few months, coming over with dinner wrapped in foil and snacks in Tupperware for the exhausted parents, offering to help run errands or tidy up the place while they try to catch up on sleep. The picture perfect friend.
You never thought it’d hit you like this until it does. Baby fever à la max. Even the word ‘fever’ undersells it—the feeling that overtakes you is like a blazing inferno, burning away every other want or desire apart from the one currently tearing you asunder.
It’s all you can think about from that point on. Babies, babies, babies. The milky smell of their heads, the flexible cartilage of their noses, their pudgy, wrinkly yawns and soft sighs. You make excuses to visit, offering to babysit whenever they look like they could use a night out, your agenda so transparent that anyone with eyes could see it.
All you can think when you look at them is that your life has been looking a lot like a house of cards these days: all style and no substance.
They get in your head, alright. That ominous they; not a specific person or group, just a nebulous, widespread opinion permeating far too many corners of your world. All that fearmongering about babymaking windows and that talk of rapidly vanishing fecundity—your eyes nearly bulge out of your head when you come across a TikTok of a thirty-six year old calling her eggs geriatric—and by the end of it, you swear you can hear your biological clock booming between your ears, one swinging gong after another.
You’re able to keep the beast at bay for a bit by tricking yourself into thinking that it’s just in your head. Just one of those things. You’re getting older—of course at some point you’d start to worry about the things you never got a chance to do. FOMO. Regrets blooming into full-blown crises. It’s only natural that it would start to get to you eventually.
Trying to convince yourself of that is not enough to shake the damn urgency from your blood though. You’re like a dog with a bone, too many late nights spent scrolling through parenting forums and conception tips, neither of which are of much use to you as a childless, partnerless person not currently trying for a baby. What does it matter to you if smoking reduces your chances of getting pregnant by forty percent? You don’t even smoke.
You might actually want to have a baby though. Mindblowing after all this time, to think that maybe it wasn’t just a fleeting fancy.
Mindblowing, then abruptly terrifying.
Your present situation is a bit dire. It’s been several years since you last had a partner, none you ever would’ve ever considered having a baby with. Absurd—worse than absurd even. And despite everything, despite the self-imposed countdown ticking away in your head and the stress causing your spine to curl in a half-inch more every single day, you are, thankfully, not desperate enough to reach out to any of them.
So you try. For a short period of time, you make a real, concerted effort to find a partner, going on three dates in a week, each more appalling than the last. It’s the last one that breaks you, your date not only unbearably dismissive to the waitstaff but also entirely uninterested in discussing anything about your life, completely preoccupied with recounting the minutiae of his own life story.
A swing and a miss. You made an effort at least, put yourself out there. Tried to do things the old-fashioned way.
It’s the twenty-first century though, for goodness’ sakes; there are more ways to start a family than just the tried-and-true method.
And that’s how you wind up here, at a fertility clinic on a Tuesday afternoon, PTO plugged into your work calendar with a secretive little “Appointment” reason left for being out of office. It’s no office-busybody’s business though. They don’t need to know about the increasingly debilitating need to have a baby that’s been overtaking you these past few months.
It would clear a lot of things up, but it still isn’t anyone’s business.
The waiting room is a simple, unadorned roost of a room, the walls lined with plastic eggshell-like chairs for all the eggs soon to be hatched. An oddly sterile space for the purpose it serves. It would be a little uncomfortable if it weren’t like every other waiting room in existence, minus any snivelling sick people.
There are other people besides you. Or rather, there were people. People that have already come and gone, not quite so anxious as to turn up an hour early for their two o’clock appointment, their stomachs grumbling from skipping lunch.
And so after the third couple goes in for their appointment with the specialist, you’re left on your own for a bit until a new person walks in.
A man this time, all by his lonesome.
And boy is he a specimen so fine that you can’t help but hope that he’s come to make a deposit. If they let you pick your donor based on build and gait alone, you think you’d have your man right here. You can barely drag your eyes away from him, glued to the rounded muscle of his back, gliding over the curve of his shoulders and up the thick of his neck.
After a brief conversation with the receptionist to check in, he drums his fingers across the counter and takes a seat on one of the little egg chairs along the wall facing yours.
Where he then proceeds to lift his head and lock eyes with you.
In retrospect, you wish you could describe it as a magical moment, but in reality, you just freeze in place, embarrassed at being caught staring. He’s a decently handsome enough man to be good fodder for any later self-care. Square-jawed and bearded.
Good hairline for his age, which you don’t want to take a crack at guessing, but if you had to, it would have to be somewhere around his mid-forties. Maybe late. But it touches him in just the right way, evident in the lines on his forehead and the pull of the skin around his eyes, his beard just ever so slightly flecked with the barest hints of grey.
The writing on the threadbare shirt he has on, almost hidden beneath the plaid shirt layered over it, is barely legible after countless washes. You can almost see straight through it. If you pinched the fabric between your fingers, you think your nails would poke right through. You could rip it right off him, get a better look at the dense pecs that you can just barely make out through his shirt.
You swallow, that thought catching you off guard.
Despite your own embarrassment, his gaze holds steady. Some people aren’t born with shame as a built-in foghorn. Some people look out into the world and genuinely believe it is theirs to conquer, raised on a diet of self-confidence and boldness, free-range audacity.
He’s bold enough, in fact, to rise to his feet and cross to the other side of the waiting room, taking a seat right beside you. He sits down beside you like you're old friends, like there's nothing strange about a man sitting beside a veritable stranger in a completely empty room.
It’s such a bold move that you don’t even know what to say at first, head turned towards him in the chair next to you now with some dumb expression on your face, gobsmacked.
“Can I help you?” you hear yourself ask, years of socialization coming to the rescue. Thank god the gears start turning in your head after that brief second of bewilderment.
“Not at all.” And what a voice too, as if his looks weren’t enough. All unintentional deep-chested purr, leonine English rumbling out of the depths of him, Northern accent to top it off. “Just thought I might introduce myself. Be polite, seeing as how we’re both here for the same reason.”
Unless he ran ahead of a wife still on her way up the elevator, you don’t think that’s the case. You glance around him just to double check the door. “Are we?”
“Maybe a pick-up instead of a drop-off in your case,” he concedes, a droll little note curled up in his voice. “But that’s not so different when the end result’s the same.”
You swallow and force an awkward smile, ignoring the way your heart speeds up. “Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, nice to meet you, um, circumstances aside.” You hold out a hand, which he doesn’t hesitate to take.
“Nothing wrong with the circumstances, but pleasure to meet you too, love.”
His palm feels huge around yours, a warm, firm grip that only yields a few moments later when you have to make an effort to pull your hand away, holding on for the fleetingest of seconds, long enough for a spark of anxiety to shoot through your chest.
You hope that’s the end of it when he finally lets go of your hand. Not because you don’t want to chat up an incredibly attractive stranger, but because you couldn’t imagine the timing being worse.
He, however, seems to have no qualms with carrying on. “Has it taken yet or are you shopping for donors today?”
It’s a horribly invasive question, but you answer it anyway, all buttoned-up and ginger. “Um. No, I’m just here for a consultation. There’ll probably be a lot of paperwork before, um…before we get started.”
“A lot of nonsense for something I reckon we could get done a lot easier together.”
It doesn’t register until it does. Then you just have to look at him and blink, confused.
“Excuse me?” you ask.
He cocks an eyebrow. “I haven’t got this wrong, have I? You said you’re here for a baby?”
“Uh, yes, that’s—that’s what I just said.”
“And I’m here to help someone like you have a baby. Seems like we’d be making both of our lives easier if we just skipped all the red tape and saved you the expense.”
“‘Save me the expense’?” you repeat, stunned.
“Won’t cost anything the natural way.”
You know what he’s insinuating, but you can’t believe it. You actually can’t believe that this man—a stranger, handsome as he might be, good-looking as he might be, husband-envy-inspiring as he might be—would openly proposition you in the waiting room of a fertility clinic. Offer to get you pregnant ‘the natural way’, as if it were a cold drink on a hot day. A side of fries with your order.
“I—I’m sorry, but that’s incredibly inappropriate,” you eventually wheeze out.
That gets a laugh out of him, one of those amused huffs that erupts out of him like a bear flicking a bee off its snout. “Can’t be cagey about this sort of thing, love. You have to be direct when you want to get things done.”
“You do know we’re in public, right?”
“I’d be happy to take this somewhere private.”
The heat under your cheeks might actually result in a physical burn. “I…think I’m going to find somewhere else to sit.”
“Ah, don’t worry about that, love, I’m gonna head out anyway.” A satisfied smile tugs at his mouth. “I think I got what I actually came for.”
Your frown deepens. “You haven’t even been called in yet.”
“Not what I meant.”
Before you can ask what he means, he shifts in his seat, leaning closer to you for just a second, but long enough for your heart to suddenly go wild and your pupils to go big as dinner plates.
“Here,” he grunts, lifting a hip to pull his wallet out of his back pocket, flicking it open and plucking out a business card. He flips your hand over and puts it down on your palm. “That’s my number. When you’re done here, give me a call. I’m sure we can come up with something better than this.”
He taps the card in your hand with a finger. It ricochets through you, the tap rippling up your arm and chest, nearly rocking you back in your seat. Everything he does must be punctuated with the same echoing weight.
He nods to you on his way out, a secretive smile on his lips, just the barest hint of a lift that you might’ve missed had you not been staring at his face. All you can do is stare though, still absolutely floored, practically speechless as you watch him leave.
And then you’re alone again, in an entirely different headspace than when you first sat down.
“John Price?” the receptionist calls out from behind the desk suddenly, but with the man gone, there’s no one else in the waiting room apart from you. “Mr. John Price?”
You blink, stun-locked. You can’t have been the reason he decided to back out of his appointment at the last minute. He must’ve decided to bail at the last minute before throwing a Hail Mary in an attempt to get laid.
That has to be it. He wouldn’t leave because of a brief interaction with you.
The waiting room feels a lot emptier without him now that he’s gone, as if by being made aware of his presence, everything has been indelibly altered. Changed. Slightly less interesting somehow.
You hover somewhere between bewilderment and affront until a flicker of giddiness steals in. Tamp that back down. He's gone, and with him the impossible audacity of what just came out of his mouth. You stare at the door that he just disappeared through, lips parting around a reply you'll never get to deliver, then let out a sharp, disbelieving scoff. The gall.
And yet, despite yourself, you can't quite smother the giddiness bubbling low in the pit of your stomach. Your fingers curl around the business card in your hand.
Eventually it’s your turn. You almost miss the sound of your own name until a lady in purple scrubs repeats it, sending you shooting to your feet. You follow her as she leads you down a hall and towards an open office just as clean and spartan as the waiting room. All there is in her office is a desk, a bookshelf, and a mobile ultrasound machine. Practically empty for all intents and purposes.
Ok lady, you think, sitting down across from her, what’s it gonna take to put a baby in me?
“Four thousand dollars,” she says matter-of-factly, the earlier part of your conversation long forgotten after hearing the price.
That just about knocks all the wind out of you. “Oh,” you bleat, the prospect of ever getting pregnant suddenly a sad and distant dream.
“Per cycle,” she further clarifies, much to your dismay, sliding a couple pamphlets your way. “We’re always hopeful that it’ll take on the first cycle, but we typically see about three to four cycles of IUI before conception occurs.”
IUI—intrauterine insemination. The sperm they have to shove up inside you to try and knock you up. At four thousand dollars a pop.
“There’s no…first time discount?”
“Excuse me?”
“Like the, um…like the home buyer’s loan.”
She seems vaguely apologetic when she shakes her head at least, though that doesn’t really ease the sting. “No, unfortunately. Most of our customers are first time parents, so—”
It wouldn’t make much business sense. “Yeah, no, I get it.”
You do your best to pay attention to the rest of the conversation and ask the right questions, but the sticker shock makes it hard to focus. At some point, the consultation must end because she sends you off with a folder full of pamphlets and QR codes to scan, and a follow-up appointment booked two weeks out for a blood test and a pelvic ultrasound.
No music on the drive home, just silence to let the events of the day marinate.
You know it’s likely just this clinic. It’s not like there aren’t other, probably cheaper clinics. But it’s the principle of the matter, the one factor that you hadn’t considered in this whole endeavour—you’d assumed, obviously, that raising a child in and of itself wouldn’t be cheap, but you hadn't even contemplated that the run-up to actually getting pregnant might be so cost prohibitive.
If you even get pregnant. You exhale in a rush, the thought hitting you like a sledgehammer. God, you might not even get pregnant. You might go through the whole treatment, waste thousands of dollars, and go half-crazy begging the universe to let you get knocked up, and it might not even take.
Dinner is a glass of white wine and burrito straight from the freezer, in no mood to cook or clean even a single dish. You should be cutting down on your alcohol consumption in anticipation of fertility treatments, but that’ll be a task for a later, less devastated you. You’ll rinse the hot sauce off your plate when you’re done eating and leave it in the sink for tomorrow morning.
It’s not how you wanted the day to end. You were hoping to come home invigorated and inspired, already prepping for the next steps in the process. Instead it feels like you’ve taken a massive step back.
Occasionally you like to look up flights to other countries just to imagine what it might be like to get away from your life for a bit, but the ticket price always brings you back down to reality.
This isn’t like that though; this isn’t some temporary flight of fancy or some pie in the sky that you’ll spend decades chasing down in your dreams, hoping for just a single bite or even just a whiff. This is something you actually, genuinely want. A baby. Something you can take with you into the future, something you can build your life around.
There’s got to be another way.
It’s a physical weight in your front pocket. You can feel it now, burning a hole in your hip. When you pull it out, the name John Price is printed on the card in a crisp, typewriter font, his phone number and occupation printed in the same sized font just beneath it.
You stare at the card long enough for your eyes to go dry. Blink. Breathe out, reluctance giving way to acceptance, as tentative as it might be. It certainly wouldn’t be the strangest thing to ever happen. A fun night with a good-looking man, with the added benefit of getting a baby out of it, no strings attached. Not the most irresponsible decision anyone has ever made. Some people join the army, after all.
A shiver runs up your spine when you remember the way he worded it though. Sweat on your upper lip that you have to lick off, the salt sinking into the ridges of your tongue. You don’t think he meant turkey basters and plastic cups by getting it done ‘the natural way’. You saw the way he looked at you.
You could do it for a baby. Let him—and here, you have to squeeze your eyes shut and cover them with your fists—let him do what he has to do to get you pregnant. Cut out the middle man and just let him fit the heavy weight of his body over yours and pry your legs apart to let him sink between your—
You pull out your phone and send him a text.
TWO OF CUPS | Kyle 'Gaz' Garrick x Reader
MOODBOARD · AO3
You can’t remember wanting anything with ease. Certainly not the man of your dreams.
or: the anxious avoidant au
tags: Size Difference, Size Kink, Explicit Sexual Content, AFAB Reader, Mildly Dubious Consent, Anxious Avoidant Character, Coffee Shop AU, Strangers to Lovers
You can’t remember wanting anything with ease.
It always hurts in that big, bright way, like a thousand sticks of dynamite blowing a tunnel open through a mountain, giving you a way to pass to the other side. Like whispering the same wish over and over again until your lips go numb and your voice goes hoarse, your plea still unheard after all these years.
Perhaps it would hurt less to desire if you could fill that hole every once in a while. If you could wet your tongue with the taste of satisfaction, of a want fulfilled, of the opportunity to say to someone, “Oh, look what I got” or “Look at what all my work has amounted to.”
That’s never been the case though, has it? Never been lucky enough for a wish to come true. You work like a dog for the barest scraps of what you know you’re worth (what you know and what every day seems less and less true).
Vacations that you never had enough money to take, jobs that never came to fruition, mistakes that couldn’t be undone, memories that you could never remake, friendships that grew apart or that never materialized altogether.
It’s not all doom and gloom. You have a good job and a decent network of friends and acquaintances, parties you attend on occasion and warm nights at home curled up in bed. You have a roof over your head. There's more than enough in your life to be grateful for.
But the wanting never goes away. That, you have in spades. That, you have in heaps and bounds. That multiplies itself tenfold.
And it happens that way with your heart too.
There’s a coffee shop down the street from your office with a decent amount of seating and an app to order your drink ahead of time, and every day at around two, you order your coffee ahead of time and walk over to pick it up, rain or shine.
It’s always busy to some degree when you walk in, a handful of people waiting by the counter and a short line at the register snaking around the merchandise display. The whirr of the coffee grinder hums in the background, just a touch louder than the music, always filling the café with the rich, pleasing scent of freshly ground coffee.
The same chairs are always filled by the same people. Plenty of them you’ve even grown to recognize over time—students bent over thick textbooks, elderly men creasing newspapers in ink-stained hands, and laptop screens glowing with blank Word documents, scarcely a sentence added in the time it took to order and finish their coffee.
You recognize most of the takeaway regulars as well.
They’re harder to remember at first. Quick to come and quick to go. Hard to commit their faces to memory. But some give you no choice—some boisterously loud or ostentatious in dress, eye-catching enough to hook you like a fish, drag your attention down river with them.
Then, to him.
He, like you, comes in every day around two for his afternoon coffee. He, unlike you, comes striding in full-chested, confidence nipping at his heels, no world-weariness weighing him down.
Hard not to notice him. Of course you notice him. He takes up space like a living sun, all bright smiles and radiant energy, handsome in the way that, when men are, they draw people in like moths. You feel no better than a moth sometimes, particularly in his presence.
Tea-coloured eyes. What you notice at first is that there’s a beautiful man waiting for his coffee next to you, a tall man with the sculpted physique of an athlete, all long limbs and broad shoulders tapering into a lean frame, and what you notice next are those tea-coloured eyes, honeying under the sun.
You stare so long that you only realize how dry your eyes have gone when the door swings shut behind him.
It’s no wonder then, that you latch onto his presence like so, a little flutter in your chest on your way to the coffee shop every time after that first time, hoping that you’ll cross paths again.
And you do. Cross paths again, that is. Only a few times those first couple of weeks, and then seemingly all the time, the two of you always in at the same time.
That isn’t unusual. There are plenty of other familiar faces picking up their afternoon coffees at the same time as you, people that you recognize at the mobile ordering station and laptop stickers that you’ve come to memorize, the same people sitting at the same seats. People like routine; you’re no different. Neither is he.
It comes over you like an ague, a desperate, eager thing, quiet enough at first when you’ve only seen him in bits and pieces, not studied him at length yet, but it—
It grows.
It grows like a vine in your chest, weaving around your heart and squeezing until you can feel it with every beat.
You don’t entirely blame yourself. How could you? You swear you’ve never seen anyone even half as good-looking as him—broad-shouldered and lean, perfect smile, perfect teeth. Haircut always fresh, his edges neat. He squints with the force of his smile, always effusive with his gratitude and praise, so earnest in his kindness that it makes your teeth ache.
He’s objectively a handsome man. Perhaps the handsomest man you’ve ever seen. What else could you do but go a bit crazy?
Want may not be a strong enough word for what you’re experiencing. It’s more of a torsion of the soul. A desperate, yearning ache that both releases and constricts when he walks into the café to order his coffee.
You don’t know what to do with yourself when he doesn’t show up at the same time as you. Your schedules are so in sync that you’ve grown to expect him, fattened and spoiled by the timeliness of his presence. But he doesn’t owe it to you to show up, and there are days when he doesn’t, held up for some reason, or maybe simply not in the mood for a coffee.
You practically drag your feet on the walk back to the office, a sorry sight. Pathetically despondent. You hardly know what to do with yourself the rest of the afternoon, oscillating between dejection and self-reproach. It’s pathetic that the mere absence of your crush would reduce you to such a state, hardly able to concentrate on your work because the stranger that you’ve become infatuated with wasn’t at the coffee shop where you see him for a total of twenty seconds every other day.
Forgive yourself though. Nothing you’ve ever wanted has come without pain.
What you don’t expect is for him to finally notice you.
It happens on a day when you cross paths rather than arriving at the same time, him leaving the coffee shop as you’re about to enter. Your heart skips a beat when you look up and see him staring down at you, both of you taken by surprise when you go to pull the door open and he’s already pushing on the other side.
“Traffic jam,” he laughs when you both lean left and then right at the same time, trying to let the other go around. “Here, I’ve got you.”
He extends an arm to hold the door wide open and angles his body to let you pass through. You thank him as you pass, your heart pounding against your ribs. His gaze follows you as you step inside, and you nearly jump when his voice calls a farewell after you, leaving through the same door.
You stand near the doorway for far too long, other customers coming in and going around you, cutting you annoyed looks on their way to the cash. Your drink must already be waiting for you on the counter and still you can’t move. It takes someone actually stumbling into you to jolt you back into the present.
That wasn’t part of the plan. It’s thrilling, initially, a rush so overwhelming, so kaleidoscopic, that you ride it all the way back to the office and all the way home, replaying the memory again and again in your head until even you start to tire of belabouring it.
And still you roll around in bed that night thinking about it, heart racing even hours after your short little conversation, picturing it over again in your mind—the crinkle of the corners of his eyes, the smile nearly pulling across his face, all white teeth and soft, supple lips.
The only problem is—
Now he knows who you are.
You don’t expect him to remember you after such a quick encounter. He’s not the one that’s been pining these past few weeks. He’s not the one that’s been beating himself up for crushing on a stranger.
But he does remember you. And not only does he remember you, but he looks for you the next time he’s in.
It’s one of those days when you get there first, coffee already ordered and paid for by the time he walks in, in dark trousers and a quarter-zip today, and filling them both out nicely, the sweater clinging to the muscles of his arms. You expect him to head straight for the cash like he normally does, blessedly and lamentably unaware of your presence.
Instead, your breath hitches when his eyes drift across the café and settle on you, a spark of recognition glinting in them.
His gaze immobilizes you, stronger than any paralytic. It’s what holds you in place as he approaches, the distance between you halved in an instant, and then fully collapsed, the gorgeous man in front of you doing what Zeno’s Achilles never could.
“Hey stranger, no dance today, huh?” he asks, clearly addressing you.
You don’t know what to say. This is your worst case scenario, your category five emergency. In the weeks you’ve spent crushing on him from afar, you hadn’t considered the possibility of him ever noticing you in return.
“Sorry?” you croak.
He gestures with his thumb towards the door. “From the other day, remember?”
You don’t know how you’ll make it through this interaction without making a fool of yourself. “Right. Haha. I guess the dance floor’s closed today.”
You could throw up on the spot. Of all the abysmal conversation rejoinders there have ever been in the history of humanity, the one you just offered must rank comfortably near the top.
For whatever reason though, whether divine intervention or something more dastardly, he chuckles, amused. He seems to like talking to you. Seems to like you even. That only becomes clearer when he approaches you the next day, and then the day after that, and then every day when you stop by at two p.m. for your afternoon coffee, your coffees now handed out together by the barista, as if you had ordered them that way.
The small talk alone almost makes you consider switching to a different coffee shop. It’s too much pressure. You feel sick with anxiety at the thought of him figuring you out.
And he will figure you out. You haven’t exactly played it subtle.
Then he gets your number. Somehow. And your name too, pried so easily from you that you don’t even notice, like freeing a pearl from a clam; barely a flick of his wrist and you offer it up without a second thought, embarrassingly malleable.
You get his too. Kyle Garrick. He spells it for you as he watches you save his number into your phone from over your shoulder, so close to you that your fingers fumble with the keypad, mistyping it almost four times before getting it right.
Kyle doesn’t seem to care that you can barely seem to string together a sentence in front of him. If anything, it seems to endear him to you.
His attraction makes itself apparent in tender words and a new penchant for touch, a hand always reaching out for you.
At first, it’s nothing more than the casual brush of his fingers against yours as he picks up your coffee from the bar and passes it to you, no different than a handshake or a high five. Ostensibly perfunctory. But that too changes over time. A fleeting touch becomes a hand at the small of your back as he guides you to a table for a quick chat before heading back to work, fingers squeezing your shoulder when he laughs at a joke you didn’t realize you made, and quick hugs that grow a little longer each time.
Maybe. Or maybe you’re imagining it.
“So when are you gonna let me take you out for real?”
That snaps you out of the daydream, reality crashing down with such force that it leaves your ears ringing. His words leave you dumbfounded, gaping up at him in that stupid way that you can’t seem to suppress.
“For real?” you repeat.
“On a date,” Kyle clarifies, as if the word alone weren’t enough to wreck you.
“Oh.”
You tell him yes because the word no evaporates from your vocabulary. By the time it returns, he’s already gone, disappearing into the world (likely an office building around the corner from yours, but it might as well be Timbuktu).
This isn’t what was supposed to happen. You were supposed to pine in agony until you died.
It’s everything you ever wanted, and yet, you couldn’t want it less in the moment, terrified for some reason that you can’t quite articulate. You count down the days with growing apprehension, jitters giving way to a full-body sweat.
You’ll break it off at a later date. That thought comforts you to a point. At some point, there will be a moment for you to bail entirely.
The problem is the longer you say nothing, the harder it is to say anything at all. Already guilt stays your tongue when all you want to do is tell him that you can’t do this anymore. You need to leave—go anywhere else, run home and lock the door behind you, never go back to the coffee shop again.
But there’s a text in your phone telling you the time and place, and every time you look at it, it leaves you feeling off-kilter. Sea legs without leaving dry land.
What is it about you that you feel the need to run as soon as you get too close? What about this isn’t what you want? Do you even know what you want?
Of course you know what you want. You want love and affection.
But having is not wanting. Wanting is safe. It’s the having that’s dangerous.
You contemplate cancelling on him about a dozen times until suddenly it’s too late, the man in question standing in the lobby of your building to pick you up. He must know someone in the building because he’s deep in conversation when you spot him, his head turning to meet yours at the same time, as if even in conversation, he wouldn’t allow himself to be distracted enough to miss you. Your heart squeezes when he wraps it up in the same breath, crossing the lobby to meet you.
Dinner is a restaurant in a different part of town, one you’ve seldom spent time in before, trendy in the way that would unnerve you were it not for the abrupt realization that to everyone else, this is simply a familiar part of town.
To some, the restaurant must be familiar as well. There might even be regulars. To you however, the small, dimly lit room with the booths on one side and the chairs lining the bar at the other, an eclectic assortment of framed photos and decorative porcelain plates on the wall beside you, is lovely, uncharted territory.
Over dinner, Kyle peppers you with question after question until your head spins, each answer that leaves your lips betraying some nervous tendency towards clandestinity. You have to keep some things to yourself. You have to keep some things private.
You have to shut your mouth before you—
“A long time,” you reply without thinking, the whole world blowing open when you admit it. You hadn't even consciously registered the question before answering. When was your last date?
Kyle doesn’t seem phased by it though, warm smile somehow warmer than the blood boiling under your skin. “I must be one lucky man then.”
He sweet talks you into agreeing to a drink after dinner, probably sensing the nervous animal in you, the fear about to take flight.
You assume he means a drink at a bar until you’re standing in the kitchen of your apartment, Kyle standing behind the island with a bottle of wine in one hand, uncorking it with practiced ease. When it pops out, you flinch.
What a strange thing, to lose time like that. You lose it again after he pours you both a glass, coming to on the couch with his arm around your shoulders, pinned between him and the side of the couch.
He turned the television on, you notice distantly, staring at it through your glass, red wine sloshing from side to side. It’s not a program either of you would care to pay much attention to, possibly by design.
“Do you have, um…any plans tomorrow?” you ask, swallowing when he drags his fingers over the bare skin of your upper arm.
“Nope,” he answers, playing with the sleeve of your shirt now.
You can hear it coming from a mile away. He makes it too obvious with his fingers trailing over your skin and the heat of his gaze searing into the side of your face.
The sky outside your window is black, the moon only a sliver of its usual brilliance, but your living room is bright, turning the window into a mirror reflecting the two of you, the picture of a couple in repose.
You watch his reflection lean over yours in the window, his lips grazing your double’s ears, your breath catching when his touch yours as well. “If I give you an inch, you’re going to run a mile, aren’t you?” he murmurs.
There’s a lump in your throat when you swallow. “No,” you lie.
He must see right through you though. Must see the creature inside you about to succumb to its instincts.
He must be good at chess, you think to yourself, staring down at him with a stupid look on your face as he lowers himself to lie flat on the bed between your legs, spreading your thighs wide enough to wedge his shoulders between them. Any game of strategy.
If you never give your opponent a moment to breathe, they can’t gather themselves enough to retreat.
That thought crumbles to dust when he makes you watch him lick the first stripe up the seam of your pussy, crudely spreading your lips with his tongue. Nothing more substantial materializes after that.
He eats pussy like he hasn’t had enough to eat. Lips and tongue and hollowed cheeks when he sucks your clit into his mouth and your back nearly arches right off the bed, twisted into such a complex shape that you almost don’t know how to unravel yourself. Fingers grasping at his head, his ears; rasping over the coils of his hair, fingers committing the texture to memory.
Your thighs tremble and squeeze, pried open again and again every time you try to shut him out. The muscles in his arms barely even bulge with the effort it takes to keep your thighs spread.
You are wound up in ways that would be a challenge to anyone, but Kyle doesn’t seem to care. He just holds you down and forces you to come on his tongue, rolling it over your clit until you actually start crying. Big, belting caterwauls. His poor baby, he croons.
When have you been someone’s ‘poor baby’? Someone’s darling, sweetheart, honey, that’s it, I’ve got you, that felt good, didn’t it? God, you’re so pretty, I can’t believe you let me—
He flicks his tongue over your sensitive clit and you yelp, reaching down to slide your hand between his mouth and your swollen sex only for him to lace your fingers together and pull your hand to the side and lick it again.
“It’s still sensitive,” you complain, and he lifts a brow, unmoved by your bellyaching.
“So what, you got twitchy little orgasm legs, that means I’m not allowed to lick your pussy anymore?”
“No,” you hiss, embarrassment warming the blood already pooled under your cheeks.
Warm hands rest on either side of your face as he eases his cock in for the first time, holding your gaze in place as sinks in to the root. All you can do is squeeze your eyes shut.
They don’t stay shut for long. He pries them open without words, without touch, every ounce of his ardor poured into you and lifting your own to the surface.
Sweat drips from his forehead onto yours. The sweat makes his hands slip up and down your face with the force of his thrusts, fingers tugging on your lips and pulling them apart, sliding over your gums and teeth.
“You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Kyle pants, sweat dripping off his forehead and onto yours, eyes darker than you’ve ever seen them, glassy and feverish.
“Don’t—don’t say that,” you gasp.
He dips his head down to press his forehead against yours. “You can’t tell me that. You can’t tell me what to do.”
Whatever this is, it’s nothing like anything you’ve experienced before. Proper lovemaking. Real kisses with passion, with fervor, with delight; the messiness contained between you, in the sweat rolling down your back and soaking into the sheets, the saliva dripping from his mouth into yours, the squelch of his shaft splitting you over and over, never giving you a second to catch your breath.
Coming a second, no, third time is painful, like a thing wrested unwillingly from you, and you fall back on the bed windburned. Kyle follows you down, hips bucking into yours faster and faster, his own end nearly on his heels.
He comes with a grunt, without warning; a sudden surge of heat and warmth, his fingers biting into your cheeks where he holds your face in his hands, his lip curling up into a snarl that you swear you can almost hear, and—
You expect it to be over after that. For him to roll out of bed and pull on his pants, maybe give you a courtesy kiss for a job well done before leaving you to stew in the mire of another rejection, the small win eclipsed by the enormity of losing him.
What you don’t expect is for him to lay down beside you and pull you into him. Kyle laughs softly when he notices your stiffness, jostling you slightly in an attempt to coax you into relaxing.
“That’s right, baby,” he chuckles a touch breathlessly, pressing a kiss to the bridge of your nose before relaxing back down. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Coffee the next day is different than usual. Early for one, the sun still a syrupy morning gold, not yet the starchy afternoon white, and in a different location than usual, the coffee machine on your kitchen counter hissing through its second cup of the day.
Kyle maneuvers around your apartment too naturally, a stark contrast to the way you scurry from the bedroom to the bathroom like a stowaway. He’s entirely at home in your space though, helping himself to coffee and breakfast, only glancing at you for permission, the slightest cock of his head and arch of his brow, and you fold under the pressure instantly.
When you try to skirt around him, he wraps an arm around your waist and pulls you into his side, the touch of his lips against your chest shocking you still, electrical impulses still skittering under your skin.
“I can feel your heart racing,” Kyle teases, caramel-smooth voice sending a low vibration through your chest.
And why shouldn’t he? Your heart is racing after all. “I’m nervous.”
“I know you are, baby,” he murmurs. “This is hard for you, isn’t it?”
It is. A few too many years on your own have turned you to stone, the slightest touch almost too much to handle. You’ve long learned to expect anything you touch to shock you.
“Want me to make this easier on you?” he asks gently. You’re not sure what he means by that, but you have an inkling.
And wouldn’t it be nice to not have to worry? To not have to second guess what you really want or what you should do?
You nod.
“Okay, honey. Then you don’t have to do it. No telling me to go away. I’ve got it from here.”
When Kyle takes your phone from your hand, you don’t stop him, even typing in your password for him when he turns it towards you, watching over his shoulder as he shares your location with his phone.
You exhale shakily, the tightness in your shoulders easing. There he goes with that oyster shucker again, opening you up.
So be it. What use is there in protecting something that’s already his?
Besides, when have you wanted anything with ease?
prompt: you and Price get in an accident (1.6k)
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He comes into your life like nothing less than divine intervention.
A fender bender, of all things. It’s a bad day and you’re distracted, too busy thinking about your dad calling to tell you that he lost ten thousand from his retirement fund when the stock he’d invested in crashed and how you’re supposed to help him out of this mess, and the roads are slick with that last snowfall of early spring, still unsalted even hours after the snow started.
So when you slam on the brakes at the last second after noticing the car in front of you stopped at a red light, your car slips on the ice and slides forward, hitting the back of the stopped car and sending it forward a foot. It’s quick and sudden, and though you stepped on the brakes early enough to avoid a worse collision, your head snaps forward with the jolt and the seatbelt yanks you back violently, winding you.
Your hands go tight around the wheel, eyes so wide that they nearly pop out of your head as you stare at the car directly in front of you. All of the dread in the world pools in your mouth and then down your throat when you swallow, heart galloping in your chest. You almost can’t believe it for a second.
Then the car in front of you—a big, fuck-you SUV that only worsens your anxiety because of all cars to hit, it had to be someone with a fancy, brand new car that probably has a lawyer on speed dial—puts their hazards on and the driver’s side doors opens and reality snaps like a rubberband back into you. With shaky hands, you put your car into park and put your hazards on as well.
“Oh shit,” you whisper under your breath. An understatement.
A tall man in a brown parka steps out of the car and stares at you through the windshield, a stern expression on his face. He has a beanie pulled down over his head and a full beard, and for a second, the mental image of a bear emerging out of its den flickers in your imagination, all snow-dusted and irritable.
He’s grizzled and older than you. The only consolation is that he doesn’t match the image of the driver that you had in your head—no seven thousand dollar suit or bluetooth earpiece; instead, he seems like the kind of man who’d drive an old pickup or a schooner, wearing an Aran sweater and a skipper's cap, with a pipe hanging from the corner of his mouth. He seems out of place in the middle of the road in your small town.
But he is real, and even though you watch him march over to you, you flinch when he raps on the window with his knuckles.
“Roll the window down,” he instructs, voice muffled through the glass, and you do because the command cuts through the buzzing in your ear. When you do, he reaches into your car with one hand and pops the lock, then takes a step back to open the door. You’d freak out if the situation were different, but you must be in shock because all you can do is stare at him dumbly as he leans into the car and undoes your seatbelt. “C’mon, sweetheart. Out.”
It doesn’t take much coaxing to get you to step out of the car. All he has to do is step back and you get out, knees nearly buckling, like jelly under you. He holds your elbow to steady you. Your elbow feels delicate and tiny in the width of his palm.
“You alright, sweetheart?” he asks, looking all over your face.
You want to answer him, but all you can do is whimper, “I’m so sorry.”
“Hey, none of that. It was an accident. You alright though? Anything hurt?”
“Uh…I don’t…I don’t know.” It hasn’t really sunk in yet, you think. Maybe tomorrow you’ll be sore all over, but right now you feel fine. On the verge of shaking out of your skin, teeth nearly clattering together, but more or less okay.
“Nothing too bad then. Wanna give me your insurance so we can deal with this, sweetheart?”
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. Let me just—” You move to reach back into your car to fetch your purse, but he stops you, insisting on getting it for you.
And you let him, docile like a doll, watching as he leans into your car and across the seats to grab your purse, big frame looking comically large in your little car. Looking like he’d barely fit in the front seat if he tried to get in.
He comes back out with your little purse in hand and opens it, handing you your wallet and purse by its strap. Your fingers are still shaking when you pull out your insurance information and hand it to him. Everything feels surreal and muted, and the tears are going to flow at any minute now if you don’t get a handle on it.
He must notice because a knuckle fits under your chin and lifts your head up. “Hey, what’s wrong?
“No, no,” you say, reaching up to swipe your fingers over your eyes. “I’m just—I’m really embarrassed. I’ve never been in an accident before.”
“Nothing to be embarrassed about.” His voice is much softer now, pitched low in the way handlers talk to spooked animals. He puts his thumb to your chin, holding you in place. “No one got hurt. Could’ve been worse than it was, and we’ve both got insurance, so what’s done is done. I don’t look mad, do I?”
Trapped between his thumb and knuckle, you can only give a slight shake of your head. “No.”
“Then let’s just take it one step at a time and no tears. Okay?”
You sniff. “Okay.”
“Okay. I’m going to call the insurance, so you get back in the car and sit tight, alright?”
You nod.
“Good girl,” he says, a hint of praise in his voice. “Put the heat on too. It’s too cold for that jacket.”
That makes you go warm all over, flustered and tongue-tied. Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to expect a response out of you. The only thing he expects you to do is get back in the car and turn the heat back on, the warm air billowing into your face when he leans in to crank it up all the way.
Though most of the sound is muffled from inside the car, you turn down the heat and crack the window open slightly to hear him give his name to his insurance company. John Price. Even his name evokes the image of him somewhere else in the world, settled into the nooks and crannies of history.
John handles everything for you while you sit in the car like he told you to, settling everything with the insurance companies and calling for a tow truck right after that. You don’t realize that, of course, until the tow truck pulls up in front of his car and he comes back to usher you out of your car.
“How am I supposed to get home?” you croak. The tow truck driver hitches your car to the bed of the lift and pulls it up, your little car looking pathetic all alone up there.
“I’ll drive you home then bring mine in later.”
“Why can’t I drive my car to the garage too?” You’re petulant now that you’ve learned that he won’t bite, and you know it’s petulance because you don’t actually put up much of a fight to get your car taken off the tow truck.
That petulance trembles when his expression grows stern again. “You’re getting it checked by a mechanic before you get behind the wheel again,” he tells you in no uncertain terms, eyes daring you to contradict him.
You don’t. It’s hard to argue with someone so adamant on your wellbeing. A mechanic in later days will tell John, with you by his side, that your car was mostly fine apart from some slight damage to the bumper, but that you made the right call to bring it in just in case the frame cracked during the accident.
John’s arm will be around your waist at the time and he’ll pull you tighter into his side when the mechanic says that. And what do you do but go with it, curling into his side like it’s natural. You’ll have already fucked him by then anyway. It’ll be no less forward than letting him take you for coffee and then back home, following you up to your apartment and into your bed.
Now though, you let him usher you into the passenger seat of his car and shut the door behind you, the wind cutting off abruptly. It only comes back when the door opens on his side.
You rattle off your address and watch bemusedly as he programs it into his GPS and hits save. You don’t have the temerity to question him, to poke a hole in the bubble of familiarity ballooning around the two of you. The real world seems far away in his car, like you’re in limbo, the rules different here somehow.
“How about a coffee?” he asks at the next light, putting his hand on your thigh and shaking when you don’t respond right away. “Does a hot drink sound good right about now?”
“I guess?” you say. In truth, it sounds great, but you’re losing the thread of this conversation, your old preoccupations getting further and further away from you.
John gives your thigh a squeeze, lingering for a beat before pulling away. “Good. It’ll be a nice little pick me up before we go home. My treat.”
All you can do is nod, your throat dry.
a beginner's guide to starting a family
Lately, you’ve been thinking about having a baby. Or: the fertility clinic au Part 3 masterlist
You feel like mangled prey the next morning. Nipples sucked raw, crotch a tacky mess of cum and sweat, flakes of it dried between your thighs, throat hoarse from screaming his name. Every inch of you aches when you try to move, the energy sucked out of you like marrow from a bone.
You feel like something torn from every angle, limbs just barely attached to your body. You vaguely recall him waking you up in the middle of the night by rolling you onto your stomach, a big arm hitching your hips up and positioning you just right before thrusting into you without any warning, no time to process waking up, the room around you still pitch black.
When sleep comes though, it comes hard, knocking you out until around mid-morning the next day.
Even then, when the sunlight splinters through your eyelids and rouses you back to life, it takes a considerable effort to even twitch your little finger, threaded through by a deep exhaustion. The bags under your eyes must be a wonder.
Your throat feels like sandpaper when you stick out your tongue to wet your lips, grimacing at the taste of your own morning breath. When you try to lift yourself up, your arm buckles, sending you toppling back down. Second time’s the charm though. There’s a deep ache in your hips and joints that you only feel when you roll out of bed. It’ll likely linger into the rest of the day.
“Where are you off to?” a heavy voice grumbles from the other side of the bed.
“A shower. Then coffee,” you croak, tucking your feet into a pair of slippers before waddling over to the door where you keep a housecoat hanging.
“Put the kettle on f’r me, darling,” John grunts, before turning over and burying his head back into the pillows.
The coffee maker boils and bubbles while you take a quick shower. It’s not what you need, but it’ll do until you’re alone, when you can take an hour long shower and luxuriate under the hot water with no thought to anyone waiting somewhere else in your house.
You sigh and shut the water off.
The breakfast table feels like a scene from a dream.
On the plate in front of you sits a satsuma orange, quartered, and toast with a thick layer of butter nearly spilling over the crust. Another plate sits on the placemat next to yours, piled high with toast, beans, sausage, and two fried eggs, a stark contrast from your plate.
At the sink, the man you let spend the better part of the night rutting between your thighs washes a pan. You stare at the meaty, undulating slabs of his back muscles until you’re nearly hypnotized, only snapping out of it when he shuts the water off, laying the pan down to dry in the dish rack.
“That’s all you’re having?” John asks, gesturing at your plate with his fork.
“For now,” you respond. “I might have something later if I’m still hungry.”
“Of course you’ll be hungry, you’ve hardly got anything on your plate. Here—have one of my eggs.”
He holds his plate over yours and uses his fork to push one of his fried eggs onto your plate. It flops unceremoniously onto your toast.
You decide against snapping at him because it’s too early and you’re far too tired. You slice open the yolk with the side of your fork instead, staring at the yellow spill over the sides of your toast.
There is a moment over breakfast where you begin to wonder whether John will leave at all. He eats his breakfast and drinks his tea with no real sense of urgency, no indication that he believes that he’s overstayed his welcome. You don’t want to come out and say it, but you can feel yourself getting antsy, your leg jittering under the table.
Then finally: “Well, this has been lovely, darling, but I’ve got to get going.”
Euphoria swells in your chest at the announcement, but you force it down, schooling your expression into something understanding. “You sure you don’t want more tea?”
The wry look he gives you lets you know that he can see right through your feigned dismay. “No, darling, I think that was enough for now.”
Shrewd man. Far too shrewd for the likes of you.
You send him off with a kiss on the lips and a look so heated that it nearly singes. And then he’s gone, the door locked behind him and his footsteps growing fainter and fainter until they disappear altogether.
And then, and only then, can you finally exhale.
It’s one of the first weekends in a while where you feel no compulsion to go out or do practically anything. All you want to do is laze about. You make a batch of iced tea and plop yourself in front of the TV, feet tucked under your thighs and phone open in your hand, both screens on at the same time.
It feels so good to do laundry after making a mess of everything. You strip the sheets and throw them into the washing machine the second John’s out the door, your clothes from the night before not far behind. Later, you cobble together lunch from whatever you have in the fridge, and when supper comes around, you order takeaway, barely cracking open the front door wide enough to snatch the bag off the stoop before retreating back inside.
He’s still there though. Every time you get a twinge in your hips or an ache in your belly. Every time you glance towards your bedroom on your way to the kitchen and you see the sheets, all clean and neat now, though you can easily recall what they looked like just a few days ago—a tangled, filthy mess of cum, spit, and sweat.
Unlike your sheets, the stink of John’s presence isn’t easily washed away.
By the time Monday rolls around, you feel normal again. Like you’ve caught your breath after a long sprint. No bout of Sunday scaries this time, not after the weekend you had, but still you come into work with your head on a bit of a swivel, feeling a bit like an emperor in invisible clothes. Waiting, against all odds and rational sense, for someone to read the signs of your weekend on you.
No one does, of course. No one says a word because no one notices a thing. You might have expected that if you weren’t so on edge, but paranoia has a way of twisting the mind. By the time lunch comes around though, and no one has said more than a pleasant word to you, you start to let go of the anxiety. Better late than never.
The latter point doesn’t apply to your period.
Tuesday is better. You pass a flower shop on your way to work and stop to smell the roses for a change, the heavy weight on your shoulders barely a feather in the light of a new day. It’s that time of summer where every colour is at its most saturated, the pinks and greens and golds and oranges so intense and vivid that their colours seem to almost pour out of them.
And then it’s Wednesday.
Wednesday is a croissant, the buttery flakes scattered all over the wax paper that you use as a plate, and an iced coffee. It’s a series of boring meetings at work that barely move the needle. It’s a long, circuitous drive home that ends at least once in a dead end because of all the construction going on downtown. It is, in every sense of the word, a profoundly boring day.
The first thing you do when you get home is collapse on the couch for a solid half hour, shoes just barely kicked off at the door. Supper can wait until later. Your stomach grumbles when you think about it, but you just don’t have the energy to cook, all of it eaten up by the stress of the drive home.
This is how the rest of your life is going to look. With a baby, for sure, but still, just you. Just you to come home from work and cook and clean and do it all. And even though it’s what you’ve been working towards, you’re a little morose thinking about it.
There’s a knock on your door. You lift yourself up to sit, frowning at the door. The bell follows soon after.
You know it’s John before you even check. Call it a sixth sense or intuition, but when the bell rings, your breath catches and your stomach clenches, and you know it’s him on the other side.
He comes bearing gifts at least. A stack of takeaway containers in a brown paper bag. Even just the smell has you salivating. You can almost imagine that you let him in, that you took a step back and waved him inside, interest and appetite piqued by the smell of greasy food.
You didn’t though, a sneaky little voice reminds you. You let the door open just enough to poke your head out and he was there on the other side, taking up every inch of space, as if someone had suddenly built a wall right outside your door. And he was gentlemanly about it, smiled down at you and asked you how you were, but his foot was against the door and then wedged between it and the frame, working it open gently with his leg and shoulder, pushing his way inside. Polite all the while, of course, announcing the meal that he’d come with and dropping a sweet kiss on the top of your head, but he did, in fact, push you aside on his way in.
Your problem is that you can always find a silver lining. Anyone with any common sense would tell you to kick him out tout suite—shove him towards the door, bye bye, so long, thanks for all your help, I’ll let you know if I need you to come back—but you can’t help thinking that, you know, while you have him here, you might as well—
John catches you glancing towards your bedroom door and smiles, amused. “We can get to that later.”
And he does.
Three times in one week. That’s how many times he comes over. He never leaves without at least folding you over the side of the couch and pumping a load into you, only satisfied when he dips thick fingers into a creamy centre and pulls them out wet, your trembling legs letting him know that the job is done.
You don’t complain because what is there to complain about? You have a man at your beck and call—though you haven’t yet had to call him—willing to help you make a baby and not asking for anything in return.
His involvement in your life extends beyond just the bedroom though. You suffer through mid-morning headaches for a week before realizing from the label on the jar that someone must have swapped your instant coffee for the decaf version. John doesn’t deny it when you bring it up.
Prenatal vitamins are the next thing shoved down your throat, albeit not literally. Fresh, organic fruits and vegetables as well. And grateful as you are for him saving you the trip, you can’t help but wonder if he realizes that you don’t need his help. Eventually, you’re going to have to be self-sufficient. You can’t get used to John bringing you dinner or picking up your meds or getting your groceries because eventually it’s going to end.
He doesn’t always stay the night. Sometimes he leaves right after the act or in the wee hours of the morning while you’re half-tucked under the sheets, limbs akimbo. His goodbyes are always a long, drawn out affair, even if it means pulling you from a dead sleep. Always a soft, slow kiss sipped from your lips and a little bit of tongue. One last once-over to make sure you’re okay. Sometimes he even fetches a glass of water to set on your bedside table for the next morning.
A pity you can’t look forward to this for the rest of your life.
A week and a half later, your period arrives right on schedule.
It isn’t a surprise—you warned John as much over dinner—but it does dampen your mood somewhat when you realize this means that you won’t be seeing John
The next time John calls, you tell him as much.
“We should probably reschedule—I’m on my period this week.”
You can hear the raised eyebrow in his voice. “Are you going away as well?”
You frown. “No, I’m not going anywhere. Why?”
“Then why would we reschedule?”
“Oh. Okay.”
Implacable. Unflappable. If you knew more about him, you would’ve expected that from him, but you learn it too late. Instead, you find out about this particular character trait in the shower of all places, your cheek pressed against the wet tile and your hips canted back, John’s cock plunging between your legs, blood dyeing the water around your feet pink and swirling down the drain.
If you’d known that about him, you might never have let things get to this point. But the dice have already been cast; they’re out of your hands now. All you can do is grip the reins in both hands and hold on for dear life.
It’s difficult to imagine what your life will be like after this. You’ve spent so long waiting instead of living. Waiting takes up so much space, so much time. It fills the walls of your mind with its presence, a constant, irksome insistence, making the world you’ve been running towards seem leagues away.
And then there are moments when it seems close enough to touch.
A month passes like a buzzing fly. Here one second and gone the next. You have an alarm on your phone that goes off while you’re scrolling in bed, waiting for John to come over, and you blink when you see a reminder for the first day of your period. You hadn’t even felt it creeping up on you.
You pull your shorts and underwear off right there on your bed, checking the gusset for blood and feeling your heartbeat speed up when you find nothing there. You’re late.
You call and catch him a couple blocks from your place, sounding half-crazy over the phone, but you’re coherent enough for him to double back and grab a box of pregnancy tests. One of the three-pack ones, splurging a little.
The second you let him in, John herds you into the bathroom and shuts the door behind him, flipping the lock at the same time. Your stomach drops out from under you when you hear it click.
“Here. In this,” he says, handing you a small, plastic cup.
“Wait, can’t I just pee on the stick?” you ask, reaching for the box that he yanks away from your grasping fingers.
John shakes his head. “This is a better method. Less chance of you missing or not wetting it enough. We’ll put the stick in when you’re done.”
“John—”
“We can stand here all night talking about it, if you’d rather?” The slight furrow of his brows signals that his patience is wearing thin.
You’ve clearly been giving him too much leeway if he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with putting you through the indignity of peeing in front of him.
You do it though. Hunched over on the toilet with your pants around your ankles and the cup between your legs, John leaning against the counter and watching you the whole time.You stare down between your spread thighs and into the bowl instead of meeting his eyes, half to ignore him and half to make sure that you don’t miss.
When you’re done, you hand him the cup. Let him handle it while you wipe yourself off and pull your underwear back up.
The wait is excruciating. Three minutes of pins and needles, front teeth chipping away at the nail of your thumb. You wish that John would distract you somehow, but his eyes remain fixed on the pregnancy test, unwavering.
You nearly jump out of your skin when the alarm on his phone buzzes, practically leaping over him to grab the pregnancy test.
Your heart sinks when only one line stretches across the display. You turn the test this way and that, trying to make out even the faintest indication of a second line, but it’s clear what that one line means.
Taking it from your hands, John sets the test down on the counter and wraps his arms around you, cupping his hand around the back of your head as he pulls you into his chest.
“It’s alright, love,” he says in a low, soothing voice. “We’ll keep trying.”
His comfort is an unexpected balm. A firm pressure over a wound aching to open back up.
It’s the first time he sleeps in your bed without making a move on you. You almost have half a mind to bring it up, but you bite your tongue just in time. Why spoil the mood when his arm makes as comfortable a pillow as any one of yours? You like the way his breath tickles the tip of your nose. The way he doesn’t snore but breathes so heavily that he might as well.
You’re glad that it’s him. This would’ve been harder on your own, with no one around to make the heavy moments lighter.
Sure, you would have had your friends to lean on. But you would’ve had them on weekends and at mocktail hours, not in the quiet of your bathroom, staring at a negative pregnancy test in only your underwear.
You’re glad you have John.
Not everyone shares your opinion.
A lawyer friend (not a friend by virtue of being a lawyer, but simply happenstance) goes ashen when you finally break and tell someone about your arrangement with John.
“Did you hit your head or something? Are you out of your mind?”
You wince, sheepish, aware that you deserve the dressing down. “I know.”
“No, you clearly don’t know or you would have come to me about this before having unprotected sex with a stranger in order to get knocked up. Did he even get tested before sleeping with you?”
“Obviously. I’m not that stupid.”
“You actually are that stupid. Did you have him sign anything forfeiting parental rights?”
Your lips form in a perfect circle and she groans, scrubbing a hand down her face.
A day later, she has something for you to give John to sign. It’s long and technical, but you understand the gist of what a voluntary forfeiture of parental rights entails.
It should’ve crossed your mind to seek out legal advice before all of this, but you hadn’t been thinking that far ahead. You’d sort of hoped it would be quick, that he’d spend one singular night with you, and two to four weeks later, you’d be pregnant. You hadn’t expected it to take this long; you certainly hadn’t foreseen John's active and prolonged involvement in the process.
Clearly, you haven’t been thinking straight these past few weeks.
The next time John comes over, you hand it to him, expecting to have his signature by the end of the night. Not anticipating any resistance, and why would you? Your arrangement with him is predicated on this being a temporary affair.
His face gives nothing away as he works through the document. He might as well be reading a circular.
“Very official,” he remarks. You almost feel bad about springing this on him after everything that he’s done for you. He’s been nothing but helpful and dependable since this started.
You feel so bad that you actually apologize. “Sorry. One of my friends is just really paranoid. It’s just a formality.”
John doesn’t respond, flipping over to the next page, eyes still scanning the text.
“You don’t have to sign it right now,” you insist, guilt clawing at your stomach.
“Nonsense,” he says, dismissing your worry. “I know this is important to you. You have to take care of yourself and our baby. That’s what matters most.”
Your stomach flips. Our baby. It doesn’t alleviate the guilt you feel about ambushing him with a legal document when there are groceries on the counter still waiting to be unpacked, another one of his thankless gifts. It just notches the arrow, the bow pulled back to a taut full draw.
“Do you have a pen, love? I didn’t think to bring one with me.” The arrowhead punches right between your ribs.
“No, just take it home. I don’t need it today. Please,” you stress when he tries to argue, trying to take the papers from him. “John, I’m serious.”
He sighs, reluctantly handing you the contract back. “Alright, love, whatever you say.”
There’s a certain relief in getting that off your chest, even if it means putting it on the back burner for a while. It’s not like you have to deal with this now anyway. You aren’t even pregnant yet.
That must occur to John as well because he wastes no time divesting you of your clothes, his passion tonight a slow burn, a little ember cooking you from the inside.
Even he seems to be suffering from it tonight. He touches the head of his cock to your lips and sighs like it’s a shame he can’t come in there. He doesn’t mind wetting it though. Makes it a smoother glide when he gets you down on all fours, the floorboards chafing your elbows and knees with every thrust.
The next morning, you happen to glance down at the coffee table on your way to the kitchen and notice the contract missing. John must have taken it on his way out.
You never do see that little document again after that, and you never think to bring it up.
also love the idea that Simon has never eaten anyone out before because he thinks that's too intimate, so the first time he tongues his bird's cunt, she has to practically force him to do it because he always refuses to. knows logically that there's nothing wrong with it, and he's practically in love with his girl (or the closest he'll ever be able to get to love; some approximation of obsession and covetousness, the feeling that she's irreplaceable and all his), but it just takes him awhile to get over the hurdle of a lifetime of casual, surprisingly cold sexual encounters.
but once the seal is finally broken, and Simon realizes how much he likes it, he's always diving face first into her pussy whenever they're alone. tongues her pearl until she squirts on his face. licks his own come out of her whenever they fuck because she tastes like some holy mix of the two of them, her juices and his come. refuses to give her his cock until he's gotten his mouth on her first, softened her up with his tongue and fingers. sometimes gets carried away and ignores her hands scratching at his shorn scalp and trying to push his face away from her pussy because she just came for a third time on his tongue. only relents when she goes limp and he blinks, sluggishly thinking that they need to change the sheets.
Buttermilk
It doesn't take long to settle into the rhythm of your new summer job. Or: the babysitter x single dad au
Part 1 | masterlist
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“I’m not looking for a babysitter that can only come by every now and then,” he says sternly and pauses for emphasis, brows furrowing to convey the seriousness of the situation. “I’ve got a busy schedule and his mom isn’t in the picture. I need a real commitment.”
You sit across from him wringing your hands under the kitchen table, wondering again what it is you’re doing here. Babysitting has never been your schtick; you’re somewhere in between too old to do it as a casual gig for extra cash and too young and inexperienced to be considered for a full-time position.
Yet, it seems like that’s what he’s looking for, based on the information he’s told you and your general impression from having been in his house for less than twenty minutes. The house is a mess—toys strewn across the baby’s bedroom and the living room, dishes crusted with day old food sitting in the sink, the bookshelf in his study covered in a fine layer of dust that tells you that this man spends so little time in his own house that it’s become something of a requiem to single fatherhood.
“So, a nanny?” you ask.
He hems and haws over that for a bit. “Bit too fancy for my tastes, but that’s more like it. It won’t just be watching the baby—I need someone who can help out around the house as well. ‘Used to run a tight ship before him, but cleaning’s not been my highest priority these days. Sure you’ve picked up on that.” He says the last part wryly, lips curling up into a crooked grin under his mustache.
“Well…” You trail off while glancing at the mess in the living room out of the corner of your eye, toys and blocks scattered over the playmat. Your own smile is sheepish.
“I work odd hours, so I’ll be gone a lot; you’ll probably have a few late nights here, but I pay well. Think that’s something you can handle?”
A polite refusal sits on the tip of your tongue until you swallow it back, suddenly conscious again of the dwindling funds in your bank account. It’s not that you don’t think you could handle the job. You’ve babysat before (only preteens, you correct yourself internally, but surely there are some transferable skills there). And, eclipsing all of your arguments in favour of walking out the door right now, is the very salient and pressing need for an actual income.
“You’re military, you said?” you croak out instead.
He nods, hums. “Bit of a glorified desk job these days. They don’t put the old timers out in the field. Still, keeps me busy.”
You frown at that. “You’re not that old.”
That gets him to cock an eyebrow. “Love, I’m over twice your age, easy. I’m plenty old for a first time father on top of that; should’ve already been an old hand at this, but I’ve been married to the job for too long.”
You don’t ask if the baby was an accident or how it came to be that he chose to raise the baby on his own rather than try to work something out with the mother or give him up altogether. It seems uncouth. Rude. It’s none of your business and, more to the point, hardly relevant to the job. It’s just your own insatiable need to pry and know every little detail raising its head to sniff the air.
“Well, I think—” You chew on your words and then backtrack. “—I can handle the job. I live nearby, so I can be here whenever you need me. If you need references, I can—”
“No need,” he cuts you off, waving a hand in front of him. “I’m a good judge of character. If you wanna help put the baby to bed, we can talk salary and I’ll go over my schedule this week with you.”
The chair scrapes against the tile floor when he stands up, pushing it out from under him. Standing, he towers over you, a big, fit man despite his protests to the contrary. Hardly out of his prime. You’d put him at forty-five at the latest, and still a work horse of a man at that; broad like a draft horse, like he flips tires and runs marathons for fun. When you push out your chair and stand as well, you’re still forced to look up at him.
“Sure can, Mister…—?” You realize with a slight start that you only remember his first name, though it hardly feels appropriate to call him by that given the fact that he’s about to become your boss. Already is your boss.
“Price. But John works just fine,” he corrects, his smile warm, almost paternalistic.
You ignore the flash of heat up your spine and the way your belly constricts when he reaches across the table to shake your hand. His big, calloused palm dwarfs yours, fingers easily overlapping. You might as well be shaking a mitt.
“Well, thanks for the job, John,” you say with a smile of your own, ignoring the way yours strains at the end, anxiety already gnawing a hole through the lining of your stomach that your stomach acid will now most certainly leak through. “I won’t let you down.”
“I know you won’t, sweetheart.”
His words seem like a bellwether for something that you can’t yet articulate or even anticipate. Regardless, they make you swallow reflexively when you start salivating out of nowhere. You should probably quit on the spot actually, just out of principle alone, but again you remember the gut-churning sensation of checking your bank balance in the middle of the grocery store the other day before putting half of the contents of your cart back onto the shelf beside you.
You follow him into the playroom instead, where a fuzzy headed infant gasps up at his daddy, blinking big lovestruck eyes up at him. Your own heart feels like a melted caramel in your chest when John picks his son up, eyes crinkling with affection. The baby is so tiny in his arms.
Any thought of being a good person evaporates from your mind. As if you ever had a chance.
You don’t know how he found you. Through a friend of a friend of a friend’s dad’s coworker, maybe. Word of mouth. Watercooler conversation and a heaping cup of gossip.
“Did you hear the Captain’s looking for a babysitter?”
“For what? To bang?”
“No, dipshit. He knocked some broad up and she left him with the baby.”
“No kidding. The Captain?”
“Didn’t I just fuckin’ say that?”
“Price, you mean? Captain Price?”
“Are you fuckin’ deaf? Yeah—Price.”
“Christ. Godspeed to him. A baby. Goddamn.”
“Give it a rest, it happens all the time. That’s why you always wrap it up. Anyway, you know of anyone that’d be up for it?”
And then somehow, your name gets mentioned. Much to your relief. Job opportunities don’t knock on your door all that often, and when John finally gets around to telling you your hourly rate, you almost burst into hysterical giggles in front of him. It’s more than you expected. More than you deserve, if you’re being honest. You’re retroactively grateful that he didn’t ask you to name your rate because you wouldn’t have dared propose something anywhere close to what he offers.
It’s a straightforward gig. John doesn’t work the typical nine-to-five, so you show up at the times he made you write down on that first day in his living room after your interview and you leave whenever he comes home. The first week is fairly true to the schedule he laid out for you. He’s only late by around half an hour one evening, but that was another condition that he made you well aware of prior to giving you the job.
You know better than to put up a fuss. You’re already learning on the job as it is; with your anxiety at a ten at all times, you appreciate the extra half hour to keep googling baby-specific information. What to do during tummy time. The benefits of baby massage. How to change a diaper. You’re learning all sorts of things these days.
To your credit, he could’ve done worse. The day after John hires you, you sign up for an intensive babysitting course over the weekend and read the online manual front to back. Your CPR certificate is still valid, but you book a refresher course as well just to be on the safe side. It’s a bit unbearable to watch the funds drain out of your account before you’ve even had a chance to earn your first paycheck, but it’s worth it for the burgeoning confidence that you bring on your first day.
Babies are fun to be around, you realize, much to your own delight. Babysitting—or rather, nannying, but John still introduces you to the neighbours as his babysitter, plus nannying requires a host of additional accreditations that you simply just do not have—might not have been a job that you ever expected yourself to like, but you find yourself kind of morose at the end of each day when you have to say goodbye to baby, and even going so far as to turn in early when you get home so you’ll be ready bright and early the next morning.
Babies also smell better than anything you’ve ever smelt in your life. You could huff the top of this little guy’s head morning, noon, and night. Milky and clean; it barely takes a few days to become addicted to the smell of his little head. When he’s cradled in your arms, you can’t help but press your nose to the top of his head and take a deep inhale, eyes fluttering shut. It’s some good shit.
You keep a journal filled with notes to relay to John when he comes home at the end of the night and keep your phone close to you during babytime to film any important moments that John might’ve otherwise missed.
“He started babbling today,” you tell John the second he walks through the door, the video already pulled up on your phone. You haven’t felt this excited in ages. “Look.”
He’s still in his fatigues and everything, but he humours you and takes the baby when you pass him over, cooing and tickling his belly until the baby squeals and babbles again for him.
“See?” you gush, mooning over him. You don’t have the presence of mind to be self-conscious in the moment.
“Yeah,” John remarks, lifting his son up to blow a raspberry into his belly and grinning at his ensuing peals of laughter. “Ain’t that something.”
If the smile in his voice has anything to do with you, you don’t pick up on it.
On top of everything, John turns out to be a really good boss. Despite his gruff, intimidating exterior, he’s remarkably kind and patient with you. He doesn’t nag you for missing a spot when cleaning the bathroom. He doesn’t scold you the day your car breaks down and you’re forced to take the nearest bus to his place, tacking on an extra twenty minutes to your commute, even though that means that he’s invariably late for work. When you accidentally use scouring powder on the inside of his Le Creuset Dutch oven and scratch off the enamel, he gently talks you out of a sobbing fit, seemingly unbothered by the state of his scratched up crockery.
He shrugs when you bring it up. “It’s got a lifetime warranty anyway. I’ll bring it into the shop over the weekend. No use getting upset about it.”
Unflappable. That’s the word for it. It’s like as long as he’s able to come home to the baby and you in one piece, nothing else matters, and that sense of calm permeates the whole house; for the first time in a long time, you don’t feel like you have to walk on eggshells around someone.
Your only qualm—and it’s hardly even a qualm, to be honest, more of just an observation—is that John is more of a physical person than you are.
When he wants to move you, he does—two big hands clamped around your waist and only a fraction of his strength to move you away from the stove so he can take over cooking while you check on the baby, your mouth hanging open, aghast. Fuming at his nerve. The gall of him to manhandle you.
You don’t hold it against him though. You haven’t spent much time around groups of men, but you’ve seen military movies before and it seems like the status quo for men to grab and push each other around. If anything, he’s gentle with you.
It’s just that—and again, John’s the first adult man you’ve spent any one-on-one time with, what with it just being the two of you and the baby in his house, so your frame of reference is microscopic—you’re not completely sure whether it’s appropriate for your boss to be so touchy.
You don’t mean to insinuate that he’s being inappropriate. It’s just that—and again you have to catch yourself before you go making assertions about people because John is honestly such a nice man and he’s done nothing but treat you fairly and made you feel safe and welcome, but…—sometimes he insists on you staying over for dinner after he comes home from work and doesn’t take no for an answer.
You’re never in any rush to leave. There’s not exactly anything waiting for you in your dingy little apartment. So when he asks you to stay, you have no good reason to refuse. It’s nice to get a free meal as well. With the way John gives you unfettered access to the fridge and pantry, you hardly need to buy groceries at all these days. You feel a little guilty about that, but you know what it’s like to go hungry.
Maybe that’s why you stay for supper the first time he asks a couple weeks into you working for him. You’re subconsciously mortified that you’ll eat his food when he’s not gone but not when he offers it to you.
At least dinner feels like something you’ve been given rather than just taking, taking, taking.
Not to mention you’ve developed something of a rapport. There’s always something to talk about with John: the baby, his work, a show you watched on TV after putting the baby down for a nap, the new big Tesco four blocks from your place, his late teens before joining the military (“back when you weren’t even a thought in your mum’s head,” he jokes, cutting into his steak and something in your brain pops and fritzes out like the static between radio stations).
The first few suppers are sporadic and never long enough to make you feel like you’ve overstayed your welcome. In all honesty, they’re the few bright spots in an otherwise dull life. Outside of your job and the infrequent dinners, you’re estranged from your family and you’ve only got a few close friends in town that you see maybe once or twice a month. Nothing to write home about. Some Friday nights, the yoga studio near your flat has a five pound community class that you pop in for, but those are infrequent too.
Then there’s the odd night where he shoos you into the living room to put on a movie while he cleans up after dinner. You stare absentmindedly at his forearms when he rolls up his sleeves and then jump when you find him staring at you expectantly over his shoulder.
“Go put something on,” John tells you, a warning look in his eye. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”
“Sorry,” you whisper before slipping off into the living room.
You can’t relax on the couch while you wait. You flinch when he finally joins you, sitting down on the other side of the couch suddenly. You hadn’t even heard him coming; he’s light on his feet for such a big man.
The buddy cop comedy you picked barely distracts you from the fact that your boss is sitting on the other side of the couch. You spend the whole two hour run time so nervous that you’re afraid you’ll buzz right out of your skin.
For absolutely no reason, of course, because all John does is make light conversation with you throughout the movie. Conversation that you respond to in curt, choked whispers. When he walks you to the door after the movie, all you can focus on is how utterly embarrassed you are for being so weird.
Your dreams that night come frantic and heady. Humid under the blanket. The phantom feeling of a body heavier than yours weighing down one side of the couch and you sliding towards it gradually, unable to even cling onto the arm of the couch to keep from falling into his lap.
Then hands on your belly, cupping and holding. Thick fingers with hairy knuckles. A warm, tobacco smell wafting under your nose, sweet like tonka bean and smoke. Nothing you can do to keep them from travelling down your stomach and thighs and spreading your legs wide, big hands curving around your inner thighs until—
You wake up panting, fingers pressed against your clit in your sleep. It takes nothing to bring yourself over the edge, dark blue eyes swimming on the precipice of your conscious mind.
“Sleep well?” John asks you the next morning when you show up on his doorstep, handing you the baby before you’ve even said so much as a word. You hold the baby to your chest like a makeshift shield. Anything to put some distance between you and the man who has now taken to starring in your dreams.
“Not bad,” you squeak.
You flinch when he guides you in with a hand on your back and shuts the door behind you. Your cunt pulses when his fingers press firm against the small of your back, hand bigger than you remembered from your dream.
As if you were ever going to end up anywhere but here.
