i was like "if youre looking for medieval books i suggest you try the church - they often provided the highest education one could get" and now main has joined the church
When I was working at the sex shop I was pulling poverty wages. I loved my job but I was on food stamps and still barely getting by. When they hired the stores first male employee and he started at my pay rate after I’d been there for three years I quit.
I was initially really nervous when I saw the post for the mattress job. It listed a pay scale that I couldn’t even conceptualize and I appeared qualified. When I got an interview I was over the moon but also petrified. Reactions to my line of work often varied but most people were very embarrassed or skeptical. I worried about how I’d address it in the actual interview.
I lived far to the north of their headquarters and drove almost two hours to get there. When I finally arrived it was in the nicest thrift store clothes I could find, but I shrank inside to see a room full of older white men in nice suits waiting to be interviewed for the same job.
Why did I bother? I was decades younger than anyone else in the room, shabbily dressed, and I suspected I was the only afab person in the entire building. I stewed in my insecurities until I was called in.
The second I met my interviewer I was instantly put at ease. The man had the energy of a therapy dog, he was abound with positive, good natured energy. He was also incredibly beautiful. I grinned back at his welcoming smile as we said our pleasantries. But still. This very beautiful polished man seemed very innocent. How would the sex shop question go?
“I see here you worked at STORE?”
“Yes,” I said hesitantly.
“And that was sales? Or you just rang people up.”
“No, it was sales. I’d help people find products, we were encouraged to upsell, there was sales spiffs, and most importantly we educated customers on products to help them find what they liked best.”
He grinned approvingly and asked, “Can you give me an example of a time you successfully upsold a customer?”
I paused, wringing my hands before I asked, “How vague would you like me to be…?”
“Not at all!” He assured me. “Go for it!”
“Well. A man came in looking for something to make his fingers vibrate so when he was touching his wife it would enhance that sensation. We had cheap $10 cockrings that I showed him first. But we had a rechargeable waterproof one made of nicer material, and after I showed him a demo he bought that one.”
“How much was that one?”
“$110”
“Wow! You had an upsell of 100% from what he came in looking for! That’s incredible!”
He was so truly genuinely stoked and not at all embarrassed that for the first time I saw a tiny glimmer of a future where I didn’t have ramen and peanut butter tiding me over between paychecks.
He asked me to wait then came back to tell me he liked me so much that he wanted to send me right into another interview, if that was okay. He didn’t want me to have to drive back later, it was terribly considerate and exciting. I beamed and told him it would be lovely.
I then had the second worst interview I’ve ever had. The worst goes to the time I applied to be a store manager for a pet food place years later. The district and store manager interviewing me passed notes and texted while I was speaking. When the district manager called to inform me I didn’t get the job I told him I’d never have accepted anyway because I’d never had such a disrespectful interview.
The new man sitting behind the desk radiated an aura of a brick wall. As someone with anxiety I’m highly keyed into the emotional states of people I’m talking to. To receive no feedback at all was my personal hell. After a perfunctory greeting he asked me with no inflection to sell him a pen.
I gathered the shreds of my courage and attempted the Herculean task he’d set me. Through my whole improvised spiel he resisted all attempts at engaging him, regarding me with a cold apathy as I touted the benefits of my fictitious pen.
Halfway through I broke into a cold sweat. My smile didn’t waver but it grew strained as I projected friendliness and warmth into the black hole of his heart. My thoughts scattered and my sales pitch grew redundant in the face of his nothingness. I finally concluded with a hard close and he simply nodded.
He glanced at my resume and commented, “You didn’t ask me to touch or hold it. Though I suppose I can understand from your previous line of work why you wouldn’t.” I shriveled and died inside knowing that I encouraged people to touch dildos all day long and had been too frazzled to offer him the pen.
He bid me a cool farewell. I made it to my car before I started sobbing. I had never been so rattled. I couldn’t understand what I’d done to make him so unfriendly or if my threadbare clothes were what had made him treat me like dirt. I drove an hour and a half to get home, weeping intermittently.
I was therefore taken by complete surprise to receive a call the next day inviting me on board for their five week training program. The first man who’d interviewed me gushed on the phone about how the second guy had loved me and that I was going to be fantastic.
I was in shock. When I showed up to training the second interviewer was charming my new classmates, beaming and laughing. He was an utterly different person. To my dismay I learned he was the trainer for my district and would be my point of contact if I made it through training.
He joked with me later that his interview facade was just a tactic to see how people held up under pressure and I filed him into a category of my deepest enmity. I never forgave him for how small he made me feel that day, but I never showed him the depths of my fury.
I aced every test and went on to be valedictorian of the eight people who had survived the rigorous training process to earn a sales position. When I got my first paycheck I bought myself new clothes, the first non-thrifted things I’d owned in years.
you and ni-ki exchanged filthy words to each other at the same time, your voices were sharp and loud enough to turn your other coworkers heads. and even though they had long grown accustomed to your rivalry, they always still look at the two of you in shock.
it's like the office practically lived in fear whenever the two of you were around,
and it got to a point where the HR was already forced to intervene.
you both found yourselves sitting across from a visibly exhausted HR rep after a particularly heated argument during a department-wide meeting.
"l/n, nishimura... this is really out of control." they said while rubbing their temples. "you're sabotaging projects, disrupting meetings, and making the workplace hostile."
"tell her that. she started it." ni-ki pointed out.
you rolled your eyes.
"effective immediately, you're being reassigned to different departments."
and it should've ended there but somehow, despite being on separate teams, you both still found ways to make each other's lives miserable. you found loopholes and more ways to sabotage each other without making it obvious.
ni-ki took every ounce of restraint not to strangle you, and you might've run him over in the parking lot already if it weren't for security cameras around the building.
that late night, the office was already empty. you thought everyone had clocked out except for you.
you were also ready to leave, your bag is already over your shoulder but something was missing.
the important file, you knew you had just printed it.
"looking for this?"
it was the first time you saw ni-ki again. he's standing across the room, holding the folder between his fingers with a serious expression.
your stomach dropped. no fucking way.
"you're so fucking dead," he shook his head. "say goodbye to your career."
"gi-give me that!"
he held it high, stepping back when you tried to take it.
you almost had it but he made it more out of reach.
the folder has the confidential criteria of the next manager promotion, he knew you're a bad person but he didn't know that you'll just fucking cheat.
"yes, i'll give this back," he scoffed and nodded. "right to our manager."
your desperation turned to rage, that paper would literally ruin you. your eyes landed on a thick book sitting on a nearby desk, and you could've just explained and asked nicely to give it back but hell no, so you grabbed the hard thick book and threatened to swing.
ni-ki panicked, he looked around for a weapon of his own and in a split-second decision, he grabbed a cup off the desk and threw it at you...
very cold water splashed all over you and your clothes.
your jaw dropped. "you-"
"i- i didn't-"
then your foot slipped on the wet floor, ni-ki reacted fast, catching your head before you could crash to the ground but the momentum sent him stumbling too.
you groaned, his hands braced against the floor to keep himself from completely crushing you and next thing you knew, you were on the floor, your back against the cold tiles, and ni-ki was right on top of you, with his face buried on your tits.
he slowly moved, his eyes locked onto the view in front of him... your soaked blouse sticking to your skin, making your black bra and cleavage very much visible.
ni-ki cleared his throat before turning his head away from you. he was about to grab the scattered papers but you were quicker, you grabbed onto his collar, pulling him before he could escape.
"let go!"
"not a chance."
he struggled, trying to push you off but you were holding onto him so hard that the buttons of his shirt ripped, exposing his toned chest and abs.
you smirked slightly when you noticed ni-ki stopped pushing you away and his breaths became heavier.
he's still a guy after all.
your fingers roamed around his exposed chest, teasing him just to test something, to see if you could turn the tables,
you could feel his muscles tensed under your touch and ni-ki closed his eyes when you leaned close to give him a soft kiss on the lips.
the sound your lips made as they parted was too sexy so he leaned in to kiss you just to hear it again.
the kiss deepened, it became hurried, hard, aggressive, and messy.
like all his hate had nowhere else to go except right here.
ni-ki groaned against your lips, hands gripping on your waist.
you fingers slid down his chest, feeling the warmth of his skin more beneath the open shirt again and before you knew it, you were helping him remove his shirt off completely, tossing it aside like it meant nothing.
"this is unbelievable." he thought, while his fingers worked hastily, unbuttoning each one from your blouse with urgency, making your heart race even more.
"you're impatient." you whispered, breathless.
"just wanna get this over with." he said before his lips crashed into yours to shut your annoying voice.
you wrapped your arms around his shoulders as he easily lifted you, his other hand sliding down your back to remove your bra.
ni-ki watched the way your boobs bounce and spread free right in front of his eyes.
he lay you down on a nearby couch, removing your skirt and stockings so he can have you naked completely.
you arched on his touch but ni-ki grabbed your wrist and pulled you on top of him with no effort.
and even though you won't openly admit or say it, you knew everyone found your coworker is attractive but damn, he's this big too?
so now it made it harder to stop all this and it's been so long too since you had sex, you already forgot how it felt.
you watched ni-ki slicked himself with his own spit, barely easing what was about to come because just as you suspected, the stretch really hurts.
maybe it just the tip but it was already too much. your nails dug into his shoulders, desperate for something to hold onto.
ni-ki started moaning, his entire body tensing as he felt the way your walls squeezed around him. it's so tight, so impossibly hot too like you were already milking him for everything he had and his cock's not even fully inside yet.
"fuck," he groaned, "you're sucking me in."
yes, ni-ki hates you and even though he wanted you to suffer for everything you did to him, he would never be cruel when it came to sex. his own self-control was also hanging by a thread, yet he still moved carefully, pushing in slow and deep, letting you feel every inch of him.
your head tipped back, moaning too as you adjusted to his size, tightening more around him involuntarily.
ni-ki smiled, probably the first time he did. "there you go," he thought, watching your reaction as he rolled his hips up to meet yours, slow while keeping your legs in it's place.
you couldn't even think now already, the way he filled you up, the way his body pressed against yours, it was overwhelming. your nails raked down his back as he picked up the pace, going deeper, and deeper that you just might pass out.
and when the pain faded into pleasure, your body moved on its own, you rolled your hips until you found a good rhythm, lifting yourself slightly before sinking back down, to take his dick even deeper inside you.
ni-ki threw his head back, eyes squeezed shut as you rode him with no mercy, your warm, soaked walls dragging over his cock at a pace that was too much. it felt like he had no control anymore, he could barely think.
"y/n, slow down-" his voice broke, desperate and strained but you ignored him, rolling your hips even more fast because then maybe you'll get to see him snap.
his whole body was trembling beneath you, muscles tensed as his breath came out in sharp, ragged gasps. he already came once, and it had already been so deep inside you but you just wouldn't stop.
"you wanted to fuck me, right?" you taunted, your thighs were shaking from how much pleasure was coursing through your overstimulated body. "then just take it."
ni-ki buckled up into you too, he's so close again, teetering on the edge, but he refused to give in to your words.
"you- you're one to talk," he rasped, "when you're so fucking soaked."
and he was right, you could feel how drenched you were, could hear how messy and filthy it sounded every time your hips met his.
the pleasure became too much again, unbearable ache building deep inside you it felt like you're going to pee anytime soon, you pulled his hair for support as your rhythm started slowing down.
ni-ki noticed even through his dazed, wrecked state before smirking again. "gonna fall apart on me?"
his hands held your hips down, forcing his cock so deep inside you that your vision blurred, a sob tore from your throat as the pressure snapped, crashing through your body so intense that you couldn't even moan.
your lips parted, body trembling uncontrollably as you came hard on his lap.
you didn't know how but somehow now, he had you on your hands and knees, chest pressing against your back as he drove into you, relentless, unforgiving.
"n-no, fuck!" you sobbed, your arms nearly giving out as he buried himself inside you again and again, ni-ki's lips trailing over your shoulder, hot and ragged.
and your pussy clenched around him again, he started losing it.
his fingers tangled in your hair, pulling it to where your back can press against his chest, his other hand gripping on your throat.
he cupped your tits, you could feel his cock twitch inside you, the thrusts of his hips turned frantic as he chased his own release.
...now the office fell silent but the reality of what just happened started creeping in slowly between the two of you.
you reached for your discarded clothes, your limbs were feeling heavy as you clumsily pulled your skirt back on. ni-ki, still catching his breath, sat up to and started buttoning his ruined shirt though half the buttons were missing, making it completely useless.
then, he held something up between his fingers.
"can i keep these?"
your head turned towards him, eyes widening when you realized he was holding your panties.
you snatched it from his grip. "are you fucking sick in the head?" you hissed, slipping them back on as quickly as possible.
he just laughed and shook his head.
maybe he's sick, after all, he just slept with the worst person he ever knew.
next day you and ni-ki sat across from each other in the office, both unusually quiet. no bickering, no scheming, everything was just... gone.
your coworkers noticed but ignored it, just enjoying while it's happening.
ni-ki exchanged awkward glances with you before quickly looking away.
your lips were still tingling from last night. you swore that your body still felt him, and every time you move in your chair, the memories just keeps on flooding back to your head. "stop... please... oh, my god."
he wasn't doing any better too, he can't stop smiling and running a hand through his hair, his knee were bouncing under the desk every time his eyes landed on you.
then he caught you alone.
you were at the copy room, trying to focus on literally anything else when suddenly, you felt him.
ni-ki pressed up behind you, my dick misses you, is what he wanted to say. "what the fuck are you doing here?"
you blushed, your fingers were curling into the edge of the machine. "p- printing, what else?" you stuttered.
"y/n..." his hands found your waist, squeezing lightly. "you don't miss it?"
you swallowed hard before turning around to face him, "keep dreaming, psycho."
liar.
the asshole ni-ki you know would never say these things and if he did, the old you would've punch his mouth and punching it once once so you'd make sure it'll bleed.
so what happened?
"remember, i still got the files."
you hushed him, "give that shit back," you whispered.
he hummed, tilting his head. "it's at my house. you can come get it."
"just bring it here!"
"like i said," he dragged the word out, stepping closer, "come get it."
you still found yourself standing outside his apartment later that night even though knew it was probably a trap.
ni-ki opened the door, leaning against it with that same smug expression like he knew you'd be here... he's wearing nothing but a loose bathrobe.
you looked down. is he naked underneath? he's this pervert? then you quickly shook your head, forcing yourself to look back up. "where is it?"
he sighed, stepping aside to let you in. "hmm, i put it somewhere over there," he murmured.
you shoved him away before he could try anything, making him chuckle.
so you started searching, bending down to check under his sofa and through the mess on his coffee table.
ni-ki stood behind you, watching. no, he was checking you out.
his tongue slipped to wet his lips, looking at your ass and if he stared any longer, he knew his dick will get hard.
you stood and stomped your foot. "just give it back!"
ni-ki sighed and fixed his hair. "okay, fine!" he said, "i already shredded it. you don't have to worry."
"how do i know you're not lying?"
he didn't answer right away. instead, he leaned back against the armrest of the sofa, legs spreading slightly as he pulled you closer between them.
"because... you fucked me so good, i destroyed every single thing i have that could ruin you."
you swallowed hard, chest rising and falling hard as you look into his eyes then you looked down, and... oh.
his cock twitched beneath the thin fabric of his robe, already straining against it, making his arousal painfully obvious.
the air grew heavier as you both watched him get harder, completely shameless.
your lips parted slightly, heat creeping up your neck, but then you shot him a glare. "can you put some damn clothes on?"
ni-ki smirked, playing with the belt of his robe. "but you came all the way here…" he said. looking at you with his needy eyes.
he didn't finish his words, you just reached forward, curling your fingers around the soft fabric, and dragged it off his shoulders, inch by inch.
your eyes followed every reveal, his sharp collarbones, the defined lines of his shoulders, the smooth, lean muscle of his chest.
his eyes were locked onto your lips, red, and swollen from the night before. that's his doing and it looked so good.
his fingers traced along your jaw, his other hand gripping your waist as he captured your lips in a slow, deep kiss. his body was already hot beneath your touch, tense, waiting for you to take control and do him however you wanted.
you knelt between his spread legs, dragging your hand over his thighs, watching the way his muscles flexed under your touch.
you wrapped your fingers around his cock first, stroking him slow, letting your palm glide smoothly over him. his cock twitched in response with a shaky breath slipping past his lips.
you leaned in and pressed a slow, wet kiss to his tip. ni-ki's grip in your hair tightened but not pulling, just holding, like he needed something to ground him.
and when your lips wrapped around him, he lost all of his sense of control. you took him deeply that your cheeks were hollowing while letting your tongue glide over every inch of his dick.
you pushed even lower, forcing him down your throat, stretching yourself around him until your throat clenched, gagging as you choked when he hit the back of your mouth,
"more, more... more..." ni-ki bit his lip.
and you let yourself struggle, deep throathing his cock that spit started pooling at the corners of your lips, dripping down your chin, and all over your hands.
you heard him swore in Japanese under his breath so you can't help but chuckle, vibration sent another set of pleasure through him before you pulled away, letting his cock slip from your lips with a pop, thin strand of spit still connecting your mouth to his tip.
ni-ki's hips bucked, desperate for your mouth again but you just smirked, dragging your tongue along the side of his cock, slow and teasing, before wrapping your lips around him again... only to pull away the second he's about to cum.
"y/n- stop... that." he warned but you ignored it. instead, you just wrapped your hands around him, stroking him slow and lazy.
"you were close, right?"
"you think you're funny?" he panted.
you started sucking his dick passionately again, enough to make him think you were finally giving in but only to pull away again at the last second, lips barely brushing his tip, making him fucking ache.
his voice cracked, "you're so fucking evil-"
"you sound so desperate right now." you teased, dragging a single finger along his length, feeling how hot and hard he was in your grasp.
"you're not gonna make me cum?" ni-ki asked before pining your hands above your head, he had you completely spread out beneath him,
he's too far gone to even remember why he hated you in the first place.
and he went on you so hard that night, you couldn't even move the next day. you would fall the second you tried to stand, and the soreness between your thighs made you collapse back with a frustrated whimper.
a deep chuckle rumbled beside you, raspy from hours of groaning, moaning, and going crazy.
you glared at him weakly, when you tried again and failed, ni-ki carried you in his arms. you yelped, clinging to his shoulders as he carried you towards the bathroom.
he really did a number on you.
"think we can handle another round here?"
now he had your cheek pressed up against the cool, fogged-up glass of the shower. ni-ki's hands were everywhere, his large palms gripped the soft flesh of your tits, squeezing, pulling, and rolling your nipples between his finger, making your body arch back into him.
you just hoped that it wouldn't leave bruising prints on your skin.
you breathed hard, fogging up the mirror. ni-ki groaned against your shoulder, your fingers kept slipping against the tile for balance, wet slap echoing through the steam-filled bathroom.
"i could fuck you for days..." he declared, his teeth grazing your shoulder before he buried his face in the crook of your neck. His fingers dug into your hips, pressing you harder against the glass.
the water kept shifting from icy cold to blistering hot, and it's so hard to breath, like you were both drowning.
next morning, your body ached in ways you didn't think were possible, ni-ki groaned into the pillow beside you, his arm draped over your waist, refusing to move.
your phone buzzed on the nightstand, probably an alarm or a message about work. you glanced at the time, then at ni-ki, who peeked at you with a smile.
"we're not going in, are we?" he asked, still sleepy.
you sighed, already knowing the answer. "nope, i can't."
he grinned and rolled over, grabbing his phone to call in sick.
"i gotta go home."
he hummed, nuzzling against your neck. "mm. or you could just stay here with me."
his hand slid over your thigh.
"i'm so sleepy," you mumbled, voice muffled against the pillow.
ni-ki's fingers were already trailing down your side so you hissed.
"what?" he murmured against your shoulder, pressing a warm kiss there. "i'm just holding you."
"you're not."
sighed, eyes fluttering shut. "i need sleep."
...but he can fuck you back to sleep.
ni-ki hummed, pretending to think. he rolled on top of you, pinning you beneath his weight.
"just five minutes." he agreed, lips brushing your ear. "if not, i'm waking you up my way."
later, just as you were drifting into actual sleep, something heavy landed on the bed, startling you both awake.
your eyes snapped open, only to be met with a pair of little eyes glaring at you.
a dog.
a small, fluffy thing that was currently growling at you like you had personally offended it.
"what the?" he muttered, scrambling back. "oh, bisco..."
"your dog?"
"that's my child."
you blinked at him. "i didn't know you we-"
"yes," he replied, reaching to ruffle the dog's fur. "i'm a single father."
you squinted at him, then at the dog, who was still very much growling at you.
"oh, come on," you huffed, sitting up. "what's your problem?"
the dog barked in response, stepping protectively over ni-ki's chest. "bisco thought you were hurting me last night."
"excuse me?"
the dog growled again, and you shot ni-ki a glare. "are you gonna stop it?"
ni-ki reached out and pulled you against him, ignoring the dog's outrage.
"bisco," he called out, "you'll get used to her."
bisco did not look convinced. "i think it can sense your evil attitude," he teased, rubbing the dog's ears.
ni-ki looked completely at ease... messy hair, lips still a little swollen from earlier, and worst of all, smiling.
like actually smiling.
you swallowed hard, your face heating up.
was this really the same guy who had spent months making your life a living hell? the same guy who stole your reports, sabotaged your presentations, and threw every possible insult your way?
the same guy you swore you'd never tolerate, let alone you expect to wake up next to?
it really doesn't feel real.
you sat there feeling like your whole world just tilted sideways and yet, here he was, laughing softly as bisco licked his face, as if he wasn't the biggest opp you have.
ni-ki looked at you, "what?"
you scoffed, grabbing the blanket and pulling it over your head. "nothing..."
ni-ki only chuckled, moving closer, "tsk, don't tell me..."
and you kicked him under the blanket, smiling like an idiot.
a/n: i need to write smut better omfg, thank you @greenparties for this request. and if you're a MOA and BEOMGYU is your bias here's another coworker/enemies to lovers fic of mine: coworker || c. beomgyu x reader
masterlist: マスターリストm.list || my biggest opp part ii
Hey there! Just discovered the blog the other day and I must say...you're feeding my current Dr. Abbott Obsession right now. 😍💕
So anyway I read the fic about Abbott and the student paramedic at the event. So that inspired this request...also sorry its descriptive as hell. Feel free to change whatever you want 😊
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Jack has been dating an ER resident and everyone knows it. On the day of PitFest, yn manages to get the day off by switching shifts with another doctor. Robby finds out where shes going and asks her to take care of Jake while shes there. She says she is meeting up with him ayway.
While shes there, the shooting commences and she goes into dr mode rather than fleeing. She goes around helping who she can when Jake yells for her. She runs over and tries to help Leah as best as she can. She sends them off in some strangers truck to PTMC.
Yn gets injured by a few bullets but eventually a paramedic that frequented the hospital gets her in a rig and drives her to the Pitt. Abbott and Robby take care of her but they notice the extreme PTSD and Panic Attack she has when she arrives so they have to sedate her to start helping her.
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Hope this makes sense! And if its too much/graphic I understand! Cant wait to see what you come up with!! 💕 I think Abbott would completely crumble into pieces and his heart would be shattered if this happened. 🥺😭
Futile Devices (jack abbot x resident!reader)
author's note: thank you SO much for the request! i am finally finally finished final year school placement, and going on a few days holidays tomorrow, so this will be my last post for the week anyways. i enjoyed writing the angst here, and i'm not really used to writing serious stuff so this was a nice change too!
pairing: jack abbot x resident!reader
word count: 6.4K (absolute blackout i was writing at the speed of lightning tbh its literally 2am help)
warnings: pittfest fic so big warnings for talk of shootings, blood, er trauma, medical inaccuracies, near death experiences, character death (not reader) heavy angst to comfort, panic attacks and ptsd, sedation, not proofread!!
description: he was four miles away when it happened. charting. completely unaware. and when they brought you in, pale and terrified and coming apart at the seams, he understood for the first time what it meant to be on the wrong side of the emergency.
banner by the lovely @uzmacchiato
You watched this documentary once on the Discovery Channel about how people are supposed to see their lives play out like a movie before they die. You're a doctor, you understand how endorphins and serotonin amongst other supposed hormones, such as DMT, are released when the body is preparing to take it's last breath. You also understand how the body is a complex and and complicated thing, something nobody will ever fully understand. You've seen so many people die in your life. Old family members, people from your town, the many patients you've treated from your internship all the way to your seniors years of residency. Death is nothing new to you, it never really has been. That's why you struggled to understand how you've never become desensitised to it.
Like, what would you see in your final moments? Would you remember things you thought you'd forgotten? The first time you rode a bike, your first school dance, the day your mother put you down from her arms for the last time, your first kiss? You suppose you'll never know until it actually happens.
And it is actually happening. You're in the back of some guy's pickup truck that you've never met. There are two gunshot wounds - one in your hip and one in your shoulder. Your whole body is on fire, and there is so much blood. And amongst all of this, amongst the unbelievable, all you can think about is him.
Jack Abbot, with his tired brown eyes and soft, curly hair, courtesy of your expensive conditioner you keep in his shower. Your eyes are closed, and you're replaying the feeling of his arms around your waist yesterday morning as you made breakfast, giggling as he swears he can crack an egg with one hand. His fingers are electric against the bare skin between your pyjama shorts and the tank you are wearing. They are warm, and calloused, but find almost permanent residency in the soft skin of your stomach, creating imprints that you swear are permanently etched into the pores there. He blows raspberries onto your bare shoulder, playfully biting as you throw your head back in laughter, wiggling to get out of his hold. The moment is not unlike others you've shared with him, nothing inherently special about two idiots in love, but this is the memory you are replaying in your head, moments away from bleeding out all over this poor man's truck.
This morning, after breakfast, you had let Jack sleep as you got ready for PittFest, ready to meet up with the girls from med school you hadn't seen in months. Plus, Jake, Robby's stepson, was at the festival with his new girlfriend Leah, and Robbt had asked Jack to ask you to keep an eye on him. You loved the kid, and had organised to meet them sometime today, too.
You remember leaving him this morning like you always do, carefully, quietly, the particular tenderness of not wanting to wake someone who doesn't sleep enough. You had stood in the doorway of his bedroom for a moment, just looking at him. The grey morning light coming through the curtains he never fully closes. The way he sleeps on his side with one arm extended like he's reaching for something. His hair, which was doing something entirely its own business without your conditioner to answer to, and which you found unreasonably endearing.
You had thought, standing there: I'll tell him tonight.
You had been thinking that for three weeks, actually. That you loved him. It had been living in your chest like a held breath, warm and patient, waiting for the right moment. You kept almost saying it, over dinner, in the car, in the quiet of a Sunday morning exactly like this one and then not, for reasons that felt significant in the moment and embarrassing in retrospect.
Tonight, you had thought, and closed his door softly, and went to meet your life.
PittFest was everything a day off was supposed to be.
Loud and golden and completely, mercifully ordinary. You'd found your friends from med school near the food trucks. The same faces you'd spent six years surviving alongside, older now, laughing the same way, and for a few hours you had existed entirely outside the Pitt's orbit. No charts, no monitors, no board covered in flags. Just music and warm air and the specific joy of a city having a good day.
You'd found Jake and Leah mid-afternoon.
Jake had spotted you first, cutting through the crowd with the particular energy he had, young and bright. He'd grinned when he saw you, the wide uncomplicated grin of someone who hadn't yet had enough bad days to make smiling complicated, and something in your chest had done something warm and protective and entirely involuntary.
"You actually came," he said.
"I said I would." You bumped his shoulder. "Where's Leah?"
She appeared at his elbow like she'd been summoned, small and bright-eyed, with sunburnt shoulders and a yellow sundress and the easy confidence of someone completely comfortable in their own skin. She'd shaken your hand and immediately started telling you her strong opinions about the lineup with the conviction of someone who had done her research, and you had liked her enormously within approximately forty-five seconds.
You spent an hour like that. Moving between stages, arguing good-naturedly about which food truck had the better fries, Jake looking at Leah sideways with that expression he clearly didn't know was visible on his face. You had thought about Jack, his hand in yours in the dark of his car, the weight of what you hadn't said yet, and felt warmly, helplessly fond of the whole stupid human situation. The way people fell into each other. The way it happened whether you meant it to or not.
Leah had laughed at something Jake said, tipping her whole head back, and you'd thought: she's good for him.
You'd thought: Robby is going to like her.
That was twenty minutes before the first shot was fired.
The first shot didn't register as a shot.
That was the thing you hadn't understood before, not intellectually, not really, despite all the training and the simulations and the academic understanding of how humans process unexpected sound. Your brain reached for the nearest reasonable explanation before the unreasonable one could land. A speaker blowing. A car in the street beyond the park. Something ordinary dressed up as something it wasn't.
Then the second, then the screaming started.
It moved through the crowd like a current, not all at once but in a wave, person to person, the understanding spreading faster than sound, and then the crowd was moving and the music cut out mid-beat and the air changed in a way that had nothing to do with temperature.
"Jake." You grabbed his arm. "Down. Now."
"What's—"
"Down."
You pulled him low with you, scanning the crowd with the specific, involuntary focus of someone whose brain had just switched registers entirely. Around you the world had become a different kind of chaos, people running in every direction, some frozen, some on the ground already, the music replaced by a sound that was going to live in a part of your memory you didn't have a name for yet.
Another shot.
Close enough that you felt it in your chest before you heard it.
"Jake." Your voice came from somewhere trained and steady that had nothing to do with how your heart was hammering. "Stay low. Where's Leah—"
"I'm—" she started.
And then she made a sound.
Small. Confused. Almost questioning, like her body had registered something her brain hadn't caught up to yet.
You turned. The blood was already spreading through the yellow fabric of her sundress, dark and fast and wrong in the particular terrible way that blood is wrong when it's somewhere it shouldn't be. She was looking down at herself with an expression of complete bewilderment, one hand hovering over the wound without quite touching it, like she was afraid to confirm what she was seeing.
"Leah." You were on your knees before you'd made a conscious decision to move. "Hey — look at me — look at my face—"
"She—" Jake's voice had lost every layer of the easy confidence it usually carried. He sounded, suddenly, very young. "She got hit—"
"I know." You pressed your hands to the wound, hard, feeling the warmth of it against your palms. "I've got her. Jake, Jake, look at me." You held his eyes until you were certain he was actually inside the moment with you rather than somewhere ahead of it in the dark. "I need you to find a vehicle. A car, a truck, anything with a driver. We have to get her to the Pitt right now. Can you do that?"
"I'm not leaving—"
"You are not leaving her." Every word deliberate. "You are saving her. There is a difference, and I need you to understand that right now."
Something landed in his eyes. A steadiness that hadn't been there a second ago, borrowed from somewhere, from you, maybe, from the absolute necessity of the moment.
He nodded and you stayed with Leah.
"Hey," you said, softly, the chaos still moving around you like weather around something fixed. "I've got you. You're going to be okay. Keep looking at me."
"It hurts," she said, small and honest.
"I know. I know it does. You're doing so well." You kept the pressure steady, your hands knowing what to do even while the rest of you was processing, the crowd, the sound, the ongoing crack of shots somewhere to the left of you, the calculation of distance and trajectory running underneath everything like code. "Tell me something. Tell me anything. What's your favourite song?"
Her voice was thin and a little slurred at the edges but she told you, and you listened to every word, and you kept your hands exactly where they were and did not think about what you could feel beneath them.
Jake came back with a truck and a stranger with frightened eyes who turned out to be exactly what you needed him to be. Between the three of you you got Leah into the bed of it, and you gripped Jake's arm once, hard, and made him look at you.
"Hold pressure. Right here, exactly where my hands are. Don't move them." You waited until you were sure he had it. "Tell them entry wound, left flank, no exit, significant blood loss. Can you say that back to me?"
"Entry wound, left flank, no exit—"
"Significant blood loss."
His jaw was tight. His eyes were wet. "Significant blood loss." A beat. "Come with us—"
"I'll be right behind you," you said, which was the closest to the truth you could get.
The truck pulled away, and against your better judgment, you turned back to the crowd.
Because there were people down. Because you could see them from where you were standing, scattered across the grass between the stages, some moving, some not. Because the part of you that had decided a long time ago what you were for, what all of it was for, the years and the debt and the sleep deprivation and the fluorescent lights and the learning to hold terrible things in your hands without dropping them, that part of you would not let you walk away.
You didn't feel the first bullet.
That was the thing. The adrenaline ate it before it could reach you, the body in crisis mode simply declining to process the information, and there was a sharp impact and a lurching stumble and you caught yourself and thought, distantly, that's odd, and kept moving.
You made it to a woman on the ground near the main stage. Mid-thirties, dressed for summer, conscious and terrified. Leg wound, not arterial. You got her belt off and had it around her thigh before she'd finished registering who you were.
"I'm a doctor," you said. "You're going to be okay. Is there anyone with you?"
There was. A man, white-faced, who appeared from behind an overturned table and whom you handed her to with instructions delivered fast and clear, and then you were moving again, scanning, calculating, the ground uneven under your feet—
The second bullet you felt.
It came from nowhere and everywhere at once, the way they apparently do, and it took you sideways and down hard, your knees hitting the grass, your hand going to your hip instinctively. When you pulled it away it was dark and your side was on fire and the world had acquired a new tilt, a new relationship to vertical, that you were going to need to negotiate carefully.
Okay, you thought, with the strange detached clarity of a brain that has received information it is not yet ready to feel. Okay.
You pressed your hand back to your hip and tried to stand. You made it approximately as far as your knees before the paramedic found you.
You remember leaving him this morning. That's what you're thinking about, lying in the bed of a stranger's truck that some other stranger drove to the Pitt because the paramedic's rig was already full and there wasn't time to wait and someone just needed to get you there. The sky above you is very blue and very large and the edges of it are graying in a way you recognize clinically and would rather not.
You had thought, standing in his doorway this morning: I'll tell him tonight. Three weeks of almost-saying-it burned away in an afternoon.
I should have just said it, you think, and the thought is very clear and very simple and completely without the complicated edges it's always had before. What was I waiting for.
The truck is slowing. Through the fog of pain and blood loss and the grey that keeps threatening at the edges of everything, you register sounds, voices, the familiar cadence of the ambulance bay, footsteps moving fast. The specific smell of the Pitt reaching you even out here, antiseptic and metal and the particular aliveness of a place that runs on crisis.
You're here, something in you says. You made it here. You hold onto that.
A face appears above you, a paramedic who frequents the Pitt, whose name you have been meaning to learn for six months and are now deciding you will learn the moment you are able to form a coherent sentence.
"Hey," he says, focused and careful. "You're at the emergency room of the PTMC. Can you tell me your name?"
"Y/N," you say. Smaller than you mean to.
"Good. Stay with me."
And then it is all movement - gurney, ceiling, lights, voices overlapping - and the bay and the brightness of inside and someone saying two GSWs, hip and shoulder, significant blood loss, and the particular terrible fluorescence of a place you have spent years of your life in looking entirely different from this angle, from this side of it.
And then there are hands on your face. And you know those hands. You would know those hands anywhere, the particular weight of them, the callouses in the places they always are, the way they hold you like something that matters. Your eyes find his, and for one single suspended second, something in you exhales.
All of it, all at once. The lights, too bright, strobing in your peripheral vision the way the sun had strobed through the trees at the festival when people started running. The sounds. Monitors, voices, the clatter of equipment, bleeding into the sounds from before, the crack and the screaming and Leah's small confused noise and the way the yellow of her dress had turned dark so fast, so impossibly fast.
"Hey." Jack's voice. "You're okay. You're in the Pitt. Look at me."
But you are also at PittFest. You are in both places at once, your brain refusing to sort them into before and after, and the part of you that understands clinically what is happening, the acute stress response, the nervous system overwhelmed past its threshold, the intrusive re-experiencing of trauma, that part is very small and very far away and completely unable to reach the part that is drowning.
"I need you to—" you start, and your voice isn't yours. "There are people — there are still people out there — Jake, I sent him — did he — did they get Leah—"
"Leah's here," Jack says, steady. "She's here. We've got her."
"The blood," Your hands come up, and you look at them, and they are clean, someone has cleaned them, but you can still feel it. Warm and dark and so much of it soaking through the yellow cotton. "There was so much, Icouldn't — my hands were right there and I couldn't—"
"Y/N." Firmer now. "Look at my face. Right here."
You try. You are trying. But the bay keeps doing the thing, the lights keep strobing into something else, and there is a sound somewhere to your left , a door, just a door, that cracks through the air like a shot and your whole body responds before your brain can intercept it, a violent flinch that wrenches at your hip wound and tears a cry out of you and then you can't breathe, you genuinely cannot breathe, your chest locking up around the attempt.
"She's spiralling." Robby's voice, from somewhere close, low and clinical. "Her pressure's already compromised, if she keeps-"
"I know," Jack says.
"Jack."
"I know, Robby."
Your hands have found his scrubs and you are holding on with everything you have, which is not much, your grip already weaker than it should be, but you can't bare the thought of letting go.
"They had guns," you hear yourself say, and your voice sounds like it's coming from very far away and from right inside your own skull at the same time. "They just,everyone was, it was supposed to be a good day, it was - I had a day off, Jack, I was just -" The breathing is getting worse, tightening into something that isn't functional, your vision blurring at the edges. "I keep seeing her, I keep, Leah, she looked at me and I—"
"Hey." He cups your face in both hands, tilts you toward him. Close enough that he is the only thing in your field of vision. "I need you to hear me. You are in the Pitt. You are safe. I am right here."
"I know," you gasp. "I know, I know, I — I can't — I can't make it stop—"
And that is the thing that breaks it open on his face.
Not the blood, not the wounds, not even your hands on his scrubs, it's that. I can't make it stop. Because you are someone who can always make things stop, who has always been able to reach inside the chaos and find the still point of it, and hearing that gone from your voice does something to his expression that he cannot fully contain, something that moves beneath the professional surface like weather under ice.
Robby steps up beside him.
His voice is quiet, meant for Jack. "We can't assess her properly. She's going to hurt herself. Her pressure is dropping and she won't stay still and if she keeps spiralling"
"I heard you." Jack doesn't look away from you.
"We need to make the call."
You see it happen on his face, the thing he has to do to get there, the working through it, the setting aside of every part of this that is not clinical. The doctor stepping forward over everything else. It costs him. You can see that it costs him.
He looks back at you.
"Okay," he says softly. Only to you. "Okay. I need you to listen to me now. We're going to help you. We're going to take care of everything. I just need you to let us do that."
"Don't—" Your grip spasms on his scrubs. "Don't go—"
"I'm not going anywhere," he says, and his voice is so certain and so careful and so precisely calibrated to be everything you need it to be right now that it almost undoes you completely. "I will be right here. I promise."
You look at him.
Even through all of it, the lights and the noise and the bay and the festival and Leah's yellow dress, you look at him and you find him there, steady and present and entirely yours, and something in you trusts that even now.
You feel the cold of the injection at your arm.
"Stay," you say, and you mean it about a hundred different things.
"I know," he says. "I've got you."
The sedation comes like the tide. Slow at first, then inevitable, pulling at the edges of everything. Your grip on his scrubs loosens in increments, your breathing beginning to slow despite itself, the terrible locked quality of your chest gradually releasing.
The last thing you see is his face. The last thing you feel is his hand, sliding under yours as your fingers uncurl from his scrubs, holding on from underneath.
Across the bay, when the team moves in properly and the work begins in earnest, Robby stands back and watches Jack work.
He has worked alongside Jack Abbott for long enough to know the texture of him, the particular steadiness, the controlled efficiency, the way he moves through a trauma like he was made for exactly this, because in a lot of ways he was. He has never seen Jack's hands shake.
They are not shaking now.
But there is something different in the set of his jaw, something in the way his eyes go to your face between every step of the assessment, a split second, just a check, the way they do across a busy floor when he thinks nobody's watching. Robby has watched him do it for months. Has clocked it, filed it away, said nothing.
He says nothing now either.
He just watches Jack Abbott take meticulous, flawless care of the woman he loves, and understands that this is the only thing available to him, and lets him have it.
The room, when it finally settles, is quiet the way the Pitt rarely is. This is the after-quiet. The exhale. The particular stillness that descends when the worst of the work is done and the machines have taken over the reporting and there is nothing left to do but wait and be present an let the adrenaline metabolise into whatever it becomes when it finished with you.
Your vitals are stable. Jack has checked them four times in the last twenty minutes. Robby has stopped mentioning it. The team has cleared out by degrees. The nurses, the techs, the organised chaos of the bay dismantling itself back into background noise, until it is just the two of them, and you, and the steady rhythm of the monitors doing their patient, indifferent work.
Jack is in the chair beside your bed. He had pulled it close, closer than was strictly necessary, closer than he might have if there were more people in the room, and he is sitting forward with his elbows on his knees and your hand held in both of his. Not loosely. He is not a man who does things loosely, and whatever version of holding-your-hand this is, it is the most deliberate thing in the room.
Robby stands at the counter with his arms folded, his eyes on the monitor, his mind somewhere adjacent to the room. He has the look he gets when he is processing something he hasn't found the shape of yet.
"She said she was meeting her friends," Robby says, quietly. Not an accusation. Not even directed at anyone, really. Just a thing finding its way out. "I saw her in the lobby this morning. She had glitter on her face." He pauses. "I asked her to keep an eye on Jake."
"She said she was already planning to meet them." Robby's jaw tightens. "She promised she'd keep him out of trouble."
"She did," Jack says. His voice is even. It costs him to keep it even, Robby can hear that, the slight pressure of it, the controlled quality of a man keeping something at arm's length that keeps trying to get closer. "She got him out. She got Leah on that truck and told him exactly what to tell us."
Robby nods slowly. He had already known this, had pieced it together from Jake's fractured account in the waiting room, the boy's hands still shaking, still holding the shape of the pressure you'd placed them in, but hearing it said aloud lands differently.
"And then she went back," Robby says.
"Yeah." A beat. "She went back."
"Leah," Jack says, after a moment. Just the name. Just the weight of it.
Robby doesn't answer immediately. He doesn't need to. Jack closes his eyes briefly. Opens them. Looks at you, at the slow rise and fall of your chest, at the IV line, at the ghost of glitter that is somehow, impossibly, still catching the light on your cheekbone, and something in his expression does something that Robby looks away from, because it is private, because it belongs to Jack and to you and to nobody else.
"She said something," Jack says. "When they brought her in. Before the sedation."
"She said she should have told me something." His voice is careful and low and not entirely steady. "She said she'd been going to say it tonight."
Robby looks at him. Jack is looking at you. His expression is the most open Robby has seen it in years, maybe ever, the professional architecture of it set entirely aside, and what's underneath is something large and worn and very, very tired.
"She told me she loved me," Jack says.
The words sit in the room and Robby is quiet for a long moment.
"What did you say?" he asks, carefully.
"I said I knew." Jack exhales, slow and uneven. "Because she was going into sedation and she was terrified and it wasn't—" He stops. "It wasn't the moment for—"
"Jack."
"It wasn't the right moment."
"Jack." Robby's voice is gentle. "There isn't a right moment. There's just the one you have."
Jack looks at him and Robby holds his gaze, steadily. Needs him to understand the weight of it.
"She came back," Robby says simply. "She's here. You have the moment."
Jack looks back at you and his hand tightens around yours.
"Yeah," he says, quietly. "I know."
It is another hour before the room fully empties.
Robby goes to find Jake, because someone has to and because it should be him. The nurses come and go in the efficient, unobtrusive way they always do. Dana appears at one point, just briefly, just long enough to stand in the doorway and look at Jack in the chair beside you and say nothing, because Dana Evans has never needed words to say the things that matter, and then she's gone.
Jack doesn't move.
He had been alone in rooms with bad things before. Had sat with patients through the dark hours, had kept vigil in the particular way that the job sometimes asked of you, had learned long ago how to be present in a room where the outcome was still uncertain without letting the uncertainty swallow him.
This is not the same. This is not the same at all, and he is not going to pretend it is, not in here, not alone. He can feel it moving through him in the way that things do when you've been holding them at professional distance and the distance finally collapses, the cold of the last several hours, the image of you on that gurney, the sound of your voice when you said I can't make it stop, the way your hands had slowly lost their grip on his scrubs as the sedation took hold.
He had been half asleep when you left, aware of you moving through the room, the quiet deliberateness of it, the specific care of someone not wanting to wake you. He had heard the soft close of his bedroom door and thought, in that half-conscious way, that he should have said something. Should have called you back.
He doesn't know what. He just knew, even then, that there was something he hadn't said.
He looks at your face, still and peaceful in the medicated quiet, and thinks about three weeks of almost-saying-it. He thinks about the car, and the dinner table, and Sunday mornings, and all the careful timing he'd applied to something that apparently didn't want to be timed.
There isn't a right moment, Robby had said. There's just the one you have.
Jack Abbott has spent a significant portion of his life being very good at waiting for the right moment, at holding things carefully until the conditions were appropriate. It is, in some ways, one of his defining qualities. He knows this about himself.
He is fairly sure, sitting here, that it is also one of his worst habits.
"You weren't supposed to be there," he says, quietly, to the room, to you, to the thing that has been sitting in his chest since Robby said your name this afternoon. "You were supposed to have a day off. You were supposed to be," He stops. "You were supposed to be fine."
"And you went back." His voice drops further, the even quality of it fraying at the edges now that there's no one here to hold it together for. "After you got them out. You went back because that's- because you couldn't not. Because that's who you are." He exhales. "I know that. I know exactly who you are."
His thumb keeps moving across your knuckles.
"I should have said it first," he says. "That's - I want you to know that. When you wake up. I should have said it first and I didn't, because I was-" A pause. Something almost like a breath of a laugh, humourless and soft. "I was waiting for the right moment. Which is apparently something we have in common.".
"I love you," he says.
"I have for a while. And I should have told you before you had to go and get yourself shot to make me say it out loud."
He looks at your face. At the rise and fall of your chest. At the glitter, still there, impossibly, catching the low light.
"So when you wake up," he says, "we're going to have that conversation. The real one. Without the sedation and the trauma bay." He pauses. "I'm going to need you to wake up for that."
As if in answer, the monitor keeps its steady, faithful rhythm.
You wake up by degrees.
First the sounds, the monitors, the low hum of the Pitt beyond the door, the particular quality of air that means hospital, means here specifically, a smell you have been breathing long enough that it lives somewhere inside you.
Then the light, dim, filtered, the room dark in the way it gets in the evening when someone has thought to turn the overheads down.
Then the weight of your body, the slow insistent reminder of it, the dull ache that tells you before you're fully conscious that something happened and your body is in the process of recounting it.
Your hand is warm. That's the first specific thing. The particular warmth of another hand around yours, and the weight of it, and before you've opened your eyes you already know.
You surface slowly, and he is the first thing you see.
Still in the chair. Still in his scrubs. Still holding your hand in both of his, exactly as he had been, you don't know how long ago, but long enough that the exhaustion has settled differently on his face. Deeper. More honest. The kind that sets in after the adrenaline has finally finished and left everything it was holding up to fend for itself.
He is watching you.
"Hey," you manage.
His hands tighten around yours.
"Hey," he says.
You take a slow inventory of yourself, the ache in your hip, the sharper complaint from your shoulder, the IV, the monitor, the dim familiar room. You are in the Pitt. You are in one piece, roughly. You are looking at Jack Abbott, who has clearly not moved in hours and who looks like he has absolutely no intention of pretending otherwise.
"Leah," you say.
The pause is very small. But you know him.
"Jack."
"She didn't make it," he says, quietly. Straight, because that is how he does it, because he respects you too much to soften it into something easier to swallow. "They did everything they could. And it was not anything you did or didn't do. I need you to hear that clearly."
You close your eyes. The grief comes immediately, the way it does when you've been keeping something at bay without realising it, real and large and without any clean edges. You think about her wide smile and her sunburnt shoulders and her strong opinions about the lineup and the way she'd looked at Jake like he was something she'd found and intended to keep. You think about her telling you her favourite song in a thin, slurring voice while the world fell apart around you both.
"Jake's okay," Jack says, reading you without you having to say it. "He's with Robby. He's been asking about you every twenty minutes, apparently."
"That sounds like him," you say, quietly.
"It does."
You stay with the grief for a moment, let it be the size it actually is, and Jack stays with you in it. Doesn't try to move you through it at a different pace. Doesn't offer the comfortable half-truths people reach for around loss. Just sits there, your hand in his, present and steady and entirely real.
After a while you open your eyes again. He is still watching you with that expression, open and worn, the professional architecture of it completely set aside, and what's underneath is something you have been learning the shape of for months and are still not entirely finished with.
"You stayed," you say.
"Yes."
"The whole time."
"Yes."
"Jack, you look terrible."
Something shifts at the corner of his mouth. "Thank you."
"I'm serious. When did you last eat something?"
"I'm fine."
"That's not what I asked."
"Baby."
"I'm the one with two bullet wounds and I'm worried about your blood sugar, which I think says something about the state of you—"
"You were shot," he says, and the almost-lightness is gone from his voice now, just the thing underneath it, the real one, arriving without warning the way it sometimes does with him. "Twice. You were in the back of a stranger's truck and I was-" He stops. Jaw tight. "I was four miles away charting."
"You didn't know-"
"I know I didn't know." His thumb moves across your knuckles, the slow deliberate motion of it. "That doesn't make it a smaller thing."
You look at him.
"I meant what I said," you say, quietly. "Before. When they brought me in." You pause. "I know it was- the timing was less than ideal-"
"You were losing consciousness in a trauma bay."
"I said less than ideal, not catastrophic."
"Those are not very far apart."
"Jack."
He looks at you.
"I meant it," you say, simply.
"I know you did," he says. And then, before you can say anything else- "I should have said it first. I've been-" He pauses, in the way he pauses when he's choosing something carefully. "I was waiting for the right moment."
You stare at him.
"You," you say. "You were waiting for the right moment."
"Yes."
"How long?"
A beat. The monitor keeps its rhythm. Something in his expression does the almost-sheepish thing it very occasionally does, the thing you have only ever seen about four times and which you privately treasure.
"A while," he says.
"Jack Abbott." You let that sit for a second. "We have driven home together approximately sixty times."
"I'm aware."
"We have had dinner together approximately forty times."
"Your point?"
"My point is that you have had roughly one hundred opportunities-"
"The number isn't relevant-"
"It feels relevant-"
"I was being careful," he says, with great dignity, and you almost laugh, almost, except that your shoulder makes its feelings about that very clear so you settle for pressing your lips together hard.
"Careful," you repeat.
"Yes."
"Meanwhile I was also being careful. For three weeks."
"I'm aware of that now."
"So we were both just-"
"Being idiots," he says, evenly. "Yes. Apparently."
You look at him. He looks at you. The room is quiet around you and his hand is warm around yours and he is the most infuriating, careful, wonderful person you have ever met, and you are fairly sure your face is doing something completely embarrassing about that.
"I love you," he says, then. No preamble. No careful timing. Just plainly, simply, with the particular certainty of a man who has thought something through completely and decided on it and will not be moved. "I have for a while. And I would very much prefer not to wait for the next crisis to say it again."
"That's the most romantic thing you've ever said to me," you tell him.
"Don't push it."
"I mean it."
"I know you do." His mouth does its thing- small and tucked away and entirely his. "I love you," he says again, like he's trying it at a normal volume, in a normal room, under normal circumstances. Like he's deciding he likes it there.
You tighten your fingers around his.
"I love you too," you say. "I loved you before I got shot, for the record. In case that wasn't clear."
"It was not entirely clear given the context, no."
"Well. Consider it clarified."
"Noted."
He reaches up with his free hand and very carefully, very gently, tucks a piece of hair back from your face. His thumb stays at your temple for a moment, just resting there, and he looks at you with that open expression, the real one, and there is nothing managed about it at all.
"Get some rest," he says, quietly.
"Are you going to stay?"
He looks at you like this is a genuinely strange question.
"Yes," he says.
"You don't have to-"
"Y/N."
"I'm just saying-"
"Go to sleep, sweetheart" he says, and there is something so dry and so fond and so completely him in it that you decide to stop arguing, which is not something you do easily and which he will absolutely not comment on tonight because he has enough self-preservation instinct for that much at least.
You close your eyes. His hand stays around yours, and the monitor keeps its rhythm.
And Jack Abbott, who has not moved in hours and has absolutely no intention of doing so, settles back in his chair and stays exactly where he is.
so bloodymary fanfic idea but it probably has been done a hundred times already lol but whatever
so it starts with your typical some Eridians on a space mission somehow find Simon and rescue him, and then Rocky is very excited bc new human for grace good good good
but then Rocky thinks like wait, he could be Grace's mate, they are both human ofc they can be mates so he makes his mission to make Simon presentable enough for Grace
and so he doesn't tell Grace about Simon and him and the eridians take care of him like cleaning him up, healing all that stuff
eventually Simon wakes up and at first freaks out bc first he was dying and then he's not and now a bunch of alien rocks are all over him you know the usual it takes him a while to get used to it but eventually is like ykw at least i'm alive and they are not hurting me and are feedind me wahtever i'm out of the submarine
rocky somehow manage to have grace give him the translator so he can comunicate with simon and one day they are talking and simon says something like
"i don't understand why are you taking so much care of me"
and rocky of course just says "so you can meet grace and be grace mate, you must be grace's partner yes yes yes"
but doesn't explains that grace is another human so simon is like what.the.fuck they are going to make marry a rock oh god
but eventually he's like "ok fuck whatever i'll marry the rock who cares as long as they keep me here"
so FINALLY time comes simon looks good enough for rocky and so they go meet grace and all the time simon is like "wow where did all this ocean come from tf this is actually pretty nice and what is that a house why would this guys need a house this is weird" and then rocky calls grace and the door opens and simon is fully expecting to see another spider rock who's going to be his spouse now and boom it's another human but not just that is the most beautiful blonde blue eyed man he's ever seen and it's completely at loss for words and rocky is just explaining to grace that "this is simon, simon new human for grace, simon grace new partner" and grace only reaction is like "ROCKY WHAT THE HELL"
anyways if somebody know a fic that is similar uuh pls give me a link
also sorry if this is like very horribly written and makes no sense i really suck at writting
edit: adding a little thing i just though of
maybe when Rocky takes Simon to meet Grace he makes him wear some of the eridian "special clothing" for celebration lol yknow this
LIKE maybe Simon wear like a collar and some of the spiky things in his arm idk lolol and all the time he's just like why why do i have to wear this what is this and rocky is just "trust trust simon look elegant simon look good"
hiya, not sure if you are taking request but I was reading your Maekar fics and they are so good! Was wondering if you might be able to write something about his wife taking up a separate bed from him because her moon bloods come for the first time since they wed and she assumes he doesn’t want to see her or be intimate during that time.
Going out on a limb here but I don’t imagine a bit of blood is enough to make the anvil turn away!
Thank you, anon! I really liked this idea, and Maekar doesn't strike me as someone to be bothered by a monthly cycle either. Hope you enjoy!
Maekar Targaryen x Tyrell!reader
WC: 955
Intended as a standalone, but can be viewed as a companion piece to this story.
TW: Hurt/comfort, blood, period sex, pain/cramps, cuddling, apparently menstrual cloths were called "clouts", no use of Y/n, no physical description of reader given
"Is there a reason you are hiding from me?" Maekar asked gruffly as he entered through the doors to your chambers, cloak billowing behind him.
You glanced up at him, snuggled up on the bench with warm stones wrapped in a sturdy cloth pressed against your belly to help soothe the cramps.
"I mean no offense, my good husband," you murmured.
"What ails you?" he demanded, and you ducked your head. A soft smile tugged on your lips. This was his nature, and it no longer troubled you. Not since the night he had protected you from two nefarious lords who wished to take advantage of you during the wedding feast. You had grown to love it. You had grown to love him.
"'Tis nothing, truly."
"Then it should be easy to explain."
You sighed. "My moonblood arrived. I did not…my mother said women should confine themselves from their husbands when it comes."
"I've never heard such fucking nonsense," he huffed.
"It does not…perturb you?" you asked.
"Why in the Seven Hells would a bit of blood bother me?"
"It is more than just a bit of blood at times. There are moments I feel rather like a stuck pig," you admitted.
Maekar gave you an incredulous look before laughing and sitting next to you on the bench. "I am no stranger to it. You needn't hide away."
Your cheeks turned warm. "I suppose that is naivety shining through once more."
He shook his head, patting your knee. "Your mother was raised with more old-fashioned beliefs; she taught you what she knew. 'Tis not your fault, but I enjoy you warming my bed. I hope you will sleep beside me tonight."
"I would like that. I also feared you might be disappointed," you admitted softly, gazing down at your fingers.
"That your moonblood arrived?" He gave you a curious look before the realization dawned on him. "Ah. There is no hurry. I do not lack for children."
This time, he could not ignore the look on your face, realizing his reply came out harsher than intended. He had only meant to lift your spirits and assure you that you were more than a broodmare to him. He cleared his throat and shifted closer to you, pulling you into his arms and guiding your head against his chest. "What I mean…the time will come. Usually, when it is least expected, we will have many opportunities to try."
"Thank you, husband," you whispered. One large hand settled on the small of your back.
"Are you in much pain, my little flower?"
"Nothing I cannot manage, the heat helps," you whispered, snuggling in close to you. "You feel rather nice."
"I suppose I will be attached to this bench the rest of the day," he teased.
"Your good lady wife demands it," you pouted.
"Ah, a man cannot refuse his wife's demands."
He called out for the handmaidens to bring in refreshments later. The cream cakes melted against your tongue as you consumed four and washed them down with a cinnamon tea. Maekar stoked the fire, pushing out a few coals and waiting for them to cool a bit before replenishing your heating cloth.
"I have to survey the lands this afternoon, but tonight I will find you in our bed, yes?"
"Yes, husband," you smiled, and his hand wrapped around your chin, pressing a deep kiss to your mouth.
After supper with the children, you climbed into the bed you shared with him with a clean cloth pressed between your thighs. He tucked you against him, spooning you from behind while his hand rubbed soothing circles over your stomach.
"Are you still in pain?"
"A little," you admitted.
"Might I try to alleviate it for you?" he whispered, inching your shift up around your waist.
"I…are you certain? It will not disgust you?"
"Do you believe the Anvil pales at blood? Do you think a dragon runs from a bit of red?" The swell of his cock pressed against your bare arse.
You nibbled on your lower lip. "No, I am foolish to think so."
He gently swatted your backside, making you yelp. "Enough disparaging yourself, little flower."
"Apologies. Please, I wish for you to do this." A sudden heat lapped in your lower belly. His tenderness earlier had stirred such desire in you.
He removed the tightly folded cloth from between your thighs before slowly slipping his cock into you from behind, keeping you tucked against him. It was gentle, and you took him with ease. He stayed like that for a while before slowly rolling his hips. It created a pleasant pressure building inside you. His hand remained on your stomach, feeling his cock swell inside you, the soft bulge it created.
"Oh," you whimpered, trembling as your toes curved over his calf tucked between your legs.
"Shhh, just feel it and let go when you are ready. Do not force it." His voice was like velvet in your ears, sending shivers through your body while he continued the slow, deep thrusts.
Your lashes fluttered, your fingers wrapping tightly around his wrist from the hand still pressed agaisnt your belly. The pressure snapped like a tight band, sending you toppling into a sweet release. The cramps subsided, and all you felt was euphoria as the high swam through your body. The tenderness continued as he gently wiped between your legs with the damp cloth and tucked the clout back into place before fixing your nightgown. Your moonblood clung to his cock like a scarlet sheath, reminding you of your wedding night when he took your maidenhead.
"Sleep, my little flower," he whispered in your ear, holding you tightly in his arms.
