black people, please take care of yourselves. please take care of your health. please take care of your mind. please take care of your spirit.
i understand if your soul is not at peace. i understand if you are exhausted. just, please take care of yourselves in these dark, hateful times and surround yourself with people who understand why.
just thinkin about younger!eren who just doesn’t get the hint that you’re not that into him. he’s a good yarning boy that you use to your advantage. need coffee for you office job? eren’s got it! need groceries delivered to your house? eren immediately does it! need a pretty long curved dick to ride? call eren! “p-please” he whimpered, brown hair messy all over your pillow. his large hands palmed your tits, tears forming at his waterline from how tight you were. rolling your eyes, you hands pressed onto his chest, your ass boncing against him, the claps and your wetness loud.
“fuckkk” eren whined, his eyes rolled to the back of his head, thumbs rubbing over your brown pebble. his cock jerked; pre cum oozing into your tight walls. making you moan cleaning around him. “such a good boy papa” you cooed moving down to kiss his neck. your bounces slowed, your hips rotated pushing him deeper making you both moan together. you rose back up, your hand wrapping around his neck, eyes connecting while you continued to rotate your hips spelling out your name on his cock. your pussy pulsated, a shiver crawling up your spine. you threw your head back letting out a long moan, that eren reward with a slap to your ass. “love you” he whispered still looking up at you. he began to take control, bringing your body to him, your nipples touching along with your foreheads.
eren planted his feet into your bed, spreading your cheeks and fucking up into you hard. “love you” he repeated over and over. his balls slapped against your skin, clit rubbing against pelvis. you breathed together, your ears ringing with his words of “i love you” echoing out in your brain. you squeezed him tight creaming so hard that you lost your breath. your hands gripping the pillow tight a silent scream that left nothing but a aching throat and shaking body. “that’s it-shit” eren muttered, his hips stilling as he let every drop filled you with the intentions of keeping your forever. no matter how much you claimed to hate the younger boy, you would never get rid of him.
The deep resonant boom of wave against rock seemed to swallow the sounds of the mourners' wails whole. From the hidden cove, the funeral seemed to unfold in an eerie silence. Mouths open in anguish, shoulders shook with silent sobs, figures covered in heavy black silks clutching at one another, yet no sound of mourning had reached beyond the breakers. The ocean had devoured it all.
It had taken the old king's body, too, pulling the shrouded coffin out to sea on a small black-sailed boat that now bobbed on the horizon. The same tide that claimed shipwrecks had swallowed both the man and the raw noise of his passing
You do not know what a king was, precisely. You had heard the word carried on boats, spoken with a particular weight that other words did not carry. You understood, watching the shore, that whatever had been inside that black sailboat had been significant, and now that it was gone, the people of the shore did not know what to steer by. That much you understood without needing the words for it
The rites on land concluded in a way that was foreign to you. One by one, mourners stepped forward to cast offerings into the water: white flowers, folded scraps of paper, tiny objects that flashed silver beneath the sun before disappearing beneath the tide. You did not know if these were a sacrifice, a bargain, or perhaps they feared sending off their dead empty-handed. There were no drifting currents to carry the essence away, no shimmering clouds of plankton or echoing songs to bind the living to what was lost.
You watched for a time, trying to discern its logic, when slowly, the robed figures began to peel away, all drifting back up the shore toward the buildings beyond the sand. They leaned on each other as they went, some still leaking from the eyes, some gone quiet and hollow. They carried their grief back up the beach with them, and the shore swallowed their footprints as soon as they were made.
There was one figure left.
He was young, broad-shouldered, and solid in his frame in the way of someone who had grown into their body all at once. His pink hair caught what little light the morning offered and held it strangely, lighter than those that once were around him, lighter than the sky.
He stood at the very edge of the platform where the boat had been, boots sunk into the wet sand, as he watched the horizon take what was lost. He sat and stared at the receding boat with an expression that was hard to decipher; he did not leak from his eyes, yet grief was carved into the set of his jaw, a hollow ache behind his eyes that went far beyond the polished sorrow of the crowd. It was raw and unguarded, as if the sea would offer answers that the land withheld.
His mouth moved once, a single word, but the waves took it before it could reach you. His throat moved with it, his hands at his sides, closed briefly then opened again.
Then he lowered himself to sit at the platform's edge, legs hanging over the water, and he bent forward with his elbows on his knees and looked down at the surface below him. At the tide that had already moved on, at the water that had taken everything without apology.
Kᴇʜʟᴀɴɪ pays homage to 𝔸𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕪𝕒𝕙 & 𝑱𝒂𝒏𝒆𝒕 𝑱𝒂𝒄𝒌𝒔𝒐𝒏 in her 'Out the Window' Music Video
Kehlani: I understand frustration with nostalgia because we want to protect what we have always loved…but this was a random opportunity to pay some homage to the GENRE. To a multitude of GREATS. To those who strutted through the light tunnel, danced in a spaceship and spun in the rain before me. I’m a fan of ingredients. I’m a child of RNB.
You’ve known each other since diapers—best friends for as long as either of you can remember. But now?
The signs are starting to show. They're there, light and sweet, innocent like an angel and clear as a crystal ball, but did either of you step up to say anything about it? No, not really.
If anything y'all just let it fester and fester and fester....until one day, San stopped pretending.
It started with unwavering eye contact, steady and unbothered, eyes bright with admiration he didn't bother hiding. Shamelessly, he wasn't afraid to check you out, assuring you a dozen times a day that you look beautiful despite your doubts and insecurities.
When you drift off in thought, he’d gently grip your chin to bring you back to him, waiting until your eyes meet his before giving you that small, dimpled smirk that always make your stomach twist.
Small ministrations like flicking a lash from your cheek. Wiping the excess gloss from the corner of your lip. Rubbing at your knee. Buying things that catch your eye. Cooking for you. Taking care of you without any of it being unwarranted made you realize just how attentive he really was.
But physically? He's touch starved king. He doesn't mean to be, but with you? It's kinda hard not.
Light brushes along your fingertips turned into holding hands. Holding hands turned into you looping your arm through his in crowded or unknown places. From wrapping his arm around your shoulder with you curled into him then came the hand at your lower back, fingers tracing lazy patterns against your skin.
At some point, keeping you close led to him holding you possessively, loving the warmth he radiates through your soul.
Late night texts became late night calls. Calls that became him wanting to see your face, hearing your voice, falling asleep to the sound of you breathing. “I wish you were here” became code for cuddles… and maybe a few soft, stolen kisses.
All those small things built into something undeniable, eventually made his feelings slip out naturally—nothing grand, just him asking hypothetical questions that were a little too specific, a little too revealing, all of them rooted in the quiet wants he’d been carrying.
And when he paused to think about your answers, you nudged him with your shoulder and teased, “So… are you gonna ask me out properly or what?”
San smirked, eyes flicking to you. “I don’t know… I have to think about it.”
You stared at him, offended and confused. “What? What do you mean you have to think about it? You ask me all these questions just to say you have to think about it?”
He only laughed, finishing his ice cream cone. After brushing the dust off his hands, he leans back on them. His legs swung lazily off the ledge as he stared off into the distance, city lights shimmering across the way.
“Saaaan~” you whined, impatience creeping in. “Just say it already.”
This time, when he looks at you, the teasing drops. His voice softens and his eyes are sincere.
“Will you go out with me? For real this time?"
“Of course I will.” you answer truthfully.
Silence settled between you for a moment before you asked, quieter, “Why'd it take you so long to say anything?”
He thought about it, then shrugged lightly. “I wanted the timing to feel right. I didn’t want to rush it or make it weird. I wanted it to be… smooth.”
You smiled at his consideration, understanding completely the more you pondered on it. Reaching up, you gently pinched at his cheek. “You’re so sweet, Sannie.” You then leaned in and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to his cheek.
When you pulled back, he was all shy smiles, head ducked, grinning like a high school boy who finally confessed to his crush.
“Yeah,” he murmured, barely above a whisper. “I know.”
mmmm husband frank langdon knowing your body and taking care of you when you’re ovulating 🤤🤤
———
You and your husband both come home from a long shift at the hospital, and you have been craving him a little extra. It’s not your fault your fault the hormones released during your ovulation made you extremely horny. It didn’t help that your husband was already sexy enough on a daily basis, and that his scrubs were especially tight around the arms and waist. All day you’ve been eyeing him from the corners of your eyes, waiting for a moment where you could pull him aside, but that opportunity never came with the amount of patients you had.
work typically leaves little energy for sex, but the two of you try to make time for each other. today you were especially in the mood, you wanted your husband inside you a little more than usual. You shed your clothes and put on something a little cuter, hoping he’d get the hint. Just when you thought your husband couldn’t look hotter, he put on a tank top and grey sweatpants, where you just went feral and couldn’t hold back. He was on the couch, scrolling his phone for dinner options when you climbed onto his lap.
“Good evening to you too, baby.” He smirked, putting his phone on the coffee table and his hands going to your waist. “What can I do for you?”
“A lot of things, Frank.” You responded.
“Yeah? Would you be so kind as to sharing what those things are?”
“well first of all, take those clothes off. Then you could take me to the bedroom, take mine off and…fuck me until I tire out.” You said so casually, like you were listing off items on your grocery list.
“I see, do you not want dinner first?” He asked, checking your wellbeing first.
“Dinner can wait.” You sunk to your knees, tugging the waistband of his sweatpants down. He sucked air through his teeth, his hands drawing your hair back.
—————
After getting him off, he payed you back tenfold the second he got his hands on you. He carried you to bed, laid you out gently, spread your thighs and lapped at your cunt until you saw stars. Frank Langdon knew how to please a woman, and you learned that very early on in your relationship.
“oh-hah-baby please…just like that…ngh don’t stop.” You whimpered, begging him in a way so pretty he couldn’t say no. He ate you out with the same energy he did the first time you had sex. Most men you had been with would rather die than get near your pussy, but Langdon lived for eating you out after a long day. He was dedicated to making you feel good before himself. He was a giver, after all.
After making you come on his mouth, he wanted to make you come on his dick. It was scientifically proven vaginal sex helped with cramping, so why not help you out in multiple ways? He always made love to you, not so much fucked you. it was different, yknow? You fuck someone you’re hooking up with, you make love to someone you’re married to. Even if your marriage was still under a year old.
He always payed attention to your reactions, gauged them so that he could figure out what you needed that specific day. Some days you needed harder, some days deeper, sometimes you just needed it gentle after a hard day. He’d always be able tp figure it out, he learned his wife’s body well.
so he knew that when you were ovulating, he needed to give you the mix of deep and slow, but not too slow. He kept his hands on your hips, thrusting deep into you and watching to make sure that’s what you were wanting.
“fuck…just like that, please baby.”
yeah, he got it right the first time.
The aftercare was always great too, putting just as much attention into taking care of you as he did when you made love. He cleaned you off gently, getting every inch of your body with the soap, and giving you a head massage when he washed your hair. He cooked you dinner instead of ordering, and tailored it to your body’s needs
I don’t know if you’ve seen that interview with Patrick Ball, but he said that Frank was a football player in collage 😮💨 and i can totally see Frank casually mentioning this to his work crush, like when he overhears her gossiping with Princess about some hot QB from Pittsburgh
“he’s so hot.” princess shows you a photo of the newest steelers quarterback on her phone, and your jaw drops as you mime fanning your face.
“wow. is he single?”
“yep,” princess grins. “who knows? maybe he’ll get knocked on his ass so bad he has no choice but to come here and be treated by us.”
you laugh at her words just as langdon interjects, “what are you two talking about?”
“how hot the new steelers quarterback is,” she tells him. “he has arms that are bigger than robby’s ego.”
you snort and even langdon cracks a smile at her comment. he feigns nonchalance, continuing to tap on the tablet in his hands.
“i played football in college,” he says casually. “quarterback.”
it’s when princess digs her elbow into your ribs that you realise your jaw is again on the floor. you close your mouth, trying not to seem affected by his words.
“it shows.” princess nods and you can feel your cheeks start to burn when you risk a glance at his defined arms.
you hum in agreement and when frank catches you looking, he throws you a smile that’s a little too knowing.
“i should check on room three,” you say quickly, moving around the counter of the nurses’ station. “he’s been pulling out his stitches all morning.”
you avoid langdon’s gaze as you hurry off to see the patient that’s so old he’s probably still exactly how you found him an hour ago: asleep.
princess shakes her head with a laugh, “you knew what you were doing.”
frank’s smile grows as he looks at her, “just broadening her options.”
Description: Michael is just so in love with his girlfriend
Warnings: (smut) 18+ Mature themes, pnv⚤ (use a condom☻) fluff
God help him.
That was the only thought running through his head.
Poor Michael didn’t understand it—couldn’t, really. In the past, things had always been easy. His girlfriends adored him, clung to him, wanted him in ways that felt predictable. Comfortable.
This?
This was different.
It showed up in the smallest ways—how his hand felt empty when hers wasn’t laced through his, how the quiet of his trailer stretched too long when she wasn’t curled into his side. Even now, surrounded by flashing lights and applause, none of it reached him.
Because she was right there.
The two of them sat side by side at some award show he couldn’t care less about. The host kept talking, names were being called, people stood and clapped—
Michael heard none of it.
His gaze was locked on her, soft and heavy, like he couldn’t look away even if he tried.
Damn.
Something in him snapped—quietly, but completely.
He leaned in, pressing slow, lingering kisses along her jaw, like he’d been holding back for too long.
“Baby…” she murmured, a quiet laugh slipping through her lips.
“Mm?” he hummed, barely pulling away.
“What are you doing, sweet boy?” she teased, her fingers brushing along his cheek.
“I just need you,” he said lowly.
Her smile softened. “You have me.”
He shook his head slightly, voice dipping. “No… I need more.”
That was all it took.
She stood, slipping her hand into his, pulling him up with her. Neither of them said a word as they slipped out into the hallway—but the second the doors shut behind them, it was like gravity shifted.
They found each other instantly.
Like magnets.
Like they’d been waiting all night.
His hands found her waist, hers slid up his chest, and their lips met somewhere in the middle—hungry, familiar, a little breathless.
When they pulled back, just barely, her eyes searched his like she was trying to steady herself.
He didn’t let her go far.
“Bathroom?” she whispered, half-teasing, half serious.
He didn’t answer.
Instead, he lifted her easily, earning a surprised laugh, and carried her down the hall as he had somewhere else in mind entirely.
By the time they reached the car, neither of them was thinking about the show anymore.
Not the awards.
Not the cameras.
Just each other.
The drive was quiet—but charged. His hand rested on her thigh, her head tilted toward him, and every glance they shared said everything they weren’t putting into words.
“We’re not making it home,” he muttered finally.
She smiled, already knowing.
He turned into a dark parking lot where no paparazzi cameras would flicker. The pest-like media teams were the only reason he didn't just park outside the ceremony.
When the car parked , the world outside didn’t matter. Sevyn Streeter played as they stripped in the backseat, and the space between them disappeared all over again.
“I love you,” she moaned, breath unsteady as she slowly grinded against his lap.
“I love you” he repeated biting his lip as he guided her body down
He licked his fingers and teased her already soaked core.
“Please” her eyebrows furrowed needily
Then he carefully pushed into her wetness, skillfully curling his slightly cooled fingers and hitting that spongy spot so perfectly that her back arched into his hand grinding her throbbing clit onto his palm.
“ ‘Kari” she whined frustrated
“Ok, baby” Mike whispers pulling his fingers out and pressing his large tip to her hole getting it wet before pushing into her.
Her arms snaked around his neck, trying to get impossibly closer, as her legs enveloped him in her warmth.
“Ohh God” she purred into his ear
“I love you so much baby” He groaned as he thrusted into her sweet velvet pussy beyond drunk off of her.
Michael fucked normally, he solely focused on how good he felt and chased after his own high, but right now he didn't care if he came or not it felt so much deeper than that to him. Slowly realization hit, this was his first time making love.
Crystal tears from pleasure poured from her eyes as his dick kissed her cervix while he kissed a constellation of delicate hickies onto her skin.
Her thighs shook under him as he begged her to cum. With his forehead stuck to hers and his lips ghosted her lips, Michael’s hips met hers as he coaxed her through an earth-shattering, toe curling orgasm as he followed closely after.
This…
This was different.
Not rushed. Not careless.
Something way deeper.
Something he wasn’t used to.
Later, when everything quieted down and the car was still again, he glanced over at her—resting peacefully, wrapped in his shirt, completely at ease.
Michael smiled to himself, brushing a gentle kiss to her temple before starting the car.
Yeah, this was different.
ℰ𝓃𝒹.
Note: First time posting smut I practice writing it but never post sooo…don’t kill me if it’s a little bad🥲
a/n: she’s finally hereeee omg i haven’t had this much fun writing something in a minute so i hope yall enjoy it <333 also there is quite a bit of spanish dialogue and it is unfortunately from google translate so just bare w me lmao
synopsis: a tale about two childhood best friends who *gasps* turn into lovers hehe
wc: 16k//// cw include: super fluffy in the beginning they’re so cute, pretty angsty in the teenage part bc well . . . they’re teenagers, mentions of connie being a dealer as an adult, a lot of flirting and banter— now for the nsfw part: kissing, connie being a tease, oral f & m!receiving, fingering, connie humps the bed while he eats it, dirty talk in english and spanish, choking, protected sex turned to unprotected sex, finger sucking, slow sex n’ rough sex, connie cums in and on her pussy, cum eating, aftercare!!!
‘sometimes when i’m lonely, i sit and think about him. and it hurts to remember all the good times.’
february 14th, 2007 . . .
“c’mon y/n! i don’t wanna be late for the valentines party!”
“slow down con, you’re walkin’ too fast!” you cried out, little feet trying their absolute best to keep up with connie’s fast strides. the chilly wind whipped around you both, nearly knocking you over. “make sure you hold on tight to your valentines, i’ll be so sad if i don’t get one from you,” connie giggled, referring to the paper bag full of bratz themed valentines for your entire first grade class.
you responded with a nod, and an obnoxious sniffle, the icy breeze making your nose stuffier by the second. connie looked over at you and giggled once more, “you look like a giant pink marshmallow.” you joined him in laughter, mitten covered hand reaching up to adjust the pink wool scarf your mother had recently just bought you around your neck.
you were wearing a pink coat that was a size too big, along with a big fluffy hat and mittens to match. “momma said i had to wear all this if i wanted to walk to school with you.”
speaking of school, it was just right up ahead! just as you were about to cross the street, connie slammed his arm against your chest nearly knocking you over. “we gotta wait for the crossing guard, remember?!” you looked at him in pure confusion before a woman wearing a neon yellow vest approached you both.
“you two ready?” she asked with a sweet smile. immediately you froze up, the stranger danger sirens in your head blaring. “yes, we’re ready! c’mon, y/n, don’t be scared,” connie took your hand in his, his free hand grabbing onto the crossing guards. as you walked across the street you couldn’t help but be jealous at how connie was never shy around strangers, adults especially.
in his eight years of being on this earth, connie has always been a social butterfly. whether it’d be saying hi to strangers at the grocery store or playing freeze tag with a random group of kids at the park, connie was always a friendly soul to be around.
“thank you ma’am, have a happy valentine’s day!” connie beamed at the crossing guard before dragging you up the stairs to the school.
you immediately relaxed at the warmth that greeted you when you stepped inside. “c’mon, i’ll walk ya to class,” connie gave you a small smile, enveloping your hand in his once more. as connie walked you to class, various students from different grades said hello to him, some of the older kids even fist bumped him! it was amazing in your eyes
“lemme help you with your stuff,” he mumbled, setting his own valentines on the ground beside him. as you took off your mittens, connie unzipped your coat and snatched off your hat, grinning when you whined about him messing up your hair. “momma spent a lot of time making sure my hair doesn’t stick up,” you huffed, running your hand over the slicked part of your bun.
after hanging up your backpack and coat on the hooks outside your classroom, you turned around to see connie giving you a toothy smile, spider-man valentine in hand. you gasped, eagerly snatching the small card with a lollipop taped to it out of his hand. “thank you, connie! i can’t wait to eat the sucker!”
“i have something else for you too, but it’s a surprise! i’ll give it to you at the end of the day, i gotta go!” and with that connie gave you a bone crushing hug before literally sprinting to his classroom, which was just a few doors down.
while you were in the first grade, connie was in second. this however didn’t stop him from trying to see you as much as he could! sometimes when his class was in the hall you’d see that bald little head peek from the door, smiling at you while waving. during passing times for lunch or recess, he’d always look for the girl with the greased up face, and multiple bows in her hair—it was usually pretty easy to find you because you were always the line leader.
“come on, y/n! let’s get this valentines party started!” you heard your teacher call out. with one last glance at connie, your grabbed the bag containing your valentines before headlining into your classroom.
being the enthusiastic seven year old you were, you expected to get quite a few valentines from your fellow classmates, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. you got a total of eight valentines out of the seventeen children in your class—apparently they thought it would be funny to skip over your basket.
this just broke your little heart.
by the time the day ended you were a puffy faced, crying mess. getting only a handful of valentines had put you in a sour mood, a frown etched on your lips for the entirety of the day. connie had noticed this, and for some reason it made his chest feel funny seeing his best friend in such sad spirits.
as you zipped up your coat you were startled by a familiar voice behind you. “hey! how was your valentines party?! ours was awesomeeee, i got so many valentines and candy—o-oh . . . why’re you crying y/n?”
midway through connie’s sentence you had burst into tears once more, fat, hot tears running down your cheeks and onto your coat. “i-i *hiccup* barely got any valentines *sniffle* f-from anyone,” you covered your face with your hands, tears seeping into the fabric of your mittens.
connie’s mind was racing. what would an adult do in this situation, better yet how would his mom handle it?
without thinking he wrapped his arms around you, pulling you impossibly close. his mommas hugs always made him feel better. he just held you for a minute and let you cry, glaring and sticking his tongue out at anyone who stared at you both for too long. “c’mon, let’s go before a teacher comes,” connie mumbled into your hair.
before you could even process what was happening, connie was dragging you away, holding your hand tightly in his. the second you walked outside and saw your mother along with connie’s waiting for you, a fresh batch of tears brimmed your lash line.
“what’s wrong with my baby?” your mother asked, her lips turning into a frown. you didn’t really pay much attention to the conversation, and you didn’t really care now that your momma was there to make things all better. you just jumped into her arms, buried your face in her neck, and cried your heart out.
“she didn’t get a lot of valentines,” connie muttered, grasping onto his mothers hand.
the walk back was pretty silent on your end aside from tiny sniffles and hiccups. connie held your hand the entire way to your apartment, he tried to make conversation but you just weren’t having it. before you knew it you were finally back home.
“this is for you,” connie mumbled, unzipping his backpack to reveal a pink teddy bear, along with a valentine’s day card.
suddenly the world stopped.
you were still as a statue, your lips turning into a pout as connie placed the items in your hands. “f-for me?” you sniffled, hugging the bear to your chest. connie grinned at you, nodding his head bashfully.
“how sweet! say thank you, y/n!”
you were still for a few moments before throwing your arms around connie’s neck, bringing him in for a bone crushing hug. “those other valentines were probably lame, you can have some of mine from the second graders.” that had you squealing so loud bystanders had to cover their ears.
“thank you con, you’re the bestest best friend ever!” you hugged the teddy bear to your chest again, snuggling it extra hard.
watching your mood do a complete three sixty made connie’s heart swell. which was weird. it wasn’t until lately that every time connie saw you his tummy erupted with butterflies, but . . . he actually liked it?
he liked being around you. he liked the way you always smelt like shea butter and fresh laundry, he liked whenever you would share your snack with him on the way home from school, but what he really liked was that you never tried to dim his shine. connie was a hyper kid, very talkative too, and kids were mean to him for no reason sometimes about it, but you . . . you were never mean to him. you always welcome him with open arms and a smile.
that night, connie talked to his momma about that strange feeling he gets in his tummy whenever he sees you—come to find out it’s called a crush.
“¿explica lo que significa de nuevo, mami?” connie asked, taking a sip of his apple juice. connie’s mom laughed, she folded her hands and rested her chin on them.
“it means you like her, and you care about her, and that’s good! y/n is probably still a little young to understand this, and honestly you are too, but i feel like you’re mature enough to know about this kinda thing. maybe one day when you’re older you can tell her, yeah?”
“yeah, maybe. that stuff is gross though.”
february 14, 2014 . . .
“c’monnnn, y/n. ¡date prisa, chica, date prisa! we’re gonna be late!”
“i know, i know i’m sorry! i totally overslept,” you called out to connie, securing your scarf around you neck. your nose scrunched at the wind that whipped at your face, your lips already beginning to feel dry.
on the decent down the stairs to the sidewalk you nearly slipped, almost busting your butt. “dios mío,” he chuckled, extending his hand to help you down the rest of the way. you quietly thanked him, ignoring the warmth flaring in your cheeks. connie hooked his arm around yours, “hold on to me, i don’t want you to slip again.”
you didn’t protest, you just nodded and quietly thanked him once again. the walk to your school was silent until connie spoke up, “happy valentine’s day.” you looked up at him, giving him a small smile and little nudge to the side. “happy valentine’s day, connie.”
trying to sound as nonchalant as possible connie said, “did you buy any roses to give to anyone? i heard today at nine is the last time to do it.” you quickly responded with a no, your eyes trailing down to the gravel below you.
“do you think you’ll get any?”
you thought to yourself for a moment before shaking your head, “nah i don’t expect it, but that’s okay.” you weren’t bothered by it completely, but you’d be lying if you said you weren’t jealous of the girls who talked about getting roses from their crushes. but all was well, your plan for the day was to bury your nose in the latest romantic novel you purchased. the book was probably a little mature for you, but hey, a little make out scene between two star crossed lovers here and there never hurt nobody.
“what about you? did you buy any? plan to receive any?”
you rolled your eyes when connie burst out laughing, nearly stopping your walk entirely to catch his breath. “you’re so dam—d-dang annoying . . . you’re so annoying,” you huffed, unlinking your arm from his. connie wrapped an arm around your shoulders, pulling you close to his side once again. “nah, nah, don’t be like that. it’s not my thing though. i didn’t buy any, and i don’t plan to receive any.”
you hummed, kicking a nearby rock with your foot. as you were walking you couldn’t help but smell a faint musky scent. you sniffed, and then sniffed again, this time you got a stronger whiff when you smelt connie. was he wearing . . . cologne?
“is that you smellin’ like that?” you giggled, stuffing your nose in his neck, and sure enough you smelt cologne. for the first time since you were kids you saw connie blush, it was kinda cute, but in a friend way kinda cute. at least that’s what you told yourself.
connie rubbed his glove covered hand over his freshly buzzed hair. “aish! yeah, i put on some cologne, but only because my mom sprayed on a little before i left the house,” he muttered, clearly lying through his teeth.
the truth was, he had asked his mom to buy him some for today, and after all her teasing and pesky questions she caved and got him some. he told her it was for another girl in his class, but really, it was for you to notice and you only.
as the years went by connie’s innocent crush turned into a full blown one. by the time he was thirteen, he kinda had a holy shit moment as he finally admitted to himself that he indeed did have a crush on his best friend. how cliche.
“well it’s nice . . . makes you smell, uhm, grown? i don’t know, but i like it,” your cheeks felt hot as you spoke, and you hoped connie didn’t notice the slight shakiness in your voice as you finished talking. newflash, he noticed, and it filled his chest with so much pride he felt as if his heart was gonna explode.
you noticed the grin on connie’s face and kissed your teeth, “don’t be weird about it, weirdo.” connie smirked, he pulled you in real close for a side hug, then released you. “you’re the weirdo. talkin’ about how i smell ‘grown’, whatever that means,” he cackled, running a few steps ahead of you to avoid getting a smack on the back of the head.
the two of you continued small talk until you, unfortunately, made it to school. “take my hand again, don’t want you to fall in front of everybody right?” seriously, you were this close to punching him. but nonetheless you took his hand, graciously thanking him inside your head for looking out for you.
“i’m gonna go, but i’ll see you at lunch yeah?” connie spoke softly, nudging your side with his elbow. you wanted to be selfish and tell him that he should spend the morning with you, but you bid him farewell nonetheless with a smile on your face. the second he was out of sight a frown took over your lips. you couldn’t help but wonder if he noticed you were wearing a new gloss today, or you changed your perfume scent from lavender to coconut. boys were so hard to read.
the day went by slow, as usual, but when the last period of the day came around things got a little interesting.
“valentine roses! we have valentine roses!” you heard someone shout from the door of your classroom. you took your eyes away from your book to see three students wearing various pink and red articles of clothing. “mm, whatever,” you hummed, looking back down at your book.
a few minutes passed, and just when you thought the commotion was over, one of the students approached you. looking up over your lashes, you raised a brow. “these are for you, all from the same person,” they said, giving you a small smile before handing you three red roses.
your mouth dropped, unable to find the correct words. there was no way this was real right? there was no way someone bought three roses for you. “w-who are these from?” you questioned, running your thumb along the soft petals of the roses. the girl tapped on a heart shaped card that was tied to the stems with a ribbon, “they had the choice to write a message in here. they either signed it or left it anonymoussss.” the girl gave you a tiny smile before walking away, leaving you completely dumbfounded.
with shaky hands, you opened the card.
‘U R 2 CUTE’ the card had said in bold, pink letters, and at the bottom in parentheses it said ‘for real :)’.
you recognized this handwriting all too well.
you nibbled on your bottom lip, a giddy smile making its way onto your lips. you couldn’t believe connie had done this for you. after all the smack talk and fake gag noises about anything romantic, connie was the last person you expected to receive a rose from. and what did he mean by ‘for real’ ? did he think you were cute, did he think you were . . . pretty?
for the rest of the period you sat there, admiring your roses. you had to ask connie about it, you had to! so when the bell rang you made a beeline for connie’s locker. thankfully he was there, unfortunately his friends were too.
when he saw you, he couldn’t help but smile, but then he saw the flowers you were clutching in your hand. there was nooo way he could let his friends find out he actually participated in the rose giveaway.
“um, i’ll see you guys around,” he muttered, slamming his locker shut before making his way over to you. once you were in reach he gently grabbed your wrist, “vamos a casa, m’starving and need a snack.” without any protests you let him lead the way with tiny, minuscule, little hearts in your eyes.
“you really got these for me?” your voice was tiny, barely audible, and if connie wasn’t so close to you he probably wouldn’t have even known you were speaking. he looked at you and then the ground, his cheeks turning bright red. “well, yeah. i thought flowers would be better than another teddy bear.” he smiled at the last part, remembering his last visit to your bedroom.
you were already into plushies and beanie babies big time, and he did no favors adding onto your collection. each of six teddy bears he got you were lined up neatly on your bed, not a head or paw out of place. connie, being the fourteen boy he was of course, wreaked havoc on the poor teddys, tossing them around and making them do obscene positions much to your horror. they all had names as well, but you have yet to reveal them to save yourself from anymore embarrassment.
“this was really nice of you con, i really wasn’t expecting you to do this,” you couldn’t hide the giddiness in your voice as you spoke, your lips breaking into a shy smile. “ay dios mío, please don’t make it a big thing. let’s talk about something else pleaseeeee!” connie dramatically threw his head back, his cheeks so hot if felt as if someone had placed hot coals on them.
“whatever, weirdo.” you giggled, gently backhanding his chest.
after a few minutes, connie pulled out his phone and headphones. “wanna listen to music with me?” you grinned at him, nodding eagerly before taking an earbud. connie only really listened to songs in spanish, and maybe some rnb on side, but he only listened to songs in spanish with you to help you learn the language better. you caught on pretty fast to the basics when you were younger from hearing him and his mom interact with each other, but as you got older connie wanted you to know more. sometimes he’d quiz you and sometimes he’d just say a whole sentence you didn’t understand over and over until you got it right—he was actually a pretty good teacher for a fourteen year old.
as you were walking you kept feeling connie’s fingers brush against your own. your heartbeat quickened, teeth clamping onto your bottom lip as you decided if you should engage or not. i mean, what if it was accident and he got creeped out? but then again, it wasn’t an odd thing for you and connie to hold hands outside of school.
your thoughts were interrupted when connie hooked his pinky around yours, securing them together. you didn’t say anything, too stunned and shy to mutter even a word, but you did give his pinky a squeeze to let him know the action was welcomed.
“did your mom tell you we’re coming over tonight?” connie asked, referring to him and his mother. you smiled at him, and nodded. “of course she did! it’s like—”
“trying saying it in spanish, chica!”
you hummed, racking your brain for the right words and pronunciation. “uhm . . . okay, uh, es como nuestra tradición?” connie tapped on his chin and hummed, he had the most unserious serious look on his face it almost made you laugh.
“¡correcto! i’ve taught my student well,” he smirked, giving your pinky a rough squeeze.
before you knew it you were outside your apartment building. “here’s your card, i’m happy you like the flowers.” there was a slight shake in connie’s hands as he held the card out, thankfully you didn’t seem to notice.
you took the card, an eruption of butterflies swarming in your stomach. without saying anything you wrapped your arms around him, and as you pulled away you left a tiny peck on his cheek. connie’s eyes widened, his body tensing. “t-thanks for the roses n’ the card. i’ll be sure to take care of them and, uh, i guess i’ll see you later!”
“b-bye y/n! prepare to have your butt kicked at mortal combat when i see you!” you laughed on the your way up the stairs, you turned around to give connie one last wave and smile before heading inside.
the second the door to the building shut connie exhaled a deep breath he didn’t even know he was holding. “was that my first kiss? nah, nah, can’t be . . . well, it counts a little bit,” he giggled to himself, turning on his heels to make his way home. the whole walk home all he could think about was the peck on the cheek you gave him.
he took off his glove and pressed his fingers against the spot on his cheek you kissed, he was intrigued to find out the area was a little sticky. he brought his fingers to his nose, senses immediately overwhelmed by the scent of strawberries. ‘strawberry lipgloss . . . nice,’ he thought to himself, a blush creeping up on his cheeks.
the second connie walked in the door of his apartment, he made a beeline for the only person worthy of knowing this information: his mom.
he found her in the kitchen, the smell of her famous pollo guisao wafting into his nose. “estoy casa, mami,” he mumbled, giving her a quick hug from behind. “one sec, hijo, i’m almost done with this. feel free to grab a snack, i bet you’re starving.” connie didn’t need to be told twice, his stomach growling at the thought of some kind of greasy snack.
“alright, that should be good,” she hummed, dusting her hands off on his apron before making her way over to connie, who was munching on a bag of chips. “¿cómo estuvo la escuela?” she asked, taking a seat on the couch next to him. connie hummed, popping another chip into his mouth.
it was silent for a few beats until she smacked him on the back of the head. “w-wha? ow! what was that for, ma?” he whined, rubbing the back of his head. “boy, you know what i wanna know. did you buy the flowers for that girl today?” connie nodded, not being able to fight the grin creeping up on his lips.
“it was y/n, wasn’t it? she’s also the one you wanted to wear cologne for, right?” connie’s jaw dropped, his fist unintentionally crushing the bag of chips he was holding. she smirked at him, reaching a hand over to gently run over his hair. “una madre siempre sabe cuando su hijo está mintiendo, mi amor.”
connie sank further into the couch, his brows furrowing in annoyance. how was she able to read him so easily? “whatever, mami, but yes, it was for her. the b-best part though was when he got to her house she kissed me!—well, on the cheek, but still.”
all connie’s mom could do was smile at her son—ah, young love. “you two are so freakin’ cuteeee!”
“mami pleaseeee stop!” he groaned, covering his face with his hands. her pesky teasing went on for a few more moments before she gave him a serious look. “i have something for you, wait here,” she spoke softly, getting up from the couch and going into her room. when she came back out she was holding a rectangular shaped box.
she sat next to connie and slowly opened the box, revealing a gold cuban link chain. “it was yours dads. i scrounged up every penny i had, and bought it for him on our two year anniversary. él llevó esto a todas partes.” she laughed at the last part, her lips turning into a sad smile.
connie took a closer look at the chain, his lips turning into a frown. “you sure, mama? i know his stuff is important to you,” he whispered, but his mom shook her head, letting out a little sniffle. “i want you to have it, mi cariño . . . he would’ve wanted you to have it. just promise me one thing.” she took the chain out the case, and gently placed it over connie’s head.
“excuse my language when i say this, amor—wear this shit with pride, just like your dad did. he was a good man, with a great life, n’ a good family and i want all the same for you, okay?” she chuckled when she saw a stray tear roll down connie’s cheek. “no tears, amor, no tears. just promise me that one thing.” connie sniffled and nodded his head—
“i promise, mami.”
february 14th, 2018 . . .
“this fuckin’ girl,” connie groaned, his head tilting back to look at the cloudy, grey sky. he had a card in one hand, and a bouquet of flowers in the other for none other than you, his lovely best friend. he settled on a bouquet of pink tulips this year, deciding to switch it up from the usual roses he gave you.
his ears perked up when he heard the sound of someone coming out of your apartment building. there you were, looking cute as cute as ever in your oversized baby pink coat, along with a hat and mittens to match. “i know, i know, i’m sorryyy,” you giggled, taking careful steps down the slippery stairs.
“yeah, yeah whatever,” he smirked, looking you up and down before holding up the card and roses. you gave him a toothy grin, happily accepting the gifts from him. “thank you con, eres tan dulce.”
connie tongued the inside of his cheek, “ah, it’s nothin’. c’mere.” connie reached an arm out, tatted hand gently grabbing your coat to pull you in for a hug. the smell of his cologne had you relaxing into the hug, your arms tightening around him.
if any stranger were to see you two right now, it would obviously look like you two were together, but unfortunately for connie, that was not the case. it gets worse, you actually have a boyfriend. some motherfucker got to you before him, and he gets mad about it everyday because he had so. much. time. to make you his. you’ve been with the guy for nearly seven months and connie’s jealousy never dimmed.
“alright, alright, let’s get going before we miss the bus,” you mumbled into his jacket, ever so slowly detaching yourself from his embrace. connie huffed, but nonetheless followed after you.
you didn’t link arms anymore, and he didn’t wrap his arm around you—apparently that was a big no no for your boyfriend. connie kinda understood him in a way, if you were his and anyone laid a finger on you he’d go ballistic. at least you were able to listen to music together on your walk to the bus stop, and on the ride to school.
you whipped out your phone and headphones, passing one to connie. “man, no you’re always listening to those korean guys. i can’t understand shit they say,” his chest puffed up if faux annoyance because he knew he’d listen to whatever you played anyway. “well, i don’t care about none of that so here.”
“mmcht, fine. una niña tan mimada . . .” he grumbled, playfully side eyeing you. he loved getting on your nerves.
“i’m not spoiled.”
“yes you are.”
“okay and what about it, constance.”
“woah, my government name? my bad buddy, didn’t mean to strike a nerve there!” he chortled, raising his hands in surrender. if you weren’t connected by a pair of headphones you would’ve pushed him. “anyways . . . how did it go with your mom last night? i’m sure she was so pleased to see the new ink on your hand.”
connie’s shoulders slumped, “bro, you would’ve thought i killed someone the way she reacted. she was saying shit in spanish that i didn’t even know existed, shit was terrifying.” you doubled over in laughter at this, your hand slapping against his arm for stability.
“tch, it’s not funny, y/n. my head still hurts from how hard she threw her sandal at me,” he whined, tenderly rubbing the back of his head. he was expecting his mom to get a little upset about the tattoo, but figured maybe she’d show a little mercy because it was a tribute to his father—that was not the case. my mans got a very stern talking to, and a sandal to the back of the head.
“tuh, well that’s what you get! you know how she feels about tattoos.”
with a huff, connie waved you off, choosing to tune into the music blaring in his right ear instead. you didn’t have to wait long for the bus to come, though you didn’t mind the comfortable silence. when connie found two seats, he allowed you to go first. he always sat on the outside of seats, or walked on the side where the street was—he was a gentleman through and through.
“are you and your mom comin’ over tonight? i convinced my mom to take your favoriteeee.” you snorted, and looked over at him, “but, connie . . . you hate salmon.” connie shrugged, nudging your elbow with his own.
“i don’t mind it too bad when i know you like it so much.” his heart clenched at your smile, but the feeling soon faltered when you frowned, your teeth pulling your lip back to pick at the skin. he made a noise of disapproval, “hey, don’t do that. ¿por qué te ves así? ¿qué pasa?”
your lip popped back into place, and connie’s frowned deepened seeing a small speckle of blood. “well, like, my mom will be going over there, just . . . not me. i’m gonna be out with—”
oh.
connie’s lip twitched, and then slowly turned into the fakest smile you’ve ever seen. “that’s . . . fine. it’s fine. i probably won’t stick around for too long anyway.” your eyebrow perked up, “oh?”
he adjusted in his seat, his knee no longer touching yours. you didn’t understand why it bothered you so much, but it did. it bothered you a lot, actually.
you poked his shoulder, “did you have other plans tonight?” connie shrugged, his focus now on plastic wrapped about his healing tattoo. “jean and ony were talking about this party goin’ on tonight, and you know, since you ain’t coming tonight i might as well join em’.”
“yeah, i guess.” you mumbled, shrinking into your seat. connie noticed the change in your body notice immediately. you thought he was mad at you, it was written all over your face. it couldn’t have been further from the truth, his anger lied with your boyfriend, the dickhead breaking your tradition for the first time since you were kids and stealing you away from him for the night.
connie grinned at your pouting lips. he tapped your chin, taking it between his fingers. this was probably crossing a boundary, but you surely weren’t in a rush to pull away from him, at least that’s what it looked like to him.
“no te veas tan triste. nestoy enojado contigo, así que deja de hacer ese puchero, ¿sí?” you hated when he did this, his eye contact was always so intimidating. your nod was slow, like you were still unsure if he was telling the truth or not. he hummed, releasing your chin. “i promise,” he spoke softly, grabbing the gold, cuban link chain around his neck, “that i’m not mad.” thankfully you seemed to relax after that.
connie was a lot of things, but a liar was not one of them. he took pride in being an honest, good man, much like his father was. but sometimes people, and by people he means you, are stubborn and not so easy to convince, so he started this little thing that whenever he grabs his his dads chain it means he is telling the honest truth, and nothing else.
your eyes lit up the tiniest bit, your frown replaced with a small smile. “te creo, connie. te lo prometo.”
“ooo, look at you using your spanish. una chica tan inteligente,” connie smirked, patting your head three times. oh, how connie loved the the language sounded rolling off your tongue. he noticed you sounded more confident nowadays, and it made his heart swell with pride. “heh . . . thank you. now move your behind, this is our stop,” you grumbled, nudging his knee with yours.
when you got off the bus you were elated to see your boyfriend, eren yeager, waiting at the steps for you. you turned to connie, “i’ll see ya later, thanks again for the flowers! i’ll leave them with ms. jones for the day, she’ll watch them for me.”
“i’ll see you at lunch, okay? we’ll get sum to eat, unless your boy toy already has plans with you.” connie’s eyes zeroed in on the brunette behind you, his lips curling up in distaste. he didn’t care for eren if wasn’t obvious. he had a reputation, and not a good one, and you were too sweet to deal with anything of that nature, but somehow the boy swept you off your feet and you were smitten.
when the most popular boy at school asks you to be his girlfriend, you don’t say no, it’s a clear no brainer—connie thought that logic was bullshit, but he kept that comment to himself.
“well lucky for you he didn’t mention any plans about a lunch date, although he didn’t mention dinner plans either . . . but i’m sure it’s just a surprise.” bells went off in connie’s head when you mentioned that, but he stayed silent. you always found the bright side in things, he admired that about you.
“mm, well, i’ll see you later then. have a good rest of your day, princesa.” he squeezed your shoulder tenderly before walking off. he side eyed eren as he walked away, and ugh, the boy just pissed him off so bad. his face looked entirely too nonchalant for having the most beautiful girl in the city all for himself.
the day went by painfully slow, and then it was lunch. connie waited for you in the foyer, already having a place in mind lunch, but you were nowhere to be found. when he checked in with your favorite teacher, ms. jones, he was shocked to find out you had went home early. apparently you weren’t feeling well.
he decided to text you and check up on you, only to find out your phone was on do not disturb. now this was odd. you were never the type to keep your phone on silent, unless absolutely necessary, afraid that you might miss an important call or message.
leaving school early? phone on do not disturb? connie did not like where this was leading.
he opened instagram to look at your profile, and sure enough, his suspicious were confirmed when he saw the highlight you had dedicated to eren was no longer there. connie’s grip on his phone tightened, he was pissed. this man had the audacity to break up with you on valentine’s day? absolutely not.
i’ll spare the details, but just know it was a very eventful lunch period for paradis high.
forty five minutes later . . .
“use this to ice that,” the nurse treating connie muttered, her tone filled with annoyance. connie huffed, slouching back. this folding chair was really starting to hurt his ass.
the door opened and there revealed connie’s very angry mother, her lips balled up so tight it had connie shivering in fear. “Levántate ahora,” she hissed, clenching her fist at her side. connie let out a long sigh, the knot on his head throbbing harder by the minute.
the walk out of the office was very humbling to say the least, his mother wasting no time cursing him out in spanish, and it continued like that until they got home.
“i mean . . . what were you thinking getting into a fight at school?! you know that stays on your record, tu idiota!” connie’s head fell in his hands, an exasperated sigh slipping past his lips. he really didn’t feel like talking about this. he just wanted to see you.
“imagine how y/n will feel knowing you started a fight with her boyfriend, she already must know you don’t like—”
“¡ya ni siquiera están juntos, mami! . . . he broke up up with her.” it was silent for a few beats. “¿lo sabes con seguridad?” connie shrugged, doing his absolute best to explain the situation with you leaving school early, your phone being on do not disturb, and his missing highlight from your instagram. all his poor momma could do was sigh. “this is absolutely no reason to get into a fight, and get suspended over, constance. i’m very disappointed.”
before connie could respond, there was a knock at the door. his mom looked at him and then the door, “yo lo conseguiré, tú quédate aquí. this conversation is not over.” connie slumped back into the couch, his heart stinging at that word ‘disappointed.’
he didn’t pay too much attention to the visitor at the door, until he saw who it was. there you were in your pink and red, heart patterned sweater, the jeans you were once wearing now replaced with hello kitty pajama pants. “i have to run to the store, so i’ll give you two a minute, but make it quick please, y/n. he’s in big trouble.” and with that you two were left alone.
you slowly walked over to his spot on the couch, taking a seat next to him. you sniffled, “ . . . why’d you do that?” he was silent, that only frustrated you more. “do you realize he’ll probably never talk to me again? he already thought i was cheating on him with you, this only made things worse! i know you don’t like the guy, but connie, i like him a lot, i-i think i might even love him.”
this had connie gritting his teeth, and balling up his hands.
“dios mio, y/n, give me a fucking break. you don’t love eren, you don’t even know what love is, you’re seventeen.” this had you scoffing, how dare he try to turn this on you? “and what the hell do you know about love? you’ve never even been in a relationship for goodness sake!”
“i may not have been in a relationship, but i can tell you whatever you and eren had goin’ on was not love. he never took you out, bought you gifts, i mean shit, the only reason the guy posted you online was because you begged him to, and it was only twenty four hour stories. don’t even get me started when he forgot your birthday—”
“that’s enough!” you cried, jumping up in front of him. connie followed suit, his chest nearly touching yours. you two have had your fair share of fights, but this is by far is becoming the most serious one.
“what? can’t handle hearing that your boy toy was a shitty boyfriend?” he hissed, narrowing his eyes at you. your hands balled into fist, your french tips pinching the skin of your palm. “w . . . w-why do you even care so much huh?! why does him breaking up with me effect you so much, con, it’s getting exhausting!”
“¡porq ue estoy enamorado de ti, chica estúpida!”
your body tensed when connie pressed his lips against yours. it was fast, and awkward. it was his first kiss.
when he pulled away, you couldn’t help but feel small under his intense gaze. his cheeks were as red as tomatoes, and his nostrils were flaring—he was breathless. your lips started to wobble, a fresh batch of hot tears brimming your eyes. “connie, i—”
suddenly the door opened, and in walked his mother. he looked at her and then to you. “deberías ir,” he muttered, taking a step back from you. each movement he made was like a hammer to your heart, shattering it slowly with each step.
“m’kay *sniffle* i-i’ll see ya,” your voice cracked at the last part, and it had connie’s heart clenching. this wasn’t supposed to happen, none of this was. when he pictured himself confessing his crush to you, him sending you out of his house a minute later was not apart of the vision.
that night you and connie both cried in your mothers’ laps, hearts aching and yearning to text the other, but too scared to at the same time, afraid it would make things worse.
“lo arruiné todo, mami. probablemente esté muy enojada conmigo,” he muttered, his eyes fluttering shut when he felt her nails scratch at his scalp. she tsked, and shook her head. “you didn’t ruin anything, amor. y/n cares about you so much, you two will work it out. te lo prometo, mi amor.” he muttered out something that she couldn’t quite hear, but she just let him be, allowing him to peacefully fall asleep on her lap.
while connie was asleep he received two messages.
new message from day one : i’m not mad at u, but i think we need to have a talk tmmr about what happened today
new message from day one : i hope you’re okay, ily
you and connie did talk about it, and after a conversation that lasted four hours, you both came to an agreement to not date. connie mentally beat himself up the entire way home afterwards, because that was in fact not how he felt, but just from your tone he figured you weren’t interested. little did he know you were.
after he graduated you two still talked, but not as often, until you just didn’t talk at all. by that time you were freshly graduated, and preparing for a summer full of fun before starting college. you decided to choose one in your city, too scared to leave your momma alone, but you wouldn’t have it any other way.
connie took an interest in selling weed, and has since moved out of his moms apartment, where to? you had no clue.
february 14th, 2024 . . .
“girlllll, let’s go! you got thirty seconds to get down those stairs before i leave you!”
“you better not! it’s hard to get down these stairs with heels on!” you cried out, clutching onto the stair railing as you carefully went down. a sight of relief blew past your lips when you made it down safely. before getting in your friends car you tugged your skirt down, not that there was much to grab onto anyway.
“this skirt is entirely too tiny,” you grumbled, hopping in the passenger seat. anytime you made any sudden movement it was riding up your thick thighs, and you almost took it off, but you knew you’d be crucified by your best friend if you didn’t go through with wearing it.
you were heading out for a night at the club, and since it was valentine’s day, this certain club was allowing ladies to get fifty percent off all drinks.
the entire way there you were fiddling with your skirt, afraid that you were showing too much skin. “don’t worry about your outfit, ‘kay? you look good as fuck, y/n,” you friend grinned at you from the side, giving your arm a tender squeeze. “yeah, you’re right . . . i do look good. really good.”
before you knew it, you had arrived, your stomach doing somersaults when your friend turned the car off. she undid her seatbelt, and turned to you, she set her hands on your shoulders, and looked dead in your eye. “we’re gonna go in there and come out with some cuties, got it?” you let out a shaky breath, nodding your head.
the club was loud, and packed, but nonetheless there were some cute faces in the crowd. luckily your friend found two open seats at the bar, she was quick to secure them and immediately ordered a lemon drop for you. “i feel bad you won’t be able to drink since you drove,” you pouted, resting your arms on the bar.
your friend waved you off, insisting that she wouldn’t need the liquid courage like you would. it was shady, yes, but she wasn’t lying. you weren’t the slickest when it came to men, so it was a good thing you were a pretty girl.
“how’s your mom?” she asked, swiftly thanking the bartender when they set your drink in front of you. you hummed, tapping your fingernails against the glass. “she’s okay, we’re not out of the woods yet, but hopefully she’ll be in remission soon.”
a couple days after your twentieth birthday you had found out your mother was ill, and although you were willing to take a break from college and take care of her full time, she insisted otherwise. ‘this is your time to find yourself, and maybe someone special,’ she had said with tears in her eyes.
your friend gave you a warm smile, “that’s amazing, y/n. i’m really happy for you guys. now where are all the cute . . . guys, ” your brows pulled together as her sentence trailed off, her focus on something, or someone, behind you. “you see somebody?” you asked, taking a sip of your drink.
she nodded with a smirk, “there’s one right behind you. the one in the gallery dept. hoodie. he’s gonna be mine tonight.” you giggled, pushing your hand against the bar to get a look at the mystery man. your eyes widened when you realized it was onyankopon.
“oh . . . i—i know him. i went to school with him,” you muttered, turning your seat back. “were you two high school sweethearts, or something?” she teased, pinching your side. this had you scoffing.
“please. we were never together, but he was friends with my bes—um, ex best friend, connie.” her eyebrows shot up in surprise. “right, right. i remember you mentioning him. do you know if they’re still cool? *gasp* maybe they’re here together! i’ll call him over.”
“n-no, no no no. there’s no need to do that forreal,” it was hard to hide the nervousness in your voice. your friend hummed, tapping on her chin in faux thought. “you’re right, let’s go over there instead,” and with that she was hopping off her seat, her hand wrapping around your forearm.
you were stunned to say the least, your body stiffening as she tried to pull you from the bar stool. “but wait, wait, what if they actually are here together? y’know i haven’t seen connie in years and i just—”
you were silenced by a hand being placed in your face. “my dear y/n, no one on this earth go ahead in life by sitting in their behind, not come onnn.” you whined and protested when pulled again, spluttering out something about how you haven’t finished your drink. it took some serious convincing, and tugging, but your friend eventually got you up, wasting no time making a beeline for ony.
his back was facing you, but that didn’t stop your friend from tapping him on the back. “what’s good—oh, y/n! what’s up, girl?” ony grinned, pulling you in for a hug. you awkwardly hugged him back, giving his back a few gentle pats. “o-oh nothin’ much,” you were very grateful the music was so loud that he couldn’t hear the shakiness in your voice.
“what are you ladies up to tonight?” he asked, beckoning you more into his section. there were a couple other guys, and some girls taking up seats on the lounge couches, all immersed in their own conversations, besides one man. he sat on the farthest end by himself, a blunt perched between two tatted fingers. he was scrolling on his phone, his foot tapping along to the music every now and again.
“oh, you know, just a girls night out. i was actually hoping we could hangout with you? you seem nice . . . really cute too.” you couldn’t help but snort as your friend turned on her charm, ony immediately turning to putty in her hands. “why don’t you go mingle, y/n? i’ll have ony order you another drink, and don’t panic if you see you know who,” she gave you a sly wink before waving you off much to your dismay.
you decided to take a seat next to the loner with the blunt, wondering to yourself if he was even allowed to smoke that inside. your eyes drifted to the rings on his fingers, all coated with tiny diamonds. you leant to the side, close enough to where he could hear you, “i-i like your rings!”
and suddenly you were met with a pair of very familiar brown eyes staring back into yours. “connie . . ? !” you said his name as it were forbidden, your chest tightening. he looked at you for a moment, his brows pulling together as he examined your face, you figured it all clicked for him when he started grinning at you like the cheshire cat.
before you could say another word, he stood up, his reaching down for yours. “uh i—” you looked over at your friend who was already looking right at you. she had a giddy smile on her face, her hand waving in a not so subtle way to tell you to go with him. with no excuse left, you took his hand, the warmth from it sending shivers up your back.
as he lead you out of the section he passed the blunt he was smoking to ony, yelling something about how he’d back right back. while he lead the way, your eyes were focused on the way his hand grasped yours. it felt comforting, familiar.
when you got outside the cool, city air felt like heaven, but it didn’t stop goosebumps from forming on your skin when connie leant against a blacked out vehicle, his eyes zeroing in on yours.
“wow, s’really you.” his head tilted back in a laugh, giving you a small peek at the grills on his teeth. “¿cómo has estado, princesa?” his head tilted, awaiting your answer.
you wanted to speak, you really did, but the words would not leave your mouth. you were stunned to say the least, not only from seeing connie after years, but also how different he looked. he was way buffer, and now had a bit of facial hair, his signature buzzcut stayed the same. what caught your attention the most was the tattoos that covered his arms and neck. his few pictures on social media didn’t do him much justice.
“hello? anybody home?” he chuckled, waving his hand in front of your face. you blinked three times, your mouth opening, then closing.
“hi.”
you sounded strained, almost like you were in pain, it made connie laugh. “hi, y/n.” the way he smiled at you made you feel . . . weird. he was looking at like you like he wanted to devour you whole.
“sorry, it’s uh, it’s been a minute since we’ve seen each other in person. you look . . . different, i-i mean you look the same, but, not? i’m sorry—”
“hey, hey, relax. it’s just me remember? no need to be nervous, even if some time has passed.” he leant forward, grabbing your hand in his, he pulled you closer then let go, your hand twitched at the loss of contact.
he had a point. it was just connie, your childhood best friend, someone you’ve known longer than you haven’t.
you cleared your throat, clasping your hands behind your back. “well, i’ve been good. i’m sure you’ve seen that college is going well. met some new people, had a few failed relationships, you know, typical stuff.”
“thas’ wassup. i heard about your mom, i’m real happy for you y/n. ustedes dos no merecen nada más que bendiciones en esta vida.” warmth spread through your cheeks at his words.
“did that translate, or have you been lacking on your spanish, hm?” he teased, secretly hoping you have in fact been continuing to speak spanish. you giggled, waving him off. “i understand, and i really appreciate it. deberías visitarla algún día, le encantaría verte.”
his grin widened, “yeah? i figured she’d hate me after what happened with you and my mom. i’m sure you’ve heard some awful things from her about me.”
he was correct. whenever his mother did visit his name would somehow come up, and then it would lead to the same speech about how she felt like she failed him and how she hated his life choices. you agreed about the drug selling part, you weren’t very fond he chose that as a source of income, but when it came to the other awful things she spewed about him, you found it rather hard to believe. there was no way she was talking about your connie.
he scratched the back of his neck awkwardly, his eyes drifting to the gravel. “i don’t blame her though, like at all. i gave her hell for months about . . certain things. i thought it was just best to keep my distance after i moved out. she hasn’t reached out to me, and vice versa.” this made you frown, and without thinking you wrapped your arms around him.
“oh, uh, thanks,” he stiff at first, but eventually relaxed into the hug, “feels good to hug you again.” you slowly nodded, sighing with content. it really was nice to be in his embrace again. his smelt different though, more mature, more expensive.
“you know, even though she says all that, she still misses you like crazy. momma told me so herself.” connie squeezed you a bit tighter, his chin finding place at the crown of your hair. “your momma has never been one to lie, so i’ll take your word for it,” he chuckled, leaning back against the car, taking you back with him.
your nose bumped into his sturdy chest, you looked up at him, giving him an apologetic look. he gently squeezed your side, “don’t worry about it.”
it was silent for a few beats. he cocked his head to the side, giving you his signature smirk, “why’re you lookin’ at me like that hm?”
“it’s just really good to see your face . . . i missed you connie. in case you don’t remember, you kinda stopped talking to me the summer i graduated.” connie licked his lips, the feeling of guilt slowly trickling over him. you looked like you had more to say, but as always you cut yourself off, your teeth picking on your bottom lip to stop yourself.
you nearly whimpered when his hand cupped your face, his thumb slowly pulling your bottom lip out. “veo que todavía tienes ese hábito. termina lo que ibas a decir, usa tus palabras.” you melted in his arms. his touch was so gentle, as if he was petting a week old kitten.
you took a deep breath, “well, it hurt connie. it hurt a lot, and like, i felt guilty, but i shouldn’t have felt guilty because . . . well, because i didn’t do anything! you kissed me, and then you ask me to leave like i did something wrong, a-and then when you agree to talk to me you acted like a fucking zombie, just nodding along to everything i said, not explaining literally anything at all. you completely ghosted me after you graduated, and then i have to hear from my mom that you’re fucking dealing?! i mean, what were you even thinking? and i don’t believe the bullshit about it ‘just being weed’, l-like y-you were an actual *sniffle* —
you hadn’t even noticed you were crying, you also hadn’t noticed you stepped three paces away from connie, too wrapped up in your anger. connie let out a shaky sigh, “sigue adelante.” connie was stunned. you were never one to raise your voice at someone, let alone yell at them. in a world full of people who ran over you your whole life, him included, he was more than happy to receive all the pent up anger you had built up.
you sniffled, lips wobbling as you choked down a sob. you probably looked crazy right now, but then again this probably looked like a normal situation seeing as you were outside a nightclub.
“you just left me hanging . . . friends don’t do that connie, n-not best friends that you’ve known longer than you haven’t. there was so much stuff i wanted to talk to you about, but i didn’t even know if you would give me the time of day.” by now you were close to hyperventilating, all the emotions you had been setting aside for years hitting you at once.
connie pushed off the car, outstretching his arms towards you, he pulled you in for a tight embrace, whispering little things in your ear to calm you down. “it’s okay, it’s okay, i’m here. i’m so sorry, you have no idea, cariño.”
“then explain yourself,” your muttered, words muffled by his shirt.
well, here we go.
“i wasn’t . . . i wasn’t being completely honest when we had that conversation. i didn’t want to be just friends, i wanted to be more, but then i thought ‘well, what if things don’t work out?’ so, i pushed you away. you have to believe me when i say dealing was the last thing i wanted to do, but if you want to live a good life as quickly as possible you have to do things you’re not proud of. you gotta understand, i was around some bad people for a while, the kind of bad people that would hurt someone i care about. i didn’t want that to happen, and my mom was already giving me enough shit so i left. i’m so sorry y/n, i wanted to explain but it was just too much, pero estoy aquí ahora.”
you didn’t say anything, so he continued. “el universo nos volvió a reunir por alguna razón, verdad?”
“yeah . . . i guess.”
“so stop those tears. y’know i hate seeing you cry, ‘breaks my heart,” he muttered, wiping a stray tear off your cheek. “do you hate me?” he whispered, and his chest filled with relief when you shook you head.
“nunca podría odiarte, connie”
connie inhaled deeply through his nose, his face moving another inch close to yours. your lips parted, but nothing came out except a weak ‘please’. he hummed, brushing his nose against yours, before softly pressing his lips to yours. it was slow, but desperate, which was expected since he’d been waiting years to do this.
what connie didn’t expect was for you to deepen the kiss. your lips parted, tongue swiping against his bottom lip in urgency. a chuckle rumbled in his chest, how cute.
he grabbed the fat of your hips and switched your positions, your back now pressed against the car. he cupped your jaw, his thumb pressing down on your chin. connie’s tongue traced over your lips before pushing into your mouth, earning a squeak from you.
“heh, te gusta eso?” with a gulp, you nodded. since when did he learn how to do that? it kinda irked you knowing some girl, that wasn’t you experienced these kinds of kisses from connie.
“get outta your head, we’re supposed to be kissing, not thinking,” he muttered against your lips, pushing his front against yours. the cogs in your head started turning when you felt something hard. was he worked up just as much as you?
connie cradled your jaw in both his hands, desperately kissing you with every fiber of his being. “c-con—”
“lo sé, cariño, lo sé. y’have no idea how much i’ve waited for this. from the moment you kissed me on the cheek ten sum years ago, i knew i didn’t wanna feel anyones lips on me, but yours.”
you whimpered. “and as much as i wanna bend you over my car, n’ take you right here, i have a friend who needs to get home safe, and so do you.” he pulled his lips away from yours, a thin line of spit connecting you. he was right, unfortunately.
“i wanna see you again . . . tomorrow, i wanna see you tomorrow. can you make that happen?” you were clutching onto him so tight, afraid he’d slip right through your fingers. connie smirked, his fingers dancing down your hips, and to the tops of your tights. he pulled the material forward before letting it snap back into place, earning a squeak from you.
“i can make that happen. should i roll us a little sum?” you shook your head, “eh, i don’t really like smoking, it makes me paranoid.” you laughed at the last part, and god, it was so nice to hear your laugh. your eyes trailed down to his lower half, then back to his eyes. with a slow bat of your eyes you said, “i like wine though . . . cuanto más dulce, mejor. do what you will with the information.”
connie’s dick twitched. “noted. very much noted, princesa.”
as happy as you were to know you’d be seeing connie again real soon, something kept crossing your mind. “um, connie?” you whispered, playing with the hem of his shirt. he noticed your eyes were avoiding his, you were nervous.
“those people, the bad ones, do you still deal with them?” it was a valid question, connie had a feeling you’d bring it up sooner or later.
“no, i don’t, i got outta that months ago. i found me a new supplier through a friend and now i sell a lil weed on side, nothing big. n’ then once i finish this apprenticeship at this tattoo shop i’m at, i’m done for good. no estaría haciendo todo esto si supiera que tu vida estaría en peligro.”
your eyes fluttered shut when he lips pressed against your forehead. he wrapped his fingers around the gold, cuban link chain around his neck, “you can still be skeptical, i don’t blame you, but just know i treasure your existence too much to play with it like that.”
“i believe you, con,” your voice was small, but connie was still able to hear. he kissed your forehead a final time, “c’mon let’s go inside, it’s cold.” your fingers laced with his, and a warmth that you’ve never felt before coursed throughout your body.
when you got back to his section of the club, you sat in the nearest open spot, your heart beating a mile a minute. after all these years wondering where you two had went wrong, you finally got a little clarity. you still had questions, but decided not to pry. as connie talked about his experience with those certain individuals, you could tell by the strain in his voice that it was a hard topic.
“by the smile on your face, i’m assuming it went well?!” your head whipped to the side to see your friend, a proud smirk on her lips. you nibbled on your lip, your eyes flicking to connie who was sitting by himself once again, blunt in hand. you would definitely call the conversation a success.
february 15th, 2024 . . .
new message from bffie ౨ৎ : i hope you like stella rose black bc that’s what i got
new message from bffie ౨ৎ : send me your addy, ima leave in 20
your stomach twisted in knots as you texted connie your address. you didn’t know what to expect from your hangout, all you knew was that there was going to be sexual tension and wine, a very dangerous combination.
with a shallow exhale, you stood up, quickly making your way over your full body mirror. you examined your outfit carefully in the mirror, it was cute, but something was missing. “ . . . i need a headband,” you muttered, scrambling to find the perfect, pink headband to complete the outfit.
before you knew it, connie was texting you that he was outside your apartment.
“momma! i’m gonna go out with connie for a while, i’ll be back soon.” you pressed a quick kiss to her forehead, and she mumbled something about how you looked like a doll.
when walked outside connie was waiting at the bottom of the stairs for you, flowers and card in hand. “lemme help you down, lord knows what’ll happen since you’re in heels,” he snickered, extending his hand out towards you.
“yeah, yeah, whatever,” you grumbled, taking his hand. you let out a tiny gasp when he pulled you close, his body pressing against yours. “mm, you look cute. i like . . . whatever this is,” he chuckled, pulling at the soft material of your jacket.” you mumbled out a thank you, your eyes drifting to the pink roses he was holding.
he held them out to you, his lips lifting into a sly smile. “i know i’m a day late, but these are for you.” the roses were the prettiest shade of pink, and the card had some cheesy pun about sushi on it. “gracias, connie. they’re beautiful.”
“you’re very welcome, amor. now c’mon, i got your seat all warmed up for ya.” he literally had the seat warmer up full blast, already knowing you were probably freezing your ass off in your skirt.
his car smelt like weed and pine scented air freshener, it was oddly comforting. “feel free to adjust the heat to your liking, it won’t take long to get there though, only like fifteen minutes.” you hummed, placing your hands neatly in your lap.
the ride was pretty silent, but you didn’t mind it because his hand was glued to your thigh the entire time. “m’not making you uncomfortable being too touchy am i?” he spoke softly, giving your thigh a gentle squeeze. you answered with a quick ‘mm mm!’ and eagerly placed both of your hands on top of his.
you were so cute, and you didn’t even know it, you were practically killing the poor guy.
“good . . . good. y’know i’ve come to realize i’m really hands-on when i want something, ‘specially if it’s a pretty girl.” your lips parted, then shut, unable to think of anything to say that wouldn’t make you sound dumb. when did he become such a flirt?
“eh, i guess it just came naturally as i got older.” connie chuckled, and you just about fell out when you realized you had in fact said that out loud. “sorry i didn’t meant to say that out loud, b-but it’s true! you keep leavin’ me flustered it’s annoying!” this had connie laughing so hard the corners of his eyes crinkled shut. “you want me to stop?”
“ . . . no.”
twenty minutes later . . .
“make yourself comfortable and—ah, don’t mind her. she loves meeting new people,” connie chuckled, patting the grey pitbull, that had started sniffing you the second you walked inside, gently on the head. you become quickly enamored with the dog, bending down and cooing at it excitedly. “what’s her name?”
“her name is kali, i got her a few months after i moved in here. she makes good company, very sweet, and very snuggly as you can see.” snuggly was indeed the correct word to use, and you were loving it. “she’s too precious, con, i’m sooo jealous,” you giggled, scratching underneath kali’s chin.
connie’s apartment was very . . . him. dark brown, leather furniture covered the living room, along with a sixty five inch tv mounted on the wall. his windows were huge, giving you a pretty view of the entire city, and along with them was a big glass door that lead to the balcony.
“this is . . wow.” your hands were clasped behind your back as you looked around, what caught your attention next the various pieces of art along the walls. “you’re into buying art?” you giggled, turning around to look back at connie, who was still by the front door. he pursed his lips, a hand coming back to scratch at the back of his neck.
“i dabble in it every now and again. shits way too expensive to have a whole collection,” he chuckled, finally making his way over to you. “which one do you like the most?”
you nibbled on your lip, taking your time to examine and admire each framed piece.
“i think i like . . . this one. the eyes look so real, it almost looks like a picture, and it looks like there’s some emotion in them, but i can’t quite pinpoint it,” you muttered, and connie hummed in agreement. he went on to explain that it was his favorite painting as well, and that it was the cheapest one of the bunch.
“this older guy was having a viewing, and barely anyone was there so he walked me through the whole exhibit. these eyes? they’re his wives, shit, everything he painted in there was of his wife. the day the viewing was held was the anniversary of her death, i thought it was kinda . . beautiful, so i bought it. only cost me fifty bucks, can you believe that?”
your jaw dropped the tiniest bit, you stepped closer the painting, taking in every little detail once again. “so i’m assuming the look in her eyes—it’s love?”
connie nodded, taking a step forward as well, he was behind you now, you could practically feel the warmth radiating off of him. “he said when he was painting this he was picturing the look she gave him on their wedding day, said he saw a spark in her eyes that day that he’d never seen before, and never saw it again. cool as hell right?” he whispered, leaning over to rest his chin on your shoulder.
“y-yeah, s’really cool,” you turned your head, your nose bumping into his, “it makes sense you’d have something like this it, uh, suits you?” connie grinned at your words, now standing up straight.
“thank you, y/n . . . you want some wine?”
you were quick to nod, your feet swiftly turning to follow him to the kitchen. he rummaged through he cabinets and pulled out two glass cups, “now i don’t have wine glasses, so these’ll have to do.”
as he poured the wine, you went ahead and made yourself comfortable on one of the bar stools at the kitchen island. your feet slowly swung back forth, and when connie slid the glass over to you, you wasted no time taking a long sip. “s’good? es lo suficientemente dulce para ti, linda niña?” he asked, leaning on the island.
you felt your cheeks get hot, recalling your comment from last night. “yes, it’s sweet enough, thank you.” you made brief eye contact with connie before looking back down at your glass, twirling it carefully in your hands.
suddenly you blurted out, “you have a lot of tattoos now.”
connie smirked, taking a sip of his own wine. “yes, yes i do. you wanna see them?” you nearly choked on your spit, breaking into a fit of coughs. see connie’s tattoos? you didn’t know if your heart, or your pussy, could handle that, especially at the rate you were drinking this wine.
connie took your silence as a yes, and before you knew it he was shedding his hoodie, leaving him in thin tank top. he was completely jacked now, the swirls of ink around his arms and chest only adding on to his attractiveness. he looked like a completely different person.
“wow, you really wasted no time taking your clothes off huh?” you giggled, raising two fingers to beckon him closer. connie kissed his teeth, he tried his absolute best to look annoyed, but he couldn’t! not when your laugh sounded like the prettiest of symphonies.
“man, whatever. now you wanna see just my arms, or do you want so see everything?” his eyebrows raised up mischievously, and you knew right then and there you were absolutely done for . . . and you were gonna need more wine. “um, i guess everything since you’re already stripping, but gimme some more wine first!”
after a topping off your wine, connie removed his tank top, revealing more inked skin. you eyes were as wide as saucers, your jaw nearly dropped to the floor. “oh my goodness, connie! didn’t this shit hurt?!” without thinking you extended your hand, you ran the tips of your fingers over his chest, shuddering at the thought of a needle piercing his tan skin all over.
connie’s breath hitched. “y-yeah, it hurt like bitch. took two sessions to finish too, but it’s hard right?” your head bobbed up and down in a mindless nod, your hand still glued to to his chest. “this one didn’t hurt too bad,” he grumbled, pulling the waistband of his sweats down slightly to reveal a tattoo that said ‘muérdeme’ right on his v-line.
“bite me . . ?” you mumbled, fingers trailing down to trace over the letters. connie let out a low hum, goosebumps rising all over his skin. “you like it?”
you blindly reached for your glass and took a small sip of the wine, you looked into his eyes while you swallowed before nodding. “i like it a lot, i love all your tattoos, s’making me a little hot actually,” you giggled, leaving connie stunned, and a little turned on. the wine was definitely giving you a little extra confidence.
he took a step towards you, and then another until your knees were touching the tops of his thighs. he didn’t lean down, no, he waited for you to tilt that pretty head up and look him right in his eyes. when you did you wanted to look right back down at the floor. he was staring at you like he wanted to eat you whole.
“should i put my shirt back on, or do you want me to keep it off?” he didn’t laugh, he give you that signature smirk, he looked more serious than you’ve ever seen him. his thumb tapped against your bottom lip, “¿me oyes, linda chica? ¿on o off?”
you let out a shaky breath, “o-off. off please.”
connie was quick to grasp underneath your thighs, and pick you up, his hands moved downwards to cup your ass for a better grip. “if you want me to stop you better tell me now,” he spoke lowly, setting you on the island. before even kissing you the first thing he did was nuzzle his face into your neck, inhaling your familiar, but now slightly different scent.
your hand gently cupped the back of his neck, “you still like me?” yes, you completely ignored what he said, but that question had been burning in your brain since the second you locked eyes with him the previous night.
he lifted his face out of your neck, now standing at his full height. “um . . . did you not see how quick i was to kiss you last night? or how quick i was to start taking off my clothes just now? c’mon, y/n, usa esa linda cabecita.”
your lips pushed into a pout, “don’t be a dick, just confirm it for me so i can have peace of mind.”
“yes, y/n, i do still like you, love in fact. i’ve only ever loved two women in my life, you and my momma, and that’s how it’ll be until i’m in my grave.”
“b-but connie, you’re only twenty four . . . don’t you think you might love another before your time comes?” he quickly shook his head, not even bothering to give your question any thought. “you and my momma. that’s it, that’s all—well, kali too, but you know what i mean,” you both laughed at the last part, but you were soon interrupted by connie smushing his lips into yours.
“mmph! w-well i have no other questions so please continue,” you panted against his lips, you shakily reached your hand down to tug him closer by the waistband of his sweats. your panties were starting to feel uncomfortably sticky, the soft cotton sticky lewdly to your folds.
connie wasted absolutely no time lifting you up once more, he mumbled something about taking you to his bedroom before making the slow, but successful journey there. his lips never once left yours, happily swallowing up every whine and moan you let slip out.
you eventually had to pull away for air, though he did not make it easy, his lips chasing yours each time you pulled away.
“i—i like your room!” your lips parted in a squeal when he dropped you on the bed, your headband flying off somewhere behind you. “not cool, eres tan molesto,” you huffed, sitting up on your elbows.
connie’s chest rumbled with a laugh, you were really too cute.
“what, you think just because i’m in love with you i won’t give you shit? estas muy equivocada, mami.” connie softly grabbed your ankles, pressing a kiss to each one before pulling you forward. “you mind if i peek up under there?” he chuckled, slowly getting on his knees.
“n-no go ahead, just . . . be nice. it’s been a minute since i’ve gotten a wax, m’goin’ for a more natural thing you know?” no, no he didn’t, but he truly didn’t care if you were bald down there or not, he was gonna eat it regardless.
his hand reached up to the button of your skirt, “i don’t care if you got a little hair down there, y/n. we’re both grown, yeah?” as he was speaking he undid the button, then the zipper. you didn’t say anything, instead you just nodded and lifted your hips up, allowing him to slip your skirt off.
connie slowly ran his hands along the insides of your thighs, his mouth watering at the sticky silhouette of your pussy. you gasped when he pulled your panties to the side, your dripping pussy on fully display for him. “dios mio . . . she’s prettier than i thought,” he mumbled, his fingers brushing over the small tufts of hair on your mound.
“constance. don’t p-pet it . . . that’s . . . w-weird . . .” your sentence trailed off into nothingness the second you felt his tongue circle around your clit. he was going soft, so soft you barely felt anything, and then he licked a fat stripe up your folds before sucking your clit into his mouth.
your elbows eventually gave up, and you flopped back on the bed with a soft thud. connie hummed against your pussy, his fingers tugging your panties to the side more to get his proper fill. when he felt your hand nearly smack on top of his head it gave him the biggest fucking ego boost.
“f-faster please,” he heard you sigh out, and he was more than happy to give you what you wanted, except your panties were starting to become a bother. “no problem, gorgeous, i just gotta—”
RIPPPPPPP
you picked your head up to see if your ears were deceiving you, and unfortunately they were not. connie had completely torn your panties in half, he tossed the garment aside like it was nothing and looked back up at you, a dopey smile on his lips. “you have absolutely no manners,” you panted out, too embarrassed to even glance at your torn, discarded panties.
he kissed the inside of your thigh, mumbling something you couldn’t decipher into the skin, probably something snarky knowing him.
“spread your legs mama, i’m gonna take my time with you—unless you have somewhere to be after this?”
you shook your head, grabbing the back of your knees to open them as wide as you could. “i texted my mom not to wait up on the way here, she’ll call if she needs me. now no more talking,” the last part came out rushed, barely audible to connie as you pushed his head between your thighs.
despite the well rounded man he had become, connie was still a little shit at heart, always teasing you even during moments like these. every time you’d moan, he’d moan just as loud, every time your hips raised the slightest he’d push them right back down, rewarding you with a nice pinch on the thigh.
he was a messy eater, not ashamed in the slightest at how sloppy he sounded, but at the same time it didn’t help that you were practically leaking like a faucet either. each time his tongue swiped over your clit another gush of wetness dribbled out of you, waiting to be lapped up by connie.
his cock throbbed in his sweats, tip drooling at the thought of you wrapped around him.
“o-oh connieee,” you gasped out, your head tilting back into the mattress. you were so wrapped up in your pleasure that you hadn’t even realized he pushed you further up the bed, making just enough room to lay between your thighs. the pressure felt sooo nice on his dick—now he could really enjoy this.
“te sientes bien, baby?” he asked, spitting on your clit, earning a shy whine from you. his hips started to rock into the bed, and with each movement it had him moaning into your pussy, the vibrations bringing you closer and closer to your peak.
you moaned out a weak yes, your hips circling around his tongue. he gave you full control now, allowing you to move your hips, and fuck his mouth as you pleased.
you nearly fell out when you suddenly felt him push a finger in, curling it almost instantly. he let you adjust at first, making sure you weren’t hurting at all before adding another finger.
shlick! shlick! shlick!
you were so close, he could feel it. you were dripping all onto the sheets, creating a creamy puddle beneath your ass, and if connie weren’t as pussydrunk as he was, he would’ve definitely teased you for it.
“i-i’m—!”
suddenly a hand wrapped around your throat and connie was towering over you, his chain dangling right over your nose. “do it, i wanna see your face when i make you cum for the first time. ven en mis dedos, princesa, déjame ver esa cara.” your eyes rolled back, hands grasping at connie’s wrist as you came a cry.
“there it is—mierda, such a pretty girl,” he groaned, slowly sliding his fingers out of your pussy. he rubbed three fingers between your folds, simply feeling you up now. “mm, i like your pussy. she’s cute n’ soft, just like you, i can’t get enough of either of ya.” your back arched into his chest when he pinched your clit, “you’re so responsive too.”
“t-thank you, can we—can we do some more?” you could spot the huge print in his sweats from a mile away, and you were just about done waiting to see what was underneath. you cupped his bulge gently, giving it a soft squeeze. “lemme see, con.”
“m’kay, baby,” he muttered, giving your lips three kisses before getting off the bed. with shaky arms you sat up, giving his lower half your full attention.
wow.
“what?”
“what?” you asked, blinking multiple times. he was looking at you like you had sprouted a second head. “you said ‘wow’ and i couldn’t decide if it was a good wow or a bad one, so i’m asking . . . duh.”
you kissed your teeth and scooted closer to the edge of bed, you couldn’t help but internally cringe at the wet sounds your pussy made as you moved. “come closer,” you whispered, moving to sit on your knees. he took two steps forward, his palms feeling clammy when you leant forward, nose nearly touching his cock.
he was hung, thick too, almost intimidatingly thick—but you were no bitch, and you liked a challenge. he let out a small breath through his nose, it sounded like a laugh. “¿crees que puedes manejar eso?” he mused, raising a thick brow. you looked at him through your lashes, “yes.”
your tongue poked out, giving his drooling tip an experimental lick. oh, you liked that.
connie’s head tilted back, his adams apple bopping with you wrapped your lips around him, your tongue caressing the underside of his cock. “d-don’t do too much, i don’t w-want to—fuck, bust in your mouth so . . . soon.” all thoughts, or any concept of one were wiped from connie’s brain when you started to suck, little droplets of drool spilling from your mouth and down his shaft. he was too far gone.
you made a noise around his cock when his hand cupped underneath your jaw, the other finding purchase on top of your head. he found a grip on your hair and slowly started to move his hips. you moaned around his dick, and relaxed your jaw, allowing him to sheath more of his cock down your throat.
“good fuckin’ throat,” he grunted, pushing your head down as low as he could get you. your hands smacked against the bed, hot tears brimming your lash line. you choked around him, and that earned you a very deep groan from connie, his head tilting forward to get a good look at you. you looked stunning with a mouthful of dick, his dick specifically.
he yanked you back by your hair, allowing you to gasp for some very much needed air. “you’re— you’re good at that *pant* so fuckin’ good at it.” he slapped his cock against your lips and cheeks, smearing any excess pre and spit on your lips and chin.
“how do you want it?”
you already had a position in mind. “f-from the side, please.”
that’s how you ended up on your side, stark naked, with connie behind you, his chest feeling scorching hot against your back. “im’a go slow at first, but after that i can’t tell you what’ll happen,” he chuckled, pressing a kiss to your shoulder. he took your hand in his, mumbling lowly for you to hold your leg up for him.
despite being on birth control, you both decided it was best for him to still use a condom, but that logic slowly faded away when you felt his dick slip between your dewy folds, fat tip nudging against your swollen clit. “goddamn, y/n,” he groaned into your shoulder, shallowly his hips back before pushing them forward.
“t-that feels nice,” you hummed, nuzzling your face into his pillow. connie tapped his tip against your sticky clit three times before aligning himself with your entrance, “you ready, mama?” you nodded, moaning out a pathetic plea for him to hurry up.
when he finally pushed inside you both gasped. you could already feel your arm getting weak from holding your leg up, and he wasn’t even fully inside you yet. “i got you,” you grunted, putting his hand over your own.
he started slow at first, real slow, making sure that you felt every vein and ridge that he had to offer you. it didn’t take long for your pussy to adjust, and before you knew it he was giving you slow, but swift thrusts. “joder, eso está apretado,” he all but growled, his fingernails digging into the fat of your thighs.
“y—you don’t know how long i’ve waited for this, to be close like this. eres un sueño, amor.” all you could do was moan, and nod along to his praises. you wished it was possible to be even more physically closer to him than you were, but this would just have to do to.
your hips suddenly had a mind of their own, moving back to meet connie’s swift thrusts. “yeah . . fuck me back, c’mon mami.” his eyes flicked between your bodies, your hips moved back against his with so much desperation it was almost too precious.
“c’mere.” his arm slipped underneath your head, his hand snaking around your throat. he hiked your leg higher, and pulled you closer, fully sheathing his dick inside you. “o-oh!” you squeaked out, hand coming behind you to cup the back of connie’s head. he let out a pretty moan right into your ear, his tongue lolling out to lick over the shell of it.
his pace had changed drastically, he was now fucking you like he hated your guts. his strokes were quick and shallow, his pudgy tip slamming against your g-spot each time he pushed in. you couldn’t help but think how nice this would be raw . . . fuck it.
“c-connie,” you whined, patting the back of his head softly. connie’s thrusts halted, he still deep inside you, cock throbbing almost painfully at how tight you were gripping him. “what’s the matter, mi cariño?”
“off . . . i wan’ you to take the condom off, if that’s okay.” it was silent for few beats, the only thing being heard were your labored breaths. “look at me,” connie whispered, not moving an inch until your eyes were on his. he slowly pulled out, gauging your every reaction as he did so. he quick to rip and condom off, blindly tossing it in the nearby trash can by his bed, and he was even quicker to thrust inside you once more, your mouths dropping in synch. you finally got feel him, all of him.
connie resumed his brutal pace, his grip on your throat tightening the tiniest bit. “h-harder,” you choked out, resting your hand on his. he snickered, squeezing your neck roughly before releasing it, “you like that? you like getting choked by me?” you head shook furiously, a raspy ‘uh huh!’ slipping past your kiss bitten lips.
the squelching of your pussy got louder and louder, alerting connie of your oncoming orgasm. “shit, you’re about to cum—aren’t you?” his question ended with a squeeze to your neck, and that’s what triggered your second orgasm of the night. your eyes crossed and your body spasmed, your pussy was clenching around connie so tightly it almost had him cumming.
“f-fuck yeah, get that nut out, baby. feel good f’me.” connie milked your orgasm as long as he could, even going as far as pushing down on your lower tummy to make sure you got it all out.
your body trembled in his arms, and to soothe your whines he whispered praises left and right into your ear, some in english, some in spanish.
it wasn’t long before that fluttery feeling in your tummy came around again, and just like that you were all over connie, your lips smushing against his sloppily in a clash of tongue and teeth. “l-lets go again, i wan’ you on top,” you words were muffled by lips, but he understood loud and clear.
he wanted you to feel him as deep as possible, so that’s why he had you hanging halfway off the bed, your knees pushed to your ears while he beat your guts in. each clap his thighs against yours had your skin tingling, your nerves feeling as though they were on overdrive.
“ohhh f-fuck,” you sobbed out, tears free falling from your eyes. connie’s thighs were practically shaking. he’d been holding back his load for so long there was no telling when he’d lose it. “tu coño es tan bueno mami, tan tan bueno, me encanta.” his eyes zeroed in on the way your pussy struggled take his cock, your folds were all soaked n’ puffy, you looked divine.
“m-me estás follando tan bien, connie, vas a hacer que me corra otra vez!” your hand smacked against his chest, fingers nails digging harshly into the tatted skin. that had connie pulling out with a hiss, a stray spurt of cum shooting from his tip and onto your tummy.
his head dropped pathetically, chest having as if he just got done running marathon. “can’t say stuff like that, baby, y-you don’t know what you’re doin’ to me,” he grunted, pushing his hips back so his cock was laying directly between your chubby folds. he slowly pushed inside, his eyes fluttering shut at the warmth that enveloped him.
his head drooped down, his lips capturing yours in a searing kiss. “we got all night, con, jus’ do it. i won’t be going anywhere, don’t worry.” you words brought him bliss, a feeling of relief washing over him when he realized you weren’t going to allow him to slip from your fingers ever again.
he rolled his hips forward, teeth clamping onto his bottom lip so hard he was sure to draw blood. his hand found its rightful place around your neck, squeezing it roughly every now and again. “that’s that fuckin’ shit, so damn wet for me, mama,” he cursed, pressing his body into yours. he was so deep now, you could practically feel him in your tummy.
the air was suddenly pushed from your windpipe when connie squeezed your neck, his hips stilling as his orgasm washed over him. he wasn’t quick enough to stop himself from finishing inside, but still he pulled out nonetheless, jerking himself off until the rest of his cum covered your pussy.
connie wiped his forehead slowly with the back of his hand, his body feeling almost completely numb. he smirked at the white substance dripping from your hole, and without even thinking he scooped some up and brought to his lips.
“ugh, connie, don’t be nasty,” you whined and shut your thighs, only for them to be forced open by connie. he swiped his fingers over pussy again, this time he was offering you some. “c’mon just a little taste, you almost begging for some before, so here,” he pushed his fingers closer to your lips. with a huff you wrapped your lips around the digit, your eyes not once leaving his.
he smiled down at you, giving your head a soft pat, “buena chica.”
sometime later . . .
after a much needed shower, and some hot tea to help your sore throat, connie had you bundled up in his bed, wearing nothing but one of his t-shirts. an episode of friends was playing quietly in the back on his tv, but you were more interested in watching the man laying next to you.
“con?” you whispered, poking his naked chest gently. his eyes slowly drifted to you, his lips lifting into a small smile. he had smoked before joining you in bed, the smell of weed still slightly attached to him. he raised a brow at you, “yes?”
“what are we?”
“y/n.”
“yes?”
“you wanna be my girlfriend?”
your lips parted then shut again, too stunned to speak. you couldn’t wrap your head around the situation at all, you went from speaking everyday, to not speaking for years, and now after just reconnecting he was asking you to his girlfriend—literally what the hell.
“yes . . . y-yes i’ll be your girlfriend connie. just stay out of that shit, i want us to be happy, lavish lifestyle or not,” you mumbled, brushing your nose again his. connie gentle stroked your jaw with his thumb, “you don’t gotta worry about me getting back into that, i got too much to lose now.” with a dreamy sigh you nuzzled into his touch, lashes fluttering shut.
that night for the first time in six-something years, connie got a full good nights rest, with you tucked by his side.
saw this vid on twitter and immediately thought about connie likekdsjd—angeleyes!connie to be exact hehe! (wc: 1.2k)
just imagine bein’ at some kinda block party—a block party for dr independence day, and after hours of drinks, blunts (smoked by connie only), and grinding on each other with fuck me eyes, connie was finally at his wits end.
“te deseo,” the six foot something man whispered in your ear, his nose brushing over the shell of it a second later. his hands were hot on your waist, squeezing the supple skin possessively before snaking his fingertips past the hem of your shorts.
you froze, lashes fluttering almost doe like. “you mean, like . . right here? we couldn’t possibly—”
“i mean in my car you scaredy cat. i’m a little too faded to drive, but y’know i’m parked further away from here,” he chuckled, nosing at curve of your neck. the scent of his cologne wafted into your nose, dizzying your mind further. “m’not tryna fuck, or nothin’ . . . yet. solo quiero saborearte.”
you made a sound of faux protest, the drink in your hand feeling extra heavy all of a sudden. some head didn’t sound half bad at all . . especially after having two shots—it was just the whole doing it in public thing that had your heart fluttering.
his windows were blacked out . . and with all the festivities going on, you were almost sure no one would notice. well, as long as connie kept his promise, and kept it to some head.
so, that’s how you ended up in the backseat of his car, knees pushed to your chest while the jean shorts you were wearing, along with your panties, dangled off one of your ankles.
at first, your heart was hammering against your ribcage at the naughty, and ohhh so illegal act, but then you felt connie’s tongue slither over your slicked clit. the moan he let out from finally tasting you was pretty, so pretty that it had more slick dripping from your entrance.
“shit, babe,” you mewled, lips twisting into a pleasurable frown when connie laid a tatted hand on your left breast. the tank top you were wearing was comfortable, thin—thin enough to show the peaks of your nipples with little to no teasing.
his other hand grazed over your thighs, slowly making its down to your pussy. his fingers circled over your clenching hole, meanwhile the other squeezed tenderly at your breast. “never been so happy to not have a bra in my way. sabía que se veían extra bonitos por una razón.”
“mmm, i-i wanted to be comfortable since we was gon’ be out all day,” he heard you comment from above, your hand now resting on his head. a few days prior, he got his monthly buzzcut, and it had him looking so yummy. “go faster, please?”
connie cupped your clit between his glossy lips and suckled, hard. his ring and middle finger prodded at your entrance, and you squealed, hips jerking upward.
the hand that was resting on your chest, pushed against your mouth rather roughly. “tienes que guardar silencio, preciosa. don’t wanna draw any attention do you?” connie muttered against your pulsing clit, full lips ghosting over the bud delicately.
you let out a whine; embarrassed and muffled, but still shook your head ‘no’ with a glazed over look in your eyes.
he pressed a wet kiss to your mound, and inhaled deeply. “good . . you wanna hold my hand?” and then his brown eyes were on yours. his irises were dark, but the way he looked at you was soft and comforting.
when your head bobbed up and down in agreement, his bigger hand enveloped yours—warm, rough, but gentle as ever. he allowed you to squeeze it as hard as you needed while he slurped at your cunt, nimble fingers now curling deliciously against that spongy spot that only he could find.
it wasn’t long before you started creaming his fingers, translucent, white pearls of it sloppily dripping down his wrist, and onto the black, leather seats.
“más, dame más,mami,” he slurred into your dewy folds, reddened eyes flicking up to your watery ones. the pads of his fingers massaged your g-spot greedily. “papi need its it—c‘mon.”
obscene squelching noises filled the cramped area, along with your terribly concealed moans.
your nails dug into the skin of his palm, earning a small groan from him. “d-deja de hablar! make me cum before someone hears us.”
pearly white teeth grazed over your clit, and then, connie was actually pouting. the noise your cunt made when he removed his fingers was almost deafening, and to make things even more embarrassing, he actually held them up, and admired them. “you’re no fun . .”
sigh.
now you felt a little bad. why did he have to be so cute?
“hey . . .” you cupped his shiny chin, and ran your thumb over his cupids bow. “the sooner we finish up in here, the sooner we can sober up, n’ get home. you best believe i won’t be satisfied after just one, quick nut.”
connie’s dick throbbed behind his jeans at your words. your duality was quite impressive—one minute, you’re too bashful to even get proper words out, and the next, you’re fixing your lips to say some of the nastiest words he’s ever heard.
“come on, papi. open—”
the petal soft skin of your soaked folds grazed over his chin when you raised your hips, “por favor, tócame.”
he didn’t bother to say anything. why would he waste his breath spewing out anymore pointless words, when he could just delve back into the sweet, syrupy mess that was your pussy.
“yessuh—o-ouuuu shit!”
connie moaned into your cunt, dark, pretty lashes fluttering. his hand wrapped around your throat, and when he got bored of that, he pushed two fingers past your parted lips. both of your hands wrapped around his wrist, and then you started to suck.
your thighs trembled, and it only spurred him further, fingers and tongue working overtime to bring you to climax. a particular harsh nudge against you g-spot finally broke the dam in your lower belly, and before you could even think of letting out a shout, connie was covering your mouth again.
eventually, he removed his fingers from your convulsing hole, and focused on your clit, giving it soft, yet precise licks.
that made you whine loudly into his palm, and although most of it was muffled, he could definitely make out the ‘—nnieeeee’ part of it.
he only stopped when you kicked at his back in overstimulation, with fat tears threatening to spill over your lash line. your clit was released with a lewd pop, and then shown some love seconds after with a chaste kiss.
“damn, you got my neck all wet,” he chuckled, running a hand over the column of his throat. it was slick with your cum, and so were the seats below, but the real mess was sitting pretty, right between your thick thighs.
your clit was enticingly puffy, peeking out from between your chubby lips that were streaked with cream.
*huff* “that was really good, babe . . now can you help me up? i fear i’ve been in this position for too long.”
and just like that, the lustful look in your eyes was gone, and replaced with your usual cute, but blank expression.
it was safe to say you had a good time celebrating dominican independence day as his official girlfriend.
author's note: wrote this one in response to this lovely ask i received earlier today:
"Omg but like, the reader being so flirty with jack all the time (secretly is in love with him) amd he just smiles and shakes his head but he loves the attention from her then one day she sees him ask dr al hashimi for beers and she assumes he asked her out on a date and she backs off and stops flirting and barely even looks him in the eye because if she does she'll fall apart and abbot doesn't understand why she stopped flirting and tries to give her openings for her usual flirty lines but she doesn't bite anymore and just the she fell first, he fell harder stuff it's soooooogood😭😭"
thanks so so much to the lovely @stuffingbuttsandshit for this message (i fw your username sm) and i hope i did it justice. please never be afraid to send me a request, and thank you for all the support, it means the world !!! also, i'm back into my teaching job tomorrow, so this will be the last of what you'll hear from me for a couple days <3
pairing: jack abbot x resident! reader
word count: 4.1k
warnings: miscommunication/misunderstanding trope! medical inaccuracies, reader is a resident but no mention of age, no specific phsyical attributes to certain gender mentioned, also not proofread!
songs i listened to while writing this: so easy (to fall in love) by olivia dean, easy by the commodores, purple by wunderhorse, when we are together by the 1975
description: You flirt with jack every shift like that's what you spent years in med school studying for. When you overhear a conversation between him and another attending, you decide to pull yourself together and face the music - no amount of one sided love would ever change your relationship. At least, that's what you think.
It started out as a joke at first.
It wasn't a calculated one. Not even a particularly brave one. It was a way to find a bit of fun in the middle of a 12-hour shift that tested every line of the Hippocratic oath that you had taken against your better judgement. It was the kind of dumb thing that slipped out of your mouth during a long shift that should have died an embarrassing death right then and there.
It was harmless flirting. Something to take the edge off. Maybe you should have taken a less, well, serious victim.
"Careful, Dr Abbot," you'd said lightly, half leaning against the nurses station while he was in the middle of catching up on charting. "If you keep looking that good under fluroescent lighting, people are gonna start accusing you of witchcraft."
Jack had looked up from the keyboard he was typing away at with that familiar flat, unreadable expression and the smallest hint of amusement at one corner of his mouth. The entire nurse's station had gone quiet, and if you hadn't known any better, you might have thought an elephant had waltzed into the room and taken his seat in trauma room one. You watched as Mel looked up so fast she nearly gave herself whiplash, which is what made you realise you may have taken it too far, because to be honest, Mel usually passed no heed on your usual antics.
Jack had lifted his eyes to yours, studying you for exactly two seconds, then given one slow shake of his head.
"I could do with a check-up on our food poisoning patient in room 4, doctor y/l/n."
That had been it. No scolding, no shutdown, no sharp reminder of professionalism. You ran the image of that twitch in the corner of his mouth over and over again in your head that night like a teenage girl with a crush on her best friend's brother. Or in this case, more like her best friend's dad.
So naturally, because you were a glutton for punishment and loved the thrill of tethering on the edge of something hopeful, you did it again.
And then again.
And somehow, over the next few months, flirting with Jack became a part of your regular shift rhythm, as natural as grabbing gloves from the wall or stealing sips of stale coffee between traumas. You called him handsome under your breath while passing in the hall. You leaned into his space during chart review just to watch his jaw flex. You told him he was ageing like your favourite bottle of red, which had earned you a long, suffering stare and a low, "Jesus Christ."
You did it at first because it was fun. A way to pass the time. But as the months went on, and you moved from junior to senior resident, the truth behind your incessant flirting became a lot more embarassing than you ever wanted to admit.
You were smart. Too smart. Educated and graduated at the top of your class, saved countless lives on the daily and still had time to feed your tabby cat at the end of it all. So there was no reason why your stupid, dumb brain had decided to fall in love with your attending.
You flirted, because you were in love with him. With Jack.
You had been for longer than you wanted to admit to yourself. Long enough that the whole thing had settled beneath your ribs like a live wire. It was warm, and humming, and a little dangerous. Long enough that it had stopped feeling like a crush and started feeling like something worse.
The problem was, Jack never really gave much away.
He liked the attention, you knew that. You weren't imagining that part. He never stopped you. Never looked annoyed in any serious or real way. There was always that familar tiny shake of his head, that almost-smile, that quiet tolerance that was so stupid adorable and somehow felt more intimate than an outright encouragement would have.
But Jack was Jack.
Steady. Closed off. Impossible to read unless he wanted to be read. So you flirted, and he let you, and you told yourself that that was enough for now. You were a resident, and he was your attending. You weren't naive enough to believe that he would ever take a relationship with you seriously.
And you know, maybe it would have been. If you hadn't caught him mid conversation with Robby's sabbatical replacement, Dr Baran Al Hashimi.
It happened halfway through a nightmare shift when you were running on little else but caffeine and instinct, and the Pitt had that strange, overstretched feeling it got when every room was full, and everyone inside them was talking too loudly. You were cutting through the hall outside the break room with a chart tucked to your chest, already halfway to Trauma Two in your head, when you heard Jack's voice from inside.
It was common to catch Jack in during the day shift, and you wouldn't have stopped if he'd been talking to anyone else. But you caught Al Hashimi's laugh first. Low, and brief, and then Jack saying, "You want to grab that beer later?"
Your feet stopped moving before your brain caught up. There was no hesitation in the question or audible awkwardness. No heaviness to it that made it sound work-related. It sounded easy, casual. Like asking someone out. You wondered if he was shaking his head in that way he did with you.
Al Hashimi said something you didn't fully hear, because by then your pulse had gone loud in your ears. You self-diagnose with mind-numbing tinnitus and prescribe yourself a huge dose of amitriptyline. The ringing grows louder as you watch her smile, small, but warm, and nodded once.
"Yeah," she said. "I'd like that."
And that was it. So, you kept walking before either of them could see you standing there. By the time you eventually got to trauma two, your face was perfectly composed and your stomach felt like it had dropped through the floor. It was ridiculous, really.
Jack had never promised you anything. He had never flirted back in the way you flirted with him. Never said anything you could hold up in your defence. He just let you tease him and seemed to enjoy it. That was not the same thing as wanting you. And Baran Al Hashimi was gorgeous, and strikingly intelligent, and better yet, an attending. You heard that she had worked overseas doing humanitarian work in Afghanistan. She was everything you weren't and more. Of course Jack would want her. God, you didn't blame him.
So, you stitched up a teenager's chin and reassured a frantic mother and signed off on discharge paperwork with steady hands, all while something sore and humiliating tore through your chest and the ringing in your eyes got louder.
Then, because apparently the universe had a cruel sense of humour, Jack found you by the supply closet twenty minutes later.
"There you are," he said.
You looked up automatically and cursed yourself. And there he was. The same broad shoulders, same tired eyes, same infuriatingly unreadable expression.
Usually, by instinct, you would have said something. Nice of you to finally show up, handsome. Missed me? Something stupid and teasing and light enough to keep the whole thing moving. To keep that little nugget of hope that lived between your ribs aflame.
Instead, you just held out the chart in your hand.
"Dana needs your signature on this."
Jack took it, but his eyes didn't leave your face.
"You okay?"
"I'm fine."
"You don't look fine-
You cut in, begging to be finished with the conversation, and forced a small smile. "All good, really."
His brow furrowed almost imperceptibly. It was the first time in almost a year that you'd walked away from him without giving him something. And Jack, as it turned out, noticed immediately.
The following night, you called him Dr Abbot during rounds. It came out before you could stop it, a verbal guard you decided to throw up to protect yourself from more hurt that wasn't even his fault. Not Jack, not any of your usual easy little digs. Just Dr Abbot, flat and professuonal and wrong enough that his head lifted from the chart like you'd said something in another language.
He looked at you for a second too long.
Then he said, "You sick or something?"
You pretended to not know what he meant. "Nope."
"Then why are you acting weird?"
"I'm not acting weird?"
Santos, standing two feet away with a pen tucked behind her ear, visibly turned her whole body to watch.
Jack's mouth flattened, unreadable. Shocker. "Don't do that."
"Do what?"
He looked like he wanted to say it outright, but with half the team standing around the nurse's station and Lena calling for updates across the room, all he ended up saying was, "Never mind."
But it wasn't never mind, because you kept doing it. You stopped leaning into his space. Stopped giving him those easy openings for banter. Stopped calling him old man, stopped telling him his curls looked good, stopped stealing sips from his coffee and dropping protein bars in his pockets when you passed him in the hall.
At first, Jack felt confusion, which quickly turned into a gnawing annoyance he couldn't shake. By the third shift, with no change from you, the whole thing had become impossible to ignore.
You were charting at the nurse's station when he came up behind you and set a fresh cup of coffee down by your elbow. A sleek, black takeaway cup that looked suspiciously like the one from the new bakery across the street you talked about going to with Santos before shift.
You looked at it, and then at him. Usually, this would have been an easy way in. What, no little heart on the lid? Starting to lose your touch, Abbot? Anything, anything would do.
Instead, you said, "Thanks."
Jack stared at you.
"Thanks?"
You blinked at him. "What?"
"That's all I get?"
You looked back at the screen where your chart lay half full. "It's coffee."
"It's your coffee. Two shots, and vanilla creamer. I made sure they used the barista oat milk you always rant on about."
You kept your eyes on the screen, even though every bone in your body was begging you to reach out and touch his forearm in thanks. "Oh, well, thank you very much, Dr Abbot."
He stood there for another beat, arms crossed, like he was waiting for the rest of it. When it didn't come, he muttered, "Right," and walked away.
Across the station, Santos leaned slowly towards Whitaker.
"This is sooo much worse than I thought."
Whitaker looked nervous. More than usual. "Should we..do something?"
"No," Santos smirked. "Absolutely not. This is premium entertainment."
Javadi, creating a circling motion with her hand towards the direction of you and Jack, said, "That looked like some form of attachment rupture."
Santos pointed at her while still looking over at you. "You are absolutely right."
You ignored them all and kept writing. Any acknowledgement and you'd have to crawl into a hole and die of embarrassment and humiliation. You think that actually might be a better way to go then facing Jack again the way you just did.
Four days go by. Four days of you being perfectly pleasant and professionally distant and absolutely miserable about it. You felt like like a three year old kid sulking in the corner after being refused ice cream for dinner.
Jack still tried, in his own strange, increasingly irritated way, to hand you opportunities you no longer took. You didn't read them as openings anymore, couldn't let yourself slip again into the realm of hoping it meant anything more than trying to get through a shift in one piece.
By the end of the week, Dana got involved.
She caught you restocking suture kits in a supply alcove and leaned against the doorframe with the expression of a woman who already knew the answer and was just waiting for you to say it out loud.
"What'd you do to him, hon?"
You kept your eyes on the shelf. "Nothing"
Dana snorted. "Honey, I know I'm in day shift territory, but I have known Jack Abbot for too long to miss when he's sulking."
"He doesn't sulk"
"He absolutely does. He's just old enough to do it quietly."
You smiled despite yourself. If Jack was here right now, you'd make a joke about old dogs not being able to learn new tricks, or whatever that saying is.
"There it is," she said, poking an accusatory fingernail at your shoulder. "Tell me what happened, kid."
You hesitated, fingers tightening around the pack of gauze. Dana Evans had a way of dragging honesty out of people with nothing but eye contact and a gaze that reminded you of your mother. You make a mental note to call her after shift and apologise for every time you've ever talked back to her.
"You know Al Hashimi? Robby's stupidly hot replacement? I overheard him ask her out"
Dana let out a laugh - no - a cackle. Dana was cackling at you.
You frowned. "Dana! Seriously, I know, it's not like I'd have any chance with him, but I just thought, just maybe-"
"You are a total idiot."
"Dana."
"She was going to a trauma conference with one of his old friends from the military and he asked if she wanted to talk to talk about it over a beer."
Your grip loosened on the gauze, and you turned to stare at her.
"Sorry, what?"
Dana crossed her arms. “Robby asked him to get her thoughts on some presentations he's gonna miss on his sabbatical. He's tryna suss her out, you know."
Your stomach dropped all over again, but this time for an entirely different reason. If your first option was crawling into a deep, dark hole, well, this option would have to be something far worse. Like, being shot from a canon, butt naked, while every one of your ex-boyfriends watched.
Dana's expression softened just enough for you to recognise her natural maternal instinct taking over. "You really thought he was asking her out on a date?"
You nodded, slowly. You ran an exhausted hand over your face, hoping the ground would come and swallow you whole.
Dana shook her head then, taking your shoulder in her hand and rubbing softly, a comforting presence that took you out of your head. "Baby, that man has been halfway in love with you since before Christmas."
You didn't acknowledge it until she was already pushing off the doorframe, walking away with that irritatingly final air of hers.
"What?!"
That made everything worse. So, so much worse.
Because now, you had no excuse. Now it wasn't about Al Hashimi, not really. It was about the fact that if Dana was right, if Jack had wanted your attention all this time, if all those tiny almost smiles and deliberate little openings had meant what you'd wanted them to mean - then you had spent four days acting like a stranger because you were too scared to ask, and too damn immature to think of any other possible situation.
That night, you slipped into the stairwell in between consults to breathe for exactly thirty seconds and maybe lightly bathe yourself in peace. Then, the door opened, and there he was, filling the space with the same steady presence that always made it feel a little smaller, and a little warmer.
He shut the door behind him, and you waited for the onslaught of questions.
"You gonna tell me what the hell your problem is?"
You stared at him over the railing. There was no real heat in his voice, but there was frustration. And beneath that, something else, something tighter.
"Uh, nothing?" You cursed yourself for making it sound like a question you definitely knew the answer to.
"Try again."
"Shouldn't you be working?"
"Yeah," he said. "I should be. But instead, I'm here. Because you've spent four days acting like you don't know me anymore."
Of all the things you expected him to say, that one landed harder than you expected. You looked away. Embarassment was a feeling that you were getting far too used to.
Jack waited a beat, then came down two steps so he was closer, though not close enough to touch.
"You stopped flirting with me." You laughed at his bluntness. He continued.
"You won't look at me. You won't call me Jack. I spent fifteen minutes of my twenty minute break time arguing with a lady in a bakery the other day about how she had to use the milk I brought for your coffee, and all you could say was thanks?"
The obvious edge of offence in that almost undid you. Load the canon now, doctor!
You said quietly, "I heard you ask Al Hashimi for a beer."
Jack turned and blinked at you, and for one second, his face went completely blank. Then he stared at you like he'd just discovered the source of a leak that had been flooding his basement all week.
"That's why?"
You swallowed. "Um, yeah. I assumed, you know. You, gorgeous woman, a beer. Date territory."
"That wasn't a date."
"It wasn't a date."
"No." He let out a breath through your nose. "Robby wanted me to ask her about this conference. We were talking about work. He's cagey about her, taking over his ER and all."
"Oh."
"Yeah," Jack said.
He continued, his eyes narrowing slightly. "Why would that matter, anyways?"
You laughed once, sharp, and utterly miserable. You were so far past the point of humiliation, you might as well get it all out now. "Seriously?"
"Yes, seriously."
You looked at him then, really looked at him. And you saw it, that he genuinely didn't understand. That whatever this had been to him, it had not included the possibility that you'd step back so quickly. That made it worse somehow. Better, too, But mostly worse.
You looked down at the stairwell floor and said, because apparently there was no salvaging you dignity now. Here goes, you guess. "Jack, I don't know how to say this without, just saying it. I-I'm, in love with you"
Then the words sat there. Plain, horrible, real. For a second, that felt like so much longer, neither of you moved.
Jack broke the silence, very quietly, "You're kidding."
Your head stayed staring at the ground. That was it, there was no going back now. You tried to ignore the intense stare you could feel burning two holes through your head.
"You're in love. With me?" he repeated.
Heat climbed your face, and you couldn't believe this was happening right now. Is this not an ER? Does nobody with a GSW want to come through and interrupt your lovely moment here?
"This is deeply humiliating, so, if you could not-"
"Jesus Christ." He laughed once, and your heart fell into your ass and ran fifty miles in the opposite direction.
Then he came down the last two steps and stopped right in front of you.
“You thought that was one-sided?”
Your mouth opened. Closed.
“I flirt with you constantly and you smile and shake your head,” you said weakly. “What was I supposed to think?”
Jack looked at you like that was the most ridiculous sentence he’d ever heard.
“I never stopped you.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“I wait for it.”
You blinked.
His jaw flexed once, like he was annoyed you weren’t getting there fast enough.
“I know what time you usually get coffee. I know when your shift starts from the sound of your shoes in the hall. I know when you’re about to make one of those stupid little comments because your whole face changes before you say anything.”
Your heart was pounding now, hard enough to hurt.
Jack took one more step closer.
“When you stopped, the place felt wrong.”
That did it.
That cracked the whole thing open.
You looked at him and saw it all at once. Every quiet little allowance he’d made for you, every almost-smile, every opening he’d handed you on purpose just to hear what you’d say.
You whispered, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He huffed out a humorless laugh. “I thought I was being obvious.”
You let out a wet, startled little laugh of your own, because of course he had. Of course Jack Abbot thought silently orbiting someone and letting them flirt without interruption counted as emotional transparency.
“You are a disaster,” you said.
“So are you.”
You smiled despite yourself.
His gaze dropped to your mouth for the briefest second before lifting again.
Then, in a voice gone rougher somehow, he said, “Say something.”
“What?”
“One of your lines.”
You stared at him.
Jack looked almost impatient now, but there was something fragile hidden under it too, something he would probably deny to the grave.
“You’ve had one ready every shift for 9 months,” he said. “Say it.”
A laugh caught in your chest.
Then, softly, because it felt different now and somehow still exactly the same, you said, “You know you’re ridiculously handsome, right?”
Jack shut his eyes for half a second.
When he opened them, there was that tiny head shake again, the one that had started all of this.
“Jesus,” he muttered, and then he kissed you.
It wasn’t tentative, or rushed either.
It was the kind of kiss that felt held back for too long, warm and sure and a little bit annoyed, like he was making up for the fact that both of you had apparently been idiots about this. Your hand came up to the back of his neck automatically. His slid to your waist, steady and firm, drawing you in until you had to grab the front of his shirt just to hold onto something.
When he pulled back, his forehead rested briefly against yours.
“You done making assumptions?” he murmured.
You laughed softly, breathless. “Maybe.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“Okay,” you said, smiling. “Yes.”
“Good.”
You looked up at him. “You loveeeeee me!"
Jack’s mouth twitched.
“Don’t start.”
“You do.”
He leaned back just enough to look properly annoyed. “You really want to have this conversation right now?”
“Yes.”
He sighed in that long-suffering way of his, but you could see the amusement sitting just under it now.
“You realised it first” he said.
You grinned. “Yeah, okay, but mine was slow. Yours was like, falling off a cliff into a stream of like, love crocodiles .”
Jack looked at you for a second, then gave in with a tiny shake of his head.
“Yeah, okay ” he said quietly. “Shut up.”
Something in your chest melted completely.
You kissed him again before he could ruin it by pretending he hadn’t said that. This one made him laugh against your mouth, just for a second, and then his hand tightened lightly at your waist and he kissed you back.
When you finally pulled away, there was a muffled voice from the other side of the stairwell door.
“Are they in there?”
Damn it Trinity.
You dropped your head briefly to Jack’s shoulder and groaned. “I hate this hospital.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No,” you admitted. “I really don’t.”
Jack tipped your chin up with two fingers.
“You coming back down?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
You smiled. “Very romantic.”
“I’m not here to romance you. I’m here to stop you making yourself miserable over nothing.”
“Wow.”
“You started it.”
You laughed again, because there it was, that grumpy, teasing edge that somehow made everything feel more like him, not less.
As he opened the stairwell door, Santos nearly fell inward from where she’d clearly been listening.
Her eyes went wide.
Then narrowed. Then widened again.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “I knew it.”
Jack looked down at her with profound irritation. “Don’t you have a patient to bother?”
Santos, unfazed, looked past him at you and grinned. “So I was right.”
Whitaker, standing three steps behind her looking mortified, asked, “About what?”
She pointed at both of you. “Everything.”
Jack muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like unbelievable and moved past her, one hand brushing your lower back as he guided you into the hall.
Not enough to draw attention.
Just enough that you felt it.
And this time, when you looked at him, he was already watching you with that same tiny, impossible almost-smile.
You smiled back. He shook his head once more, like he couldn’t believe you. But he looked pleased.
summary: jack abbot never gets jealous; that is, until he finds out that you have a whole lot of history with the handsome radiologist from upstairs that everyone else is fawning over. (3k)
characters: jack abbot / fem!reader, nick barker / ex!reader, dr. al-hashimi, michael robinavitch, princess dela cruz
contents: secret relationship, friends with benefits, grump!reader, jealous!jack, fluff, humor, so much sexual tension
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
“I was thinking Italian for tonight,” Jack says in lieu of a greeting as he falls seamlessly into step with you down the busy hall of the emergency department. His biceps strain against the sleeves of his fitted black tee as he reaches to hold either end of his stethoscope. “Or burgers, maybe— but I’m not picky. What about you?”
His heavy head swivels slowly to face you. The bright white fluorescents overhead cast a greyer tint over his curls and light eyes, which glimmer faintly with amusement as a knowing half-smirk tugs slowly at his lips.
You look up from the clipboard in your hand with a squinted look of mild annoyance, despite the quiet smile that threatens to pull at your own mouth.
“Very subtle, Dr. Abbot,” you croon in a dry monotone.
“Well, I can be less subtle, if you want,” the man shrugs, side-stepping to walk backwards ahead of you. He ambles carefully into the central work station with a wider, smugger smile. “Go out for dinner with me tonight… I promise I’ll make it worth your while…”
“Oh, really?” you hum and slide your clipboard back onto the chart rack. “Do tell.”
“Well, I’d get into the details and all, but… There are kids around, so…”
Your eyes cut to the crowd of young residents gathered by the dry-erase board, now acting as a makeshift monitor for the time being. You scoff an emotionless laugh in response. “Trust me, whatever Santos and Garcia are getting up to is far more scandalous— And don’t even get me started on Whitaker and that farmer’s widow of his.
“I wasn’t talking about them,” Jack quips, but makes a mental note to ask you about all that later. “I was talking about Robby.”
He nods to the front desk, where the man himself scribbles at the chart laid crooked before him. Robby flashes Jack an unenthusiastic look from over the top of his glasses at the sound of his name.
“Don’t drag me into this,” he deadpans.
“Into what?” Jack scoffs.
“Into whatever the two of you are flirting about.”
“Have you seen Dr. Al?” you blurt, if only as a desperate plea to change the subject.
He points aimlessly over his shoulder, and you follow his thumb across the room. You leave Jack behind without a second thought and make a beeline for the curly-haired woman on the opposite side of the station.
“Hey, Dr. Al— Have you figured out what we’re doing about the CT films? Because I’ve got a patient with an ankle injury that’s already been sitting for hours.”
“Yep,” the woman smiles, flipping through the yellow order slips in her hands. “I have them right here.”
You freeze in place just ahead of her, glancing at the papers between her fingers and the chaotically organized desk beside her with wide eyes. “…Where? Have they been miniaturized?”
A laugh sputters from her mouth as she shakes her head. “No, I mean— Radiology is getting backed up upstairs, obviously, so… I brought radiology to us.”
She motions behind her, and only then do you notice the portable machine sitting on the other side of the circular desk. A crowd of grey-scrubbed nurses helps adjust the station to make room for the bulky device. When Jesse moves the long arm of the X-Ray machine, a familiar face comes into view that makes your skin flare beneath your black scrubs — though you’d sooner blame it on the sweltering summer heat blowing in from outside.
Because, just when you think the day can’t get any worse than a heat wave and a potential cyber attack, your ex-boyfriend shows up out of nowhere.
Nick Barker smiles kindly at you with all of his pretty white teeth, swiping a veiny, sun-kissed hand through his dark, pushed-back hair.
“Hey, Professor. Long time, no see.”
You meet his warm grin with a wavering smile of your own, though it looks more like a grimace when your eyes widen at the old nickname his family had given you some years back — when you graduated high school early and became the youngest med student in your class.
It was not working with your ex that was the issue — you’ve already been doing it for years at this point — but you’re realizing now that he was much easier to stomach when he was upstairs, totally out of your line of sight.
“Dr. Barker,” you greet, with your voice an awkward octave higher and trembling with a palpable panic. “Hi…”
“Oh…” he winces playfully. “I’ve been demoted to last-name basis, huh?”
You muster an artificial smile in response and wring your clammy hands together as you amble slowly to his side. He tilts his scruffy chin to keep your gaze, though you refuse to meet the big brown eyes he looks at you with.
“Have you gotten the order slip for Adebayo? A-D-E-B-A-Y-O?”
“Uh…” he trails off and turns away to glance at the files on the desk beside him, organized by alphabet and urgency. He skims his manicured pointer finger down the list and taps on the clipboard when he finds the patient’s name. “Yep. Right. I’ll get right on it.”
“Great,” you sigh and take a step back to walk away. “Thank you.”
“Busy day, huh?” Nick hums distantly, half-distracted as he taps at the keyboard of the heavy machine before him. He’s as kind and casual as you remember him being — not nearly as fazed by your presence as you are by his — which is why you falter so desperately at the innocent small talk.
“Yep…” you nod with an apologetic grimace. “Which is kinda why I have to run right now, so…”
“Right. Yeah,” Nick chuckles. A rogue strand of silky black hair drapes effortlessly over his forehead as he shakes his head at himself. “That was a— stupid question, right? Look at this place.”
You fake a laugh at his laughing and turn on the heel of your sneaker to walk away.
Your smile ebbs the second you’re out of his sight, contorting into a pained sort of wince as you slide past Jack — who leans on a desk some feet behind you, hardly trying to conceal that he’d been watching you. (He hadn’t thought anything of it until he saw you get all embarrassed; because you never let anyone see you embarrassed, least of all a man.)
“What the hell was that about?” he murmurs lowly, falling into step with you once more. His squinted eyes dart between your profile and the vaguely familiar radiologist across the room — until you duck behind the oversized dry-erase board like you’re hiding from something. Some-one. “You know him or something?”
“Uh… Yeah?” you shrug, trying and failing to be casual, as you uncap a black marker with a sharp pop. “Kind of… I guess…”
“Kinda?” Jack echoes with a scoffed-out laugh, further disturbed by your sudden diffidence as you update the patient board with anxious hands. “What— Did you guys screw around together or something?”
“Don’t be crude,” you scold with your features twisted in disgust — mean all over again, and not at all how you were with Dr. Barker. “We just… used to date… A long, long time ago.”
“Yeah? For how long?” Jack presses, brows raised to his hairline.
“Not long,” you shrug. “Just a… better part of a decade, that’s all.”
“That’s all?” he repeats, a little louder than he meant to. He cowers at the strange looks he gets in response and takes a step closer to you behind the towering board. “What’s next? You’re gonna tell me you were engaged to the guy?”
He chuckles until you flash him a weary look in reply.
His shock returns.
“Holy shit— You were engaged?”
“We were high school sweethearts going into medicine together— getting engaged was just on par with how cliche we were,” you ramble with your gaze pointed at the organized board before you.
“Oh, don’t tell me you got married to the guy,” Jack huffs. “I don’t think my heart could take all that.”
You sigh in annoyance but answer him honestly anyway. “No… We never made it that far.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know,” you shrug, half-detached in reminiscence. “We just… We weren’t good together, you know? He was… way too nice…”
Jack blinks owlishly at you. “You broke up with him because he was… nice?”
“It’s a long story,” you sigh.
“Well, I got plenty of time,” the man tells you, crossing his strong arms over his broad chest. “It’s not like we’re on the cusp of a cyber attack or anything.”
“Okay… We got into this crazy fight one night,” you murmur, stepping closer to him like you’re telling him some sort of secret. You tilt your chin to keep Jack’s gaze as you gesture with the marker in your hand. “Sort of. ‘Cause I was the only one that was mad— But I was trying to push him into an argument because I started to notice that he never got upset with me. Like, ever. And he just… wouldn’t budge, you know? Everything I told him he was doing wrong, he just… agreed with me. And promised to work on it.”
“Wow…” Jack monotones. “He sounds like a real psychopath.”
“I know he’s a good guy, alright? That’s not the point,” you tell him. “He was just… dreadfully boring.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, he’s like— missionary personified,” you ramble. “He’s great and reliable and he gets the job done, but… Sometimes you wanna spice things up, you know?”
“Do you?” Jack teases with narrowed eyes.
“It was a metaphor,” you deadpan.
“Well, I promise that if you ever feel like fighting it out, I will always be there for you, sweetheart,” he lilts.
“Don’t tell me you’re jealous, Dr. Abbot,” you croon drily.
“Jealous?” he scoffs. “I’m not jealous.”
“Who are you convincing here— You or me?”
“Well, between me and Dr. Barker only one of us got shot at today, so…” Jack trails off with a lazy shrug. “You can’t exactly call me boring, honey.”
You cap the marker and set it back on the rack with a nod and a knowing smile. “Well, we never exactly had trouble in the boring department, did we, Dr. Abbot?”
He ambles slowly after you as you walk off in the opposite direction.
“What did I say about talking dirty to me while we’re at work?”
Nick still smells the same, you realize, when he calls you to his side to show you the newly produced film. You recognize the cologne on his navy button-up almost instantly — the soft, vanilla musk cologne you’d gotten him for his birthday when you were still in med school.
Something about it makes your chest feel funny; the acknowledgment that, in many ways, the two of you are still tied together. You’d stolen a collection of band tees from his closet back in college, and even now you swear that they’re the coziest shirts to sleep in (though you’d never tell Jack exactly where you got them from.)
You slouch in the cushioned swivel chair at his side with your heavy head propped on your fist, blinking slowly as he flicks through the various X-Rays on the monitor ahead of you.
“Looks like the ankle’s negative for fracture…” he mumbles.
“No, that can’t be right,” you murmur to yourself, lifting your head to motion at the blue-white image before you. “Look— The tibiofibular clear space is enlarged. And the overlap seems reduced, no?”
“Hm…” he hums. “Maybe a little.”
You reach blindly for the clear ruler at your side and press it to the screen, aligning it with the x-rayed ankle. You trace the ridges with your pointer finger. “8 millimeters dilated, and… 3 millimeters overlapped. Which would mean that—”
“There’s probably a tear in the sydesomatic ligaments,” Nick finishes for you, clicking at the ink pen in his right hand. “Yeah.”
“Which needs surgical fixation, which means I need you to put in a request for an MRI, which means I can free up another bed,” you ramble with an exhausted sigh as you slouch back into the cushioned seat.
“On it,” Nick nods with a quiet laugh. “When did you learn so much about radiology, Professor?”
“Well, we were kinda together for a long time, Dr. Barker,” you answer like it’s obvious. “I guess I just picked up a thing or two over the years.”
“Well, I’ve heard you complain about a thousand surgeries, but that doesn’t mean I could do one,” he scoffs with a lopsided grin that would’ve made you swoon five or more years ago.
“Sounds like a skill issue, Barker,” you joke with a shrug.
“No, I think you’re just smarter than you give yourself credit for,” he grins. “Why do you think my mom still calls you Professor?”
A laugh sputters from your mouth before you can stop it. “Why is your mom even still talking about me?”
“Are you kidding?” Nick chuckles. “She loves you! I’m pretty sure she’s still holding out hope that we’re gonna get back together…”
“You just need to date another doctor, that’s all,” you shrug. “Then she’ll forget all about me—”
“I’m a nurse!” Princess volunteers from the nurse’s station, behind the portable machine. She chirps like a songbird, with a hopeful grin and a pair of sparkling eyes. “That counts, right?”
“Aren’t you married, Princess?” you laugh.
Her smile turns into a frown in a flicker.
“Thanks for blowing my cover,” she deadpans and turns away.
“Sorry…” you grimace.
Nick laughs, dark eyes crinkling at the edges. You fight the urge to cower at the melted chocolate look in his gaze when he turns back to you. “You haven’t changed at all, you know that?”
“You have,” you retort.
“Really?”
You nod, eyes squinted in observation. “I realized you fixed that chip in your tooth.”
“I did…” Nick lilts with a slow nod, instinctively running his tongue over the bottom of his front tooth, which he’d chipped in a fall during a particularly drunken 4th of July party some years back. “I forget sometimes— Most people don’t even notice.”
“Well, I notice everything,” you quip.
“Hence the reason we still call you Professor—”
Ahem. Someone clears their throat from just behind you. The two of you turn in tandem to glance over your shoulders, where Jack looms like a storm cloud with his arms crossed over his chest. He wears an emotionless look on his scruffy face that would seem almost intimidating if you didn’t already know him so well. Maybe that’s why Nick cowers at the sight of him.
“Sorry to interrupt, guys,” Jack greets in a gritty monotone. “I’m just checking on my patient’s scans. Name’s Reeves.”
Nick swallows hard at the older man’s unwavering stare and turns to the order slips on the desk ahead of him. “Uh, yes— Reeves is still in the wet read, but I’ll come get you when they’re done, Dr. Abbot.”
“Sounds good,” the man hums with a slow nod, warm and cordial again in a flicker. His light eyes flit back to yours as he says, “Dr. Al-Hashimi wants to talk to you about your patient. Adebayo.”
“Dr. Al?” you echo, but rise from your chair despite yourself. You don’t think twice about it as you follow the man’s footsteps across the station. “I took the case from Robby. Why would Dr. Al wanna—”
“She doesn’t,” Jack answers without looking at you, when Dr. Barker is finally out of earshot. “I just didn’t like what I was looking at back there.”
You slow to a stop in front of the chart rack, where Jack pretends to survey the list of patients there. Your eyes narrow into a challenging squint. “I thought you said you weren’t jealous, Dr. Abbot.”
“Well, in my defense, I’d be a lot cooler about it if I didn’t know the two of you were literally engaged,” he whispers sharply, as if it’s some deeply held secret. “And if I didn’t know that the only reason you broke up with the poor guy was because he was too nice to you. I mean, what the hell does that say about us?”
“Us?” you scoff. “I didn’t know there was an us.”
“Of course, there’s an us,” he squints. “But if you broke off an engagement because he was too nice, what does that make me? An asshole?”
You look him up and down, smacking your lips against your teeth. “Kinda. Yeah.”
Jack’s frown deepens. “I usually find your tendency to deflect with humor incredibly hot, but unfortunately, I am trying to be serious right now.”
You huff and roll your eyes. “You’re nice, Jack. Obviously. But you’re also a little bit of an asshole— And you argue with me about stupid shit— And I wake up every day excited about what you’re gonna do to piss me off next—”
“Well…” he quips drily, despite the sudden flaring in his chest as he fights the urge to kiss you. “If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.”
“I’m not talking about love,” you retort in a monotone.
“Oh, yeah? Then what are you talking about?”
“I don’t know…” you trail off, narrowed eyes glimmering. “I’m still figuring that out…”
“Wanna figure it out tonight?” he wonders with a newfound grin, as smug as ever. “Over pasta and/or burgers? My treat?”
“You’re still on that?” you deadpan.
“Yep,” he nods, popping the p. “And I promise to start an argument with you over something meaningless if it’ll make you wanna come with me.”
“…Fine,” you roll your eyes, and poke him in the chest as you tell him, “But we’re ordering takeout. Pasta. At my place.”
“My place,” Jack corrects with a pair of squinted eyes.
“It’s your day off, Jack, and I’m the one who has work in the morning,” you argue. “And if we eat at your place, that means I can’t stay over, and last I heard, you were supposed to be making it worth my while, Dr. Abbot.”
“Touche…” he nods slowly with a sly smirk. “Well played, Professor.”
You shake your head and smile as you turn on your heel and walk down the adjacent hall. He never takes his eyes off of you — not even when Robby appears at his side to return a clipboard to the rack.
“She really keeps you on your toes, huh?” the older man murmurs.
“You don’t know the half of it, brother…” Jack mumbles lowly. “No way that Barker kid knew what he was doing with her…”
living for ‘the art of mutual benefit’ and med student!jack. i love the roommate situation too. could you possibly write another one where the reader and med student!jack actually have sex for the first time??
i’m in heat for this man and your writing is phenomenal i love u <3333333
So sorry it took so long, I was working on my Pope work, but anyway: here it is! A little additional blurb to "The art of mutual benefit" with medstudent!Jack.
1.6k words/warning content: smut and fluff
The radiator dies sometime after midnight. Not with a bang or a hiss. Just…silence.
You notice it first in your hands, how the cold creeps through your fingertips, stiffening them around your pen until the words on your notes made no sense. You rub your fingers together, frown, glance toward the radiator. “Jack?” you call, not too loud.
A beat. Then, from his room: “Yeah?”
“Did you touch the radiator?”
“No. Why would I…” A pause. His door opens, footsteps crossing the hallway. “Oh, fuck.” He crouches near it in his pajamas, turning the valve and tapping the metal, trying to coax it back to life, bur nothing.
You pull your sleeves over your hands. “It’s fine,” you mutter. “It’ll come back.”
“Yeah, when? We’re in January in Pittsburgh. We’ll be ice cold before someone comes up to fix it.” Fair. You try to go back to your notes. You really do. But your teeth are starting to chatter. From the corner of your eye, you see him stand, hesitate. “Okay,” he exhales. “This is stupid.”
You glance up. “What is?”
“This,” he gestures vaguely around the apartment. “Us freezing to death when there are very obvious, very practical solutions.”
You narrow your eyes. “Weren’t you the one to say ‘let’s take our time’ and ‘let’s keep our bedrooms’?”
“I’m sorry, you perhaps want to die of hypothermia, dear?” he replies dryly.
You stare at him a second longer, then sigh, pushing your notebook away. “Fine. But if you steal the blanket, I will make sure you end up doing nothing but stitches tomorrow.”
“Wouldn’t dare.”
You follow him into his room without a word. The air is even colder here, enough to make you suck in a breath as you push the door closed behind you. He’s already pulling back the covers. “Come, get in,” he says.
The sheets are freezing. “Jesus fucking…” you hiss.
“Yeah, I know,” he replies, moving closer until the cold is replaced, inch by inch, with warmth. His familiar warmth. The kind your body automatically recognizes like home. His arm slides around you like it belongs there. Maybe it always did.
You exhale, tension slipping from your shoulders as you turn into him, your face finding the space just beneath his collarbone without thinking. It’s muscle memory now. Your hand rests against his chest, fingers holding onto his pajama shirt. For a moment, neither says anything. This isn’t new to be together. You already know the shape of him. The way he fits. The birthmark on his ass. How his breathing slows when you’re close, thumb tracing absent patterns against your ribs when he thinks you won’t notice.
But it’s been days now. Opposite shifts. Missed mornings. Empty evenings. Passing each other in hallways of the ER with nothing but a glance and a half-smile that never quite satisfies.
“You’re still cold?” he murmurs.
You shake your head against him. “Not really.”
It takes a few seconds before he admits it. “I missed this.”
You tilt your head just enough to look up at him, though it’s mostly shadow, outlines and breath shared between you. “I thought we had to be mature about our whole ‘separate schedules’ situation.”
“We are,” he replies. “Doesn’t mean I like it.”
That pulls a small smile from you. Your hand shifts, sliding higher against his chest until it reaches for his face. “I kept reaching for you in my sleep.”
“Yeah? Well…I kept waking up too early. Thought I heard your awful alarm.”
You smile into his shirt, feeling his palm reacquainting your body, like he’s been missing the simple fact of you. “I forgot how warm you are,” you whisper.
“Two weeks and you forget that? Thank god, we’re roommates. Wouldn’t want my clever beautiful girlfriend to fail to recall me completely. Specially my body.”
You snort. “God, you’re insufferable, you know that?”
“Mm. And yet.”
“And yet,” you echo.
Your leg shifts until it wraps around his hip, no space left between you at all. Not even air. He exhales deeper this time. Like something in him settles.
Minutes pass. Maybe even longer. Time feels irrelevant in the dark, irrelevant when it’s with him, measure only in your breaths and the steady rhythm of his heartbeat pulsing underneath your fingertips.
“Hey,” he breathes, “don’t go back to your room tomorrow.”
“As in…just tomorrow?”
He huffs a quiet breath, brushing against your face. “No. As in…not at all,” his forehead dips to rest against yours. “I don’t want to keep missing you when you’re one door away.”
You swallow, only able to utter a “Okay.”
“’Kay?”
“As long as I’m not going back to sleep without you,” there’s a pause before you continue, “I’m so tired of pretending that I don’t want it. I know we’ve only been dating for a month after some very strange weeks spent doing…you know. But Jack, I’m all in. You said I was your person. And I’m sorry I didn’t say it back. You are. You are my fucking person. I want to stay in the same bedroom as you, to become a resident by your side. I want…I want you Jack. More than I’ve ever wanted anything before in my life.”
His arms tightens around you, pulling you even closer so his lips can reach yours, murmuring in between kisses. “I want you. In my life. In my bed. Today. Tomorrow. ‘m not picky about that.”
You breathe against him, each syllable bringing your mouths together. “Hey…I know we said ‘let’s take our time’ about sex and all, but…you just told me you wanted us to move together, so-”
“We’re already living together, sweet.”
You ignore him, continuing, “So I think you should definitely fuck me. Like…right now.”
He smirks, “Are you bossing me around?”
“Depend, you want to be bossed?”
“By you? Definitely.” he murmurs, bringing your arms up to pull your shirt over your head. Jack his quick to cup your breasts, fondling them before rolling you on your back so he can freely go on top and run his mouth over your nipples. Your hands are in his curls, gripping them hard.
He looks up at you and you are pretty sure that all the colors of the world around you have evaporated to end up in his eyes. Your breath catches as Jack licks his forefinger briefly over his tongue before trailing it down to your pussy under your pajamas, still staring at you as he slips it inside. You let out a gasp of surprise and pleasure as he starts to pump in and out of you, Jack’s mouth going back to lapping onto your nipples.
His touch is electric, and despite the number of times he has already pleasure you without even using his cock, you can still scarcely believe how fast he is able to bring you to the edge from these simple motions.
Another finger enters you, the gestures becoming more erratic each time he is able to brush the place that makes you arch against his body. “Fuck. Jack…” you whine, “Please. Let’s take everything off and fuck me. Please.”
“As you wish, sweet.”
It takes less than a minute for him to take all of his outfit off, tearing down your pants in the same motion, making you laugh at his eagerness. “You seem pretty glad I suggested not to listen to your…what was it? Oh yes: ‘we were fuck-friends so let’s take it slow’.”
He pushed in slowly, inch by inch, mumbling, “It was a shit idea,” a string of profanities escaping his mouth, accompanied by a sharp intake of breath as he fills you, pussy stretching to accommodate his length. Once he is fully sheathed in your warmth, Jack remains still for a few moments, simply gazing upon you.
“What are you doing?” you murmur.
“Just…I love you. And,” he takes a deep breath before pressing a kiss on the tip of your nose and slowly starting his thrusts, “you are beautiful.”
“Jack,” you moan out, wrapping your legs around him so your heels can dig into his ass to urge him to go faster, “I…” he shifted his weight to one side to reach for your hands and bring them beside your head, intertwining them together and picking up his pace, thrusting faster and faster until your vision was slowly turning in shades of purple and blue, “I love you.”
“Say it again,” he grunts, thrusting harder. “Please sweet, say it again.”
“I love you,” you repeat, eyes locking with his. A few strands of his curls have fallen in front of his face to stick to his forehead and you adore the way it looks on him. But to be honest with yourself, you adore how everything looks on him. His thrusts, now reckless with abandonment, make you scream is name like you have forget every other word of the English language.
“I’m close, sweet,” he groans, so quiet it’s hard to hear him over your own voice, “Where-”
“In me,” you reply, “I’m on the pill. Please, Jack, in me.”
You both moan out, reaching your release in unison as he buries himself deep, giving you every drop until your body is satiated. It takes you a full minute to com back to reality, bringing a hand behind his neck so he can rest his head on your chest, both trying to catch your breath.
Jack looks up, and you tilt your face to look at him. “Hey, since we’re freeing a bedroom…” one of his infuriating smiles appears on his face, “how about we ask Robinavitch if he wants roommates?”
summary: “I will pay for your coffee,” you add quickly, stepping forward and leaning into his space. He keeps shaking his head, so, in a moment of pure madness, and lacking better ideas, you just say: “I’ll go down on you.”
word count: 4k (smut and fluff mainly)
a/n: i know i'm supposed to work on the part two of my andrew story, but...yeah, episode 7 was really something for my brain
❤︎ Thank you so much for reading!
One of the few undeniable advantages of the apartment is its location.
A single block separates your front door from the ER, which means: no subway delays, no buses filled with people’s germs and no waisted minutes that could be spent studying.
The apartment itself, however, is less impressive. It’s small, a fifth-floor walk-up with a radiator that only works every other day in winter, but it saves you from many issues, especially after a twelve-hour shift. Like most attendings say: efficiency is survival in third year. And this place is efficient.
The other perk is Jack Abbot, who objectively is a good roommate.
He pays rent two days early, every month, without fail. He wipes down the counter after he cooks, because apparently, in Jack’s mind, you could be an M3 and have the time to cook (Oh, fuck off, is your main and consistent thought every time he sets a plate of actual food in front of you at breakfast and dinner). He rewinds the VHS before returning it, and he even agrees to 4am study sessions when you are doubting yourself with the tracheobronchial tree structure.
The only problem with Jack Abbot is…he does not bend. For anyone.
It’s a mistake people make about him at the hospital. They assume that because he listens more than he talks and doesn’t talk the loudest in the room, he must be easygoing. They’re all wrong because in ‘easygoing’, there’s the word easy. And Jack is many things – observant, funny, annoyingly competent - but easy is not one of them. Right now, for instance, he’s being impossible.
Sprawled at the dining table, legs stretched out, hair still damp from the shower and curling at the nape of his neck and a gray shirt clinging enough to make you look away, Jack is in the middle of Sabiston Textbook of Surgery, annotating it.
You pause in the doorway for a second, watching him read before clearing your throat.
“Jack.”
He doesn’t even look up. “No.”
“I haven’t said anything yet!”
“Don’t need to,” he replies, flipping a page. “If it’s prefaced with my name in that tone, the answer is no.”
You step closer and place your hand flat over the open page of Sabiston, earning a mildly annoyed look from him.
“I just need a small, tiny favor.”
“No.”
“Please at least listen to me!” you implore.
One corner of his mouth lifts, and there it is, that smirk that you want to either punch or kiss “You want to switch our trauma shifts tomorrow.”
You hesitate just long enough for him to catch him, his eyebrow lifting slowly. “Why do you need it?”
“I…” you exhale, a little embarrassed. “I haven’t completed my procedure log. I’m missing one intubation and I really need it to pass the rotation.”
“One intubation,” he repeats, a little judgy, closing the book with his pen marking the page. “Haven’t you been on three different procedures already?”
“I know,” you snap, heat creeping up your neck. “I know. But Meyers took the first one because he is an asshole who can’t stop himself from playing mister Know-it-all, the second one went to Patel because he hadn’t logged one either, and the third…”
“You froze.”
I hate you for remembering this, I hate that you noticed, I hate how right you are, you thought.
“It was just…one second.”
“In trauma,” he replies, leaning back in the chair and hands folding behind his head, “one second is the difference between life and death.”
You glare at him. “Jack…I am missing one intubation. Just one. If I don’t log it, Reyes will tank my evaluation, and I’m not repeating this rotation, I physically cannot handle doing another six weeks of this while pretending I don’t care when he calls me ‘sweetheart’ in front of the interns like I’m a pretty accessory instead of a med student. So yes. I want your trauma shift cause I need it. You can’t even fathom the depth of my despair right now.”
“Oh, I think I have a pretty vivid imagination,” he replies.
“I’ll do the dishes for a month.”
He snorts.
“I’m serious!”
“You can’t be trusted with my plates.”
“I will pay for your coffee for a month,” you add quickly, stepping forward and leaning into his space.
He keeps shaking his head, so, in a moment of pure madness, and lacking better ideas, you just say: “I’ll go down on you.”
That gets his attention. “You…You’re not going to go down on me.”
“I’m sorry, which part of ‘despair’ don’t you understand with your so-called vivid imagination?”
He frowns, with that tiny crease between his brows that you want to kiss as much as his smirk, his throat moving as he swallows. “You’d actually…do that?” he asks carefully.
You hadn’t expected that answer and for a moment, the weight of what you just offered settles in. The apartment suddenly feels too quiet, and you become acutely aware of the fact that you are standing very close to Jack, that his hair is still damp and you want to run your hands through those curls, and the way the lamplight catches in his hazel eyes and turns them warmer, almost golden.
The fact is…you like Jack. You’ve liked him for the past few months, and quite frankly, being his roommate has not helped with your massive crush problem.
You shrug, forcing your voice into something light and easy. “Yeah. I’m okay with it. If you are, I mean.”
His fingers flex against the edge of Sabiston, not looking away from you and saying quietly. “So, um…we do this and you get my shift?”
“A privilege for another,” you clarify, voice steady even if your pulse is sabotaging you. “You help me log the intubation and I… return the generosity.”
He nods once, and to your quiet, personal satisfaction, a faint blush creeps across his freckled cheeks, like a tell he can’t suppress. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay,” he says again, quieter.
You reach for the back of his chair, gently turning him toward you, your faces now inches to each other. “How about now Jack? Or are you too busy studying…let me guess: the saphenous vein?” you murmur, with a teasing smile.
“It was the VSD actually,” he breathes, his gaze dropping briefly to your mouth before snapping back up. “But…yeah. Now is fine.”
You drop to your knees, his knees parting quickly, confirming your personal theory: it has been a long time for him. Probably as long as it’s been for you. Third year is not exactly fertile ground to start having relationships: no time, no personal life, no sleep and not to mention that you have never seen him bring anyone back here. Not once. He’s never acted on any nurses’ or classmates’ flirtations. The apartment has always been just the two of you.
You hook your fingers into the waistband of his sweatpants, pulling it down as he lifts his hips. “I’m not entirely sure that I haven’t passed out on the table and this is all just a hallucination,” he continues, a groan escaping his mouth when you let your palm graze over his half hard cock, eyelids shutting completely the moment you wrap your hand properly around him.
“I don’t know…” you joke as you start moving, enjoying the view of Mr. Perfect Grades keeping his hands diligently on his legs and pressing his teeth on his lips. “You look very awake to me.”
You wet your lips lightly, running your tongue over them as his gaze finds yours. You’ve always loved that part: the control, deciding when and how it happens, to go slower or faster, feeling someone react under your hands and mouth, but still…you’re a little nervous. It’s been a while and you hope you haven’t lost it in…oh my god a year ago now? Yeah, it was definitely a year.
Either way, you don’t give yourself more time to think about it before dipping your head to take him in.
Multiple things come up to your mind: first, he’s not the kind of guy to put his hands on your hair to get you to move faster or deeper – which you appreciate - second, he’s vocal, muttering your name and profanities each time you manage to fit him entirely in your mouth - you still don’t know how you do that, the guy is huge - and third, you are officially on your knees, blowing your roommate, crush and student rival.
Once he’s done, you stand back up, knees numb and wiping the back of your hand over your lips, both struggling to catch your breaths.
“6am. For tomorrow. But get there at 5.30,” Jack says, closing his eyes briefly before putting his pants back on. “And you better do this intubation.”
──────────
Two weeks later, he’s the one standing in the living room.
“Hey.”
You don’t look up from your notes. “No.”
He exhales sharply through his nose, dropping onto the couch beside you. “Please.”
“No,” you repeat, turning a page calmly even though the corner of your mouth is threatening to betray you. There’s something so satisfying about denying Jack Abbot anything.
He drags a hand through his hair, mussed from the shift at the hospital, and puts his hand on yours (don’t freeze over that, it’s stupid anyway). “It’s just one procedure.”
You raise an eyebrow, finally looking at him. “Doctor Abbot missing something on his log?”
“No,” he starts before hesitating, his pride wrestling with the request, “it’s about the thoracostomy. Reyes is letting one M3 take lead tomorrow and I need someone to cover triage so I can stay in trauma long enough to be picked.”
You let your gaze drag slowly over him, pretending to think. “No.”
“You’re enjoying this,” he sighed, his hand still clasps around yours.
“Oh, immensely.”
“Please. I’ll make it up to you.”
You snort softly and close your notebook, setting it aside before turning fully toward him, your knees brushing his. “How, doc?”
“I’ll go down on you.”
“What?” you ask slowly.
He shrugs, trying for casual, one hand still loosely wrapped around yours, his thumb brushing absently over your knuckles. “One privilege for another. That’s…that’s our thing, right?”
“Um…yeah. You really want to do this thoracostomy?”
His lips pull into that maddening kissable half-smile that you love more than anything, the one he gets in the ER whenever he answers correctly to one of the residents’ questions. “I really want to do it and erase Meyers’ smile once and for all. So, what do you say?”
“Okay,” you reply, parting your legs (oh yes, Jack, you’re gonna have to kneel for this one, no way I’m passing on an occasion to let you do everything) “but be quick, I still have to read the biological markers of…”
The words don’t get out of your mouth when he kneels in front of you, pulling off your pajama short and underwear, the leather of the couch making you feel hotter than you were already.
“I’ll be very quick and thorough, I promise,” he replies, amused – probably because you were now completely silent – before working his tongue on you.
And wow, you have received plenty of good cunnilinguses in your life, even if it’s been some time, but this one…is miles from the rest. You can recognize it happily… Jack has some wicked knowledge of the human anatomy and how to get you there in a few minutes.
“You better be fucking great for this thoracostomy, Doctor Abbot,” you say as you’re try to catch your breath, Jack picking up your notes, ready for a new study session (you don’t comment over the fact that he doesn’t go rinse his mouth or put distance between you and just…drags his thumb across his lower lip and then licks it clean).
“You know me,” he replies with a smug smile that makes you roll your eyes.
And yes, you know. The next day proves it. You’re buried in triage when you hear from your resident, the Doctor Robinavitch – a young, tall man, barely a few years older than you who keeps trying his best to be half your friend, half your boss – that Jack had been an example of calm and solid, earning a fist bump from both Reyes and Robinavitch.
You nod slowly, pretending you don’t feel the faint flare of something warm under your ribs, travelling down your body. Pride. You are so proud of him, and you want to reply to the resident, of course he was solid, of course he didn’t choke, this man is great and kind and…actually is also a great giver, but you don’t need to know that.
You catch sight of him later in the hallway, walking toward you with a protein bar in hand, a little smile on his face. And that smile, Jesus, all warm and bright and unguarded…it’s definitely a second privilege he doesn’t need to know about.
──────────
Four days after, you get behind on your charting.
Because you’d rather slit your wrist than stay late in the ER with Reyes breathing into the back of your skull, you make another deal with Jack.
“If you stay up with me until it’s done,” you murmur to Jack in the CT-Scan room, “I’ll give you a very nice orgasm.”
He checks to his left and right. “Define ‘very nice’”.
“You’re insufferable.”
“Hey, I’m the guy who’s gonna stay to help you, so be a little more grateful.”
You salute him with your pen. “Aye aye doc.”
Late that night, steam fogs the bathroom mirror, the water running hot. He’s already under the spray when you step into the doorway, taking off your clothes (after all there’s almost nothing he hasn’t seen already). You step closer before putting your hand on him, his palms ending up on the tiled wall behind you and muttering a “Jesus fucking Christ.” at the combined feeling of the water cascading on his body and your movements who only grows faster, making him come in a few minutes, your name on his lips.
“You know…it’s stupid to waste the water,” he murmurs after a while.
“Oh, really.”
“I mean, we’re two broke med students, it’s cost-effective. And we’re already in here anyway.”
Surely you can’t disagree with this idea.
Efficiency, after all, is very important in medicine.
──────────
“Hey kid.”
You look up, the Doctor Robinavitch standing there with that expression – the one who wants to gossip but tries to refrain himself from it.
“Um,” you say cautiously, pen lingering over the chart. “What?”
He glances down the hall then back at you. You follow his gaze automatically.
Jack is at the nurses’ board, talking to one of them, arms crossed and sleeves rolled up. He laughs at something, shaking his head. You look away, glancing back at the resident, who’s already staring at you, leaning over the table just enough to meet your eye level.
“…What?” you repeat, sharper now.
“How long?”
You blink. “How long what?”
“Whatever that is,” he replies, gesturing vaguely between you and the air.
You scoff lightly, going back to writing your charting. “There is no ‘that’, Doctor Robinavitch.”
He sighs deeply, rubbing a hand down his face. “Listen kid, you realize the entire staff has a betting pool, right?”
Your pen freezes mid-word. “On what?”
He just stares at you until you break (my god how you hate when he does that, condolences to all the future doctors who’ll get him as an attending).
“We’re not together. It’s…it’s not like that,” you try to explain weakly instead of saying we’re just roommates who are the type to perform oral sex to get what we want, no big deal there. oh, and now we take showers together every night to save the planet, not to…give the other a freebie.
His smile widens. “Oh, so there is a ‘that’.”
You look back at the nurses’ station. Jack is still there, but now he’s looking directly at you, an eyebrow raised with a small, knowing smile – like he can feel that your mind is turned to this morning and the two orgasms he gave you before going to work.
You can’t help but smile back at him.
Robinavitch follows the silent exchange, then looks back at you with open disbelief. “That,” he says slowly, “right there, is definitely a thing.”
Before you can gather your words to get a more convincing denial, a monitor alarms from down the hall.
“Go, kid. And try not to share lovey-dovey looks over the patient.”
You shove his shoulder as you pass him, heat rising in your cheeks.
“I hate you, Robinavitch.”
“I know that’s not true!” he calls after you.
Annoyingly…he’s right. You don’t hate him.
And there is a thing.
──────────
It happens after the code blue.
You and Jack are walking home in silence, refusing to mention how, when you had stepped into the patient’s room, he had handed you the laryngoscope without hesitation – you, not himself – like there has been no other option in his mind.
Your hands brush every few steps, neither of you pulling away.
By the time you reach the apartment, your body feels heavy, exhausted, dumping your bag on the hallway floor and ripping of your jacket as you go straight to the bathroom.
The light is too bright. It exposes everything: the smudged mascara under your eyes, the dark circles who can’t be hidden well by the foundation, the way your eyes are reddened by your need to cry.
You grip the edge of the sink and stare at yourself, murmuring “You did well, don’t worry. The woman is alive. The baby is alive. You did well.”
The door opens quietly behind you.
“If you’re about to tell me I did great, don’t.” you mutter, voice flat, refusing to meet his eyes in the mirror. If you look at him, you might crack.
He doesn’t answer. Instead, you feel him step into your space, listening to him opening the cabinet and the rustle of cotton pads. He reaches around you, close enough that his arm brushes you before gently turning you by the shoulder so you’re facing him instead of your – miserable, pathetic – reflection.
“Hold still,” he murmurs.
His face is close to yours – barely four inches away. Close enough that you can see the freckles across his nose. Enough that you could close that distance with the smallest tilt forward and drown your thoughts in something easier than this ache sitting in your chest.
The cotton pad is cool against your skin. He wipes slowly beneath your eye, careful, his thumb steadying your jaw. “Can you do me a favor?” he asks quietly.
“I’m not in the mood tonight,” you reply automatically.
He rolls his eyes, but there’s no heat in it. “No, not like that. Not…” he exhales, dragging the pad gently across your cheek, “not everything is about having sex.”
“I wouldn’t call exactly what we’re doing ‘having sex’,” you say, sharper than you intend.
He stills and for a fraction of a second, something flickers across his face in between surprise and hurt. “Oh. Um…Okay.”
His throat bobs as he switches to a clean pad, focusing on your eyes.
Eyes closed, you try to explain yourself better, words coming out before you can filter them. “That’s not what I meant,” you murmur. “I just…I don’t want this tonight and I don’t want this to be another thing that happens because we almost lost someone. We…we can’t keep doing this.”
Fuck, you don’t even know what this is anymore.
You feel him getting even closer – so close that his breath brushes your lips when he exhales. He finishes wiping up your face. “Can you…” he starts, voice lower now, uncertain like you’ve never heard from him, “can you let me just be here? With you?”
You open your eyes slowly, now seeing everything: the faint traces of tears at the corner of his eyes, the way his curls have fallen messily over his forehead from running his hand through them too much. He looks younger like this.
“I’m sorry Jack. I didn’t mean to make it sound like…like what we do doesn’t matter. I just…” your voice breaks, “I don’t want it to be the only reason we touch.”
He doesn’t hesitate. “It’s not.”
You study him, skeptical.
“Fine,” he admits quietly. “It started that way because we’re two massive idiots who don’t know how to say what we want without turning it into…a mess. But it’s not why I continued doing that.”
He sets the cotton pad down in the sink and brings both hands to your face now, his palms feeling warm against your cheeks.
“I don’t want this to be about that. I…I want to be the person you come home with after something like tonight. Not just the guy you’re giving blowjobs to who turns out to be your roommate.”
“Great blowjobs, you mean. Wonderful. Fantastic,” you reply, trying to smile a little.
“Yes, sure. All of the above and more,” he nods, matching your grin with that crooked, infuriatingly gorgeous one before leaning in slowly, giving you time to pull away if you want to. He waits until you give the smallest eager nod before his mouth brushes yours.
Oh. Oh. Okay. You should have started here weeks ago.
The kiss is nothing like the moments you’ve shared before. It’s unhurried and soft, his lips moving against yours like he’s learning a part of you he doesn’t know.
And God, he’s a good kisser too – good doctor, good giver, does this man know how to be bad at something?
He tilts his head slightly, deepening it and learning to read every small reaction: when you sigh softly against his mouth, he runs his tongue against yours, when your fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt, he pulls you closer.
Out of breath, he rests his forehead against yours, noses brushing.
“I like you, okay? I like you when you study until four in the morning. I like you when you are right about a diagnosis and high five me. I like you when you’re scared. And stubborn. And exhausted,” he whispers against your mouth. “You’re my person. In the ER, here, everywhere.”
You swallow. “My god, how didn’t you get with, like…all the girls of the hospital?”
“Well, you see, I was a bit busy trying to get the attention of a certain woman,” he replies, chuckling.
“Oh, do I know her?”
“Hm. I’m not sure,” he murmurs, lips still close enough that your breath mingles. “She’s obstinate. Overworks herself and pretends she doesn’t need anyone. Terrible at dishes.”
You pinch his side. “Rude.”
“Oh, and she rolls her eyes when I’m right,” he continues. “Which is very often.”
“Unbelievable.”
“And,” he adds, softer, “she has this look she gives me every time there’s an alarm. Like she’s checking if I’m okay.”
You swallow. “Oh. Her.”
“Yeah.” His mouth curves, his nose brushing yours deliberately. “Her.”
You shake your head, smiling despite yourself. “You’re ridiculous.”
“And you love that.”
You hesitate before nodding. “Yeah,” you admit. “I do love that.” I love you, I love you, I love you.
“Yeah?” he asks, a smile spreading across his face as his hand slides to the small of your back. “Good.”
You don’t give him time to get smug about it before kissing him again, your fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt and pulling him closer until there’s no space left between you. His breath catches against your mouth, a surprised sound that makes you press him against the bathroom’s door.
Against his lips, still holding onto his shirt, you murmur, “Shower?”
