something about Robert Robertson being far too sensitive to stimulation post coma. He’ll wince as he walks into the SDN building in the morning because the light reflecting off of the linoleum floors are just a bit too much, and maybe turn the volume down on the break room tv (it’s already at 40% but oh well), oh and definitely when you’re at home later, both of you taking out your frustrations of the day on each other, don’t pay attention to the way his lip quivers as you suckle a hickey onto his pulse point and don’t comment on the way he whimpers and mewls when you grind your hips onto his already leaky cock, voice shaking as he lets out a small “holy shittt.”
Ignore the fact that he can’t seem where to put his hands as you ride him into the couch (you guys were far too horny to stumble the few feet it was to your apartment’s bedroom). He’ll definitely blush hard, cock twitching inside of you if you tell him how good he’s fucking you and god forbid you call him pretty because he’ll blow his load right there.
Don’t worry though, Robert being the munch he is will make sure you cum at least twice after this, and by then he’ll be hard enough to flip you over onto your stomach and fuck you in prone bone because maybe if he doesn’t have eye contact with you it’ll be better? Spoiler alert it isn’t. He ends up spilling inside of you 5 minutes later because Robert is the most sensitive when it comes to your pussy
He has to be on all the time at work and as a hero- he loves being able to completely relax with you and be taken care of. But he doesn’t know it at first.
He tries to play the role, to take the lead when you first fall into bed together. Dirty talking in your ear, promising to make you see stars. “Come here, I’m gonna make you feel so… so…good…” he trails off, his fingers flexing on your hips.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You won’t know what hit you. I mean, I won’t hit you. Unless you’re into that? But I’m not really. Enough of that with the villains, you know? For fighting, not sex…”
“Robert.”
He relaxes just a bit, closing his eyes as he pressed his lips to your neck. “Mm, I like how you say my name.”
“Robert.”
“Hm-?”
“Let me be in charge.”
“But don’t you-
“Shhh.” With one hand, you press his face against your skin, scratching lightly at his scalp. With the other, you reach down and trace the bulge in his pants.
He huffs a sigh into your neck, his body softening on top of yours.
“That’s it,” you praise, and he hums. “Let me take care of you for once.”
“That…sounds nice,” he concedes, and you reward him with a kiss to his temple. Your eager fingers make short work of his button and zipper, tugging out his hardening cock. You keep your touch light, almost teasing, continuing to run your fingers through his hair all the while.
You’ll take things slow, make him fall apart. Here, he’s allowed to.
Robert Robertsonxfem!reader explicit (ex-villain medic!Reader, alternating POVs between Robert and Reader, mutual awkward pining, belligerent sexual tension, banter, awkward flirting, unrequited crush on both sides that's not really unrequited, Robert is depressed but denies it, Reader is doing her best, a smidge of professional malpractice, kissing, heavy petting, sub!Robert Robertson, gentle power play, pretty classic (though unsafe) sex. This is just a warm-up :v)
word count: 8,6K (I like him a lot okay)
author’s note: Hi! Baby's first Dispatch fanfic. Never thought it possible that Mr Viktor Arcane will loosen his chokehold, but here we are. You can send ideas you'd like to see to my inbox, I'll see what I can do!
Lord Knows It Would Be The First Time (part 2) ->
Please Please Please (part 3) ->
Dispatch Masterlist
AO3
—
Self-preservation is a funny beast. In the wild it pushes you to higher ground, into thicker cover, towards whatever keeps you breathing for one more day. It doesn’t care if you’re happy. It cares that you’re alive. Translate that into a moderately corporate open-plan office and it stops being dramatic and starts being pathetic: instead of fleeing a predator, you smile through a migraine, stay late, laugh off the chest pain. You learn which parts of yourself need to be hidden so no one gets ideas about ‘restructuring’ or ‘fitness for duty.’ You choose a slow grind over the clean break, because the grind is the devil you know.
Robert’s beast keeps him on a narrow ledge between heart-on-sleeve and padlocked shut. He’s not hiding the soft bits that make him a fool for second chances and best intentions; everyone can see those, they’re practically in the job description. What he buries is worse. The part that’s convinced he deserves every bad thing that happens. The part that thinks his job is to work himself to the bone for whatever scraps of good land on his desk, then apologise for wanting even that.
And while he’s mastered the game of hide and seek in front of almost everyone, there’s at least one person (besides Chase) who can see straight through him. The doctor.
The doctor, whom he managed to offend on day one by making a crack about not trusting anyone who’s probably closed wounds with a stapler. The doctor, who got her experience stitching up goons but still has the softest touch that’s ever landed on his forearm. Who caught him out on two half-hidden colds and one not-at-all-hidden burnout with nothing more than a glance. The doctor, who answers every attempt to shrug off his long-standing depression and desperate scrabble for purpose with that infuriatingly calm, all-knowing look that says: I see what you’re doing, and it’s not working.
It would be fine if it stopped there—professional irritation, bruised pride, a healthy dose of avoidance. But somewhere along the way self-preservation seems to have grown a rival instinct. Not at all beastly this time. Just a sad, wet dog lodged under his ribs, scratching at the door it thinks hides comfort. It wants things he doesn’t have the language for: fingers at pulse point with no intention of measuring pulse, frown of concentration aimed at his chart (or somewhere closer to his body, were he so bold) instead of his latest screw-up, your voice saying his name in something other than exasperation. It’s needier than Beef and nowhere near as charming. It’s a completely unnecessary thing. A whim. A complication. Some idiotic yearning he’s much too tired and too old for.
So he does what he’s good at: he pretends. Pretends he’s annoyed by you. Pretends he doesn’t notice the whiff of your perfume on Colm when that one comes back from a check-up. Pretends the reason he dodges your appointments is purely bureaucratic and not because sitting on that exam bed under your scrutiny makes him feel naked in ways no HR form has a tick-box for. He does all of that while smiling.
You are the person who kicks his creativity up to cosmic levels. He’s never come up with so many excuses to miss a check-up. But even that has a limit—the moment an old-school paper notice appears on his workstation, stamped in glaring red capitals: OVERDUE. Right in the med-check row, under his ridiculous name.
So he drags it out to the bitter end. Answers every last pointless query on the board. He checks, double-checks, and triple-checks handover notes no one will read. Solves a printer jam that was in no way his problem. One by one, people peel off: Chase with a clap to his shoulder, Galen with a muttered ‘night,’ the floor supervisor with a reminder about the staff survey he is absolutely never filling in.
Comms taper from overlapping chatter to the occasional bored check-in. Then even that dies. The city, miraculously, stays quiet. The big wall clock over the dispatch screens drags its way to seven and tips over it.
There is still a chance you’ve gone home. He sits with that for a minute. If you’ve left already, it’s not his fault, is it? He tried. He had to stay late, had work to do. He can come in early tomorrow and—
He peels the slip off the desk. Two instincts pull in opposite directions as he walks the empty corridor towards Medbay: the well-trained one that keeps his head down and his mouth shut, and the younger, needier thing that sits up whenever it hears you stifling a laugh.
He stops outside, hand hovering for a second. He’s not even sure what he’s hoping for—for you to be gone and grant him a temporary stay of execution, or for you to still be there so he can stop thinking about this and just… get it over with. Or not just that. He doesn’t look too closely at that part.
He knocks before he can think better of it.
“Yeah?”
Your voice, muffled through the door. Still here, then. Of course. A fellow overachiever at everything, including giving him nowhere to hide. The door creaks when he pushes it open, and the sigh punches out of you on instinct.
Robert fucking Robertson.
He looks exactly as you’d expected him to if he ever turned up this late for an overdue med-check: headset finally off, hair a little flattened where it sat, SDN polo rumpled and half-untucked, smile apologetic around the edges.
You’ve never met a man who seemed to file you under definitely not so quickly. From day one he’s kept you at full arm’s length—baseline polite, a bit wary, doing his level best not to need you. Apprehensive at best. Most likely just plain resentful, and for reasons that would be very valid if he ever bothered to voice them.
You know what you look like on paper. Ex-villain medic, Phoenix Programme intake, years spent helping people he used to fight. First day had set you on a certain path with his joke, technically. You laughed. Then you watched him flinch away from your hand when you reached for his arm.
Since then, he’s dodged you with an agility most capes would envy. Barely makes eye contact in the hallway. Sends messages through the Z Team when he can. So when he appears in your doorway at seven p.m. with that sheepish, caught-out expression and a crumpled notice in his hand, your first instinct is not concern. It’s exasperation, sharp and familiar.
“You're joking,” you say, caught mid-way packing up your bag. “Robert. It’s seven. I was about to leave and this close to pretending I didn’t see that form.”
“I, uh… Exciting life you are in a rush to get to?”
Standing there with the screens in sleep mode behind you, you realise this very overdue dispatcher is trying to make it look like this is an inconvenience for you. Of course he’s late. Of course he waited until everyone else had gone home to come and sit on your exam bed like a sulky teenager.
You frown. Fucking asshole. “What a fantastic approach to asking for an off-the-clock favour.”
“I thought it was your job.” He shrugs, flaps the crumpled notice at his face like it’s a fan, already half-turned as if he’s doing you a favour by leaving you to whatever thrilling plans you were ‘in a rush’ to get to.
Ignoring the attempted escape, you turn to the sink and start scrubbing your hands. “It is. But my shift ended at five.”
“Well, it’s ten past seven now. What are you still doing here?”
You catch his eyes in the mirror—big, sad, hopeful. Hopeful for what, you’re not sure. Probably for you letting him off the hook. But… that’s not happening. “Are you willing to answer the same question for yourself?”
“Oh, I was just fully avoiding you.” He laughs, scratching the back of his head, like that’s a charming confession and not a reason to sedate him.
“Hah. I should’ve seen that coming.” You dry your hands, reach up to the cabinet for test tubes, needles, tourniquet. He’s still hovering in the doorway like a particularly dim ghost. “Just… sit,” you sigh. “You can speed things up by taking your shirt off.”
He perches on the exam bed and reaches for his buttons with all the enthusiasm of a man about to be flayed. “You could at least buy me a drink first.”
You scoff. “I can let you sniff some disinfectant while I draw your blood. How does that sound?” Gloves on.
“Like an HR violation,” he mutters.
He doesn’t even know what he’s doing. Flirting as self-defence, maybe. Flirting while hoping for something? Definitely not. Not him.
“You started it,” you bite back, turning with your tray of things—only to walk straight into the sight of him sitting shirtless and hunched, all innocent and mildly terrified on your bed.
There are so many scars on him the canvas of his body is barely enough. Old and new, white and pink and angry, overlaying each other until he’s less man and more atlas of every punch, blast and cut he’s ever taken. He wears it like it’s nothing. You feel heat flood your face and hope to God he can’t read skin temperature as well as you read his.
Eyes down. Professional. You hem your throat and steer hard back into safe waters. “When was the last time you ate?”
“Lunch time.”
“So, like… six hours ago? Eh. It’ll do.” You loop the tourniquet around his upper arm and cinch it tight.
“Very heartwarming to know we’re equally eager to get rid of each other,” he says.
“I have nothing against you,” you reply, checking his vein with your thumb. “I just want to go home. To my exciting life.”
“What does that entail?” he asks, the fool that he is. He has no idea what the survival limit is on possible answers. A boyfriend? He’d probably take that hit, sulk about it, then mull it over within three to a hundred business days. Anything heavier might be lethal.
Salvation or damnation—he doesn’t know yet—comes packaged as one of your softest smiles.
“One very needy and lonely cat,” you say, patting the vein into prominence.
He inhales the sterile air like it’s personally betrayed him.
“What?” you ask. “Did you think I hustle black market organs on the side?”
“Something like that,” he says, because of course he did. He’d hoped for it, secretly. Something clean to work with. Villainy. An excuse to file you off under evil once and for all and stop stumbling over this ridiculous crush.
Instead you hand him something else to work with—a small, ridiculous domestic detail, a gentle crumb. An opening. The sad wet dog part of him immediately starts figuring out how to squeeze every drop of hope out of it. Breath stutters, arteries tighten.
“Are you afraid of needles?” you ask, the pad of your thumb caressed by the flutter of his pulse.
Body a traitor, the beat jumps under your touch. He tries to swallow it down and pukes up a deflection instead. “No. I’m not afraid of anything.”
“Just doctors, then.” You smirk. “Or is it a personal animosity?”
“No,” he says. “I hate you all equally.”
Your eyes meet. There it is again—that flicker that could be humour, could be panic, probably both.
“That’s reassuring,” you say, holding his gaze, and slide the needle into his vein making it absolutely, painfully erotic.
His mouth parts on a sigh, lids lowering. Under different circumstances you could probably sell this as a relaxation exercise. You watch the line of his lashes settle, the sputter of freckles across his cheeks, and pretend you’re paying attention to the tube rather than his face. His blood winds into the plastic in a slow, lazy thread.
“You’re dehydrated,” you say, rubbing your latexed finger over the firm line of his bicep.
“I had a lot of fluids,” he murmurs. “Coffee, mostly.”
“That explains it.” You drop the full tubes into the rack, strip off the needle, and reach for the stethoscope. “Alright, I need to listen to your breathing. It requires you to be silent. Are you able not to talk for two minutes?”
He fails to not notice the careful details. The way you hang it over your neck and pick up the diaphragm into your palms to warm it up for him. “Two minutes?” he whispers. “How will I cover up my discomfort?”
“I guess you won’t be able to,” you say, enjoying this more than you should. “It’s alright, just auscultation. Procedure known for its low lethality.” You rest the bell on his chest, right over where his heart thrashes around the ribcage. “Deep breaths for me.”
For you, he’d do either. Breathe deep or hold his breath until you tell him he can come up again. With the room gone quiet, the disobedient muscle pounds up into his ears. He closes his eyes again to salvage at least a little dignity.
You drag it out. A little longer. A little longer still. The stethoscope roams across his chest, then around his back, your fingers brushing here and there, cataloguing the topography of his scars and imagining the architecture underneath. Millimetres of latex have never felt so thick, or so useless.
“H–how much longer?” he asks, all choked up.
You pull yourself up short. His breathing is exactly as fine as it was three minutes ago and, yes, his heart’s running a little fast, but you’d be a hypocrite to point fingers. Yours is, too.
“Just blood pressure left.” You peel the Velcro of the cuff loose. “So eager to flee. Almost as if I’m a dentist.”
He smiles, caught. Offers the unpunctured arm. You cinch the cuff tight, start pumping it tighter still until his fingers begin to buzz.
“Last time you wrote me up, I got three months of weekly psychs,” he says, sounding more betrayed than he intended.
You chuckle between the hisses of air filling the sleeve. “Ah, so that’s the issue. I only recommend what I think is fitting. Do no harm, remember?”
He snorts at that, a sharp, humourless sound. Wonders how much harm you’ve done indirectly by dragging the wrong people back from the brink of death. “Do you even have some basic training in psychology?” he asks.
“No. But I have experience and knowledge of how trauma shows in the body.”
“Really?” He scoffs, seizing on it. Finally—something he can take you on. An opening his embarrassment-beast latches onto, mean and unprompted. “Were the goons traumatised after getting their asses kicked?”
It lands clean. A poisoned seed planted neatly in soft tissue.
“Not that I’m trying to justify villainy,” you say, smile turning sharp, “but not everyone can flex an epically tragic backstory where your genius, absent father gets killed by your arch-enemy.”
Straight for the jugular, no less. All the resentment of everything he brought in here today—freckles, pouty mouth, big brown eyes and that lickable stretch of stomach that would probably withstand you slicing your nails through it—compressed into a tight little ball and hurled right at his face.
His expression dims half a shade. It’s all it takes. Guilt floods you before the sentence has fully cooled in the air. “Sorry,” you blurt. “That was uncalled for.”
Well deserved, though. “A little,” he agrees. The pout twists into a smirk. “It might have triggered my trauma back.”
“Oh, fuck off,” you say, shaking your head. “You’re such a stubborn ass.”
“Alright, alright.” He lifts his free hand, a white flag of sorts. “I’m teasing. It’s self-defence.” His gaze drops to your fingers still curled around the pump. “What do you recommend?”
Your hand stills. “Just talk to someone. Doesn’t have to be a shrink, can be a friend. Otherwise your pep-talk well might dry out.”
“Can’t be my doctor, I suppose?” he asks quietly, hating himself as the words leave his mouth.
“I thought we’d already established I’m not qualified, Robert.”
He tilts his head, studying you, as if there’s a loophole he’s missing. “What good are you for, then?”
“Please make up your mind whether you’re going to be awkward or cocky,” you say. “Those two don’t fit together.”
“I wasn’t aware I was.”
“Cocky?” you repeat, and he lights up in a way he absolutely shouldn’t.
If he were a worse man, he’d ask you to drop everything after the ‘cock’ and say it again, clean and unadulterated, just to hear how it sounds in your mouth. As it is, he saves the moment under: things to think about at three a.m. when loneliness and shame tag-team me.
“No. Awkward,” he corrects, sheepish. “I thought I was incredibly cool.”
You’re barely holding it together. The laugh punches out of you, unbidden—charmed, disarmed by this absolute mess of a man who keeps turning up with a martyr complex.
“Will you stop fucking with me while I’m checking your blood pressure?” you say, because you need the ground back under your feet.
“Of course.” A beat. And then he just can’t help himself. “When you’re done, though—?”
You raise one eyebrow, the kind of eyebrow that has shut down far more dangerous men than him. He aborts mid-suggestion like you’ve hit the big red button.
“Alright, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” His shoulders hunch. “I hope you understand that all I am is awkward and this is just a smokescreen.”
“Real smooth, Mr Robertson,” you say, peeling the cuff off his arm. “Blood pressure slightly elevated. I can file you under ‘future risk of cardiovascular failure’ or you can admit you’re nervous around me.”
“I am nervous around you,” he says, instantly.
A beat stretches. Long enough for him to mentally draft his will, choose hymns and coffin type, just in case this whole encounter kills him on the spot.
“Nice try,” you say at last, and turn away to scribble the last note on his chart.
The script says this is the part where you tell him he’s free to go. He feels the moment coming like a drop on a rollercoaster. Which is exactly why he grabs the razor and holds on—figuratively, this time. Desperation works like that: a hand sliced open is better than drowning.
“What does my body say about me?” he blurts.
You look up, caught. For a heartbeat your mind serves up the truth: that you need to be kissed senseless. That you should have your brains fucked out while you say please, please, please. That you take too much on and push too hard, and there’s never anyone there to catch you when you fall. That you collect damage like it’s a hobby.
“What do you mean?” you ask instead, blinking the depravity away.
“How much can you tell about me from me,” he gestures at himself, bare-chested on the bed, “just sitting here in this compromising position?”
Challenge accepted, you strip your gloves off and drop them in the red bin. Then, you move behind him, fingertips skimming very lightly down the line of his spine. Goosebumps rise in their wake before he can order his body to behave.
“Either your mattress is made of planks,” you say, clinical, “or you sleep on the floor. Softest thing this back has seen is your desk chair.”
Your hands slide up to his shoulders, warm and slightly damp from the gloves. You knead once, thumb catching in the hard knot where muscle refuses to unclench. “You lift too much,” you go on. “Some anger, or… frustration?”
When you brush the fine hairs at the nape of his neck, his body shudders. Completely involuntary. Excellent.
You circle back around to face him, take his hand. His knuckles are faintly bruised, skin roughened where it keeps meeting things that hit back. You raise an eyebrow. “Does punching things help?”
The way his face twists, confused and defensive, is answer enough. Before he can scramble for a lie, you let his hand go and cup his face instead, both palms bracketing his jaw as you press your thumbs into the hinges.
“Stress,” you diagnose. “Or tetanus, given the number of scars on you.”
Oh, God. You’re too close. He can smell your breath, which is just breath—no coffee, no mint, no cheap sweets—just mouth. Mouth that should, by rights, have his tongue in it right now if the world were at all fair.
He counts your lashes instead while you stare at the tendon, pretending this is still medical. Merciful, in its way.
“My bet is on stress, though,” you say. “Some serious lockjaw.”
He swallows, the muscles shifting under your thumbs. When you glance up to check you haven’t actually hurt him, his eyes are gone nebulous—brown eaten away by black.
You’re both stuck in the same narrow strip of air. You between his knees, him perched on the edge of the cot, your hands framing his face like you’re about to break bad news instead of bully him into therapy. His skin is warm under your fingers, stubble just starting to rasp at the pads of your thumbs. He looks equal parts startled and wrecked, like he’s been caught out in something much more serious than lying on his wellness form.
You should let go, but how could you?
“Serious… lockjaw,” he echoes, a little hoarse.
One of his hands comes up, fingers curling around your wrist. It’s not restraint; it’s a small, desperate appeal, a please stay. The other finds your second wrist a moment later, grip faintly trembling.
“This is very…” he starts, but the rest gets lost somewhere between his teeth and his courage.
He cranes forward instead.
It’s very unpretty. His neck protests, shoulders hitch, nose bumps yours on the first attempt. But he gets there, mouth brushing yours in a quick, clumsy press that’s more question than kiss. You feel the breath desert him against your lips like he’s just stepped off a ledge.
He pulls back half an inch, eyes wide, as if waiting for the inevitable slap / formal complaint / HR seminar.
You answer by closing the distance yourself.
This time, it lands properly. Softer, more sure. He holds onto your wrists, but the tension shifts; his thumbs stroke along your pulse points as if he’s checking your heart rate by touch. (Elevated, you could tell him, if you trusted your voice right now.)
He makes a tiny, incredulous sound into your mouth when you part your lips for him. That’s all it takes for something to snap the other way. His grip loosens, slides down the length of your arms, slow enough to ask permission without words, then settles at your hips.
“Okay?” he breathes, barely a syllable against your mouth.
You nod, the movement brushing noses, and then he’s tugging you in.
The exam bed creaks under his weight when he drags you closer. Your hips meet the inside of his thighs; your knees bump the metal frame. One of his hands stays firm at your waist, the other climbs up your spine, fingers spreading warmly between your shoulder blades before curling around the back of your neck.
You step in, automatically. There’s nowhere else to go. You hook an arm over his shoulder, fingers sliding into the hair at his nape, making his face meet you properly.
From this angle, you’re suddenly almost towering over him. Your chest lines up with his throat, soft weight of breasts brushing against the base of his neck every time you breathe. For a man who spends most of his life haunted by bad luck, Robert spares half a wild thought to thank whatever fickle force arranges these things that he chose now to finally kiss you.
You tilt his head a fraction more, directing the kiss like you’re adjusting an angle of approach, and he follows without question. His mouth opens under yours, hungry now, the earlier hesitation melting into something that feels dangerously like relief.
He kisses like he does everything else: too hard on himself, too careful with everyone else. You feel the restraint in the way he keeps checking his own grip, the way his fingers flex on your hip and then ease, like he’s terrified of overstepping even while his tongue is mapping the topography of your molars.
It stops being sweet somewhere around the moment you nip at his top lip and he finally lets himself react. He makes a low noise, and answers with a sharper pull of your hips into his, a firmer grip of his hand over the back of your neck. You gasp into him, surprised that you’re the one making the needy sound, and that seems to give him permission to stop holding back.
It tips over from tentative to messy. Your teeth catch, noses bump again, neither of you cares. Heat floods up the column of your spine in waves. He tastes like bad coffee and mint gum and the faint ghost of a Twinkie. You’re suddenly acutely aware of every place your body is touching his: his thighs next to yours, chest pressed to your ribs, thumb stroking tiny, absent circles against the base of your skull like he’s trying to soothe both of you at once.
Then, he bites.
It’s not hard. Just a quick, sharp catch of your lower lip between his teeth, paired with a tiny tug. A hot, startling carnality that has the grooves of your brain smoothing by degrees. You hear yourself make a sound you do not recognise—high, broken, utterly unprofessional.
The realisation hits a half beat later. You jerk back, breath tearing out of you, but you don’t go far. His hand on your neck stops you, just holding you close enough that your foreheads almost touch. Your palm finds his cheek on instinct, thumb brushing the line of bone, and you feel the way his jaw is working, still too tight, breathless for an entirely new set of reasons.
“That’s very unprofessional,” you manage, voice rougher than you intended.
“Mhm.” He gives one tiny nod, like he’s agreeing to a meeting note. His eyes, those big sad brown eyes, have gone soft and heavy-lidded, well on their way from dispatch edition to bedroom version. They lock on yours like he’s bracing for impact and, at the same time, staking a claim.
“Do it again,” he says. “Please.”
You laugh, just to get some air into your lungs. Round two is stripped of neatness. His hands rediscover your pelvis like he’s lost his place, fingers digging in just enough to drag you back into the heat of him. You feel the tension in his shoulders ease by degrees as you kiss him again, like every slide of your mouth over his sands down a layer of panic. His thumbs press into the soft dip above your waistband, and your mind briefly whites out at the reminder that, yes, there are nerve endings there.
You break away, just by a few centimetres, breath sawing. The room feels smaller. Warmer. Too much air, too much skin.
“I thought you don’t trust me,” you hear yourself say. It comes out thinner than you’d meant, challenge stumbling over a confession.
He blinks, drag-slow. His pupils are huge. “I don’t—” he starts and feels you stiffen. The grip on you loosens instantly, like he’s bracing for a step back, getting called an asshole and thrown off the bed. He rushes the rest out. “I don’t trust myself around you,” he adds, voice low and rough. “That’s entirely different.”
Your brain tries to catch up with that while your body does something unhelpful like shiver.
He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing against your chest. “And you know way too much for a person I tried very hard to keep my distance from.”
That lands. You can’t help the small, sharp smile.
“I thought you didn’t like me,” he says, quieter.
It’s a ridiculous thing for a man currently groping your ass and wearing your lip balm to say, but there it is: naked, awkward, painfully sincere.
You snort. “You sure worked hard for that,” you tell him. “But I’m not easily discouraged, Mr Robertson.”
His mouth twitches, half way to a smile, half way to disbelief.
You feel something unfurl in your chest. The admission’s out. Both of them are. No going back to pretending this is purely professional irritation now.
You study him for a beat—the flushed cheeks, the mussed hair, that earnest, worried line between his brows that hasn’t gone away even now—and the next words tumble out before you can filter them.
“I hate how hot you are,” you say.
His eyebrows shoot up. For once, he’s the one caught flat-footed.
Then he laughs, short and startled. It spills out of him in a breathy rush, as if that was the last thing he expected to hear in this particular hellscape of a day. “Yeah,” he says, tugging you closer, greedy for ballast. “It’s a real curse. I can’t get a break.”
You roll your eyes and, because your dignity has clearly fled the building, let your fingers slip into the hair at the back of his head again. “Shut up.”
He grins up at you, all crooked teeth and ridiculous bravery. “Make me—oh—”
The oh breaks on a different note entirely when you slide your hand down, down between your bodies, and press your palm over the front of his trousers.
Heat. Solid weight. The faintest, involuntary jerk of his hips up into your touch, like you’ve hit a secret button to Robert Robertson’s dilapidation.
“Good—” His breath stutters; his fingers convulse on your waist. “Good tactic,” he manages, a little strangled.
“You talk too much,” you murmur, watching his face as you apply the smallest amount of pressure, thumb tracing an idle line along the seam of his fly like you’re drawing on a chart.
His head tips back, throat bared. There’s a flush creeping up from his clavicle, crawling over his neck, turning his ears pink. He looks wrecked. He looks like the kind of man who has not, in fact, been told often enough that anyone finds him hot, curse or otherwise.
“Occupational hazard,” he says weakly. “Radio etiquette. Fill the dead air.”
“Consider this… an intervention,” you say, giving him the kind of look you reserve for stubborn patients and malfunctioning equipment. Your fingers flex, and his breath hitches again, audible this time.
“Noted,” he says, voice gone low and ragged, the word like sandpaper. His gaze drags back to your lips. “I can… work on that.”
“Less talk, more—”
You don’t finish the sentence because he leans in and takes the hint, catching your mouth again. This one is all forward momentum, like he’s afraid if he pauses you’ll change your mind and send him back to the safety of terrible coffee and unfiled incident reports.
You kiss him back because you’ve clearly gone completely mad.
He shifts his grip, fingers doing that delicious tug on waistband about to denude you, about to touch where you’ve imagined different parts of him more times than you’d like to admit, and you let him. You let him, and set your own payback into motion, clawing at his belt, his fly, seeking out the very thing you can almost imagine from the way his crotch bulges.
There he is, warm, hard, heavy, perfect—you can tell by touch only. You lean in, just to have his face close to yours. He doesn’t waste time. It all goes; your trousers with the underwear alike pooled around your ankles, ready to be stepped out of. Likewise, his hand is wandering between your legs. Checking, assessing. Holding you while you hold him, he sighs; a lovely bare sound.
“Careful,” he murmurs against your mouth. “I’m… not going to be very dignified about any of this.”
“It’s much overrated, the dignity” you say, a little out of breath.
He laughs once, and then you perch your knee on the edge, swing your other leg over and just commit, straddling him properly. The bed complains, loud. His hands fly to your hips on instinct, thumbs pressing hard enough to bruise.
“Okay,” he says, like you’ve just given him a complicated instruction and he’s trying to follow it to the letter. “Okay.”
Another meeting of mouths before he overthinks his own access to gravity and the fact that your bodies are kissing elsewhere, too.
Time slows in that cheap, fluorescent way it sometimes does on shift. You take every sluggish second you’re given to just feel him, to just look. When you lean back, drag your mouth away to breathe, his cock slots against your groin, pressing insistently, begging to be let inside. The gasp that punches out of him, the sweet little draw of his brows—those you ignore. You have other data to collect.
You let your hands explore instead, the way you’ve longed to since he lost his shirt. Your fingers press to blemishes, red and pearly alike, mapping the mess of him like a new continent, inventing your gentleness from scratch.
“You don’t have to be this nice,” he says, poor bastard. His voice comes out thin, frayed at the edges. “And this is quite unfair.” There’s a little tug at your shirt, as if to underline exactly what the injustice is here.
“Oh, I think we’re rather even, no?” You pinch the waistband of his trousers between thumb and forefinger, then flick it, a tiny reprimand. Together you make about half of a respectably dressed person.
He smiles—doomed, askew—and slides his palms under the fabric instead, working with what he’s been given. His thumbs climb, rough pads dragging over your ribs until they find the edge of your bra and hook under it, pulling the cups down to bare you to his warm hands.
“I don’t have to be nice, hm?” you tease, arching a brow.
You tangle your fingers into his hair and tug, puppeteering him with a practiced pull. His head tips back, throat offered. You take your time, lifting your hips, shifting just far enough that you can reach between you. It’s easy to find him; you’ve already memorised the shape through cloth.
You line him up with one steady hand. “Is that mean enough?” you ask, and start to sink down on him, painfully, arduously slow.
Plethora of blood abandons all other posts. Whatever was left in Robert’s brain drops rank and flees south in a rout. For once you see white instead of brown as his eyes roll, lashes fluttering.
“Yes,” he breathes, mouth falling open before you’ve even taken him fully. The word cracks halfway. “Oh, God, yes.”
You keep going, inch by inch, taking every twitch and stutter of muscle as a personal victory. When your body finally seats itself around him, snug and complete, his hands are gripping your breasts like he needs something to hold onto.
“Fuck me,” Robert says, and only realises it was out loud when your mouth twitches.
Too late to take it back. Too late to take any of it back.
He’s lost this battle in every possible way. He told himself he wouldn’t end up here—on the med bed, half dressed, fully pathetic—but there you are, in his lap, and here he is, buried in you up to the hilt and hanging on by his fingernails.
It still feels like winning.
Nothing he did alone ever came close. His own hand is a bad cartoon compared to this: the heat of you around him, the steady clasp of muscle that says mine every time you move. It scrubs him clean from the inside out—worry, guilt, whatever thing he’s been clutching to his chest since breakfast all shaken loose and sliding towards the one place in his life that currently makes sense.
You.
You sit properly, spine straight, thighs braced either side of him, and he can feel every inch of you. The weight of you. The way you take him all the way in and hold, like you’re testing what his nervous system can take before it shorts out.
“Robert,” you say, hand smoothing down his chest, over the frantic rhythm drumming underneath. “Look at me.”
He obeys. Of course he does. Whatever ragged little instinct he calls self-preservation is curled up whimpering in the corner by now; the dog is running the show.
Your eyes are dark and careful. He realises, distantly, that you’re watching for signs he’s hit his limit. He wants to tell you he passed his limit three kisses ago and is somewhere entirely new now, but speech is… not a strong option.
You roll your hips instead of asking. Deep, then forward, then back again. It drags his full length along you, thick, thick pressure that makes his breath fail and his fingers dig past your tits, into your ribs.
He makes a sound that has no business coming out of a grown man with a mortgage and a dog. “Please,” he gasps.
You go still. Tilt your head, interested. Then, your mouth curves, part fond, part wolfish. Your thumbs find his temples, stroke gently, grounded in a way that threatens to undo him more than the sex.
“How good you are,” you say, bewildered. It sounds like you didn’t mean to let it out.
He almost laughs. If only you knew. He’s never been good a day in his life; he’s just tired and malleable and so relieved to have someone else managing the disaster that is him for five goddamn minutes.
“Say it again,” you tell him.
He should be ashamed of how fast it comes. “Please.”
You rock down on him, slow, purpose and all, and the word turns into something broken halfway through.
“Again.”
“Please,” he repeats. “Please.”
The rhythm you find is ruinous. When you lean forward, the angle punches him deep; when you pull back your hips snap against his, tight and filthy and loud in the small room. Deep, then hard. Deep again. His brain keeps trying to process, to file, to make sure he’s not doing anything wrong, and you keep riding those thoughts right out of his head.
“More,” you say quietly.
He doesn’t know if you mean words or feeling. He gives you both.
“Please,” he whispers. “God, please—don’t stop, don’t—”
Your hand slides from his temple into his hair, back to tugging, just enough to tilt his head back, to open his throat under your mouth. Your other braces on his shoulder, keeping him exactly where you want him.
It’s not rough, not really. Just… anchored. Controlled. You move on him like you know exactly what he can take and exactly how close to the edge you want him.
“The way you’re taking this,” you murmur against his jaw, voice low, warmer than the words indicate. “Letting me—” you punctuate it with a hard slam of your pelvis that knocks the breath out of him “—do all the work.”
He shudders. “Happy to… delegate,” he manages, fingers flexing. “You’re… highly qualified.”
You laugh, short and surprised, and he feels stupidly proud of that too.
He clings. That’s the truth of it. His hands travel, to ribs and back, seeking the slide of your muscles under skin as you move. He lets you set the pace, take what you want, use him as leverage. Just use him. Every time his palms try to guide, your fingers close over his and push them back where you like them—here, on your ass; here, at your ribs; here, flat against the mattress so you can ride him without interference.
“Please,” he says again, because you haven’t told him to stop, and because begging feels less like humiliation and more like offering you something he’s never given anyone else. “Please, please…”
“Look at you,” you murmur. Your thumbs come back to his temples, like you’re soothing a fever. “So good.”
That shouldn’t go straight through him like that, but it does. He feels it hit, low and sharp, tangled up between need and relief. “Yeah?” he asks, dazed.
“Yeah,” you say, and there’s no edge to it. Just honest astonishment. “You’re being very good for me.”
He swallows hard. That’s all he’s ever wanted: to be told he’s doing it right, that he’s not making everything worse by existing in the room. If the price of that is his dignity, he’ll pay in full and tip generously.
You change the rhythm again, chasing something in yourself now; he can feel it in the way your thighs tighten around him, the way your breath gains weight on the upstroke. You ride him in a rougher pattern—no prettiness, just grit and need.
He meets you as best he can, hips jerking up into yours, but it’s still you doing most of the work, using his body like a solid thing you can trust. He lets you. He will let you do whatever you want to him, as long as you keep that look in your eyes, that intent, focused thing that says stay instead of go away.
“Robert,” you say, and his name in that voice is a command. He drags his gaze back from where you’re joined, from the slick slide of you on him, and up to your face. “Stay with me.”
“I’m here,” he says quickly. “I’m—I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good.” You slow for a few strokes, roll your hips in a way that has his vision greying out at the edges. “If you need to stop, you tell me.”
He huffs a laugh, half-strangled. “Not… a risk.”
“I mean it.” Your fingers tighten in his hair, just enough to get his full attention. “You say stop, I get off. Understand?”
He nods, throat thick. “Yeah. I—understand.”
It hits him then, properly: the line you’re walking. The fact that he’s not just being swept along; he’s choosing this, handing you the reins and trusting you not to jerk them hard enough to break his neck. His chest squeezes. Something in his spine unwinds.
“I trust you,” he blurts, before he can talk himself out of it.
You falter, just for a moment. Your eyes search his face, and for a terrifying second he thinks he’s ruined it, said the one thing too heavy for this space.
Then your expression goes soft in a way he’s never seen. You lean in, kiss him once—slow, almost chaste compared to the rest of it.
“Good,” you whisper against his mouth. “Now, beg again.”
He laughs, choked and delighted, and does exactly that.
“Please,” he says, the word decomposing as you start to move in earnest. “Please, please—fuck, you feel so good—please don’t stop—”
Your breath stutters on a shaky laugh. “God, you really are,” you say, half to yourself. “Better than anything your charts say about you.”
He doesn’t know what that means, but he files it under positive results and lets go of whatever scraps of composure he was still clinging to. He gives you every please you ask for and then some, sheds his worries into your skin, the rhythm you set, the praise you’re stingy with and therefore priceless.
He can feel it building, low and huge, like a wave with his name stamped on it. If you tell him to hold it, he will. If you tell him to let go, he will do that too, without question.
For once in his life, Robert Robertson is not steering the disaster. And it feels—against all his instincts—like safety.
You change again—less showy now, more focused. Shorter strokes, tight and vulgar, grinding down at the end so he can feel the drag of you around him, the wet heat that is absolutely going to break his spine if you keep this up.
“Robert,” you breathe, and he’s so far gone he almost comes just from that. “You close?”
He lets out an undignified sound that could be yes, could be help. “Yeah,” he manages. “Yeah, I’m—I’m really—”
“Hold it,” you say.
Just that. Calm, but fond. His whole body spasms. “You’re kidding.”
“Do I sound like I’m kidding?” Your hands tighten on his shoulders. Your hips keep moving, slow and deep, rolling down in a way that wants to wring him out. “Stay right there. For me.”
He was going to be obedient anyway; you didn’t need to weaponise it. “I—okay. Okay,” he says, because that’s all he’s ever had to offer anyone. Try. “God, I’ll—”
You change angle, and whatever he was about to promise burns up on re-entry.
It hurts, in a good way. Like holding a heavy weight just past the point where his muscles want to give in. Sweat beads on his brow, trickles down his spine. He clamps his teeth together, fists curling in the meat of your ass, and breathes like a man doing fire suppression on his own arousal.
“Good,” you murmur when he doesn’t immediately explode. Your forehead presses briefly to his, your breath hot and uneven. “So good. Just like that.”
He clings to the words like they’re a harness. Good. Just like that. He can do that. He can hold the line if that’s what you want. If you tell him to stay, he’ll stay. Even if it kills him.
Your rhythm starts to fray. He feels it before he hears it—the way your hips stutter, less precise, more desperate. Your hand, which had been steady on his shoulder, slips, fingers digging in for purchase.
He looks up. Your eyes are unfocused, lashes wet, mouth parted around breaths that keep catching on invisible edges.
“That’s it,” he pants, half encouragement, half prayer. “Come on, I’ve got you. I’m not—I’m not going anywhere.”
You let out a laugh that’s about three parts wrecked. “Thank you.”
You bear down on him, again, again, chasing something only you can see. Every squeeze, every clench around him is both agony and reward. His balls are screaming; his pulse is a shrill alarm in his ears; every cell in him is screaming now, and still he holds, because you haven’t said he can let go.
“Please,” he rasps, not even sure what he’s asking for any more.
“Hold,” you say again, voice thin and high. “Just—just a bit longer. I’m—”
The sentence dissolves into a broken noise as it hits you.
He feels it. Every shudder of muscle, every tight, frantic clench around him as your body locks down and rides the wave. Your head tips back; a string of sounds spills out of you, not words, just grunts and whimpers and a raw little oh that sounds like it’s been punched out of your lungs.
It’s the prettiest thing he’s ever heard.
He has to hold you, then, because you’re shaking and clinging and he’s the only solid thing within reach. His arms wrap around your back, crushing you to his chest as if he could hold you together by force. Your nails bite into his shoulders. Your whole body shivers through the aftershocks, bearing down on him in involuntary pulses that push him right up against his limit and balance there.
“Okay,” you breathe, eventually, forehead dropping to his. “Okay, you can—”
You don’t finish the sentence. You don’t have to. He’s already nodding frantically.
Before he can tip over inside you, you shift. With a quick, efficient twist of your hips, you lift yourself off him. The sudden loss of pressure makes him groan, low and guttural. His cock slips free, wet and slick and flushed dark, twitching helplessly in the cool air.
He’s so close it hurts. His hands scrabble for something to hold onto that isn’t you dragging yourself out of reach.
You don’t go far.
One hand comes up to the back of his neck, fingers slotting into damp hair, tugging him forward until his mouth is a breath away from yours. The other wraps around him, sure and slick and merciful, stroking from base to tip with a grip that makes his hips jerk without his permission.
“Oh—fuck,” he gasps, forehead thunking against yours. “Oh, that’s—”
“Shh,” you murmur, thumb circling the flushed head, spreading what’s already there into something obscene. “I’ve got you. Just like this.”
You kiss him then, properly—no angle, no wrestling for control, just a long, open-mouthed drag of lips and tongue that he feels all the way down his spine. Your hand works him in steady, firm pulls, squeezing just a little at the top, twisting on the way down. It’s too much, too perfect, like you’ve taken a lifetime of fumbling and rewired it in thirty seconds flat.
“Come for me,” you hum into his mouth.
There’s nowhere for the command to go but straight through him. He breaks.
It rips out of him in a rush, the tension snapping all at once. “Yes, yes, yes—God—thank you,” he cries out into your mouth, the sound mangled by the kiss, hips jerking up into your fist. Hot, ridiculous relief floods him as he comes in thick, helpless spurts—half across his own stomach, the rest striping your abdomen and the inside of your thighs. “Thank you, thank you.”
He has no idea what he’s thanking you for. Existing. Making a spectacular mess of your very sterile med bay. All viable options.
Before you can issue any commentary on said mess, he folds around you, arms wrapping tight, dragging you in against his heaving chest. His whole body is trembling, post-adrenaline, post-orgasm, everything. He tucks his face into the curve of your neck like that’s where it’s always meant to go.
“Hey,” you say softly, one hand coming up to his cheek. You thumb the sweat from his forehead in small, absent strokes. “You okay?”
He laughs once, breathless. “More than,” he manages. “Kind of… illegally more than.”
“Hm.” You lean back enough to see him, properly, and he hates how much he already misses the contact. Your expression is dazed but wry. “I guess it’s you who should buy me a drink now, so this isn’t doomed under professional malpractice forever.”
“Oh, I can do that.” His voice is still wrecked, but a bit of his usual rhythm sneaks back in. “I know just the place for a lady like you.” He swallows, nerves pricking under the afterglow. “Have you ever been to The Sardine?”
You snort. Actual fondness, all teeth bared, honest and bright, flashes across your face. It hits him harder than anything else tonight.
“Even The Sardine will work today,” you say.
You press your face to his again, cheek to cheek, natural and sweet. Your hand comes up in a light smack to his face—not a slap, not really. More of a pat. A gentle thing right on the border between reprimand and affection.
He thinks, absurdly, that he might like to find out what it feels like pushed a notch further. He puts that away for after the drink.
For now, he lets himself breathe. Lets himself feel the way all the old tensions—the clench, the hunched shoulders, the constantly buzzing nerves—have loosened, dissolving somewhere between your hands and your mouth and the way you told him he’s good without laughing.
Lockjaw, at least, is gone. So are a few other things he dragged in here.
He feels… held. And if he gets to keep even a fraction of this once you’ve both put your clothes back on and pretended to be normal people in a terrible bar, he’ll count himself obscenely lucky.
Hi Krys! Thanks for making this request so I can go this was a request, not something I was yapping about since the first second I saw this man :3 Unfortunately, I can't peg Roberto, but I can write about it.
Lord Knows It Would Be The First Time
Robert Robertsonxfem!reader explicit (established relationship, sub!Robert x dom!Reader; yo does anyone remember Freakdays, because this has rimming, anal fingering, pegging, enthusiastic consent, d/s etiquette (safe word mentioned but not used), praise kink, aftercare and love confessions)
word count: 4K
author’s note: This is a very loose part two to Lockjaw, but can be read as a stand alone piece. Title is (sadly) from The Smiths so I feel it is my duty to remind everyone that I hate Morrisey. One of these days I will write Les Misérables length of playing with male asses, for now have fun with this!
You don’t have to be this nice, Robert had said; you can do whatever you want with me. Please, please, please, he’s been looping almost every night since that allegedly routine med-check detonated into gut-spilling, tear-pricking, cock-crying revelation right into your lap.
From a man who evades a gloved hand in case it discovers how badly he neglects stretching, he’s reformed into someone who gets his blood pressure checked weekly ‘just to be safe.’ A man who turns up to medbay with papercuts, for God’s sake, and lets you roll the offended finger on your tongue. Because he genuinely cannot wait until you’re both home and he’s on his knees. In the final boss-fight between self-preservation and whatever it is in him that needs, the sad wet dog came out the triumphant black horse; all that’s left is to live with the result.
Whatever happens now, you kiss it better. Whatever happens, you check in on him. Whatever happens, you cup his face in both hands, press the lines out of his forehead, thumb along the hinge of his jaw and tell him he’s been good—and he believes you more than he believes half his performance reviews.
Please has become something he says more often than your name—which is impressive, given how many times a day you make him use that, too. On the odd night you spend apart, it still slips out of him like a glitch in the code: please, please, please, muttered into his pillow, a stuck record that only stops when he imagines you saying let go.
He wishes it worked as well outside your bed as it does inside. In the real world, please doesn’t get payroll to fix his overtime, doesn’t get management to hire another body, doesn’t resurrect the ones they lose. With you, it’s a master key. Please kiss me, and you do, unhurried. Please touch me, and there’s a hand on his chest, another sliding down his torso. Please, and he gets to tongue your cheek, taste you on your fingers, move his hips, press his mouth into the hollow of your palm, come, sleep with his nose crushed against your neck in a bed that smells like the only good decision he’s ever made. So it’s no wonder he asked.
Disassemble me. Make me yours. Bend me, break me, take me, keep me.
He’s gotten so good at begging he didn’t even consider this one could be hard. Shame climbing red up his throat, he swallowed around the stutter, dropped his eyes a hundred times too many, kept pinching the hem of his sleep shorts just to give his hands a job. He picked the morning on purpose, when you’re still a warm and pliant beast, and your moral judgement lags a few seconds behind your body. Every possible advantage.
“You can say no,” he said, like there was any universe in which you’d let him do something you didn’t want.
When he finally turns to face whatever he’s summoned, you’re propped against the headboard, hair a mess, unfairly pretty, mouth already curved. Nothing wicked. Just fucking enamoured. The next thing he knows you’re climbing into his lap, eyes closed as you breathe him in, fingers sliding into his hair until his forehead is cradled against your chest and his spine realigns under your hands.
“You’ve made me so happy,” you tell him, simple as a vital sign, and then he can exhale. “Thank you.”
Caged there for a long time, his jittering nerves get a warm compress. It takes a while, but you can feel it when the fight leaves him—shoulders sinking, jaw unclenching, breath turning from little staccato bursts to something closer to normal. Only then do you lean back enough to look at him properly.
“You’re going to have to follow my lead, hm?” you say, smoothing your thumbs over the faint line between his brows. “Tell me everything. Stop when you feel bad, yes?”
You know exactly where the conflict sits in him: torn between the praise he gets for enduring and the praise you’ve started sneaking in whenever he says enough. There’s a whole ocean of charge in him; he floats on the surface, arms tired, and you keep being the one who says that’s far enough for tonight, I’m taking you home.
By the time the actual night comes, he’s a cocktail of emotions no medic would recommend. Giddy, because it’s you, and the track record so far suggests that anything involving you tends to land somewhere between great and I didn’t know I could feel like this. Terrified, because there’s a non-zero chance he’ll come apart in some spectacular, embarrassing way and have to live with the knowledge that he asked for it. That he wanted it. That, whatever he is on the other side of this, it will be something you’ve seen and had your hands on.
“Are you nervous?” you ask, fingers working his buttons loose one by one.
“No, just—” He swallows. “Scared shitless?”
Your mouth curls. You look him dead in the eye. “All things considered, shitless is better than shitful.”
He groans and lets his head drop, like you’ve just knocked five points off his dignity score. Somehow he’s managed to make this even more mortifying for himself.
“Hey.” You cup his face, coax it back up until you’re nose to nose. “I’m joking. You like jokes.” Your thumbs trace over his cheeks; something unspools low in his belly, right where it creases when he hunches.
“I like them when I’m the one telling them,” he mutters, abashed.
“I won’t do anything you don’t want,” you hum, lips brushing his. “And we’ll take this slow, okay?” He nods. “Also, I’m a doctor. There really isn’t much I haven’t seen.”
“Still, I think some parts should remain a mystery,” he says. “For the sake of this relationship.”
That does you in. Your face goes soft, pleased; you loop your arms around his neck and kiss him once, slow. “Alright, let me embarrass myself and tell you I like that word a lot,” you whisper, catching your lower lip between your teeth.
“God, that’s so embarrassing,” Robert says into your mouth. His hands, governed by some separate nervous system, slide to your waist, your back, rubbing comfort in while his voice flails for jokes he thinks will save him. “I don’t know how you look at yourself in the mirror.”
“Ugh, I know, right? Feelings. Disgusting,” you murmur between kisses.
“So filthy,” he hums, tone making it very clear this is the best thing he’s heard in his life. “You depraved freak.”
Through snorts and gasps and little pats, you undress him fully until chill licks his back. There’s not a spot on him you haven’t seen at this point. All scars have been kissed, every dent’s taken a thumb pressed into it like you measured him and remembered him down to the whorls on each of his fingers.
You press your palms to his chest and nudge. That’s all it takes. For a man built like he’s been poured into his clothes and left to set, he’s absurdly easy to move when you mean it. A little pressure under his collarbone and he backs up; a light push at his hip and he turns with it. By the time his knees meet the bed frame he’s already halfway folded, body reading your intent faster than his brain can catch up.
“Down,” you murmur, not quite a command, more an observation of where he’s already going. He goes—tips forward, chest and stomach surrendering to the mattress, cheek turned to the side, shoulders sinking like you’ve cut his strings. Solid weight, yes, all muscle and stubbornness—but the moment you put a hand on him with purpose he’s suddenly all hinge and give, joints articulating exactly where you set them.
You follow, knee on the edge, hand settling at the back of his neck (just resting, just reminding), the other smoothing down his spine as if checking your earlier measurements. He lies there and lets you, pupils blown when he glances back, and it hits you again: all of that brawn, all of that tension, parked neatly in your hands for as long as you choose to hold it.
The neck brace drifts lower, over the ladder of ribs, until it finds the curve of his ass. There, you cup him, palm holding the weight of one cheek, thumb settling into the crease where it slips into thigh. For a moment you just rest. Bring your face in, cheek pillowed against him, breathing in skin and laundry powder and the clean trace of your own shower gel stuck to skin. The other hand travels the back of his leg, smoothing from the meat of his thigh to the knot of his calf and back again.
“How are you?” you ask, voice low, testing the line.
There’s a beat where all you hear is his breathing and bed yawning under his ribs. “Excited,” he says at last, words pressed flat against the sheet.
“Good,” you murmur. “Let’s keep it that way. Red whenever you need it, yes?”
“Yes.” A swallow. “Okay.”
“Good boy,” you praise him, and his eyes flutter shut. Another thin layer of tension leaves his shoulders, like someone’s finally loosened a brace he’d forgotten he was wearing.
You nose along the flat of one glute, following the muscle, then let your teeth sink in—firm, not cruel, holding. His hips jump on instinct, ass tipping up into your mouth; the head of his cock skates helplessly against the sheet. Between his legs he’s growing heavier, harder, and when your hand slips there to cradle him, the shudder crawling his sides is pure reflex.
Taking all the time in the world, you set both hands on him. They spread him gently, thumbs easing his cheeks apart until you can see everything. You start everywhere but the place that’s clenching for you: a kiss to the swell of one cheek, then the other; a slow, open-mouthed drag along the warm inner curve; a soft press of lips at the base of his spine; another behind his balls where the skin is thinner, fragile. Every time you touch, his stomach ripples, cock gives a helpless jerk, hips twitch in tiny, abortive thrusts against nothing, and it’s thrilling.
Only when his breath has gone thin and ragged do you give in to your own curiosity. You lean in and place your mouth right at the tight knot of muscle at his centre, a single, unhurried kiss to the most guarded part of him. As you do it, you hum, a vibration cruel in how little it is, tender in how careful you are. He tastes of trust that’s finally beaten back the fear of loving, of being small—like morning skin on a hard-working man; it makes something in your chest fizz and settle at the same time.
“Oh fuck, baby,” he groans, the words breaking as he fists the sheet, knuckles pale. His face buries, shoulders clenched, as if he can hide from what you’re doing even while his body arches back into your mouth.
Your throaty chuckle drives him insane. He feels it right where you are pressed to him, pulse travelling through the fibres of muscle, echoing all the way up his spine until it’s buzzing in his own throat, like you’ve wired the sound straight into his body.
Then your lips get replaced by the hot, practised slide of your tongue. You push past the ring of muscle, slow but inexorable, and breach him. His whole body seizes.
“Jesus fuck,” he moans, pathetic, honest. “Yes. Fuck, yes—”
A pleased sound pours straight into him. You keep working him, tongue moving in shallow little thrusts that make his stomach clench, frantic. At the same time your hand migrates forward, tracing the seam between his cheeks, over the perineum, down to where his cock is straining against his belly.
It finds the ridge just under the crown and presses there—mean, precise. Release. Press again. His hips jerk helplessly each time, cock kicking against your fingers. When you finally slide along the length and skim your fingertip through his slit, it comes away wet; he’s already beading at the tip, leaking like his body has given up any pretence of restraint.
It’s so much, all at once—your tongue opening him, your hand teasing the most over-wired parts of him, the way you hum like you’re the one on the receiving end—that the overworked muscle behind his eyes simply… checks out. Thought burns off into white noise. This is him in the most honest version he’s got. Body ruptured on all planes: muscles pulled apart, every soft and secret place laid bare, and his chest saying safe, safe, safe.
Then, your touch deserts him, and something new joins the mix.
Tongue eases back, and there’s the distinct, unmistakable nudge of a fingertip right where he’s already loosened and hot. You circle first—patient, almost absent-minded—smearing everything you’ve coaxed into him over a ring that makes his toes curl. Then, you press.
His body answers before his brain can vote. A sharp inhale, a full-body flinch, muscles clutching around the intrusion like they’re trying to bar the door and drag it in at the same time.
“Breathe,” you murmur somewhere above him, thumb stroking lazy reassurance into the side of his hip. “You’re doing amazing.”
He forces air in. Out. In again. The burn at the edge melts, molecule by molecule, into something else—still intense, still bright, but no longer filed under danger. He feels himself yield, just enough, and your finger slips past the tightest point with shocking ease, sinking into warmth that’s all his and suddenly, very much yours.
“Okay?” you check, voice low.
“Y-yeah,” he manages, shock-soft. “Yeah. Just… new.”
“New is fine,” you say. “But tell me if it stops being fine.”
He nods into the sheets, useless gesture that it is, and then you move.
No jabbing, no rush; you work. Slow retreats, slower returns, careful little twists that have him clenching around you in weak aftershocks. Every time you crook just right he feels it like a dropped stone inside him—deep, electric, ricocheting down his cock in a way that makes his vision pixelate. There’s a palm nestled low: thumb wedged under ass cheek, the rest braced warm against his hip, keeping him tethered to now.
Two sensations wrestle in his throat. A wash of embarrassment flickers through at how easily he takes your fingers, how that spot you brush makes his cock lurch like it’s been waiting for it. On every other level he’s just… grateful. That you’re this thorough. That you’re taking your time with him, like he’s worth getting exactly right.
“More?” you ask eventually, fingertips stilling inside him, surrendering the choice.
He should pretend this is enough, make a joke, be sensible about it—but the idea of you taking your hands off him now tugs at something low and miserable in his chest. This is good. He’s safe. He doesn’t want it to stop.
“Please,” Robert hears himself say, hoarse. “Yeah. More. Please.”
Before more arrives, for a minute, there is nothing. His pelvis eases down onto the sheet and he traps his cock between cotton and belly, the drag of fabric a blessing and a curse. Every tiny shift gives him just enough friction to make his eyes roll, and just enough warning that if he starts rutting now, you’ll stop him and he’ll deserve it.
So he waits. Patient, for once. Listens instead: the whisper of clothes easing off you, the tiny clink of a buckle, the soft exhale you let out as you adjust something low on your hips.
Then the mattress dips behind him under the weight of your knees and his body arches back up on instinct, like it’s been summoned.
“Slow, baby, no rush,” you tell him. Your palm lands between his shoulders, steadying him. “Feel me first, hm? Tell me how this feels.”
Something smooth and solid finds him—cool at first, then warming quickly as it settles along the length of his cock. The firm weight buckled snug around your hips comes in beside him, blunt tip nudging his own before coming to tease his underbelly.
By the feel of it, it’s no bigger than him. Maybe an inch in girth, a touch more insistent where it lies heavy against him. He files that under manageable. Truth be told, he’d probably have found a way to be optimistic if you’d produced something intimidating too; it’s you, and that’s the whole point. If you’ve picked it and you’re here, he trusts.
“Doable,” he says at last, voice small but steady. A soft, embarrassed chuckle follows, shoulders pinking where the blush starts to spill down his body.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You can… we can carry on.” He ducks his head, face burrowing back into the sheet like he can hide in the cotton.
“Robert.” Your palm slides up his spine, rests warm between his shoulders. “You are doing so well, you know that?”
Sound leaves him in a stutter—half laugh, half shiver. His hips give a tiny, helpless rock; his cock twitches against his belly like it heard you first. “Thank you,” he mutters, voice gone hoarse around the words.
You reach for the bottle. He braces instinctively for the cold and gets nothing. When he peeks back over his arm, you’re not touching him yet—you’re rubbing the lube between your palms, warming it, expression focused in that way that always topples the heart over in his chest.
When your hands return, they’re slick and gentle. You coat him first, fingers spreading the warmth over soft skin, then glide the rest along silicone, working it in until it gleams. For a moment you just let the toy rest in the crease of his ass, the smooth length nestled between cheeks, rocking it in slow, easy passes so he can feel the weight of it without panic.
“Ready?” you ask him.
“Yes,” says his mouth and his entire body confirms as he presents himself. The head nudges his entrance and slips in with little resistance. “Oh—fuck,” he manages, high and raw. Not a protest. More like surprise that something so new can land squarely in the good column. Another press, barely an inch, and you pause again, letting the burn ease into embers. The stretch is strange, bright, all of his muscles trying to decide whether to flinch or melt.
“There you are,” you say, thumbs settled in the hinges of hips. “Go at your own pace. Show me, okay?”
“Yeah, okay. Okay,” he says, and commands his pelvis to move. He sinks until he can feel the warmth of your body behind him, then retreats again. Finds a rhythm, small pushes that grow bolder until each slide makes his breath come out wrong. It’s ridiculous how fast he goes from careful to greedy; every time he rocks back his body gives him another shiver of yes, yes, yes, and your small sighs just fuel him further. His cock drags, furious along the sheet, and it’s enough contact to keep him on edge and obedient until you speak again.
“Look at you,” you say, and there’s enough pride in it to make his hips stutter. “So keen. Working yourself open for me. That’s it.”
That does it, or rather undoes him, because he lets his chest kiss the mattress and blurts, “Please.” Neck craning, eyes blown when he looks back over his shoulder. “Please… just—fuck me. I’ve been good, baby, please.”
“Okay,” you say softly. Your palms slide up his back, smoothing over every knot you helped put there. “Alright. Breathe. I’ve got you.” A careful little roll, just enough to nudge deeper. Then ease back, giving his body time to catch up with his want. The sound he makes isn’t dignified in the slightest, a sweet little gasp, but his back softens under your hands, muscles unkinking one by one.
“That’s it,” you murmur. “Good. You’re so fucking good.”
You pick up a slow rhythm: shallow, testing thrusts that gradually lengthen, each one nudging further until you feel the give of him turn into welcome. Beneath you, he clutches the sheets and lets it happen, hips tilting back into you on instinct. Every time you bottom out, he shudders, cock draws along the damp patch he’s made in the bedding.
“Still good?” you ask, thumb stroking idle circles where his spine dimples.
“Yeah,” he manages, voice shredded but sure. “Yeah, fuck, that’s—God, that’s so, so good…”
“Good boy,” you tell him, and feel the shiver claim him, from your hand to where you’re inside him. “Stay with me.”
He does just that. Stays, takes, while you work and check and praise him, and he feels cradled from the inside out. Things happen in his body, alien and incredible; Robert can feel himself tipping, closer and closer with every push. It rings in his tendons, thrums in his temple. His cock drags on cotton—head catching, length rubbing just enough to taunt, not enough to finish. Every scrape of fabric over him, untouched, lands in the same place low in the gut and winds it tighter.
“Fuck… fuck, yes—” he pants, small. “Please, can I—?”
“Let go,” you tell him, steady as a hand on the wheel. Your palm spreads, holding him, encouraging him. “Let go for me. You did so well.”
It hits on the next stroke. Everything in him locks—calves, thighs, stomach, jaw—then snaps. His body bows to an orgasm that throttles all thought. He grinds air, muffles his own sob into the sheets as pulse after pulse hollows him out. There’s a thumb soothing his lumbar spine and it’s both too much and not enough when you slip out and he’s left empty of everything.
He limps onto bed. There are sounds: first the buckle clicking, then cooing. “Robert,” you say, and give your hands back. They brush the hair off his forehead, then cup his face. “Are you with me?”
I am always with you. “Yes,” he murmurs.
He is wrung out and weirdly clear. Not light, exactly—more like something in him has been taken apart, inspected, and put back together in a way that makes sense. Like somebody pried up the lid on the box, had a good long look, and instead of spooking just went ah, right, that’s you then. Whatever this makes him on the other side, he doesn’t know yet. First time for this flavour of wrecked.
“Thank you,” he says, and it lands heavier than most of the apologies he’s ever muttered. Solid. Meant. His ears are still ringing; the world’s a bit tunnelled. He sees it before he hears it.
Your face says it first—eyes brighter than he’s ever seen them, glossed over and spent but fixed on him like he’s the only thing left in the room worth focusing on. Lashes fan, mouth shapes the words once, twice, again, and only on the third does his hearing catch up.
“I love you.”
It hits him how obvious it’s been. So he blurts, “I know.” Your face does something bright and devoted and relieved all at once, and then you fold all his shock in, arms around him like you’re bracing him through turbulence. “I love you too,” Robert manages, and this time it’s clean, heavy, absolutely certain.
Later, when you’re both under the same sheet and his pulse has stopped misfiring, it lands properly: this is the first time in a life full of wanting that please has bought him something soft instead of another bruise. The first time, but for once it doesn’t feel like a one-off; he lets himself hold you and expect a next time, and another, and another, and he will say thank you for all of it.
Robert Robertsonxfem!reader explicit (established relationship, sub!Robert x soft dom!Reader, mild angst (Robert's had a bad day), explicit consent, slapping, colour system, cockwarming to completion, crying after sex, mild subspace)
word count: 3K
author’s note: This is a very loose part three to Lockjaw, but can be read as a stand alone piece, I like this miniverse your honour. It's very much crazy unclean tired brain writing blurt, but basically Robert had a terrible day and comes to Reader for a reprieve :') Also: Freakday.
<- Lockjaw (part 1)
<- Lord Knows It Would Be The First Time (part 2)
Dispatch Masterlist
AO3
—
Man is the sum of his climactic experiences. Not the curricular ones, not the graduation, the wedding, the baby’s head so small it fits into a palm, no, the little spikes his nervous system files under this is when I tipped. First fistfight, first time he realised his father was afraid, first time a voice on the other end of the radio went quiet and stayed that way, first time someone said good boy and meant it and his spine understood it before his brain did. Those notch into tendon, graven into meat behind breastbone, a crooked bar graph of every time the whole system has gone to white, then black, then pale blue as it restarted.
He gets only as many as he pursues or asks for. Tonight he both pursues and asks. He chases the clean wipe, the it, the thing that will sandblast everything that happened today off the inside of his skull and will hold his teeth back from biting off the worried tongue.
He forgets everything between the small patch of floor under his desk to your front step. In between, Robert exists as a sequence of surfaces he bounces off—the chair, the carpet, elevator button, parking lot, steering wheel, stair rail, door, another door, doormat where his boots plant and stay and stay and stay until his knuckles remember that knocking unlocks the door.
His chest does that horrible shallow kick, hand hanging when he stands stands stands and waits for the now, until the door unlatches and you are there, backlit and saying his name—his government one, the one that usually means we are humans, of which two letters get out, the R and the O, before he erases the rest.
The off-centre mouth lands, too much of it, a wet dog kind of it, the hello I half-died without you kind of it, because some days are like this, eager and familiar like this, horrible and terrifying like this, waited to be over like this, and there is a breath trapped in his lungs and it releases into yours and he doesn’t have to be human anymore. He’s come straight from triage to triage, braces his palms on either side of you, hulks his shoulders like he’s coming home without moving his feet and then his knees go.
Overworked quads give way; there’s nothing debonair about the drop, just gravity and fingers catching at your shirt to steady the fall and drag you down a few centimetres where he goes. His face slides along your mouth, your chin, your suprasternal notch, your cotton, nose bumps your sternum, his breath has nowhere to flee only into air and it smells of coffee, his breath, and by the time the floor has taken him he’s sucked your centre of mass with him, forehead pressed into your belly and it keeps pressing there, where it’s safe, where it’s his, where you let him.
He stays. Hands clamp around the backs of your thighs, hard enough that you can feel the shake in them, the afterimage of all the fists he didn’t clench at work. His cheek is flat to your stomach, turned just enough that his mouth can catch on fabric and skin; each inhale drags the hem of your shirt in and out against his lips. He doesn’t say please. No words, he just holds on—shoulders broad and bowed, spine curved, whole body folded down around the small, selfish point of contact that is you—here—now.
“Baby,” you say, a worried kind, your fingers in his hair, combing, brushing, tugging but he doesn’t let you, digs his nose deeper into the soft underbelly and whines terribly when you try to move. “Robert,” you say again, a change of tone. It’s the one that has his spine straightening.
The spine straightens and he looks up with eyes so pained your face softens. “Talk to me,” you say and now there’s a tender hand on his cheek.
Robert tries to find words, but his problem with impure desires is the stalemate of pride and need. Gasping but somehow still alive, he searches and then finds too many, so he talks, everything at once, insistent and conflicting and restless, taking things that shouldn’t be real and talking them into maybes, then into facts, the way desire does once it’s got a tongue.
“Fuck me,” he chokes. “I beg you. Fuck me, be good to me, make me—”
His fingers bunch in your shirt, hauling cotton, crumpling, ruining, they skate up over your ribs, rough and clumsy, and he pushes himself higher on his knees just to get his mouth where he wants it, nose nudging the hem until fabric gives and his lips find flesh. “Slap me. Please,” he says into you. “Please, please—”
Each is a breath, a little shake, his hands flattening at your lumbar spine to drag you closer and digging, digging to get under your skin so he can finally rest. “Please, baby, please, ah—”
Your answer is a hand. You sink your fingers into his hair and pull. His head tips back, throat offered up, the hinge of his jaw pried open. Losing your stomach from his mouth he leaks out a protest, a moan, a small stupid sound but the sting at his scalp goes straight to the place that craves being handled.
“Did somebody hurt you?” you ask, face stern, steadfast. He loves that face. It makes him feel safe that face. He can be a dog with that face aimed at him.
“No,” he says, swallowing against your hand. “Just… the day. My head’s tired.”
You know this grammar: small sentence, stupidly big payload. The day with other days nested in it, the I fucked up day, the too much at once day, the I couldn’t keep up day, the nobody listens day, the I can’t hear anyone anymore day.
Your hands slide into his armpits, a quiet up, and he goes without thinking, straightening, then folding into you; his forehead finds the crook of your shoulder like it’s only for him and he can sag.
He has it for a breath, two, then you take the hiding place away. There are palms, warm, at his jaw as you tilt him up, and he goes with it, a helpless hinge, a puppet of a man and by the time his eyes meet yours his neck is bared, muscles all traitors melting, retiring, surrendering. Thumbs drag down his cheeks, catching on stubble; he could move if he wanted to, but the part of him that remembers how to obey has already gone still.
“Tell me again,” you say, calm as a pulse in someone who is not him. “What do you want?”
His throat bobs and he could backtrack into a lie, say sleep, say a hug, tell you you heard him but he can’t really, it’s just pride that takes a fierce last stand under your looking glass and then folds and he hangs at the option of say nothing at first but it swells in his mouth, bursts and everything tries out at once and has to squeeze through the same narrow space.
“Take it off me,” he says. “All of it. The day. Take it.” A breath, sharp. “I want you to… to take me. Make it quiet.”
His gaze flickers down, then drags back up because your hands don’t let it fall. “I want you to slap me,” he says, the sound of his own voice a bell full of rust, clean and wrong and begging shouldn’t sound this sanguine. “In the face. Until it… settles. Until I can only hear you and not—” He lets that die. “Slap me. Please.”
Practice made it perfect. Please please please do this with me, please deny me, please undress me, touch me, kiss kiss kiss me, hold my hands, make me, take me, break me, please love me, please I love you, thank you thank you thank you, I can’t without you please, a myriad of orisons each a different please that leads to the same place and the place is quiet, the place is gentle, the place is him shattered, remade, renewed, something better, something whole when he stands again and his knees are strong.
He huffs out a crooked little laugh that isn’t funny. “I want you on me,” he adds, smaller, wrapped into throat’s hollow. “Tell me when I’m done. When I’ve been good enough. Because I don’t… I can’t find the off switch by myself today.” His mouth skews, embarrassed and hopeful and all. “Please,” he says, because please is good.
Hands on his hands and he’s pulled by the centre of gravity that is your hands, through the hallway, past kitchen, past rooms, to the bedroom where you take it all off, his jacket, his shirt, his shoes, his belt, his pants, his underwear until he is naked and then you are naked too and he is falling on the bed saving the image of you above him for when he’s alone and now he is not, you are there above him, then on him, thighs around his thighs, hands more hands on his cheeks warm already he soaks it all in and you tell him how to stop and when to stop and he can’t imagine stopping at any point so he just nods in waiting, laying in wait, sitting in wait for when you take him, inside inside inside and it’s him filling you but somehow it’s him full of you.
First it’s touch, teasing, gentle, kind, he hates it, he loves it, eyes like thumbs dug into them, your thumbs there in his eye sockets pressing tender belonging into scleras, into irises and he sees red and white nothing, void black sparking bright at the edge where he can’t see where he can see things so clearly they are so sharp they cut him in halves and he waits for stitches and the first slap stitches him unevenly into a gruesome version of a man.
He exhales the morning, inhales the next day. “Yes. Thank you,” he says with his eyes closed, nods and something realigns, he tilts his head for you to do it again, to do it again, to do it again and his cock twitches against you a hungry yearning jerk and you laugh and it sounds like pearl string breaking pearls falling on the floor clattering, he wants more of that laugh, more of that slap.
The left hand, the way of the heart, comes between his legs and takes him, takes his cock full of blood, full of the day he’s ready to spend, takes it and guides it to sink between lips where he watches himself disappear and watches groins clasp together and then you still, let the way of the heart find his heart, the one in his chest, the heart, then his throat as you tilt him and deliver another, sharp, relentless, red print of your hand coming up through his face like he’s lit from the inside, eyes bright wetting themselves pouring down to your fingertips.
It blooms and holds, the sting, whole face three seconds ahead of the rest of him, skin humming, buzzing, nerves pried open climbing out of themselves and smelting into your palm. Inside that flare the day shudders, buckles, shrinks and he expands in small increments, growing back into his own flesh suit.
You keep them coming, thoughtful, one you watch his eyes, two you listen to his break, three you ask, “Still with me?”
“Here,” he says. “Yes, still here,” he says. “Please,” he says, brings the flaring cheek to yours, it’s cold, it’s brilliant, the please pre-loaded, it just needs a mouth.
There is no movement from you, just stillness where you’re settled deep, so deep he can make out the shape of you inside, on him hips are heavy, weight steady, pressure patient when you tighten, release, slow and long, tighten, tighten, release, a muscle contraction that runs from his tip to the backs of his knees. Not enough to chase, more than enough to feel. He sits in it, shuddering, trying not to buck, trying, instincts born in his pelvis openly rebelling against the orders coming from his neck up: stay. take. don’t move unless she moves.
Hair tugged again, a slap again, on the same warmed patch again, a flat perfect sound. His head turns with it, eases back into the hand like a dog finding the right spot, ripples march from his jaw down the line of him and thump against the place you’re holding him, wrapped around him. His cock kept warm gives a twitch, desperate, no help from him at all.
You see it. Of course you see it. Your mouth curls and softens and hardens and softens. “Colour?”
You ask for his colour and he’s green, like green in the crowns of the trees, like green of the swamp, deep, primordial, ancient green. He exhales on the absolution, says, “Green.”
“Good boy,” he hears and it sprouts warmth in him. Heart’s pooling under his jaw, your thumb strokes there, the other strokes the heart behind sternum, flat palm, below it a thud calms from disordered to even, fast, but even.
Slap. Check-in. Breathe. Paragraphs of thoughts shrink down into lines, then to words, then to small, manageable shapes, letters that form your name and yes and please, your thighs, your body ringing around his body. He watches the twitch of your shoulders, it happens when you tighten in place, your mouth parts around sounds you give him as sighs, as gasps, as coos.
There is a thing in him changing from tumultuous noise to sweet disposition of no thought, just being, and he’s everywhere in himself, from the tip of his cock to the flesh of his temples, all places where blood pulses through him, all places where he feels you gripping and he realises, you grip for yourself too, you get lost too, you are there with him in all places he’s too scared to look at alone.
“Look at me,” you ask him, and he’s looking, and you’re asking look at me when I’m this, look at me when you’re this, look at us.
He looks, stares through the haze at what’s right in front of him, your cheeks glistening sweat, hair a little wrecked, lashes clumped by the day left behind, a vein jumping delicately in your neck. He sees himself in the glass of your eyes, your eyes rapt watching him back, then closed, and he watches himself in the grease of your eyelids and he realises he’s an uncracked egg and you keep him there with the shell intact, the shell is to break because it overboils, not because a spoon is brought to it.
He is so close that one thoughtless lift of your hips would end him, leave him gasping, dying but somehow still alive. One slide, one stutter of friction and he would go, stupid and hard and fast as a teenager. You give him a different nudge, the body settling deeper without moving, a slow clench that grains vision, your hand coming in again across his cheek, not harder, just sure; the sound of his own breath returning to him in shorter, cleaner bursts.
Then it’s your hand again, and then another hand, both hands at once cupping his red face. You lean in, press your mouth to where your palm has signed itself love, mine, and he feels your lips move against the ache. “I love you,” you tell his cheek, sink it through the layers of skin and bone into the marrow.
You turn his head and kiss there too, pressing your nose in like you’re trying to take some of the burn into yourself. “I love you,” again, quieter, breaking the man, mending the boy. Your body sucks him in, greed in the tissue. “I love you, my good boy. My darling, you are all mine.”
He belongs, and if you moved, he’d be gone, so you hold him instead, prescient, waiting. “Let go,” you breathe. “Let go for me. Let it out for me. I love you.”
Rupture takes him, not his cock yet, an older thing, the tight knot of the day, of the week, of all the weeks. It lets go first with his hands lurching up to your back like he’s been thrown, body locking into one long line from his teeth to toes.
Muscles crawl into movement so miniscule it’s cellular. At the base of him the clasp makes a pulse roll, and he starts breathing, gasping and parts of him dying, sharp sounds like puffs of air that fogs in winter, his throat is torn and he folds forward into you coming, coming all ripped, violent in how little it asks of his limbs, all locked in one place, inside, inside you, inside him where yes, yes, yes echoes bright and vibrating and throbbing.
Nothing outside the span of your palms exists enough to hurt him and he realises his face is wet while his eyes are on fire. Thank you, he says, weeping where you are unshaken, into your arms he’s weeping, sweating, hollering with his cheeks red and his eyes on fire.
And then: oubliette. Revulsion falls away, desire stays with him, and peace. He is present in his face where it burns, hands coming to your face and he’s kissing you, thanking you.
He’s so light the fall back into the mattress is slow and long. You on top of him, tranquil weight, wrap yourself around his shoulders and hide him in the crook of your neck and whisper, “You did so well. Are you alright? How are you?”
He’s a sum of one thing now, he’s a sum of your understanding touch and skin aflame and his cum plugged into you where he softens and it’s all one thing. “I’m great,” he tells you. “Thank you so much. I’m better, yeah.”
“Do you want to tell me now?” you ask, knuckles cold where he’s burning.
“Yeah,” Robert says. “I had a really bad day,” he says and tells you about his bad day.
