loving never did me no good (so why am i lying now?) | simon x reader | +18
He calls, and you can't help but answer.
tldr: you and Simon have been separated for months by now, yet he refuses to take you off his emergency contact list. [ao3]
tags: explicit sexual content, fem!reader, depictions of physical injuries, emotional manipulation, forced caretaking, (dubious) consensual impregnation, not exactly breeding definitely babytrapping, simon calls himself "old man" meaning husband not in a fauxcest way
[Mar 12, 2.14 PM] (linked Google Calendar reminder)
[Mar 12, 2.14 PM] Please come sign
[Mar 12, 2.16 PM] Simon I'm so serious
[Mar 12, 4.43 PM] Stop having your shit sent here
[Mar 12, 4.44 PM] I've had to reschedule with the lawyer twice. Stop fucking bailing!!! And stop! Fucking! Having! Your shit sent here!!!
[Mar 13, 7.20 AM] I told the lawyer to send it to your email. Check it.
[Mar 13, 7.21 AM] Password $TWAT!5 i think
[Mar 15, 8.06 AM] simon for fucks sake i know you use your email check it
Divorce leaves you with an embarrassing amount of free time. Like many women on the other side of a relationship, you find yourself in desperate need of a hobby.
Call it perhaps naïve optimism, but decades of movie-induced psychosis had you somewhat convinced that after ending a marriage your life would fall into that frazzled chase towards the proverbial moving on. Your Bridget Jones-esque era, so to speak.
You're certain you've done all the steps. Bought a tape dispenser to pack your shared life into tidy cardboard boxes, called the notary, fixed the doorbell tag, endured the pity comments, drank the gifted celebration wine bottles (expensive), had the obligatory celebratory one-night stand (bad), and decided the backsplash had to go as it's only there because Simon liked it (he didn't. He positively did not care.)
You hate the backsplash tiles.
They'd been clearance stock from a hardware store, and when you'd seen the price, you had squealed so hard your husband had pretended to plug his good ear. His lips had thinned into that long-suffering line as your fingers curled around his elbow, tugging him towards the pallet. 'S ceramic crap, Simon had objected, tapping a nail against the PEI sticker. You'd rolled your eyes and had wanted to ask him exactly what he would know about tiling, but his hands had been already pulling the wallet out of his back pocket.
It took him two attempts and several YouTube tutorials he kept rewinding every ten seconds, but he got them up in the end. You sucked him off as repayment with your knees to the kitchen floor, tracing lazy circles across the white of his knuckles where they gripped the countertop.
They get stripped off in a manic yet satisfying fit of hysteria, and now instead of ignoring them, you ignore a sticky note over bare plaster reminding you to call the remodel company.
Hot pilates seems as good as any distraction, and your therapist's office sits between the studio and your house. It's convenient: you can waste an hour on some very pricey lies and then go shed the guilt along calories and sweat. You squirm on the love seat and nod along her words when it seems appropriate.
"I think it would help if it were a more... A cleaner cut," you stammer. Your tongue is dry but you've achieved what you think is the perfect interested-but-nonchalant posture and you don't want to risk it for the glass of water. "I still get all his stuff, you know. His medical records and his phone bills, it's... Confusing."
Your friends occupy every Thursday and Saturday night since last October. They sit criss-cross applesauce on the wood of your living room for movie night, swing by the day after potluck for their washed casserole bowl. You get passed from one hand to the other in the most absurd game of "who has it", a watchful eye forever on you and your spine of jello.
Around them, it's easy to forget you've lost the flock. You fall into step without thinking, borrowing their direction for a few hours. Let yourself be carried on the same current, trusting they know where they're going.
But when night comes, they rise up and rub their knees and the small of their backs and swipe open their phones. One texts her fiancé— leaving now, home in 15. The other traps the device between shoulder and cheek as she buttons her coat. Did you wash your teeth? Jaime, I'm going to check before your goodnight kiss.
Instagram fills your head with christenings and birthdays while you stack the dishes in the sink. The washer-dryer gets stuck on heavy duty. You take a shot in the dark.
[Mar 23, 11.06 P.M] [Attached image] ?
It makes you feel a little less pathetic that he answers immediately.
[Mar 23, 11.06 P.M] control lock on have to turn it off
[Mar 23, 11.15 P.M] nite pet
It should feel nice, that two can play the same game. You don't respond anyway.
The next morning, you check the mail before heading out for work. Wedged between letters and advertising flyers, you find another health record. This time there's a full STI panel in the summary.
[Mar 24, 7.03 AM] youre not funny
The call comes at 3 A.M.
Your car is on and out of the driveway before you've even fully realised what Price's voice is saying, streaming out of the speaker. They got the short end of the stick on the outskirts of northern Paris, and then had to get EVAC'd out of there because Simon almost bled out in a helo.
The team at Queen Elizabeth's Centre for Defence Medicine extracts two bullets from your ex-husband's side, nestled between his spleen and his pancreatic artery. A couple millimetres in a different direction, and you'd be getting a death notification instead of a call from the ICU.
You sit on the plastic benches just outside the OR block and stare at the linoleum until a woman timidly scooches over. She's waiting for her daughter, a ruptured appendix she tells you, and she cuts the biggest orange you've ever seen in slices to coax into your hands.
"Who are you waiting for?" She asks, and your eyes decide they no longer have the strength to contain the neurotic tears you've been holding in.
She pats your back awkwardly, a little maternal, and makes soft cooing sounds as you sob into your palms, pressing your nose and your mouth into your fingers.
You picture him lying there, on a steel anatomical table, the surgeon suctioning his blood into numbered plastic bags. You wonder if they've given him something for his head. His neck hurts, if he uses a pillow that's too thick. You hope they've found him a flat one.
For a moment, you imagine that he does die, and that you're relieved. You rub against the front of your throat when that makes your stomach turn until you feel sick.
The tears slip into your mouth, iodine and sweet juice.
"There, dear," the woman tuts, smoothing over your hair. "I'm sure everything will find its place."
You're not sure how to feel about it, that you couldn't answer her question.
The zipper of your bag leaves a red imprint like a scar across your cheek. You attempt to rub it away as the nurse leads you through the frigid corridor of the unit, shoes squeaking and cleaning agents stinging the lining of your nostrils. She makes you wear funny green covers for your shoes and hook a mask over your ears, showing you how to work the gel disinfectant into your hands.
Your bag slips off your shoulder as you peek through the gap, pushing the heavy door of the room open.
A wet laugh surges from you, completely involuntary, because Simon truly looks ridiculous. Sprawled out on a mattress somehow too small for him, cast leg propped on a metal sling, oxygen cannulas skewed over his top lip, away from where they're supposed to rest against his nose. They must've had trouble dressing him, because his gown is sagging down his arm, loosely tied behind his neck.
Half of it must be his own making given that he's leaning over the edge of the bed to smash his clunky fingers onto the screen of a beeping machine. He turns his head to look at you and you take a step back to rest against the doorpost. Your hands itch with the need to touch him, to check...
His chest heaves into a great sigh when he flops back against the pillows. "Sweetheart," he burrs, nodding his chin towards the equipment. "Giv'us a hand, yeah?"
You think about hitting him, but you're sure they'd throw you out.
He watches as you drag your feet towards the bed, letting your bag drop to the floor so you can inspect the monitor. His chin dips again with encouragement when your hand hovers on the side buttons, and the half-moons under his eyes have your heart give a pained squeeze.
"Simon," you start, hating how your voice turns wet. "Oh my God. Are you okay?"
Your ex-husband cocks his head to the side, like he's taking your measurements, and the line of his mouth softens. "None o'that," he tells you, patting the seat of the chair next to his head, "c'mon, you're breakin' my heart."
He lets you sniffle a little, stretching to the nightstand to offer you a tissue box as you start rubbing your eyes. You take one out of politeness, but there's really no need: they are so puffy and dry you'd be surprised if they'd manage to produce something. Still, you jam one end into your inner corner and hope at least to clear some crust from sleep.
"How long you been 'ere."
"Since four, maybe. What happened?"
Simon scans the room and you're sure he's fishing for a clock, but he winces when his eyelids flutter in the harsh lights and he covers one with a knuckle. "Ah, nothin'."
Some part of you must still have enough hope because you wait for him to offer up more. It never comes, predictably, and you wind your arms around yourself and drop your gaze as old resentment floods your mouth.
It makes him sigh again, a heavy noise that bleeds into a groan somewhere in the middle. "Not keepin' secrets, you wouldn't understand half o'it. Who called ya?"
"Price," you admit reluctantly, twisting the point of your shoe against the ground. You find the action immediately childish, so you stop by shifting in your chair and knocking your knees together. "I told you to take me off it."
The hand he had to his eye falls down over his barrel chest as it wavers up and down with his shallow breaths. There are scrapes there you didn't notice before, at the start of his wrists and up his forearms where the tactical jacket must've rolled up. He's more gauze than skin there, between the plasters and the IV dressings.
"Been busy."
"I've called the office. Says you didn't authorise it."
"Right," you scoff, primming your lips. Perhaps you don't make the best decisions in a panic. His team would've taken care of him, so there's no need for you to be here. What a clean cut you'll get if your hands keep trembling around the handle.
Your bag is halfway from the floor when his hand dangles off the bed, right in front of your face. His index hooks into the strings of the mask, nail scraping lightly against your temple, and then he's pulling it down until it rests on your chin. Your eyebrows knit together as you look up at him and his thumb smoothes over one of them, hair catching on the callouses.
He's staring at you with that complete impassivity that can only mean he's thinking very hard.
"You look nice."
Sometimes, it's easy to forget that out of the two of you he's the better butcher.
Taking him home isn't a planned thing, nor a welcomed one. He spends eleven days in the hospital and you manage to limit yourself to one other visit only, just to really assure your brain that he's out of death's grip so you can leave this whole thing behind and go back to dismantle what's left of your marriage.
It's sprung up on you. You ask him what's the prognosis and he clucks his tongue and rubs his nape until he feels like he's made you work enough for it.
They won't let him go back to his flat. The stitches on his side are still precarious and his broken leg hobbles him even with crutches, so for once in his life, it seems Simon isn't trusted to take care of himself. The medical team is still too concerned about the risk of infection and hemorrhage to leave him be without observation.
"I thought you said your spleen was fine." Your eyes squint while you help him arrange his lunch tray precariously on his knees. The dedicated support attached to the bed doesn't fit over the width of his thighs.
He sucks his teeth before using them to tear open the oil packet. "It is. Just nicked it."
The rest of his unit has been sent on action already, gone a day or two after his injury. It's protocol, but you stare at the way he tightens when he shifts wrong and think that he looks a bit like a toy someone has gotten tired of playing with.
He eats around his words, hunched over the food like a big animal of prey. He's not one to complain, but you catch the way his crooked nose twists when he gives the spare bed in the room a sideways glance. He tells you that some kid blew his fingers off like it's to spite him personally.
"Thought I'd get some R&R, at least," he grumbles, licking meat glaze off the knife. "Have to share wit' a wanker who can't keep the spoon still."
You know you shouldn't say it, but it comes out anyway.
"Do you, uhm..." Your brain tells you to backtrack, twisting your voice until it's all strangled. "Do you want to come stay at the house? I work, so it's not like we'd see eachother much and I can... Yeah, I can help you out."
It wins you a taste of the laser focus he's capable of. "Oh, pet," he croons, making your toes curl inside your shoes. "S'not a good idea, innit?"
You shrug your shoulders, prickly with vulnerability you've grown unused to. It feels a bit like rejection, and can't figure out why it hurts. The plastic covers of the meal gather into your palms, and you cringe when condensation dampens your skin.
Simon reaches for you when you try to move to the bin. His thumb and forefinger close around your wrist, feeling for your heartbeat.
"Don't want to take advantage," he adds, and you know him too well to ignore what swims in his eyes. You pretend not to see it.
"You'd do it for me."
He licks his lips, and the hesitant press around your wrist turns full, hand circling it completely. "Yeah," he agrees, "of course I would."
The fact that the divorce was your idea goes without saying.
It's unclear exactly which cog had stopped turning, but one day you'd woken up to the uncanny feeling that no time had passed since the day before. Simon had been somewhere in the other hemisphere, and you'd stumbled through the twenty-four-hour cycle of your life with an inexplicable anxiety.
You'd felt like one of those birds that smash again and again on a window they can't see, desperate for something beyond the glass.
Then Simon had come home, and time had resumed moving. It had scared you terribly.
You try to keep it from heading there, now. In the morning you leave for work and attempt to think of anything else other than where Simon will be once you return. At times you find him wandering the back garden, checking the tree roots' stability with the end of one crutch. Others he's at the kitchen table, typing clumsily on a laptop with Tesco-bought plastic glasses precariously perched on the tip of his nose. Most of the time he doesn't even bother putting them on correctly, with one arm going over the ear and not behind.
Taking care of something gives a direction to your life that's been missing. You like that he has to listen to you, now.
He doesn't object when you nag him about taking his meds and makes such deep, growling noises of appreciation for your cooking they go right down to your stomach.
His thank-yous come in service, always, so he fixes the wardrobe door that's been giving you trouble and checks all the lightbulbs of the house. You're reminded of how many things he sees that you don't: your car oil too low, loose window latch in the bathroom. The fact that your neighbour's garage has been broken into twice since Christmas.
He spends a Saturday afternoon replacing locks and tinkering with the security system. You're only informed when a new set of keys is delivered into your hand.
"You can't change stuff in my house without telling me," you try to admonish him, pretending to not be distracted by the rolled-up sleeves of his sweated t-shirt. "You know normal people just call someone for this, yeah?"
"Aye," he says around the cigarette dangling from his lower lip, "get ya a three-weeks wait and a half-arsed job. You need this done now."
This is what you've been missing: to not have to explain yourself. The few (try two) dates that you've been on since you and Simon split have failed for the same reason. You can't expect someone to know you when there's no history, but it's a hard adjustment coming from a long-term relationship.
There's no need to faff around with Simon. You don't have to explain why it's a grand thing, when you're late at the end of the work day and enter the house and tell him that your sister is pregnant. Due in September, after a third cycle of IUI.
He turns the toy you've picked up from the store on the way home in his hands. "You think 'bout it?" He asks, waits for the moment it takes for it to click in your head.
"What, about kids?"
Sometimes, you want to say, but it seems unfair to say it to him. Parenthood was always off the table, to your agreement as well. How does one raise a child when their father is across the globe half a year. The idea was shelved and replaced with something else, and for a while it had worked.
"Don't know," you're hesitant to respond, torturing the inside of your cheek. "Depends on who comes along, I guess."
He hums, stare never leaving your face. "Sounds about right."
Simon knows just when he has to push with you, and where. You're aware he lets you ramble so you're distracted when he tugs your feet into his lap, press his thumb into your socked arches. Because he knows you, you let him.
Your former uni roommate glowers at you over clementine martinis when you go out drinking. Your ex-husband has been stashed in your house for two whole weeks and you've yet to tell a single soul. It would've gone on longer, but after you'd called a rain check on your Thursday-Saturday meetups twice in a row, your friends were nearly committed to an intervention. You managed to de-escalate it down to drinks, hoping the alcohol would help, but perhaps a tête-à-tête hadn't been your brightest idea.
"It's just until the end of the month," you reiterate, sounding too much like you're justifying yourself.
There's no particular amount of affection that your inner circle holds for Simon, and you're quite sure it has decreased significantly since your separation. No need to fake appearances once a friend's insufferable partner is out of their life.
"I don't know, babe," she grimaces, stirring her drink with a straw. "It's kind of fresh, you don't even have the papers signed. I don't think it's the healthiest thing."
"It's practical. And, c'mon, what was I supposed to do? Leave him there? It's temporary and it's... It's fine, it's nothing."
"All I'm saying is, you don't make the smartest decisions around him," she points out. Not like you can get mad at her if she's right.
You swirl the words on your tongue while you drive back.
The lights are all off and you wander into the kitchen, pulling open the medicine cabinet to rummage around for a paracetamol. The weather is not quite hot enough for summer yet, but you feel stifled under your dress, fanning your face with your free hand to dampen the alcohol-fed licks of heat travelling up your spine.
A shadow shifts in the corner of your sight and you scramble, whirling around and pressing against the counter so fast you almost land on top of it.
Simon turns his head away to curl his lips in that nasty manner that means he's amused, standing a few feet away as if not entirely sure you won't bolt. Your palm slides away from your heart, and you award him a blank look.
"Fuckhead," you chastise him, low because the anger has already bled out of you. Quiet is not something he decides on anymore.
He gives you a canine smile and saunters closer, holding his arm out for you to see. "Patch's comin' off," he explains, picking the corner of the dressing with his nails to show you how loose it is, nodding his head towards the cabinet.
The help isn't offered nor does it need to be, because he angles towards you and waits until you reach behind your back for the disinfectant and the box of plasters. You murmur that you're sorry when the glue pulls at the straw hairs on his forearm, and he hums softly like he's conversing with an animal he thinks a bit dumb.
"I like the dress," he tells you after a while, and when you look up briefly, he's sizing the length of your body approvingly. Your hips shift in response, correcting your slouch as you clean the skin around the wound. "When 'ave you worn this?"
"I haven't," you swallow, hissing when your fingers fumble opening up the new dressing. "Got it after you."
The massive curve of his shoulders hunch, closing in, and you don't think he liked that so much, that there's an after you. You stick the plaster in place and prepare to bite the bullet.
"You smell good," he interrupts eagerly, and it almost makes you give in.
"Simon, can you sign the papers?"
His eyes are so weird. They shift like earth, at times, one moment the light, rich brown of soil, warmed by the sunlight. Now they deepen, the ground opening in layers, pulling you further by a magnetic core, bubbling in their tar pits.
"What papers, love?" He asks it along a deep breath, lips pulling at one corner, like you're revising some old shared joke and he's helping you set up the punchline.
"The divorce papers. I have them in the office, we can..."
Your mouth opens, and you curl your lips to wet them, squeeze some moisture out of your dry mouth. Your hand lets go of his arm, but he moves his behind you to rest on the counter so he can bend you in a more comfortable position for himself, shifting you until you face him directly. You have to tuck your shoulders inwards or you brush against the cupboard.
"You know wha' I think," he mumbles, swiping his nose over the crown of your head. "I think tha' yer a little drunk, pet, and you're not talkin' straight."
In a broader sense, you already knew this was going to happen, so it's not exactly shock that twists in your gut when his fingers hike the skirt of your dress up your thighs. They pinch the softness there as they go, mean enough that you squeak, and he chuckles with his mouth fitted to your ear.
You fear for his stitches when he hoists you up on the countertop, trying to swat his hands away, but he's clever and he hooks the gusset of your underwear in the crease of your pelvis. You've been wet since you noticed he was in the kitchen, and the groan that rumbles up his throat when he discovers it punches you in the solar plexus.
"Fuckin' knew it, I knew she missed me."
It seems like memory doesn't fail him, because his thumb traces the folds at the top before he caresses the length of your labia, finding the pool of slick at your opening and smearing it back up.
You can't help but clutch at his shoulders, digging into the muscle. The heel on your left foot bangs against the wood behind it and threatens to slip away, but when you try to spread your toes to keep it on, Simon gives your clit a good jiggle that has you doing the opposite.
"Speakin' a load of nonsense with a cunt leakin' for me," he huffs annoyedly, muffled against the spot on your neck he's lavishing. He doesn't warn you, just presses hard against your clit and plunges two thick fingers into you, bullying the rim apart until it stretches over the thick of his knuckles.
"Simon-!"
The gasp is out of you before you can reel it back, and he uses the opportunity of your open lips and cram his tongue into your mouth, with such an insistence you'd think there isn't enough space. You try to duck your head away a little, keep this from turning tender, but he palpates the hinges of your jaw and strokes quick little jabs against your front wall that make your lips slack.
You cum dizzyingly fast, moaning when you suck instinctively on his tongue the way you know he wants you to.
Simon grins like the cat who got the cream when he decides to let you breathe again, rubbing your cheek in a rough back-and-forth with his thumb. No more sounds seem willing to leave your body, so you're silent as he tugs your panties back in place, smoothing the dress over your legs.
Unsure of what else to say, you palm his side with a delicate touch. "Are you hurt?"
"No, darlin'," he's quick to respond, lowering his head so he can plant an insistent kiss over your mouth. "Feel fuckin' fantastic."
The following week, you celebrate your birthday. It falls on a Saturday, so you'll go out to that nice rooftop bar you've been meaning to try with your friends and you'll pretend it's all a surprise. But on Friday, Simon orders your favourite Indian and almost gets offended when you try to pay him back. It makes you so awkward that you let him stamp a peck to the side of your head before settling on the couch to watch a film.
When 9 PM comes, he taps your biceps with his fingers. "Pill," he clicks his tongue, and you're somehow shocked that he remembered.
The truth gets wedged in your throat on its way out. Admitting to it seems like dangling intimacy in front of his eyes that you're not ready to depart from.
"Yeah, sure," you hum, feigning severe interest in the movie. "In a minute."
"No, not in a minute. Now."
You think about getting up and swallowing an ibuprofen, just to get him off your trail. But why should he have that control over you?
"I'm, uh, not on it anymore." Hand reaching for a curry chip, you sniff and stuff it between your lips, deciding to focus on the spice burning the roof of your mouth instead of the intense look he gives your cheekbone. "Didn't really seem useful. Thought I'd take a break."
The rest of the evening is spent convincing yourself that you don't care about his opinion rather than worrying whether he thinks it's a bad thing.
You make your wish over chicken korma and pray he hasn't yet figured out how to read your mind.
By the time the last week of the month rolls in, you've half-forgotten Simon is supposed to leave eventually. If it's slipping from your mind, then he's buried the thought so deep it may as well not exist. Every time he leaves for a health check-up, you wring your hands and wait for him to come back and tell you that the time is up, that he doesn't need you anymore. What is supposed to bring you solace now fills you with dread.
Spring is drawing to an end and you feel a part of your life goes with it.
Over dinner he tells you that his medical downgrade will be lifted when May comes, and you're grateful that he pretends to ignore your fork clattering against the plate. You twirl it around your fingers, tapping the tabletop with the flat end of it.
Steam curls from the pasta between you. Simon decided to cook for once, and you'd come home just in time to bear the results. "Clean across 1500 meters", you'd said, enjoying having to evade his grabby hands, "and defeated by a timer."
Now he eats like he's still in a mess hall, elbow planted wide across the table, barely looking at his plate. He's always had that about him. This is mine, his posture says sometimes, come and take it.
"That's good," is what comes when you manage to metabolize it as the prongs skewer a limp maccheroni, and he watches your mouth open for it.
You're not sure if it's irritation or embarrassment that twinges at your nape when he snorts, tilting his head away so you're only allowed one side of his face, watching the way the line of his mouth bleeds into the scarred divot on his cheek. It turns his whole face into one long, pitying grin.
You've seen the place he's supposed to return to. A stuffy cubicle crammed into the side of a duplex, so narrow you weren't sure it was fit for rent. He hadn't seemed interested in decorating, because it had been lacking any furniture aside from the basics, all dull popcorn ceilings and vinyl plank floors. You'd found a pack of condoms in the hardboard sidetable digging for the things he'd sent you to retrieve; shame somersaults in your guts at the memory of throwing them away.
Another noodle makes it into your mouth, and you swallow it along with the image of him noticing just as he's about to fuck another woman. "Will you go back?"
"Back where?" Simon says, stealing the last piece of bread for himself.
You go to answer honestly, but you lose your bravado. "Field. Your team left," you reply stupidly, as if he possibly couldn't know, "a few days after your surgery."
"Aye, probably. Kind o' need-to-know stuff."
The chair creaks under your shifting weight as you adjust, curling a foot towards your chest so it rests flat on the seat.
"Have you packed anything yet?"
"Plenty o'time."
He says it like time is something he can afford to waste, like leaving is an inconvenience to be dealt with only when necessary. He clears the plates without asking, carrying the stack to the sink while you rinse the cutlery. Silence grows thick, cut only by scraping metal and rushing water.
When you wander to check the back door, he looks up from where he's polishing a knife. "What're you doin'."
"Making sure it's shut," you reply with your hand still on the handle. The door gives a good rattle as you try the latch, putting some of your weight into it. The door gives a good rattle as you try the latch, putting some of your weight into it. The lock clicks, firm in its place even when tested under a second, harder shake. His mouth twitches and it earns him a mean glance in response.
"Checked it half an hour ago."
"So?"
"So you're starting to sound like me."
You laugh, but the sound catches somewhere in your chest when you try to make it real. He shifts away from the sink, setting the knife on the rack, sighing when you don't offer anything else.
"Someone had a go at Ms. Cooke's place. Police came sniffin' round."
"What?" You gape, abandoning the door to move back towards the kitchen island. Your stomach goes tight and unpleasantly hollow, and you can't stop your hand from pressing over it, as if that alone could help it settle. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Was tellin' ya now." His shoulder sways in disinterest, like he's swatting away a fly, watching you with that unnerving patience he gets when he's already decided on something. "S'fine. We've got the alarm."
When the tidying up is done, you go upstairs and stew in your anxiety. The night seems to have an in on your thoughts, because every little noise acquires intent. Your shoulders jump as you undress when the boiler settles with a knock in the walls, and later your eyes wander from your paperback towards the dark glass of the window, wind worrying at the fence panels.
A car door slamming is what sends you out of bed, resigned that you can't bear it anymore. You stick your fingers in your mouth, gnawing at the nails, and take laps around the first floor to inspect the dark corners of your home, the phone flashlight gripped in your palm as a weapon.
By the time you descend the stairs, you're embarrassed by yourself. You find Simon exactly where you've left him, sunk in the edge of the sofa with a Stella hanging lazily off his hand. Blue-white flashes from an old football match ripple across his face. He doesn't turn, but greets you before your feet have even landed from the flight.
"Oi."
There's no rush for an answer on his part, yet he still sighs heavily when it doesn't come. His eyes studies you, moving over your face with a quiet attentiveness you've never learnt to evade. "Still thinkin' bout Cooke?"
Your expression must answer for you, because he rubs a thumb over the condensation on the bottle before he's speaking again.
"If they're worth half o' their salt, they'll have scoped the place already." His chin dips towards the window without looking away from you. "Not stupid 'nuff to try while I'm in the house."
You know, of course you do. You've spent months alone in this very same building, and haven't spent a night turning in your bed about it. For some reason, it doesn't stop your stomach from churning tonight.
"Need me to come up?"
You're not strong enough to pretend that his weight on the mattress is not a relief. The sheets have been kicked to the end of the bed, room too stuffy for them to be useful, and you anchor a hand to the edge of the bed to keep yourself from rolling in his direction, gravity wanting to move you towards the alcove of his body.
Somehow, Simon feels bigger than you remembered. His breath rumbles when he stretches lavishly with one arm over his head, knee popping as he hangs his foot over the bed's end. The sound reverberates through the fabric, pulsing where your skin meets the topper. It turns physical when a hand touches between your scapulae.
Makes you jolt, eyes darting over your shoulder, finding the humped line of his nose bridge. His arm is still over his head, and he stares up at the ceiling while using the opposite to drag his knuckles up and down your spine. You don't have time to ask what he's doing before he answers.
"Stiff as a board," he chuffs. The fat joint of his middle finger digs into a sore spot dead centre on your back, and you tilt backwards in protest. " 'am makin' you nervous."
"Always," you reply, and he chuckles like he thinks it's a joke.
"And here I was hopin' it was the break-ins."
You give a sharp jiggle of your shoulders to knock his hand away, still too touched by the fact that he's sharing your bed to reassure you to bed truly mad. You keep tight to your pillow so there's no chance that he sees you smiling when he snorts, and fall asleep with his fingers tracing patterns over your back.
His tug wakes you. Your eyes flutter open mid-motion, rolling with the pull until your face plants against his chest. His breath wafts in your mouth before Simon tucks you under his chin, seemingly more content to take long huffs of your hair than facing you directly.
You're probably the only one conscious out of the two, which is why you don't move away. You take the precious opportunity, wallowing in the instinctive comfort it offers.
It's his smell you realise you've missed. Saliva drips liquid-hot on the back of your tongue as you press your nose to his throat. Dried sweat sticks to the crook of the arm beneath your head and in the hollow between his shoulder and neck, catching the back of your nostrils with acridness. It makes you press your thighs together, too embarrassed to consider rubbing them like you want to.
The pleasant floatiness of half-sleep is ripped away from you when his hand fists the fat of your calf to drag your leg over his hip.
"Wot 's it, baby," Simon slurs against the top of your head, and you gulp down your doe instinct with his voice under your ear.
You have to work the words through the tightness of your vocal cords and pull back a little from him so you can speak. "Sorry," you start, "just woke up. Think I rolled over."
The hand on your calf travels up, palming the length of your leg. When it reaches your ass, he sinks his fingers there like the pyjama trousers between you are a problem.
"Yeah." He ignores you when that makes you whimper, slapping his palm over your cheek a couple of times. It's not a smack, more of a pat, like he's testing the solidness of you. He grabs it again, this time a little bruising. "Need some touchin', do ya."
The familiarity of it confuses you. Your brain is not sure, as his palm moves to your front and up your shirt, if he should be allowed to do this. He's your husband and he's in your bed, but he's not. He's your ex and he's plucking your nipple between two fingers until he can catch your panting in his mouth, but you can't help it when it makes you rub your pussy on the muscle of his thigh.
"Please." You convince yourself you're begging him to stop, head spinning, but Simon must hear something else in your voice because the pad of his thumb flattens against the peak of your breast, and he flexes his leg to give you something harder to grind against.
"Bloody hell. Alrigh'," he groans, a punched moan, and the forearm behind your head curls so he can weave his fingers into your hair. Prickles bloom at your nape when he pulls, forcing your chin back so he can kiss you. His spit slips into your mouth, syrupy. Waxy sugar over candied apples, stuck behind your teeth out of your tongue's reach.
Whenever you get shy and try to inch backwards, he forces you again on his leg, pressing you so hard to himself that the rubbing verges between pleasure and burning. You know you're obscenely wet because he drags two fingers over the crotch of your pants repeatedly, trying to feel the moisture that seeps into the fabric.
"Goin' to be nice to me, uhm?" He croons, pressing his forehead to yours. He's gotten you desperate enough that your hips continue working even when his palm leaves them in favour of guiding you to the tent of his joggers. The hot, thick shape of his forces whines out of you, tip of your noses bumping. "So sweet for your old man, yeah."
The fabric moves and he's in your hand, weighty enough that it makes your cunt clench at the memory.
He has a cock that makes you want to touch it. He makes you want to touch him. You've known this since the first time you've slept together: there's a deliciousness in circling your fingers around the shaft, feeling the soft give of the veins gorging, swelling with his arousal. It has you hot in the stomach, eager when you find the tip angry and leaking already, slipping between your fingers until they're slick. You stroke him from the upside of his length, trapping yourself between him and his belly so you can feel the coarse hair on his pelvis tickle the back of your hand.
You imagine he made less noise when they shot him. He tries to muffle it by smashing your mouths together, cupping your cheeks to keep you still when you struggle to breathe.
"Fuck, tha's it," he hisses, bouncing his thigh when it makes you sigh pathetic little oh's. "Good girl, stroking my cock so good. Makes you wet as rain, uh? Ahhhh, fuck-"
Your head spins again, and this time it's because he's easing you on your back. It takes the pressure away from your achy pussy, and you claw at the dark where he's supposed to be only to come up empty-handed.
"Simon-" you call, until the bedside lamp switches on. He's already taking his shirt over his head. His back casts broad shadows across the wall, shifting with his wingspan, muscles flexing at the bottom of his sternum where they disappear into the soft fold of fat over his lower stomach. The ink on his bicep jumps when he fists his length, so tight you're sure it must hurt.
You realise the light is less for you when his free hand yanks your shirt until it rests at your collarbone, baring your breasts. He sucks on his teeth and settles on his hunches between your spread thighs.
"Lemme see," he beckons with a nod, barrel chest heaving. You feel pinned by his gaze, like there's no place else for you to be, and the head of his cock bobs up and down when he resumes stroking it. "Play with yer tits."
You oblige, strumming your nipples until they perk and rosy, coaxing gentle ripples of pleasure that move your hips in jerky circles. Every attempt to close your legs is stopped by his free hand.
"Baby," you sob when you're at your wit's end. You must hit whatever nail he was laying right on the head, because the stoic line of his brow softens and he shuffles forward towards you.
"You poor thing." Simon lets go of himself, tip slapping against his belly right under the surgery scar, in favour of pulling down your bottoms and panties all in one. His thumbs hook under your knees, and you gape up open-mouthed as he guides them towards your chest. "Been a'bad husband, haven't I?"
Your sight blurs, and he notices and cooes. Precum beads and drips to land on your inner thigh. His fingers seem a bit apologetic as they nudge you apart, pushing inside your cunt to make you sigh.
You want to cum, and you tell him with your walls spasming around his knuckles, shivering from the warmth of the tears leaking from your eyes and the warmth of the wetness leaking from your pussy. He wipes the former away and gives you a third finger to stretch on.
"Gonna be good to you from now on," he promises as he rolls you on your front, detangling the clothes from your feet. Your arms attempt to push you back around but a rough palm on your spine holds you down against the mattress.
"I'm-"
The head of his cock slips over your entrance, too slick to gain enough friction, your skin pulsing when he uses his fingers to wipe some of your wetness away. Looking back, you choke on your spit as you watch him lick them clean.
Simon cages you in, a fence of muscles over you, settling his elbows around your head when he punches his length into you. It's a bit stilted at first because he's not at the right angle, and it burns, paper-cut sharp. He soothes you with a kiss on your nape and gives you the rest of it.
You feel yourself open up for him, a caving space that wants for his shape. Your cunt gulps around his shaft, suctioning, pulling him further while you struggle to catch up, pressing your mouth to your forearm. "Ah, Simon, please-"
"S'okay," he says through gritted teeth, like he's telling you more than he's reassuring you. A hand fists your hair to have more of the back of your neck so he can bite you there when his hips start pumping. "I've got ya."
The train of your thoughts gets woozy after that, brain too winded in keeping conscious. The buzz at the base of your skull grows with each sound smack of his thighs against yours, skin prickling. You'll be red there tomorrow, and at the end of your spine where his abdomen chafes. His cock pistons deep behind your mons, sending direct waves to your redden clit as it rubs on the bed.
"My wife," Simon growls when his maw leaves your neck, pushing your head down when it tries to lift up. Your field of vision is entirely occupied by his bicep, jaw slack. He presses his nose into your cheek when you thump your forehead against his arm. "My fuckin' wife... Comin' on my fuckin' cock. Mine, my-"
"Fuck, please. Right there, ah, make me come," you keen, fucking yourself back, lifting your ass to meet his thrusts. You think you could cry when he balances on one arm to sneak the other under you, stroking his fingers on your clit. "Yes, Simon, yeah-!"
It's a full body spasm, a rolling tide, growing and growing until your throat is tightening around your pants and you're near silent, mouth open in teary sobs. The ring of your pussy draws so strict that he inhales like it stings before he's rocking hard against you, making your teeth clack together.
Once you're sated, his pace changes from rolling plunges to short stabs that makes you search for his fisted hand, so hard they make it for your lungs to expand. It loosens just a second, only to snake around yours, constricting like a noose.
You feel his cock throb, pulse against your rim, and you swipe your thumb over his knuckles. "Pull out," you try, voice smothered by his weight, "pull out. Baby-"
The sound is harsh when he shushes you, lips pressed right over your temple. His arms lock like a manacle, elbows digging in the mattress, mouth parted over your ear when he huffs like a bull.
"Givin' it to you," he warns, and something scampers in your guts. Your shoulders try to shift, but you're rendered near immobile under him. "Ya need it, yeah? Somethin' to fuss over. Yours and mine, pet. Uhm?"
Objecting is a useless attempt, because the only things that come out when you open your mouth are feeble moans and wheezing breaths. He must take your silence as a yes, and his cock pulls back all the way, right down to the head, before it's slamming inside in a few desperate thrusts.
They're a repetitive drumming, laden, heavy shoves that have the entire power of the muscles of his back and thighs. Your second orgasm comes like a tumble, catching you underfoot as he spills against your cervix, making you shiver with the viscous warmth of it.
He stays there for a while, nudging the back of your head with his nose while you both catch your breath. You pant against the mattress and wince when your pussy doesn't want to let him go, seizing up when his spent sloshes out of you as he slips out.
Simon gathers you up in his arms, pulling you astride his hips, letting you rest your cheek against his tacky pectoral. He tilts your chin up with two knuckles and kisses you until you gasp for air, just to make himself laugh.
"I love you, sweetheart," he smiles when you frown at him, sealing the words with another press of his lips.
You feel like the price is already paid. Whether by you or him, it seems unimportant.
Pregnancy doesn't agree with you, but you're so content you can hardly pay it any mind.
The feeling is self-inflicted, though, because people smile at you in the grocery store, eyeing the gentle curve of your belly, and your friends twist their fingers in your hair every night out, checking the quality of the locks. God, so the pregnancy glow is real! Why didn't I look like this? You know Simon agrees because he seems physically incapable of sharing your twenty inches radius without cupping some part of your body.
The first two months you could barely roll out of bed, and when you would, you'd have to sway towards the bathroom before nausea had you bent in half. Now on the cusp of your second trimester, the stubborn thing growing under your ribs seems happier to grant you the occasional uninterrupted walk.
You take your breakfast by skirting the trowels, tile cutters and floats strewn across your kitchen floor, pinching your nose when the sharp smell of grout catches in the back of your throat.
"Out," your husband commands, swatting your ass with a loud smack. You'd think that having done this once already would be helping him somehow, but he seems to be struggling more than the first time. There's no rush: you know he'll get it how he wants it in the end. "Shouldn't be breathin' this in. Go somewhere else."
You retreat with your tea and the morning post, humming along to the weather forecast intro while you sort through envelopes. Bills. A wedding invitation. A card from your godparents congratulating you on the pregnancy. Can the baby hear you yet? Does it recognise the sound of your voice and Simon's?
When you're in bed at night, it seems that it can— it lands such kicks when its father presses his mouth to your abdomen to make silly noises for the pleasure of making you laugh.
A yolk-yellow paper clip slips from the stack and lands on the table. It takes a second to recognise it: the medical records from the night Simon was shot.
You push it aside to continue parsing through the remaining letters, but curiosity has you going back. The excerpt from the surgical record is nothing new. Two entry wounds to the abdomen (LUQ), no major arterial damage, minor damage to the splenic capsule. Patient underwent emergency exploratory laparotomy. Then there are the files from his hospital stay, the billing from the RXs and the reports of his blood work. The last page is his discharge notes.
Discharge destination: patient's residential address. Advice and caretaking: no heavy lifting 3mos, no contact exercise 3mos, see therapy section for pharmacy. No home care required.
The date stares back at you until Simon curses from the kitchen. You smooth the corner flat and slide it back beneath the paper clip.
"Simon?"
"Pet, c'mere. Come tell me how ya like it," he calls. You leave the documents in the foyer. You have so little time for things like this, nowadays.
i would give you my kidney for more sunshine reader and park the shark
whoa before i receive your kidney i need to know if it's healthy enough that i can get good money for it. that aside thank you!!! im so so so happy you're enjoying them <333
risky and you hit send (smau) | brendon park x sunshine!ERdoctor!reader | pt. 3
in which you take someone's advice on how to get brendon's attention
a/n: disclaimer, there's not much brendon in this chapter sorry! but a girl who yearns is a girl who earns. trust she's getting there okay 🙏
taglist: @alphabetically-deranged @novausstuff @mel164 (comment if u wanna be tagged!)
pt 2 | next
as always, im so so grateful so many of u are enjoying this!!! <333 thank u for all the likes, comments, and reblogs. mwah mwah
risky and you hit send (smau) | brendon park x sunshine!ERdoctor!reader | pt. 2
in which brendon (literally) drops something and you take it as an opportunity
a/n: ahh i wasn't expecting the amount of people who showed love for these two!!! the first part randomly came to me so i truly didn't think people would fuck with it as much as you guys did lol. i do enjoy the dynamic between brendon and reader so here's the second part :p. i hope you enjoy as much! if not then my bad!!! thank you for your comments, likes, and reblogs! <3
pt. 1 | next
a/n: i had to edit the dialogues in this a couple of times because the Pressure is On. anyway, i have an idea on what i want for these two moving forward but if you have anything you want to see of them, requests are open! again, thank you for all the support 😁😁😁
being a poor, frazzled med student just trying to survive rotations and getting ceremoniously thrown at the shark—a man with more mythology behind him than anyone else on staff, and none of it good—and someone who seems to have it out for you from day one. and sure, maybe you talk too much—a nervous habit—but it doesn't seem like it's enough to justify the scathing glare you can feel.
one that digs in through layers of vulnerable flesh: a surgeons knife cleaving into fat, tendon, muscle, and bone until nothing is left but a lump of barely masticated anxiety lodging itself in what remains of your throat. choked up in front of him—something you're sure he knows, can scent in the water like blood—and offered no reprieve as he aims that flaying stare at the tremble of your bottom lip and asks questions you should know the answer to, but can't seem to get out through the muck stuck in the hollow of your throat. a gaping, teary eyed rookie in the face of a man who parts halls like a shark sluicing through schools of fish—a sick match up that culminates in a brutal bite to your jugular as he demands an answer you can't force out. left bleeding out in the operating room in the resounding echo of a mocking remark—pretty quiet for someone who had a lot to say five minutes ago, huh? or maybe you just like wasting my time—
you don't get his vitriol or what you, in particular, did to piss him off. but he becomes a battering ram to your ego. a man you can't seem to win over or find some semblance of common ground no matter how hard you try—and you do try. so much so, that it almost becomes an obsession. driven into a primal state of flight or flight: get his approval no matter the cost or die of humiliation trying—the latter of which seems to be the only viable outcome as the three weeks beneath him become what can only be described as a humiliation ritual. a psychological experiment—his voice starts to sound like dinner bells: tears welling in your eyes the moment he appears in your periphery. primed, like a dog, to weep on command whenever he's around. and that, in itself, becoming another sort of hell when his voices carries through the room when he catches sight of them: come on, crybaby, save the waterworks for someone who cares.
(crybaby becomes a nickname you can't shake, one he won't let you—but when the other med students, ones eagerly lapping at the jowels of the beast that decided you were the morsel it wanted and not them—try to tap into the mockery, he snaps at them. goes off on anyone else who uses it in his presence, like bullying you was just for him and him alone—)
but despite the harsh treatment, which while brutal, blistering, it's often waylaid by the devastating competency of his lessons. the reason why he's able to get away with a shocking lack of decorum, and why everyone around him seems to go soft at the knees, bowing out in order to stay out of his way (and in these terse moments, Garcia's poignant wisdom always seem to come back and haunt you with a viciousness only matched by the waspish doctor she tried warning you about: some advice, crybaby? just stay the fuck outta his way and let him do his job. maybe stop whimpering long enough to listen to what he's saying—might learn a thing or two) reveals itself within minutes of meeting him. he's sharp tongued and surly, but it's undeniable that he's an expert in his field. jowels dripping with both ire and proficiency—two facets he wields with an unshakeable deftness. it almost makes the punishment worth it in the end—
almost.
but for as much as there is an acute sense of awe in being beneath him, the abject misery of failing short of success in leaving a modicum of a good impression (or even just impressing the imposing man) is enough to leave you bereft at the end your rotation. reeling, almost, because for as much as you like to fill empty space with empty words, everyone else seems to like you well enough, and your ego (which really should be non-existent after three weeks under that horrible glower) is sufficiently bruised enough for you to feel some sense of desperation—like a kicked dog that doesn't know what it did to make someone so angry.
and like a kicked dog, you just can't help yourself when you come crawling back a day after your rotation ended, knocking on his office door with the words you rehearsed in the mirror for five hours running through your head—
not that it matters much because the moment he's in front of you, all of it is drowned out by the sound of the bell ringing in your ears.
"what? got something to say to me, or are you just gonna pout at me all night, crybaby—"
and he's not wrong. tears are already brimming in your eyes. all you can do is there and gape at him as he huffs and shuffles you inside. too busy trying to stifle the hitch in your throat to notice him turn the lock. too caught up in the size of him like this, in an office that feels comically too small to fit him in it, much less you. and it's not like you weren't aware of how big he is. the brooding eyes and the glower are usually noticed secondary to the absurd size of him cutting through a room with an unmatched sense of urgency. biceps you laid awake at night thinking about. easily coming to the conclusion that even with both of your hands wrapped around the thick of his arm, your fingers wouldn't meet. but still.
you've never really been alone with him, have you? and something about the way he's staring down at you, gaze slipping to trace the tears running down your numb cheeks, makes you feel like every bit of the dumb dog you are, one with too much prove and no way of knowing how—
—or maybe, he says after the tear he's been feasting on falls into the collar of your scrubs. something ugly cuts through the pallid brown of his eyes—a spark that makes your you stomach twist into knots as he looms over your head, looking down the barrel of his nose at you.
"maybe you just wanted my attention—"
dogs are good at picking up new tricks, especially ones so eager to please, and when he curls his hand around the meat of your throat, the baleful glare from before is peeled back into something a little less hateful, a little more base; a grunt slipping out when your eyes flood once again, the reason for his singular anger made apparent when he drags you closer and you can feel his cock thicken against your belly, twitching when the tears roll down your stinging, sticky cheeks. he bends down until his mouth is flush against the corner of your eye, picking up your tears with a groan—the agony of a starving man. bearing his teeth against your skin as the sound of his stomach echoes in the throaty rasp of scathing words:
is that why you keep showin' me those pretty tears, huh?
(and after being thrown to the shark like a sacrificial lamb, is it really a surprise when you show up to your next rotation with a slight limp and chain tucked into your collar that reads crybaby)
Park the Shark x overprotective trope... i just wanna see him flash his teeth at a patient for being combative with y/n. 'Nobody can bully her except me' shtick hhhnnnggg
( gif credits to the lovely @parktheeshark for this crisp gifset ! )
☤ ─ PEARLS BEFORE SWINE
summ. Ortho is paged to the ED. Park the Shark fortifies his fierce reputation.
pairing. brendon 'shark' park / f!resident!Reader
w.count. 2.5k!
a/n. Implied power-imbalance , corrupted mentor/mentee dynamic if you squint , an annoying amount of eldritch maritime motifs . Apologies if Shark is ooc here given he had like 3 minutes of total screentime— I hope y'all enjoy nonetheless! & Thank you @lumissandbox for beta-reading this shipwreck of an imagine 🥀
UNCANNILY SHARP MOLARS are a common sight when Dr. Park snarls out and berates hapless surgical interns amid long procedures.
Anyone who’s ever worked with him— let alone heard of him, is aware of Park the Shark, who’s come around to be some cautionary, fantastical fable.
A mythological creature of PTMC’s Orthopaedics Department— some beastly, thalassic leviathan— who’s all jagged rows of endless teeth and killer instinct; Made out to be a divine, merciless warden of the sea responsible for piecing together centuries old bones buried five fathoms deep into bedrock.
A virtuoso of his field who you owe your knowledge to. Who’d taught you the fearlessness common of surgeons, but also instilled in you the fear of failure that’s needed to temper it.
What is it that Garcia and Walsh like to call you residents under his wing (or fin—), again?
Shark pups.
Left to fend for yourselves most of the time. Sink or swim. A dogfight of devouring each other alive in a desperate attempt to keep your head above water; to make it through this riptide of a Residency and be the best of the best.
Park the Shark stands on a mantlepiece of his own making. A faultless reputation sharp enough to cut, and the stringent attitude to match that’s a given considering his medical prowess and achievements. The other juniors— aw, these your shark pups, Park?— tenderfoot and wet behind the ears, worship the ground he walks on like suck-up remoras.
You admire him, yes. But most of the time you just… try to get by. Keep your head down and stay out of his way.
(Not that you never advocated for yourself, that is. Being a woman in a particularly male-dominated specialty has only drilled into you an extra layer of thick-skin from criticism and inherent misogyny. You don’t fawn to the quote-unquote Ortho-bros, and have enough clever sense to know when to be candid without crossing the line.)
Perhaps that’s why he’d quickly clamped his jaws around you.
Always seen as the ‘favourite’; the ‘Prodigal Daughter/Mentee’, even if it never remotely feels like you’re worth any of Park’s precious time.
Resentful, the other Residents eventually came to the conclusion that competition starts with you:
Always the one personally selected to assist in Park’s odd cases, always the one his shark-like gaze searches for first in a crowd, always the one getting teeth sunken into and then humiliatingly chewed out for the smallest, mindless things because You’re supposed to be the competent one out of all the others, for fuck’s sake.
They spin yarns of boyish rumors. Call you names that stick. Sharkbait, Catch, when they’re feeling particularly bitter. Or the Jewel of the Sea; Park’s prized (Mother-of-)Pearl, when they’re feeling particularly childish.
It’s fine. You can ignore those, and let your work do the talking. Besides, they never do address you that way around Dr. Park, anymore— not after he’d nearly bitten the head off of one of the R3’s after he’d overheard you openly be called Chum-dump in passing.
(“The fuck did you just say?”
“Uh… Nothing. I— It won't happen again. Sorry, Dr. Park.”
“The hell you apologising to me for and not her?”)
You tell yourself it’s just because Park doesn’t want to be associated with the likes of you; that it’s nothing to do with him being chivalrous— he’s just being professional. Doing his due duty as your Senior Attending to browbeat workplace misconduct.
(Don’t think too much of it. He doesn’t care. You’re not of value to him in any way you think.
How does the saying go? Never cast pearls before swine—)
You wonder if he’s aware of how much his implicit bias has you isolated in an already isolating field for a woman. A target on your back. How his apparent unspoken ambition for you and your capabilities alone have become somewhat of an albatross around your neck.
You’ve done the work to get here, you remember him muttering mid-procedure once. I might make a surgeon out of you yet.
Park is utilitarian; he doesn’t waste time on petty endeavours— he couldn’t possibly be doing it on purpose, could he? To keep you orbiting close to him whether you like it or not, lonely from the ostracism you receive from your fellow peers, all for the sake of imparting in you what’s best. Deliberately exploiting his influence into favouritism so you rely on him and only him for company; starved for kinship.
None of which he ever gives you, either way.
Just his stoic, brooding silence. A single hum of assent or curt nod when you answer his questions flawlessly during one of his rare moods of actual teaching (“Hm. You’ll close after I’m done, pup.”); Or his lingering presence over your shoulder in the breakroom when you’re brewing a fresh pot of coffee, shoulders brushing (“I take it black.”).
Feels more like bait, really. Dangling right in front of you; waiting for you to take the bite.
Or have you already bitten?
“ED’s paging. You don’t need me in here,” Park declares, over a traumatic pelvic crush injury slowly coming to its end. He nods to the surgeons in Vascular when they say they’ll finish up the rest of the procedure, and jerks his head at you to degown. “You. With me.”
The elevator sinks both of you all the way down to the bottom-dwellers. Emergency Medicine: a never-ending bustle of nervous energy and raucous commotion of sounds that grates at Park’s ears. When he sails into Trauma Bay 2 with you tailed close behind, medical staff part for him like the Red Sea; shoal of fish dispersing from an apex predator.
Robby greets him calmly despite the patient groaning his lungs out. Garcia is already rattling off an efficient presentation. …Crush injury to foot and ank… Compartment syndro… torn between salvaging the limb t… what do you think?
Meanwhile, a pair of impressionable Med Students observe, rapt, as you glove up and curiously round the writhing patient in the exact same way Dr. Park does— an unconscious habit you’ve picked up from him; circling calculatingly like a shark sniffing out blood in the water. (Do you hear that? quietly nudges one of the Residents, the JAWS theme?)
They watch as you shadow Park, comically insignificant against the hulking brawn of him, scrutinising the X-Ray of the patient’s shattered foot. It’s a unique case, alright: a complex multiple fracture of practically every bone in his foot up to his ankle from a freak accident.
Even Park reacts with a tiny, impressed snort that only you manage to catch by chance proximity.
“Give me something for the fucking pain already!” a voice lashes out, synchronising you and Park into sparing a narrow glance up from the bedside of the patient’s gurney.
“Mr. Aldrich, we’ve already given you more pain meds after the regional block,” soothes one of the ER nurses, “the ketamine will take a minute to kick in—”
“Screw you nurses!” he hisses, thrashing his head pointedly at you as he squirms in place. “Get me a real doctor!”
“You’ve got multiple in one room here to help you, Sir,” Garcia overrides, humorously, “take your pick.”
An exasperated growl. “Fucking, I don’t know, a bone doctor?!”
“Good news! You’ve got Orthopaedics to your left,” she gestures, shooting you an amused look.
Mr. Aldrich glares harshly at you. “Well? Move, bitch, and let me talk to the big guy behind you.”
Across the bay, Robby doesn’t get to snap at the verbal harassment in time. No, it’s—
—Dr. Park, pinning his tenebrous gaze at the patient as he cocks his head ominously.
“You’re gonna wanna speak respectfully to the ‘bone doctors’ responsible for getting you back on your feet, Sir,” he drawls, sangfroid as always before returning his attention completely to Robby.
(You don’t try to pick apart the notable undercurrent of… something in his tone. Chalk it off as non-negotiable decorum. If it isn’t Dr. Park who’d have said something, you’re sure someone else would have.)
Hell of a fracture, you ignore the patient, running a mental map of the potential procedures it’d take and what the prognosis would look like. Dr. Park busies himself with more details regarding the injury: mechanism, labs, drugs. Pokes and prods clinically at the patient’s numbed foot.
“We’re gonna need your consent, Sir,” comes everyone’s eventual finalised conclusion, where you keep your tone as calm as possible in a bid to deescalate the tension, “before we get you prepped for surgery.”
“You better fucking make sure I walk again,” he seethes. “My legs are my livelihood, you know that? Do you know who I am?”
“Mr. Aldrich,” you answer, patiently. “I’m taking that as a yes?”
“Oh, you think you’re fucking funny, do you—?”
An iron-grip stops the patient’s forearm short well before you even register it:
A swing at you. An attempt to snatch at you from the bedside to drag you like an undertow.
Sharks are a predatory species born with sixth sense. An innate electroreception that helps them zero in on the most sensitive of muscle movements within close-range. Top of the food chain. Evolutionarily driven by pure, lethal instinct leading them to their prey.
You wonder, idly, if Dr. Park has it too—
Bloodlust. Untamed animalism prowling somewhere behind his hunter eyes. His scrub sleeves are pulled tight from the flex of his biceps, tension of corded muscles in his forearms taut with brutal force from where he’s canceled out the threat in a whipcrack of a second: shackling the patient’s wrist effortlessly in a dizzyingly lightning-quick reflex.
Your heart stutters at the scene.
“Go on,” Park dares, voice glacially cold and sea-pelagic dark. “Take a swipe at my resident again, and I will break each and every single bone in your hand before resetting all 27 pieces of it back together.”
A beat.
You’d have been able to hear a pin drop in the trauma bay, somehow, from how suspended everything feels.
Akin to witnessing an abyssal leviathan come to breach ashore after being provoked.
It makes something treacherous take flight in your chest.
That for as much as a supercilious asshole Park is sometimes, he still keeps a controlled, watchful eye on those in his wake as a mentor. Utilises that intimidating, ubiquitous command of presence he carries to his unfair advantage when things go leeways into dangerous waters.
It’s not heart, per se. But it’s certainly something rare. Some abstract, omnipresent patina of his that surrounds your being like a levee and safely harbours you. Shoreline rock armour, almost: Feeling like the broad, muscled stonewall that is Dr. Park has become your own living, breathing, metaphorical breakwater.
You find yourself foolishly replaying his words like a broken record in your head.
My resident.
The patient visibly deflates, snatching his weak arm free from Park’s vice-like clutch as he rears back and loses all bravado. “I consent to the surgery,” he grits out, still turning his nose up against everybody. “After that I’ll sue all of you assholes for— for harassment. And you! For threatening me.”
Robby and Garcia bite back a laugh at the irony.
“Looking forward to it,” Park sneers, aggressively snapping his gloves off. He turns back to you and, uncharacteristically, nods at you to sidle past first and make headway towards the exit. “I’ll book an OR.”
Thanks, Shark, Robby calls out, gaze flickering curiously between you two before it lands as a side-eye to Garcia— who also seems to be trying to decipher something nameless as Park hovers close behind you.
The entire ordeal leaves a buzz under your skin.
My resident, you repeat again. His chum. His catch. His coveted pearl; his favourite pup—
The words are muffled in your memory. Underwater. The flash of canine-sharp teeth as he bit the threat out, cavalier, deceivingly calm. The unbidden warmth of safety blooming in your ribcage after he’d put himself between you and danger, and you’d essentially been tucked protectively behind the fabled Shark of PTMC’s Orthopaedics.
You should neither be allured nor girlishly thrilled at the idea of Park showing any semblance of anger at your behest— you’re in a hospital, for christ’s sake, not the cold open of a romance novel— But who doesn’t like to be defended at times? Let alone by the most notoriously unsympathetic surgeon you’ve ever come to know yet?
“Thank you,” you muster the courage, once both of you are taking the silent ride back up to the Ortho-wards, “for earlier.”
He scoffs. It’s delivered, surprisingly, with less bite than you steeled yourself for.
“How about you keep your head on a swivel,” he advises pointedly, glaring down at you with disapproval. “Should’ve just let him grab you. Might’ve learned a lesson or two.”
But you’ve worked alongside him long enough to catch the minutest of tidal shifts in his callous voice— an antsiness; the faux-calm of doldrums out at sea. Something hadal in you knows that had the patient actually managed to snatch you in that riptide grip of his, Park would have ensured the man left the hospital with no functioning hands at all.
Or perhaps it’s just a delusion. Feverish calenture. A self-indulgent desire to have secretly collared the terrifying Park the Shark to be your own proverbial seadog:
Bristling and snapping his serrated teeth at anyone that got too close; orbiting you like a predator possessively guarding their own claimed territory. Exclusively yours.
(“Only I get to call you pup,” he’d said, once upon a time. Out of context, it makes your head reel every time you recall it.)
“Yeah. Sorry,” you say, pathetically. A force of habit; defaulting into deference.
Only—
“Are you?” he narrows, shrewdly.
It feels like something’s buried itself right into its target. Harpoon to a siren’s heart.
“I—I…” you blink. Stumble your words. No, comes the candid instinct. You think of how he’d stepped in, how he’d handled the danger; All for you. I liked it.
“Don’t get used to me playing nice,” he continues at last, looking damningly straight into your soul.
It lights your body aflame. Feel a rush to your cheeks at the unintended (perhaps?) implication of his words. “That’s your nice, Dr. Park?”
The elevator dings through the charged air. He turns back forward lazily.
“For you,” he grunts dismissively. “Yeah.”
You blink. The doors slide open.
Park the Shark stalks off, and you don’t get to answer.
୨ৎ summary .ᐟ.ᐟ dr. brendon park operated like most shark, always patrolling and returning to where he was familiar. he knew how to fix fractures and re-implant amputated limbs with confidence. he was a master in his professional craft. socially—brendon didn’t have that same skill, and when you moved to the night shift, the atmospheric change was something he couldn’t stabilize like bones.
୨ৎ tags/warnings .ᐟ.ᐟ female reader, no use of y/n, no physical description, sexism/conflict in the workplace, pediatric/mass casualty cases, burnout, slow burn, grumpy/sunshine, competence kink, emotionally repressed brendon (he honestly needs therapy), power imbalance, this is just park realizing he fucked up and lowkey yearns for reader to notice him again lol
୨ৎ authors note .ᐟ.ᐟ here is the long awaited continuation! someone said something of a park pov and i couldn't resist it!! i hope this is a worthy part two (yall let me know honestly, okay?) i love brendon park y'all and i know you guys do too, so i really hope you guys like it (i have a validation kink)
୨ৎ word count .ᐟ.ᐟ 14.4 k
part one: find another soldier!
Brendon heard more than what he wanted to about the hospital and its staff. Even though staff were acutely aware when he was around (typically refraining from making obvious comments about him), he was still able to pick up a few things here and there.
Observations of potential flings and affairs between nurses and doctors. The ‘drama’ that occurred within departmental staff—some of them including married couples who challenge their vows by working together. The latest news on what residents royally screwed up or who had been reprimanded for forgetting protocol.
Brendon Park, who had the hearing of a shark, picked up those sociable conversations between colleagues. He always stood a comfortable distance from the parade, finding no satisfaction in bonding with people he was meant to work with. The absence of relation and sharing intimacy such as personal details didn't affect his work negatively, which was all that mattered to him
He told himself he didn't care about any of it, even when he heard a thing or two about himself. Internally, he knew that was the absolute truth. There was no exception.
Until he passed by the nursing station where Sully, his chief resident, was speaking with Dr. Emmick, the night shift attending. The two were off to the side, speaking among themselves like the two had done so before. Sully held a digital chart in his hands, but his attention was on Dr. Emmick, casually slumped with her hands in her jacket pockets.
“She’s doing perfectly on her own.” Dr. Emmick shrugged, a proud smile on her face. The relief that escaped Sully made something tick in Park. “I mentioned nominating her for chief resident next year. That just seemed to amp up her determination even more, if that was possible.”
“That's not surprising. She’s always been miles above some of the other residents.” Sully responded with a buzzing smile. Brendon had resorted to stopping by the printer behind the station, pretending to be shuffling through pages he had already arranged. “She’s managed to teach me a few things I plan to take with me.”
“I’m sure she’ll be sad to see you leave,” Dr. Emmick patted his shoulder, that softer smile she reserved for praises and quiet appreciations painting her face. Sully nodded along with her words. “But, she’s blossoming here. Before you know it, she’ll be running this place.”
“Dr. Emmick,” Park cut through the conversation, standing from across the nursing station. He held up the papers in his hand, a curt nod in her direction.
She offered one more smile to Sully as she moved around the desk. Park didn’t look over at her as the two merged to walk alongside each other. In the time Dr. Emmick had been at PTMC, she never once spent time alone with Brendon Park. The most solitude the two of them spent was when they had meetings, and even then, those events included other admin or members of the collective hospital boards they were in.
She figured out he was a lone shark when they first met, preferring to slip in and out the doors without so much of a ‘good morning’ or ‘good night.’
The least he could do was offer her a nod whenever they passed each other by hand-off.
Dr. Emmick walked with a small sway, too much energy for someone who spent the entire shift focused on an emergency reconstruction of a patient with an unstable pelvic ring fracture. Brendon sensed the small glances she sent him, and he sighed out through his nostrils, maintaining his aloof demeanor. If he acted normal, she’d keep the curious questions to herself.
“We’re only a few months shy from graduation again.” Emmick mentioned casually, maneuvering around some nurses passing by, offering small ‘excuse me.’ “Do you have anyone in mind for chief residents?”
Brendon barely flinched at the question, keeping his attention straight ahead. The two pushed through the first pair of double doors until they reached the nonclinical area of the surgical department, where his office along with the other chief surgeons and attending lounge was.
He snorted lightly, shaking his head. “At the rate my residents are working, we may have to settle on one, if we both agree on someone.”
“That’s a lot of responsibility for one resident,” Dr. Emmick snickered. She was aware what residents wanted the title, which came with the most attention from the attendings. All the other residents were their little ducks to watch, a true simulation of being an attending in a trauma-1 hospital.
Which came with the responsibility of their wrong-doings as much as their wins.
Emmick brushed her stray hairs behind her ear, “And if you can't settle on someone from the day-shift, I’d hate to hear what you think of those in the night shift.”
“I’m assuming you're asking because you had someone in mind.” Brendon diverted smoothly, his tone even and rested. Despite the fact he knew exactly where she was reigning the conversation, he still held the detached perceptive look he had when he was making an objective judgment.
She hummed, advancing ahead of Park to scan her badge to enter the hospital-staff exclusive area. With a beep, the doors clicked open and Brendon stalked down first. When the door shut behind Emmick she stepped back to his side, “It’s someone we both have worked with extensively.”
When Brendon reached his office, he bowed his head slightly to hide the twitch in his nose. Once he sat at his desk, he had put back the stoic expression. Emmick shut the wooden door, pulling out a chair for her to sit across him. Both her hands folded onto her lap, legs crossed. The small twitch in the corner of her mouth all but confirmed his suspicion.
When your name escaped her mouth, he straightened his back. He was recalling the image of him sitting on his desk, your buzzing body standing in front of the door, waiting for the moment to escape. You had left and never looked back.
Once the switch was made official, Park wasn't expecting there to be a lapse in his day-to-day life. It’s not like you had moved departments or hospitals. He would see you passing by the halls during hand-off, the back of your head or the familiar fleece jacket you sported in the eerily cold hospital; but there was a distance that didn't exist while you worked the dayshift.
Working under his command and his directive as his resident.
“What about her makes her ideal for the position?” Brendon questioned. The current quarterly review the two were meant to oversee before their meeting pushed aside.
The question was firm, like he was interviewing his colleague instead of searching for her opinion. She raised her eyebrows at him, an amused grin flashing back at him. “You want my professional opinion?”
“Obviously.”
“She is a good mentor, has great instinct and initiative. She keeps a clinical perspective while under pressure.” Emmick listed out concisely, opting to appease the language Dr. Park preferred. He didn’t care about the mush or the personable trait that made you stand out to him, even if Emmick felt those strengths were your greatest virtues. “As a third-year resident, she is already doing the job of a chief resident, without the title.”
Brendon remained silent, pressing his lips into a thin line. The subtle movement of his jaw, an obvious tick, made it evident what he refused to put into words. He had doubts.
“This observation is based on the last three months she’s been on the night shift?” He clarified while crossing his arms over his chest. Through the sleeves of his scrubs, his muscles tightened, pulling the fabric tighter.
Emmick confirmed with one silent nod, eyeing Park from her chair. “As well as the double and previous night shifts she has worked.”
“And you're confident in her abilities?”
The more questions he spewed, the more it resembled an interrogation. He was investigating a theory he was keeping to himself through the people who knew you, instead of addressing the source. In three months, it was clear that you were keeping a distance.
No one wanted to spend five minutes alone in a room with Park, let alone talk to him that long. In your case, you confronted him of the clear judgments he made of your work while under his supervision. The public displays of his criticism had pushed you into the deep end of a pool, and as you found an edge to climb off, you took the extra steps to never fall in that situation again.
If you had asked him, he’d describe it as running.
“You aren’t?" Emmick resounded incredulously, like it was unbelievable he thought contrary to popular belief.
“I think that in the majority of the three years I’ve witnessed her work, I’ve noticed moments requiring additional correction.” Brendon commented with no hesitation, as if he was waiting for the opportunity to let it out.
The frustration you caused when Mr. Stevenson suffered through compartment syndrome. The lack of awareness when you were run down through your double shifts. Even the lack of urgency when treating patients. It was all hindering your ability to be a perfect orthopedic surgeon.
“All residents need to be corrected.” Emmick remarks with a humorous scoff. Park ticked his head to the side, displeased with her dismissing his objection. “I’m not saying she’s perfect.”
“It was implied strongly by your choice of words.”
“Well, in comparison to some of the other residents, she’s damn near it.” Emmick cocked her head to the side, almost daring him to utter a word. Brendon kept his eyes on her, and all he saw were talons flared out, like a hawk ready to protect its nest.
Emmick had traits he respected in a colleague. Working together as attendings undertaking residents with shaky hands became a source of common ground. What divided them was their nonidentical ways of going about it. Emmick stuck her ground when Brendon might expostulate with gravity to the risks. She believed in a hand-on validating method. Brendon had to see it first to believe it.
“I thought maybe you might agree.” She mentioned casually, picking at a lint on her jacket sleeve.
Brendon nose twitched, leaning forward in his seat to rest his burly arms on the table. “Why is that?”
“Because I like to believe you couldn’t possibly deny when a resident is good at their job.” Emmick narrowed her eyes at him, tempting to push him just close enough to the edge where he’d have to turn and face the issue.
What Brendon thought was nothing was something worth omitting. He could brood all he’d wanted, and most of his residents wouldn’t blink a teary eye, but what he cursed Emmick over was her peculiar talent at observation.
“Especially not a resident like her.”
He huffed out a sigh, almost cracking his resolve. This had to be a joke. “The residents chosen for the chief position need to have earned my utmost trust. It’s not a title handed prematurely.”
“Like Sullivan?” She asked skeptically, arms crossing over her chest as she leaned back in the chair.
Her steady stare dragged across every inch of his face. He didn’t bother intimidating a colleague who had proven time and time again she wasn’t to be messed with; even when people assumed she was too lax in comparison to him.
But, she had a nasty bite.
Brendon knew exactly what she was insinuating. Apart from Sullivan (who was personally chosen for the role by Park) his co-chief for night shift was also a man who (in Parks terms) got lucky from the process of elimination. Despite the fact Emmick might’ve argued the two female 4th year residents would’ve made wonderful selections.
“Look, before you snarl your shark-teeth at me, let me say one thing.” She put up a hand to restrain his irritability right before they were meant to meet with administration.
When he mentioned nothing more, she sat up straight, leaning in closer like she might tell him a life-changing secret. “If this is about her moving to night shift, that might’ve been my doing more than hers. No hard feelings, Brendon.”
“What do you mean?” He entertained, eyes turning into slits as he stared curiously. Like examining an amputation on the field.
“I told her I could use a resident with her skill.” She mentioned casually, like the concept was known by everyone. Brendon was aware of what Emmick thought of you, as much as the other resident did. She didn’t hide her affection or pride with a firm guard as he did.
She shrugged, her smile upside. “I didn’t think she’d want to give up the chance to be taught by you, but here we are.”
Brendon's eyes moved down at the desk, feeling the oak from that night as he gripped the edge of his desk. He conformed to the idea his sudden dissatisfaction was from you standing over him, pointing blame for affecting your work. He was too hard, too malevolent, or contemptuous for your liking.
All the effort he put in was just him being too “proud” and “arrogant.” He expected more from you, and he didn’t need your honesty (as you had put it), to remind him that you weren't up to the plate.
“I still stand by the fact she’s exceptional, and it would be a disservice if we didn’t even consider her.” She concluded, with the firmness that came from working her way to where she was.
On the very few occasions that they spoke, Emmick had expressed small gratitude for the trust he had extended to her when she first transferred over. He didn't comprehend the need to “thank” him. He assumed the hospital was hiring competent attendings to take over the hard work while teaching naive residents and interns.
So when he thought of you, as chief resident or an attending, the bill did not fit. Nobody just deserved the title. It was earned from hard work. You had yet to work hard enough to garner a standing ovation from him.
Philosophy wasn’t Brendon’s strong suit. He didn't waste his time on debates, but he did have strong beliefs. Medicine was a rational practice. There were right and wrong things to do in a hospital—as a surgeon—that could put the lives of others in the balance. He was taught that lesson long ago, and when it came time for him to pass along his teachings, he made sure to drill it in all his residents.
‘Your patient can die at any moment. Don't be the reason they don’t make it.’ was something he had reminded them time and time again. He didn't need to be pulled away from one life-saving surgery to futilely attempt another. His residents should be covering all bases, without serving any reminders.
He hadn't forgotten the occasions you had failed at that.
It was rookie mistakes unsuited for third year residents. When he enforced responsibilities, he expected stellar work in return. If the residents signed up for the work of orthopedic surgery, they should be held accountable for every action and inaction that they take. He expected them to enforce that upon themselves.
He had put that weight on you.
He was unapologetic for what he had done while you worked with him. It was all for the sake of the patients, himself, and you. Your work was a reflection of him, and if you couldn't figure out how to stand on your own two feet, how could anyone trust the training you had to save lives?
You had not seen it that way. Brendon shrugged it off in turn.
Maybe he was vindictive, waiting for Emmick to see the dangerous flaws he did. He expected Emmick to see it as he did, but she had other pillars in her teaching.
He saw it the way she smiled whenever you showed up around her. Brendon noticed it from inside patient rooms, behind nursing stations, and the few occasions you two were in the same space together. Emmick praised you with the same ease as breathing.
Everyone was aware how rare Dr. Park complimented anyone for his or her work. Marla Emmick operated oppositely.
She’d pat your shoulder, whisper something with that curled grin of hers, or give you a fist-bump as a supportive nod of your actions. Brendon rolled his eyes at it.
These weren’t kindergartners who needed a gold star for accomplishing something required of their program. These were grown adults who needed to comprehend the intensity of their choices, their observations and evaluation of patients, and the importance of knowing what they were doing as much as showing up to do it.
He was trying to make competent surgeons capable of saving fragile human life and he would do that at the expense of feeding the “shark” persona everyone saw. Cold-hearted, detached, and mean.
Even while you were under the supervision of Emmick, he still tried to figure out whether you had learned anything from the time you spent with him. He needed to see whether Emmick was right about her observation.
Park was making his way to the patient waiting in the pre-op wing. He stalked around, looking for the small group of residents making their rounds. He nodded at Annette, the charge nurse, as she pointed over to patient room three. When he made his way to the room, he saw the collective group of residents standing at the foot of the bed. He stood by the doorway, listening to the hand-off Reddy, the senior residents for the night, conducted.
Frank Giles, a 65-year-old, needing a total hip replacement after a nasty fall in his home, sat on the bed. He was cracking jokes with the residents, who seem to go along with it.
He was looking around the crowd, in search of someone specific. Frowning, he looked at Dr. Reddy, “Where is that one doctor? She’s the one who spoke with me when they first admitted me.”
Reddy furrowed his brows, glancing up from the device in his hand. He paused for a moment before speaking your name. It rang bells in Mr. Giles face as his smile widened, “Would it be too much to ask if she could do the operation?”
Sully smiled sincerely, standing center at the foot of the bed. “Her shift ends soon, unfortunately. But knowing her, she will likely check in with you tonight once you’re resting up in post-op.”
Mr. Giles conformed to the idea, despite the fact his smile was nearly as bright as before. “Good friend of hers, I assume?”
With a flustered grin, Sully nodded. “Roommates. Given the amount of time we spent together, I would hope we are.”
A belly laugh filled the room, and Mr. Giles identified with something Sully said. The endearing look on his face made it clear to Brendon, watching the old man examine Sully like he were someone familiar. “Reminded of my late wife and I.”
Brendon could make out a quiet condolence from Sully. Before Mr. Giles could go on a tangent, Sully smoothly transitioned the conversation into pre-op protocol. Reddy jumped in easily, going over the diagnosis.
He nodded along to what Reddy explained about the procedure assigned to Sully. After a couple of questions, the residents paid their farewell and filed out in a line.
Park stood back, waiting for the senior residents to emerge from the room. When his chief resident noticed Park, he gave him a silent tut of his chin. He fell in line beside him, silencing the quiet conversation between Sully and his co-chief resident.
“Where is Dr. Emmick?” Park asked without invitation. The question was directed to Dr. Reddy, who lifted his brows in response.
Park expectantly looked at him with hooded eyes. He shook himself from the daze, “She got stuck in a complex acetabular reconstruction. 3 hours and counting.”
“Alone?” Park followed up, eyes darting in front of him as he counted the back of the resident's head.
He knew exactly who was missing. He didn’t need to specify where his curiosity lied.
“No,” Sully jumped in, glancing at Park from beside him. Despite the fact they were about the same height, he still towered over the senior resident. He then said your name with a smile, “Dr. Emmick managed to rope her into a possible ten-hour surgery. Although, I doubt she would’ve said no to it.”
“Better her than me.” Reddy had mumbled under his breath, presuming his comment could be omitted from Park the Shark.
“As a fourth-year resident, it should be you.” Park swiftly remarked, barely jerking his head to look at Reddy. He did extend his arm to Sully, silently taking the device in order to sneak a look at the operation details. “How do you intend to make up for your lack of exposure in a different hospital? By choking up the minute you’re standing over a patient with everything at stake?”
Reddy's wide eyes panicked and landed on Sully, hoping the person supposedly in his corner would save him. Sully gave him a menial headshake, refusing to intervene. Reddy sighed in defeat, shoulders sagging. “It was a joke.”
Park didn’t elaborate more on the matter as he glared at him from the corner of his eye. As he opened the operation details, he read about the patient suffering a work-accident. Based on the intake details and initial imaging once in the ER, it was an unfavorable surgery to hop on while almost done with a 12-hour shift. With a both column fracture involved, you two were bound to be stuck there for ten hours.
Before Park could rip Reddy apart even more, he excused himself to debrief about a patient in post-op. Instead of joining the group, Park stopped by the nursing station, investigating the details of the case further. Of course, Emmick would choose her most prized resident to join the surgery.
However, Brendon couldn’t help but wonder whether you agreed for the experience and bragging rights that came from being selected over your senior resident only.
Sully stood in front of him, hands in his pocket while glancing between his fellow residents in the patient room and his attending. He leaned back on his heels, “I heard the patient was in a pretty bad state when he came in. Dr. Emmick might be stuck in there a while, if you needed her.”
Park huffed out a sigh, shaking his head slightly. With your absence, he was able to gauge what type of doctor Sully would turn out to be. He was the same ambitious and focused resident he always was, even without you to support him through every surgery.
Whether he wanted to or not, he had asked Park for a recommendation letter for an attending position he planned to take at a trauma-1 hospital in Chicago.
Brendon never embellished the truth—whether personally or professionally. There was no way he would lie on a rec letter for a resident, no matter how much they relied on it for a position anywhere. But, he hated to admit, Dr. Sullivan had managed to push Park to add some flourish to the letter.
“Maybe this is out of place, but I know talks about chief residents are being held around this time.” Sully leaned in casually, still keeping his focus mostly on Reddy and the other residents. They both could hear enough from outside the room. “Do you mind if I give you my opinion as their predecessor?”
Park lifted his gaze up, hooded eyes staring back at Sully, who waited patiently for a response. Looking bored, Park sighed, “Something tells me you’re going to give it to me regardless.”
Sully chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck casually. He shrugged, “I want to make sure you and Dr. Emmick consider everything to make the right choice, not that you need me to do that.”
Remaining silent, Park stared blankly at Sully. After a beat, he understood Park wasn’t going to welcome the suggestion verbally. That was beneath him. Sully leaned onto the nursing station, eyes focused on Dr. Park. “I don’t want you to think this is some plug just because she’s my roommate or because we’re close.”
Brendon didn’t need any more explanation as to who he was referring to. The utterance of your name from him was something he was starting to dread after the last conversation with Emmick. Sully stared skeptically at Park, trying to read into the stoic demeanor he had all the time. “She is a good surgeon, and as her chief resident, I do believe she could fulfill the position with ease.”
“Are you sure she’ll survive without you?” Park questioned, his eyes now narrowed on Sully. It wasn’t the type of concern Emmick would’ve shown him. It was a mockery of what Sully just expressed. The everlasting doubt in his resident still understands the work. He didn’t agree, but he didn’t vocalize it yet either.
Sully cocked his head to the side, “I don’t doubt it. The real question is if I’m going to survive without her. I got too comfortable having her around, I guess.”
Brendon saw the slight tenderness in his eye. Something soft he didn’t get to see every day between him and you. He could almost sense your presence while you were holed away in an OR. The way patients asked for you with the same affection they’d search for a comrade. He was aware of what the residents thought of you, often turning to you to save them from a sinking boat.
It was like they knew you’d throw them a life preserver, unlike the harsh suggestion to ‘figure it out’ on their own like Park would do.
“The lease of our apartment is already under her name. She is set for next year.” Sully mentioned coolly. Park hated small talk, but he found it odd within himself to hesitate with cutting the conversation short. He stared with the same blank expression at Sully, completely unsure what to do with that information.
Sully chuckled, “If she weren’t set on staying, I would drag her over with me.”
Brendon forehead creased in the center and his jaw clenched, similarly to when attending a consultation in the ER. A solid focus on trying to capture every detail of a patient’s leg, arm, or other joint susceptible to needing care under his department.
He never questioned where a resident went once they were done with their program. They all couldn’t stay here, and the ones that attempted found it hard to continue with the pressure pushed by ‘Park the Shark.’ Even if there were a resident whom he deemed sufficient to fill an attending position, he’d never advocate on their behalf.
Brendon didn’t get where he was by accepting a hand-out from anyone.
“I’m still going to hold her a place over there just in case.” Sully continued, still hanging around Park like there was more to discuss.
Park caught the residents leaving the room, walking over to another a couple of doors down. His eyes followed their movement, barely blinking when he looked back at Sully, questioning glare. “Shouldn’t you be doing hand-offs with the rest?”
Sully didn’t look over his shoulder, or show any attempt to attend to his duties. There wasn’t even a hint of hesitation, not even when he saw the glare from Park, staring him up and down. He was a man determined to do a job Brendon saw no point in. “I’m telling you this because I’d hate for you to come to the realization how critical her contribution to this hospital is until it’s too late.”
Brendon grinded his jaw slightly. Had Sully conspired with Emmick to shove you down his throat? Or maybe this was a lousy attempt at your end to get an apology out of him. Park didn’t relinquish. He didn’t care how much people argued the contrary, he refused to give in on what people may think was “best” for his department.
“You may not need her, but that doesn’t eliminate her worth around here.” Sully stated with firmness.
From the hardened stare of his resident, Brendon knew exactly what Sully was referring to. He didn’t doubt that you’d share the hostility brewing between him and you. It wasn’t exactly a secret. Park would not shy away from exposing a resident for their wrong doings.
What he was starting to notice was the courage of certain residents willing to put their foot down on what they saw was unjust.
They handed him the short end of the stick during his residency and med-school years. His teachers and attendings didn’t make it easy, and they certainly wouldn’t have tolerated being advised by residents like you and Sully.
Instead of picking a fight, he chose the silence. It was early in the morning to dig into Sully. He’d chosen to wait into swatting him around like a shark with its fin. It took another minute for Sully to realize Park the Shark was opting to glare at him, inserting dominance until he got the hint.
Park handed him the device back. Sully took it without question, swiftly turning to head in the direction the residents disappeared. Standing firm in place, he watched the cloud of plum scrubs move around the post-op floor.
He knew exactly which ones would cry over his directive before the start of their next year. Who would hesitate and second-guess themselves the next time they answered a consultation. He could acutely guess who would be eaten alive by the other attendings across different departments. If they couldn’t handle the likes of Robby or Walsh, then he saw them quitting sooner rather than later.
Yet, you didn’t fit that image, physically or metaphorically.
You, who was off doing a surgery only he trusted senior staff on, were ambitiously seeking to make yourself indispensable. There was no need when you had staff like Emmick and Sully in your corner, even the dreadful surgical attendings like Walsh were jabbing at Park to ‘ease up’ on the only resident able to keep up with him.
He heard it all and up until now, it never made sense to ‘ease up’ on his residents. It was far from his natural instinct to push until they finally figured to pull themselves up, even as he had control of the rope. You had managed to deny him that pleasure, opting to climb the side of the cliff with your bare hands.
Now, he was left watching and waiting, with the rope still in his hand.
When Brendon heard about the opening of OR 5, cleaned up after the complex acetabular reconstruction, it was past noon. He was doing the afternoon check in with Annette, and he hadn’t realized how late the surgery ended.
There was no sight of you or Emmick. He would not have assumed either of you were going to stay longer than necessary once charting was done. It was a difficult procedure based on the pre-operative details. The day had been lulled by a scheduled base itinerary that the residents could handle with limited supervision. He had time to spend, and he was analyzing the patients chart as if he was going to scrub in for surgery.
It was obsessive, but the compulsion to understand every surgery in the department he commanded, was a given.
He happened to be going around the post-op ward. Checking in with residents as patients moved out of surgery to observation or were discharged or transferred elsewhere. As he was passing by the room in the far corner, he heard a familiar belly laugh. Unrestrained and engrossed in whatever made him laugh.
Brendon peeked his head first, checking in through the window. Mr. Giles sat on the bed, glancing to his left with a toothy grin. The surgery had been done in a few hours, and although he’d probably feel better sleeping the entire procedure off, he had his own form of treatment.
He was staring fondly at a female visitor. It was hard to make out who they were from their face, but the silhouette was too familiar. He noted the black backpack sitting beside the chair, pulled close to the bedside. It wasn’t until the voice started laughing along with Mr. Giles that it clicked.
“I swear, I’ve never seen anyone slip so animatedly as then.” You breathed out, the laugh subsiding into giggles as you tried to catch your breath.
Stopping beside the filler of the wall between both rooms, he crossed his arms. Without realizing, he was inclining his ear closer to listen. You sighed out dramatically, “He’s not the most graceful, but he can suture up nerves and tissue even with his eyes closed.”
“So, how come he’s leaving?” Mr. Giles questioned, interested in the explanation. He cleared his croaky throat.
There was a beat of silence, and from the corner of his eye, Brendon noticed how you shrugged. “He doesn’t see himself staying here. This was always temporary compared to where he wanted to be.”
“And how about you?” Mr. Giles proposed, smiling again. “You’re pretty good at what you do. Where do you want to be?”
You hummed, nervously laughing after as you tried deflecting the comment. Too humble to know when to just take the compliment. “I haven’t decided yet. Dr. Sullivan has invited me to join him once my residency is over, but I still have a year to figure that out.”
“Don’t wait too long.” Mr. Giles advised in the antiquated fashion Brendon’s parents did to him.
Marriage. Kids. Retirement plans; personal-life-milestones Brendon put aside. He didn’t have to think about that while focusing on his career. As long as he could continue to be the chief orthopedic surgeon at PTMC, his life was as fulfilled as he felt it could be. He didn’t need personal distractions to keep him occupied.
“Sometimes, the things that are good for us are the things we let go.” Mr. Giles warned, turning his head to look up at the ceiling. “If I had taken my own advice, I would’ve married my wife before going to the Marines. I was lucky enough she came to find me once her first marriage ended.”
Brendon glanced down at the watch positioned on the inside of his wrist. It was past one and he didn’t need the liability of restless residents staying around past their bedtime. He advanced towards the patient’s door, one hand braced on the frame of the open sliding door.
He spoke your name briskly, title and surname firm into the air. You turned towards the door of the room, eyebrows raised to your hairline. Staring at you with heavyset eyes, he saw the casualness of your attire. Plum scrubs more than likely in the dispenser, changed into relaxed jeans, a grey t-shirt, wrapped in your fleece jacket.
Rotating from the hip, you put on a tight lip smile. “Dr. Park. Did you need to check in with Mr. Giles?”
“No,” The firm definition of his arm around the sleeves of his scrub tightened, gripping tighter to the frame. “I’m here to make sure all my staff is where they need to be.”
With the pronunciation of his possession over the day shift, you heard the message clearly. Facing Mr. Giles, your body relaxed with the revelation of his soft expression. With one hand stretched, you patted his hand lying flat on the bed. “I will check on you tonight.”
He scoffed, the corner of his lip curling up. “So soon? You just can’t stay away from this place, huh?”
While reaching down to slip on your backpack, you smiled coyly. You pushed the chair back to the corner, and once back by Mr. Giles bedside; you paused with your hands in your jacket pockets. “What can I say, I love what I do. Rest up, Frank.”
Making your way out the room, Brendon pulled his arm back, stepping aside to give you an undisturbed exit. The air that hit him as you were passing by was colder than the fuzziness between you and Mr. Giles. Brendon still found himself venturing in the same direction as you.
“If you’re looking for Dr. Emmick, I last heard she was speaking with the wife of the steel-yard worker.” You directed to Park walking behind you. As you turned the corner, walking in the direction of the elevator, he was still behind you.
“How did the surgery go?’ He asked with no change in the equilibrium of his tone.
You sighed, shaking your head. “He’s in the ICU. Apart from the fracture and the reconstruction, he suffered major trauma to his internal organs. Spleen was compromised, and Dr. Walsh removed a part of his kidney.”
The way you noted all the information was robotic. It was like having an automated voice read the chart. If he had wanted the differential diagnosis of the patient, he wouldn’t have asked. His eyes lingered on the back of your head, suddenly determined to leave the hospital as rapidly as possible. As if your pit stop to see Mr. Giles wasn’t the true reason you had delayed leaving.
Instead of heading straight for the elevators, you derailed into the residents lounge, slipping in and letting the door fall behind you. Park, with the reflexes from his childhood, pushed the door back with his palm. Inside the lights were dimmed, and you walked over to the fridge, as if you were utterly alone in the room.
“How come you were pulled to assist?” Brendon ruminated, eyes narrowed at you.
When you stood back up straight, you had an energy drink in your hand. The crack of the seal echoed and you shrugged while sipping the beverage. He awaited a verbal response. Some nonsensical explanation for an answer you had no way of knowing.
You took a couple of steps, in his direction, before stopping. He didn't move from the path to the door. With wide eyes and an awkward tight lip smile, you rocked on your feet. “Is there something else you needed to know about the patient, Dr. Park?”
The question wasn’t proposed because you wanted the conversation to continue. If it was the only way for you to be able to leave the confined space, you would; but you make it practical. About the patient care and the workload, the night shift was leaving the day shift. Nothing of the sort that related personally to you and him.
He knew with the scheduled double shift you were blocked for must have been a dread. If the current direction this conversation was heading was any clue, he could see the double shift being the last thing you want to do.
Working for 24 hours—half of them stuck with the attending you shunned from your education. Brendon was anticipating some form of retaliation. Letting your professionalism turn to spite. Lying in wait to see whether you’d give him the same treatment you felt you unjustly earned from him.
“Typically a fourth-year resident would perform or assist the procedure.” Park responded, completely guiding the conversation in the opposite direction.
You didn’t remove your eyes from him. They were glassy, and the way your lids would flutter ever so slightly, weary. With your lips sealed, you slowly nodded your head, as if remembering for the future. Don’t get used to this treatment. It’s not meant to last.
“I responded to the consultation and it was Dr. Emmick’s directive to have me on the surgical team.” You plainly renounced. This antagonistic approach was doing nothing in his favor. From the way you kept looking at him with the blank expression, he had more luck talking to a wall. “It was a learning opportunity.”
Brendon curtly nodded once, flexing his jaw as his teeth pressed against each other. Firmer than before. How were you supposed to be ‘equals’ if you could barely speak words to him?
“I have to go home. I work another shift tonight.”
Silently, you maneuvered around his body. As he felt your arm come up against his, he finally retracted himself. You only opened the door wide enough to slip your body, letting partial light from the hospital peek in the ambient lounge.
Brendon’s hand reached for the handle, pulling it open wider. You glanced up when you noticed the door leave your grasp. You spun around once stepping out the room, eyeing Brendon peculiarly.
He stood opposite of you, shoulder tall and pulled back. He nodded once more, “See you next week for day shift.”
Brendon prided himself on the control he had. The influence in his department that allowed him to rule over his residents prevented health violations and potential lawsuits from knocking on his door. It saved him from unprecedented headaches. The less likely he was to have an unplanned meeting with Admin, the better.
That idea was expanded to his residents. He deemed it efficient to harbor the tenacity his attending preached. If they put on a mile with an inch, they could potentially save someone’s quality of life.
That is a lot harder said than done when patients weren’t easily agreeable to their plan of care.
Which was the only reason Brendon was tenser with pediatric cases. With more parties involved with the care, there was more time dedicated to explaining operative procedures and post-op care. Everything was done for the consideration of the children, but Brendon didn’t understand that type of reliance.
Being a single man in his early forties, he had yet to figure out that stage of his life. There was no personal life with a wife or children waiting for him outside the hospital doors. So his approach was practical when explaining, but it was failing him at the moment.
A 12-year-old girl was trembling in fear, tears staining her cheeks, while sitting on the hospital bed. Her parents were sitting beside her, and after Brendon thought they might be able to proceed with the open reduction and internal fixation, they were pulling out with the consent forms before them.
“We just don’t feel as comfortable as we did before. I mean, how do we know the probability of the risks?” The father reasoned, similar in build as Brendon, one arm filled with tattoos. He twisted at the hip, as one hand held the smaller one of his daughter, while facing Brendon.
He shouldn’t have sent Jones to sign the consent forms.
“We don’t have precise numbers, but most children recover well.” Brendon’s concise answer was honest, not medically malicious. He couldn't provide them false hope. That was a lawsuit waiting to happen.
“But, could she develop this growth plate injury the other doctor mentioned?” The mother questioned, leaning forward in the chair. Her eyes were sunken from the exhaustion, and despite the fact, they had only been there for three hours, the hospital air and lights were draining the youth in her.
“So we aren’t even sure if she will be able to dance, let alone move normally?” She continued with a shaky breath.
He was totally going to rip Jones a new one.
Before Brendon could make a feasible attempt to remedy their concerns, they all heard a knock come from the door.
You peeked your head in, one hand braced on the door you slid open. Your eyes landed on the couple and their daughter, and as if you immediately sensed the tension in the room, you smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I need to borrow Dr. Park for a moment.”
When your attention moved to Park, he let out a heavy sigh, one raised eyebrows in your direction. What is it?
The subtle shake of your head, Not in here.
Brendon grabbed the device the parents put at the edge of the girls bed. The father stood up, wiping his hands on his black denim jeans. “We will need more time to think about this, anyway.”
“Let the nurse know when you’re ready.” Brendon curtly responded.
You opened the door wider, stepping back to let him through. Closing it gently once he stepped out, you spared the family a soft smile. You both walked away from the glass, over to the nursing station. Brendon put down the device, “What is it?”
“ER needs a consult.” You informed him immediately. He put his hands on his hips, turning to the patient's room.
When he glanced at you, he noted the army green scrub cap, beige stars littered around it. It seemed new. He shrugged his shoulders, lips pursed. “Why hasn’t anyone gone down?”
“Bryant did.” You affirmed, shaking your head as you scoffed. “Dr. Robby must be in a mood because he sent him up immediately. I just happened to catch him groveling when I left the OR.”
His eyes wandered up to drink in your nurtured appearance. Despite the last shift you worked being night shifts, you managed to come rejuvenated for the day. This was no longer the shift you mastered, but you appeared the same as before.
Except Park knew things were different. Unexplainable, but it was messing with the ‘control’ he had within himself and in his habitat.
When you came in for hand off, you joked with the night shift. Hugged and laughed along with whatever funny patient interaction they had that night. When you came around Emmick, she’d check in with you, tease you about the change of schedule.
Once Park came around to collect all the residents, he caught the slight wink she sent you when you both looked in his direction. Like the two of you had always spent your residency as close friends.
“So, how come you're here telling me this?”
You chuckled, grinning subtly. “It’s better than having to hear about you ruining another resident's spirit.”
The knowing look in your eye that twinkled before you looked away didn’t go amiss. That was shady, but something told him that’s exactly what you meant to do. Even if he couldn’t admit it, you were intentional with your action.
You looked back over your shoulder to pre-op room 6. “Was that the girl with the Salter-Harris fracture?”
Park hummed, shifting on his feet. You had noticed the patient from looks alone. The only time you could’ve heard of the patient was from nurses when they transferred her up from the ER, before participating in the rotator cuff repair. You had the faintest idea of who she was, but you were aware from when you walked in.
“Seemed tense.” You noted cautiously, eyeing Park from his face alone. It was like you were trying to angle out his response without words. You had been able to read any room you had entered, which is why he believed in practicality.
No need to play different parts every time you enter a room.
He looked down at you. You mimicked his posture, less weight on your shoulder, appearing casual. “Blame Jones. He’s freaked the patient out, and now the parents are hesitant to sign the consent forms.”
He scowled and there was a beat of silence.
“Is there any way I can help?”
The question was assertive. You weren’t planning to be overlooked, and you needed an answer. You weren't going to walk away without an answer. It was the drive he kept alluding you were missing. Whatever pushed you into wrapping your soul around another was showing up more in this two-minute conversation than before.
The private check-in that Brendon had never acknowledged as you were looking out for a colleague (as much as a supervisor) was an ‘act’ that disappeared in three-months. In that time, you had erased the previous routine and rapport with him, and started new. Brendon knew it was taking everything in your power to restrain yourself from doting on him as much as anyone else you worked with.
He was also acutely aware you didn’t stray away from what mattered most to you. Professionally or personally.
Brendon reasoned. This was genuine, but the way your steely eyes waited expectantly, it felt like looking in a mirror. He was sure the residents recognized the impersonal stares from the countless times he stared down at them. He didn't hide the fact he was displeased, stressed, or irritated with an outcome.
No one wanted to be the one sent to bother him during those moments. You had dared to step up to the plate in place of an intern.
“Why not answer the consultation?” Brendon fixated on the fact you heard of the consultation and preferred coming to him personally to let him know. You hadn't responded to it, nor were you aware there was a consultation to see until a few minutes ago.
You cocked your head to the side, playfully rolling your eyes. “I’d rather not get on Dr. Robby’s bad side.”
Fair, he supposed. You set boundaries with your own attending. He couldn't say he was shocked you’d do so easily with someone who wasn’t directly your supervisor. The slight stretch of his neck managed to pull at the muscles down to his shoulders, and the dread of the patient in room 6 was getting to him.
Before Brendon could assign you to some scheduled surgery to busy yourself, you pointed your thumb back to the room. “I will talk to the parents. It is best that they make a decision soon before the girl takes a turn for the worse.”
He was left with no choice but to stiffly agree with you. The careful steps you were taking backwards put immense distance again. “You better head down to the ED before Robby rips you a new one.”
The smooth turn you made flipped a switch. You sanitized before knocking the door. When you opened it, he could make out the faint sound of you greeting them properly while introducing yourself . He could see you smiling all over again. It wasn't just the bed-side manner you put for patients, but the authentic side of you that was patient and illumining.
Brendon buffered for a minute, waiting to see whether you’d come out, deferring to the idea of appealing to their psychological needs. After what felt like minutes, you hadn’t come out at all. No inkling of a potential departure.
Daring to fight against the curve, Brendon stalked close enough to peek in the room from the window. To any nurses or doctors passing by, he was the leader taking mental notes of what was happening in his area of control.
He saw your figure first from the angle. You were sitting on a chair, nodding along to something the girl was saying. Beside her, the parents were grasping onto her hands, while the 12-year-old patient let tears roll down her eyes.
You were on the mothers opposite side, listening intently like any other adult patient. Yet, this patient was comfortable being a frightened 12-year-of girl. The father jumped in, speaking at you with more elaboration as his hands moved.
The transition was simple, still empathetic and understanding as they explained in detail what they couldn’t tell Park standing in the room. You spoke slowly and steady, much more available to sit and reflect on every aspect of a surgery you had done before.
When Brendon assumed time was escaping him, you weren’t fighting nearly as desperately as he was. He was endeavoring to make it worth his while. You were working at the pace that suited the patient under your care.
While being young and having better neuroplasticity than him, you were malleable with every experience. You were adapting to every interaction with patients and coworkers—which explained why you were unrecognizable in an element Brendon Park had no intervention in.
No control over a habitat you were reigning with your mind and fortifying with your heart.
And after answering the consult from a brooding Robby and booking an OR, he found you sitting in the dictation room, typing away. You had lost the scrub cap, letting your hair be free. You hadn’t moved when he walked in, as if you had been expecting him to look for you.
He was looking down at the consent forms, initial and signed by the parents.
“How did you manage to get them to consent?” Brendon queried. He stood at the door, holding the device up.
There was a small hum to fill in the silence of the room. He awaited there, like you had the knowledge of the Holy Grail—waiting for you to bestow upon him the privilege of knowing.
Standing in front of anyone, he’d feel like an idiot. Standing in front of you, he was trying to get to know what everyone else saw. The missing piece to his elaborate puzzle with a decades work into.
You lazily lifted your head, briefly confused until you realized what he was alluding to. Shrugging your shoulders and leaning back in the chair, you sighed. “I just sat there and spoke to them.”
“The parents and the girl had questions they felt Jones didn’t address.” You clarified, simplifying the previous trouble Brendon was having.
You made it sound like the antiquated practice had somehow been lost between consultation and transfer to the surgical floor. “They just wanted to have a conversation instead of being mandated to agree with the surgery.
Standing up, you wandered over to the coffee pot with a mug already in hand. Pouring the liquid, your light breathing was calm. You weren’t rattled by emotionally distraught parents and frightened girls.
The same way standing up against him came out as if you had done it before.
The coffee pot clicks back on the machine. You carefully moved around, grabbing sugar packets and powered creamer. “They knew it was necessary, but it didn't stop them from feeling scared.”
“It’s all for the benefit of their child.” Brendon responded. You were a doctor. He was aware you knew that. It was a reflex. It was the practical answer.
It should’ve been a no-brainer. For you and for the parents. No parent should neglect or delay care necessary, especially if the odds of them being mobile without the procedure was at risk.
You stared at him with wide eyes, before chuckling. “They know that, Dr. Park.”
With the stare of your eyes, you were communicating what you weren’t going to put in words for him. They’re still human and afraid. It was redundant considering Park had scolded you for such. You weren’t going to bother with explaining yourself anymore.
“I also spoke with Jones about appropriate verbiage when getting consent from patients, specifically in pediatric cases.” You informed, holding the mug in two hands while
heading back to your workstation.
He shook his head, squeezing his teeth together until they rubbed. You stuck a hand out, halting whatever tangent he was going to start. “Not everyone’s preferred method of criticism is from Park the Shark.”
The small grin on your face while you typed didn’t agitate him as much as it would’ve from anyone else. Walsh would’ve earned a scowl. He might’ve glared at Emmick from the corner of his eye, with a strained stretch of his neck. Garcia knew better than to poke the Shark when she saw him send the senior resident out of the OR as a second year.
And while he thought he had sunken his teeth deep enough to be able to pull you from making grave mistakes, you had slithered from his grasp. You had him chasing your tail in a trail that would end with him going to the depths of the dark ocean.
“Some of us learn differently. There’s nothing wrong with that.” You casually mentioned, clicking around on the computer and typing. “The point is we learn to do better next time, right?”
When his brain registered you were talking with him, he huffed out a breath, tempted to let the corner of his mouth curve. He picked up the subliminal message. You were becoming braver with your jab; and even while you pretended not to be overtly interested in to stare him in the eyes, you were making precise stabs.
Before he could push the conversation further, there was a beep. You both glanced down at each other's pagers and the small scrape of your chair against the floor followed. You breezed past him without a second thought, leaving him in the wake of your sunshine. Even with the glumness of his personality, you were shining the darkest of places. He was inches from touching the sunlight, but some cloud always obscured it.
Brendon looked at the door click shut and he saw the same cloud shutting his limited sunlight once again.
“All non-emergent surgeries will be rescheduled. We need to focus on OR turnover to be quick. Some of these patients may not be able to wait five minutes.” Brendon instructed precisely, staring at the patient board over the nursing station. His arms folded over his chest, musing in thought.
“My nurses know what they’re doing, Dr. Park.” Annette joked, frameless glasses sitting on her nose as she stared down at her device. Her fingers moved eagerly to start moving the scheduled times of the current list of patients.
Brendon shook his head with a small hum. He heard the clacking of shoes down the hall and his head followed the noise. Emmick was typing rapidly on her phone, while approaching him. “What is the current count?”
“17 including children, right now. It can change soon.” Annette responded, glancing at Emmick who stood close to them.
Emmick sighed, pocketing her phone. She shook her head as she saw a couple of the residents rushing by to reach out to loved ones and run to the bathroom before they were buried in their work. A multi-vehicle pileup on the interstate, including an 18-wheel truck. Once the mass size of the gasoline truck flipped over, the rest of the cars followed, and the casualties were increasing by the second.
“Have you reached out to the rest?” Brendon asked, turning to Emmick.
She stiffly nodded, interlocking both her hands behind her head. “I’ve debriefed with the residents in the lounge. A couple of them will be going over 24 hours on their feet.”
He knew exactly who was supposed to be done with a double shift. That didn’t stop them from their responsibilities. They knew medical emergencies occurred at all hours, and anyone’s life could hang in the balance. Their job was to react to the trauma at hand and do everything in their power to stop the emergency.
As on cue, you were coming around the corner with Sully by your side. He was handing you a paper cup, probably filled with coffee, to push you through the unexpected extension of your shift. Despite this being your third consecutive shift, you were synchronized with Sully’s steps. He was light and energized, and with each sip of coffee, you were pacing yourself to reach the same determination.
When Sully found the two attendings standing in the small circle, he smiled casually, as if a car pileup was an everyday occurrence. “Residents are getting in their last moments of freedom. Let us know where you want us, Captain.”
“Trauma down stairs will determine priority. Dr. Emmick will run point with Garcia.” Brendon informed, tutting his chin to his colleague.
“Lovely.”
Emmick rolled her eyes, dropping her hands to her hips. Brendon briefly ignored the annoyance with a slight glare. “I will assign you all to cases as they come in.”
Sully and you both nodded to Brendon’s command. Emmick bumped your arm with her elbow. “Want to help me downstairs? Could use the second pair of eyes.”
“I’m going to need all R4 and R3’s in the OR.” Brendon intervened, glancing between the two of you through his hooded eyes. “I won’t have to check the work of the interns.”
Emmick narrowed her eyes while she pursed her lips. To the two residents in question, it would seem like Emmick was challenging the decision. It wasn’t rare that on occasion the two attendings would butt heads, like hammer-head sharks fighting for their space. But to Brendon, this was a jest. One more feather in her cap about how well she knew him while barely speaking to her.
“Fair point.” Was all Emmick mustered, suppressing the small grin on her face.
When Brendon looked over at you, there wasn’t any deflation of his prerogative. You weren’t visibly upset as you were focused. While still taking sips of your coffee, you were simply listening to the instruction. He could safely assume you were high-strung, from the small shift of your feet and your eyes to the group of your supervisors and friends. You didn’t let your face show it.
“Will you be able to manage?” Brendon questioned in your direction.
Humming, you furrowed your brows at the question. He crossed his arms, “I’m going to need you to be alert. Sometimes you’re going to have to work through the fatigue for the sake of patient-care.”
The statement wasn’t wrong. It was an observation any rational teacher would warn their student. Accepting to work at a trauma-1 hospital brought the exhaustive workload. If he was going to trust any of the residents to demonstrate leadership and initiative, it was a moment like this to prove it.
He noticed the hesitant eyes from Sully and Emmick, caught off guard from the warning. You nodded once, ignoring the uncertainty for your closest work-partners. “I understand, Dr. Park.”
Satisfied enough with that answer, he looked back to Annette who was watching the interaction carefully while speaking on her spectralink phone. She muttered small replies before hanging up. “Ambulances are 7 minutes out.”
“That’s my cue.” Emmick announced, clapping her hands together. She placed a gentle hand on your shoulder, sending you a small wink. “See you once the dust settles.”
Brendon scoffed, shaking his head. Emmick began her tread backwards, pointing a finger at Brendon. “Don’t’ go biting any of my resident’s head off!”
Sully snickered, covering his mouth with a hand and with the two of you standing in front of him, he didn’t see that task as impossible. He motioned his hands outward. “Get your nerves out before either of you kill a patient.”
You pushed a smiling Sully in the direction that Emmick went down, your free hand resting lightly on the back of his arm as you guided him away. He was mimicking an aggressive bite, chomping his teeth at you. Retracting your head, you laughed, eyes crinkling into little slivers.
The energy changed two hours later. With the surgical unit bustling with all the possible staff available, his residents were no longer smiling or kidding—covered in blood stained gowns, dispersed between the 25 operating rooms. Brendon stepped out of OR 17, doffing the gloves he was wearing. When he walked down the hallway, he noted another door slide open farther down.
You stepped out, hands on your hips as you sighed. When you looked in his direction, he was already heading towards you. “What do you have?”
“Bilateral wrist and humeral shaft fracture with a radial nerve injury. Put in plates and screws.” You sanitized your hands, rubbing vicariously through every side. Motioning your head to the ER you just exited, you sighed. “May is closing up.”
The double doors down the hallways clicked open. Turning both your heads at the sound, a patient was being wheeled in with a small group of doctors and nurses surrounding the head of the bed. Brendon recognized the vascular surgeon, Greg Norton tying up his scrub cap. He greeted Brendon with a grin, hands landing on the bed railing. “Park, ready to make mincemeat with this poor fellow?”
When the bed came up towards where you both stood, you had moved beside Brendon, hands on your hips as you stared down at the patient. He noticed the quizzical look in your eye, staring at the lower extremities. “I won’t be scrubbing in.”
You turned to look at him as Dr. Norton furrowed his brows, his grin faltering. “What? Don’t tell me you’re going to send me one of your pups?”
Looking down at you, there was a moment of doubt, like you couldn’t believe Park was actually looking at you. “Possible posterior wall acetabular fracture with hip dislocation. Emmick called beforehand about it.”
“What did imaging show?” You questioned, already honing into your diagnostic skill. Your eyes shifted around his face, and your mind was moving at an incredible speed attributed to the neuroplasticity you sharpened.
“Come on, Park.” Dr. Norton interrupted, leaning forward as to cut into the silent digression of the case. His thick New England accent bounced off the walls with the heightened volume he always spoke at. Brendon crossed his arms as he reluctantly glared at the older, fuller man. Dr. Norton then looked towards you, nose scrunched slightly. “What are you, sweetheart? R3?”
“I’ve done this procedure before.” Your calm voice still gives way for the displeasure of his dismissal.
It wasn’t disappointment, it was anger. Despite being 20 years his junior, you maintained a sense of composure for your age. Some might have acted ferociously. Brendon knew there were attendings that would not have kept up appearances for the sake of respect in the workplace.
Dr. Norton snorted, shaking his head. “Nothing against you, honey, but this procedure is made for meticulous hands. I don’t need the trouble of some shaky, doe-eye resident screwing this man’s possibility of walking.”
Brendon's own disbelief didn’t seem as animated as yours, widening your eyes while tilting your head to the side. Dr. Norton had been around since before Brendon joined the hospital. He always poked at the fact Brendon didn’t smile for a doctor with ‘razor sharp’ teeth. He thought Dr. Brendon Park was as animalistic as people described him to be, he’d flaunt it.
Before you could proceed by jumping into a pit of fire, Brendon crossed his arm, squaring his shoulders. “Dr. Norton, I assign the cases, and if you have a problem with that you can take it up with me after my resident performs the surgery.”
Dr. Norton snarled, lifting his top lip to his nose. He looked at you before smacking his lips. With the menial glare from Brendon, he could see his ego visibly deflate. If he wanted him to show his teeth, he should have asked nicely.
“You ready?” Dr. Norton grumbled, motioning his head to one of the OR’s down the hallway. He was turning his father away from Brendon and avoiding your gaze, as if you had ripped his jugular.
Offering a polite nod, you took a step back, still staring at him. “I will meet you there after looking at the imaging, Dr. Norton.”
Dr. Norton grumbled, signaling for the nurses to continue down the hall to the OR. Brendon stood there, eyeing Dr. Norton as he passed, burly arms crossed to intimidate with his physicality as much as his personality. When the doors to OR 22 closed behind the transfer team, Brendon finally turned to face you, who was staring up at him with a deadpanned expression. “I didn’t want you defending me.”
Brendon pressed his lips in a thing line. You didn’t deny that you needed it. Dr. Norton didn’t know how to talk to his female colleagues, and his brusque manners didn’t rub people the right way, regardless. You had worked with him before, under Brendon’s guide, which left you in the limelight compared to center stage.
The overcasting shadow of his reputation protected you from the scrutiny. While stranded at sea, you had to find your own anchor to throw.
“I wasn’t.” Was all he plainly said.
He wasn’t defending you. He was defending your knowledge. Had you been Jones or Reddy, he wouldn’t have jumped so eagerly. There were weaknesses in all his residents, some more than others, but you had been the exception in most areas. Even if it didn’t come at first, it came from work. You could not have survived up to 27 hours of traumatic repairs if you had not put sweat and tears into getting it right.
“You better hurry and scrub in.” Brendon advised, cocking his head to the side. Go look at the images and prove to him he’s wrong. Prove to me you’ve got this.
With less visible friction, you walked around Brendon, heading in the direction of the double doors. You walked with the power of someone prepared for the challenge. When Brendon turned around, he noticed another figure had joined the hallway, having exited OR 2.
Sully stood outside the door, speaking at you quietly. He furrowed his brows, hands on his hips as he saw you walk away. You nodded in response to his question, pushing the door open with you back and slipping through gracefully.
Brendon sighed, walking down the hall and nodding to Sully in acknowledgment. “You done? I have a couple of open-tibia fractures that won’t heal on their own.”
Buffering for a moment, Sully complied with a small smile. He turned back to the door, forehead pinched as he tried deciphering the scene. Park, you, and Dr. Norton. From the small snort, he had picked up all the clues necessary to make a bold assumption. It didn’t help Norton spoke with the volume of twenty people.
“Thank you, Dr. Park.” Sully gently grinned; slyly leaning forward as he suggestively spoke.
The word rang in his ear repeatedly: You may not need her, but that doesn’t eliminate her worth around here. Sully was assuming Brendon thought the hospital couldn’t utilize your brilliance. That the hospital didn’t need surgeons with exemplary bedside manner that matched their skills in an operating room; or that he couldn’t use someone he could trust at this very moment to dedicate themselves in a surgery he trusted himself to do.
In typical Brendon fashion, he stared at Sully, lips in a tight line that strengthened his jaw and cheeks even more. Sully pushed the limits by still standing before him and that distressed him more than he liked. He didn’t know whether it was the fact that Sully had thanked him something he saw as unnatural, or the fact you had yet again dismissed his efforts others would consider valiant.
He didn’t want to be a hero of any sort (not that you needed it, he was starting to realize). You could snarl just as nasty as him, but it wasn’t your preferred method of surviving—because you weren’t just surviving your residency. The formulated relationships with your co-residents, attendings, and patients were your life mission, apart from learning to improve someone’s life while living their worst day.
The vulnerability that he considered not outfitted for the workplace led to how you operated. Your life, the patients, even the residents you helped when they just were not there yet.
Brendon didn’t see the future as optimistically as you, and when the shattering reality came of how it could look different to what he was used to know, it did break his stride. The built of momentum between you and him—his correction and your fear of fucking it up—was his everyday routine. Not to minimize you, but to build the tools to survive.
Of course, the method didn’t work. And he stupidly realized he was attempting to survive on his own like a shark in a tank.
It was a hard lesson you were teaching him while baiting him. He was rolling his neck around trying to compose himself. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Right.” Sully responded, raising his chin higher as he squared his shoulders. The same self-satisfied grin gracing his youthful features. He watched for any unwelcoming passersby before leaning in. “Better you than me. I might’ve socked the guy.”
Brendon's lips twitched, and he looked at Sully thoughtfully. He definitely had the build. He had seen him work out at the gym across the street from time to time. “You wouldn't have.”
“For her? Yeah.” Sully confirmed breathy as he scoffed from the disbelief. “Like I said Dr. Park, she could survive without me, but I don't think I could’ve made it without her.”
“I don't take lightly when people dismiss her.” Sully stuffed his hands in his scrub pockets, shuffling briefly like the admission was something too vulnerable. For a conversation with Dr. Park? It was a revelation that went beyond professional bounds.
You had taught Sully a thing or two about being attuned with your inner spirits—and if that meant warding away what ate the center of it—there was worthiness in the cause. Park saw the deep resemblance in the now stoic impression on Sully’s face. Bold and Brendon couldn't ignore it.
Sully took careful steps backwards, arms falling to his side. “So, thanks, Dr. Park.”
“I’ll book the OR.” Brendon announced walking out of Trauma 2 in ER. He ripped off the gloves he was wearing, tossing him in a nearby waste bin. It was an ironic day to get into a motorcycle accident while the interstate was still being cleared from the debris of the MVA in the morning.
What more could you expect from a 21-year-old boy whose frontal lobe still had not developed.
It was almost 2 and the majority of the patients that came in during the accident had been moved to the post-surgical unit or the ICU while waiting for follow up surgery for open wounds. The surgical department had cleared half of its staff that stayed overnight or pulled the spontaneous shift. Those still on the clock were dragging their feet and it was taking everything in him not to bite. When the night shift residents were able to leave, they were also zombies walking.
All, except one. When he got up to the surgical floor, he walked into the viewing room, where their charge nurse could gauge operations with the camera live streaming it all. He could see OR 22 running up to 8 hours of operation time. He mostly was staring at the different scrub caps to distinguish all the involved staff.
The only one missing was a green cap.
“Are they finishing it up?” Brendon questioned, turning to Annette sitting at one of the open tables, typing into the device.
She hummed, head still lowered. “Ortho is done with the reconstruction. Vascular and trauma is finishing up.”
Brendon nodded curtly before heading back out the room. The surgery couldn’t have been too complicated if you were done in roughly 7 hours. He had slipped in once as he continued assigning residents to the incoming patients. You had stayed stuck there for the majority of it, and Brendon didn’t feel the need to come in after that.
His immediate thought was to check the dictation room. If you were still lingering, you’d probably be trying to finish up work you had, which meant charting. To his luck, when he peeked through the window on the door, he found you hunched over a computer. The same station you sat at the last week he had spoken to you.
Inhaling a sharp breath, he twisted the door open, and the click caught your attention. Lifting your head and eyebrows simultaneously at the direction of the door, your body visibly jolted. He knew you were awake enough to orally translate your notes, but your body kept succumbing to the sleep it needed.
“How was the surgery?” Brendon questioned, approaching the desk with his hands in his scrub pockets. With the height advantage, he had a clear view of the desk. You had a paper cup of black coffee, an open energy drink, and a small bottle of ibuprofen.
Straightening you back as a way to stretch your body, you shrugged. “Went better than expected.”
“Did Norton give you any grief?” Brendon followed up, not taking his eye off the obvious display of you recklessly messing with your body’s melatonin. From the look of it, you didn’t have anything of substance to run off.
You gently twirled your wrist to reboot your dexterity and putting down the microphone in your hand gave you the break your body needed to lean back in the chair. The question caught you off-guard, leaving your mouth open, while your brain lacked the reflex to come up with a response.
“He was fine. Didn’t talk much unless he was bragging about his NFL athlete son to the nurses.” The small scowl on your face made him bite back the laugh he wanted to let out.
He heard the stories. The accolades he made about a son who mostly sat on the bench. He couldn’t remember the last time they had even aired his face on anything bigger than a phone screen. Brendon crossed his arms, the slight cure of his lips gave him away. “He's the 2nd running back on a good day, at best.”
You bit your bottom lip, shaking your head lightly. “Have you told him that?”
“Almost.”`
The loopy grin on your face made you look cuter, as Emmick or Walsh might describe it. He was aware what staff liked you for your personality and which other liked you for something other than work-appropriate. In an objective sense, none of them were wrong, nor did it concern him or HR yet. Your hands rubbed the back of your neck, easing it from side to side. “Apart from that, he is a respectable surgeon. He just lacks the social cues to elevate him to a standard that I could befriend.”
Brendon arms crossed over his chest. When he looked away, he was starting to see there were some lessons you felt he needed reminding of. Brendon had casual friends, people from college or med school he kept in touch with enough to be invited to weddings. He didn’t plan trips to see them across the country, but he thought being mutual on social media made up for that.
When in comparison to you, he did fall flat of the mark. You had the charisma that engaged everyone, and no one forgot your name because of it.
In no way was it to save face for anything you may lack. It was your greatest strength, which as healers earned more respect that skill did.
You let out a choppy yawn, attempting to hide it before it just came out altogether. He cocked his head to one side, tightening his stance. “You’re exhausted”
“No, I'm fine.” You corrected him. He could not help to think that if Emmick were standing here, you would be more subject to her compassion than his no-nonsense tone. “I have charting to get done.”
“Which you are barely awake for.” Brendon pointed out.
The sigh that escaped you paired with the glare of your bloodshot eyes confirmed it all for him. You were past your limits, and there was no reason to prove you were capable of heaving the heavy load. Not to Brendon’s eyes.
He watched you reach for the energy drink and before you could take a sip, it was pulled from your loose grasp. You stuttered, sitting up taller while staring accusatory to Brendon, holding the now relatively small can in his hand. Before you could utter a word, he leaned over to grab the cup of coffee with the other. “You don’t need this. You’re frying the melatonin in your brain telling you to go home.”
“I am needed here.”
He scoffed, turning his back to you as he found a way to keep the caffeinated drinks from your reach. He opted to put it on a nearby counter, leaning back into it with feet crossed to hide the mere temptation of sight.
“If I did need you, I’d need you to stay awake and alert.” Brendon grasped the edge of the counter underhanded, flexing the muscles in his biceps. “Right now you are neither of those things.”
Sagging in the chair turned to face him, your computer with the dictation notes still open abandoned, you frowned. “You could use the help.”
“No, I need you to go home.” Brendon emphasized his stare glued to your tired body. You didn’t have the precision to walk in a straight-line let alone cut into someone and know the difference between each ligament in a fractured tibia. It wasn’t an undercut. He wasn’t even sure it was out of pity. It was the rational thing to do for both you and him. “I can't work if I'm concerned about the moment you come down from the adrenaline of everything else.”
“You’ve been working over 30 hours straight. Either go home or sleep in the on-call room until Sullivan is out, but I don't want to see you in any OR, understood?” He questioned the way a parent might give an ultimatum to their preteen.
With those options presented to you on a platter and not some vicious stab of his displeasure of your character, you came to your senses. “You’re right. It was stupid.”
“It’s the exhaustion.” Brendon huffed out, standing from the counter. He turned his back to you and dug in one of the cabinets.
“Is Park the Shark making an excuse for his resident?” You mused and he could imagine the dopey grin on your face.
“You’re my resident now?” Brendon questioned back, shutting the cupboard while hiding the item he grabbed in his wide fist. He glared at you through his eyelashes. It wasn’t nearly as fierce as Park the Shark could be.
“Honorary resident, depending on how I feel.” You joked, while craning your head back the closer he approached you.
The bags under your eyes were deserved. Not in a derogatory sense to put you down for your appearance, but because it felt like a badge you could brandish. The hard work you put while he pushed his thumb into your back, grinding your gears until you saw the same perspective from ten-feet above the ground, and you stood on your toes to match. It was an effort he could recognize in few residents.
Except not all dare yank him down to see it from their eyes. You had all but grabbed him from the collar and shook him. With dignity and pride to recognize yourself for something more than the surgical ‘pipsqueak,’ you humbled him.
That wasn’t an easy feat, and Brendon hadn't even snarled his teeth.
He held out his one curled hand, a protein bar in a plastic wrapper facing you. When you look back up at him, lips curled inwards and eyebrows curved in confusion, he sighed. He rolled his eyes, “Eat something. You’ve had enough caffeine to kill your heart two times over.”
Skeptically, you took the protein bar in your hand and muttered a small ‘thanks.’ Slowly peeling the wrapper apart, you took a generous bite. He stepped away, stalking around from behind, still making sure you were chewing properly the only piece of nutrients you’ve had in hours.
After sufficiently breaking down the food and digesting it down your esophagus, you spun your chair around, catching Brendon before he approached the door. “I appreciate your endorsement, by the way. With Dr. Norton.”
He looked at you from over his shoulder, before turning his body to get a better look. You nodded appreciatively. “I probably didn't deserve it, but I couldn't have entered that OR without some of your help.”
The cheeky smile on your face made him narrow his eyes humorously at you. He twitched his nose to hide the smile that wanted to break. If there was anything you were good at besides completely reconstructing the stability in someone’s hips, it was pecking at him with a double edge sword.
“If the patient makes a full recovery, Dr. Norton won’t have anything to complain about then.” He shrugged. It was a safe response. One that didn't compromise the stone-cold persona.
He knew you thanked him because you meant it, but also because he had already extended one hand to pull you back towards him. One step closer to reimagining what you both thought couldn't align.
“Not to be cocky, but I’m sure he will.” You said softly, the opposite of bold and pretentious. You hopped back on the computer, rapidly typing and clicking around on the screen.
Brendon snorted, enjoying the bona fide assurance. It’s the only reason he hasn't loiter or probe the medical judgment you made in the OR. Even with the pressure boiling like a cooker pot, you had earned the space to own the operation room he typically did with years of experience.
“I better not see you in my OR.” Brendon looked at you pointedly. “Not until your next shift.”
Now leaning in the chair, with your free hand, you lazily saluted to him. You brought up the protein bar and chewed lazily through another bite. He cocked his head to the side, awaiting a serious response from a third year resident.
“I promise, Dr. Park.” You added, reaching down for your backpack. With raised eyebrows, you wait for him to move along, proving he was satisfied with the response.
He looked you up and down once more before heading for the door again. With his hand on the door knob, he heard the shuffling of the chair and your bag. He opened the door and stopped when you called his name one more time.
With the sound of your voice, he pressed his back against the door, keeping it open while turning his head once more. You were approaching him, backpack hanging low as you trudged it. Slipping in between him and the space he held open with his body, he had to crane his neck down to watch the top of your head travel past him.
“Have a good rest of your shift, and I’ll see you around, Dr. Park.” There was a faint smile on your face as you started walking backward, still looking at him.
He stayed frozen holding the door, half his body stepping out into the hallway. You spun gracefully, fiddling with the wrapper of the protein bar. He believed the words, because they came tenderly from your lips. The easy steps of your walk communicated what you didn't say with the words. He was one step closer to getting in your good graces, and he rubbed away the stiffness in his jaw as he bit back the grin.
୨ৎ summary .ᐟ.ᐟ dr. brendon park had earned the notorious title ‘park the shark’ for reasons besides his chiseled facial structure and razor sharp eye contact. his bites aimed to make his victims bleed without warning or apology. everyone awaited his retribution to come. the last person he expected to humble him was his do-good third-year resident.
୨ৎ tags/warnings .ᐟ.ᐟ female reader, no use of y/n, no physical descriptions, grumpy x sunshine trope, hurt/comfort, slowburn, work-place tension, park being a bully & ass (but he's hot), park being territorial/possesive (if you squint hard enough), night shift (because I love them!!), competence kink, blood/gore & other reoccurring medical topics in 'the pitt', medical inaccuracies (i've only graduated from google med school),
୨ৎ authors note .ᐟ.ᐟ y’all i genuinely foam at the mouth every time a shark fic on this app. there’s nothing that brings me more joy than fantasizing about dr. brendon park, so here’s my interpretation of this sexy man. also this is inspired by the song 'kill me' by hayley williams !! (i love that woman soooo much y'all)
୨ৎ word count .ᐟ.ᐟ 13.6 K
If you were in the comfort of your own apartment and bed, wrapped in the sheets you had personally endeavored yourself to splurge on, you would probably be in a better mood. Even though you had racked up enough student loan debt to achieve the satisfaction of ‘following your dreams’ to the point of living scraping by, you’d consider your bed a prized possession.
If they had warned you about the lack of commodities as a resident while working an overnight shift, you may have reconsidered your career choices.
While this wasn’t your first night shift, it was definitely the roughest one yet. Lack of energy, constant back pain, and absolute discomfort in the resident on-call room did nothing to satiate your grumpiness.
You no longer could count the times you had tossed and turned on the bed. At the end, you had resorted to sitting on the office chair, with your head thrown back. It did nothing for your back, but it was less annoying than attempting to lay on the sad excuse of a bed. You caught a couple of hours of sleep, with your sweatshirt providing some comfort, but not enough to pass as high functioning.
Right as you had fluttered your eyes close; there was a ping from a phone. You shook awake, flustered and alarmed from the noise.
Shit. You stared down at the watch. 7:23 AM.
You immediately jumped from the chair, tripping over your own feet to your backpack placed by the corner of the bed. Your hands fished for the phone in the side pocket, and when the screen illuminated your face, your blood pressure dropped.
SULLY 1 min ag0
The shark is looking for his next meal.
Where the fuck are you?
There was no hesitation. Your hands moved like lightning. Backpack, water bottle, random protein bar you scavenged from the resident lounge. Slipping out of the on-call room, everyone saw you jogging down the hallways, towards the resident lounge where no doubt, Dr. Park was expecting you to hand-off the night shift.
Your futile attempt to reverse the dark spot under your eyes landed you right in the middle of the ocean. The ‘Jaws’ theme song played in your mind, and you knew he could smell your blood pumping from across the hospital. It was a sixth sense of his, able to detect a puny resident from a mile away.
The thumping of your heart rose to your throat, like a boulder you couldn't swallow down. Your breathing was caught each time you tried to pull it down to your lungs. You were a dead man walking. That much was certain when you saw the wide eye stare from Sully, your senior resident. The two of you had bonded from being your attending’s personal meals.
‘Park the Shark’ was how you all had met him when onboarding the PTMC’s orthopedic surgery program. It didn’t make sense to you how the simple mention of a name could make everyone’s back shiver, until you tried to introduce yourself, hand out a stretched and wide smile to the hunk of muscle of your attending.
“This isn’t kindergarten. Don’t waste your breath on first impressions. To be clear, there’s nothing you can do to impress me.” Park deadpanned, staring down at you as he brushed past, leaving your hand floating.
The same frown must have crossed your face as you halted, fixing your badge into the waistband of your plum scrub pants. Holding your breath, you tossed your backpack to the nearest available chair, dragging your hands down your face. Time to face the music.
Your senior resident sat at one of the workstations, eyebrows raised as recognized the unease of your shortcomings. Sully leaned forward, arms crossed as he stared at you. “Where the hell were you?”
“Trying to catch some sleep so I don’t snore my way through the rest of my shift.” You gritted back, tucking your stray hairs away. There wasn’t time to doll yourself up in a mirror and you were praying that you didn't appear as restless as you were.
This was the second double shift you were pulling, and your third year had just started. If you were being honest, you didn’t understand why you were the one doing it.
Park had come up to you during one of your lunch breaks a couple of weeks ago, and dropped a physical copy of the newly printed schedule. In the colored blocks, you found your name under two of the 12-hour blocks. You had stopped chewing the sandwich in your mouth, looking up at your attending with wide eyes.
“There’s been some changes. Your cooperation is assumed, so memorize the changes.”
You barely uttered a word until he stalked off as if this was scutwork he was dreading to get done. Safe to say, you weren’t pleased with the sudden change of schedule for the month.
Right now, you are suffering the repercussions of it.
“You should be glad Dr. Park got distracted by Walsh’s morning jabs.” Sully scoffed, standing up with a smug slump. “He’s feeling particularly hungry this morning and Walsh is only going to make it worse for the rest of us.”
You shrugged menially, rushing over to the fridge in the room, digging for the collective energy drink collection. The crack of the seal echoed in the room. “It’s about time Park dishes what he eats.”
Earnestly, you got along with Walsh—and most of the other surgical attendings and residents. You had worked around enough of them to garner a likable reputation, but working under Dr. Park worked against your favor socially.
It was different in the night shift without Park. There wasn’t a certain tension when answering consultations or in the operating rooms. Albeit, everyone was a bit looser during the nights, but it opened a space where you could take charge more freely without worry of consequence or doubt in your decisions.
“And you think Walsh is the one to do that?”
The bass in the voice was unique to one person only in which everyone in the surgical department recognized from the other end of a call or down the hallways. Unamused in his tone that never changed while his lips remained stiff and straight.
You almost choked on the acidic liquid you had started gulping down. Whipping your head to the point of stabbing into your muscles from the speed, Dr. Park stood at the doorway with his arms crossed. If you were a bigger idiot than you were now, you would’ve pretended he didn’t hear what you said.
To try to spare yourself, you quickly shook your head. “Dr. Park—“
“Save it, pipsqueak.” Park dismissed, barely paying you any mind as he stared down at his watch. With his head bowed the reflection of the gel-cast over his light brown hair shined right in your eye. Perfectly combed back, chiseling his piercing bone structure. “You missed pass over. I had to hear from a second year resident.”
Glancing at Sully, he shrugged his shoulders, eyebrows down turned. Quickly recovering, your hand gripped onto the can tighter. “Jones? He’s a bit overzealous—“
“Which in your case, wouldn’t hurt.” Park dryly interrupted, staring at you with hooded eyes. The ‘clean shaven’ look he typically had pronounced every twitch in his mandible and the other parts of his jaw. It was a good way of telling when Dr. Park had lost his patience.
You blubbered, your fingers numbing from the cold can as you refused to let it go. “I don’t want to see you dragging your feet.”
“Of course not—“
“Don’t tell me.” Park dismissed, stalking passed you over to the fridge. He occasionally stole from the resident stock; everyone assumed it was a test to see who would stop him.
No one dared.
He didn’t have to finish the saying for you to get the message. He needs to see it. As of now, you weren’t helping your case as you tried coming up with deflections of your mistake. If there was something Park hated more than mere incompetence, it was weaponizing it with the false hope it worked on someone as sharp as him. Acting a fool and being a fool were two different things, and regardless of what angle you chose to play, it was always a lose-lose situation for yourself.
And you still needed to survive another 12 hours around him.
You should’ve known you weren’t going to last the day. If accidentally sleeping through your alarms and missing hand off told you anything, it should’ve been a sign things were going to go astray.
While pushing through a pair of double doors, having scrubbed out of an open tibia-fibula fracture surgery, a yawn escaped you. Shaking your head and rubbing your eyes, you hardly noticed what was coming ahead. Head bowed and senses incoherent, you only lifted your head once you ran into a form of mass, sending you tripping backwards.
When you looked up, the heavy stare of Park shadowing over your entire body, you shrank into yourself more than you already had earlier. It was a miracle that Sully roped you into the surgery, long enough to endure half your shift and to avoid Park the Sharks current disfavor of you.
Sully did not intend to stay once his residency was up. He knew he didn't have the courage to battle up against Park over executive decisions, even if Park carried the ‘Chief’ title. He had other goals to look forward to that didn't include staying at PTMC.
You, on the other hand, were yearning for an attending spot. Upon matching into Orthopedic Surgery, especially at a trauma-1 hospital like PTMC, you knew you would fight vigorously to outperform the others. What you didn't expect was to be soul-crushed by an attending like Dr. Brendon Park.
In the three years you had worked under him, you had seen enough residents fizzle out with time. Half of them moved across the country for fellowships and attending positions, while the other stayed just far enough to refrain from having to mutually work with him again. No one dared curse his name, but he was the type of person you only wanted to meet once in your life.
Your plans of moving into a lively city like Pittsburgh and settling into the comfortable life of an orthopedic surgeon no longer felt like an achievable dream, and you were falling into the conveyor-like cycle as the rest of his former residents.
When you finally closed your slack mouth, you registered something clattered against the linoleum floor. Your eyes darted to the ground noticing his phone had fallen from his grasp. Immediately, your body bent down, examining the phone with anxious precision before holding it out again.
“I am so sorry, Dr–”
“ER needs an ortho consult.”
His words clipped your sentence again, the apology ignored. He brushed past you, and the cold brush of his arm brought shivers to your exposed skin. You stood dumbfounded, unsure how to interpret his stoic statement. Spinning in your heels, you watched his taunt, muscular back walk further from you.
He pushed the double doors with his back, sticking his phone in his pocket. The subtle sigh he let out didn’t go amiss. “What did I say about dragging your feet?”
You dashed over in his direction, pushing the door back as Park let it fall toward you.
The elevator ride down was nothing short of awkward. Park was never one for small talk. He found it a waste of air, especially when he considered most pleasantries as disingenuous. While standing behind him, your hands fiddled in front of you; grasping and releasing your fingers with easy rhythm, you chewed the inside of your cheek. You weren’t a talkative person necessarily, but you were now silently reminding yourself to request for some elevator music for ambiance later.
As soon as the elevator halted, Park wasted no time, briskly exiting the elevator once the sleek doors split open. You followed in his suit to Trauma 1 in the ED, slipping in behind Park.
When you first walked in, you saw the small bustling group of nurses and ED staff surround a gray-haired African-American woman. You could make out that much from the corner of the room as you stood back and watched. Although you had been in this room many times, you didn't always make yourself known while Park was around. Why would anyone trust a thing to slip out your mouth with someone like Dr. Park present?
With the fogginess of the lack of sleep and the last surgery you barely made out of, you hardly noticed the debrief occurring anyways. Words about the patient's vitals and chief complaints were being tossed from a resident off to the side. You were internally imploring Park to not dismiss him as he had you practically the entire morning.
Your hands fell in their customary position in front of you, folding into a ball as a form of self-soothing. Briefly closing your eyes, taking in a deep breath, you tried to call upon some energy to hit you like a wave. You still had the second half of your morning shift to go, and you barely got through half the energy drink you cracked open to sustain you. Don’t get in his way, and maybe he won’t sink his teeth into you–
“I see you dragged one of your pups, Park.” A deep voice ribbed from the opposite end of the room.
Dr. Robby stood with his arms crossed at the foot of the gurney, staring back at you with no shame. He cocked his head to one side, glazing at you with amusement, hiding in the corner like some meek fish. Some of the other doctors had finally noticed you, sparing you a smile that came off more like a grimace.
Your attention drifted to your attending, who glanced over his shoulder, back at you. So much for not being noticed. Your entire body tensed up, and the bored expression from Park secured another stamp of his disapproval.
“What does the X-ray show?” Park questioned, his tone even and bass-y while echoing in the sterile room.
Eyebrows lifted with a quick hum coming from you was the only sound that came from anyone breathing in the room. His piercing blue eyes didn't move from you, and you weren't sure whether to keep looking or to turn to somebody else he might have referred to.
Someone called your name in the distance. As if on a swivel, your head moved toward the direction of the call. Dr. Langdon scratched the side of his head, subtly nodding his head to the X-ray machine.
Suddenly aware the question was directed to you, a cold chill ran down your spine. Embarrassment and fear of reprimand for acting like an idiot while being a third-year resident clouded your mind as your feet shuffled to the machine. Peering down at the screen, your eyes distinctly measure every inch of the image.
Lifting your head, you looked to the side. A front-view of the patient, an older patient dressed in khaki capri pants and a blue, flowery blouse. She sat uncomfortable, and you noticed her left leg, shortened and externally rotated. Based on the current needles poked in her, she was sedated from feeling most of the pain she should be experiencing.
“What’s your name ma’am?” You asked politely, with a soft smile.
She let out a shaky breath, mustering up a quivering smile. “Mrs. Perry.”
“It’s lovely to meet you, Mrs. Perry.” You mused, straightening your posture and walking over to Dr. Park’s side, leaving enough space to not brush against one another. From up close, you could see Park pressing the hip area on the left side of her body, arms flexing with the movement. She’d visibly flinch, but withheld from yelping. “How did this happen?”
“I tripped over my living room carpet.” She scoffed, annoyed from the incident while shaking her head. Park removed his hands, reaching down to hyper-extend her leg. The reaction then was a hiss. “I should’ve listened to my daughter when she told me that old things might kill me.”
There was a slight grumble released beside you. When peering from the corner of your eye, Park was stretching his neck uncomfortably after finishing a physical examination he’d typically have his resident perform. His words ringed in your ear. Don’t tell me.
Turning your body to face him, you awkwardly avoided his pointed stare. “X-ray shows a displaced femoral neck fracture. Based on the pattern, a Hemiarthroplasty might be necessary.”
You saw the slight twitch in his face. Moving around you, he advanced towards the machine, needing to see the images himself. You filled the void he left as Mrs. Perry bedside. Smiling down at her shaken expression glued onto Dr. Park, you leaned forward to capture her attention. “The surgery is a very common one. Mostly recommended in cases like this. You’ll have a greater likelihood of being able to stand and move after 48-hours.”
“What is the healing process like?” She asked, the slight tremor in her voice resonating too deeply within you.
Carefully reaching over the gurney, you grabbed her cold frigid hand resting on the edge. She sucked in a breath, staring at your eyes as if they held in some precious jewel for her to find. “You’ll probably need physical therapy afterward, possibly at an inpatient rehab facility. Mrs. Perry, many patients before have recovered beautifully from this, with mobility returning to their standard before this injury.”
You noticed the brimming of tears in her eyes, nodding her head vigorously along with your words. Her frail hands found strength to squeeze yours, and you couldn't help but beam wider at her. You could hear Park speak with Robby and the other doctors, but you didn’t pay them much mind.
“Thank you.” She whispered, the air hitting your face. She lifted her other hand to grasp at her chest, as if you lifted a weight from her. “Bless your soul, sweet girl.”
“We will book the OR for the procedure.” Dr. Park spoke louder, stopping at the foot of the bed. When you turned your head in his direction, he nodded to Robby. “We’ll need blood work and an EKG done to plan accordingly.”
“Already on it.” Robby nodded, he glanced from Park to you. He tried to hide the subtle skeptical look in his eye after listening to you speak with Mrs. Perry with tenderness.
You certainly didn’t learn that from Park the Shark.
Park didn't utter anything more as he sauntered behind you. The snapping of his gloves as he pulled them off concluding your business in the ED. You spared Mrs. Perry one last look, before ushering yourself out of the trauma room. When the door sealed shut, Park had already pressed the up arrow for the elevator. You halted a couple of feet behind him, standing to the side like some kid in trouble.
Clearing your throat, you rocked on the balls of your feet. “Was I right about the Hemiarthroplasty?”
If you were Sully, or any other resident with much more confidence in their diagnosing skills, you’d assume you made the right observation. But you weren’t—especially with Park present—and with a patient's life on the line, you didn’t pretend to be either.
The elevator dinged, doors opening wide for the two of you. Park who settled himself in the center of the elevator box while you slipped around him. Once the button lit up for the surgical floor, the box rattled to move up, forcing you to grasp onto the railing.
“Do you really have to ask?” He asked, not concerned to see your reaction. His voice seemed almost annoyed by the need to ask.
You fumbled on words, mouth agape as you considered how to redeem yourself without sounding overtly desperate for his approval. He slightly shook his head, squaring his shoulders. “Next time I ask for you to do your job, I assume you won’t dally like you did now.”
You weren’t dallying.
If anything, you were trying to comprehend what injury Mrs. Perry had. Apart from the X-ray, there were still elements you could learn talking to the patient. Maybe your teachers in med-school were too ‘soft’ for Dr. Park's animalistic taste, but you found the traditional-method worked.
You furrowed your brows. “It’s all for the sake of patient-care.”
“Reacting promptly and avoiding delay is patient-care.” Park corrected, you saw the slight maneuver of his chisel jaw, now able to see your figure from over his shoulder. “I shouldn’t have to teach my third year residents this.”
If you were paid every time he threw that insult, you’d have your student debt paid two-times over. There weren't enough fingers on your hands to count the amount of times he directed those words to you. It was profoundly glued into every fold of your brain, haunting you even in your sleep. The utter lack of gratification you gave him as his resident didn’t need words with the way he’d dismiss you like a prey not worth the hunt.
It wasn’t like you didn’t try. You’d be wasting your time and his if you sat around lulling, but sometimes the insults bordered on cruel.
“It’s his teaching methods. Be glad he even addresses you by name.” Sully painfully attempted to remedy the slight heartache you had a couple of months ago—sulking over the fact Park had ripped you a new one.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, or whatever Nietzsche said.
Except, you weren’t sure that philosophy helped anyone who worked under the control of Dr. Park.
That much was assured once Mrs. Perry was moved into an OR after her necessary tests were conducted almost three hours later. You were half hoping you wouldn’t have to perform the surgery, finally running to your wits end after the double shift. There wasn’t anything to liven the zombie-like shuffle of your feet down the halls through consultations and pages. Your body was running on autopilot, and the connectivity with your brain no longer attached.
You hadn’t realized you fell asleep while supposedly “resting your eyes” from documenting patient charts. Without much thought, your brainpower fizzled and shut off at the first taste of silence and peace. You were only thankful there wasn't anyone else trying to cram in charting time.
With your body succumbing to the small grace, you hadn’t a clue of your surroundings and the last thing you expected to disrupt your REM cycle was the booming sound of a door slam shut. You shook awake, turning your head in either direction to find the source of the noise. When your eyes shot open in the direction of the door to the dictation room, you saw a grouchy Dr. Park standing at the doorway with his hands on his hips.
You tried to act like you hadn’t been sleeping, blinking reverently to shake off the drowsiness. Dr. Park wasn’t convinced. Humming you braced one hand on the desk, spinning the chair slightly. “Were you looking for me?”
“You’d know that if you’d answer your pages.” His stolid stare of your face was aware of exactly the position he caught you.
Your hands wandered to the pager on your belt. When you saw all the unanswered responses, you groaned, too aware of the fact you had managed to fail your attending, again. Refusing to lift your head, you shut your eyes in defeat. “I’ve been trying to catch up on—“
“Sleep?” Park interrupted, bracing his arms over his chest.
Blinking at him like a dog with its tail between its legs, you could see something beyond general annoyance over you sleeping on company time. You hadn’t exactly expected him to handle it nicely, but a pit was forming in your stomach. It felt like awaiting a death sentence.
Park ticked his head to the side, snarling like a shark tempted by insatiable fury. Too wild and ferocious to wait for his next meal to come. That didn’t make him forget his control, staring at you with the starching glare. “Mrs. Perry is ready for surgery.”
His hand gripped open the door, stalking out as quickly as he came in. You sat there frozen, unsure what to make out of the reaction. He wasn’t the type to yell. His icy demeanor and hooded stare said enough without an elevation in vocal volume. Yet, he didn’t elaborate more on the obvious inappropriate state he found you in.
Could it be a dream? Maybe your brain hasn't fully booted to life. There was no way Dr. Brendon Park would let your mishap slide, right?
After surgery, you walked around with less eagerness than you did before (if you had any). You downed half a pot of coffee you found in the break room before scrubbing in. It was no shocker Dr. Park had led the entire operation up until the end, where he left you alone to finish up the entire procedure after he removed the hip-ball to replace it with something durable,
When you left the surgical wing, you noticed you put in over an hour of overtime. Sully was more than likely settled at your shared apartment. When you glanced at the lock screen of your phone, you noted the missed message.
SULLY 1 hr ago
Bought thai and dessert. I know you’re going to need it after tonight.
The exhale that left you might’ve sounded like you had received the best news of your life. In hindsight, it was as luxurious as your life got.
You were mostly grateful you had managed to avoid Park since finishing the surgery. Some part of you dreaded that he’d be waiting out the double doors to hand you the list of all your faults within the one shift. When you found the halls empty, you thanked whatever higher authority there was that it wasn’t the case.
As you stood in the desolate, quiet elevator, your hands hovered over the buttons. You were desperate to run out of the hospital and forget the shift like a bad nightmare. Instead, your finger reached for the post-op floor.
Maybe it was in everyone’s nature to linger instead of pulling away without turning back.
You didn’t think the hospital could get any colder. You tugged your fleece jacket to wrap over your body as you walked over to where most of the patients were sedated and asleep. The nurse at the desk recognized you, waving her hand at you before turning back to the paperwork she was attending to.
Mrs. Perry's room was diagonal from the desk, even with her face turned away, you knew her from afar. Quietly pulling the door open, you slipped in, gauging her body for any sudden movements of her shifting awake. When you saw the soft fall and rise of her chest continued without lapse, you grabbed the marker on her patient-board.
She was a lovely lady overall, resembling a grandmother from childhood. You scribbled a small note to tell her surgery went well and wishing her a speedy recovery, finalizing with your name. When you slipped out, you made no more delay, hurrying to the directions of the elevators, typing away in response to Sully’s message.
You didn’t lift your head up when the door slid open, side stepping to the panel to click to the floor to the hospital parking garage. Too busy staring at your phone, awaiting a response from your roommate; you didn’t acknowledge the presence lingering behind you. Just another hospital staff trying to make it home.
The buzz of the elevator filled the silent atmosphere. You hummed lightly to a song you had stuck in your head, watching the three dots light up the opened message.
“How’s the patient?”
You jumped back, your head turning ninety degrees in an impossible speed that would leave a kink in your neck no doubt. The grip on your phone was ironclad as you stared wide-eyed at Park, leaning against the railing with one arm. Staring at him with a frightened look, no doubt the same look of surprise from earlier, your mouth clamped shut.
He raised his eyebrows at you, and with a careful step, back you nodded. “Mrs. Perry is resting in post-op. I’m sure she’ll make a nice recovery with some therapy.”
Park only gave you a firm nod. He didn’t need you to reaffirm that thought. He had looked at all the pre-op tests and results. She was an ideal patient for her age, low-risk of infections and complications. He knew everything about his patients. Therefore, his nonchalant and dispirited expression reminded you of that.
You peeled your eyes away, hoping the elevator would somehow move faster, so you didn’t die of shame. As the elevator continued to descend, you grimaced, choosing your next words carefully, “I’m sorry about missing the pages. There is no excusing my ignorance of my responsibilities. I just—“
Your words fell flat. How were you supposed to excuse the fact you fell asleep while charting, especially to an attending like Dr. Park? Anyone would have a better time wrestling an actual shark then to be forgiven by Dr. Park.
“All residents should be able to adapt to their schedules.” Park reminded you, like you were an intern who had yet to learn to struggle on a shift. You had worked double and overnight shifts before. Today just happened to be one of the tiring ones yet. “Do you think a patient wants you drooling over them while in surgery?”
He shook his head, which was the most you had seen him emote. After the face you had made some mistakes you should've grown out of. “I gave you one task today, and somehow you were incapable of managing that.”
You shrunk within yourself, hands clamming around your phone. The sharp inhale must have caught in your throat from the constricting chords. It was as if the air had thickened with the rising density of Park’s sudden reprimand. Of course, you couldn’t save yourself from drowning into the depths of the ocean, where most of the curious sharks lived. You were bound to be another fallen soldier in Park the Shark’s list of students who fell too short of the expectation.
“I need competent third-year residents on my staff. Ones who don’t need me to hold their hands and coddle them their entire way through this program.” He took one-step closer, and you wondered what was taking the elevator so long. “I won’t risk my patient’s life for your irresponsibility.”
The elevator dinged and the metal doors slid open. You held your breath the entire time Park stared down at you, like scum under his shoe. Without uttering another word, he walked out the doors, placid and unfazed by the confrontation, compared to you. Feet glued to your stationary position and blood running cold over your entire body.
Was that how Park saw you? Some liability he tried to tolerate, even when he preferred you separated from the patient with a ten-foot pole. The shaky breath you finally let out shook your core. Maybe all he saw you was the ‘pipsqueak’ of the group. Too mousy and self-deprecating unlike the rest.
God, you were a fool thinking you could impress anyone with your confident persona, impersonating a skilled ortho-surgeon instead of training to be one.
You stuck your hand through the sliver between the closing doors, activating the sensor once more. Stepping out into the fresh breeze, you caught the headlights of some luxury car flash in your direction. With one hand hovering over your eyes, you traveled to the side, remaining close to the edge away from the pathway. Right as the car passed by, you caught a glimpse of Park speeding away without turning back.
It sounded naïve to hope you could change his opinion of you. Didn’t mean you’d stop trying. He could stir the waters into a whirlpool, but you made your travel home planning to fight against it. If there was something you wanted Dr. Park to recognize most was you weren’t going to stand for the tyranny—even if he was the living impersonation of an apex predator in your habitat.
Some animals were made to be preyed on, and you’d climb the food-chain if you had too.
The animosity from Dr. Park had stopped in the shifts after. You made an effort to be assertive. Taking charge of consultations while instructing the interns. You weren’t doing it just to earn Park’s respect, but to also prove to yourself what you wanted to be capable of. If he happened to change what objective opinion he had settled on about you, then that was just a plus.
Thankfully, it had worked well enough to have Park only mutter the tame sarcastic remarks, which announced to everyone he wasn’t a fan of redundancy. He nodded at you when he ‘liked’ what you had to say about a patient and their diagnosis. Never cracking a smile, but whenever he'd examine you up and down once exiting a patients room, you knew he had no critiques.
It was nearing the end of the day shift. You had paid your farewells with most of your closest colleagues. Sifting through the fridge in the break room, you heard the door click open. Lifting and peeking around curiously, you assumed other residents were packing to leave.
Instead, Dr. Emmick, the night shift attending that relieves Park, greeted you with a casual smile. You had worked with her previously, enjoying her calm, playful nature. She had her black hair tied in a braid, framing her face. You always admired her youthful look, tanned color and clear skin.
She smiled at you while holding her packed lunch. The sweet ring of your name followed as she approached, “it’s nice seeing you around.”
“Likewise,” You mused, extending a hand out as you politely put the container into the fridge. She gratefully handed it to you, mouthing a small ‘thank you.’ Before closing the fridge, you grabbed the last of your energy drink, tapping the seal.
“I hope Dr. ‘Shark’ is treating you well.” She joked, and you caught the playful chaste in her words. She flashed a grin as she spun around towards the kitchenette.
You scoffed, shaking your head with a nervous smile. “As well as he treats all of his residents.”
She laughed at that, her cheeks swelling as her smile widened. She moved around, grabbing a mug from the cabinet. She rustled around the sweeteners and sugar for a minute. “I find it hard to believe you haven’t charmed your way into his cold heart.”
Squinting your eyes at her, you chuckled awkwardly, gripping the can tighter. “What do you mean?”
You froze as she poured the warm liquid in her mug. She moved around casually as if what she said hadn’t been news to you. While she shook her head, you continued to stare at her back with a crinkled nose. “I haven’t met a single person who didn’t have a single good thing to say about you.”
She shortly paused to take a brief sip of the coffee before she rustled with more of the sugar packets. “You have been monikered the most liked resident of the entire hospital.”
“That’s a lie.” You countered. When the tone came out more combative than intended, you retracted your head a bit, pressing your lips together.
“Don’t believe me?” she mused, glancing over her shoulder as she mixed the coffee with a stirrer. The grin on her face made you feel like you shouldn’t have doubted the observation.
‘Most liked’ must have been an exaggeration. Of the entire hospital? Impossible. Sure, you played nice with the surgical attendings and the doctors down in the Pitt, but they couldn’t have all thought that way. Not when Park found a way to rip up your efforts every shift. It is unbelievable that any of the attendings could like you if Park found flaws.
“Which begs the question as to why you stay on the day shift.”
When you lifted your eyes to level at her face, she was leaning back onto the counter cradling the mug. One foot crossed over the other and she smiled sincerely. “I know many here on the night shift who would appreciate you a little more. I know I would.”
“I could use a resident with your maturity.” She shrugged, pushing off the counter. You continued fiddling with the can, trying to ground yourself as she continued finding new ways to praise you. “Would take a lot off my plate.”
You hadn’t realized how silent you were until she raised her eyebrows at you expectantly. Shaking your head, you waved one hand in dismissal. “I’m sure you’re just saying that. I know most of my co-residents are moving once they finish residency and the hospital is in need of some positive turnover.”
She narrowed her eyes at you, like your observation was a point-of-view she hadn't been exposed to. With the slight shake of her head, she blew out a sigh, eyebrows raised. “Truth is it’s a lot harder to stay than it is to get in. It’s definitely not for lack of trying. But, I think if anyone has a solid chance, it's you.”
Before you could politely disagree, the sound of a phone ringing bounced off the wall. Reaching into her scrub pocket, Dr. Emmick pulled out her on-call phone, skimming the ID. She lifted her head, offering an apologetic smile. “Just consider it, at least.”
She swiftly answered the call, announcing her name. You waved her a small goodbye, which she returned, before you excused yourself out. Dr. Emmick was a good mentor from the times you had worked the night shift. She was swift with an edge of personality people felt Park lacked with all his glaring. She played music roulette while doing surgery, remaining the champion of the ongoing ‘guess that tune’ game.
It was hard to deny her forwardly when she charmed everyone with such ease.
You walked down the halls, towards the elevator where Sully stood by waiting, scrolling through his phone. He glanced up when he heard the footsteps, “What took you so long?”
“I was talking with Dr. Emmick,” You sighed out, leaning over to press the down arrow button. He stared at you skeptically, noticing the small shrug of your shoulders. “She tried to convince me to move to the night shift.”
He scoffed, stuffing his phone and hands in his pockets. He bounced on his feet, staring up at the ceiling. “Wouldn’t be the worst idea.”
Your head spun to stare at him with down turned eyebrows and pursed lips. He stared down at you with a puzzled expression, “What? You’re not a morning person, whatsoever, and you hate working with Park.”
“I don’t hate working with Dr. Park.” You neglected, offended by the insinuation. ‘Hate’ was a strong four-letter word you disliked using.
‘Hating’ Dr. Park insinuated the one thing you didn’t want to relent to: that he was under your skin. If he was able to obliterate the part of you that made up the person enduring his personality, then you’d have to resign. There was no way you could objectively work with him—or anyone similar—without it affecting patient care. It wasn’t a justifiable means to an end; it was a disservice to the patients.
Sully mockingly nodded his head, pretending to believe your words. You noted the small eye roll as he scoffed, “Either way, I won’t be here to cover for you next year, and you could use someone like Dr. Emmick in your corner.”
When the doors opened to the elevators, Sully slipped in first, holding the door open for you to follow. You bowed your head, still fiddling with the tab of your energy drink, no longer needing to satiate the craving. All you felt was the small shake of the elevator as it began its descent. Sully stood diagonally, watching you stare at your feet.
His small huff caught your distracted attention, “If you're so determined on staying here, you better learn to play offensive with Park. Don’t the big sharks always dominate the small ones?”
You refrained from laughing, dropping your gaze to hide the crack in your expression. Once Sully got over the shark-induced fear, he played around a lot more than he should’ve. The others thought it was like dropping his blood in a tank of sharks. Sully had read up on all the shark facts he could, and during every hand-off while Park was present, he’d share it with him.
He swore that Park patted him in the back once, hiding the small curve on the corner of his lip.
“Wouldn’t turning over to the night shift just confirm what he already thinks of me?” You questioned, rolling your head to the side as the words rang in your head again. All you were was incompetent and juvenile anyways.
“Maybe,” Sully shrugged, readjusting the singular strap of his backpack hanging off his shoulder. “Or maybe he won’t care at all. If he feels that strongly about you, then why should it matter to him?”
Sully was usually right, which was why they titled him chief resident. He had made the last three years with Park more than bearable. If you hadn’t gone to introduce yourself to him in the parking lot, he probably wouldn’t have chosen you to assist him throughout most of his cases. He always noted that you were smarter than the rest. When they’d all make performances of them kissing ass, you’d do it in silence, without the need of recognition.
You thought he was being nice when he offered his spare bedroom. In reality, you were the only one he could fathom spending time with outside the hospital.
When the elevator halted, Sully gave you a grin. “I hope I wasn’t wrong about you, pipsqueak.”
“Seriously?” You groaned, dragging your feet through the lobby as you two wandered out the doors as all the other day-shift staff.
Sully led the way with more energy than when he came in. You didn’t know how he wasn’t drained from the work, or the bustling of Park pushing him in every direction. He was meant to be the right-hand man, after all. When the two of you made your way out, the sun was close to gone.
There was a chilly breeze and you shivered as it kissed your cheeks. “What is that supposed to mean anyway?”
“I just hope that all the hints I’ve been dropping Park isn’t for nothing.” He shrugged, trotting up steps to the parking garage elevator.
“What do you mean?” You pushed, letting out a sigh once the two of you made it to the elevator. Your hands landed dramatically to your sides, head tilted as you stared expectantly.
He shrugged first. Once he caught wind of your raised eyebrows, he chuckled. “Look, I get we’re friends, roommates, and honestly, we work on more cases together than with Shark combined.”
“Get to the point.”
He raised his hands, as a form of retaliation, while you deadpanned him. “But, you are more than a decent resident.”
Scoffing with an offended and jarred gaped mouth, you prepared to fire equally backhanded remarks. Sully put his hands on your shoulders, guiding you into the elevator first, leaning into your ear. “I’m messing with you.”
He let go once inside, and clicked the fourth floor. He turned to you with a sincere smile, crooked and charming. You had lost track of the amount of times other residents asked if he was single or in a relationship with you. “But, I don’t think I’ve seen Park so interested in anyone as much as he is with you.”
Throwing your head back gently, it thumped the elevator wall, trembling as it glided upward. “People say the same about you.”
“My point is if I see it, so does Park.” Sully redirected with a casual smile. Professional and honest, in the same manner he talked to patients. “So give him reasons he needs to be wrong.”
“And If it doesn’t pan out, I’ll hold you a spot in Chicago.” He winked at you and as if on cue, the elevator dinged and the doors revealed the dark parking garage .Walking backward, he widened his smile, all teeth. “Then he’ll regret ever doubting you, shark pup.”
You tried to keep Dr. Emmick and Sully's words in mind. It had started to feel like an omen you meant to keep an eye on. It never occurred to you that some people had formed strong opinions about you. Dr. Emmick had asked subtle questions about your consideration of the last conversation the two of you had. Sully had noticed, and even began to inquire about your next steps.
It had never dawned on you that the invitation was serious.
Not until you worked the next night shift block on your schedule. You had walked into the dictation room, zipping on your fleece sweater when you ran into Dr. Emmick. She looked up from her watch, stating your name with a smile. “Didn’t realize you were scheduled tonight.”
You nodded politely, offering a closed mouth smile in return. “I switched with another resident. It was a last minute thing.”
“Well, happy to have you here.” She somehow smiled wider. You tried to hide the sudden tightness in your chest. It was weird to be openly invited and welcomed into your shift by an attending. Park would have barely looked in your direction if this were the day shift.
She stood with her hands in her pocket, examining you up and down. “Have you done the hand off yet?”
“Just got back from that,” You point your thumb behind you, motioning to the door you came in from seconds ago. “Seems like a manageable workload.”
“For now,” Dr. Emmick chuckled, readjusting the pager on the waistline of her scrub pants. “Give it a few hours to liven up. The next trauma is yours.”
You should’ve known by now to take her words seriously.
While assisting her in a surgery that was when the call came in from the charge nurse. Trauma via ambulance. Motorcycle accident. Left leg deformity with obvious bone exposure. Dr. Emmick only hummed as she glanced at you from across the surgical table.
That’s what landed you in the elevator, gloves and gown doffed while now only sporting your scrub cap. When you landed on the basement floor, walking straight off the elevator and looking into Trauma-2, you saw the chaos within the glass. Pumping hand sanitizer and pushing the door open with your back caught the attention of most in the vicinity.
Walsh lifted her gaze across the room, a small smirk on her face as she announced your name amusingly. “Dr. Park’s shark pup. You finally turned to the dark side?”
You shook your head, grabbing a pair of gloves from the wall. “Hello to you too, Dr. Walsh.”
Approaching the gurney, your eyes immediately went to the splint holding his left leg in place. That when you saw the exposed bone from an open wound on the anterolateral shin. An intern was sitting, irrigating the debris into a pan. You then looked up to see the young, male patient, sedated on the bed. He was scattered with other wounds in his face.
“Present, please.” You proposed, eyes darting to the staff wearing black scrubs.
“A please? Are you sure you're one of Park’s?” Jack hummed from beside you leaning over the patient as he and Walsh worked on putting a chest tube and alleviating some internal bleeding near the liver. When you looked at him, you scoffed, shaking your head.
“Motorcycle accident. Flew almost ten meters away from the crash per paramedics. No knee fracture or joint surface misalignment.” Nazely spoke up from your other side, continuing to irrigate gently, looking much smaller as she donned her gown.
“Jesus” You mumbled, hands behind you back as you leaned in to examine the open wound with precision. “Did he come in unconscious?”
“Morphine and fentanyl will do that for you.” Walsh mumbled as she began to stand up straight. She tossed the small strands of hair that fell around her face back looking in your direction.
She watched as your hand traveled along the bone in his knee, then lowered as you felt the tissue. Nazely had retracted her hands, looking around anxiously as you stared at the leg like some prey on the hunt. “Keep irrigating. It’s looking like a subtype B and we don’t want to risk infection.”
“Subtype B?” Nazely questioned softly, looking up at you with her widen sunken eyes. She glanced around to try to understand the silent understanding everyone else had.
You nodded at her, a soft smile as you made your way around to where she was, stopping close enough to brush against her arms. “Gustilo-Anderson Type III.”
“Good old Ramon and John.” Walsh joked, shaking her head with a small huff. Jack glanced at her, an amused smile on his face.
The movement continued as you examined the patient in silence. Nazely kept cautiously peeking at you from the corner of her eye. She was paranoid of whether she was doing it correctly, adjusting her arms rhythmically. Your mind and body acted on your training, sensations alarmed from the previous cases you can recall that imaged the patient’s current situation.
When you turned to Nazely, she tensed up a bit, suddenly alarmed. “Was his upper leg always this swollen?”
Her eyes followed where you were pointing nervously. She furrowed her eyes, a bit panicked while shaking her head. “It looks worse than when he came in.”
“Before the medication he was in severe pain, even with passive stretching.” Jack informed, now stoic as he followed what you and his intern were concerned. He moved around the nurses and techs to assist with other continuous care in his upper extremities. “Felt numbness in his toes and pain continued up to the ankle.”
“Can I see imaging?” You called out, retracting yourself to step over to the machine where the radiologist tech stood with the blue vest still on. Peering down, you drowned out the sudden rise of noises.
Voices followed with consistent reports of heart rate and pressure, moving into a position that was no longer safe for comfort. Even while focused on your area of expertise, you could recognize the plan of care Walsh and Jack were announcing. Ischemic. Stiffness, swelling, and pain in the left leg. Tibia fracture.
“Acute compartment syndrome.” You called out, turning your head over to Jack and Walsh.
The trauma surgeon tsked as she busied herself with Jack looking over her shoulder. She lightly jerked her shoulder, pushing Jack back to block space between them. Jack lifted his head over Walsh, looking at the small intern sitting on the stool, attempting to shrink impossibly smaller. “What are the four compartments, Nazely?”
She blinked rapidly, pausing with her mouth open as her attending addressed her. While shutting her eyes, she took a deep breath out. “Anterior, Lateral, Superficial, and Deep posterior.”
“500 to Dr. Toomarian.” You joked, walking back to her side. She gazed up at you offering a trembling smile as she gathered her bearings again, focusing on her one task. You sighed, shaking your head. “He’s going to need a fasciotomy and reconstruction if we can salvage all the compartments. Hope he doesn’t lose his leg.”
“Any attending’s available in ortho?” Walsh questioned, finally taking a step back to speak directly at you.
You ripped off the gloves you were wearing, tossing them in a bin before sanitizing. While rubbing your hands you sighed, “Dr. Emmick will be stuck in a spinal surgery for the next couple of hours. I will proceed as primary ortho after checking in with her.”
“Without supervision?” Walsh clarified, an eyebrow raised. You could tell she had reservations, not of the work, but the ethicality of the procedure.
You shrugged, before crossing your arms and holding her attention. “You’d rather the patient lose his leg, Dr. Walsh?”
Jack snickered from across the trauma room. He shook his head, “Now I see it.”
Walsh followed your previous actions, doffing the PPE attire. Once she ripped off the gloves, she clapped her bare hands, an amused smile on her face. “You’re up, shark pup.”
When you finally scrubbed out of the surgery, it was nearing sunrise. Before walking into the OR, you kept repeating the case in your head, going over the steps you had done previously before. You weren't exactly secure until stepping into the sterile environment. Standing at the surgical table, along with Walsh and the other surgical techs, it was coming to you as easy as breathing.
Taking control of the entire narrative in a different capacity felt strange. There wasn’t the lingering presence of Emmick or Park, who typically didn’t refrain from giving direction, guiding your hands like molding clay. There was steadiness in your hands you didn’t think would be present without either attending.
You could hear Park’s constant reminders not to get too conceited. Cockiness never suits a wide-eye resident still learning to stand; he huffed out after assisting in your first major reconstruction surgery. He had surprisingly relied mostly on your directive than his own, asking questions and staring at your work.
There was still a buzzing sensation throughout all your nerves, like an adrenaline rush you didn’t want to come down from. It didn’t help that when Dr. Emmick did step into the OR, to check in with how the operation was progressing, she gave no criticism. The nod and approving hum that escaped her while wearing the mask, listening intently to you break down the steps you’ve taken, made it hard to not be proud of yourself.
Instead of gloating though, you sat in the break room, nibbling on the lunch Sully had prepared for you two for the week. You leaned back in the plastic chair, scrolling through your phone. You heard the door click open, but made no effort to turn your head to the sound.
When you saw a figure move around from where you were sitting, you caught Walsh looking down at you, much cleaner from the last time you saw her. She grinned at you, stopping across the table, “The patient was moved to the ICU for monitoring. Good job back there.”
“Thank you.” You replied, putting your phone down gently. Sitting up straighter, your braced both hands on the seat, smiling coyly. “Is it bad to say I was afraid of messing it up?”
“Don’t let Brendon hear you say that.” Walsh snickered, turning her back to scavenge the fridge. She pulled out a gray can, immediately cracking the seal and gulping down the cold liquid. “He’d have a gall if he knew you did the operation with no attending supervision.”
“You were there.” Your chin motioned to where she stood, one hand now braced on the kitchenette counter.
“I’m not your attending.”
Her grin widened as you playfully rolled your eyes. There was a beat of silence as you finally sensed the temptation to steal another nibble of your food. Walsh stared at you, taking another swing of her drink. “I heard you’re bored with the day shift. Is Park not living up to the hype?”
With down turned brows and a shaky laugh, you tipped your head to one side. “What are you talking about?”
Walsh looked back at you as if she had shared a secret she wasn’t supposed to let slip. Readjusting her back, she pursed her lips. “Marla said you were moving to the night shift with the rest of us nocturnal mammals.”
Dr. Emmick. Ardent to assume one good half-shift was enough to have you turning your current schedule upside down. Although, you could say pretty confidently you had never been as validated as you had this shift than any day shift, you still were considering the proposition. It wasn't entirely a decision you could rationally make with this one experience. You had yet to find out what struggling with the night shift entailed.
“I’ve yet to decide on such a big change.” You corrected, earning a hooded look from Walsh. “I promised her I’d consider it.”
Walsh booed, rolling her neck to glare at you with amusement. The playful grimace on her face eased the small worry in your chest. Has it really been that big of a disappointment?
She pushed herself off the counter, sauntering in your direction. “Here I thought I’d be able to rub in his face how we stole his greatest protégé.”
There was that word. Along with the ‘shark pup’ nickname some of the residents had heard a handful of times answering consultations. They were meant to learn from the quiet, calculated Dr. Park, and find some way to honor him with their skill, but Park wasn’t the type to look at that. He didn't care much for individuality either, but he preferred neither of you to paint yourself in an image that only suited him.
“Why do you guys keep saying that?” You questioned genuinely. Walsh stopped in her tracks, raising her eyebrows at your question. “I’m nothing like him, and if anything, he probably has a scroll full of things I could work on.”
For a minute, you thought Walsh might actually pull you into the insider information that every surgical staff knew–except you. A part of you wondered whether Park was secretly feeding into the ongoing perception as well. Walsh scoffed, the corner of her lips curling upward, pronouncing her cupid's bow. “I’m not going to spell it out for you. Takes away the fun.”
“Besides, if it keeps you from coming over to nights, I don’t think I want to.” She admitted, leaning in closer to come off as mischievous. You only nodded, defeated that you were left out.
She sighed, “You’ve got potential. I’d hate for ‘Park the Shark’ to be the reason you don’t explore that.”
She rolled her eyes at the title Park had been known for since you joined. Now you understood why Park always seemed to have a scowl after talking with Walsh. If she jabbed at him in his face as much as she was right now, that would explain everything. She straightened herself, sparing you one last smile.
“See you around, daredevil.”
To say Dr. Park was a tough person to impress was an understatement. You didn’t expect him to sing your praises the following shift after Dr. Emmick had prematurely gloated on your behalf. The only reaction you got was a huff of some sort, his head tilting to the side as he saw you checking in on the patient and mutterings of ‘doing your job.’
By that point, you knew Park was grateful the patient had survived long enough to offer you his gratitude.
It did get him off your back a bit.
He still picked on you to accompany him on the major trauma surgeries, but he stopped hounding over you. Most consultations in the ER were yours to attend, with the junior residents to teach and guide. The word must have traveled, because even a hunk of a chief like Dr. Robby had respected your professional opinion.
They knew to trust your opinion when packed under the pressure of a MVA, including up to five vehicles and six pedestrians. Some of them were as young as 12, just riding their bike on the sidewalk by a park, blindsided by the speeding cars. It was chaos in the ED, and the trauma alarms up in surgery didn’t go missed by anyone.
Gowns and gloves flew on with quick ease and stained with the crimson blood of those involved just as quickly. Right as you were working on the hip fracture of a 72-year-old woman, a passenger to one of the affected vehicles, Park had immediately switched you out with Sully to stabilize a 32-year old man's leg.
You had done the same procedure alone. When you watched Park walk out to dictate another surgery, a sigh of relief escaped you. It was hours before the hospital found a steady rhythm. Most of your shift had passed by with the blink of an eye, and patients transferred in and out like a manufacturing company. Now, most of the interns and second-years were attending to follow calls about surgery while you sat in the dictation room to finish charting.
Sully sat across from you, speaking quietly as he recounted the steps of his pelvic stabilization of a 45-year-old patient, waiting to follow up with the acetabular reconstruction. You preferred to type your way through the chart, even if you could barely keep your eyes open enough to see the words.
What did liven you up was the sound of your pager beeping. You groaned lightly, earning a scowl from Sully who didn’t falter with his words. When you glanced down at your pager, you read the room number feeling some sort of dread following.
The last thing Sully heard was the scraping of the chair as you walked out the dictation room.
You wandered up to the post-surgery wing, wandering towards the room number with alerted ears. Right as you were approaching the sliding doors, you halted as nurses were pushing the patient bed out of the room. Pushing yourself aside by a wall, you watch with slight horror as Jones, the small blonde second-year resident, walks out like a wounded puppy, followed by an infuriated Park.
Despite being the least expressive person in the entire hospital, there was an eerie distinction between his typical crabbiness and his frenzied authoritative side. This was the latter.
When Park’s eyes landed on you, he scoffed. The disgust was evident when he brushed past you with little acknowledgment. You tried to ask a question that fell short when Dr. Park finally spoke up with his back turned to you. “Nice of you to finally act upon your responsibilities,”
With a huff, you followed closely behind him, eyeing at Jones who departed down a desolate hallway. “What happened?”
“Your lack of concern for patient care is what.” He retorted, and from the angle, you caught him in, it was as if he was snarling his teeth with a low grumble. “Mr. Stevenson was your patient, and your lack of consideration for him has resulted in compartment syndrome.”
You opened your mouth, but nothing came out. From the trauma interventions, the lack of fuel keeping you standing, and the endless work you still had yet to finish in the last two hours of your shift had all blurred together. The patients handed off from the night before had been lost in your memory, and when Park uttered his name with the sharp punctuation, it was like the thought was aimed straight for the center of your brain.
“Jones agreed to cover while we attended the incoming MVA patients.” You said breathlessly, now matching his pace. He still didn’t bother to look at you, which should’ve been the least of your concerns, but right now, it made you feel insignificant. Undeserving of a moment of his precious time.
“So I heard,” he reported sourly, shaking his head. The nurses lead the hospital bed in the direction of the elevator and if your body weren’t caught off guard, you would’ve realized exactly where they were heading in the first place. “I’ve already reprimanded him for his dismissal of the nurse's report of his increased pain after the intramedullary nailing and refusing to consult with a senior staff member.”
He paused, turning to stand right in your tracks. You stumbled back with a startled expression, craning your neck back to look at him. The bones in his jaw ticked as he clamped down. The shadow over his eyes made his crystallized stare sharper, like a pair of knives pointed straight at you. You finally had a moment to catch your breath, but hardly anything was traveling to your lungs.
“But with your seniority, it was your responsibility to supervise his actions and your patients, regardless of everything else going on.” He affirmed a finger point at your chest as he emphasized his point. “You learn to accept the workload. Do you think they care whether you’re tired or busy with their limb on the line?”
His voice was echoing now through the halls. The last thing the nurses saw was his muscles contracting under his plum scrubs before the elevator doors sealed shut. It left you in shallow waters, helpless under the unrestrained hunger of his wrath. You stood with both hands resting at your side, eyes fluttering with every stab of his words.
It was your responsibility, and you stupidly pushed it aside like scutwork.
“Now he might lose his leg.” Park pointed behind him, motioning to the elevator box the patient disappeared too. That reality was dawning on you with the emergency-surgery taking place.
Your body deflated; mouth agape as you attempted to reel in some courage to face him with dignity. The last thing you needed was for him to bully you over your lack of thick skin. That didn’t stop the wetness accumulating on your waterline. Accept the consequence of your inaction, god dammit.
“I can scrub in.” You pleaded, like a last attempt to beg for some form of life saving intervention. A boogie, life jacket, floating ring, something to pull you out of the depth of your despair.
With a flat palm right in your face, he snarled. “Don’t be an idiot. Don’t you think you’ve done enough?”
“I will fix your mistake for you, since you appear too absorbed by other duties.” His detached and swift examination of your diminished position tossed aside any ounce of consideration he had for you. The match he struck on you overturned all the micro-trivial actions you confused for tokens of his appreciation. Now, he was turning away as you burned and fizzled alone.
“Word of advice? Don’t waste my time if you don’t plan to take every challenge this program entails seriously.” The lash of his words didn’t need to be filled with profanities to make an impact, nor the heighten of volume like some may assume.
He was filled with quiet precision. A sniper with a scope and steady aim. “I’m not going to waste my time teaching a resident whose absurdity gets the best of them during dire moments. It’s not worth my effort and you’re not worth the aggravation.”
You were stunned, stapled into your position in front of him. It was like watching a bad accident unfold. Park was intact, emotionally stunted, but able to move on with his life without having to rerun the event. You were coming from the wreckage with all types of breaks and fractures. Your stability wiped from under you and recovery was a concept you were not sure could happen with due process.
Therefore, when Park turned around without so much of a glance in your direction as he stood alone in the elevator. You swore you saw the interaction slide off him, taking literally the last thing he muttered to you.
You’re not worth the aggravation. A third-year resident who needed to be coddled and instructed step-by-step on how to do their job properly, like you were a med student. Reprimanded and shunned all at once.
It was an embarrassment to yourself when you locked the door to the private bathroom, leaning against the door with a shaky hand covering your mouth. Truth was, you were frightened Mr. Stevenson would lose his leg after you incautiously neglected him. Not only would you have ruined an innocent man's life (along with yours), but Dr. Park might’ve used it for grounds of terminating your participation in the well-accredited program.
It wouldn’t have been unjustified, but you would never recover.
When you crawled back to the dictation room, night shift was making its way in. You looked around for Sully. Something familiar and safe to fall on to. As you were walking in, Dr. Emmick was walking out, alongside a night-shift resident. She smiled when she caught your eye. If she noticed the hesitation in your response, she didn’t mention it out loud, but she did furrow her brows in question.
Sully lifted his gaze, slight alarm when his eyes peeled from the desktop to the sudden sunken look in your face that was beyond the exhaustion of the shift.
“What happened?” He questioned, hands braced on the desk to push himself up.
You made your way over to him, sinking in the chair beside him. He turned to lean his body toward you, ear burning with anticipation. The subtle shake of your head and the wobble of your chin. He knew exactly what look that was.
Before he could ask a follow up, you sighed, “You’re right. I hate Dr. Park."
A week had passed. You let the dust settle for a week. You weren’t the idiot Dr. Park assumed you were. It didn’t settle because you were overly upset. Refusing to cry in your place of work, you saved the self-pity for your couch, a rom-com too sad to be comedic, and a tub of ice cream in the dark to self-indulge. It worked, because you came in for your next shift, coherent enough for Sully to understand you.
You let it settle to think clearly of the decision you conferred with your roommate about.
It only took you a week to decide with profound confidence because you didn’t want to cave into Dr. Park’s not-so-subtle mark of inferiority for you. Giving in to his brashness meant letting him win. If there was one thing you had decided against was losing the opportunity to prove yourself.
That’s what had you walking down the hall with the sheer determination of someone scorned. At least, you were pretending to be. Steadying your breathing and keeping your chin held high, you were confident enough to confront the current source of your uneasiness.
It was the end of your shift, hand-off concluded and Sully was currently waiting for you in his Prius. He had offered to stick around for moral support, but this was one challenge you had to endure alone.
As you rounded the corner, where most of the offices were, you felt the air thin too short to breath. You couldn’t turn back now—certainly not ten feet away from where Dr. Park was. So mumbling the affirmations, you spoke two feet from the mirror in the morning; you knocked on the door of the office.
“Come in.”
When you pushed open the door, Park sat in a comfortable office chair, desktop resting on a polished, and dark oak wood desk. His finger hovered over the keyboard, and when you met his eye, there was an unmistakable twitch from his nose.
Somehow, his gel combed hair shined brighter under the office light than that of the fluorescence in the OR and the ED. It was a visible recall of discipline and order. Nothing went unnoticed by him and he acted appropriately per his standard.
In the past week, he couldn’t ignore the fact you acted passive compared to your usual friendly demeanor. The very few consultations the two of you wounded up in, you were curt in your evaluations. You no longer sweet-talked conscious patients, and suddenly your reports were too concise. It was as if you were trying to wrap up any form of conversation with him as rapidly as possible.
He knew better than to assume the monologue he gave you hadn’t stung. That was the intention, after all.
You closed the door behind you, opting to respect him and your professional relationship to not blow this into departmental news to gossip about. Hands folded in front of you, it was like being in elementary school all over again. Addressing a teacher or principle with the dignity of an adult, that at the age of 12, was a foreign concept.
Clearing your throat, you offered a tight smile. “I wanted to tell you I have made the decision to transition to night-shift until the end of my residency.”
The glare he spared in return was still razor sharp, but once the words left your mouth, you instinctively searched for there to be something to deceive him. He peeled his arms away from the desk, folding them in his lap. “Admin will want a formal address as to why.”
“Dr. Emmick specializes in spinal and musculoskeletal orthopedics. She’s agreed to mentor me in those sub-specialties.” You explained with no hesitation. Once it landed, you noticed how rehearsed the statement sounded. You tried to seal it with a shaky smile, despite the stiffness in your posture betraying you.
Park examined you. His eyes narrowed and you silently pleaded he’d just accept the lame excuse, tell you to leave, and never have to face him again until the rare chance you’d have to work the dreaded day shift again. The last thing you expected was for him to stand, coming to stop on the other end of the desk. He sat on the edge, bicep muscles curling as he folded his arm over his chest.
If he weren’t so insufferable, you could see yourself drooling over them like some of the nurses did.
“You aren’t interested in spinal or musculoskeletal orthopedics.” He spoke directly. As if he had the faintest idea what you were interested in. You almost opened your mouth to derail his confident theory, before he shook his head. “You love pediatrics. You told Sullivan that in the first week.”
It was scarily true. The first pediatric case you worked on was a scared 7-year old girl who was going to need an amputation. She had strangely accepted the fact she would be missing part of her leg from above the knee and lower. That is what sold pediatric orthopedics for you. Except, Park hadn’t worked that case. He remembered that.
“Is this about last week?” Park sighed out, slight dismay in his tone.
You pursed your lips, hardening your stare. “If it was?”
“I’d tell you not to act so immature.” He remarked, like he was astonished by the fact you even asked the question. “You messed up. It will happen. I will chew you up about it. Grow up and just accept it.”
You dryly laughed at that. Grow up. What a concept?
Had you not matured in the three years from working under his supervision? He molded you under his guise, so much, so the other attendings only saw him in your image. Even with the tenderness you held on to. Meanwhile, he was stubbornly trying to beat it out of you, like a bad habit.
“What’s so funny?” He questioned, although he knew the laugh wasn't amusement. He wasn’t sure he had seen this reaction from the furrow in his brows. Somehow, his eyes were more hooded than before with that tick.
“Everyone seems to mistakenly think I’m your protégé or as they endearingly call me ‘shark pup’” You air quoted the last part, and the various voices utter that name brought upon a distaste in your mouth.
The name was a bag of weights resting on your shoulders. Without intending to, they constantly reminded you of who you were meant to be serving, as if patients weren’t the top priority. It had you running in circles, finding some way to remain impressive and shine enough to be memorable. Dehumanizing the charity of your work for the sake of appeasement.
“Like I want to follow in the footsteps of ‘Park the Shark.’”
Park scoffed. He had never approved the name per se, but he didn't discourage the usage. You saw pride in the shimmer of his eyes as people used it to praise him. All it did for you was remind yourself how negligible you were in his shadow.
You sighed with resignation, your body tired from the neglect on your own behalf. The backpack hanging on your shoulder weighed heavier. “I’m going to be frank Dr. Park; I want to be nothing like you.”
“Is that so?” He proposed, barely flinching from the implication.
“Yes.” Your breathy voice trembled, but you nodded with assurance. “All I want is to be someone honorable enough to treat the people who come in here during their worst moments.”
“I can’t do that with you disparaging me with every mistake or browbeating me around every corner.” Your hands motioned out to the very hospital Park reigned. With his designated office and cushy salary, he’d always terrorize your waters. “Especially when you don’t trust my skill as your resident.”
Maybe this was giving in. You were aspiring to have the same pride in yourself that Park did swimming into the ED or any surgery he led. If you were meant to fail to become great, why did it always feel like Park worked only in perfection?
“I happen to like to connect with my patients as much as I want to treat them and see them recover positively.” Your hand pointed to yourself, emphasizing the obvious difference between his bite and your heart.
The tiny sadness in your eye made Park shift uncomfortably. With his attitude, he must have made dozens of female residents cry. He probably went home satisfied if he crashed and burned the dreams of his students with the daunting reality that life could always get tougher.
“I don’t need you invalidating that method because you’d rather we operate in mechanical-like processes, like we are all just cogs in the machine.”
There was a beat of silence. You wholeheartedly awaited him to laugh in your face. Tell you this was ridiculous, you were too emotional, or even that you just weren’t cut out for the medical profession at all. That was everything you had heard in med-school and more. Yet, here you stood barring yourself clean, no life preserver to fish you out.
“Being emotional costs patients’ lives.” He stoically retorted, as if it had been obvious.
“I don’t see it that way.” You shook your head, lips forming a thin line. This was the final act of whatever the two of you had going on. Whether he appreciated you in silence at all or not, it couldn’t make up for the moments that ruined the illusion of his knowledge.
Too brilliant to apologize.
“Which is why I cannot have you as my attending,” You concluded, as if the argument was always clear.
He straightened his posture, shoulder falling back like a soldier hearing his command. He must have felt some way. Rejected by a resident must have been first, not that it was some record to feel proud of accomplishing. You had mixed feelings. It was all wrong, yet, there was comfort in knowing you had enough of a spine to say something.
Your hands brushed away the small hair tickling your face, “I’m afraid your judgment may hinder mine, and I need to trust in myself if I want to be good enough to be considered for the next attending position.”
That did it. You’d never outwardly said that you sought out an attending offer once your residency was up. If you had, maybe Park would’ve been much harsher than he already was. That certainly would’ve had you considering withdrawing all together.
Park's hands moved to the edge of the desk, gripping on to it as he pursed his lips slightly. Sourness or disbelief in a future where you were making the executive decision matched what you saw in his eye. “We will have to work together. Regardless if you leave the day-shift and especially if you apply for any attending position at PTMC.”
“Together. As colleagues.” You clarified, “Equals. Where I am not just some student you’re expecting to roll over at every word and waiting upon a treat blessed by you.”
There was something snarky in the comment. His nose flared lightly as he bit his tongue. For once, he was speechless, in a way that was aware, you had a score to settle, and he was at a disadvantage. Your hands fell to your side, lightly hitting your thighs. “I’ve already spoken with the program and staffing coordinator. This was mostly a courtesy.”
Then, one curt nod. No fondness of a goodbye, no devastation of your tender disappointment, or resentment for finding some unique way of disappointing him once more. It was bittersweet to terminate what you had come to know, even if it was your form of preservation. This would be your test on whether you could survive without the oh-so-wise knowledge only Park somehow had.
Maybe you could be a good surgeon without him yet.
With one hand on the door, you nodded, as if he spoke enough with his silence. Turning your body slightly, you paused with the door ajar. When you turned halfway, you offered him a tight smile, “I hope by then, you will have accepted I’m not like you, Dr. Park, nor will I ever be.”
When the conversation concluded with a click of the door, a relief shored into your chest. Your muscles released its iron-stiffness that weighed like stones in your pockets. You worried you’d regret the decision, but, how would you know who you are if you weren’t acting as you?
When you peeled your hand away from the handle, you finally noticed the small tremble gone. It was the calm after the storm, huddling in shelter as your world rattled around you. There was work needed to be done to find stability and normalcy again, but you started favoring the future more and more.
Sitting under your own tree and basking in the fruits of your own labor. Sighing in the idea of no longer standing under a man impersonating a territorial shark on dry land. And you’d finally outgrow the ‘pup’ term, once and for all.
synopsis. dick grayson swears he’s not in love with you. he just happens to find an unreasonable amount of joy in ruining your dates. purely for entertainment, of course.
contents. fluff, lowkey manipulative dick? he’s weird, theyre both whipped but they’re also both equally dense.
notes. inspired by that one smallville scene.
Despite what everyone says, Dick does not have feelings for you. You’re annoying, bossy, and frankly, rude. Definitely the opposite of his type. Or so he tells himself as he trudges to your apartment, cursing every step like it’s some great inconvenience instead of an excuse to see you.
You open the door with a glare so sharp it could cut glass. “You again?”
“Shower’s broken,” he says like it explains everything.
You blink. “And?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Let me use yours.”
A sharp laugh escapes your mouth. “Oh, sure, yeah. Let me just roll out the red carpet for Gotham’s most dramatic orphan.”
“Would it kill you to be nice to me for once?”
“Probably.” You cross your arms. "You literally live in a penthouse, Grayson. Call a plumber like a normal rich person. Or better yet, go use one of Bruce’s fifty extra bathrooms.”
Dick sighs, already tired. “First of all, Alfred’s out of town, and I’m not about to let Bruce nag me about home maintenance. Second, I’d rather take my chances with you than with Jason. You want me dead? Because he definitely does.”
You hum, considering. “Tempting.”
“Oh, come on, it’s just a shower.”
You squint at him, like you’re searching for the catch. “Fine. But you better not take forever. Some of us actually have social lives.”
Dick steps inside with a smirk. “Right, those thrilling Friday night plans of yours. What is it this time? Reorganizing your bookshelf? Watching true crime documentaries and judging people’s bad decisions?”
You scowl. “For your information, I have a date.”
His smirk falters. Just a little. “Date?”
“Yes, Grayson, some of us are desirable. Now hurry up so I don’t have to explain to him why my apartment smells like a stray I let in out of pity.”
Dick rolls his eyes but heads to the bathroom before you can catch the way his jaw clenches.
The bathroom door shuts behind him, and the moment he turns the water on, Dick sighs, rubbing a hand down his face. Being around you is exhausting and the hot water does little to soothe his irritation. You always have something to say about him. His stupid smirk, his messy hair, his tendency to throw on whatever shirt is closest without looking in a mirror.
Fine. If you’re going to be so obsessed with his hair, he’ll just use all of your expensive shampoo out of spite.
He squeezes way too much into his palm and lathers aggressively, enjoying the petty satisfaction. But as the steam fills the air, the scent of you clings to him. Vanilla. Something floral. Something undeniably you.
His nose scrunches.
It’s nauseating.
…Nauseating, he swears.
But he doesn’t stop sniffing.
Damn it.
Dick groans, pressing his forehead against the cold tile, letting the slowly cooling water run down his body in a weak attempt to regain his composure.
"Get a grip," he mutters under his breath. He’s a trained vigilante, a disciplined fighter raised by one of the greatest strategists in history. He’s faced warlords, assassins, and intergalactic threats without breaking a sweat.
So why does his stubborn mind keep circling back to the fact that his shower isn’t actually broken? That he’s here, in your bathroom, standing under your showerhead, using your shampoo, because he was bored enough to come bother you?
Now he sounds like a complete loser.
The thought barely has time to settle before..
BANG. BANG. BANG.
“GRAYSON, YOU BETTER NOT BE RUBBING ONE OUT IN THERE.”
Dick jerks upright so fast he nearly slips. “Excuse me?”
“You’ve been in there forever! I can feel the steam coming through the door!” Your voice carries through, laced with that whine. The one where you drag your words out just enough to send shivers down his spine. He hates it. It’s infuriating. It’s…
“Don’t make me send you my water bill,” you huff.
Dick sighs, turning the water off and grabbing a towel. “I’ve been in here for, like, ten minutes. What’s the rush?”
“My date’s here, genius, and I left my purse in the bathroom.”
Dick pauses, towel in hand. His grip tightens around the fabric as an unexpected weight settles in his stomach. His frown is instinctive, but he masks it with a quip before he can dwell on it.
“Purse?” He tuts, stepping out of the shower. “The guy’s making you pay? Wow.” He whistles lowly. “You have awful taste in men.”
Silence.
Then, barely audible through the door.
"Trust me, I know."
Something about your quietness shifts the atmosphere. The usual fire in your voice dims just enough for him to recognize it. Hesitation, maybe. He doesn’t know why it makes his chest tighten.
An idea strikes him. One that he’d know would definitely rile you up.
With his towel slung low around his hips, he heads for the door.
You sigh in relief when he finally exits the bathroom, but the relief is quickly replaced a glare.
“The hell are you doing?” Your voice is suspicious, but he can hear the shuffle of your footsteps behind him.
Dick smirks. “Relax. I just wanna meet the poor guy who’s stuck with you for the night. Give him a warning and all that.”
“Grayson, don’t you dare—”
But he already has his hand on the doorknob. And the way your eyes widen in actual panic makes a sick part of him swell with amusement.
“Are you crazy?!” You lunge for him, but Dick is faster— or maybe you let him be faster. Either way, it’s too late.
The door swings open.
Your date stands frozen on the other side, his eyes nearly bulging out of his head as he takes in the sight of Dick Grayson dripping wet, shirtless, towel hanging just low enough to be scandalous.
“…Uh.”
The poor guy looks from Dick to you, eyes flickering down to where your hand is still gripping Dick’s bicep, peeking out from behind him like some kind of guilty party.
The silence stretches.
“Hey,” Dick says easily, leaning against the doorframe like he’s in his own apartment. “You must be the guy.”
Your date blinks rapidly, clearly struggling to compute the situation.
Dick grins, because this is too easy. “So… you treating them right, or should I be worried?”
But Dick isn’t stupid. He knows the guy isn’t right for you. No, he doesn’t know how you take your coffee in the morning, or that you have this annoying habit of leaning on the nearest person, him, of course, when you’re tired. And he definitely doesn’t know how your voice gets all breathless when you two play fight, like you’re trying not to smile even when you’re pretending to be mad.
You shove him. “Grayson, I swear to—”
But the way your date’s expression shifts, how he suddenly looks a little less sure tells Dick everything he needs to know.
And if that knowledge makes his smirk widen? Well.
CW: fake marriage, undercover as a couple, masquerade ball, mutual pining, sexual tension, secret identities, violence, blood/injury, guns, knives, suggestive banter, explicit sexual content, semi-public kissing/touching
Summary:
Red Hood and Moxie know each other well enough to fight back-to-back, but not well enough to know each other’s real names.
When a criminal masquerade admits only married pairs, Jason asks her to play his wife for the night, and the line between cover and confession gets dangerously thin.
Author’s Note:
this is my first reader-insert fic!!
i know it's not really full on smut but i did my best...
Red Hood called you at 2:17 in the morning and opened with, “I need you to marry me.”
You stared at the comm where it sat on the edge of your bathroom sink, its tiny red light blinking up at you with the smug patience of a device that knew it had just ruined your night.
There was blood on your knuckles, rainwater dripping from the ends of your hair, and half a strip of medical tape stuck to your wrist because you had been in the middle of wrapping a split across your ribs when his voice came through. Gotham was still rattling against your window in a hard gray sheet. Somewhere below, a siren cut through the Narrows and vanished toward the river.
You picked up the comm carefully. “Say that again, but slower and less like a hostage negotiation.”
A pause. Then Hood, sounding annoyed in a way that meant he had probably practiced the line and hated that you had ruined it. “I have an infiltration job.”
“You need me to marry you for an infiltration job.”
“Fake marry me.”
“Oh, good. For a second there, I thought you were being impulsive.”
“Can you be serious for ten seconds?”
“I can. I just usually charge extra.”
A low sound came through the comm, almost a laugh, before he caught it and killed it. Red Hood had a habit of doing that, letting amusement slip halfway into his voice before remembering he was supposed to be terrifying. The criminals of Gotham still believed in the terrifying part. You believed in it too, mostly. You had seen him put a man’s head through drywall for threatening a kid. You had seen him walk through gunfire like pain was an inconvenience rather than a warning. Red Hood was not soft.
But he was funny when he forgot not to be.
That had been one of your first problems with him.
The second had been the way he trusted you at his back.
You leaned against the sink and pressed a clean cloth to your ribs. “What’s the job?”
“Masquerade tomorrow night. Private estate outside Bristol. Guest list is a who’s who of Gotham’s worst-dressed with too much money. Arms brokers, corrupt judges, traffickers, one Intergang accountant who’s either brave or stupid, and a host who calls himself Mr. Argent because apparently Gotham finally ran out of normal criminal names.”
“Argent,” you repeated. “Subtle.”
“He’s auctioning off a ledger.”
“You called me at two in the morning because of bookkeeping?”
“It’s a buyer list. Names, routes, shell companies, offshore accounts. Enough to gut a weapons pipeline running through the East End, the Narrows, and half of Blüdhaven.” Hood’s voice changed there, the humor thinning out into something harder. “Kids have been turning up with military-grade rifles in their backpacks because these assholes are selling like they’re moving party favors. I want the ledger.”
That sobered you fast.
You pulled the cloth away from your side and looked down. The bleeding had slowed. Good enough.
“What’s the catch?” you asked.
“No solo guests.”
You blinked. “Sorry?”
“The invitation admits married pairs only. Spouses. No exceptions. They verify rings at the door, cross-check the aliases, then keep paired guests together for most of the night. Argent’s paranoid about undercover cops and lone operatives. Thinks people are less likely to make a move if their partner can be used against them.”
“That is either deeply stupid or unfortunately insightful.”
“Both.”
“And you thought of me.”
The pause on the other end went a fraction too long.
You knew Red Hood in pieces, because that was how everyone knew each other in Gotham. You knew the red helmet, the leather jacket, the guns he carried like extensions of his hands. You knew the brutal efficiency of him in a fight, the dry commentary over comms, the way he always put himself between civilians and bullets before anyone could accuse him of caring. You knew Arsenal liked him enough to insult him creatively, Nightwing worried about him with the exhausted fondness of an older brother, and Oracle treated him like a migraine she would still guide home through a burning building.
You did not know his name.
He did not know yours.
That had always been safer.
“Yeah,” Hood said finally. “I thought of you.”
Your fingers tightened around the comm.
Outside the bathroom, your apartment was dark except for the neon wash bleeding through the blinds. Moxie had been a joke once. A stupid little word spat by men who thought it made you sound small, cute, harmless. You had been new to Gotham then, fresh from Star City with one duffel bag, two batons, seven knives, and Roy Harper’s warning that Gotham had teeth. You had kept the name because it annoyed people. Then, you had made it expensive to laugh at.
Red Hood had never laughed.
The first time you worked together, he had found you pinned behind a half-toppled bar with four rounds left, a dislocated shoulder, and a mouth still running badly enough to make three smugglers hesitate before rushing you. He had dropped through the skylight like divine punishment with a gun in each hand and said, “You always this chatty when you’re bleeding?”
You had said, “Only when I’m bored.”
He had trusted you after that. Slowly. In the grudging, suspicious way Gotham vigilantes trusted anyone, but it had counted. You had traded intel, patched wounds, covered escapes, and spent too many dawns sitting on rooftops while the city turned bruised and gold beneath you. Friendship had crept in under the armor. Attraction had followed like a bad idea wearing boots.
Neither of you had said anything.
“So,” you said, because your silence had begun to feel too revealing, “you need a wife.”
“I need a partner.”
“But the invitation says married pairs.”
“Yes.”
“Which makes me your wife.”
“Fake wife.”
“Still hearing wife.”
“Moxie.”
You smiled despite yourself. He only used that tone when he was trying not to react, which made it one of your favorites. “What, no other options? Arsenal busy?”
“He offered.”
“He offered to be your wife?”
“He offered to wear white and make it everyone’s problem.”
You laughed, and this time Hood did not quite hide the answering warmth in his voice.
“Nightwing?” you asked.
“Would spend the whole night making heart eyes at the security cameras so Oracle could laugh at me.”
“She’ll laugh at you anyway.”
“Probably.”
“You could ask one of the Bats.”
“I’m asking you.”
The room seemed to quiet around that.
You looked at yourself in the mirror. The mask was off, leaving only the tired face beneath it. A fading bruise shadowed your jaw. Rain had flattened your hair against your cheek. You did not look like anyone’s wife. You looked like someone who had kicked a gunman down a stairwell forty minutes earlier and still had glass dust in one sleeve.
“You trust me that much?” you asked, softer than you meant to.
Hood did not answer immediately. When he did, the modulator could not quite strip the honesty out of his voice.
“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”
The stupid thing was, you trusted him too.
“All right,” you said. “Send me the details.”
“I’ll pick you up tomorrow at nine.”
You straightened. “Absolutely not.”
“It’s a married couple event. We have to arrive together.”
“You can meet me two blocks out like a normal person.”
“A normal fake husband.”
“You’re enjoying this too much already.”
“You’re the one who keeps saying husband.”
“You started this call with a proposal.”
“It was a mission brief.”
“It was a cry for help.”
This time, he did laugh, low and brief and rough around the edges. It slipped under your skin before you could stop it.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Nine. Formal. Mask. Minimal weapons.”
“Define minimal.”
“Enough to keep you alive. Not enough to start a war before dessert.”
“You take all the romance out of organized crime.”
“Wear something you can run in.”
“Wear something you can bleed on.”
“Always do.”
The line clicked off.
You stood there for a moment with the comm in your palm and rain tapping against the glass. Then you looked down at your half-bandaged ribs and sighed.
“Fake married,” you told your reflection.
By the next night, you had decided that if Gotham criminals insisted on being dramatic, you were at least going to make them regret inviting you to be attractive.
The dress was black because subtlety had its limits. It skimmed close where it needed to, moved where it had to, and hid more than one blade in the places people politely pretended not to look. The slit up one side gave your thigh holster room. The structured bodice concealed flexible armor. Your shoes had been modified by a woman in Blüdhaven who believed all formalwear should survive a rooftop chase and at least one attempted kidnapping.
Your mask was matte black, simple and sharp, covering enough of your face to preserve the fiction without interfering with your sightlines. It lacked the tactical comfort of your usual mask. It also made you feel less like Moxie and more like someone who had been invited into a room specifically designed to test whether she could lie prettily while armed.
You arrived two blocks from the estate at 8:56.
Red Hood was already there. He stood beside a sleek black car under the cover of an old stone archway, rain misting silver around him. He was not wearing the helmet. That was the first problem. The second was the suit.
You had seen Red Hood in body armor, leather, Kevlar, blood, soot, and once an ugly green hoodie he had stolen from a safehouse after taking a knife to the shoulder. You had never seen him in a black suit tailored so cleanly that it looked as if it had been built around the breadth of him. His shirt was dark red, open at the throat instead of strangled by a tie, and his masquerade mask covered the upper half of his face in black and oxblood leather. A white streak cut through his dark hair, which had been pushed back like he had fought it into submission and lost only once.
His mouth was visible.
That was unfair.
You stopped under the archway.
He looked up from adjusting his cuff and went still.
The rain filled the silence between you.
You lifted a brow behind your mask. “Problem?”
“No,” he said.
His voice was not modulated tonight. It was lower than you expected, rougher, human in a way that made something in your stomach tighten. You knew Red Hood’s voice through static and armor. You knew the shape of his threats, the cadence of his sarcasm, the way he said your name when he was warning you not to do something dangerous you were absolutely about to do.
This was different.
This was close enough to touch.
“You look…” He stopped, jaw working once. “You clean up nice, Mox.”
The nickname landed differently without the helmet.
You gave him a slow look from shoes to shoulders to mouth, because if he was going to make you feel off-balance, he could suffer too.
“You look expensive,” you said.
“Emergency tailoring.”
“Obviously.”
His mouth twitched. “That obvious?”
“You’re wearing a suit that actually fits, Hood. Either someone threatened you, or you threatened them first.”
“Little of both.”
“That sounds more believable than it should.”
His mouth curved. “You ready?”
“For the crime gala or the fake marriage?”
“Yes.”
You stepped closer, close enough to smell rain, leather, and something faintly smoky beneath his cologne. “Rules?”
He opened the car door but did not move out of your way. “We stay together. We get in, find the ledger, copy it if we can, and steal it if we have to. Argent’s people are running heat sensors at the door and wand checks inside, so anything metal better be hidden well.”
“It is.”
His eyes flicked down for half a second before he caught himself.
You smiled. “Professional, Hood.”
“You brought it up.”
“Are you going to be weird all night?”
“Probably.”
“At least you’re honest.”
Something shifted in his expression. The teasing stayed, but a different tension moved beneath it.
“Speaking of.” He reached into his jacket.
You tensed on instinct before you saw the small velvet box in his hand.
He noticed. Of course he noticed. Red Hood noticed everything, which was one of the most annoying things about having a crush on him.
“Relax,” he said. “If I were going to shoot you, I wouldn’t be standing out in the open like this.”
“You got a velvet ring box.”
“It’s part of the cover kit, Mox.”
“You have a cover kit with rings?”
“I have a lot of things.”
“That answer raises more questions than it resolves.”
He opened the box.
Inside were two rings. His was plain and dark, brushed black metal with a thin line of red through the center. Yours was simpler than you expected, a narrow gold band set with a small dark stone that caught the low light like it had a secret. It was not flashy enough to be ridiculous. It was not cheap enough to be meaningless.
For a mission prop, it looked dangerously thoughtful.
Your mouth went dry.
“Hood,” you said slowly.
“They verify at the door,” he said. “Needed to look real.”
“You bought rings.”
“I bought a cover.”
“You bought rings, Hood.”
His jaw shifted. “They verify at the door.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
He took the smaller ring from the box. His hand was bare, no gloves, and the sight of it did something stupid to your pulse. Broad fingers, scarred knuckles, a pale line across the back of one hand that disappeared under his cuff. You had seen those hands reload guns, set bones, pull you out of an exploding warehouse by the back of your armor. You had not imagined one holding a wedding ring.
That was a lie.
You would never admit to imagining it.
“Give me your hand,” he said.
You should have made a joke. You usually had one ready, sharp and easy and useful for putting distance between yourself and anything that looked too much like vulnerability. But his voice had gone quiet, and the rain had softened the edges of the city, and there was no helmet between you tonight.
You gave him your hand.
He slid the ring onto your finger.
It fit.
You looked down at it.
Hood held your hand a second longer than necessary. His thumb brushed the base of your finger, barely there, and the carefulness of it landed worse than any joke he could have made.
“How’d you know my size?” you asked.
“I’m observant.”
“That’s a creepy answer.”
“In Gotham, paying attention is the difference between getting home and getting buried.”
The joke caught in your throat before it could fully form, because there was nothing theatrical in his voice when he said it.
“Fair enough.”
You took his ring from the box before he could close it, because letting him have the upper hand for too long was bad for your health. His eyes narrowed slightly, but he gave you his hand.
His ring slid over his knuckle with a little resistance. You felt the scars there. You felt him watching you.
“There,” you said, because your voice needed somewhere to go. “Tragically wed.”
He flexed his hand once, looking at the ring as if it had personally betrayed him. “For the mission.”
“Obviously.”
“Nothing else.”
“Never even crossed my mind.”
The lie sat between you, wearing formalwear.
“Names?” you asked.
“Anders,” he said. “Daniel and Elise.”
“Elise?”
“You hate it?”
“I sound like I own silk robes and poison my husbands.”
“Useful energy for tonight.”
“How long have we been married?”
“Three years.”
“Too long. I would’ve killed you by then.”
“Two years.”
“Better.”
“We met in Star City. You hated me.”
“That part’s true enough.”
“Got married in Atlantic City after a job went sideways.”
You stared at him. “That is the least believable thing you’ve said tonight.”
“It’s memorable.”
“It’s tacky.”
“It’s criminal.”
“It’s grounds for divorce.”
His mouth curved. “Then sell it, Mrs. Anders.”
He opened the car door wider. “After you, darling.”
You almost tripped on your own dress.
He caught your elbow immediately, steadying you with infuriating ease.
You looked up at him. “Don’t call me that.”
His thumb rested against the inside of your arm. “Noted.”
“You’re going to call me that again, aren’t you?”
Every guest wore a mask.
It made the whole thing feel less like a party and more like a confession waiting to happen.
Hood stepped out first and came around to your side before the valet could reach you. He offered his hand with the smoothness of a man who had absolutely been taught manners at some point and had chosen violence anyway.
You took it.
His ring flashed dark against his hand.
“Smile,” he murmured.
“I am smiling.”
“That’s your I’m-going-to-bite-someone smile.”
“It’s versatile.”
His hand settled at the small of your back.
The contact was light. Polite, even. It still burned through the dress like he had pressed his palm to bare skin. You hated him a little for being able to do that. You hated yourself more for leaning into it just enough that his fingers flexed.
At the door, a woman in silver looked over your invitation with the blank expression of someone paid well enough not to blink at murderers.
“Mr. and Mrs. Anders,” she said.
Hood smiled. It was small, controlled, and completely fraudulent. “That’s us.”
Mrs. Anders. You were going to murder him before midnight.
The woman glanced at your rings. Then at your faces. Then at the security guard beside her, who lifted a scanner.
“Hands,” he said.
Hood went first. Calm. Unbothered. The scanner passed over his sleeves, chest, waist, and legs. It did not beep, which meant either he had actually obeyed the minimal-weapons rule or he had spent the afternoon sourcing enough ceramic, polymer, and carbon-fiber problems to make the scanner irrelevant.
When it was your turn, Hood’s hand shifted against your back.
A warning.
You relaxed your shoulders, lifted your arms, and let the guard scan you. He found nothing. He did not know about the ceramic blade along your thigh, the garrote sewn into your hem, the lockpicks disguised as hairpins, or the tiny flash drive tucked beneath the dark stone of your ring.
Oracle would have been proud.
The woman in silver gave you both a final look. “Enjoy the evening.”
“We intend to,” Hood said.
You waited until you were inside, past the first curtain of security and beneath a ceiling painted with golden saints, before you muttered, “Mr. and Mrs. Anders?”
“You don’t like it?”
“I sound like I run a suspiciously profitable antique store.”
“You do have the vibe.”
“I’m divorcing you.”
“We’ve been married for fifteen minutes.”
“Annulment, then.”
His hand moved slightly at your back, fingers pressing once as a masked couple passed too close on your left. You caught the movement of the man’s hand toward his jacket and shifted before Hood had to pull you, putting yourself just out of reach while looking like you had only turned to admire a vase.
Hood’s mouth twitched.
“Nice,” he murmured.
“I know.”
The ballroom was a glittering fever dream.
Chandeliers spilled gold across polished floors. A string quartet played something elegant and mournful in the corner. The guests drifted in pairs, all silk, velvet, diamonds, and concealed cruelty. Masks transformed familiar monsters into myth. You recognized a judge who had buried evidence in three trafficking cases, a shipping magnate whose warehouses had burned twice under suspicious circumstances, one of Penguin’s accountants, and a woman from Blüdhaven who had once tried to stab Roy Harper with an oyster knife.
Above it all, on a balcony overlooking the room, stood Mr. Argent.
He wore white. Of course he did. His mask was silver, shaped like a fox’s face, and his hair was slicked back so severely it looked lacquered. Two guards flanked him. He lifted a champagne flute as the room applauded, and you felt Hood go still beside you.
“That him?” you murmured.
“Yeah.”
“Punchable.”
“Very.”
“Later?”
“If you behave.”
“I never promised that.”
“No,” Hood said, looking down at you with an expression you did not know how to read. “You didn’t.”
For the next hour, you were married.
It was alarming how well you both lied.
Hood kept you close, his hand at your waist or your back or curled around your fingers whenever someone looked too long. You let yourself be guided without seeming guided, answered questions with a smile, and invented a marriage with him in pieces. You had met in Star City, according to him. Blüdhaven, according to you. You handled private acquisitions. He handled security consulting. You had been married for two years, unless someone asked Hood, in which case it became three because apparently your fake husband believed in committing to details without warning you first. You disliked his driving. He admired your temper. You preferred clean exits, and he preferred making sure no one followed. Somehow, that was the most believable part.
Every time he called you his wife, your body reacted before your brain could remind it to be professional.
“My wife has better instincts than I do,” he told a broker with a scar cutting through one eyebrow.
“That must be difficult for you,” the broker said.
“You have no idea,” you replied.
Hood’s fingers tightened on your hip.
The broker laughed like he thought you were charming.
Hood leaned close to your ear as the man turned away. “Careful.”
“You brought me because I’m charming.”
“I brought you because you’re dangerous.”
“You say the sweetest things.”
“I could say sweeter.”
Your breath caught.
He did not move away.
The room kept spinning around you, music rising and falling, glass chiming against glass. Hood’s mouth hovered close enough to your ear that you felt each word more than you heard it.
“For the cover,” he added.
You turned your face slightly toward his. “Coward.”
His gaze dropped to your mouth.
The moment stretched thin.
Then a bell chimed from the center of the room, and Mr. Argent descended the stairs with his hands spread as if he were welcoming guests to a wedding rather than a criminal auction.
“Friends,” he said, voice carrying. “Partners. Devoted halves of dangerous wholes. Welcome.”
You felt Hood’s irritation through the line of his body.
Argent spoke for several minutes, all polished charm and predator’s teeth. He praised loyalty. He praised discretion. He praised the beauty of masks, of chosen names, of the sacred privacy between spouses. It was all ridiculous and unpleasantly effective. This crowd liked being told their secrets were elegant rather than filthy.
The auction would begin at midnight.
Until then, there would be dancing.
“Of course there will,” you said under your breath.
Hood looked down at you. “You dance?”
“I fight people on rooftops in steel-toed boots. What do you think?”
“I think that wasn’t a no.”
“It should have been.”
The quartet shifted into a waltz.
Couples moved toward the center of the floor.
Argent watched from the stairs.
Hood held out his hand.
You stared at it. “You’re kidding.”
“He’s watching.”
“Let him.”
“Sweetheart.”
There was the mission voice again. The one that made you want to argue and obey at the same time, which was probably why you usually chose to argue.
You placed your hand in his. “If you step on my dress, I’m leaving you for Nightwing.”
“Like hell you are.”
“He has better posture.”
“He has worse taste.”
“He still claims you, so clearly.”
Hood pulled you into the dance before you could look too pleased with yourself.
You had expected competence. Red Hood was good at nearly everything physical, which was obnoxious but useful. You had not expected grace. He moved like he fought, controlled and deliberate, except here the violence had been translated into something almost beautiful. His hand settled at your waist, the other holding yours. He led without forcing, gave you space when you needed it, adjusted to your rhythm so quickly you almost forgot to be surprised.
Almost.
“Where the hell did you learn to dance?” you asked.
“Crime Alley community center.”
You looked up sharply.
His mouth curved. “You should see your face.”
“I am going to widow myself.”
“You ask a lot of questions for a woman with at least six hidden weapons at a no-weapons gala.”
“Seven.”
“Anklet?”
“Hair.”
“Nice.”
“You missed it.”
“Did I?”
His hand shifted at your waist, just enough for his thumb to skim the reinforced seam where one of your hairpins had been before you tucked it into place. Heat shot down your spine.
You narrowed your eyes. “Show-off.”
“Observant,” he corrected.
The dance turned you beneath one chandelier, light sliding across his mask. For a moment, with his face half-hidden and his mouth bare, you felt the strangeness of knowing him and not knowing him. Red Hood had carried you once when smoke inhalation made your knees buckle after a warehouse fire. He had sat beside you on a roof while you stitched his arm and complained about his inability to hold still. He had told you which safehouses had clean water and which clinics would not ask questions. He had never told you his name.
You had never told him yours.
Yet his hand fit at your waist like it had always been meant to find you.
“Why me?” you asked.
His steps did not falter, but his expression changed.
“I told you.”
“You said you trusted me.”
“I do.”
“That’s not all.”
Around you, masked couples turned and glittered. Argent’s people watched from the edges. There were cameras in the chandeliers, guards at each door, predators in every corner, and still the most dangerous thing in the room felt like the pause before Hood answered.
“You don’t flinch,” he said.
You could have made that a joke. You should have.
“I do,” you said. “Just not where people can see.”
His eyes stayed on yours.
You hated the mask for hiding their color from you. You hated it more for making you want to know.
“I know,” he said.
The words were quiet enough that no one else could have heard them. They landed with brutal precision anyway.
The dance ended. Applause rose politely around you.
Hood did not let go.
You did not pull away.
Then Oracle’s voice crackled faintly through the tiny comm hidden in your earring. “Argent’s private office just went active. East wing, second floor. You have maybe ten minutes before the auction staff transfers the ledger downstairs.”
You stepped back first, mostly because someone had to.
Hood’s jaw tightened like he had been pulled out of a thought he did not appreciate. “Copy.”
“And try not to make the cameras work harder than they already are,” Oracle added.
“I make no promises,” you said.
Hood shot you a look.
He joined you inside thirty seconds later.
“Cheekbones?” you whispered as the door clicked shut behind him.
“They were very proud of them.”
“You’re mean when you’re jealous.”
“I wasn’t jealous.”
“They were looking at me.”
“I noticed.”
“That’s jealousy.”
“That’s situational awareness.”
“You’re very committed to being wrong.”
“Part of my charm.”
You grinned and headed for the stairs.
The office was exactly where Oracle said it would be, behind another locked door at the end of a corridor lined with bad portraits of dead men who had probably also committed tax fraud. Hood stood watch while you worked the lock. It took eighteen seconds, which was twelve seconds longer than it should have taken because he stood too close behind you and smelled too good.
“You’re hovering,” you whispered.
“I’m guarding.”
“You’re breathing on my neck.”
“Want me to stop?”
Your pick slipped.
Hood noticed.
You got the door open and shouldered your way inside before he could say anything smug enough to justify stabbing him.
Argent’s office was dark-paneled, overdecorated, and cold. A fire burned low in the hearth, more decorative than useful. The desk was massive. The safe behind the portrait was predictable. The pressure sensor beneath the rug was less predictable, but only because Argent had otherwise shown no taste.
“Left,” Hood said.
“I see it.”
“Camera above the bookcase.”
“I see that too.”
“Drawer’s wired.”
“You know,” you said, crouching beside the safe, “some husbands support their wives in silence.”
“You’d hate that.”
“You’re right. Keep talking.”
The safe took longer. Argent had invested money there, at least. You worked by feel while Hood disabled the camera feed through a device Oracle had given him with a warning not to break it. The room smelled like smoke and old paper. Music drifted faintly from the ballroom below.
When the safe opened, you found the ledger in a black case beside stacks of cash, passports, and a velvet pouch filled with diamonds.
“Bingo,” you said.
Hood came closer. “Can you copy it?”
You opened the case.
Inside was a slim encrypted drive and a paper ledger. Dramatic and paranoid. Gotham criminals really were exhausting.
“Copy the drive, photograph the paper,” you said. “Three minutes.”
“You have two.”
“You always say that.”
“You always take three.”
“And yet you keep asking me places.”
He stood beside you while you worked, close enough that his suit brushed your bare shoulder when he reached past you to shift the desk lamp. The contact made your skin prickle. You ignored it. Then his hand settled briefly over yours to steady the ledger page before it curled.
You stopped.
He stopped too.
For one suspended second, both of you looked at your hands. His ring. Your ring. Inked names of criminals between you.
Then footsteps sounded in the hall.
Hood moved first, crossing to the door with silent speed. He listened, shoulders going tense.
“Two guards,” he mouthed.
You closed the ledger, pocketed the drive, and grabbed the paper book because copying was suddenly less important than leaving.
The office door opened before you reached the safe.
Hood caught the first guard by the wrist and slammed him face-first into the doorframe. You threw the ledger case at the second guard’s throat, followed it with your elbow, and swept his legs when he choked. The fight was fast, ugly, and mostly quiet until the first guard got a hand on the panic button at his belt.
Red light flashed in the corridor.
“Well,” you said, breathing hard. “That’s unfortunate.”
Hood looked at the unconscious guard, then at you. “You said three minutes.”
“You said two. This marriage has communication issues.”
Shouting rose from downstairs.
Oracle’s voice cut in. “Alarm triggered. Multiple hostiles converging on the east wing. Also, Argent just noticed his ledger room is having a moment.”
Hood grabbed your hand. “Not the window.”
You glanced toward the glass. “I wasn’t going to suggest the window.”
“You were thinking it.”
“I was considering all exits.”
“You were thinking the window.”
“Fine. I was thinking the window.”
“Too exposed. Service corridor.”
He pulled the office door open just enough to check the hall, then drew you out after him. The alarm had not yet become a full lockdown, but the estate had shifted around you. Music still drifted from the ballroom, strained and elegant beneath the first signs of panic. Somewhere below, a guard barked orders into a radio. Somewhere closer, expensive shoes moved quickly over the polished floor.
You made it down one hall, then another, before voices rose ahead of you.
Hood stopped so abruptly you nearly collided with his back.
“Storage room?” you whispered.
“Locked.”
“Can you open it?”
“Not before they turn the corner.”
“Then what?”
He looked at you.
You had just enough time to understand before his hand slid to your waist and he walked you backward into the shadowed alcove beside a half-open terrace door. Rain breathed cold against your bare shoulders. His body covered yours, broad enough to block you from the hall, close enough to steal your balance. The ledger pressed between you.
The sensible thing would have been to wait until the footsteps faded completely, then slip away.
The less sensible thing was Hood looking down at your mouth.
“Careful,” you whispered.
His eyes lifted to yours. “With what?”
“You know what.”
“We’re still undercover,” he said.
“You say that like it explains why your hand is on my ass.”
He had the decency to look caught for half a second before the corner of his mouth tilted. “It’s a convincing cover.”
“We’re in the middle of an active alarm.”
“Gotham criminals love drama.”
“You are so full of shit.”
“Yeah,” he said, quieter. “Maybe.”
Then his mouth was on yours.
It was supposed to be a cover. You understood that. You understood it with the part of your brain still tracking footsteps, sightlines, cameras, and the weight of the stolen drive hidden beneath your ring. The guards were coming. You needed a reason to be tucked into a dark corner with his hands on you, and Gotham criminals were much more willing to believe in lust than competence.
Knowing that did nothing to save you.
Hood kissed like he had been waiting for permission and hated himself for needing it. His hand tightened at your waist, the other braced near your head, and when the first guard rounded the corner, you let yourself make a soft, irritated sound against his mouth as if being interrupted were the only crime happening.
“Hey,” the guard snapped.
Hood lifted his head slowly.
You had to give him credit. He looked exactly like a rich, dangerous husband being inconvenienced in the middle of something private.
His mouth was damp. His mask was slightly crooked. His hand tightened at your waist before the guard could decide whether to look embarrassed or afraid, and when his voice came, it was low enough to make the man rethink his life.
“You lost?”
The guard looked like he was seriously considering saying yes. His gaze flicked from Hood’s face to your hand fisted in his lapel, then to the ring on your finger.
“Restricted wing,” he said, but the authority had already leaked out of him.
You smiled from beneath Hood’s shoulder, breathless enough that it was not entirely acting. “We were looking for somewhere quiet.”
“This isn’t—”
“My wife gets bored at parties,” Hood said.
Your nails dug warningly into his jacket.
He did not even flinch.
The second guard muttered something into his radio. The first looked between you again, then made the obvious and incorrect calculation that two half-dressed socialites sneaking away from a masquerade were less urgent than the alarm coming from Argent’s office.
“Return to the ballroom,” he said.
“Eventually,” Hood said.
The guard looked like he wanted to argue. Then Hood smiled.
The guard chose life.
When they disappeared around the corner, neither of you moved.
The sensible thing would have been to break apart immediately and run.
Instead, Hood’s eyes dropped to your mouth.
“Convincing,” you said, but your voice had gone thin.
His thumb moved once against your waist. “Yeah.”
“For the cover?”
“That was the idea.”
“And now?”
His gaze lifted to yours.
The alarm wailed louder somewhere behind you. Your heart was worse.
“Now I’m waiting for you to tell me to back up,” he said.
You should have. The mission was still burning around you. Argent’s men were searching the estate, Oracle was probably developing a stress migraine, and you had a stolen ledger digging into your stomach.
Instead, you caught his lapel and pulled him down again.
The second kiss had no excuse at all.
Hood made a low sound against your mouth and crowded closer, one hand sliding from your waist to your back, the other cupping your jaw with surprising care. He kissed like he did everything else, with focus, hunger, and a barely leashed intensity that made your knees threaten to forget their job. You kissed him back just as hard, biting at his lower lip because you had wanted to know what he would do.
He groaned.
That sound nearly undid you.
“Fuck,” he muttered against your mouth. “You have any idea how long I’ve wanted to do that?”
Your laugh came out uneven. “I was hoping it wasn’t just tonight.”
His forehead touched yours. Rain slid down between you. “Not just tonight.”
The admission settled under your ribs, warm and terrifying.
Then Oracle said, with the precise exhaustion of a woman who regretted every friendship in her life, “I know this is a very meaningful moment for whatever emotionally constipated thing you two have going on, but the armed men are still armed.”
You closed your eyes. “Oracle.”
“East stairwell is blocked. West service corridor is clear for maybe ninety seconds. Also, Hood, if you get lipstick on that suit, Roy is going to know the emergency tailor trip was for a date, and I refuse to moderate that conversation.”
Hood froze.
You pulled back just enough to stare at him.
Roy.
The suit.
Hood’s mouth tightened.
Your brain, traitorous and quick, began putting pieces together. Arsenal’s teasing. Nightwing’s fondness. The way Hood moved through certain rooftops like he knew the Bat-routes and hated that he knew them. The way Roy had texted you earlier that week, complaining that getting his friend Jason into a tailor’s shop had required bribery, threats, and the promise of post-mission chili dogs.
Jason Todd, scowling in Roy’s kitchen three months ago with a beer he barely drank and a book tucked under one arm like a threat. Jason Todd at a crowded charity event Roy had dragged you to, wearing a suit with the stiff irritation of a man who understood formalwear but resented having to surrender to it. Jason Todd, who had once apparently threatened a tailor over sleeve mobility.
Oh.
Oh, no.
“You’re Jason,” you said.
Hood’s eyes narrowed. “We are being hunted.”
“You’re Jason Todd.”
“Moxie.”
“I made fun of your tie at Roy’s birthday.”
“It was an ugly tie.”
“You said you liked my boots.”
“They had knives in them.”
“You noticed?”
“I notice a lot of things.”
You stared at him, outrage and desire tangling so tightly you could barely separate them. “Did you know?”
His expression shifted, something almost helpless moving through it. “Not until tonight.”
“Tonight when?”
“At the door,” he said. “You smiled like you were about to rob the place and insult me for helping.”
“That is not specific. I smile like that often.”
“Yeah,” he said, voice dropping. “That was part of the problem.”
The shouting grew louder.
Oracle cleared her throat over the comm. “The identity crisis is very compelling, but your ninety seconds is down to thirty.”
Jason—because it was Jason, because of course it was Jason—looked down at you, rain bright on his mask and your lipstick smudged at the corner of his mouth.
“We’re finishing this conversation later,” he said.
“You showed up in a custom suit, called me your wife, and let me figure out you were Jason Todd during an active alarm. We’re finishing several conversations later.”
His mouth curved. “Looking forward to it.”
“Thirty seconds,” Oracle warned.
You tightened your grip on his lapel, outrage and desire still tangled somewhere behind your ribs. “Run, husband.”
His grin flashed, sharp and delighted.
You ran.
The next twenty minutes were chaos in formalwear.
You and Jason moved through the service corridors like you’d done it a hundred times before. He covered your left without needing to be asked. You ducked under his arm when he fired over your shoulder. You broke a man’s wrist with one hand and held the ledger against your chest with the other. Jason used a serving tray to knock a guard unconscious, which you appreciated as both violence and commentary.
At one point, you vaulted over a dessert cart, and he caught you by the waist on the other side because the floor was slick with spilled champagne.
“Careful, honey,” he said.
You elbowed him in the ribs.
He laughed as he shot out the lock on a service door behind you. The door swung hard enough to clip one of Argent’s men in the face, which was probably not intentional but still felt like a gift from the universe.
Argent made it as far as the conservatory before his sense of self-preservation failed him. He had two guards, a silver briefcase, and the deeply unfortunate confidence of a man who had never been tackled by Red Hood while wearing formal shoes.
Jason hit him beside the orchid display.
The fountain took both of them.
Water surged over the marble lip. Argent shouted. Jason came up soaked to the chest, one hand locked in the back of Argent’s expensive white jacket and the other already reaching for a zip tie.
You handled the guards.
By the time Nightwing arrived through the shattered glass roof with far too much acrobatic flair, Argent was bound to a marble cherub, Jason was dripping wet in a custom suit, and you were holding the ledger in one hand and one of your broken heels in the other.
Nightwing landed lightly beside you and took in the scene.
Then he looked at Jason.
Then at you.
Then at the rings.
“Oh,” he said, with terrible delight. “This explains so much.”
Jason pointed at him. “Say one word.”
Nightwing’s grin widened. “Mazel tov?”
You covered your mouth with your hand but couldn’t hide your laugh.
Jason looked betrayed. “You too?”
“You’re soaked in fountain water and wearing a wedding ring,” you said. “I’m only human.”
Nightwing pressed a hand to his chest. “I’m honored to have been here for the reception.”
Jason started toward him.
Nightwing wisely flipped backward onto the fountain edge, still grinning. “Oracle says police are six minutes out. Arsenal also says, and I quote, ‘Tell the happy couple I’m claiming visitation rights.’”
“I hate all of you,” Jason said.
“No, you don’t,” you said.
He looked at you.
For a second, the wreckage of the night narrowed to the space between you. Broken glass glittered on the conservatory floor. Rain poured through the ruined ceiling. Your mask was still in place, and so was his, but the fiction was gone. He knew you. You knew him. Not completely, not all at once, but enough to make the wanting feel less like a dangerous mistake and more like a door neither of you had realized was unlocked.
Nightwing’s expression softened, which made you want to throw the broken heel at him.
“I’ll take Argent,” he said. “You two should go before the cops arrive and ask why she has seven knives and a ledger full of people who are going to want her dead by morning.”
“Six knives,” Jason said automatically.
Nightwing stared at him.
You stared at him too.
Jason glanced at you. “You lost one in the east wing.”
“You counted?”
“I’m observant.”
“You’re impossible.”
“Yeah,” he said, and there was something warm under it. “You noticed.”
Nightwing made a sound that was suspiciously close to a laugh. “Go. Both of you. Before I start making a speech.”
“Don’t,” Jason said.
“Oh, I have several prepared.”
Not awkward, exactly. You and Jason had survived too many injuries together for silence to become fragile that easily. But this was different from your usual post-mission quiet. There was no helmet between his voice and your ears. No modulator to make his breathing sound distant. No way to pretend you had not kissed him in a dark alcove, learned his name while being hunted, and liked both too much.
The rings were still on.
You noticed every time his hand moved on the steering wheel.
He noticed you noticing, because of course he did.
“Say it,” he said eventually.
You looked out the rain-streaked window. “I’m deciding which thing.”
“That bad?”
“Oh, there are categories.”
His mouth twitched. The bruise along his jaw had darkened. There was still a faint smear of lipstick near the corner of his mouth, half washed away by rain and fountain water.
You reached over without thinking and rubbed at the mark with your thumb.
Jason went very still.
The car slowed at a red light on an empty street.
Your hand remained against his jaw. The stubble there rasped lightly beneath your thumb. His eyes flicked to yours behind the mask, and the air in the car changed so quickly it felt like a drop.
You withdrew your hand. “Lipstick.”
“Right.”
“Couldn’t let Roy win.”
Jason huffed a laugh, but his fingers tightened on the wheel.
Neither of you said anything for the rest of the block.
When he pulled into the alley two streets from your apartment, the rain had softened to a mist. He parked beneath a fire escape and cut the engine. The sudden quiet felt deliberate. You could hear the ticking of the car cooling, the distant hum of traffic, your own pulse refusing to calm down.
Jason removed his mask first.
You had seen his face before. That was the worst part. You had seen him across Roy’s kitchen, half-lit by the open fridge while he argued about takeout like it was a tactical decision. You had seen him at that charity event, bored and handsome and restless, as if all that polished wealth irritated his skin. You had not known then that he was the man who called you Mox over comms when he was worried. You had not known he was Red Hood.
Now the two versions slid together and made something sharper.
You took off your mask.
Jason stared.
Not like he was surprised, not exactly. More like the last remaining doubt had just been removed, and he had no armor ready for what came after.
“Hi,” you said, because apparently you had lost access to every clever line you had ever had.
His laugh was soft and almost disbelieving. “Hi.”
“That’s it? No dramatic comment?”
“I’m having a moment.”
“Should I wait?”
“Probably.”
You smiled, and his gaze dropped to your mouth again.
The car felt much smaller than it had a minute ago.
“We should talk,” you said.
“Yeah.”
“About identities.”
“Yeah.”
“And boundaries.”
“Definitely.”
“And the fact that you apparently knew my ring size.”
“I guessed.”
“You did not guess.”
“I made an informed estimate.”
“That’s worse.”
He dragged a hand through his damp hair. The ring flashed again, dark metal and red line catching briefly in the low light.
Your smile faded around the edges.
Slowly, you twisted your own ring. It slid halfway up your finger before Jason’s hand closed over yours.
“Don’t,” he said.
The word came out too raw for the joke he clearly meant to attach to it.
You looked down at his hand over yours. “Jason.”
His name felt new in your mouth. His fingers tightened.
“I know it was supposed to be a cover,” he said. “I know. But don’t take it off like it meant nothing.”
Your throat went tight.
There he was. The man beneath the helmet, beneath the suit, beneath all that practiced brutality. Not soft, exactly. Jason Todd would probably never be soft in any simple way. But honest, when cornered. Brave enough to bleed where you could see it, if not quite brave enough to ask.
You turned your hand beneath his, palm to palm.
“It didn’t mean nothing,” you said.
He exhaled as if something in him had braced for impact.
“But,” you continued, “you don’t get to fake marry me, kiss me in a hallway, let me find out you’re Jason Todd, and then look wounded when I try to return the prop.”
“I didn’t look wounded.”
“You looked extremely wounded.”
“I have a bruise.”
“Emotionally.”
He made a face. “That sounds like something Nightwing would say.”
“Nightwing is emotionally literate.”
“Don’t compliment him right now.”
“There’s the jealousy again.”
“Threat assessment.”
“Jason.”
He looked at you then, really looked, and all the banter thinned into something warmer and far more dangerous.
“I wanted it to be you,” he said. “Before I knew. The job, the partner, the whole stupid fake-married thing. I wanted you there. Then you showed up in that dress, and you were you, and I kept thinking…” He stopped, jaw working. “I kept thinking I was screwed either way.”
Your chest ached.
You had imagined, once or twice, what Red Hood might sound like if he ever admitted wanting something. You had imagined arrogance, maybe. A filthy grin. A hand around your wrist in an alley. You had not imagined this careful, frustrated honesty, as if desire were easier for him than hope.
“You could’ve said something,” you said.
“So could you.”
“I was being professional.”
He gave you a look.
“I was being emotionally avoidant,” you corrected.
“Yeah. Same.”
You laughed, quiet and helpless.
Jason’s thumb brushed your ring again. “You can take it off if you want.”
There was the out. Offered plainly, because whatever else he was, Jason had never once tried to trap you. He had asked you to trust him and then given you room to choose.
You looked at the ring. Something bought for cover. Something worn through gunfire. Something neither of you had meant to make real, except maybe that was not true. Maybe the wanting had been real for months, and the ring had only given it a shape.
You slid it off.
Jason’s expression closed before he could stop it.
Then you placed the ring in his palm and folded his fingers around it.
“Next time you want a date, ask me properly.”
He stared at you.
The silence lasted one breath. Two.
Then his mouth curved, slow and stunned and devastating.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t make me regret being romantic.”
“You’re calling that romantic?”
“I’m new at it.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
You rolled your eyes, but your face had gone warm. “You owe me explanations.”
“I know.”
“Real ones.”
“I know.”
“And dinner.”
His smile deepened. “Explanations, then dinner?”
“That order, yes.”
He leaned closer. “What about kissing?”
You pretended to consider it. “Depends.”
“On?”
“How convincing you are.”
Jason reached out and touched your cheek, giving you plenty of time to move away.
You did not.
The second kiss was nothing like the first. There was no alarm, no audience, no cover to excuse it. It was slower, deeper, and somehow more dangerous for being honest. His hand slid into your hair carefully, avoiding the pins he knew were weapons. Your hands found the front of his shirt, still damp from rain and fountain water, and pulled him closer until the console dug into your hip and neither of you cared.
He kissed you until your breath broke.
Then he murmured against your mouth, “Tell me to go, and I will.”
Your fingers tightened in his shirt.
The heat between you flared so fast it almost startled you. It was not as if you had not wanted him all night. You had wanted him at the door, in the ballroom, in the dark alcove, in every narrow space where his hand found your back and his voice dropped low near your ear. But here, with your mask off and his name still warm in your mouth, the wanting became something else.
Still, you pulled back enough to meet his eyes.
“Not because of the mission,” you said.
“No.”
“Not because of the cover.”
“No.”
“Not because we almost died and adrenaline makes people stupid.”
Jason’s thumb swept along your jaw. “I’m always stupid about you.”
That should not have worked on you.
It worked on you.
You kissed him again, harder this time, and felt him smile against your mouth for half a second before hunger took over.
By the time you reached your apartment, you had both forgotten at least three reasonable boundaries about elevators, hands, and the general decency owed to security cameras. Jason kept one hand at your waist, his body angled between you and the hallway, even now, even here, and something in your chest went painfully soft at the thought.
Inside, the door barely closed before he had you against it.
He stopped before pinning you there fully, breath rough, eyes searching your face. “Still good?”
You hooked two fingers into the open collar of his red shirt and pulled him down. “Jason.”
His name was answer enough.
He kissed you as if the sound had snapped the last of his restraint.
The dress that had survived knives, guards, and a criminal masquerade nearly lost its battle against Jason Todd’s patience. He found the hidden zipper with insulting speed, paused only long enough for your nod, and drew it down slowly while his mouth moved along your throat. You shivered when the cool air touched your back. He noticed that too, pressing a kiss beneath your jaw as if the reaction pleased him more than he wanted to admit.
“Still six knives?” he murmured.
“Five,” you said, breath catching when his teeth grazed your skin. “Lost another on the way out.”
“Careless.”
“I was distracted by my husband tackling a man into a fountain.”
His hands stilled at your waist.
You smiled against his cheek. “Too much?”
He lifted his head. His eyes were dark, intent, and stripped of every joke. “Say it again.”
Your pulse jumped.
“My husband,” you said softly.
Jason made a sound that was almost a groan and kissed you hard enough to make your spine arch against the door.
After that, things blurred into touch and heat and the shedding of every last defense. His jacket hit the floor. Your heels followed. The dress slipped down, and Jason followed it with his mouth, kissing each place the night had left a mark as if he could argue with every bruise. You pushed his shirt from his shoulders and found scars beneath, old and new, a map of violence written into him. He went still when your fingers traced one across his chest.
You kissed it.
The breath left him all at once.
“Baby,” he said, rough and warning and wrecked.
The endearment settled low in your stomach.
You looked up at him. “That one for the cover too?”
“No.” His hands tightened at your hips. “That one’s mine.”
You should have had a clever answer.
You had survived worse nights than this. You had talked your way out of locked rooms, gun barrels, bad dates, worse missions, and once, memorably, a hostage situation involving a chandelier and three men who had severely underestimated your patience. You should have had something sharp ready for him.
Instead, you caught Jason by the front of his shirt and pulled him with you toward the bedroom.
His laugh followed you, low and breathless, half disbelief and half surrender. It lasted until you stumbled backward through the doorway, and then he was on you again, one hand braced against the frame, the other sliding firm and careful around your waist.
“Impatient,” he murmured.
“You’re still talking.”
That did it.
Jason kissed you like the words had snapped the last thread of his restraint. He crowded you back with the heat of him, with the rain still clinging to his hair and the city still written in bruises across both of you. His mouth found yours hard enough to steal the next thing you meant to say, and you let him have it. Let him have the sound you made when his hand settled at the small of your back. Let him have the way your fingers dug into his shoulders. Let him have the moment your knees hit the edge of the bed and you pulled him down with you because distance suddenly felt offensive.
He caught himself before his full weight landed on you.
Of course he did.
Jason Todd, who had thrown men through glass tonight, who had tackled Argent into a fountain like subtlety was a language he had never bothered to learn, stopped himself with one hand planted beside your head and the other cupping your hip like you were something breakable.
The tenderness almost annoyed you.
Almost.
“You can touch me,” you said.
His eyes searched yours, dark and intent. “I am touching you.”
“You’re treating me like evidence.”
That surprised a laugh out of him, rough and quiet. “You are evidence.”
“Of what?”
“That I’ve lost my mind.”
You smiled despite yourself, and his gaze dropped to your mouth like the expression had done him personal harm.
Then he lowered himself over you.
The weight of him settled slowly, carefully, and your breath caught before you could stop it. He noticed. Of course he noticed. His attention sharpened immediately, that same devastating focus he brought to fights and locks and exits turning entirely on you. On the way your fingers tightened in his shirt. On the places you tried not to flinch. On the places you leaned closer.
“You okay?” he asked.
You nodded.
“Words.”
The command should have irritated you. Instead, it went through you like heat.
“Yes,” you said. “I’m okay.”
Only then did he kiss you again.
This kiss was different. Slower. Deeper. Less like a collision and more like a decision. His mouth moved over yours with the kind of patience that made your pulse kick in frustration, like he had all night, like there were no sirens waiting in the distance, no bruises blooming beneath your skin, no ledger full of enemies, no blood drying at the edge of his collar.
Just Jason, above you.
Jason, kissing you until your cleverness dissolved completely.
His jacket hit the floor first. You pushed it off his shoulders with more force than grace, and he let you, smiling against your mouth when it caught at one wrist.
“Bossy,” he murmured.
“You like it.”
His smile flashed against your skin. “Yeah.”
The honesty in it landed harder than the teasing had.
You pulled at his shirt next, impatient with buttons, fabric, anything that kept him from you. Jason helped only when your frustration became obvious, sitting back just long enough to drag it over his head. The movement bared him to you by degrees: the broad line of his shoulders, the hard planes of his chest, the scars.
Old ones. New ones. Some pale, some angry, some so familiar-looking in their violence that your throat tightened.
You reached before you thought better of it.
Your fingers traced a line across his chest, not the worst of them, not the newest, just the one closest to your hand. Jason went still.
Immediately, you stopped. “Sorry.”
He looked down at you, and something in his face shifted. Not away from you. Not quite toward you either. Inward, maybe. Somewhere you could not follow unless he let you.
Then his hand covered yours.
“Don’t be.”
His palm was warm over your knuckles. His heartbeat moved beneath your fingertips, steady and alive and too close to miraculous for either of you to joke about.
So you didn’t.
You lifted your head and kissed the scar instead.
Jason’s breath left him all at once.
For a second, he did not move. Then his hand slid into your hair, not pulling, just holding, like he needed somewhere to put the feeling before it broke loose. When you kissed another mark, lower this time, his fingers tightened.
“Careful,” he said, voice uneven.
You looked up at him. “You first.”
Something in his expression cracked open.
Then he was kissing you again, and this time, there was nothing careful about his mouth.
He was careful with the bruises. Less careful with your lips. You liked both. You liked the contradiction of him, the control and the hunger, the way his hands could disarm a man in three seconds but trembled once at the zipper of your dress. You liked the way he paused there, waiting, until you nodded. You liked that he needed the nod. You liked that he looked wrecked by it.
The dress slipped down by inches.
Jason followed it with his mouth.
He kissed your shoulder first, right where the strap had been, then lower, where the night had left a shadow on your skin. Each bruise earned a touch so gentle it made your chest ache. Each scrape got the brush of his lips, the warmth of his breath, the silent fury of a man trying to argue with every mark violence had put on you.
“Jason,” you whispered.
His name changed something.
You felt it in the way he paused against your skin, in the way his hand flexed at your waist, in the half-second when his control faltered before he gathered it again.
“Say that again,” he said.
You should have teased him.
You really should have.
Instead, you said his name again, softer this time, and felt him shudder.
His mouth found your collarbone. Your throat. The place beneath your ear that made your entire body go tense and then loose beneath him. Your hands slid into his hair, and he made a sound against your skin that you felt more than heard.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
Not smoothly. Not like a line. Like the words had been dragged out of him against his will.
It hurt more than it should have.
You pulled him down until his weight settled over you. “You’re overdressed.”
His smile returned, brief and dangerous. “Still bossy.”
“And yet you obey.”
That got you his laugh again, but it broke when your hands moved over him, learning him in return. The strength of him. The scars. The heat. The places where his breath caught. The places where he tried, unsuccessfully, to pretend it had not.
Outside, thunder rolled over the city.
Inside, Jason bent his head and said your name.
Not Moxie.
Your real name.
You barely remembered when he had started saying it like that. Somewhere between the hallway and the bedroom, maybe. It mattered anyway. It mattered when he said it against your mouth. It mattered when he pressed it into your shoulder. It mattered when he used it like a promise, like a confession, like something he had no right to keep and wanted anyway.
Everything after that softened and sharpened at once.
The night had been all alarms and violence, all running feet and broken glass and blood under your nails. This was slower. Hotter. More dangerous in a way you had not prepared for, because Jason did not just want you. He paid attention to you. He watched your face, listened to your breath, checked in with quiet words and searching hands until you were almost angry with how much it undid you.
“You still with me?” he asked.
You touched his jaw. “Yes.”
His eyes closed briefly, like that single word had gone straight through him.
Then he kissed you through the next breath, and the next, and the next, until the storm outside felt distant compared to the one he built under your skin. You answered with your hands, your mouth, the tilt of your hips, the helpless little sounds you would deny later if anyone had the nerve to ask. Jason learned each one with ruthless attention. Worse, he remembered. He returned to every place that made you gasp, every touch that made your fingers twist in the sheets, every kiss that turned his name into something unsteady on your tongue.
By the time he moved over you again, bare skin warm against bare skin, the teasing had burned down to something quieter.
He paused.
Of course he did.
His forearm braced beside your head. His hair fell forward, damp and dark, and his eyes moved over your face as if he were trying to memorize you before the world remembered it had claims on either of you.
You touched his cheek. “Jason.”
“I know,” he said.
But his voice shook slightly.
Your heart turned over.
“Just looking,” he admitted.
The tenderness of it nearly undid you more than the hunger had.
For once, you had no armor left. No mask. No joke sharp enough to save you. There was only the warmth of him, the weight of him, the impossible gentleness in his hands after a night that had given neither of you any reason to be gentle.
You wrapped your legs around his waist and pulled him closer.
“Look later.”
Jason lay beside you with one arm under your head and the other across your waist, holding you like he was trying to pretend he was not holding on. His hair was a mess. There was a scratch near his shoulder that you were fairly certain you had left there. The bruise at his jaw had darkened, and your lipstick was long gone.
Your ring sat on the nightstand beside his.
Two mission props in a pool of warm lamplight.
You reached for his hand beneath the sheets. His fingers laced through yours immediately.
“Still awake?” you asked.
“Yeah.”
“Thinking?”
“Dangerous habit.”
“About?”
He turned his head on the pillow to look at you. Without the mask, without the suit, without the red helmet or the ballroom or the gunfire, Jason looked younger and more tired and more beautiful than was fair.
“You,” he said.
Your chest warmed. “That’s vague.”
“I’m working up to poetic.”
“Take your time.”
His thumb moved over your knuckles. “I’m thinking I should’ve asked sooner.”
You looked at him for a long moment, then shifted closer until your forehead touched his shoulder.
“You did ask me to marry you.”
He huffed. “Fake marry me.”
“You should be more specific next time.”
“Next time?”
You smiled against his skin.
Jason went quiet.
Then he reached past you toward the nightstand. You watched as he picked up your ring, turning it between his fingers. It looked smaller in his hand than it had any right to, dark stone catching the lamp light.
He did not try to put it on you.
Instead, he held it out.
“Dinner,” he said. “Tomorrow night. No masks. No aliases. Explanations first, because I heard you the first three times. Then dinner.”
You took the ring from him.
Your fingers closed around it. “That sounds dangerously like a date.”
“Yeah,” Jason said. His voice was rougher than it needed to be. “That’s the idea.”
“And if you completely screw it up?”
“I’ll ask for another one.”
“That confident?”
“No,” he said. “That stubborn.”
You laughed softly.
He smiled at you like he had won something he did not know how to hold.
You looked down at the ring in your palm, then slid it back onto your finger yourself.
His breath caught.
“For safekeeping,” you said.
“Right.”
“And because it’s pretty.”
“Obviously.”
“And because you look like you might pass out if I don’t.”
“I do not.”
“You absolutely do.”
Jason rolled toward you, pinning you gently beneath him with a look that promised retaliation and probably more bruises you would enjoy explaining to no one.
“Keep talking, wife.”
The word should have felt like a joke.
It did not.
You reached up, touched the bruise on his jaw, and smiled.
“Make me, husband.”
Jason kissed you again as Gotham rumbled beyond the windows, all rain and sirens and secrets.
On the nightstand, his ring waited beside your mask. In the morning, there would be explanations, consequences, teasing from every mutual friend with a pulse, and probably at least one lecture about professionalism.
For now, there was Jason’s mouth on yours, his hand over the bought-for-cover ring, and the dangerous, wonderful realization that some covers were only lies until someone chose to keep them.
credit to @uzmacchiato for the cherry divider and @toxisyddy for the Red Hood divider ❤️💛
Ghost would never willingly see a therapist for his own mental health, but he would go to marriage counselling in order to subject a third party to him and his wife "arguing as foreplay" kink
sitting on the couch beside her in the marriage counsellor's office and genuinely getting a hard on because his wife keeps bitching about how he's never home because of work, doesn't respect her boundaries, probably has untreated ptsd, won't let her sell any of the junk in their garage because he's a hoarder, and keeps trying to knock her up even though she's still trying to build her career. and he's just like wow. i really did marry the love of my life, no one else gets me like this.
༯ synopsis. fwb dick who gets jealous when your ex tries to get back with you.
warnings. 18+. dick grayson x fem! reader. fwb. neighbors au. he’s jealous and a little insecure. smut. p in v.
dick grayson lives in the apartment next to yours and introduced himself by helping you carry boxes up three flights of stairs without being asked. you’d told him he didn’t have to and he’d just shrugged and picked up two more. by the time you’d gotten everything up he knew your name, your old neighborhood, and that you took your coffee black, and you knew he was annoyingly charming and had a smile that did something inconvenient to your chest.
that was six months ago. somewhere between then and now the friday night bar visits became a standing thing, the easy conversation became something you looked forward to all week, and the line between neighbors and friends and something else entirely got blurry in a way neither of you has bothered to address.
it works. you like that it works.
it’s a friday night. the night you spend with dick unboxing your entire week and then drink to it.
you’re on your way back from the bathroom when you see him. your ex, standing near the bar like he belongs there, and your whole body does that involuntary thing before your brain has even caught up. he spots you before you can redirect. the smile that never quite reaches his eyes. the way he steps into your space too easily, like the last year didn’t happen.
you laugh at something he says because it’s reflex, because it’s easier, your shoulders drawing in without you meaning for them to. he presses his number into your hand with a casualness that makes your skin feel wrong and you smile your most noncommittal smile and walk away.
you slide back into the booth and dick is already looking at you.
he has very blue eyes and a very irritating habit of seeing straight through you with them.
“who was that,” he says.
“my ex.” you reach for your drink. “it’s fine.”
his jaw does something quiet and controlled. “he give you his number?”
“dick—”
“he gave you his number.”
“it wasn’t like that—”
“cool. cool,” he says, and picks up his drink, and smiles the smile that’s all surface, and you know exactly what that smile means.
the walk home is three blocks and dick spends all of them somewhere else entirely.
normally he fills every silence — some joke, some completely unnecessary observation about whatever you’re passing. tonight his hands are in his pockets and his eyes are forward and he says nothing.
“you’re doing that thing,” you say.
“what thing.”
“the thing where you pretend you’re fine.”
“i’m fine.”
“richard.”
“i’m tired,” he says. “it’s been a long week, angel.”
you both know that’s not it.
you make it as far as the hallway outside your apartments before you stop.
he’s already reaching for his keys and something about the set of his shoulders, the careful performance of it, makes you reach out and catch his arm.
he turns.
you kiss him.
it takes him exactly one second and then his keys hit the floor and his hands are on your face and he’s kissing you back with something desperate and unguarded that he’s been keeping very carefully under wraps all evening. a low groan muffled against your mouth, his fingers curling into your jaw, walking you back against the wall without breaking it.
when he pulls back he’s breathing harder than usual.
he looks at you for a moment. then he bends and picks up his keys and opens his door and picks you up like it’s nothing, carrying you inside, kicking the door shut behind him.
later he has you underneath him and there’s nothing easy about it tonight.
he pushes in slow and the stretch of him makes your breath stutter, thick and girthy, the flushed red tip of him pressing through your plushy folds and sinking into your gummy walls inch by inch until you’ve taken all of him and your walls are fluttering around the fullness of it.
his jaw is tight. his eyes on your face.
“why do you want him back,” he says. low and rough.
“i don’t—”
he snaps his hips forward and the words evaporate entirely.
“hm?” he pulls back and drives in again, his cock dragging against your walls, you feel, oh, so full and overwhelmed all at once. “why him.”
“dick i’m not—i—”
your eyes shut. the pleasure too much, the words bleeding into a moan.
“eyes on me,” he says quietly.
you open them.
and that’s when you see it. something vulnerable in his expression, unguarded and unusual, the kind of thing he’d never let you see if he were thinking straight. something that’s been sitting underneath all of this for a long time.
“why do you want him,” he murmurs, hips rolling and pressing deep, the head of his cock nudging that soft spot inside you that makes your toes curl, “when you have me.”
it’s not cocky. it’s almost like he’s desperate to hear the answer. desperate to hear you say he’s enough. that what you have with each other is enough.
heat builds low in your belly, your body sensitive from the drag of him, your walls clenching greedily around his girth every time he pulls back.
your mouth opens. what comes out is a garbled mess of his name and something that isn’t words at all.
“yeah,” he breathes, forehead dropping to yours. “that’s what i thought.”
something releases in him after that. his pace picks up and you stop trying to think at all, hands gripping his shoulders, your slick walls taking him over and over until the heat that’s been building low in your belly crests and you come apart underneath him with a broken sound, clenching tight around him. he follows shortly after, hips stuttering, a low groan muffled into your throat as he spills into the condom, his whole body shuddering through it.
afterward he’s on his back and you’re tucked against his side.
“i can make carbonara from scratch. i remember how you take your coffee. i’ve sat through every terrible film you’ve picked on a friday night without a single complaint.” he’s quiet for a second. “i’ve been your boyfriend for six months. you just haven’t called me that yet.
you look at him.
“maybe i should,” you say quietly.
he’s very still for a moment. then his hand finds yours and laces with you. warm and calloused and big.
“it was nothing,” you say. “tonight. with him. i don’t want him back. i never did.”
the breath that leaves him is slow. like he’s been holding it since the bar.
“obviously i don’t want him,” you say. “i want you. i’ve wanted you for a while.”
he turns his head to look at you. really look.
“yeah?” he says softly.
“yeah,” you say.
he brings your hand up and presses his lips to your knuckles, and settles back against the pillow.
the city hums outside. the lamp stays on.
“friday nights,” he says eventually. “same booth.”
“same booth,” you agree.
“except now i’m going to hold your hand across the table and if your ex shows up again i’m going to be very annoying about it.”
you laugh softly and his mouth tilts into a smile.
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