ME! hello, i’m v. my pronouns are she/her, i am 19 years old and i am from the northwest of england.
FAVES! challengers inhaler djo dead poets society the 1975 uk youtubers fontaines dc joe keery wunderhorse guitars taylor swift josh o’connor pinterest mike faist playlist making will poulter mood boards gigs stranger things steve harrington role model joseph quinn
CURRENT OBSESSION! abbot elementary, joe keery and the pitt
“oh I’m too old for stuffed animals” skill issue. sorry you can’t appreciate little creatures made to hang out with you, I on the other hand am full of joyous whimsy and therefore vastly superior.
Description: Johnny Storm needs a change in his life. So when he goes looking for an apartment to move out of the Baxter Building and live a “normal life”, he ends up being your roommate. As you both struggle with the highs and lows of dating in New York, through shared takeout on the living room floor and dances under the refrigerator light, you may realize what you needed has always been right in front of you…or in the room next door.
This is a Part 1, loosely inspired by the movie When Harry met Sally. Set in the early 80’s of the Fantastic Four canon retro-futuristic world.
Tags/Warnings: romcom vibes, fluff, domestic moments, johnny loves women and johnny loves music, talks about sex, one smut-ish scene, cheeky easter eggs and cameos.
Note: When I tell you I’ve been wanting to write this since December!!! When @nexxen24 made me watch When Harry met Sally for the first time 🤍 This is by no means a retell of the film, but it’s inspired on the essence of it. I had so much fun writing this part, enjoy 🫶🏼
Masterlist
Johnny spent a lot of time feeling stuck.
Stuck at the Baxter Building, for starters. Living with his sister, brother in law, Ben and a droid as the world’s most renowned family, could be considered ‘fantastic’ most of the time, but it could also be…exhausting.
It wasn’t that he didn’t love them, of course he did. They were his team. His family. But lately, Johnny had started wanting something different. For once, not something shiny, or bigger or better. Quite the opposite really, just something…simpler. Something a little closer to normal.
Which was laughable, considering who he was. Johnny Storm had never had “normal” a day in his life, even before the powers.
Maybe that’s why he craved it so bad. Or…maybe it was just a quarter life crisis.
He didn’t exactly know when it started, but suddenly he wanted to know what it felt like to walk through a lobby where no one greeted him like he was the president. To buy laundry detergent and groceries and whatever people who don’t have a Herbert to do it for them, well, have to do. To have a mailbox in a locker with a little key, and no need to go through a dozen levels of security clearance just for some fan mail.
Maybe that’s why he found himself going through rental listings at two in the morning in the darkness of his room. Half laying on his round bed, one arm raised up in flames to illuminate the newspaper in front of him.
This is ridiculous, he thought. He told himself he was just looking. Killing time. He wasn’t going to do it, he was just thinking about it. Swear to God he was not actually going to do it. But an ad caught his eye.
Roommate Wanted
Apartment in Brooklyn, Park Slope. Two bedrooms, one bathroom. Looking to split rent 50/50. 4th floor. Girls only, unless you’re famous, then we can talk. Call after 7pm if you’re interested.
“Unless you’re famous,” Johnny chuckled, re-reading the ad, and the name attached to it.
The ad was pretty vague, but Johnny recognized the location. Safe neighborhood, no rooftop pools in that area, and definitely no doorman.
It was perfect.
The next day he counted the hours until 7pm came. He wanted the full experience, so instead of using the fine piece of technology on his wrist to call the number he saw on the ad, he took some coins from Franklin’s piggy bank in exchange of a generous twenty dollar bill–you’re welcome buddy–and found himself a random telephone booth at Central Park, just in time.
Big breath, here goes nothing.
-
The landline phone hung on your kitchen wall rang exactly at 7:01pm. You cleaned your hands with a napkin, leaving a bowl of heated leftovers on the counter before picking up.
“Hello?” You said, holding the phone between your ear and your shoulder.
“Hey! I’m calling for the apartment ad, I’m very interested.”
The voice on the other side of the line surprised you. So far only women have called you and unfortunately none of them had agreed with the rental fee. “Uh, sure…what’s your name?”
“I’m Johnny Storm,” he said immediately.
Okay, pause. Is this guy being for real right now?
“…Right,” you said after a moment, dragging your words and fiddling with the tangled cord. “And…you’re looking for an apartment?”
The disbelief in your voice made Johnny sigh. Only when the words left his mouth he realized how ridiculous his name probably sounded. But what else was he supposed to say? He wasn’t planning on hiding who he was, even if it was just a call. That felt wrong.
“Yeah…listen I–uh…I know this may seem a little off, but I’m looking for a place for…personal reasons, and your ad caught my eye. I really like the area and I can definitely pay rent on time.”
He chose to leave out the fact that he could actually pay rent four years in advance. That seemed a little overkill.
“I swear I don’t set couches on fire, not unless you ask,” he added with a nervous laugh, but his whole body relaxed when he heard the chuckle you left out. “And you said being famous was the exception so…can we talk about it?”
You contemplated for a moment. To be honest? It seemed too good to be true. On the other hand, you had nothing to lose…and you wanted to go back to your dinner. So you just shrugged.
“Alright,” you said, “I’ll tell you what, Johnny Storm. There’s a café a few blocks from the apartment, called “Geta’s”. Let's meet there, Saturday at noon. If you’re actually who you say you are, you’re paying for coffee. If you’re not, I’m calling the cops.”
“Geta’s” Johnny grinned. “Roger that. I’ll be there.”
You weren’t actually planning on calling the cops. Or well, you hoped you didn’t have to call them.
Worst case scenario, some random guy was pretending to be Johnny Storm, and you’d have to ditch the clown and go back to answering calls. Best case? Well…you hadn’t really considered that one, because come on. Johnny Storm, Manhattan’s golden boy, Mr. Baxter Building himself, apartment hunting in Brooklyn?
Absolutely not.
Still, you got to the café ten minutes early. Picked your favorite table by the window, with a good view of the street and a close exit in case things get weird. You ordered your usual drink, a side of mini croissants, and the wait began.
You were mid sip when you heard the familiar ring of the bells above the cafe’s door.
"Mr.Storm!" someone called from behind the counter, way too cheery to be greeting a conman. “Welcome to Geta’s!”
Your head snapped up, and…yup. There he was.
Johnny Freaking Storm. Golden hair, golden everything. A pair of sunglasses perched on his head, paired with some designer jacket and perfectly fitted pants and that pearly white smile you’d only seen on billboards.
He looked unfairly good in real life.
He nodded to the barista, who was currently having a mini stroke behind the register, then turned his gaze toward the tables, looking for…you?
Right, yeah. You.
You raised your hand awkwardly, giving a tiny wave that said yep, that’s me, the girl who didn’t think you’d actually show up. He smiled wider at your stunned expression, and strutted straight to you, sliding onto the chair across from you.
“I didn’t actually think Johnny Storm was going to show up today,” you blurted out, making him chuckle.
“I get that a lot,” he said, shrugging.
“Do you…want a mini croissant?”
“Only if they’re not poisoned,” he joked, narrowing his eyes playfully.
“Right. You’re the Johnny Storm. You probably have someone test the croissants for you.”
“That would be Herbert, yes,” he nodded cockily, getting another chuckle out of you.
This time you narrowed your eyes at him, trying to process the entire fever dream. He just tilted his head, matching your face expression in amusement. You shook your head and leaned back a little, crossing your arms.
“Okay, I feel like I need to say this out loud so I know I’m not hallucinating. My apartment is not in Manhattan. It’s not a penthouse. I don’t live next to models or celebrities. Are you sure you replied to the right listing? Or is this just you…pulling a bit? Like a prank show? Because I really do need a roommate.”
Johnny chuckled, shaking his head.
“No cameras, I promise,” he reassured. “I know where the listing said it was. Park Slope. Two bedrooms. 4th floor. You said girls only unless you’re famous, which, considering…”
He leaned back with a shrug, gesturing at himself.
“Yeah but that was a joke. I mean you could, I don’t know, live anywhere. Somewhere crazier like…the moon or space in general,” you gesture vaguely, because him living in another galaxy sounds more realistic than him sharing a couch with you.
He seems to find it funny, at least, but something in his face softens before he lets out a sigh.
“Listen, I know this is weird but…I’m not joking. I don’t want a penthouse. I’m not looking for anything “crazy” or fancy or with zero gravity. I just…want something a little quieter. A little more normal, you know?”
You raised your eyebrows, still skeptical. “Well, Johnny, life in an apartment building is not necessarily “quieter”,” you chuckle. “Normal? For sure. But you’re telling me the big Human Torch, who flies over the stadium to see the Mets, wants normal?”
He shrugged, but there’s no cockiness to it anymore.
“I know. Shocking, right? But I do," he said. “I mean, the tower’s great and all, but it’s…a lot. And it’s all I’ve known for most of my life. Cameras, tech, Reed in general, it just…never stops. It always feels like everything needs to be perfect, you know? I kind of want a door I can lock and a couch I don’t have to share with a 500 pound rock man. Maybe just with…a normal roommate."
You stared at him in silence. If there was anything you learned from Johnny Storm in that short interaction, it was that he had the bluest of eyes, and the way they were looking at you, like he needed to be understood by some random girl he just met, made something in your heart clench.
Still, you had questions. You weren’t going to be swooned into giving away half your apartment.
“A normal roommate…” you drawled, still waiting for the punchline of this whole situation. “So, you don’t mind the fact that I have a regular job and I don’t throw superhero parties?”
That makes him grin again. “Well, I was kind of hoping you threw superhero parties. But that’s okay, I can tell spidey to meet me somewhere else.”
You rolled your eyes, but you were smiling. Okay…maybe you’re getting a little swooned. You looked down at your drink, trying to play it cool.
“And you know I probably won’t scream when you come out of the shower shirtless or whatever?”
Johnny grinned wider.
“I mean, you can. You’d have shirtless privileges as long as you don’t go around selling pictures of me.”
That makes your smile grow. Damn him.
You really tried to stay skeptical. Tried to keep a cool head and ask more serious questions. But shit, they weren’t lying about the Storm charm.
And the sad truth was…you liked it. The way he made you laugh. The way he was looking at you. Not just in a flirty, over the top Johnny Storm way. He seemed genuine, not necessarily trying to impress. You could tell he was truly interested…maybe even hopeful.
And I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? You really needed a roommate like, yesterday.
“Okay, Johnny Storm,” you shrugged. You had nothing to lose. “Wanna go see it?”
“Are you sure you don’t want to fly up the fire escape?” You tease, eyeing the four flights of stairs ahead of you as you walk into the building.
“Please. I’m going for the full normal experience, remember?” He gives you a smug little smirk.
You snort, then pretend you don’t hear him panting by the third floor. But all the amusement goes away as you open your front door, totally not freaking out about the fact that Johnny Storm–your potential roommate–is about to come inside.
Time for the house tour.
The apartment is not that big, not like anything in New York is anyway, but the layout looks decent under the soft light coming through the windows. The ceilings are high, the wood floors shine when the sunlight hits them right and the open kitchen is small but cozy.
Johnny walks in with an unreadable expression in his face. Still, you can’t help but look at it the way he must be seeing it now; the single couch in the living room with carefully picked mismatched throw pillows, the thrifted coffee table you sanded and painted yourself, the small black and white TV, the organized mess on every surface but…it’s home. It’s been home for a year now.
He turns around in a slow circle, taking it all in, eyes landing on a small desk by the window with a typewriter on it and stacks of paper all around it. He wanders over there, leaning a hand on the window frame as he looks out over the rooftops.
The view isn’t breathtaking, not at all like the one he’s used to back home, or the one he sees when he flies over the city, but it’s beautiful nevertheless. Lived in. Rows of shoulder to shoulder red brick facades, dozens of arched doors with molding and tall trees lining up the street.
Standing here, he feels small. In a good way.
“It’s actually very nice,” he says, turning to you with a smile.
“Thanks…” you say. Relief washing your features. “Does it meet the great Johnny Storm’s expectations?”
He shrugs playfully, eyes darting across the floor like he’s looking for something. “I’m still expecting at least one cockroach cameo.”
You gasp in mock offense, but can’t fight the smile on your face.
“Give it time.”
You gesture for him to follow you into the mini hallway to access the rooms, separated by a bathroom in the middle.
“This one’s my room,” you say, pointing to the one that faces the front street. “Yours would be the one on the left. It has good light in the morning.”
He hums, peeking inside the empty room. “I like that.”
“And then…there’s a smaller third one next to yours. I’m using it for storage, and I wasn’t planning to fill it but…I was actually going to talk with my new roommate about considering renting it too. But–”
“How much more do you need to make it work?”
“What?”
“Well, if you’re gonna have to bring in a third roommate, then I assume the math doesn’t quite work yet. I can do more than 50/50,” he offers like it’s nothing.
“Johnny…”
“60/40? 70/30? Just tell me what you need, I got it.”
“That’s not really the point,” you say softly, shaking your head. “Look–I just…I’ve loved this apartment for over a year now but rent went up and it’s been a bit tough finding someone who can help afford this place. The building is nice but people’ve been turning me down when hearing their part. So, I thought I might have to split it in three. But I’m not trying to take advantage of anyone, of you...it’s just a big deal for me, living here you know?” You shrug, suddenly feeling self conscious.
“You’re not taking advantage of me if I want to help,” he says, just as softly. “Seriously. I like it here. This whole thing I’m trying is…kind of a big deal for me too.”
Your shoulders relax a bit, and a smile tugs at your lips.
“So you really want to live here?”
Johnny looks at you like obviously, before that cocky grin sneaks into his face again. “I already committed to the stairs. I’m invested now.”
That gets a laugh out of you.
“Well,” you smile, stepping toward him, extending your hand, “then I guess we are roommates, Johnny Storm.”
“Roommates,” he nods, sliding his warm hand into yours.
“Better than the moon, then?” You tease.
“Way better,” he smiles. And oh, that smile is trouble.
Four months later.
Living with a celebrity has been…surprisingly uneventful.
No paparazzi hiding behind the trees, no fans camping outside the lobby, no wild afterparties. In fact, it’s been almost too normal…if you ignore the fact that your roommate is technically flammable.
Johnny hasn't set anything on fire. Not on purpose, at least.
The kitchen had two close calls. Both were an attempted murder breakfast. He claimed the stove was not user friendly because “it has no lights like the one at home”, so you had no choice but to ban him from using it unsupervised.
Still, he tries. On some nights when you come home dragging your feet from work, he’s already waiting by the TV with takeout bags in hand and his sweater sleeves pushed up as if he made the meal himself.
You’ve also noticed his little communicator/watch thingy beeps every Wednesday at 8 pm for family dinner back home. He flies off the fire escape, only to return a few hours later with something delicious like Ben’s lasagna or Herbert’s infamous cheesecake (you’ve learned he’s actually a droid and not a private chef.)
“Figured you could take some for lunch tomorrow,” he’d say casually, placing whatever he brought carefully in the fridge.
Oh, and the fridge! We have to talk about the refrigerator. A ridiculous piece of fine technology he barely managed to fit through the apartment door. It’s framed in shiny silver, with curved glass doors you didn’t even think was possible a fridge could have. He said he had a similar one at home, and figured your place could use something with the same aesthetic.
His words.
And you still remember the day he moved in like it was yesterday. He arrived with an obnoxiously big truck that had to return half full to the Baxter Building, because he overestimated the space he was moving into.
The bed was the funniest, for sure. Or at least…the attempt to get it in. It took him forty whole minutes of directing two movers to realize his round, ridiculous, king sized bachelor bed would simply not fit through the apartment door, let alone his designated bedroom. Not by angle, not by disassembly, not even with your upstairs neighbor offering unsolicited advice from the stairwell.
Funny times.
Your favorite part of that day, though? When Johnny took out a shiny, white sphere-shaped turntable out of a blue velvet lined case with more care than you've ever seen a man apply to anything in your life.
He brought his entire record collection too. Countless boxes of them. He even had custom shelving made for the living room, right above the small tv stand. The wood midcentury curves contrasted perfectly against the brick wall, and were packed to the brim with all his colorful records. Johnny was very proud of it. Back then he’d even said they were for “shared enjoyment,” and you took that to heart.
Johnny hadn’t noticed how many romantic records he owned until you started wearing them out. He doesn't mind at all, he’s caught himself smiling more than once when he hears you play one without asking for permission anymore. He even keeps your favorites on the shelf closest to the turntable.
Cause that’s what roommates do.
He admits it’s a little weird, sharing a space with someone who’s not family or you’re not romantically involved with, but he likes it so far. The simplicity. Sure there’s no cabinets that open with a clap of his hand or a rocketship parked in his backyard, but there’s walking out of his room for a midnight snack only to find you already there making some tea, humming in your pjs under the soft glow of the refrigerator light. That, until he lifts his hand and starts bragging about his flames heating your tea faster than a kettle. There’s watching you spend an entire Sunday hunched over your desk, giving the poor typewriter a run for its money while you play Sinatra in the background.
You also notice things about him. Cause that’s what roommates do.
Johnny likes dancing. It’s not a rare occasion to find him swaying his hips to Marvin Gaye or Michael Jackson in the middle of the living room when you get home at night. He’s been trying to master the moonwalk, which you discovered one day you arrived early from work (he’s getting there.)
Johnny likes to be active. He gets very fiddly when he’s not saving the world, so he always has to be doing something. Whether it’s cleaning his custom golf clubs, doing push ups in the middle of the living room, or trying to figure out a rubik’s cube Franklin can solve in less than five minutes, but who’s counting?
(Not Johnny.)
He has an unhealthy obsession with cereal, but we all have guilty pleasures, don’t we?
Johnny also pays the bills. All of them. You’ve tried to argue, even tried to pay some as soon as the receipt came, only to find out he’d already done it because it gets automatically drawn from his bank account. He even goes grocery shopping like you have a pantry the size of the entire apartment.
“No Johnny, you can’t keep buying in bulk, we don’t have space for all that stuff!!”
And…he’s still The Human Torch.
He disappears sometimes. You just hear the beep of his watch and he’s gone in a yellow blur. You’ve learned not to worry. Not because you’re not worried, but because he always comes back.
It’s your new normal. It’s easy. Domestic in a way you didn’t expect after the last…person you lived with. You’re not sure how much longer you can keep deflecting the question that pounds your head every now and then. Is this–whatever this is–the best mistake you’ve ever made?
“What do you do for a living anyways?” Johnny asks, his attention going from the movie to your spot on the floor next to the couch.
It’s almost 9pm on a random Tuesday. You’re folding some laundry into baskets after Johnny convinced you into joining him watching “The Godfather.”
“You see me leave every day with a lanyard that says New York Times, Johnny,” you chuckle, still focused on the shirt you’re folding.
“Yeah, but with the way you abuse that typewriter at night I’d think you’re running a secret gossip column about me or something.”
You finally look up, only to find him munching his popcorn in amusement. You reach for his bowl to steal some, he pretends to pull it away only for a second, only to extend it closer to you with a grin.
“Sure Johnny, because I have nothing better to do than write fan fiction about you for the Flaming Heart’s club zines,” you snort, shaking your head, but his tilts in confusion.
“...What’s a fan fiction?”
The question makes your wrist full of pop corn stop mid-air.
“Uhm…you’re better not knowing,” your voice comes out a little too high pitched, trying to brush it off.
“Right…” he says hesitantly, making a mental note to get the next Flaming heart’s club issue.
“I write for the paper’s lifestyle section,” you say, trying to stir the conversation away from that topic. Fortunately, he seems to perk up at that. “But it wasn’t always like that, I actually started writing about sports.”
“Sports?” He asks, lowering the tv’s volume and turning his body more towards you. “You never talk about that.”
“Well, I wasn’t exactly passionate about it. They hired me for whatever they needed. And they needed someone to write about the Mets.”
“The Mets…so you’ve seen me there?” He wiggles his eyebrows, making you roll your eyes playfully.
“I covered four seasons Johnny, four. I think I saw the human torch painting the game score on the sky a few times,” you chuckle, wiping your hands on your shorts to grab another piece to fold. “Don’t think I could watch another one, though.”
“Do you hate them?”
“I don’t hate them specifically but…I can’t really stand being in a stadium anymore. My head hurts and it makes me feel sick. It’s so loud, and the games last so long. I had no idea they were that long.”
He tries to be serious, he really does because you’re opening up, but the words leave his mouth before he can stop them.
“That’s what she said.”
You look at him stunned for a second, before you both burst into laughter. Of course. But you don’t get mad. If anything, it helps ease some tension off your shoulders.
“Okay, okay, sorry,” he apologizes after a moment, clearing his throat when your laugh subsides. “So, lifestyle then?”
“They moved me last year. Which is better…I guess.”
It’s not just your hesitant tone that makes Johnny soften, but the way you start to fold a pair of socks like your life depends on it. His gaze goes to your desk by the window, still stacked with mountains of papers and the cup of tea you forgot to take to the sink last night.
“That still doesn’t explain the aggressive typing at midnight,” he adds, prying a little more. “Unless you’re too passionate about throw pillows or vitamins or whatever a lifestyle column is about, but by the way you told me about it…I’m guessing that's not the dream, right?”
You chuckle at his analysis, but there’s more sadness in it than amusement.
“I want to write novels,” you admit quietly. “Romance, actually.”
That makes his eyebrows go up.
“Oh, now that makes sense,” he says with a teasing grin.
You whip your head toward him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh come on,” he laughs, leaning back on the couch to look at the ceiling, gesturing dramatically in the air. “The girl who listens to love songs repeatedly, wants to write romance novels? Not very surprising.”
You gasp, nudging his knee so he looks at you.
“May I remind you those are your records I’m playing?”
“Oh, please. You put them on more than I do.”
You try not to smile, but with Johnny…you’ve learned that’s impossible.
“Yeah, well, it’s not my fault you’ve got a softie’s taste in music,” you tease, going back to your stupid pile of clothes when he finally looks at you, feigning offense.
“I will not tolerate slander in my own home.”You both fall into soft laughter again, before he decides to turn the volume back up, not really caring about what he might’ve missed. Romance novels, huh. He’s definitely using that against you later.
It’s supposed to be another random Tuesday night.
You’ve called it a day, and intend to sit back and relax and enjoy your evening. You’re about to walk out of your room to make some tea for bed, when you hear the familiar rustle of Johnny’s keys on the front door, but it’s not just his footsteps you hear.
No, there’s a giggle. A girl giggle.
“Oh my god, you weren’t kidding about the stairs!” She says, followed by a breathless little laugh. “Wait…this is it?”
You’re still in your room where you can't see them, but by the sound of the girl’s voice, she’s not exactly impressed about the place Johnny Storm brought her into. But he doesn’t seem to mind, instead, you can hear his footsteps going toward the turntable, probably rummaging through his “setting the mood” shelf.
“Yep. This is where I live.”
There’s a brief pause, where you assume the girl is looking around trying to find a camera that would explain this is just a bad prank.
“…Really? I thought you lived in a penthouse,” she says, laughing nervously again. “I don’t know, something with a view, at least?”
“Nope,” Johnny says, and you can hear the unbothered smile on his face. “This is home.”
She doesn’t say anything back, but you’re guessing she’s probably trying to smile politely like her life depends on it. After all, she’s not stupid enough to waste the opportunity of spending the night with the human torch.
You don’t know what makes you step out of your room, maybe curiosity killed the cat, but you regret it the moment you see the girl Johnny brought home. The brunette looks like her face belongs in a billboard as much as he does. She’s still standing by the door, shifting awkwardly, and her eyes widen when she sees you walk out in pj’s.
“Oh hey!” Johnny says quickly, gesturing between you with a little laugh before she spirals. “This is my roommate. And this is, um…Paige.”
You smile, just enough to be polite, crossing your arms over your chest to try to keep at bay whatever you’re feeling.
“Hi, Paige.” That’s all you can manage to say. Johnny pretends going back to choosing a record, but he watches you from the corner of his eye.
Paige straightens on her spot, smiling way too cheerfully for the expression of bewilderment she had just seconds ago. “Hi! I love the place. It’s so…cozy.”
You nod, ignoring the way she looks up and down at you, and decide it’s wiser to forget about that tea.
“Nice meeting you. I’ll uh…leave you both to it…” you mutter, before doing the only thing a sane person would do.
Retreat to your room, shut the door, and pretend you don’t exist.
You decide to go back to your plans of enjoying the evening, and curl up with a good book in bed–thinking a glass of wine wouldn't be the worst idea–when you hear music coming from the living room. And it’s not just any song. Of course it’s not.
The opening sultry sequence is unmistakable, so instantly recognizable that your eyes go wide as your head snaps toward the door.
“I’ve been really tryyyyyyin’, baby…”
“No fucking way,” you whisper to yourself.
“Tryin’ to hold back this feeling for so looooong…”
You rush to the door, pressing your ear to the wood to confirm you’re not hallucinating. Johnny really is shooting his shot with Marvin Gaye in the background.
Way to set the fucking mood. Literally.
“Oh my God,” you slap a hand over your mouth to stop the disbelieving laughter bubbling out of your chest. “That’s his move?”
You can’t help it. You have to see this. You crack the door open just enough to take a peek of the living room. The record spins on the turntable, as Johnny stands in front of the couch Paige is sitting on.
“Let’s get it on…”
And girl, Johnny’s getting it on. He has his arms up in front of him, elbows bent, fists and eyes closed, completely surrendering to the groove. He rolls his shoulders seductively, and his hips are doing a slow sway that makes your jaw drop to the floor.
He’s performing, right in the middle of your apartment, and you’re not sure if you should be horrified or turned on.
The girl on the couch is surely eating it up. She giggles, covering her mouth like this is the most charming thing she’s ever seen. Johnny throws in a little hip circle, that feels unnecessarily dramatic in your humble opinion, but she squeals louder, clapping as she melts under his mating spell.
“Let’s get it on…let’s love, baby…”
You can’t believe him, you can not believe him…and yet, your lips twitch at the way he’s completely unaware of how stupid he looks because he’s too busy having fun doing his weird seduction ritual.
Of course this is how he flirts. Of course he dances like that. And of course people fall for it.
You shake your head, smiling despite yourself. Paige laughs again, and Johnny grins wide, clearly proud of himself. He offers his arm to her with a wink, leaning forward, and she takes his hand with a delighted gasp that seems to seal the deal.
That also means you’ve seen enough.
You close the door softly, pressing your back against it as the music and the giggles muffle behind it. You tell yourself that you should be annoyed. You should be rolling your eyes. But god help you, there’s this weird tender feeling blooming on your chest, and you hate it. Because even when he’s being ridiculous, even when he’s dancing to Marvin Gaye for someone else…You still find him stupidly endearing.
-
Unfortunately, Johnny’s wasn’t the only performance of the night.
Oh no, you wish you could go back to the stupid mating dance instead of…this.
First you just heard the creak of a bed. His bed. Followed by a sound that could only be described as a high, breathy, and absolutely overdone…moan. A performative moan. The walls are thin, not paper thin, but still enough that every exaggerated sound from his guest bleeds through.
“Oh my goood, Johnnyyy…”
You try covering your ears with your pillow, hoping it’ll help muffle the show Paige is putting on next to your room. But no, this girl is committed. She’s moaning as if she’s trying to convince someone. Anyone. Everyone.
God, what if your neighbors think that’s you?
Your groan is muffled by the pillow. This is torture, absolute torture. You know Johnny must be good in bed. That’s not the problem. The problem is that she sounds like she’s aware she has an audience.
You lift yourself on your elbows to glance at the clock and sigh at the time. 1:07 a.m.
Who goes on a date on a Tuesday?
Granted, if you were fucking Johnny you probably wouldn’t mind the day, or the hour–alright STOP right there. That’s not the point!
You plop back down, exhausted, but sleep doesn’t come easily. You just stare at the ceiling, counting the cracks you’ve never bothered to notice before, in an attempt to ignore Johnny’s muffled groans.
You tell yourself it’s fine. You tell yourself you’re a grown adult who can handle the fact that her roommate has a sex life. There was never a rule against Johnny bringing someone home. He lives here. He pays for almost everything for God’s sake. He’s allowed to bring anyone wants.
It's just…you were naive enough to think he wouldn't.
Girl, whatever.
Wednesday’s morning sun hits you like a slap in the face.
You couldn’t sleep well, not with the symphony next door. So you forced yourself up from bed and got ready for work by a miracle. Now, yawning and barely keeping your eyes open, you drag your feet toward the kitchen to find some salvation in the form of caffeine, but you don’t make it two steps outside your bedroom before you collide directly into something solid.
And wet. And warm. Too warm.
Johnny.
Who was just stepping out of the bathroom with water dripping down his golden skin. A white towel hangs low on his hips. Like low low. His clenched fist barely keeps it in place. Blonde hair sticking in strands to his forehead.
You freeze in place.
“Morning,” he says, smirking, “You okay? You look like you just saw a very handsome man.”
You don’t really hear him. And you absolutely do not stare at his chest, his abs, or the water trickling down his happy trail. But you do notice the hickeys adorning his glistening pecs. Bright and fresh and mocking you.
“It’s okay if you want to scream.” His teasing voice makes you roll your eyes as you shove past him.
“Put on some damn clothes, Storm.”
Johnny lets out a chuckle, leaning over the bathroom’s door frame with his arm.
“Why? You looked like you were enjoying the view,” he adds, and just to show off more, he steams the water off his body in a matter of seconds. “You know, you can just say I’m hot. I’d be flattered, really.”
He expects you to say some witty remark, or give into him with a laugh like you always do, but you give him the cold shoulder treatment. Then you distract yourself by stabbing the buttons on the espresso machine he brought in just last week. Johnny notices not only that, but your sudden aggression toward the cereal box and the bowl you set a little too harshly onto the counter. He frowns, stepping slowly into the kitchen.
“Hey…wait, are you–“
“I’m not mad,” you say, still not looking at him.
“I didn’t say you were,” he shrugs, lifting one hand innocently before smirking again. “…but are you not though?”
“I’m just tired, okay? Some of us had to sleep last night instead of entertaining their very loud…guest.”
“Ohhh,” he clicks his tongue, grin only growing bigger. “So this is about last night. That’s what you’re mad about.”
“I said I’m not mad!” You snap.
There’s a few seconds of silence where Johnny debates turning around and hiding in his room before you throw a knife at him or something, but since he apparently has no survival instinct, he leans closer, tilting his head inquisitively at you.
“…Are you sure?”
You set your palms on the counter with a sigh. But instead of going for the knife in the drawer to your right (very tempting) you step away from him.
“Johnny–listen I’m not mad that you brought someone over,” you start explaining, a little hesitant because wow, this is awkward. “You live here too and you can bring whoever you want. It’s not about that.”
“Okay…” he drags the word, waiting for the but.
“It’s just…it was a weeknight, alright? I have work today and I could barely sleep.”
You see the shift in Johnny’s face when he takes in your exhausted features, your slumped shoulders and the lame work outfit you didn’t seem to care much about. His brows furrow in something that looks like concern as a mild pink paints his cheeks. That’s when you straighten up, shaking your head in an attempt to take it back as sudden embarrassment takes over you.
“Sorry, that probably sounded dumb. Swear I’m not trying to police your sex life–you’re an adult! You can…you can do whatever you want, whenever you want–” you fumble through your words, but this time Johnny is the one shaking his head as he steps closer to you, so close that you can feel the warmth radiating off his bare chest.
“Shit. I didn’t even think–you’re right,” he says, scratching the back of his head as he turns redder. “I’m sorry…I should’ve thought about that. I really didn’t mean to…make you uncomfortable.”
“You didn’t, not in the way you think,” you reassure, lowering your eyes to the bowl on the counter with a little shrug. “Maybe I just didn’t need to hear…all of it. You know?”
He nods a little too quickly. “Yeah yeah, totally, I get it. This uh–this roommate thing’s still new to me, but I’ll be more careful next time. Promise.”
Next time. Promise. You’re not sure why that didn’t make you feel better. Next time. Next time you’ll–
“Thank you,” you mumble, feeling Johnny’s gaze fixed on you as you nod and turn away from him toward the coffee machine again.
Johnny hums, and decides to retreat back to his room, bare feet dragging over the wood floor. The roommate thing is not necessarily new new to him, but living in a shared apartment with thin walls is. At least back at home no one complained about his night endeavours anymore after Reed installed a soundproofing system specifically for this purpose.
He stops right outside his room, his hand resting on the doorknob when he turns to you with that charming smile he wears when he knows he’s done something wrong and he needs to fix it.
“Lunch tomorrow?” He asks casually, almost laughing at the way your head snaps up toward him with wide eyes. “To make it up to you. It’s your day off.”
The perplexed expression on your face doesn’t change.
“You…know?” You tilt your head, narrowing your eyes at him.
“You marked it on the calendar with a little face next to it.” He grins, shrugging cockily.
“I didn’t–” Your eyes land on the calendar next to the landline phone on the wall, and sure there is a little smiley face next to your circle. “You drew that there!” you accuse with a small laugh he follows.
“Whatever. It’s still my treat, what do you say?”
“But…Paige won’t be mad?” you tease, and he bites back a chuckle as he shakes his head.
“She was just a one time thing.”
His expression doesn't falter, but something about the quickness of his reply makes your heart do something stupid again.
“Then…yeah, guess I’d like that,” you say softly.
“Good. I’m picking the place,” he nods with a smile.
You definitely don’t stare at his back as he disappears into his room.
“I got sunshineeee, on a cloudy day…”
The music coming from the jukebox is lively, and matches the bright diner Johnny brought you to. He’d tried hailing a cab to get there, but you dragged him toward the subway, where he insisted on getting his own card to cover your fare at least.
He adored the subway, though! That poor innocent soul.
You weren’t really sure where he was taking you, but you liked the place he chose.
“Can I get you anything else, honey?” The waitress asks Johnny after scribbling down your order. A kind middle aged woman with bright red lipstick, who has apparently known Johnny since he was a kid.
“That’s everything for now. Thank you, Glinda,” he smiles, sending a wink her way.
She laughs, shaking her head, used to him doing that every other day. Then her gaze travels between you two with a smile you can’t quite decipher.
“You two are cute,” she says suddenly.
“We’re not–”
“Thanks!” Johnny cuts you off, and before you can protest, he nudges your foot under the table until Glinda leaves. He chuckles when he sees you narrowing your eyes at him. “Let her believe it. We’ll get better service.”
“Huh. Did that work with Paige too?” You tease with a tilt of your head, and Johnny raises his eyebrows in surprise.
“Wow. So we’re doing that today?”
You shrug, a laugh escaping your lips. “I’m just saying, if I’m gonna be one of your girls of the week, I should know if you’re using the same techniques.”
“Oh don’t worry, you’ll meet the rest of my harem later and you can ask them yourself,” Johnny plays along, making your grin widen. “But if it makes you feel better, you’re the first one I’ve ever brought here.”
Something about the comment makes something flutter in your stomach. You look around, and this is definitely not the place you imagine the girls Johnny dates hanging out. No wonder he hasn’t brought them here, after all, this is just a casual “I fucked too loud the other day and I need you to forgive me” spot.
“How do you know this place?” You ask.
“Sue used to bring me here when I was little,” he explains, smiling softly as he recalls the memory. “Best burgers in the city. I didn’t want to eat anywhere else."
You smile, and shake the bad thoughts away, grateful to be the first one he decided to share this space with besides his sister.
Your food arrives eventually, and the conversation flows easily between you, just as if you were sitting on the floor of your living room. He always shares stories about his missions that seem too good to be true, and when you share stories from your job, the craziest thing you can tell him is the absurd HR drama of the week.
“...I guess you'd say
What can make me feel this way?...”
The music fills the restaurant, and the food is so good, you can’t help the delight on your face.
“Oh my god, you weren’t lying about these,” you say, a little muffled, after the last glorious bite of your burger.
Johnny chuckles, nodding like ‘I told you so’. You’re too busy tasting heaven to notice when he leans forward on his booth, and before you know it, his hand is reaching toward your cheek, wiping some leftover sauce with a napkin.
“There you go,” he says softly.
The gesture is so sudden that you freeze on your spot and stop chewing, but Johnny looks unbothered as ever, leaning back again with both arms resting on the edge of the booth like that was nothing. You stare at his relaxed position, and finish swallowing what was in your mouth, trying to ignore the lingering feeling of his warm fingers grazing your skin.
“Thank you,” you manage, clearing your throat.
“Anytime,” he shrugs, flashing you another one of his pearly white smiles.
“...My girl (my girl, my girl)
Talkin' 'bout my girl (my girl)...”
-
“Well, I think that should cover the noise,” Johnny says, following behind as you enter the apartment after getting back from the diner.
“Fine. Apology accepted, Storm.” You roll your eyes, but can’t help a smile as you go straight to the living room.
You plop down onto the couch, and Johnny throws himself beside you. There’s a comfortable silence for a few seconds, one he couldn’t wait to ruin by opening his mouth.
“Don’t worry, next time I’ll keep it down,” he says nonchalantly. “I can be considerate.”
Maybe he meant it as a joke, you tell yourself. Next time. It really shouldn’t bother you, but it’s the second time he says it like the idea of having another woman on his bed is as casual as eating a burger.
Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t–
“Well, hopefully the next one doesn’t fake it so loudly.”
The words left your mouth before you could think about their impact. Johnny turns fully toward you, straightening up on the couch.
“I’m sorry, what? Did you just say Paige was faking it?”
You consider getting up and ignoring the conversation altogether, but that would make you look worse than you already do.
“I didn’t say any names,” you try to brush it off.
“You absolutely meant Paige,” he retorts. “And she wasn’t faking it.”
“…Okay,” is all you say, pursing your lips together. Johnny narrows his eyes.
“You don’t believe me,” he says defensively, and it’s a little hard not to laugh at Johnny's genuine offense.
“Well, did you believe her?” You ask, raising your eyebrows.
He looks at you like you’ve gone mad. “Yes, of course I did! I’m very attentive with those things. I would know.”
“Okay then,” you shrug, leaning forward to take the tv remote from the coffee table, but he beats you to it, and hides it behind him. “Johnny!”
“No! Don’t patronize me,” he points at you with his finger, “I pay attention, okay? I’m not saying I’m Casanova–”
“You kind of are.”
“Well not the point,” he glares at you, but you just bite back a smile and wave your hand for him to continue. “What I mean is, women don’t fake it with me.”
He says it with such conviction, that all you can do is bite the inside of your cheek to not burst out laughing. I mean, of course certified hot stuff™ Johnny Storm would believe that.
“Okay–”
“Stop saying okay!” He groans dramatically, running his hands through his hair like this is physically wearing him out, and then holds them in front of you. “You wanna hear the details? Fine. She said she came ten times.”
“Ten times?”
“Yeah.”
“Johnny.”
“What?”
“Ten??”
“Yes. Ten,” he says proudly, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Did you also come ten times?”
He goes quiet for a moment, his mouth opening and closing in offense. You raise your eyebrows and nod with your head, prompting him to talk.
“No that’s…that’s impossible,” he huffs. All you have to do is give him a look. See? “Okay–stop. It’s different for women.”
“Yeah, I know it is. That’s why you don’t understand,” you sigh, trying to sound nicer now because despite everything, you’re not trying to humiliate him. “Listen, I’m sure you’re good in bed, but sometimes it just doesn’t happen for us. And sometimes girls don’t want to stop everything and explain that in the middle of it, so they fake it to be…polite.”
He looks flabbergasted to say the least.
“Polite? So you’re saying faking orgasms is what, being generous with us?”
“I think she was very generous, making you believe it was twelve times.”
“I said ten,” he snaps.
“Right, ten. God forbid I say an unrealistic number.”
Johnny narrows his eyes at you, but your amused smile doesn’t falter. That’s the moment when the devil on his shoulder whispers something to him, and a glint appears in his eye.
“Well, what about you, then?” He asks casually.
“What about me?” You narrow your eyes.
“Do you have to fake it a lot with the guys you are with?”
“Johnny…” you laugh, rolling your eyes at how he turned it around.
“I’m just saying,” he smirks. “You seem to know a lot about it. Did you have to do it a lot?” He’s teasing, you know it, but there's a bit of genuine curiosity under all that.
“Like I said, sometimes it just doesn’t happen for us,” you shrug, chuckling again but it doesn’t reach your eyes this time, “my last partner was…attentive. So I didn’t have to. At least…not at first.”
“Your last partner?"
You hesitate for a second, then nod.
“We were together for five years.”
“Five years?” Johnny straightens up, unconsciously sliding himself closer to you on the couch. “You were with someone for five years?”
“Yeah. I actually thought I was gonna spend the rest of my life with him,” you smile sadly. “His name is James.”
Johnny hates James.
He’s not sure what to say besides that. You’ve never told him this before, and God, that look on your face…makes him watch you more carefully now. No more teasing, no smirk.
“Did it end badly?” He asks softly. You shake your head.
“It wasn’t ugly per se, just…sad. We didn’t want the same things anymore,” you sigh, he just listens. “We had dreams, you know? Big ones. Penthouse in Manhattan, fancy dinners, skiing holidays. He wanted to go into politics, make it to congress, I wanted to become a New York Times best seller. So, we’d agreed we didn’t want kids or the whole marriage thing. Just success,” you chuckle, because it sounds so foreign to you now. “But after so many years together I changed my mind. I wanted a family. I wanted…more. I wanted to live the love I was writing about.”
“And he didn’t,” Johnny adds quietly.
“No. He didn't. Didn't think we could have both.” You meet his gaze, and you see true concern there, so you smile. “It’s been about a year since we called it off. I’ve healed a lot since then. Found this place and made it home.” you say, as if he’s the one who needs reassurance.
Johnny’s heart burns under his chest. He’d never stopped to think about the life you had before him. There was a whole imagined future that someone destroyed, and he had no idea.
“I heard he made it to congress last month,” you add, toying with the hem of your shirt. “Guess that leaves me here, still writing in my pjs thinking I can make it big one day,” you chuckle, but Johnny doesn't find it so amusing.
“Hey. Don’t say it like that,” he says softly, shaking his head. “You’re doing it. You’re writing, maybe not in some fancy tower office or bestselling list yet, but you’re on your way. I’ve seen you type for hours on that thing,” he points at the typewriter by the window. “And you’re going to find someone who wishes the same things as you. You deserve someone who wants to give you all that, and more.”
“Yeah…maybe,” you nod. He huffs, nudging your leg playfully with his support.
“Definitely.”
This time you let yourself smile genuinely. You’re not sure why you let yourself share all of that with Johnny. Surely, he’s never had to worry about success, and there’s a line of girls who would gladly marry him anyday. But the way he’d looked at you, so…earnest. You deserve someone who wants to give you all that, and more. His words echo in your head, but maybe you shouldn't dwell on it. He was just being nice–
“It’s a little quiet in here, isn’t it?” His voice snaps you out of your thoughts, and when you turn to look at him, he’s got his devilish smile back on.
You narrow your eyes, but he just raises from the couch and walks toward the turntable.
“I say, we need some music to lighten up,” he half turns to you without stopping, winking.
You snort, shifting on the couch to peek at what vinyl he wants to play, but he purposefully covers it with his body. You don’t have to guess for long, because a familiar groove fills the apartment when he drops the needle.
“Johnny, you can’t be serious right now,” you chuckle when you recognize the tune.
He turns away from the turntable, and he already has that mischievous glint in his eye, making a “come here” motion with two fingers. His hips start moving to the rhythm as he walks toward you, and you have to bite back a smile.
“Come on, I already heard your sad story. Let’s dance now.”
“My sad story?” You gasp in exaggerated offense. “Oh you're dead, Storm.”
“Yeah?” He grins, stopping right in front of you but never halting his moves. “Why don’t you stand up and show me you can move, then?”
“I won’t–”
“Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk, I'm a woman's man no time to talk…” he cuts you off, singing and pointing at himself. His voice comes out so high it matches the record, and you cover your mouth to hide your smile. He keeps dancing to the groove, “And now it's all right, it's okay. And you may look the other way…” you do just that, but Johnny slides to stay in your line of sight.
“…Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother
You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive…”
You cover your face, peeking through your fingers. He keeps moving so easily, so unashamed, and for a moment it feels too familiar. It’s just like the other night, except today, you are the girl he’s dancing to.
“Ah ah ah ah, staying alive…” Johnny channels his inner Travolta, and busts out the signature disco move: left hand on his hip, the other moving up and down in the air as the chorus hits. You can’t hide the delight on your face anymore. A giggle escapes out, and he just smiles brighter, stopping his move only to offer his hand. “Come on, dance with me.”
You want to say no.
“Scared of a little fun?” He teases.
It’s a trap. It’s a trap. But he’s standing right there with his hand outstretched, hips swaying to the beat, and those impossible blue eyes daring you to stop thinking about fake orgasms and failed relationships and just join the moment. He looks so ridiculous, yet you’re rising up from the couch before you can really think about it.
Johnny cheers approvingly, stepping back to give you space, and you let yourself go. Your own moves are looser, less practiced than his, but still good enough to raise to the challenge. You shake your hair playfully, spinning around so Johnny is standing behind you as you join the rhythm. You sway from side to side in opposite directions, catching brief glances of each other’s faces. He lets out a low whistle.
“Ohhhh she dances,” he praises, eyes shamelessly trailing your movements.
“Shut it,” you shoot back.
And you both dance.
“…Well now, I get low and I get high
And if I can't get either, I really try…”
The apartment fills with music and laughter, and you get lost in your own Saturday Night Fever extravaganza. At some point he reaches for your hand again and twirls you, making you stumble into him, and you collide chest to chest. The song keeps playing, but it fades out when his bright blue eyes set on you.
You’re breathless, and you try to play it cool, but it’s impossible when he’s right there.
“You’re smiling,” he says teasingly, but you don’t try to hide this time.
“Only because you’re ridiculous,” you manage.
Johnny shrugs smugly, making you yelp when he steps back and spins you around faster than before, then prompting you to dance again. “Then be ridiculous with me.”
As you both laugh and surrender to the rhythm, you come to the realization that you could learn to love this.
The dancing.
It’s Friday night, and you decide to give dating a chance again. It’s about time after all.
You smooth down your outfit, fix your hair one last time, and give yourself a final look in the mirror of your room. It’s been a while since you actually dressed up for something that wasn’t work, and god, it feels good to remember you still have it in you.
You step out of your room hoping to leave without making too much of a fuss, when you come across a shirtless Johnny leaning on the breakfast counter, wearing his human torch pj pants– way too low to be considered PG– and eating from the cereal box in his hand. Only the glow from the refrigerator bathes the kitchen in a pale golden hue.
Not an unfamiliar sight at all, yet…you always find yourself staring longer than you should. For Johnny, however, watching you come out of your room looking like that as you leave a trail of expensive perfume he’s sure you’ve never worn before, is unfamiliar.
“Wow,” he says, straightening up against the counter, a teasing smile on his face. “She actually cleans up nicely.”
You snort, looking around for your coat and pretending you don’t feel Johnny’s burning gaze on you when you put it on.
“Date night?” he asks. His voice definitely didn’t come out higher than normal.
“...Yeah,” you mumble, fixing the collar of your coat. “Guy from work. He’s um…we’re going dancing.”
“Dancing? People still do that?” He teases. Hypocrite.
“Ha. Ha. Very funny Storm,” you retort, walking to the door to grab your keys on the little hook next to it. “Please don’t burn the place while I’m out.”
“I can’t promise anything,” he shrugs unapologetically, rounding the counter as if to walk toward the couch in the living room, but he really just wants to get a better look at you before you leave. “You look very beautiful.”
His words make your hand freeze over the doorknob. There’s something about the softness in his voice that knocks the breath out of your chest. You turn around to look at him with a small smile.
“Thank you, Johnny,” you say, but before you can reach the knob again he perks up.
“Wait–he’s not coming up to get you?”
“No…he said he’d be outside at 8,” you shrug, but Johnny doesn't seem to take it as lightly as you do. If anything, you’d say he looks scandalized to say the least.
“Yeah–no. That’s not happening,” he shakes his head, dropping the cereal box on the counter as he walks towards you.
“Johnny–”
“No way I’m letting you wait outside alone in the cold while some guy honks his car like he’s doing you a favor,” he says, walking ahead to open the door. “I’ll wait with you.”
“...You’re only wearing pants.”
“Yeah, and they’re my favorite pair,” he deadpans. “Let’s go.”
“Okay…” you shrug, but can’t fight the smile tugging at your lips as he guides you outside the apartment. “Thank you,” you whisper, when he offers his arm to help you down the multiple flights of stairs.
Date night hasn’t even started and you’re already flustering.
Once you’re in the lobby, Johnny doesn’t seem to mind the fact that he’s standing shirtless and barefoot next to the glass doors. If anything, he’s more interested in seeing who this mystery man is, if he even has the decency of at least walking inside to get you. For a moment he just stares at you from the corner of his eye, resisting the urge to send another compliment your way.
The clock ticks, minutes go by, and you’re still smiling but the slight waver of your stance doesn’t go unnoticed by Johnny.
He glances at you, then at his watch. 8:15. Shit.
"Are you sure he said eight?" Johnny asks carefully.
“Yeah. Eight. Michael called me yesterday to confirm it,” you nod, eyes still glued to the street outside.
Johnny hates Michael. He hates him so much and he doesn’t even know him. But he forces a reassuring smile for you.
“Maybe traffic?”
“Yeah,” you agree too quickly. “You know how it is on a Friday.”
He just nods, and turns back to the street. He doesn’t feel the bite of the cold, but he notices the way you wrap your arms around you. He silently steps closer to you, increasing his body temperature so can share some with you. You don’t say anything, or even move, but time does.
8:25.
You shift your weight from side to side, trying to come up with something to at least make the silence a little less awkward, but nothing comes out.
8:30.
Johnny’s gaze turns to you again, and you fear he sees the moment of cruel acceptance in your face. Why did he have to wait with you? This would be less embarrassing if he’d just stayed upstairs so you had time to come up with an excuse less pathetic than “I was stood up.”
At 8:40 you decide it’s been enough of this humiliation, so you exhale, turning back to the stairs while avoiding Johnny’s eyes.
“Well, he probably got caught up in something,” you shrug, trying to sound casual. A shaky laugh escapes your lips. “Maybe an emergency. Or maybe he just didn’t want to come...”
“I don’t think–”
“I’m gonna go back,” you cut him off, clearing your throat. “I’ll just change and order something. It’s no big deal.”
Johnny doesn't have time to offer his arm this time, because you’re already halfway up the stairs ahead of him. So he follows behind, no questions asked.
The hurt is not even about the guy who didn’t show up, because you haven’t known him long enough for this to be a proper “heartbreak”, but you hate that you got all dressed up and hopeful. How you let yourself believe someone might want to see you that badly. Oh he’s gonna hear it from you on Monday.
And now you’re walking back upstairs with your roommate in the front row of the whole shitshow.
Your roommate who held the door open and helped you down the stairs.The one who hasn't made a single joke about the situation even when you’re sure he’s never had to worry about being stood up in his entire life. The one who said you looked beautiful with such softness in his voice that your stomach still flips thinking about it.
Your roommate who also happens to be Johnny Storm.
And the worst part?
Part of you wishes he was the one who stood you up. Because at least then, it would’ve meant he wanted to take you out in the first place.
God, you’re being ridiculous.
You don’t really want to talk when you approach the apartment. Johnny closes the door behind you with a soft click, and you don’t even bother turning the lights back on since the idea of ordering something doesn’t seem that appealing anymore, instead, you bend down to take your shoes off. Your night ended before it could even begin anyways.
“Goodnight, Johnny.”
You don’t wait for a reply as you straighten up and make a beeline for your bedroom, but you stop when you feel his warm fingers wrap gently around your wrist, the same one holding your shoes.
“Wait,” he says softly. “Just…wait.”
He lets go almost as quickly, his brief touch a mere ghost feeling on your wrist as you watch him walk with determination toward the turntable in the living room, flipping through the basket of records on rotation you keep next to it. You’re about to open your mouth to tell him you’re really not in the mood for this, but he beats you to it.
“Ah ha!” He celebrates when he finds the one he was looking for, but from your spot it’s hard to recognize the cover in the darkness. He places the record on the player, and turns to you a little bit shyer. “This isn’t, you know…a fancy dance floor. But I figured you deserved your dance anyway.”
His dashing smile is soft and lopsided and even a little sheepish as he waits for your response. Your heart thumps so loud and quickly you struggle to process everything you feel in that moment, and the sting in your eyes doesn't help either.
You stay speechless, but Johnny doesn't mind, he only turns again to drop the needle on the vinyl before walking to your spot.
You expect the melody to come out of the turntable to be lively, something ridiculously sexy or extravagant like the other day, but when you recognize the soft chords of a guitar, you have to stop yourself from gasping.
“I know I stand in line until you think you have the time to spend an evening with me…”
Frank Sinatra's voice dances across the apartment, just as Johnny stops in front of you and extends his hand with a soft smile.
“What do you say? Wanna dance under the glow of our ridiculous fridge?”
A chuckle escapes your lips. To think that you would’ve expected him to mock you for what happened, but no, he’s offering you a dance instead. Again. Words are foreign to you still, but you drop your shoes to the floor and take his hand.
“And if we go some place to dance I know that there's a chance you won't be leaving with me…”
His hand finds your waist, and yours land over his bare shoulders almost instinctively. You start to sway to the melody, glassy eyes meeting his piercing blue ones. His face is washed by the faint glow coming from the kitchen, enough to look ethereal as he guides your hips from side to side. His body is hot beneath your touch, and you find it hard to coordinate your moves with the unsteadiness of your breathing.
“And afterwards we drop into a quiet little place and have a drink or two…”
The record choice doesn’t help your state either. That song. That damn song. The one you’ve been playing every Sunday morning. The one you sing along to in the middle of typing as you try to recreate that love with your words. The one you reach for when the apartment’s too quiet and you don’t want to be alone with your thoughts.
This is not like the other day. This…this is everything.
“And then I go and spoil it all, by saying something stupid like ‘I love you’...”
Johnny breaks eye contact to spin you around softly, almost letting out a tiny huff when your chests collide back together. That’s familiar. His grip on your waist tightens ever so slightly, and your fingers find their way to play with his hair.
You don’t want the moment to end. And neither does he. So you keep going, careful not to let your face bury into his bare chest, as you sway barefoot under the refrigerator light.
“The time is right, your perfume fills my head
The stars get red and, oh, the night's so blue…”
Maybe getting stood up wasn't so bad.
“And then I go and spoil it all, by saying something stupid like ‘I love you’...”
Maybe this is exactly where you’re supposed to be.
The next time you decide to try dating, it’s with a better man. A totally normal, grounded, emotionally available man who shows up at your doorstep when he says he will.
Joseph has brown eyes and brown hair. A warm voice with an accent that had you internally giggling and kicking your feet when you were introduced at a work event. He’s sweet and listens and laughs at your jokes and doesn't have a superhero suit in his closet.
Nope, he just works in finance.
That’s good. That’s smart. Joseph’s normal. He doesn’t light on fire at will. And he's oh, so handsome. Which is why, after many successful dates, you knew you wanted more with him.
Johnny hasn't been home on a Saturday night since he moved in. You don’t know exactly where he goes; missions, friends, clubs, space? Who cares, Saturday is his disappearing act, so you were counting on having the apartment to yourself.
So when Joseph said I’d love to come inside after kissing you against the front door, you said sure with a little grin and the warmth of two glasses of wine running through your veins. You fumbled with your keys a little, giggling when Joseph’s hands roamed down your waist when you opened the door…only to find him on the couch.
Johnny.
Wearing sweatpants and a white t-shirt with a 4 logo. Bowl of popcorn in his lap and a movie glowing on the screen. His head whips in your direction when he hears your little messy entrance, and smiles a little too wide for someone who just ruined your plans entirely.
“Heeey,” he beams, leaning back on the couch as his eyes narrow at the man standing behind you.
“Hi,” you say, clearly taken aback. “...You’re home.”
“Yep.”
Ugh. Can’t a girl get laid in peace?
“Everything alright?” Joseph asks hesitantly, clearly not expecting to find Johnny Storm on your couch.
“Yeah–yeah, sorry. Come in,” you step aside, gesturing awkwardly between them. “This is uh–Johnny. My roommate.”
“That’d be me,” Johnny throws a salute in his direction. “And you are?”
“Joseph,” he flashes a confident grin, tightening his grip around your waist. “Nice to meet you, torch.”
Johnny nods at him, eyes traveling to his hand placement, and you swear you catch his posture faltering for a second, the thousand alarms going off behind that perfect smile. So she doesn’t like blonds…
“Don’t you uh…have somewhere to be?” You ask, gesturing with your eyes toward the door in a silent plea, but he just shakes his head, smiling wider and leaning back onto the couch. He even has the audacity to laugh when you glare at him.
“Oh please, don’t mind me here! I’ll just finish my movie.”
Your eye twitches. So he wants to stay? Fine. You’re not leaving either.
“Well!” you say a little too enthusiastically, one hand reaching for Joseph’s to pull him toward your bedroom. “Don’t mind us either, then.”
He shrugs, pretending to turn to the TV again but you feel him watching as you walk away.
“Don’t forget the walls are thin!”
You don’t turn around or answer to him, just tug Joseph inside your room and shut the door. You twist the lock and try the knob a few times, just in case.
It doesn’t take long before Joseph is all over you. You’d already been worked up on the way there and the drinks fogging your mind helped you ease the nerves. This is what you wanted after all, a normal night with a normal man. A very sexy one at that.
His roaming hands are warm and his mouth finds places that have you leaning on the wall behind you so you don’t fall apart completely.
You really try to be quiet. Respectful. Because unlike him, you’re not trying to put on a show. Seriously, what was he thinking? He’s gone every single Saturday and today he chooses to “watch a movie”. I swear to God, he can be a pain in the ass when he wants to–
Okay, maybe let’s not think about Johnny Storm when another man is on top of you.
But your bed creaks, just like his that night. You tell yourself to relax, to let go, yet you bite your lip and keep your sounds low. Careful little breaths barely muffled by Joseph’s neck. That is, until it starts to feel too good, and the moans slipping out stop being something you can control.
Outside, the movie is still playing. Johnny, however, doesn’t even know what’s going on in that screen anymore. He turns the volume up and tells himself that whatever is happening inside your room is none of his business.
You brought a guy home, big deal.
It explains why you’ve been giggling on the phone late at night and disappearing every now and then all dolled up. Not that he has noticed, really. You have every right to do whatever you want, with whoever you want. Really. He’s even glad this guy didn’t stand you up like the last one. You deserve to be happy.
Even if he’s not happy right now. Because he really shouldn’t be listening to you like that.
She’s faking, he thinks immediately, when the sounds start to slip past the walls of your room. You have to. There’s no way that guy is that good.
Something in his stomach twists when the sounds you’re letting out just prove your theory from the other day: he’s an idiot who can’t tell.
But he would know with you, he would–no.
He stands up so abruptly the plastic bowl of popcorn goes flying from his lap, making a mess all over the woodfloors. Whatever, he’ll deal with that later. Right now, he has to leave, or he’s gonna die in this house. And in a whoosh of raging fire, he’s gone.
Weeks went by, and Johnny never brought up that night. Just like you never brought up finding the TV still on and the popcorn all over the floor next morning.
You both went back to normal. You kept seeing Joseph and Johnny went back to disappearing on Saturdays. You even had a feeling Johnny was seeing someone too, and confirmed it the day you found a pink bra peeking out of his laundry pile.
So you were both dating…other people. Big deal.
Despite that, things didn’t really change between you. Because at night? You still came home to each other. You still ate takeout together on the floor, still watched movies, still bickered over who jammed the garbage disposal.
Normal, normal, normal. Just like tonight.
“So, when are you moving in with your boyfriend?” Johnny asks playfully, setting down an empty noodles box on the coffee table.
For a second you choke on your last bite of noodles, and cover it up with a cough that has him looking at you amusingly.
“It’s a little early for that,” you shrug casually, fiddling with your chopsticks on the empty box.
He nods, serious for only a second before he sighs dramatically, putting one hand over his heart and the other over his eyes. “And here I was, thinking it was because you liked living with me too much.”
This time you snort, shaking your head. The worst part is that he might not be wrong about that, but don’t tell him that I said that!
“Don’t flatter yourself, Storm,” you scoff instead.
“Oh, come on,” he whines, pushing your thigh with his foot. “I’m great to live with. I know you’d miss me if I left.”
I might wither and die.
“I would not,” you say firmly. “What is there to miss, the burnt toast and the bra’s in the laundry?” You tease.
“Those aren’t mine,” he says seriously.
“Well thank you for clarifying that, Johnny. I was really having doubts if you were a C cup or not,” you shake your head, and this time you can’t fight the laughter that flows so easily between you. “And for the record, if there’s anything I’d miss, it's the refrigerator, or your vinyls.”
He snorts and rolls his eyes, standing up to take the empty box from you and walk toward the kitchen to throw it away. You can’t help but glance in his direction, and heat warms your cheeks when he turns around and catches you staring. But the teasing never comes, no, only a sweet smile, softly illuminated by the fridge in question.
You look away before you say something you're not supposed to.
Wow, look at that! Another Saturday Johnny didn’t disappear. Why? Because this morning Johnny decided to casually announce that the Fantastic Fucking Four were dying to see your shared apartment and finally meet you, the roommate, tonight.
So yeah, he had you running like a headless chicken all day from store to store–dragging him along, of course–to have everything decent for them. He even bought a dining table with express delivery and ever faster assembly service, since your thrifted coffee table wasn’t gonna fit his fantastic family.
Perfectly normal Saturday.
“Johnny, does your sister have a preference for napkins?” You ask, holding up as many brands as you can, the fancy ones, but when you turn to him, he’s in deep conversation with that watch thingy he has.
“No, it’s a family thing…” he says to the person on the call. “...I know, baby. But I’ll make it up to you tomorrow, alright?...Come on, don’t be like that…”
You move farther away when you realize who he’s talking to, but when you watch him from the corner of your eye, he looks like he’s trying to bargain something with a toddler. A few minutes later, he sighs and hangs up, and you pretend to read the back of two napkin brands like your life depends on it. A casual whistle was the only thing missing.
“So…” he says nonchalantly when he reaches you, or at least that’s how he thinks he’s coming off like, “…Vicky is coming tonight too.”
He smiles, even if he’s ready for you to snap at him since it was just supposed to be his family. But you just purse your lips together.
Of course she’s gonna come. The bra girl.
“Great!” you say, maybe a little too fast, then clear your throat because you have bigger things to focus on. “Now help me with the napkins, I don’t want your family to silently judge us for having the wrong ones.”
Johnny’s shoulders sag in relief and amusement. “My family doesn't have a preference, it’s just napkins,” he says, but then he eyes the multiple brands on your hands and feels as lost as you are. “You know what, let me ask Herbert to be sure.”
You should get extra points for not passing out when he introduced you to his family. Especially when Sue Storm hugged you like you’d known each other your whole lives. Johnny had then decided to give them a full tour of the small place, and you’d made yourself scarce with the excuse of putting away the dessert Ben brought. The truth is, you just needed a moment to process the fact that four superheroes were in your apartment right now.
You tried not to think about how crammed it looked right now, since the sitting area had been reduced due to the space the new table took. If they noticed, it never showed in their kind faces.
Just as expected, his family was as golden as him.
You’re sliding the dessert tray into the fridge when you hear the soft click of heels behind you. Turning around, you find Sue standing there with crossed arms and a curious smile. She’s dressed in cashmere and a pair of boots that probably cost more than your rent. You look over where Johnny is, proudly showing them the view, completely unaware that his sister had left the audience.
“So, this is the girl my brother hasn’t stopped talking about,” she says, drawing your attention back from Johnny.
“Oh…me?” You ask a little confused, closing the fridge and wiping your hands on your legs.
“Unless there’s another roommate with a fondness for love songs and typewriters, I think I’ve got the right one,” she says teasingly, and you notice she has the same spark in her eye Johnny does.
Wait, she…she knows those things?
You resist the urge to glance at Johnny again, and nod. “Oh yeah, I just..thought maybe you meant Vicky,” you chuckle nervously.
“Vicky…?” She tilts her head with a frown, trying to place the name, but then she shakes her head. “No, he’s only ever mentioned one girl. His roommate…and that’s you. He says he likes the–” she cuts herself off, finding the right word. “...Balance, this place gives him.”
“He said that?” This time you can’t keep from looking at him, demonstrating to Reed how comfy our worn couch is. Our. Sue nods.
“He didn’t really have that growing up, you know. The world’s always been loud for Johnny, and it felt like he was always chasing something. But now…” she looks around the apartment with a big sister smile, “he’s still chasing things, but he has somewhere stable to come back to. And I’m glad it’s here.”
You let the words sink it for a moment, as you swallow the lump in your throat. Sue’s eyes soften, and she reaches to squeeze your hand reassuringly. The brief moment breaks when the bell rings, making you both jump and then laugh at each other’s reactions. You clear your throat, and walk toward the little intercom by the wall.
“Yes?” you ask.
“Hi! It’s Vicky!” a bright voice rings louder than the bell itself.
“Come on up,” is all you say, pushing the button to open the lobby door.
A good glass of wine doesn’t sound like a bad idea right now.
Sue lifts a brow curiously from her spot when she sees you pour yourself a cup and then one for her, but you just flash a smile and excuse yourself, smoothing your clothes and fixing your hair before opening the door.
And there she is…Vicky. Golden hair, golden everything. Just like Johnny. Just like…his world.
“Hi! Oh my god, the stairs always get me,” she exhales with a little giggle, and yet not a single bead of sweat on her forehead or a piece of hair out of place. “I brought appetizers!” she beams, holding up a tray.
“That’s so nice of you,” you smile politely, but narrow your eyes when you realize they look a little suspicious. “Are those–”
“Oh, shrimp bites! They’re to die for.”
You barely manage to keep your polite expression in place, ready to explain that Johnny hates shrimp and would rather die than be in the presence of it, but the king of Rome itself materializes next to you before you can.
“V!” His voice comes out way more affectionate than it did at the store earlier, as he approaches her. “You made it, baby.”
You step aside just in time to witness him plant a loud smooch to Vicky’s cheek, and that’s the perfect moment to take a big sip of your drink. Or maybe not, because the second you get distracted, Johnny reaches for the tray.
“Well, don’t mind me,” Johnny says, popping one of the little shrimp abominations into his mouth before you even bring your glass down. But you look just in time to see the exact moment his eyes go wide when he chews, and his entire soul leaves his body.
Vicky, absolutely oblivious to the horrors Johnny is going through, has already set her gaze on something behind you.
“Oh J, this must be your sister!” she squeals. She barely gives you time to balance your glass as you catch the tray she tosses to you, shouldering past you to wrap Sue in a big hug.
Johnny has never been more grateful to throw his sister under the bus, using the distraction to discreetly spit the whole bite into a napkin, wiping his tongue dramatically and trying very hard not to gag. You bite back your amusement as you walk up to him, placing the tray gently on his hands. He immediately scowls at it, looking up at you in betrayal.
“Here you go,” you grin, taking a sip of your wine as you walk away toward the couch where the rest of his family is.
Sue looks past Vicky, who keeps yapping away about how much she’s heard about Johnny’s big sister and can’t believe they haven’t met yet so she had to come tonight, and finds Johnny looking in the direction you took off.
Interesting.
–
After brushing his teeth twice, Johnny had survived the shrimp fiasco, and everything was going well so far. Vicky had sat on his lap as you all got to know each other, chatting away in the living room. Honestly, he’d actually planned this to be just his family and…you. But then things happened, and well, seems like he wasn’t the only one with surprise guests.
His gaze followed you as you excused yourself from the conversation, to open the door to Joseph (🙄) with a bright smile on your face. Of course. It’s only fair you invited him too. Not that Johnny cares anyways.
Joseph walks in wearing a loose black suit, with his stupid wavy brown curls tousled by the stairs trials, and holding a stupid bouquet of flowers in his hand.
“Hi, darling,” he says with a warm smile, meant only for you. “You look beautiful.”
Your soft laugh dances through the room as he steals a kiss from you. Johnny turns back to the conversation. He doesn't notice how he sits up straighter on the couch or how he sets his drink down a little too hard on the coffee table. He doesn't even notice when Vicky leaves his lap to go to the bathroom. But what he definitely notices is the moment your smile turns from genuine to polite, when you get handed flowers he knows you don’t like.
He knows that, because you scowl at them every time you pass them by the supermarket, so why doesn’t your boyfriend know?
Joseph leans in to kiss your cheek now as he steps inside, and you lead him toward the kitchen. Johnny notices how you set the flowers down on the breakfast counter instead of looking for a vase to display them.
“So…” Ben, who’s sitting to his right, nudges his arm. “Are we not gonna talk about it?” He mumbles.
“About what?” Johnny whispers back, still looking at you.
“About how her boyfriend looks exactly like you.”
“What?” Johnny’s head jerks toward him, looking baffled as Ben just shrugs with a knowing smile.
“Just saying, man. It’s like seeing you with brown hair…and lawyer shoes.”
“No it’s not. We do not look alike.” Johnny scoffs.
“You do.”
“We don’t.”
“Do too.”
“Do not.”
Ben leans back with a grin. He enjoys rage baiting Johnny whenever he can, but there’s truth in his words. Johnny looks back to his alleged doppelgänger and shakes his head.
“Seriously?” He says. Ben chuckles, and shrugs. Johnny rolls his eyes, and leans toward the armchair his sister is sitting at, “Hey Sue, psst.”
Sue looks away from her conversation with Reed, and lifts her eyebrow at Johnny.
“C’mere,” Johnny says, patting the spot on his left side. Luckily, she excuses herself from her husband and takes the spot. Ben and Johnny turn to her expectantly, whispering, “Okay, do not say yes just to annoy me, but…do you think I look like him?”
“Who?”
“Joseph,” Johnny deadpans. “Do I look like Joseph?”
Sue tilts her head, pretending to be analyzing the British man making you laugh in the kitchen, but there’s a knowing smile creeping on her face.
“Oh…a little,” she says with a twinkle in her eye.
“A little??”
“Well, yeah. He’s like you, if you had brown eyes…and less of a tan…or a cute accent…” she says, watching her brother grow more scandalized by the second.
“A cute accent?” Johnny mocks. “Please. He sounds like a knockoff Beatle.”
Sue and Ben share an amused look.
“I don’t think he’d be a singer. He has more…actor vibes,” Sue taunts, adding fuel to the fire inside Johnny’s veins.
He almost choked in offense.
“Okay, so he’s an actor now? He doesn’t even have that kind of face,” Johnny huffs, reaching for his drink again because what kind of fuckery is this.
“So you’re saying you don’t have that kind of face either,” Ben adds, this time Sue snorts, shaking her head.
“I do have that kind of face. The face. He doesn't because we don't look alike.”
“Sure, Johnny.”
Sue stands up before he can protest like a toddler again. “I’m gonna help her with the food,” she announces, winking mischievously at them and walking away.
“Oh I love these napkins!”
He hears her say when she reaches the new shiny table setup.
That makes you perk up from the kitchen. Right in that moment, your gaze moves from Joseph to Johnny, and you smile proudly at him like “told you so.” Johnny smiles back, but before he can get up and say anything about how much influence he actually had on the napkin choice, a pair of long legs trap him on his seat.
“What did I miss, babyboy?” Vicky asks as she plops down on his lap again, wrapping her arms around his neck to play with his hair.
Reed and Ben pretend to look everywhere else. Johnny just smiles, taking another sip from his drink.
–
Vicky had left earlier than anticipated, claiming a friend called her to get her out of a shitty date, or something like that. Johnny didn’t really ask.
He has to admit he was a little nervous about this whole get together. Afraid that they would be too much. But he wanted nothing more but to brag about his apartment and his roommate, and the little life he’d managed to build for himself. Even if their world had always been filled with big things. This could’ve gone wrong in many ways, but all things considered, he finds himself smiling when his eyes land on you.
He's standing close to the front door, and seeing you confidently showing Sue, whose kitchen had been designed by Reed–the king of gadgets himself–the tiny spice rack you installed last week, made something inside him flutter.
“Hey, man. Have you been to a lot of Mets games?” A familiar British accent startles him.
The fluttering dies immediately.
Joseph has stepped beside him, glass in hand and that stupid smile plastered on his face. He forces himself to look away from you. You’re close to them, but not enough to hear the conversation.
“I mean, yeah. It’s kind of hard not to, I can fly,” Johnny replies drily, but Joseph just laughs easily.
“Right, right, of course,” he says, glancing toward the kitchen, mirroring the way Johnny was just looking at you seconds ago. “Sometimes I forget she lives with a superhero...”
Johnny chuckles, shrugging nonchalantly (he’s actually trying very hard not to puff his chest right now.) “Why do you ask?”
“Ehh…just wanted to know if you got any recommendations for seats? I’m still new to the city, but I’ve been told not to miss the games,” he shrugs. “I’d like somewhere not too close to the cameras, if possible. I’m not…really into all that.”
“The cameras?” Johnny frowns.
“Yeah, the whole crowd cams, people watching you all the time, that whole thing.”
Johnny listens and tries not to judge. But see? This guy could never be an actor. Or a Beatle. Johnny could, shame there’s not a blonde Beatle. Ohhh, but there’s always wigs though! He’s sure he could rock one, with his bone structure and all–
“Mate?”
Johnny snaps back to reality, and just flashes a golden smile.
“There’s cameras everywhere, mate,” Johnny replies, “but I can hook you up with the good tickets, if you’d like. How many do you need?”
“Oh wow that–that’d be perfect, yeah, thank you,” he says, not really expecting that. “Just two, man.”
“…Are you going with a friend?” Johnny narrows his eyes, but Joseph chuckles, shaking his head.
“I’m taking her,” he says, gesturing at you with his glass.
Fuck.
“You…are taking her to a game?”
“Yeah. It’ll be fun on her day off.”
Johnny knows when your next day off is. He painted another happy face next to your mark on the calendar just to make you smile. He also knows that you like to spend those free days curled up at home, certainly not at a freaking stadium.
He knows because it mattered to you when you told him. He remembers because you matter to him.
“Did you…ask her if she likes baseball?” Johnny pries carefully.
“Not really. I mean, I figured she’d be fine,” he says, a little defensively.
There’s a few seconds of silence where Johnny debates to keep quiet, but that has never been one of his strengths, so he ends up blurting, “She doesn’t like going to the stadium.”
“Really?” Joseph frowns, eyeing him.
“She told me once that all the noise makes her sick. And I get it…it’s not the most comfortable place to be,” Johnny chuckles, trying his best to sound casual about it.
“Oh,” Joseph says. For a moment it looks like he’s contemplating, but after thinking about it for exactly three seconds, he shrugs. “Well… she can bring earplugs or something. It’s just one game.”
Johnny’s not sure if his eye twitching was only a product of his imagination, but given the lack of acknowledgement on Joseph’s face, he figures he managed to keep his emotions at bay. This is not what you deserve. This is not what he wants for you.
Don’t flame on right now. Do not flame on right now. Do not–
“You know what? I can get you access to the VIP suite, so you two can be more comfortable,” he offers instead, plastering on his best plastic Ken smile.
He’ll get you the best suite, with shade, AC and all the unlimited appetizers you could ever need. If that makes the experience a little more bearable for you.
“Yeah I guess that would work, thanks, mate!” Joseph says, patting Johnny’s shoulder, but regretting it immediately. He retracts his hand with a hiss, switching the glass to that one to help cool it as he laughs nervously. “Jeez. You’re burning up, man.”
He’s boiling up, actually. But he manages to tone down his temperature, patting Joseph’s cold shoulder firmly before walking toward the kitchen where you’re laughing at something Sue just said.
Just the sight of you manages his temperature to calm down.
“Everything alright?” You ask curiously when he steps beside you with a suspicious smile, noticing the way Joseph kept opening and closing his hand as he headed toward the bathroom.
“Peachy,” Johnny smiles innocently.
“Mhm,” you hum, narrowing your eyes at him. Even his sister eyes him suspiciously, but Johnny ignores her.
“Is there anything I can help you here with?” He asks casually, gesturing to the pots simmering on the stove.
“Nope! But maybe you can pour some more wine for our guests," you say quickly, stirring him away from the stove for everyone’s safety. Sue bites her lip.
“Roger that,” he says, diligently opening a new bottle on the breakfast counter.
Johnny notices Sue leans in to whisper something in your ear that makes you throw your head back and laugh, before whispering something back to her.
He can’t fight the smile on his face when he realizes you’re talking about him, but it dies down when his eyes land on the flowers Joseph brought you on the counter. The conversation with him is still making fire run through his veins, and this just added more to it.
Safe to say, Johnny now hates Joseph too.
To be continued…
Thank you so much for reading! Feedback is always appreciated 💗
description: morticia and gomez addams if they survived the horrors of hawkins, got married, raised two equally dramatic children, and spent the rest of their lives being unapologetically obsessed with each other.
pairing: eddie x wife!reader
tags: eddie x reader, no y/n, husband!eddie munson, dad!eddie munson, morticia and gomez addams coded, tooth rotting fluff (they're obsessed with eachother), soulmates, edward jr & corvina, domestic bliss, slice of life, gothic romance, munson family, black cat x black cat, love as devotion and worship
TW: NSFW (18+) minors do not interact!!, PiV, unprotected, mushy fluff
WC:7.3k
A/N: requested by @pierrotandsam AGH HERE IT IS!!! I HOPE YOU LOOOOOVE IT :))) reblogs are a writer's best friend <3
I'm so obsessed with this. **I proofread as best as i could...i got three hours of sleep last night, so my brain is straight mush
Eddie still remembers the day he first laid eyes on you. Summer, going into his third senior year at Hawkins, you walked into Larry’s Auto Body Repair looking like something pulled from the pages of a half-burnt gothic novel left to rot in an attic trunk.
The heat outside had been miserable; thick, wet Indiana air that made grease cling to skin and tempers run short, but you arrived untouched by it all. Draped in black despite the July sun, lace sleeves swallowing your wrists, silver rings glinting like tiny knives beneath the fluorescent lights.
Your perfume smelled faintly of clove cigarettes, old paper, and rain. Long dark hair spilled down your back in soft waves, and your eyes, God, your eyes, looked mournful in the way stained glass saints did. Beautiful enough to make a man confess every awful thing he’s ever done, truth or not.
Eddie had nearly dropped an engine part directly on his foot.
You’d stepped into the garage like you belonged in another century entirely, gaze drifting slowly across the room with detached fascination, lingering on rusted tools and oil stains as if they were artifacts in a museum.
Then you smiled at him. Not sweet, not shy, but devastating. Like you already knew every terrible thing about him and adored him for it anyway. From that moment on, Eddie Munson was ruined.
Years later, the people of Hawkins still spoke about the two of you in hushed, bewildered voices. The Munsons of the Creel House. The strange family on the hill with wrought iron gates, tangled in dead vines and black roses that somehow bloomed year-round.
Children swore candlelight moved through the windows at impossible hours. Neighbors whispered about organ music drifting through storms and the silhouettes dancing behind curtains long after midnight.
The truth was far less sinister, mostly. You simply loved beautiful things that others were too frightened to appreciate. And Eddie loved you enough to follow you anywhere, even the old Creel House.
At first, he’d refused to even step onto the property. Too many memories. Too much blood soaked into those walls. Vecna. Chrissy. The Upside Down. Every rotten thing Hawkins tried desperately to bury lived in the bones of that house.
But then you’d walked through the front doors for the first time, black dress trailing over dusty hardwood, staring up at the massive chandelier with wonder glowing across your face like moonlight.
“Eddie,” you’d whispered softly, almost reverently. “It’s perfect.”
And that had been it. Because you looked at the house the same way you looked at him, not with fear, but affection. Like ruined things deserved devotion too. So he rebuilt it for you.
Every creaking staircase. Every shattered window. Every rotted inch of wallpaper. Together, you turned the graveyard of Victor Creel’s legacy into something warm, strange, and terribly romantic. A home, your home.
Corvina, your eldest daughter, drifted through the manor like a tiny phantom in velvet dresses, all solemn eyes and unnerving intelligence. She collected moth wings in glass jars and read Poe beneath thunderstorms while Eddie watched with equal parts pride and concern.
Meanwhile, Edward Jr, though everyone called him Teddy, was chaos incarnate. Wild curls, scraped knees, and his father’s crooked grin. The poor kid had inherited Eddie’s dramatic flair and your complete lack of fear, which meant most afternoons ended with him attempting something mildly catastrophic somewhere on the property.
Eddie had been hesitant about naming him after himself. Truthfully, he was terrified.
He remembered sitting beside you in bed while rain battered the windows, your newborn son asleep against your chest. Candlelight flickered gold across your skin as Eddie stared at the tiny little thing wearing his name.
“What if he ends up like me?” he’d asked quietly. You’d looked at him then with that same devastating softness you’d always reserved for his ugliest thoughts.
“My darling,” you murmured, brushing your fingers through his curls, “I should certainly hope so.”
And just like that, the fear dissolved. Because in your eyes, Eddie Munson had never been something to outgrow or overcome. He had always been something to cherish.
The Creel House came alive slowly in the mornings. Rain tapped softly against the tall windows that morning, the sky outside painted silver and gloomy in the way you adored most.
Eddie stood at the stove in silk pajama pants and a black robe hanging open over his tattooed chest, swaying dramatically to the music while making pancakes shaped vaguely like bats.
“Darling,” you called from your place at the kitchen table, long black sleeves draped elegantly around your coffee cup, “I do believe those are becoming progressively less edible.”
Eddie pressed a hand to his heart in mock offense. “Cruel. Wounded before breakfast.”
“You married me for my cruelty.”
“I married you because you looked at me like a Victorian widow cursed by the sea.”
You smiled over the rim of your mug. “And you looked like trouble wrapped in leather.”
“Mm,” Eddie hummed proudly. “Still do.”
Before you could respond, Eddie appeared beside your chair suddenly, dramatically dropping to one knee like a man overcome with passion. He took your hand delicately, pressing a kiss to your knuckles. Then another to your wrist. Then another just beneath your sleeve.
You laughed softly, tilting your head as his curls brushed your skin. “Edward Munson,” you murmured. “The children are awake.”
“Good,” he replied against your hand. “They should witness devotion.”
Right on cue, Corvina entered the kitchen carrying three books against her chest, long dark braid hanging over one shoulder. She glanced once at the scene before deadpanning:
“You’re disgusting.”
“Thank you, my dove,” you said warmly.
Corvina moved to pour herself coffee like she hadn’t witnessed anything unusual at all. Then came the sound of slower footsteps, Teddy.
Edward Jr. appeared in the doorway wearing his Hawkins High hoodie, backpack hanging off one shoulder, curls sticking up wildly like he’d been running nervous hands through them for an hour.
And immediately, both you and Eddie noticed the expression on his face, and Eddie straightened a little. “Whoa. What’s with the funeral look, Theodore?”
Teddy hesitated, then slowly held up a folded yellow slip of paper. Your brows lifted slightly while Corvina sipped her coffee with the detached calm of someone witnessing an execution.
“It’s a summons,” Teddy muttered.
Eddie blinked once, then dramatically pointed the spatula toward him. “What’d you do?”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“That’s exactly what I used to say,” Eddie nodded solemnly. “And I was usually innocent at least forty percent of the time.”
You extended your hand calmly. “May I see it, darling?”
Teddy crossed the kitchen and handed it over anxiously while Eddie abandoned the pancakes entirely to loom over your shoulder. His chin immediately dropped onto the top of your head while his arms wrapped around your shoulders from behind instinctively.
You unfolded the slip carefully:
REQUESTED PARENT CONFERENCE.
PRINCIPAL HIGGINS.
REGARDING: EDWARD MUNSON JR.
Eddie groaned immediately. “Jesus Christ. They started early this year.”
Teddy looked miserable. “Dad, I swear, I didn’t even do anything. It was those idiots from the basketball team—they kept messing with my stuff in gym, and one of them shoved me into a locker, and when I shoved him back, he started bleeding and—”
“Bleeding?” Corvina asked mildly.
“He ran into the trophy case!”
“Ah,” she nodded. “Natural selection.”
“Teddy,” you said softly, reaching for his hand. “Look at me.”
He did immediately.
And despite being nearly Eddie’s height now, despite the deepening voice and teenage awkwardness settling into his limbs, he still looked at you the same way he had as a child: like you could fix anything simply by speaking.
“You are not in trouble with us,” you assured gently.
Eddie nodded instantly. “Absolutely not.”
“But—”
“Nope.” Eddie waved him off. “Listen, kid, Hawkins High has been blaming Munsons for shit since before you were born. It’s practically a school tradition.”
Teddy huffed out a nervous laugh. You rose from your chair then, smoothing your hands over Eddie’s wrists where they rested around your waist. “We’ll attend the meeting.”
“Together,” Eddie added.
“And if your principal insists on being unreasonable,” you continued calmly, “your father does so enjoy making authority figures uncomfortable.”
Eddie grinned wickedly. “Baby, remember the vice principal in ‘89?”
You smiled faintly. “He looked moments from cardiac arrest.”
Teddy finally laughed properly at that, the tension melting from his shoulders almost instantly.
Without another word, Eddie reached over and grabbed one of the bat-shaped pancakes, shoving it onto Teddy’s plate. “Eat up, kid,” he said. “Nothing scarier than school administration on an empty stomach.”
Corvina glanced toward the stove. “Those are burnt.”
“They’re wonderful,” Eddie corrected.
You reached for his hand again, kissing his knuckles this time. “My talented husband,” you said softly.
Eddie practically preened under the affection, leaning down immediately to kiss you dramatically enough to make Corvina groan.
“Oh, my God.”
“Teddy,” Eddie said seriously against your mouth, “never settle for a love that doesn’t make your children physically ill.”
“Noted,” Teddy muttered through a mouthful of pancake.
By noon, rain had turned into a heavy mist that clung to Hawkins like a veil, which was the exact kind of weather you loved. The kind of weather Eddie insisted was “romantic as hell.”
The two of you walked through the halls of Hawkins High side by side like something entirely out of place amongst the fluorescent lighting and beige walls. Students slowed as you passed, conversations dipping into whispers almost immediately.
You floated through the hallway in a long black coat that brushed your calves, silver jewelry gleaming beneath the dim lights, while Eddie walked beside you in dark rings and leather, one hand firmly wrapped around yours, as if he physically couldn’t stand not touching you for more than a few seconds.
Which, truthfully, he couldn’t.
“Sweetheart,” Eddie murmured low enough only you could hear as you approached the office, “if Higgins pisses me off, are we thinking subtle psychological warfare or full public humiliation?”
You glanced at him calmly. “Let us see how brave he feels first.”
“God, I love when you threaten people poetically.”
The secretary barely looked up when you entered the office, though her expression tightened almost immediately at the sight of Eddie, still, after all these years. Eddie noticed too, squeezing your hand once before leaning casually against the counter.
“We’re here about Teddy,” he said.
The woman cleared her throat awkwardly. “Principal Higgins is expecting you.”
“Lucky him,” Eddie muttered.
You placed a gentle hand against his chest before he could continue, smoothing imaginary wrinkles from his jacket. “Behave, mon amour.”
Eddie looked down at you like you’d hung the moon itself in the sky. “For you?” he said softly. “Always.”
The secretary looked deeply uncomfortable. Good.
Principal Higgins’ office looked exactly the same as it had when Eddie sat in it at seventeen; stale coffee smell, ugly filing cabinets, school banners hanging crookedly on the walls.
Only now, Higgins himself had more gray hair and less patience. He didn’t stand when you entered. Instead, he leaned back slowly in his chair, eyes moving between you both with poorly concealed irritation.
“Mr. and Mrs. Munson.”
Eddie sat down across from him casually, slinging an arm immediately across the back of your chair. “Higgins,” he replied. “Still alive, huh?”
You rested one elegant hand atop Eddie’s knee beneath the desk, feeling him relax instantly under your touch.
Higgins ignored the comment. “Teddy was involved in an altercation yesterday afternoon.”
“Involved,” Eddie repeated. “Interesting wording.”
“He assaulted another student.”
“He defended himself,” you corrected smoothly.
Higgins finally looked directly at you then, expression tightening slightly. “And how exactly would you know that, Mrs. Munson?”
“Because, unlike this institution,” you replied calmly, “our son tells us the truth.”
Higgins folded his hands atop the desk. “Mrs. Munson, with all due respect, Edward Jr. has inherited certain… behavioral tendencies.”
There it was. Eddie’s jaw tightened instantly beneath the lazy posture he wore like armor. But you? You simply tilted your head slightly.
“What an unfortunate thing to say aloud,” you murmured.
Higgins shifted faintly. Eddie watched you carefully now, eyes practically sparkling because he knew that tone and knew it well. It was the same tone you used moments before verbally disemboweling someone.
“The Munson family,” Higgins continued carefully, “has had a difficult history with this school. Your husband, especially.”
Eddie gave a dry laugh. “Yeah, because this town treated me like I was carrying the plague.”
“You developed quite the reputation.”
“And your athletes didn’t?” Eddie shot back. “Interesting.”
“Eddie,” you said softly, not looking away from Higgins. You folded your hands neatly in your lap, expression serene enough to be unsettling.
“Our son,” you said carefully, “was cornered by three boys larger than him.”
Higgins opened his mouth, but you continued before he could speak.
“One shoved him into a locker repeatedly. Another destroyed his sketchbook. And when Theodore defended himself after being physically provoked, suddenly, he became the problem.”
Silence, and Higgins shifted again. You leaned forward slightly then, dark eyes steady on his.
“And now you sit before two former students who know exactly how Hawkins High operates and imply there is some sort of inherited defect in our child because his last name is Munson.”
Eddie looked dangerously proud beside you.
Higgins cleared his throat. “That isn’t what I meant.”
“No?” you asked gently. “Then perhaps choose your words more carefully.”
The office went quiet except for the rain tapping softly against the windows. Eddie finally leaned forward himself, rings clinking against the desk.
“Look,” he said flatly, “I know exactly what this place thinks about me. Fine. Whatever. But you do not get to stick that shit onto my son because some meathead couldn’t keep his hands to himself.”
Higgins sighed heavily. “No one is suspending Teddy.”
“Very generous,” Corvina’s voice drawled suddenly from the doorway.
All three of you turned. Corvina stood there holding a hall pass and looking deeply unimpressed.
“She followed us?” Higgins asked incredulously.
“She’s observant,” you replied.
“And nosy,” Eddie added proudly.
Corvina stepped inside without invitation. “Also, for the record, Tyler Bennett admitted in chemistry that he started it because Teddy wouldn’t let them make fun of that freshman girl.”
Eddie blinked. Then slowly turned toward his son’s principal with the most insufferably smug expression imaginable. “Huh,” he said. “Would you look at that?”
You reached over then, brushing your fingers lovingly along Eddie’s jaw.
“My darling,” you sighed softly. “It appears our son inherited your unfortunate tendency toward heroics.”
Eddie practically melted into your hand. “Baby,” he whispered dramatically, grabbing your wrist to kiss your palm, “you say the sexiest things to me.”
Corvina stood near the doorway with her arms crossed, entirely too pleased with herself. Eddie lounged back in his chair again, one boot hooked over his knee while he admired you with open, ridiculous affection.
Meanwhile, you remained perfectly composed, which somehow made you infinitely more terrifying.
“Well,” Higgins said stiffly after a long silence, “I believe this matter can be considered resolved.”
“How fortunate,” you replied smoothly.
Eddie snorted under his breath, and Higgins ignored him. “I’ll speak with the boys involved.”
“You should,” you said. “Especially if the school wishes to maintain the illusion of fairness.”
The principal’s jaw tightened faintly. Then, as though remembering something unpleasant, his eyes flicked briefly toward a framed flyer hanging beside his desk.
Hawkins High Arts Expansion Fund: Sponsored by the Munson Mortuary.
Eddie noticed immediately, as did you. A slow smile touched your lips. “You know,” you mused softly, rising from your chair, “Edward and I have always cared deeply about the arts.”
Eddie stood the second you did, naturally gravitating toward your side like a shadow stitched to your heels.
“The theater department,” you continued thoughtfully, smoothing the sleeve of your coat, “the music programs, student scholarships…”
Higgins straightened slightly.
“Hell,” Eddie added casually, “the new ceramics kiln was us.”
You turned your attention back to Higgins, expression warm enough to unsettle.
“It would simply devastate us,” you said gently, “if the environment here became hostile enough that we no longer felt comfortable continuing such generosity.”
Higgins cleared his throat quickly. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”
“No,” you agreed pleasantly. “I imagine it won’t.”
Eddie grinned beside you like the devil himself. God, he loved you. Loved the way you could flay someone alive without ever raising your voice. Loved the way people underestimated your softness right until the moment they realized it had teeth.
You reached for his hand, and he took it instantly.
“Well,” Eddie sighed dramatically, “this has been deeply irritating.”
As the four of you started toward the office door, Higgins spoke again. “Mrs. Munson.”
You paused, turning slightly. “I assure you,” he said carefully, “Theodore will be treated fairly.”
You held his gaze for a long moment, then smiled faintly. “I should hope so.”
And with that, you left. The halls quieted again as your family walked through them together.
Eddie’s hand remained clasped tightly with yours while Corvina drifted ahead in a sea of black fabric, entirely unbothered by the stares surrounding her.
The second the front doors shut behind you, Eddie turned toward you with outright admiration burning in his expression.
“Jesus Christ,” he breathed. “Marry me again.”
You looked at him calmly. “I would a thousand times.”
Candles flickered low throughout the house, golden light dancing against dark wallpaper while thunder rolled softly somewhere in the distance.
Dinner had long since ended, dishes abandoned in favor of the far more important activity of Eddie dramatically sprawled across the velvet chaise in the sitting room with his head in your lap.
“Darling,” he sighed as you lazily combed your fingers through his curls, “if I die right now, know that I died fulfilled.”
“You’re forty years old,” Corvina deadpanned from the armchair across the room. “Not a dying Victorian poet.”
Eddie pointed accusingly toward her without lifting his head. “Your mother encourages this cruelty.”
You smiled softly down at him. “I find it endearing.”
“That’s because you worship me.”
“Correct.”
Corvina physically recoiled. “Can you two act normal for ten minutes?”
“No,” both of you answered immediately.
Teddy snorted from the floor where he sat building something suspiciously dangerous out of spare radio parts. Then, the doorbell rang, and everyone paused. Corvina moved first, way too fast for her character.
You noticed immediately. Eddie noticed immediately. Teddy noticed immediately. The three of you slowly turned toward her as she stood abruptly from the chair, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles from her black skirt.
“…Interesting,” you murmured.
Corvina narrowed her eyes. “Don’t.”
Eddie sat up slowly now, a grin already forming. “Oh, my God.”
“It’s probably nothing.”
“Corvina Lucille Munson,” Teddy gasped dramatically. “Are you nervous?”
“I will kill you.”
The bell rang again. Corvina moved toward the front door with all the rigid dignity of someone approaching their execution.
You and Eddie exchanged a look. Then, silently, both rose from your seats to follow.
The front door creaked open, and standing beneath the porch light was perhaps the least expected person imaginable. A boy. Tall, clean-cut, nervous beyond belief. Bright blue varsity jacket. Hair neatly combed. Holding flowers.
The poor thing looked like he’d wandered into the wrong horror movie. Corvina stared at him; the boy stared at Corvina. Then his eyes slowly lifted, and landed directly on you and Eddie looming behind her like two beautifully dressed vampires awaiting explanation.
His face drained completely of color. Eddie blinked once, then immediately leaned toward you and whispered with genuine awe:
“He looks like he says ‘yes ma’am’ unironically.”
You nodded thoughtfully. “How refreshing.”
“Mom,” Corvina warned.
The boy swallowed hard. “H-hi, Mr. and Mrs. Munson.”
Eddie lit up instantly. “Oh, I like him.”
Corvina closed her eyes briefly like she regretted ever being born. You stepped forward gracefully, gaze drifting over the bouquet in his trembling hands.
“How lovely,” you said softly. “Funeral lilies.”
“They’re her favorite,” he blurted.
Then you looked at Corvina slowly, while Corvina looked horrified. Eddie looked seconds from losing his mind entirely.
“Teddy,” he whispered sharply. “Your sister has a boyfriend.”
“I KNEW IT.”
“He is not my boyfriend,” Corvina snapped immediately. “He’s an experiment.”
The boy blinked. “An… experiment?”
“You’re studying social dynamics?” you guessed politely.
“Yes,” Corvina said quickly.
Eddie crossed his arms. “By holding hands with the quarterback?”
“Second-string quarterback,” Teddy corrected.
Everyone looked at the boy while he awkwardly raised one hand. “We lost regionals.”
Eddie burst out laughing. “Oh my God, sweetheart,” he wheezed to you. “She brought home a jock.”
“He’s not a jock.”
The boy tried to help. “I’m also on the debate team.”
You gasped softly. “How multifaceted.”
Corvina looked moments from throwing herself from the staircase.
Eddie grinned wickedly at her. “Baby bat’s got a crush.”
“I do not.”
“He knows your favorite flowers,” Teddy sang obnoxiously.
“I hate this family.”
The boy, still somehow standing there despite the obvious psychological warfare occurring around him, looked toward Corvina carefully. And to everyone’s shock, his expression softened.
“She talks about you guys a lot, actually.”
Corvina froze.
Eddie immediately clutched his chest dramatically. “Oh, my.”
“Dad.”
“She told me,” the boy continued nervously, “that her parents are… intense, but very in love.”
You smiled faintly. Corvina looked like she wanted the floorboards to consume her.
“And,” he added carefully, “that her dad still leaves dead roses on her mom’s pillow every morning.”
Eddie looked at you instantly, utterly smitten. “Baby,” he whispered emotionally, “our love is inspiring the youth.”
You reached up, smoothing your hand against his jaw affectionately. “We are deeply romantic.”
“You’re deeply weird,” Teddy corrected.
“Thank you.”
Corvina groaned. “Can we please go before they start kissing again?”
Too late. Eddie had already grabbed your hand dramatically.
“You wound me, little raven,” he said, pressing a theatrical kiss against your knuckles. “Your mother’s beauty simply overwhelms me.”
The boy stared. Teddy stared. Corvina pinched the bridge of her nose. And you, you simply looked at your husband with soft, endless devotion while thunder echoed gently overhead.
“Oh, mon amour,” you sighed lovingly. “You are still the most handsome thing this house has ever held.”
Eddie nearly died on the spot.
The house felt different when the children were gone. Corvina had vanished off to some poetry reading with her painfully polite almost-boyfriend, while Teddy was staying overnight at a friend’s house after aggressively insisting he was “old enough to survive one night without parental supervision.”
Eddie had looked personally offended by the statement.
Now the evening rain had finally stopped, leaving the world outside soaked silver beneath the moonlight.
You stood in front of the bedroom mirror, fastening a pair of silver earrings, when Eddie appeared in the doorway, already staring at you like a man deeply unwell. His dark button-up hung half-open, curls still damp from the shower, rings glinting in the candlelight.
But his expression, my God. After all these years, he still looked at you like the first breath after drowning.
“Well,” he murmured, leaning against the doorframe, “there goes every coherent thought I’ve ever had.”
You smiled softly at his reflection. “You say that every time I wear black.”
“Because every time you wear black, I fall in love with you all over again.”
“You’re very dramatic.”
“You’re very beautiful. We all cope differently.” You laughed quietly as he crossed the room toward you.
The second he reached you, his hands found your waist instinctively, warm and familiar through the fabric of your dress. He buried his face briefly against your neck with a content sigh like “this—this right here—was the safest place in the universe.”
“Close your eyes,” he murmured.
You raised a brow. “Edward.”
“Please?”
Amused, you obeyed. You heard him moving around the room for a moment before something soft brushed across your palms.
Flowers.
When you opened your eyes again, Eddie stood before you holding a bouquet of black dahlias and dead roses tied together with velvet ribbon, just like your first date.
“Oh,” you whispered.
Eddie suddenly looked shy beneath all the tattoos and bravado. “I know they’re a little wilted, but Gareth’s florist cousin said—”
“They’re perfect.”
The relief on his face was immediate. You reached up carefully, fingertips brushing his cheek while he melted into your touch on instinct.
“Do you remember,” you asked softly, “what you said to me the night you gave me flowers for the first time?”
Eddie grinned a little. “Yeah.” He leaned closer. “‘Most girls want roses. You looked like you’d appreciate something half-dead.’”
“And I nearly married you on the spot.”
“You definitely wanted me carnally.”
You laughed again and kissed him gently. Eddie hummed happily against your mouth, already chasing after another kiss before you’d fully pulled away.
“Come on,” he whispered. “I’ve got a surprise.”
The graveyard sat at the edge of Hawkins beneath enormous twisted trees, moonlight filtering silver across old headstones and damp grass. Most people found it unsettling, but you found it beautiful, especially tonight.
Your breath caught softly as Eddie led you through the cemetery gates hand in hand.
Because there, beneath the crooked oak tree where he’d taken you all those years ago, sat an entire picnic laid out atop black blankets and velvet pillows. Candles flickered inside lanterns. An old radio played something metal, low enough to blend with the wind.
Your favorite wine rested beside a basket overflowing with chocolate-covered strawberries and homemade pastries, which Eddie had very obviously burnt slightly. And in the center, a vase of black dahlias. Eddie rubbed the back of his neck suddenly, almost bashful. “I know it’s kinda stupid—”
“It isn’t.”
Your voice was so soft that it stopped him immediately. He watched as you stepped slowly into the little space he’d created, moonlight catching the emotion shimmering across your face.
“You remembered everything,” you whispered.
“Course I did.”
Eddie moved closer then, taking your hands carefully. “This is where I fell in love with you,” he admitted quietly. “Figured it deserved revisiting.”
Your chest ached. Because despite all his theatrics, despite the flirting and dramatics and endless teasing, Eddie loved with terrifying sincerity, always had.
You touched his face gently. “You never told me you loved me that night.”
“No,” he said softly. “But I knew.”
The wind moved through the cemetery trees around you, carrying the scent of rain and earth and candle smoke. Then Eddie suddenly dropped dramatically onto the blanket.
“Now,” he announced, patting the spot beside him, “come seduce your husband under the moonlight.”
You smiled helplessly and settled beside him. Immediately, he pulled you into his lap like gravity itself demanded it. You curled against him easily, fingers playing with the rings on his hand while his chin rested atop your shoulder.
For a while, neither of you spoke. You simply existed there together beneath the stars, wrapped in candlelight and old music and decades worth of devotion.
Eventually, Eddie pressed a slow kiss against your neck. “You know,” he murmured, “I was so scared to bring you here on our first date.”
You turned slightly. “You were?”
“Terrified.” He laughed softly against your skin. “Wayne told me if I took a girl to a graveyard, she’d think I was either a serial killer or possessed.”
“And instead?”
“You told me it was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for you.”
“It still is.”
Eddie looked at you then. And suddenly he was twenty again; grease stains on his hands, heart beating too fast, staring at the most hauntingly beautiful girl he’d ever seen while wondering how someone so lovely could possibly want him back.
Only now, he knew, because you’d spent decades proving it.
His hand slid carefully against your cheek. “My sweet girl,” he whispered.
You kissed him before he could say anything else. Slow and loving, the kind of kiss built from years and years of choosing each other over and over again. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rolled softly again.
Eddie smiled against your mouth. “Think the kids are behaving themselves?”
You smoothed your fingers through his curls lazily. “Not our concern tonight.”
“God,” he sighed happily, pulling you impossibly closer, “I adore you.”
“Eddie,” you whispered, tilting your head as his lips brushed the side of your neck. “You’ve outdone yourself, mon amour.”
He hummed against your skin, the sound vibrating through you. “Only the best for you.”
You laughed softly, and the sound made him tighten his hold, one hand sliding reverently down your side, tracing the black silk of your dress.
Eddie loved pleasing you more than anything, maybe even more than breathing. He lived for the way your breath would hitch when he touched you just right, for the way you looked at him like he was the only man in any world worth having.
His fingers found the hem of your dress and slipped beneath it, warm palm gliding up your thigh. “Let me worship you here,” he murmured, voice low and rough with devotion.
You turned in his lap, straddling him, your long dark hair falling around you both like a curtain. The cemetery was empty, the night yours alone. You cupped his face, thumbs brushing his cheeks, silver rings cool against his skin.
“Then worship me, Edward,” you said softly, the command wrapped in velvet.
Eddie’s eyes darkened with hunger and endless love. He kissed you deeply, almost reverently at first, then with growing heat as your tongues met. His hands roamed, pushing your dress up around your hips. He groaned when he realized you’d worn nothing beneath it.
“Fuuuck me,” he breathed against your mouth, a crooked, adoring grin breaking through.
“Oh my love, I plan to.”
He laughed, the sound rich and warm, then lowered you gently onto your back atop the velvet pillows. The cool night air kissed your skin as he peeled the dress from your body, kissing every inch he revealed. Your collarbones, the swell of your breasts, the soft plane of your stomach. When he reached the apex of your thighs, he looked up at you with pure reverence.
He settled between your legs, curls brushing your inner thighs as he pressed open-mouthed kisses along your skin. His tongue found your center with devastating patience; slow, worshipful strokes that had your fingers tightening in his hair.
He moaned into you like you were the finest thing he’d ever tasted, savoring every gasp and whisper of his name that left your lips.
“That’s it, sweetheart,” he murmured against your slick flesh, voice thick. “Let me hear how good I make you feel.”
Your back arched as pleasure coiled tight inside you, and Eddie watched it all unfold like a man witnessing divinity. When you came undone beneath his tongue, thighs trembling around his head, he held you through it, kissing you gently until the waves subsided.
Only then did he rise, shedding his shirt and pants with reverent haste. His cock was hard and aching for you, but he took his time, crawling over you, kissing you so deeply you tasted yourself on his tongue.
“I love you,” he whispered against your lips, lining himself up. “More than life. More than death. More than anything in this fucking universe.”
You wrapped your legs around his waist and pulled him inside you with one smooth thrust. Both of you moaned at the perfect fit; years together, and it still felt like coming home.
Eddie moved with slow, deep rolls of his hips, savoring every clench of your walls around him. His forehead pressed to yours, curls falling around your faces as he gazed into your eyes.
“Look at me while I fuck you, baby,” he breathed, devotion dripping from every word. “Want to see those saintly eyes when you come on my cock again.”
The cemetery felt alive around you; the wind whispering through the trees, the distant hoot of an owl, the scent of earth and night-blooming flowers mixing with sweat and sex. Eddie’s pace gradually quickened, one hand sliding between you to circle your clit while the other pinned your wrist gently above your head.
You came again with a soft, broken cry of his name, pulling him over the edge with you. He buried himself deep, spilling inside you with a guttural groan, hips stuttering as pleasure wrecked him. Even then, he kept moving; lazy, loving thrusts to draw it out, kissing you through every aftershock.
Afterward, he collapsed beside you and immediately pulled you into his arms, tucking your head beneath his chin. His fingers traced lazy patterns along your spine while your leg draped over his hip.
Eddie pressed a kiss to your hair, voice hoarse with satisfaction. “I’d desecrate every grave in Hawkins if it meant making you feel like that.”
You smiled against his chest, fingertips playing with the silver strands beginning to thread through his dark curls. “If we keep this up, Corvina and Teddy may have a sibling.”
“Would that be so bad? Another mini-Munson running around, raising hell?”
You rolled your eyes lovingly, planting a few peppered kisses along his chest and jaw. “Poor Principal Higgins wouldn’t know what to do with himself with a third Munson.”
Dinner in the Creel-Munson House was rarely quiet. Not because anyone particularly tried to be loud, it was simply impossible for four Munsons to exist in the same room without the atmosphere becoming theatrical.
Thunder groaned outside while candlelight flickered across the dining room, illuminating velvet curtains, silver dishes, and the massive candelabra Teddy insisted made “every meal feel like a vampire intervention.”
Tonight, Eddie had been suspiciously smug since five o’clock, you noticed immediately. Corvina noticed immediately. Teddy noticed immediately. Which meant all three of you spent most of dinner staring at him with increasing suspicion while he fought a grin behind his wine glass.
Finally, Teddy pointed his fork accusingly. “You’re hiding something.”
Eddie gasped dramatically. “What a horrible accusation.”
“You’ve been smirking for an hour,” Corvina added.
“You also called the garlic bread ‘historic,’” Teddy said. “That means something’s wrong.”
You smiled faintly from your seat at the head of the table. “Darling,” you said gently to Eddie, “are you planning a crime?”
Eddie looked delighted by the question. “No,” he answered proudly. “Something better.”
Then, with all the ceremony of a man revealing the crown jewels, Eddie reached into his jacket and slapped four tickets dramatically onto the table. Silence.
Teddy squinted. Then his eyes widened so violently you thought they might leave his skull.
“No fucking way.”
“Language,” you corrected softly.
“No FUCKING way.”
Corvina leaned forward slightly now, dark eyes narrowing in interest. Eddie sat back in his chair with unbearable smugness. “Iron Maiden,” he announced grandly. “Indianapolis. Front section.”
Teddy SHRIEKED, like actually shrieked. The sound echoed through the dining room while Eddie burst into laughter.
“Oh my God,” Teddy gasped, grabbing the tickets with trembling hands. “Dad—Dad, are you serious?!”
“Your old man still has connections, baby.”
Teddy launched out of his chair instantly.
You sighed knowingly. “Brace yourself, mon amour.”
A second later, Teddy practically tackled Eddie backward in a hug. “There he is,” Eddie wheezed dramatically as Teddy nearly crushed him. “My son. My flesh and blood.”
“You are the coolest person alive.”
“I know.”
Corvina, meanwhile, carefully picked up one of the tickets with much more restraint. But you noticed the tiny upward twitch at the corner of her mouth immediately.
“Dickinson is still performing?” she asked calmly.
Eddie clutched his chest. “That sounded almost excited.”
“It wasn’t.”
“She got the Munson concert gene,” Teddy informed you loudly.
“She absolutely did,” Eddie whispered emotionally. Corvina rolled her eyes, though there was the faintest flush creeping into her cheeks now. You watched your family fondly from your chair, chin resting against your hand.
This. This was your favorite thing.
Eddie glowing with happiness while the children inherited every loud, passionate, ridiculous piece of him without even realizing it. Teddy flopped back into his chair, grinning wildly.
“This is literally the greatest day of my life.”
Eddie pointed at him immediately. “That’s exactly what I said when your mother kissed me the first time.”
“You say that about everything Mom does,” Corvina muttered.
“Because your mother is extraordinary.”
You reached over and touched his hand gently, as Eddie looked at you like he’d been shot directly through the heart.
Then, Corvina cleared her throat, causing everyone to look at her immediately.
“…What,” she said flatly.
Eddie narrowed his eyes. “You’re about to ask for something.”
“I’m not.”
“You did the voice.”
Teddy gasped dramatically. “She DID do the voice.”
Corvina looked deeply regretful. “I hate all of you.”
You smiled softly. “What is it, little raven?”
A pause. Then, with visible reluctance: “…Could I possibly have one additional ticket?”
The room went silent, and Eddie blinked once. Then slowly lowered his wine glass.
“…For who?”
Corvina stared at her plate. “No one.”
“Corvina.”
Another pause.
“…Damien.”
Eddie’s entire body reacted as if he’d just been informed the government had finally collapsed.
“THE BOYFRIEND?”
“He is not—”
“The assistant quarterback?!” Teddy shouted.
“THE DEBATE CLUB ONE?” Eddie cried simultaneously.
Corvina groaned into her hands. You, meanwhile, were trying very hard not to smile.
“He likes Iron Maiden,” Corvina muttered.
Eddie looked genuinely betrayed. “The clean-cut child likes Maiden?”
“He listens to metal with me.”
Eddie stared at her for a long moment. Then suddenly leaned back in his chair, placing a hand dramatically over his heart. “Oh, my God.”
“What?”
“She likes him.”
“I do not.”
“She’s sharing music with him,” Eddie whispered hoarsely to you. “Baby, that’s intimate.”
Teddy looked horrified. “That’s like… sacred.”
“Exactly.”
Corvina looked ready to walk into traffic. You finally spoke, voice warm with amusement.
“Perhaps,” you said carefully, “she simply enjoys his company.”
Corvina nodded quickly. “Exactly.”
Eddie narrowed his eyes immediately. “Have you held hands?”
“Dad.”
“HAVE you?”
“No.” Too fast.
Teddy slammed both hands on the table. “THAT WAS A LIE.”
Corvina pointed at him. “You are dead to me.”
Eddie suddenly looked emotional again. “Oh, sweetheart,” he sighed dramatically, “your first love.”
“It’s not love!”
You stood then, gliding around the table toward your daughter. Corvina visibly braced herself for teasing. Instead, you simply smoothed a strand of dark hair behind her ear gently.
And very softly, you said: “If someone makes our little raven smile enough to frighten her this badly… we should like to know him.”
Corvina froze. Because despite all the drama and teasing, your family loved hard. Openly, and without shame, just like Eddie always had.
The house had long since gone quiet. Somewhere downstairs, the grandfather clock groaned past midnight while rain tapped softly against the windows of your bedroom. Eddie lay sprawled across your chest like an oversized cat, one arm wrapped tightly around your waist while you lazily played with his curls.
This had always been his favorite place to exist, right here, with you.
Even after all these years, he still sought you out instinctively. Every night, somehow ended the same way: his head in your lap, or tucked against your chest, or buried into your neck while he mumbled half-asleep nonsense against your skin. Tonight was no different.
“You know,” Eddie murmured sleepily, eyes closed, “I think Corvina gets scarier every day.”
You smiled softly, carefully winding one silver-threaded curl around your finger. “She is your daughter.”
“Exactly why I’m concerned.”
“You cried when she said she held his hand.”
“I did not cry.”
“You absolutely did.”
Eddie cracked one eye open. “I became emotional.”
“You gasped loud enough to frighten Teddy.”
“That was fatherly grief.”
Your laugh came soft and quiet in the dark. God, he loved that sound.
Eddie tilted his head slightly against you just to hear it again. Then your fingers paused suddenly in his curls, a tiny thing, barely noticeable. But Eddie felt it immediately.
“What?” he murmured.
You said nothing at first. Instead, your fingers carefully separated one curl from the rest, then another. Eddie finally looked up slightly, finding your expression softened by something achingly tender.
“My darling,” you whispered.
“Hm?”
You gently pulled something free: a silver strand, then another.
Eddie blinked once. “Oh,” he said.
There was no fear in his voice, just surprise. You held the strands delicately between your fingers, studying them beneath candlelight like they were precious threads of moonlight themselves.
Eddie suddenly looked sheepish. “Well,” he muttered, “guess I’m getting old.”
You looked almost offended by the statement. “Edward Munson,” you said softly, “you have survived.”
You slid from beneath him carefully, crossing toward the antique vanity near the window while Eddie watched you in sleepy confusion.
Then you reached for the little silver locket resting beside your jewelry tray, the one you wore nearly every day, etched with the letter ‘E’.
Eddie pushed himself upright slightly as you opened it carefully. Inside rested tiny fragments of your life together.
A pressed black rose petal from your wedding bouquet. A piece of the guitar pick Eddie used the first time he played guitar for you. A photograph so faded it barely showed two young people grinning in a cemetery beneath storm clouds.
Eddie went completely still.
You placed the silver strands gently beside them, like they were treasures. Then you closed the locket softly and climbed back into bed.
Eddie stared at you for a long moment after you settled beside him again. “…You kept all that?”
You looked genuinely puzzled. “Of course I did.”
“Baby, there’s literally a piece of an old guitar pick in there.”
“The broken corner because you were nervous while playing for me.”
His expression cracked instantly. “You remember that?”
“You dropped it three times before speaking to me,” you replied calmly. “You were adorable.”
Eddie let out a weak laugh, suddenly overwhelmed in the way only you could overwhelm him. Because no one had ever looked at the broken, embarrassing, vulnerable pieces of him and treated them like sacred things before you.
Your fingers slowly returned to his curls. “You know what I see,” you murmured softly, “when I look at these?”
Eddie shook his head once.
“A life.”
His eyes burned immediately, so you kissed his forehead gently.
“The silver only proves you stayed long enough to grow old with me,” you whispered.
And that nearly destroyed him. Eddie suddenly pulled himself over you completely, burying his face into your neck while holding you tight enough to make you laugh softly again.
“Jesus Christ,” he mumbled against your skin. “How are you real?”
You stroked your fingers through his curls carefully, silver strands and all. “I might ask you the same thing.”
“No, seriously,” Eddie groaned dramatically. “You put my gray hairs in a locket. That’s insane behavior.”
“You married me willingly.”
“I’d marry you in every lifetime.”
Your expression softened instantly. Eddie lifted his head, then just enough to look at you through the candlelight; older now, yes, lines at the corners of his eyes and silver threading through dark curls.
But still the same boy who fell hopelessly in love with a gothic girl in black lace all those years ago. Still yours, always yours.
“You know what the worst part is?” he murmured sleepily.
“What’s that, mon amour?”
“I still get nervous around you.”
You smiled. Then pulled him down into another kiss while rain whispered softly against the windows of your haunted little home.
AGH I HOPE YOU ALL LOVED ITTT:)))
Hell of a Summer pt.2 is currently in the works, GET EXCITEDDDD YUHHH
The one where Jack Abbot accidentally knocks up Robby's little (step)sister in his final year of college.
warnings: this blog is 18+, mdni! this fic deals with pregnancy, discussions of abortion and medical complications, explicit sexual content, slut-shaming (not by jack), reader is robby's step-sister, they are not related biologically, and reader's appearance is not described at all.
add yourself to my taglist(s) HERE! (taglist for this specific fic is full, but you can opt to be tagged in everything that i write)
prologue sneak peak // meet the cast // instagram post snippet // original moodboard
so i’m imagining jack with a retired police k9…one who’s not very old but maybe his original owner passed away/he was just a little too anxious to be in the force for too long.
jack has no intentions of getting a dog, but the second he sees a post about him on facebook, looking for a new home, jack’s done for. the dog is his by the weekend. he keeps his name, it’s probably like apollo or ranger or something.
the second that dog is home, he’s attached to jack at the hip. the people jack picked him up from had said ranger was very good at his job; strong and stubborn. didn’t care about people very much, just listened the way he was trained to do, but was a good dog. a little anxious, but with jack? he’s completely different.
ranger’s anxiety is ten times higher any time jack is gone, standing alert at the door waiting for him to come back. sometimes he whines a little, but was otherwise trained not to. he follows jack every time he gets up. even if he just laid down & got comfy. if jack is getting up & moving, so is ranger. he trails a few inches behind him everywhere he goes.
the kitchen? ranger is there by his feet, looking up at him with those big brown eyes.
the bathroom? ranger’s in the doorway.
the bedroom? ranger’s at the end of the bed, shifting on all four feet & whining a little until jack invites him up. every. single. time.
don’t even bring up jack leaving for work, that dog is completely lost. to the point jack has put up a camera in his apartment to keep an eye on him. asks his neighbors & robby to stop in & check on him.
ranger becomes 100% a baby after settling in with jack. the blanket jack got him for his dog bed is drug around the house in his mouth, toys scattered everywhere. the armchair closest to the window is his.
jack ends up nicknaming him ‘sarge’ when he’s being dominant/determined in getting what he wants. like pushing jack around with his nose at the back of his knee for food or to steer him a certain direction. he laughs and puts his hands up in defeat; “ok, ok, i’m coming. whatever you say, sarge.”
jack gets him certified as a service animal, he is a vet after all. it happens after ranger grounds him one night after a bad nightmare without even being trained or told to. jack’s ptsd is flaring; & ranger just…pushes him down gently with his nose, forcing jack to lay on his back. jack doesn’t even get a ragged word out before ranger is laying completely on-top of him, chin over jack’s shoulder & lightly bumping his cheek with his wet nose every few minutes.
jack would never admit it, but ranger has helped with his anxiety & ptsd SIGNIFICANTLY; & maybe jack has helped ranger’s a bit too.
ranger tags along on SWAT missions with jack sometimes—he can sniff out drugs & bombs, etc.—only if jack thinks he’ll be really useful, otherwise his pup is retired. he lets his boy rest, he’s worked hard in his life.
ranger is absolutely adored by the Pitt-crew, to the point people start getting more excited to see him than jack & greet him before their own attending; much to jack’s dismay. faux-hurt & dramatic performance on display every time. jack will bring ranger to see kid patients that are waiting or upstairs in a room after being admitted.
dana’s an absolute sucker for ranger, there will always be pieces of food snuck from various things in the break room pulled out her pocket when she thinks jack isn’t looking.
“that old man’s keeping you too skinny, not feeding you huh? it’s ok, we won’t tell him a thing.”
but jack catches her every time; “dana—he’s not skinny he’s fit.”
“i can see his ribs.”
“you’re supposed to be able to see dogs’ ribs.”
but secretly at home? jack will slip him a piece of steak or meat from his sandwich at lunch or whatever he’s ordered to eat that day. he also gets plenty of treats.
they start running together in the park sometimes when jack goes, getting up right before the sun & stopping for breakfast on the way back. they go hiking sometimes too; ranger in his own camp harness that matches jack’s backpack if he’s not in his SWAT one.
at night when he can’t sleep, ranger has half his body weight over him, helping him stay in the room & not float away in his thoughts. that dog is 100% his. it’s even better when you come into the picture, & ranger lays draped across both of your feet, keeping an eye on both of you to make sure everything is as it should be before he lets himself go to sleep too.
so yeah, maybe jack had no plans on getting a dog, but he’s sure as hell happy he did.
content: 18+ mdni, widow!jack abbot, fake dating, sexually explicit content, age gap, discussions of miscarriage, discussions of surgical miscarriage, discussions of infidelity, dysfunctional family, discussions of divorce, wedding, hurt/comfort, angst with happy ending, mild violence, some named family members and ex significant other
words: 26.7k
synopsis: when the wedding invitation arrives for your ex husband's marriage to your little sister, you're tempted to set fire to your entire life. your attending, jack abbot, has other ideas.
a/n: i had a blast writing this all the drama all the love all the hurt all the pining!! it's been a while since i wrote something for jack and i'm really happy to be putting this out just in time for dr abbot to be back on our tv screens!! title is based on the song me before you by bleachers. i hope you love it <3 syd (also i know i did not edit this well so i apologize in advance for the typos)
The night had already started off badly enough before you checked the mail. You'd slept through three alarms, stubbed your toe on the dresser in your rush to get dressed, and burnt your coffee all before leaving your apartment. In hindsight, you should have left the overflowing mailbox alone on your way out. You wished you could have foreseen how yanking all the pieces of mail out of the small black box that hung by the door would ruin your whole shift. Would ruin your whole week, really.
Getting into your car, you had tossed the mail into the passenger seat. It wasn't until you were stopped at a light about five minutes away from the hospital that you caught sight of the envelope. Pastel pink bows and your name etched in cursive.
Your heart dropped, eyes glued to the envelope, the rest of your body locking up, "You've gotta be fucking kidding me."
A horn split the air from behind you and you jerked your head back to the front and saw the green light, "Fuck—Alright, alright!"
Your knee shook the entire rest of the way to the hospital and once you were parked, your hands were so shaky as you tried to open the envelope you immediately received a paper cut. But the pain was nothing compared to the agony that you felt ripple through your chest as your eyes traveled over the invitation, gold and pink glitter floating around the car onto your scrubs.
After staring at the piece of cardstock in your hand for too long, you felt your phone vibrate. Blinking rapidly you pulled it out to see a text from Jack Abbot: You good?
Your eyes traveled to the time at the top of your screen to see you were nearly five minutes late to the start of shift. Normally you walked through those doors at least fifteen minutes early. He was clearly showing heroic levels of restraint by waiting until you were several minutes late to contact you.
Sorry, running late. Be there in 5. You texted back hurriedly and were rewarded five seconds later with a thumbs up reaction.
Taking in a shaky breath, you closed out of your messages app to dial your mom.
She picked up after the second ring, "Hey, honey, everything okay? Thought you worked tonight."
"Has Maya lost her fucking mind?"
Your mom was quiet for a few moments, "…So you got the wedding invitation then?"
"I'm not going," You said, angry tears already burning the backs of your eyes, "and to top it all off, she's getting married at the exact fucking venue I wanted to get married at but David and I couldn't afford it at the time. She knew that, she fucking knew it was my dream wedding—"
"I know, baby," your mom said sympathetically, "I don't expect you to come."
"Why would she do this?" You asked, and finally, the anger evaporated from your voice, replaced with the pure devastation, "I mean, she already fucking won, what else does she want? Having my husband and my dream wedding isn't enough for her? She needs to humiliate me in front of everyone we know as well?"
"I don't think she's doing it to hurt you," your mom said quietly, "believe it or not, I think she just wants her big sister at her wedding. She misses you."
You laughed humorlessly, straightening your shoulders in an attempt to rid your body of the despair that now saturated it, "She should have thought about that before she fucked my husband."
Your mother sighed on the other line, "I told her that you'd react like this, but she wouldn't listen to me."
"You think I'm being unreasonable?" You snapped.
"Of course I don't," She said firmly, "and you know that. You know exactly how I feel about this whole thing and so does she. It's a goddamn shame. And if she ever wants to fix things with you she'll probably have to wait until she's divorced or that son of a bitch is dead."
You snorted at that and your mother, normally a perfectly poised saint, rushed in to damage control, "Sorry, I didn't mean that, I actually think his mother's a sweet lady."
You swiped at a tear and sniffled, "Yeah, she is. Thank you for listening to me scream and cry again, but I have to go to work now, I'm late."
"Anytime, kiddo. I love you."
As you hung up, you saw another text from Abbot come in: Come find me when you get here.
You sighed, "shit."
As senior resident, you had a pretty close relationship with your attending. Professionally, anyway. But you being late was out of character for you and Jack Abbot was perceptive. He'd want to get to the bottom of whatever was wrong and no matter how you tried to deflect, you knew he'd persist.
But that wouldn't stop you from trying.
"Hey hun," Lena peered at you over the rim of her glasses as you approached the hub, "you alright?"
"Yeah, just overslept." You forced a smile, "You know where I can find Abbot?"
She directed you over towards the beds in north where you found Abbot discussing a treatment plan with Ellis outside a patient's room. When he saw you, he gestured for you wait a second while he finished up with Ellis. Once she walked off, he gestured for you to follow him.
You fell into step beside him as you walked around the ER, "Everything okay with you?" he asked.
"Yes."
You'd arrived back at the hub and Jack turned fully to you, hazel eyes laser focused on you. You hated this about him, how he demanded your eyes on his at all times so he could properly assess you, as if you were a patient in need of fixing.
"That's it?"
You shrugged, "Yes."
He tilted his head slightly, "In the entire time you've been on my shift, you've never been late. Not even once."
"Yeah," You said, annoyance coating your tone, "which is why you should cut me some slack."
"You're not in trouble," he said mildly, "I'm just checking in. You sure everything's fine?"
You sighed, "Yes."
He stared at you a moment longer before taking an iPad from the docking station, "Okay, fine. Grab a med student and handle chairs."
"Chairs?" Your eyebrows shot up your forehead, "You are pissed at me."
"No," Abbot said shaking his head, eyebrows raised as he looked up from his iPad into your face, "You were late and I need someone to triage and who better than my senior resident?"
You scoffed, and pivoted on your foot, "Unbelievable."
"Call me if you need me," he shouted after you.
"I won't," you called back.
Jack watched you go, wrangling a student by the arm as you went, and then turned back to Lena, "She tell you what her problem is?"
Lena shook her head, "No, she even fake smiled at me when she got here."
He shook his head, "There's definitely a problem though, right? I'm not imagining things?"
"She's been off for weeks now," Lena looked over her glasses at him conspiratorially, "I know you hate the rumor mill, but there is one going around that she got divorced recently. And it wasn't mutual."
He looked up at Lena, incredulous look on his face, "That's ridiculous. She would've told me."
Lena shrugged, "Look, I'm just telling you what I've heard."
Jack turned towards the door to chairs where you had disappeared and frowned. You would have told him, right? The two of you had always been professional, but he did consider you something like a friend after you had been here for nearly four years. When there were social events after work or on days off, you had always gravitated towards him and Robby. A bit older than most of the other residents and students, it was easier to find common ground with them. Things had never gotten overtly personal, but there had always been some level of sharing about personal lives. And he really thought the two of you were close enough that you would have told him. Especially if you were struggling.
"When did that start swirling around?" He asked, turning back to Lena.
"Few months ago, I think," she said, "Jesse said he overheard her take a call with a divorce attorney when he was heading out one day."
Jack ran a hand through his curls and sighed. Jesse wasn't the gossiping type and if he did, that usually meant it was true.
"Okay," he said finally, "you'll come find me if things go to shit?"
"You got it."
***
You could feel yourself slipping as the shift went on, beginning to snap at patients and beginning to snap at the med student you'd pulled, Whitaker, who wasn't even really supposed to be here. He was usually on the day shift, but the usual single med student allotted to the night shift was out on bereavement and Whitaker had volunteered to fill the gap. You liked him, honestly, even if he was a bit spacey at times, he was earnest and never made the same mistake twice.
Except today, when he got you the wrong antibiotics, not once, but twice.
"Whitaker," You said slowly, "am I not speaking clearly?"
"Wha—? I—No—I mean, yes. You are."
"Then why are these still the wrong meds?"
Whitaker was starting to get flustered and you were getting more and more annoyed— "Because I changed the order."
It was Abbot's voice that came behind you and you turned to see him standing there, arms crossed with that disappointed look on his face you had had the displeasure of encountering just one other time while working on his shift. When you had tried handling an aggressive patient on your own without calling him or security and ended up with a black eye.
"Whitaker, you can finish up here?" Abbot asked, eyes never leaving yours. When Whitaker agreed, Abbot steered you out of the waiting room by your arm back into central.
You wrenched your arm away from him, "You don't need to drag me, I can walk."
"What is going on with you?"
"Nothing," You threw your hands up in exasperation, "I'm irritated that I'm out in triage—"
"You're too good for triage?"
"I know you're doing it to punish me—"
"When have you ever known me to punish anyone?"
"You changed my order, why? You don't even trust me to prescribe simple antibiotics?"
He sighed, "We didn't have the dosage you were looking for up here, it would've taken longer to call the pharmacy and Whitaker was too scared to come back to you empty handed, so I told him to get something else. It had nothing to do with your decision making, though the way you've been treating Whitaker all shift is absolutely unacceptable for a senior resident and you know that."
You never cried at work. It was your one rule. Even crying in the parking lot felt like sacrilege. No matter how fucked up things got, and they'd gotten well and truly fucked, you tucked it away until you got home.
But with Abbot looking at you like this, his judgment heavy as stone, on top of the invitation… It was too much. PTMC had always been your one safe haven from everything, but you had managed to ruin that, too.
Abbot looked at you with alarm when he saw your eyes water and your chin wobble, "Hey, what the hell?" he said softly and then quickly ushered you out to the ambulance bay, shielding you from anyone else's prying eyes.
"I'm sorry," you blubbered after you'd gone through the double doors, "I have to apologize to Whitaker."
"Not now, later."
You leaned against the wall of the hospital and scrubbed your hands over your face, "I was so mean to him all shift."
"I know, he told me," At the look you gave him through your hands Abbot shook his head, "Not to get you in trouble, he was worried about you. Said you weren't acting like yourself. And I have to agree, you're normally a very kind and patient teacher."
His praise—which you felt was undeserved—made you want to cry all over again, but you managed to swallow past the lump in your throat. Abbot leaned up against the wall next to you and pushed his hands into his pants pockets, "So, I'll ask you again: What is going on with you?"
You sighed and crossed your arms over your chest, fought the urge to self soothe by wrapping your arms entirely around yourself, "You won't let it go unless I tell you, right?"
"Damn straight," He said immediately, "We can keep it between us, but it's starting to effect your work now, so I'd like to know what's going on. And maybe I can help."
You scoffed and looked down at your feet, "No one knows besides my family and that's only because I had no choice," You swallowed, "It's humiliating. You might look at me differently."
He narrowed his eyes at you, "If you really don't want to tell me I won't force you. But I promise there's very little you could say that would make me think less of you."
You closed your eyes and leaned your head back against the wall. You weren't sure why it even mattered to you what your attending thought of your personal life. Despite your borderline friendly relationship with Abbot, there had still always been the irrepressible urge to impress him, to make sure he both liked and respected you. Probably had something to do with your absent father, but that was something to unpack in therapy.
"I got my baby sister's wedding invitation in the mail today," You said slowly, could already feel the heat bubbling beneath your skin, "And the man she's marrying is my… ex husband."
You felt the double take that came from his direction, but you couldn't find it in yourself to meet his eyes.
After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, he cleared his throat, "I—I didn't know you got divorced."
You nodded, "Finding out they were having a year long affair was a hell of a motivator to get it done quickly and quietly."
"Fuck," he murmured under his breath, "When did all this happen?"
You chewed the inside of your cheek, "They started sleeping together while I was recovering from the miscarriage."
You thought you heard his sharp intake of breath at that, but you still couldn't look over at him. The miscarriage had happened almost two years ago now and marked the beginning of your life turning upside down.
You had lost a pregnancy you didn't even know had been in your womb. Fighting with David as he drove you home in stony silence while you cried about how you couldn't understand why he was acting this way, you'd always said you didn't want kids.
How when the bleeding didn't stop, didn't slow the way it was supposed to, and you told David you needed to go back to the hospital he—the lawyer—somehow convinced you—the doctor—that you weren't bleeding that much. You thought about this moment almost daily, now. You felt so stupid for letting him debate his way out of taking you to PTMC. It had taken you hours to finally text Abbot, feeling lightheaded from the blood loss, if he thought you should come in.
He had left the hospital to come get you and you remembered his quiet anger as he condescended to David while carrying you to his truck.
In the end, surgical intervention had been required to stop the bleeding and when you woke up to David beside himself with remorse beside you, you'd forgiven him.
And yet, you'd find out much later that while you recovered from surgery, he began sleeping with Maya.
"Well," Abbot said after a few moments of shocked silence, "Knowing that you've been holding all that in for… months now, I'd say you've actually shown remarkable restraint."
You huffed a laugh through your nose, "You think so?"
"Yeah, I do. If I were you they'd probably both be six feet under by now."
You hummed, "I considered it when I opened the invitation today."
"Why don't you go home?" He said quietly and you finally turned to look at him, his hazel eyes glinting in the moonlight, "We can handle the rest of the shift without you."
You shook your head, "I feel worse when I'm not working. I'm still not used to going home to an empty apartment."
At that moment Lena poked her head out into the ambulance bay, charge phone pressed to her ear, "Incoming MVA, five minutes out."
You both pushed yourselves off the wall to head back inside, "Hey," he said, fingertips ghosting over your wrist as you walked ahead of him, "if you won't go home, will you get breakfast with me after shift?"
You bit your lip as you looked back at him, "I'm okay. Really. You don't have to babysit me."
He shook his head, "No, I'm asking for me. You wouldn't make an old man eat by himself, would you?"
He had that easy smirk on his face as he followed you inside, helped tie your trauma gown at the base of your neck. Your stomach flipped the way it sometimes did when he showed you too much attention. You had always dismissed it as a silly crush, the cliche daddy issues you couldn't quite shake even in adulthood.
"Okay," you said finally, turning back to face him as sirens called in the distance, "fine, I'll get breakfast with you."
His grin widened, "Atta girl."
And then he was darting back outside to meet the ambulance, oblivious to the way your cheeks heated and your heart fluttered in response.
***
The only thought in your head as you sat across the diner table from Jack Abbot and the waitress poured you a cup of coffee was that your lips were chapped and you'd been picking at them all shift.
After the waitress took your order and walked off, Jack's eyes traced your face and watched as you chewed on your lower lip, "Stop that," he said softly, "You've been tearing your lips up all day."
Embarrassed, you pressed your lips together and clasped your hands in your lap, "Sorry."
He frowned, "What was that?"
"What?"
"Did you just apologize to me?"
The corner of your mouth tugged up just slightly, "Don't act like you've never heard an apology before."
"I have," he smirked, "just not from you. Now I've heard you say it twice in one day."
You rolled your eyes, "Oh, that is not true."
The waitress returned with your food and after thanking her, Jack speared a homefry into his mouth before turning his attention back to you, "So," he said, "What're you gonna do?"
You frowned, swallowing the eggs you'd spooned into your mouth, "About what?"
"Your sister's wedding."
You shrugged, "Nothing. She knows how I feel, it was fucked up of her to even invite me. I'm not even gonna RSVP."
His eyebrows knitted together, "What d'you mean? You're not gonna go?"
You snorted, "A weekend full of watching my baby sister and ex husband celebrate their love and solidify their union in the place I dreamed and gushed about getting married at myself to my sister for years?" You shook your head, "No thank you. I'm not a masochist. I'll probably spend the weekend with several bottles of wine on my couch watching Vanderpump Rules."
Jack balked, his head pulling back in that way it did sometimes when he was passing judgment on someone. You'd seen him direct it at patients, other students, occasionally Robby, but never you.
"If you don't go, they win."
You sighed, "Oh, come on, Abbot. They already won."
He shook his head, "No. They're shackling themselves in a relationship built on lies and betrayal. They've lost. And seeing you happier than ever at their wedding would be great revenge."
"Yeah, well there's only one problem with that," You stole a homefry from his plate and stuffed it in your mouth, "I'm miserable."
He tilted his head slightly, his eyes assessing you, "Do you have a plus one on your invitation?"
You blinked, "Why are you asking me that?"
He cleared his throat and rested his forearms on the table and leaned toward you conspiratorially, "I just think that even if you don't feel it, think about how much it would bother them to see you show up with someone else. Happy."
Was he delusional? You narrowed your eyes at him, and in turn leaned forward towards him, "My dating life is abysmal right now. So, pray tell, who is this imaginary knight in shining armor who's going to accompany me?"
Still smirking, he leaned back in his seat and shrugged, "I'd do it."
You nearly choked on your coffee. Once you'd caught your breath, you felt your eyes nearly bulging out of your head, "What, pretend to be my boyfriend for the weekend? Make them think we're in love? Why would you agree to that?"
He shrugged, "You're my best resident and I'm tired of seeing you off your game. And I already told you, I want to help."
You hummed, "By forcing me into my worst nightmare?" You nodded, "Yeah, solid plan. What could possibly go wrong?"
He sighed, "Look, you don't have to do anything you don't want to do, but I think you should consider that this might… Give you closure. And it won't hurt to get in a few shots yourself by bringing me along."
You narrowed your eyes at him for a few moments before laughing quietly, "This is insane."
"Well just…Just think about it before you say no, okay?"
You raised your eyebrows at him skeptically, but he was still smirking, "Okay. But don't hold your breath."
After you'd both finished your food, Jack paid despite your insistent attempts to slip your card to the waitress and drove you home.
"I left my car at the hospital."
He shrugged, "I can give you a ride in tonight."
As he pulled up to your house and put his car in park, he leaned over and squeezed your knee lightly, prompting you to look at him, "You'll get some sleep, right?"
Doubtful, you thought, but you nodded, "Yeah, of course."
His eyes narrowed and he held out a clenched hand, pinky outstretched towards you, "Promise?"
You snorted, "Seriously?"
He raised his eyebrows, pinky still held out insistently. So, sighing, you wrapped your pinky around his, "Promise."
Jack smiled and released your finger, "Get out of here then. I'll be back here at 6:30."
"Yes sir," You mocked, and jumped out of the car before he could give a snarky reply.
You wouldn't tell him, but spending time with him had done wonders for your mood. You were even considering taking him up on his offer to come with you to the wedding.
But surely, that was a disaster waiting to happen.
"I think that's a great idea!" Your mom said enthusiastically over the phone an hour later.
Your black out curtains were pulled down tight over the windows, shuttering your bedroom in darkness. You likely wouldn't sleep much, but you would still try. The only light a dim glow from your phone.
You scoffed, "You think it's a great idea to pretend to be in love with my boss at my ex's wedding?"
"I've been saying for months that you let them off too easy. And David's always asking me if you're seeing anyone. Possessive little fuck."
"Mom—"
"—Sorry, sorry. He really gets under my skin. I met Dr. Abbot, didn't I?"
"Yeah," You said, rubbing a hand over your eyes, "When I miscarried."
"He seemed nice. Handsome."
You sighed, "He's just being nice. And also, I've apparently been doing a really shitty job at work and he thinks this'll help."
Your mom hummed, "Sure, sweetie."
Already once before at your bedside after your miscarriage, your mom had implied that she believed Dr. Abbot looked at you as more than just a resident, "I'm not saying it's romantic," She had said at the time, when you had still been married to David, "I just think… He sees you as a person outside of all this." She had gestured around the emergency room.
Now, it seemed, she had changed her tune.
You looked at the watch on your wrist, illuminated in the dark to see that it was nearly noon. If you had any hope of sleep, you'd have to try soon. You said your goodbyes to your mom, and to your surprise, sleep came easy… along with dreams of freckled arms and a face with gray stubble, smirking at you slow and sweet like molasses.
***
You climbed into Jack's truck that evening, immediately engulfed by the hum of his heater, the warmth cocooning you away from the harsh winter air. You let him drive in silence, his radio quietly playing, tuned to the classic rock station.
When you pulled up to the hospital, the two of you walking side by side inside and then by the lockers, "Steak, chicken, or fish?"
You felt it when his head slowly turned towards you, eyes assessing as he draped his stethoscope over his neck, "Steak," he said finally and you could hear the smile in his voice.
You chewed the inside of your cheek as you closed the locker and turned to face him, "You understand that this is a whole weekend affair, right? It's in upstate New York. If you come you have to stick it out the whole weekend. We'll have to share a room—maybe even a bed—"
"You think I didn't already think of all this?"
He was so…unbothered. It didn't make any sense to you. That he would do all of this for you.
You ignored his question—Of course you knew he had, you knew how over prepared Abbot was for every scenario no matter how unlikely—But you thought at the very least you'd detect some discomfort, some acknowledgement that it might not be so easy. "What about the fact that I'm your resident? You're not worried about how this could effect our professional relationship?"
He shrugged, "You only have a few months left and it's not like we've ever had a normal working relationship."
You were reminded of your miscarriage. You couldn't remember everything, the blood loss had muddled some things, but you did recall the way his voice rose when speaking to David, insisting he wouldn't leave until he saw you. The way he'd so easily slipped his arms around you like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Then last year when you had noticed Abbot limping around the ED and trying to hide grimaces a bit too much, you were the only one he'd admit to that he was in pain. The only one he'd listen to when you demanded to take a look at his prothestic. You didn't scold him when you saw the blood and pressure sores. Just gently cleaned and bandaged them, asked him if he'd been fitted for a new socket yet since this one was obviously causing problems. It was you who gently followed up with him day after day until it healed. You were the only one he allowed that close.
He was your teacher, your boss, but the two of you had always had something a bit deeper, a bit more intimate, that you each always tried to brush off. But now, here Jack was, declaring it openly.
You swallowed and broke eye contact, "You should know that after I found out he was having an affair and with who… He tried to deflect. He brought you up, accused me of sleeping with you—"
"That's ridiculous," Jack said, sounding irritated.
"I know," You said quickly, "I'm just telling you because… If you show up to this wedding as my date, if we're pretending that we're in love, he'll probably see it as vindication that he was right. He'll probably act like it absolves him of any wrong doing."
He nodded, "Will that be a problem for you?"
You raised your eyebrows, "For me? No. Personally, I hope it eats him alive thinking I cheated on him." You shook your head, "No, I just want you to understand what it is you're signing up for. It might… put a target on your back."
The two of you were at the hub now and Jack chuckled as he picked up an iPad, "I'm not afraid of David. He's a fucking coward and he's always punched down," He raised his eyes to you and added quickly, "no offense."
You dismissed him with a shake of your head, "None taken. So it's settled then. We're going."
He nodded, a smile on his face, and reached out his pinky towards you again, "It's a date."
You tried to ignore the way your stomach flipped and your heart rate likely doubled when you wrapped your pinky around his, hazel eyes soft and gentle on yours. The moment passed quickly and then he released you, off to find Robby to start hand offs.
***
As the weeks passed and the snow thawed you were beginning to wonder what you had gotten yourself into. Your sister had texted you when you RSVP'd as if everything was fine now, saying she was so excited to see you and who were you bringing she wanted to see pics was he hot how long had you been seeing each other? She wanted to gossip with you as if nothing had transpired since the last time you talked to her, probably a year ago now. As if the last time you saw her you hadn't told her that she was no longer your sister as far as you were concerned.
You had ignored each text, telling your mom everytime you spoke to her to ask Maya to stop texting you. That just because you were coming to the wedding didn't mean all was forgiven.
"It doesn't matter what I say to her baby, she has her heart set on the fact that you coming means you're ready to be her big sister again. She won't stop talking about it."
It made you both angry and incredibly sad that Maya was naive enough to believe that you could just forgive and forget like that. You had meant what you said about her no longer being your sister. Truthfully, you still felt like you never wanted to speak to her ever again.
"And what does your husband think?" You asked as carefully as you could. It was something you had wanted to ask for a long while, what your stepfather thought of the whole thing. He had been the only father you'd ever really known after your biological father cheated on your mother and skipped town. He was Maya's biological father, but he had always treated you as his own—granted, you knew your mother wouldn't have accepted anything else. But when all this happened, you had assumed you'd lose him. After all, Maya was his real daughter.
"He understands why you need your distance, even though he hates seeing you girls fight. I've caught him more than once digging up old home videos of the two of you playing dress up or putting on plays. He misses you."
Your eyes had watered and you made a mental note to text him after, "I wish it didn't have to be like this." You'd said softly, and meant it.
But you didn't know how to be in the same room with Maya and David and not have a world ending meltdown. And you were realizing as the wedding drew closer and closer that maybe you were making a colossal mistake.
Which was how you ended up paralyzed staring at your half packed suitcase the day you were set to leave while Abbot repeatedly beeped from his truck outside.
You had left the door unlocked, so eventually after you ignored phone call after phone call and didn't come to the door, he made his way inside, calling your name.
When he walked in your bedroom and saw you, he breathed a sigh of relief, "Christ, I thought I was gonna walk in here to see you fuckin' passed out or something. What's going on?"
You chewed on your thumbnail and then shook your head frantically, "I—I can't do this. I'm not going."
"Yes you can and yes you are."
"Abbot—"
"I think it's time you start calling me Jack if you want to convince people we're dating."
You sighed and looked up at him, panic fluttering around in your chest like a trapped bird, "This is a bad idea," You whispered.
He shook his head, "If nothing else you and I are gonna have a really fun weekend away from the ER, alright? When was the last time you skipped town?"
You rolled your eyes, "This isn't exactly my idea of a vacation."
He feigned offense with a hand to his chest, "You're not excited to spend a whole weekend with me upstate?"
Despite the impending panic attack you felt brewing, you tried to banter back, "Bringing you to my ex husband's wedding wasn't exactly how I envisioned our first date, no."
You were pleased to see his grin widen, "So you've been dreaming about our first date, then?"
You rolled your eyes again and started throwing more clothes haphazardly into your suitcase, ignoring the heat in your cheeks. Ignoring how easy it was to play with him, how quickly it soothed you. With his voice in your ear, you thought maybe it'd be almost tolerable getting through this weekend. Almost.
"Shut up and help me close my suitcase."
***
As Jack pulled away from your apartment, you turned around to look in the back seat. It was filled nearly to the brim with duffel bags, first aid kits, bandages, emergency food kits, warming blankets—
"Do you know something about this weekend that I don't?" You asked as you took in all the supplies.
He shrugged, "It's always good to be prepared. Besides, do you know how many weddings I've been to where at least one drunk idiot injured themselves or someone else and needed a doctor?"
You would not admit to him how endearing—or sexy—you found it that he had overprepared like this. You turned back towards the front, "Fair enough."
After a few minutes of riding in silence, he cleared his throat, "So, what should I know? About fake dating you?"
You fought a smirk, "I don't think there's much to know. You know me already. Besides, I doubt we'll be spending much time with anyone who'd be able to spot it since I'll be avoiding Maya and David like the plague."
He frowned, "What about your parents?"
"Oh, my mom and step dad know we're not actually dating."
His head turned towards you, "So they know this is actually just a revenge tour?"
You nodded, "Yep."
"And they're… Fine with that?"
You chewed the inside of your cheek, "I think secretly they're hoping being in the same room with Maya will… help repair our relationship. Or something."
Jack scoffed, "They don't honestly expect you to forgive her, do they?"
"I don't think my mom does, no. My father cheated on her when I was really little and left us. So she… Knows how I'm feeling."
He paused, "I'm sorry, that must've been really hard on you as a kid."
You stared out the window, chewed on your thumbnail as trees blurred past your window, "I used to think, when I was a kid, that I'd never be like my mom. I saw how… hurt she was and I promised myself I'd never pick a man like my father. And David wasn't anything like my father. He was ambitious, kind, funny, romantic…" Your eyes watered, "He took care of me until he didn't. So maybe it's me, maybe I'm the problem. Maybe I was just doomed to repeat generational patterns by virtue of being my mother's daughter."
After a moment, Jack gave what sounded like an almost pained groan, "Don't do that."
"What?"
"Let him off the hook like that and put the blame back on yourself. He fucked up. Not you."
You knew there was no sense in arguing with him, convincing him that you must've done something to cause him to stray. To look to someone who was so much like you, but younger and less damaged. He could've picked anyone to cheat with, but he fell in love with your baby sister. The same sister you had cared for so vigilantly to make sure she avoided the missteps you took. So that she wouldn't have twin scars to match yours. Practically made in your image, except she was less damaged. How could you get Jack to understand what that felt like? How could you not blame yourself?
So you didn't say anything. You let the silence fall instead and tried your best to keep your sniffling to a minimum. After a few minutes Jack reached across the cabin and gently took your hand in his own.
***
A few hours and many gas station stops later, Jack pulled into the parking lot of the hotel you were staying at. You hopped out of the car first and he watched you from the rearview mirror for a few minutes before following suit.
You were so sad and quiet on the ride up he was beginning to wonder if he had made a mistake, convincing you to come here. But he couldn't stand the thought of you moping at home, building this wedding up in your head to be more than it was. Obviously, you had every right to be upset. Frankly, if you came to him and said you wanted to burn the whole place to the ground, he'd start googling where he could find kerosene nearby.
What he didn't want was you deciding that this wedding marked the end of your life when really, he thought it was probably liberating you. He wished he had known when you were getting divorced because he would've thrown you a party. He would never suggest that you were lucky for the way things had played out, but he was relieved on your behalf that it had all happened so early in your marriage, in your life. You had so much left of it. He wanted you to see that, that it was possible to be happy again even after your whole world had imploded as violently as it did.
He hated that you had so much shame wrapped up in the dissolution of your marriage when that fucker was the one the blame. It was horrible enough he had chosen your little sister, but the timing of it, right after your miscarriage, made his fucking blood boil. When you needed him the most he was busy warming your sister's bed. It made him sick with rage. And then to hear you blame yourself on top of it all? It was too much. Jack thought it would be a miracle if he made it through this weekend without punching the coward's lights out.
And then, to top it all off, he wondered if he had an ulterior motive for all this. That maybe he was so eager to play the part of your boyfriend because he really did want to be your boyfriend. It wasn't a novel thought, he had wondered to himself many times before if the reason he allowed you to get so close when he had historically pushed everyone else away, especially after his wife, was because he was harboring feelings for you. He had never been able to answer the question. Or maybe he was just too afraid to be honest with himself about it. For a while he had told himself it didn't matter how he felt about it because you were married. But now…Well, things had changed.
He settled his hands on your hips when he came up behind you as you were beginning to unpack the bags from the back seat, "We should probably set some ground rules before this goes any further."
You spun around, his hands still on your hips. You didn't seem bothered by his closeness, "What d'you mean?"
"Well," Jack started, feeling the heat begin to crawl up his neck at having this conversation while standing this close to you. His leg was beginning to ache from driving with the prosthetic all day and he leaned into the pain in an attempt to ground himself, "I'm a very physically affectionate man when I'm in a relationship. So, if you're uncomfortable with that, we should talk about it."
He watched the bob of your throat as you swallowed, "That's fine."
Jack hummed and looped his fingers through the belt loops of your jeans and gently pulled until your hips were pushed up against his, "Maybe we should have a safe word."
"A safe word?" Was it his imagination that you sounded a bit breathless? You had only been here a few minutes and he was already in danger of crossing the line.
He nodded and bit his lip, "Yeah, so I know if I need to back off."
"That sounds… Like a good idea. Very mature."
"You pick, what's our safe word?" While walking around to you at the side of the truck, he had noticed what looked like a couple standing by the entrance of the hotel, watching. It could have been Maya and David, it could have been anyone. But on the off chance it was someone you knew, he wanted to make sure he was playing his part well. At least, that's what he told himself he was doing when he nudged his nose gently against yours.
He thought he felt you gasp against his mouth and it was taking almost everything he had not to kiss you.
"Troponin." You said, and he blinked. Confusion clouding his features.
"Troponin?" He repeated, eyebrows knitting together. He wondered if he had heard you correctly. He was this close to you, close enough to devour you, and you were thinking about a STEMI?
"Our safe word," You said and licked your lips. His eyes trailed the path of your tongue hungrily.
"You want our safe word to be troponin?" When you nodded he smiled, "Okay, troponin it is," he pressed a kiss to the bridge of your nose and then backed away slightly, "In the spirit of total transparency, I do think we have an audience."
He almost wished he hadn't told you. You had relaxed so much under his touch and he watched the tension return to your shoulders as you peered around, trying to locate the possible enemy.
But then when you saw them, beginning to walk towards you, your shoulders drooped, "It's just my mom and stepdad."
Jack watched a few steps away as your mother pulled you into a tight hug, your step dad watching with a bemused smile on his face and hands in his pockets. You looked so much like your mother. He remembered thinking it the first time he'd met her after your miscarriage and it still held true. She talked like you too, or rather, you talked like her. The same mannerisms and same lilt to your voices, the same warm laugh. If he closed his eyes, he might have a hard time telling you apart.
"Mom, you remember Jack."
He shook your mother's hand in both of his, murmured that it was good to see her again.
"And you, Dr. Abbot. Thank you for looking out for her, even outside of the emergency room."
"My pleasure, but call me Jack, please."
You introduced him to your step dad who seemed to be a reserved man of few words, but friendly enough.
"Well the two of you must've had a long drive so I'll let you get settled, but—" Your mom turned to look at you pointedly, "—We knew you were here because Maya knew you were here so I wouldn't be surprised if she shows up at your hotel room unannounced."
You frowned, "How did she know I was here?"
"Well," Your mom sighed, "It would seem that you never stopped sharing your location with her on your phone."
You groaned and clawed your phone from your pocket, "Oh, Jesus fuck—"
Your stepdad winced, "Language, please."
"I don't want to see her." You said, hands shaking as you unlocked your phone, undoubtedly trying to quickly stop sharing your location, "Can you please tell her I don't want to see her right now? I'm not—" Your voice sounded close to breaking, "Please, I'm not ready to see her."
Jack's hands itched to reach for you, but he clasped them behind his back instead. As far as your parents were concerned the two of you were not really dating, he was just here as a friend. He didn't want to make anything more complicated for you. But still, he felt like you were still in the ED, and thus his responsibility. He wanted to fix it.
"We'll tell her," your stepdad said softly, "But it's her wedding, you'll have to talk to her eventually—"
"I know that," you snapped, then immediately softened, "Sorry, I—It's been a long day. I'll talk to her, I promise. Just not today."
The three of them began hushed conversations that were becoming more and more strained. You had downplayed to him what your stepdad was hoping for, he thought now. You had been here only a few minutes and he was already laying into you about how "that's your sister" and "you're her big sister you should be the bigger person" and "you can't ignore her forever."
You absolutely could, if that was what you wanted. And Jack understood the man's stake in it. It had to hurt watching the girls you raised become estranged. But had he sat his other daughter down and explained to her the consequences of breaking your trust like that? Of betraying you like that? It sounded like the two of you had been close, best friends. Not only did she sleep with your husband, but her actions had resulted in you losing your best friend. You had a traumatic surgery and you ended up cheated on and divorced within a year and you hadn't been able to talk to your best friend about it. It was cruel to now ask you to be the bigger person.
Jack began walking back towards the back of the truck so he could continue unloading your baggage, heavily favoring his right leg. He was in a decent amount of pain, but he may have been playing it up so—
"Jack, is your leg bothering you?"
You were by his side in a moment, taking bags he had unloaded and carrying them on your shoulder.
"I'm fine," he said, "Just a little sore from driving all day." You started rummaging through his back seat, "What're you looking for?"
"Your cane or crutches or something—"
He scoffed and gently pulled you from the car, "They're in my duffel, I don't need them right now."
"But—"
"Sweetheart—" Your mother interrupted, "Your dad and I are gonna go, we'll see you at breakfast?"
You nodded and quickly hugged them goodbye and Jack felt immediate relief at their absence. They were nice enough people, especially your mother who he could tell was more on your side about the whole thing, but they were still being too hard on you in his opinion.
Once inside the room, Jack sat on the edge of the bed and pulled off his prosthetic with a soft groan. He didn't look up, but he felt you watching him, knew you were trying to think of some way to help.
"Can I get you anything?" You asked finally.
He shook his head, massaging his limb gently, "No, I'll be fine after a hot shower and working some lotion into my leg."
"Oh, that reminds me—" You walked off towards the bathroom and then returned a few seconds later, "—Good, they remembered. I called a few days ago to ask them to put a shower chair in here. Just wanted to check so I could call down if they forgot."
Jack blinked, "Well, that was… Very thoughtful of you, thank you."
"Least I can do," You sighed, "After the ledges you're sure to talk me down from this weekend."
Digging into your pocket, you pulled out an unopened pack of Marlboro Reds and a lighter.
"What the fuck?" Jack laughed, "You don't smoke."
"I know, I thought it was a great weekend to start—Hey!"
Jack had snatched them from you before you had the chance to unwrap them, "Do you know how fuckin' hard it is to kick a nicotine addiction? Do you?"
You sighed, "You're really gonna lecture me about this?"
"Yeah, I absolutely am. I'm not gonna watch you be self destructive all weekend. That's not why we're here. It's so you can see how better off you are."
You pushed your lower lip out into a pout, "You don't think I deserve a cigarette in this situation?"
Fuck, why'd you have to go and do that? It was unfair. Now all he could think about was your lower lip between his teeth— He could not let you know how easily you could wrap him around your finger. Clearing his throat, he pushed the packet of cigarettes into his pocket, "You take the shower first, you'll feel better after. I'm going to hide these while you're in the bathroom."
You looked for a moment like you might argue, but then your eye caught on what looked like a welcome basket on the dresser, filled with snacks and—wine, "Fine. Have the cigarettes. But I will be opening the wine after I get out of the shower."
Jack fought a smirk, "Only if you let me order us some room service. You've eaten nothing but jerky and Red Bull all day."
You glared at him from where you stood, arms crossed over your chest before turning on your heel towards the bathroom, "Fine, fine. Whatever. But only because I'm starving, not because I think you're right."
He watched as you sauntered into the bathroom, holding your bag of toiletries and a change of clothes. Then, with a sigh, he laid down flat on the bed.
"Abbot, you are so fucked," he murmured to himself. Then he propped himself up and reached for the phone on the nightstand.
***
Troponin. Troponin. It was so stupid, that that had been the only word you could think of.
A safe word. The very implication meaning that there could be a scenario where Jack Abbot could touch you and you wouldn't like it. Absolutely absurd.
No, the only real, looming danger of this weekend was that Jack Abbot would touch you and you would like it too much. You didn't think he knew it yet, but Jack had the power to break your heart even more than it already had been. You were afraid of him, but not for reasons he'd understand.
Jack was sound asleep next to you, snoring softly. The moonlight that spilled through the balcony doors lit up his watch enough that you could see it was a bit past 3:20 AM.
There hadn't been much back and forth about sharing the bed. Jack had said when you got out of the shower that he didn't mind calling and asking for a cot, but you had waved him off. Besides which, if you were going to be convincing that you were actually a couple, on the chance that your sister stopped by unnanounced you didn't want her seeing you were sleeping separately.
So you had each climbed into opposite sides of the bed, bid each other goodnight, and that was that.
Between being a night owl by default and the number of Red Bulls you'd had that day, sleep wasn't an option for you. You would've been surprised that Jack was able to sleep at all, both of you accustomed to working through the night, if you didn't also know he had a prescription for his insomnia.
So it was just you wide awake, staring at the ceiling, thinking about troponin. A protein used to detect heart damage. Faced with the impossibility of the weekend, seeing both your ex and your little sister for the first time since you found out about their affair, all with your attending by your side, pretending to be in love with you, you thought it likely you might end this weekend with an abnormal troponin reading.
That's ridiculous, he had said when you told him David had accused you of sleeping with him. And while it may have seemed ridiculous to him, you understood why David had thought it. The hero worship was likely blatant in your voice and on your face whenever you talked about him.
You turned your head to the side and looked at Jack's sleeping face. Peaceful, wrinkles smoothed out. His silver stubble glinted in the moonlight. You liked when he grew it out like this, just a little bit.
You would never admit you were in love with him, but weren't you, just a little bit?
You blew out a long breath and turned your face back towards the ceiling. It was going to be a long weekend.
***
"I feel like I'm gonna be sick."
Jack turned to look at you as you said it. You were walking to the welcome breakfast, which was being held at the venue. It was a winery draped in greenery and curtained by trees. The couple would be married in the garden that overlooked the pond outside.
"Do you need to sit down?"
You shook your head and stopped walking, "I feel like there's a boulder on my chest," your breathing quickened and you brought your fist to your sternum, rubbing clockwise, as if it would free the pressure.
Jack stepped in fromt of you and brought his hands up to cup your cheeks, left hand sliding below your jaw to your neck so he could feel your carotid. Your pulse jackhammered against his fingers and sweat glistened on your forehead and upper lip.
"Panic attack?" He asked softly and you nodded, "We don't have to go in right away, we can be late. Take a lap around the pond."
You shook your head, "No, no Maya's in the door she's watching us. I don't want—Ah, fuck David's there too."
"Hey, look at me," Your eyes darted to his and he shook his head, "Don't look at him. What d'you wanna do?"
"Well I want to go home, but that's not happening."
Jack smiled, "Okay, let me rephrase that, what do you need to get yourself in there?"
Your chin was wobbling as you looked at him and you shook your head slightly, "I don't know, I don't—" Your eyes trailed over his shoulder.
Jack angled himself in order to block your view, "Hey—" Your eyes met his again, wet and frantic, "It's just you and me right now. They're not as scary as you think they are. You've built them up to be these scary monsters in your head and what they did to you was monstrous, but they're still just people. They should be afraid of you. Do you want to piss them off?"
Finally, your lip curled up the tiniest bit, "Yeah."
"Great. What should we do then? What would piss them off?"
You bit down on your lip gently and tilted your head. You seemed a bit shy, a feeling he wasn't used to seeing on you.
"Could you kiss me, you think?"
Immediately, Jack felt heat spread through his chest. He smirked, hoping he looked more nonchalant than he felt, "Are they watching still?"
Your eyes darted over his shoulder and then you nodded.
Hands still on your cheeks, he moved one hand to cup the back of your neck and gently pull you to him. His heart raced as he tasted you, slowly explored your mouth, relished in the way it felt for your lips to move against his.
It took enormous effort for him to pull away from you, but he managed it. Your pupils were blown out and you seemed a bit breathless, but he wasn't sure if he was just seeing what he wanted to see. You had only asked him to kiss you to make your ex jealous, he reminded himself.
"What do you think? Did it work?"
You peered over Jack's shoulder and nodded, "David stormed off. Maya's still there."
Jack hummed, running his fingers over your cheeks one last time before dropping them, "She probably wants to talk to you. Are you ready?"
You inhaled, slow and deep, "Will you hold my hand?"
Jack felt himself melt. He thought there was little he wouldn't do for you, "Of course," he slipped his hand into yours, ran his thumb over the soft skin on the back of your hand, "Remember, you've done nothing wrong. They should be afraid of you."
You kept pace with him, the venue looming ever closer in front of you, "Right."
Jack squeezed your hand reassuringly as you approached your sister, and shit, did your mother have strong genes. Even only being half sisters, the two of you were nearly identical, though there were obvious differences to Jack. Your sister was perfectly manicured, nails done, lips glossed. She obviously had some sort of workout regimen if her toned arms and legs were any indication. Likely pilates, he thought.
Obviously, Jack found you gorgeous. He knew your bitten down nails and often chapped lips were a symptom of the job—Long, manicured nails often led to broken gloves and who had time to constantly reapply chapstick in the ER?—But there was something to the two sisters standing side by side. He could see the stress and heartbreak of the last year on you whereas your sister looked nonplussed. Whether that was just an image she wished to project on her wedding weekend or if she really felt no remorse, he wasn't sure.
But he wasn't in the mood to give her the benefit of the doubt. He disliked her instantly on principal.
Her throat bobbed as you approached. You came to a stop, a roughly three foot buffer between you. The two of you seemed unsure what to do next, staring at each other, both of you glassy eyed.
And then, without warning, Maya threw her arms around your neck. For a moment, you froze, and then you released Jack's hand, slowly easing your arms around her. He watched your face crumple just slightly, half hidden by Maya's shoulder.
"I'm so happy you came," Maya said, and Jack had to strain to hear it, her voice muffled by your shoulder, "I couldn't imagine getting married without you here."
You didn't say anything at all, but you kept holding her, that bereft look in your eyes.
Maya pulled away, a smile on her face, though tears began to cascade over her lash line. Then she turned to Jack, "And Dr. Abbot, I'm glad you're here too. You know, I always said there was something more between the two of you, the way she always talked about you."
You were despondent, eyes aimless as you stared at nothing. Jack turned his attention to Maya and he didn't smile, "It wasn't like that."
Her mouth fell open, maybe realizing her mistake, the implication, "Oh—Oh n—no, of course not—"
"Jack," you said softly, "save me a seat inside?"
He knew he had just got done telling you they weren't monsters, but he was ready to take it back. He didn't want to leave you alone with her. He had encouraged you to come here and now he thought maybe he'd been wrong.
But he nodded anyway, walked into the venue with his hands clasped behind his back. You weren't his. He kept forgetting that. He was acting like a fucking guard dog and you weren't even his to defend.
It was barely 10 AM and Jack strode over to the bar.
***
"I really am so happy you're here. Mom said you wouldn't come, but I knew you would— And this place! Isn't it gorgeous?"
Maya babbled on and on while you felt… Empty. She was discussing wedding planning with you as if nothing had changed. You remembered sitting with her on your living room floor after you'd gotten engaged, scrap booking your dream wedding.
You wished you could dig up that scrap book now because while you had had to settle and compromise on most things, it seemed that she had gotten everything.
The venue, the welcome breakfast in the tearoom, the open bar— You bet from the floral centerpieces on each table that she'd even gotten the same florist.
You had ended up getting married in a courthouse with a small dinner party afterwards. It was all you'd been able to afford between law school and med school.
Still, it had been the happiest day of your life because you loved him. You would have done anything for him.
And now you saw that same pure giddiness on your sister's face.
"Look, Maya, I don't—The last time we talked, I'm sorry I was so harsh, but I meant what I said. I'm not here to make amends."
She stared at you, almost disbelieving as the happiness began the melt off her face. You almost felt guilty, "Then why are you here?" She asked, bitterness slipping into her voice.
"I don't know. To get closure." You shook your head, "Maybe there's also a small part of me that thinks I can convince you not to go through with it."
Without hesitation, Maya stepped away from you, "I've had this conversation with mom already several times. Just because he wasn't good for you doesn't mean he's not good for me."
You tilted your head slightly and felt the tears burn the backs of your eyes, "You think you're the exception to how he treated me? Did you know you weren't the first woman he stepped out on me with? You were just the final straw."
She was shaking her head rapidly, "No, no, that's not true. He left you. He said—He said you wanted to make things work after… After you found out, but he wanted to be with me."
Your breath shook, "Well he lied to you. I told him that same day I found out that I was calling an attorney and he got down on hands and knees and begged me to stay—"
"You're lying!"
"—Ask mom! I stayed with her and dad that night, she sat next to me when I called the lawyer."
Maya shook her head, "Mom has not been subtle about how she feels about everything. She's just as bad as you, trying to convince me to leave him—"
"That's because we both know how it feels to love a man like David and we're trying to spare you from that—"
"I'm not a fucking child!" Her voice came out shrill and startled the couple that happened to be walking by at the time. But Maya, always perfect, flashed a perfect smile at them and recomposed herself before turning back to you, "I know it's difficult for both you and Mom to believe but I'm happy. And I'm sorry for how things played out, really and truly, I can't apologize enough and I feel sick about how I hurt you, but I don't regret it. He's the love of my life."
There was a pit in your stomach, but you knew when a battle was a lost cause. She really and truly believed he was it for her. And maybe he was, maybe she was the woman he would spend the rest of his life with. But you had a difficult time believing that your sister was capable of reforming a man so quickly. Once a cheater, always a cheater. There was a reason that was the saying.
You swallowed and looked down at your feet, "Did you at least get a good lawyer for the prenup?"
"The… prenup?" The uncertainty in her voice made you look up. Her eyebrows were knitted together and she shook her head, "What're you talking about?"
You blinked for a moment, sure you must've misheard, or maybe she had misheard you, "The prenup. He made us do a prenup before we got married, said it was only practical. It was why the divorce was finalized so quickly."
You watched as her face transformed, defensiveness replaced with something that looked a lot like pity, "We don't have one," she said softly.
Confused and a bit nauseous now, you shook your head, "That… That doesn't make any sense. He was so insistent on it when we—Are you sure?"
She nodded slowly, "I'm sorry. But it really is different between us. I'm sure of it."
The room was spinning and you felt like the floor had disappeared beneath you. You were freefalling.
"That makes sense, actually," you said eventually, beginning to step away from her to go inside, "I've always been the person people use for a trial run. Just didn't realize my husband was rehearsing marriage on me."
Maya called after you, but you had heard enough. You needed to get away from her. To get away from David. You didn't hear Jack when he called after you and you didn't notice him trailing behind you while you looked for somewhere to hide. Somewhere safe to fall apart.
But when you found an empty room, likely the bridal suite that Maya would get ready in tomorrow, you moved to close the door— But found Jack's foot shoved between the door and the frame.
"Hey—what's going on? Can I come in?"
Immediately, you felt yourself soften at his voice. You felt nearly conditioned at this point to feel relief and comfort at his presence. There were many times during your residency where that voice had calmly talked you through a very scary case or his warm hand had guided you through an intense procedure. He was like a balm to your nervous system.
So after just a moment, you pulled the door back and let him in.
"What happened?" He asked as he closed the door behind you.
You shrugged helplessly and felt the tears begin to fall, an unstoppable wave behind your eyes, "They—they didn't get a prenup."
Jack frowned, "Okay…I don't understand."
You looked up at the ceiling, a halfhearted attempt to stem the flow of tears. All of this had been a terrible, awful idea, only spurned on by your schoolgirl crush on your attending. And now he was seeing you like this, humiliated. It seemed every time you thought you'd hit rock bottom, the ledge would collapse beneath you, revealing several more stories to go.
"Before we got married he insisted on a prenup. I didn't really mind it, I thought it was pragmatic at the time. Very modern," You sniffed, "and in the end it made the divorce a lot easier. But he didn't make Maya sign one." You scrunched your mouth to the side in an attempt to stop your lip from wobbling, "I don't know why it hurts so much. Of all the things he's done to me, I don't know why it bothers me so much that he didn't have her sign one—That he must think she's it for him and he didn't think that when he married me.
"And if that wasn't bad enough," You continued after a moment, pushing your palms into your eyes, "He lied to her. Told her he was the one who ended it between us because he wanted to be with her." The memories flashed behind your eyes as you spoke, finding them in bed together, David chasing after you when you fled, tears streaming down his face as he got down on his knees and swore it was a mistake, "He begged me to take him back. Not even just that once, but for a while afterwards. He stalled on signing the papers for weeks. But he somehow convinced her that it was him who asked for the divorce so he could be with her."
When you were brave enough to look up at Jack, he was just watching you quietly, arms crossed, "It just feels like…" You said slowly, "It would be so much easier if she was just the other woman, but he did give her the wedding I always wanted and he didn't make her sign the prenup and it feels like maybe he did just upgrade to a newer model—"
"That's not true—"
"—And then I feel awful for not wanting that because that means in a few years he'll probably hurt my sister the way he hurt me. But the alternative is that I just wasn't enough for him, I wasn't a good enough wife and she is. And either way I'm still the one alone and heartbroken and miserable."
The more you spoke, the more frantic and rushed your speech became and you couldn't catch your breath.
"Okay—Can I—? Is it okay if I hold you for a minute?" Jack asked, arms already outstretched.
In the back of your head, you knew it was dangerous to keep seeking out his touch for comfort. But here he was offering and you were at risk of falling apart. So you nodded, let yourself fall into his arms, his body warm and solid against yours. You allowed yourself to wrap your arms around his waist in turn, further closing any distance between you.
"We knew this was going to be difficult no matter what," He said softly, running a soothing hand from your neck down your back, "But you need to remember that the decisions they made don't reflect back on you."
You scoffed, "Oh, they don't?"
"No!" Keeping his arms around you, he pulled back from you so he could see your face, "Fuck them. I don't care if they're fucking soulmates, it doesn't justify what they did to you."
You rolled your eyes and shook your head and Jack gently grasped your chin, pulling your face just slightly down so your eyes met his. His eyebrows were raised and the way he was looking at you so intently, his face so close to yours had your heart in your throat, "Maybe you don't believe me right now, but I'm gonna do my damnedest to get it through that pretty head of yours this weekend that you deserved better. You deserve the world. Nobody deserves what they did, but especially not you."
His closeness was so soothing to you, you rested your forehead against his, "Why're you so nice to me?"
He hummed, "Because you're one of my favorite people in the world and it makes me… fucking irate to think that you don't know how incredible you are."
Suddenly embarrassed by the way his words made your stomach flip, you buried your face in the crook of his neck instead, "You're one of my favorite people, too."
His arms tightened around you and he kissed your head, "You ready to go get a drink?"
You sighed and pulled away from him, "God knows I need one."
With that smirk on his face that made your knees weak, he led you back out by the hand, turning his head back over his shoulder to give you a quick wink. With him by your side, real date or fake date, you thought maybe people would see you as worthy. If someone like Jack Abbot could love you then maybe you weren't the pathetic mess that they all thought you were.
***
"You doing okay, baby?" Your mom asked immediately as Jack led you over to her table, "I saw you rush by after talking to Maya, you seemed upset."
Jack pulled your chair out for you and as you sat down he gently squeezed your shoulders, "Better now," you said honestly as Jack sat down next to you.
"You wanna talk about it?" Your mom reached to squeeze your hand.
You shook your head, "No, I'm good. I promise."
Jack leaned over to you, lips brushing against your ear in a way that sent chills down your spine, "David just walked back in the room. He can't keep his eyes off you."
You turned your head so you were nose to nose with Jack. You expected him to put space between you, but he remained there. You were both surprised and pleased to see his pupils dilate in front of you.
"Well," You reached out and ran your fingers through his silver curls, "We should make sure we give him a show then, yeah?"
A wolfish grin spread across his face and he took your hand, pressing your fingers to his mouth before curling his pinky around yours, "Let's make it one to remember."
For the rest of the breakfast, Jack hand fed you cantaloupe wrapped in prosciutto, kissed on your shoulders and neck, and kept a firm hand on your thigh, a hand that steadily wandered higher as the morning waned into afternoon.
"I'm gonna go get us another round of drinks," You said quietly in his ear.
"Okay," His eyes trailed down your face until they landed on your mouth. You watched, arousal spreading like fire through your veins as he bit his lower lip, "Gimme a kiss first?"
You were pleasantly buzzed, but not drunk enough to not feel the fear of your own desire. Things were getting precarious. You wanted him too much. You had had just a taste of him earlier and you were greedy for more.
But you knew, somewhere, David was watching. Maya was watching. You could worry about your feelings for Jack later. When you kissed him this time it felt full to the brim with tension, Jack moving his hand to the back of your neck so you couldn't move. It sent all your neurons firing, the smell of his aftershave and the taste of wine on his breath.
You felt almost dizzy by the time you pulled away from him and headed to the bar.
***
Jack was in his own head as he watched you walk off to the bar. It was a good thing you weren't looking at him because he was sure there were hearts in his eyes right now after getting to kiss you twice this morning. He was aware that he was toeing a line with you, that you were likely only humoring him to make your ex husband jealous.
But he couldn't help it. Especially after you'd been crying to him just a bit before. He wanted to make you feel loved and wanted, it was the least he could do for you this weekend.
"So, when're you gonna tell her?"
Jack turned to look at your mother who was now leaning across your empty seat to talk to him, a knowing smile on her face.
"Sorry?"
"When are you gonna tell her that you're not pretending?"
Well, shit. He thought maybe he was just coming across as a very convincing actor, but your mother had seen right through him already. Jack laughed nervously and shook his head, "I just… I just want her to feel good, that's all. She deserves better."
Your mother hummed, "No, I think you're exactly what she deserves. Handsome, intelligent, and most importantly, you've always looked out for her. I think you'd find she feels the same."
Jack shook his head as his eyes wandered back to you, "She's still in love with David."
"She's in love with the future she almost had with him. But I think a future with you would be even brighter."
He ran a hand along his jaw, "She doesn't need me or anyone else for that, she's created a bright future for herself all on her own."
Your mom's grin widened, "The fact that you know that just reinforces how good for her you'd be."
Jack was smiling, but he sighed. Your mother meant well and he knew the two of you were very close, but nothing was going to happen between you beyond the show you were putting on this weekend.
He was old, sad, widowed, an amputee. He wasn't even close to the man you deserved.
He wouldn't sit and explain all that to your mother. Besides, you were on your way back to the table now. He surprised himself with the force of his own grin when he met your eyes as you walked back over.
You were too good for him, but that wouldn't stop him from savoring every second pretending you were his.
***
After breakfast had morphed into lunch, everyone broke off to get ready for the rehearsal dinner.
Still buzzing, you and Jack stumbled arm and arm back to your hotel room. Immediately, Jack sat at the edge of the bed and pulled off his prosthetic and liner, groaning with relief as he did.
You bit your lip, "Can I help?"
He looked up at you and shook his head, "You don't have to—"
"I want to. Please."
He must have been more innebriated than he thought because eventually, he gave in, watching you intently as you wiped down his leg and then his prosthetic. All he could think as he watched you was that no one had taken care of him like this since his wife.
You warmed lotion in your hands before gently massaging it into his leg and he couldn't hold in the groan that clawed up his throat.
He heard a chuckle from you and finally had the good sense to be embarrassed, "Sorry," he said quickly, "I'm just—I'm not used to anyone else—"
"It's okay, Jack. You don't have to explain." You finished massaging the rest of lotion into his skin and then leaned back on your heels, "Is that better?"
He nodded, "Much."
You sat on the bed next to him and without thinking much about it he slung an arm around your shoulders and pulled you back until you were both laying flat against the mattress.
You burrowed closer to him, head on his chest, "Thank you for everything this morning. I don't know how I would've gotten through any of it without you."
He pressed his cheek into your forehead, "It's me and you this weekend. I'm here for whatever you need."
You propped yourself up to see his face, "I don't know of anyone else in my life who would've volunteered to come do this with me."
"Why not?" He smirked, "It's a pretty good gig. Paid for hotel and food and drink. I get to kiss a girl way out of my league all weekend long."
You tilted your head a bit to the side, a look on your face he usually associated with when you ran a list of differential diagnoses in your head. You were focused, assessing—On him, it seemed.
"I won't forget it," You said finally, "What you've done, what you're trying to do for me."
"Sweetheart, I'd do a hell of a lot more to make you see how wonderful you are. And I mean that."
He watched your eyes grow wet and then you sniffed and looked away from him, "Um, I'm gonna jump in the shower now, if that's alright with you?"
He nodded slowly, "'Course."
As soon as you removed yourself from his arms, he missed you. If things were different, if you were actually a couple, he likely would have followed you into the shower. As he listened to the spray of the shower against the walls and your soft humming, he closed his eyes and imagined himself in his shower chair, you stradling his lap.
When you walked back into the room with nothing but a towel wrapped around your still wet body, Jack had to wave you off when you rushed to help with his crutches so that you wouldn't notice the tent in his pants.
He felt ashamed of himself when he finally did get in the shower and continued with the fantasy, grunting softly as he came down the drain, wondering what it would have felt like to spill inside you instead.
***
Your breathing was still erratic as you arrived to the rehearsal dinner, but knowing Jack would be next to you the whole time was a relief.
When your knee began jumping under the table as speeches were beginning to start, a warm hand engulfed your leg and squeezed gently.
"I think maybe I should step out," You whispered when your ex father in law began to stand, headed for the microphone. You felt nauseous. You hadn't prepared for the fact that people who used to be your family and friends, who had made speeches at your wedding would now be making speeches about your sister.
Before you could high tail it out of there, your ex father in law was speaking and though Jack was in your ear asking if you needed some air, you were transfixed. Unable to stop listening. He talked of the last year as if it was a revelation for his son. There was no direct mention of you, but instead a "black spot" in David's life for more than a decade. His father watched him wither under your love like a neglected house plant. It was only when your sister entered his life—conveniently no mention of how they had met—that he began to really flourish. That David grew to be a man his father was proud of.
You were gonna be sick. You were hurt, but mostly angry. You had thought your relationship with David's family had been good. But clearly, they had fallen in love with Maya and become disillusioned with you. Just like David.
In your cloud of rage, you pushed back from the table, chair scraping loudly against the wood floor and stood. You realized heads had turned to you at this point, but you didn't care about that much right now. You needed to get out.
As you spun on your heel to flee, you heard your father in law make a stupid joke to redirect everyone's attention away from you. You thought maybe you heard Jack call after you, but you kept walking, blood pounding in your ears.
The late spring evening air had a chill to it now that the sun had set. You walked some distance away from the building, still shaking, before reaching into the pocket of your dress and pulling out your pack of cigarettes and lighter. Jack hadn't put much effort into hiding them and you'd found them earlier in his nightstand while he was in the shower.
You weren't a smoker, but during med school you had been known to smoke the occasional cigarette while drunk. You thought as you went to take a pull that your lungs might forget the habit, force you to choke the smoke back up, but it went down smooth. Like riding a bike.
"I thought you'd quit those once you started your residency," The sound of David's voice behind you had your shoulders tensing.
"I'm having a mid life crisis," you managed to deadpan and brought the cigarette back to your lips.
"Well," He stepped next to you, but you avoided looking at him. It would be the first time you saw him up close like this in a little more than a year, "Maybe with it you'll finally grow out of making everything about you."
He wanted a fight. You wouldn't rise to the occasion. It was amazing, really, that after everything he had come out here to fight. You wouldn't give it to him.
"You've really upset Maya today. I thought you were here to support your sister, but it seems like you're just hell bent on ruining her day."
"Yeah, well, she ruined my life so the least she can do is give me a day."
He scoffed, "You love to make yourself the victim, but you cheated too. And you had the audacity to fucking bring him here to rub it in my face."
You hummed, "We only started seeing each other six months ago. I never cheated on you," Finally, you turned to look at him and it hurt as spectacularly as you thought it would. It felt like fireworks erupted in your chest. There was the tiny mole on his jaw that you used to kiss every morning. There was the curl on his forehead you used to brush out of his eyes when he went too long without a haircut. "But if I had cheated on you, would it really bother you? Or would it just be a weight off your conscience to think maybe you didn't hurt me as badly as you did?"
He shook his head, "I'm not blind, the way he came in our house that day—That wasn't the way a leader treats their subordinate. Not unless they're fucking."
"He was trying to save my life," You ground out, and with it, your cigarette, "something you should have been just as concerned about, you know, as my husband."
As you turned to leave, you felt his hand circle your wrist and you snapped back towards him like a rubber band. You were briefly shocked at his touch, not afraid necessarily, just surprised that he was trying to prevent you from leaving.
"You had a miscarriage," he said, and you felt his hot breath fan your face, the sickly sweet smell of bourbon flooding your nostrils, "you weren't fucking stabbed."
For a moment, his words took you back two years ago, to texting Jack, alone in your bed. How even to him you tried to sound dismissive. It's probably nothing but… Tell me if I'm overreacting… I feel a little lightheaded, but I can probably sleep it off. How much of a burden David had made you feel like, that you felt you should downplay everything to Jack. The pain you were in, both physically and emotionally. How excruciating the loneliness was, how clearly repulsive David had found you.
You thought maybe you would've preferred being stabbed. Maybe it would have come with less complicated emotions. Maybe your husband would have taken your pain seriously. Maybe he would have laid in bed with you and comforted you instead of sexting your sister.
"Hey sweetheart," Jack's voice floats through the air before you can say anything else to David and he drops your wrist, "Everything okay?"
You took a step back from David, into the warmth of Jack's chest, "Fine, I was just taking a smoke break."
That earned you a double take, but he must have decided it wasn't worth scolding you over in front of David because he turned his attention back to the man in front of him, "Your mother's looking for you, why don't you head back inside? I'll be right behind you."
You frowned and turned back to him, but he just winked at you in the moonlight and then nodded his head back towards the building.
***
Jack had been watching you and David from a distance as soon as you'd left. Frankly, he hadn't wanted David to speak to you alone at all, especially after the speech his father had made, but you didn't run away when David approached you. And he knew you could handle yourself, had watched you do it with difficult patients. You would even hold your own around him on the rare occasion the two of you butted heads in the ER.
But there was something about the way your body language shifted when he was around. You tensed and then seemed to curl inward on yourself. Like you were afraid of taking up too much space around him. He'd never seen you like that around anyone. It was what made him stay, watching you both carefully, just in case.
He waited patiently. Until you turned to leave and David stopped you.
You weren't helpless. Jack knew you knew how to get out of a hold like that. You had told him once before you took self defense classes pretty regularly and you tried to convince the nurses to go with you when you could. You could've thrown David on his ass easily.
But you didn't, you just wilted further. It infuriated him, just like it infuriated him when you had the miscarriage. There was something about David that turned you into someone he didn't recognize. He wondered if David knew it, if he realized how vibrant you became when you pushed yourself out from underneath his thumb.
When you let him keep you there, keep you from leaving, Jack couldn't watch it anymore. He knew you didnt need rescuing, but the blood was roaring in his ears and suddenly his legs were moving of their own volition and then— Hey sweetheart.
You seemed relieved by his intervention, and that bothered him even more. Because you could have left at any time, but David made you feel trapped.
He watched you walk away after he'd told you your mom was looking for you—a lie—and then turned back to David, "You touch her again," he said quietly, "and I'll break your fucking neck."
David laughed and ran a hand along his jaw, "Threatening a man on his wedding weekend. Very classy, Dr. Abbot. And bold considering you had an affair with my first wife."
Jack shook his head, "I never touched your wife inappropriately while you were still together. Unlike you, I greatly respect the sanctity of marriage."
For the first time, David's projected mask of casual indifference slipped. It bothered him immensely to be accused of anything immoral and it seemed no one in his life, except you, had pointed out to his face that he had. It didn't bother him that he had hurt you, Jack realized, it bothered him that anyone else thought less of his values. Or worse, thought he had none at all.
Shoving his hands in his pockets, Jack smirked as he backed away, "That was your one and only warning. Congratulations, man. I hope the second marriage sticks better than the first."
When he found you back inside, you were sitting with your mother, heads huddled together as you drank a dirty martini. He sat in the empty seat next to you and reached for the pack of cigarettes you'd left on the table.
"Hey—" You said indignantly, but Jack pocketed them before you could reach for them.
"You weren't supposed to have those." He said, eyebrows raised.
You pushed your lip out in an exaggerated pout, "But they made me feel so much better."
"Hm," Unable to resist, Jack ran a thumb over your lower lip, "so much better that you forgot your self defense training when he grabbed you?"
He had said it softly enough that only you could have heard, but you still found yourself glancing around, "He wouldn't have hurt me."
"That's not really the point though, is it? Why do you still let him make you feel small?"
Your eyebrows knit together and you shook your head, "I—I don't do that."
He nodded, "Yes, you do. I don't see you behave like this around anyone else—you shrink."
You pulled back in surprise and scoffed, "He was my husband." You said simply. As if it explained everything.
"So you just roll over and submit to him because he was your husband?"
Too far. He had pushed too far. He watched the wall go up behind your eyes, your features turned stony, "I need another drink." You said coldly and jumped up before he could say anything else.
"Fuck," Jack murmured, hesitating for only a second before jumping up to follow after you, "I'm sorry," he said sidling up next to you, "I didn't mean to upset you."
You were eating the olives from your empty martini glass as you waited for another, "Everyone is watching me today and will be watching me tomorrow. Picking apart my every move, foaming at the mouth hoping that I implode."
Jack glanced around and for the first time saw what you saw. At any given time there were at least four sets of eyes on you, whispers behind hands.
"I don't need you picking me apart as well."
He turned back towards you, "I didn't mean it like that. I just… feel very protective of you and I don't like the idea of anyone making you feel less than. Even if they were your husband."
You nodded and then thanked the bartender when he handed you another martini. With your free hand, you held out your pinky to Jack, "It's me and you, right?"
Jack smiled and nodded, wrapping his pinky around yours, "You and me."
There was a vulnerability in your eyes as you looked at him, a fragility you hadn't yet shown him until now. He was just now realizing how much of a show you must be putting on for everyone—for him. He didn't want you to hide from him.
Maybe you initiated it because you were drunk, but Jack didn't stop you when you slowly inched your face close to his. Mouths centimeters apart, he cupped your cheek with his hand, felt it when you leaned into his palm.
"Jack?"
"Hm?"
"I really like kissing you," you said softly, "probably more than I should."
His stomach flipped and he wet his lips with his tongue, "I really like kissing you, too. Definitely more than I should."
He felt it when your breath stuttered against his mouth, "Good."
It felt like a relief, admitting that. He had his suspicions you weren't kissing him back just for show, but to hear you say it outright electrified him. With your mouth on his, warm and tasting of olives and vodka, he didn't notice the likely dozens of eyes that must've been on you.
Jack hadn't dated since he lost his wife. He'd maybe shared a drunken kiss with a couple of women at a bar, but nothing beyond that. He hadn't wanted to. There had never been anyone else that he wanted to get lost in like that.
But kissing you now, his longing burst from him. Tongue sliding into your mouth, his heart felt like an open wound. Would you help him suture it closed? Or would you rip him open and dig deeper?
Tearing himself from you, he pulled back enough to look into your face, "Do you want to… Go somewhere else? Alone?"
Your fingers raised to your swollen lips, you looked around at all the people who were now acting like they hadn't been watching. Your eyes stopped on David for a moment as he brushed Maya's hair off her shoulder and kissed her bare skin.
You cleared your throat and turned back to Jack, "Yes."
***
Your heart was racing as Jack led you by the hand down the hall until you were in the bridal suite again, Jack pushing you against the door to close it.
His mouth was hot and insistent on yours, low groans deep in his throat stirring the fire in your belly.
It felt euphoric, being able to touch him and taste him like this. Though, every second, was the gnawing thought in the back of your head that this was only situational.
He didn't want you, not really, not fully. He just was caught up in the moment. You knew you weren't a bad kisser and you suspected Jack's private life was fairly nonexistent since his wife passed. He had only taken off his wedding band a couple months ago. Taking all that into consideration, he was just having some fun.
The problem, of course, being that you wanted more than that. Being newly divorced you guessed you should have wanted something uncomplicated, but you knew if it was Jack who was involved, you'd only want unfettered devotion. You cared for him far too much, there was no world where your heart was capable of being casual about him.
But fuck, you wished you could turn your brain off and just focus on the way it felt to kiss him, the way his hands on your body felt like heaven. He hitched your hip up to meet his, one hand roaming up your dress, your head falling back while he kissed your neck.
When he pulled back from you, you chased his mouth and he smirked. Repeating the movement, he leaned back into you before pulling away while you chased him.
You couldn't help the whine that slipped from you, "Fucking tease." You grumbled.
Jack brought his fingers up to his mouth and you watched, jaw going slack as he sucked two fingers in his mouth.
When he brought them back out, they glistened with saliva and you swallowed, eyes following as they went down—
"Eyes on me, sweetheart." Jack said softly and your eyes snapped back to his, even as you felt his hand beneath your dress. His deft fingers shifted your panties to the side and your eyes stayed locked on his as he gently slipped a finger inside you.
Your eyelids fluttered at the pleasure and Jack's sigh fanned your face, "That feel good, baby?"
You nodded, barely able to keep your head on straight. He was so close to you, you could smell the liquor on his breath, heady and intoxicating. You wanted him so badly, you ached, it wasn't enough with his fingers inside you. You felt greedy, you wanted to feel him wholly.
Your hands twitched, wanting to unbuckle his belt, see how hard you had made him. But along with the desire, panic was brewing. Through your haze as his fingers slowly thrust in and out of you, a thumb lazily circling your clit, you were panicking.
There had only been one serious relationship in your life and it had been David. Before David, you had done the hooking up while in college, the one night stands and friends with benefits. But it had never been enjoyable, you had never been able to come. For a while you thought maybe there was something wrong with you. Maybe you just didn't like sex.
But as you began dating David and then sleeping with him, you realized that wasn't it at all. It was just that you needed an emotional connection to get off. You needed to be attracted to someone's heart, you needed to trust them to get there.
And now with Jack's fingers inside you, it fucking terrified you how quickly your peak was approaching.
He was more than likely just trying to get his rocks off and you were falling in love with him, you could feel it. You were in danger of getting broken if you didn't find an escape hatch soon.
"Fuck—" Your walls were beginning to flutter around his fingers—It was becoming hard to breathe—
"There you go, sweetheart, I can feel you, go on—"
Swallowing, you put a hand on his wrist and pushed lightly, "Troponin," you gasped.
Immediately, Jack froze. Embarrassed, you avoided looking at him as he pulled his fingers from you and stepped back. You mourned the loss of his touch immediately.
"Sorry, did I—Did I hurt you?"
"No," you shook your head quickly, "No, you did nothing wrong. I just, um—" You grasped at nothing for the words, for what to say, heat spreading up your neck to your cheeks.
"It's okay, you don't have to explain," He said quickly, but you heard the disappointment in his voice, "I'm gonna step outside so you can straighten yourself out."
He was gone before you could say anything else and you were alone. Straighten myself out, you thought as you pulled at your panties and dress, putting everything back the way it should be. If only it were that simple to straighten out your head, your heart.
This whole thing, coming to the wedding, bringing Jack here, had been stupid. Reckless.
At this point, there was no way you left this wedding better off than when you came. Your eyes burned as you braced yourself to go back out there.
Jack had said you didn't have to explain, but didn't you? Didn't you have to give him some excuse after the confusion you'd certainly just caused?
But when you came back out, he was waiting with a smile. The only way to tell something had changed was just his subtle check in with you to see if he could put a hand on your back or hold your hand.
After another couple of hours of socializing and another drink or two, you were leaning your back against his chest. He kissed the side of your face and then leaned into your ear, "Time to get you to bed?"
When you nodded, he gently led you around to your parents so you could say goodnight before beginning to walk you towards your hotel.
"Jack, I'm really sorry about earlier—" You started when you were outside, the only sound was of the cicadas chirping and the muffled music and talking from the rehearsal dinner behind you.
"You have nothing to apologize for, I moved too quickly. I'm sorry for making you uncomfortable."
You bit your lip. You wanted to tell him that he hadn't moved too quickly, that actually you wanted him so badly he hadn't moved quickly enough.
"You didn't make me uncomfortable," You said slowly, "What you said earlier, when you said you didn't understand why I let David make me feel small—"
He sighed, "That was out of line—"
You moved in front of him and shook your head, "It wasn't. You were right, that's how our relationship always was. I let him… Tell me what to do, when to do it, I let him talk down to me, I let him do anything. He was the only relationship I ever knew," You blinked, tears blurring your vision, "I thought that was being loved. I still think that, sometimes. He wrapped his hand around my wrist and I know it's fucked up, but I thought to myself 'He still cares. He still loves me.' Sometimes I think maybe I should have forgiven him when he cheated on me. At least then I'd still have just that little bit of love." Your face crumpled, the emotion swelling even as you tried to stop it, "I'm just so fucking lonely. But I don't know how to be with anyone who's not him."
Jack's face softened and he wrapped an arm around your shoulders, pulling you to his chest, "It's okay, baby, I've got you," As you cried into him, he kissed the top of your head, "It's gonna be okay."
When you got back to the hotel room, it was Jack who sat you at the edge of the bed and took a facecloth and your micellar water and gently removed your makeup while you cried, the most tender look on his face. He got your toothbrush for you, a cup to rinse and spit in after. And then with the softest voice, asked you if it was okay if he helped you out of your dress.
He tucked you in, following on his side a few minutes later.
You were still crying silently when you felt him next to you, careful to keep his distance. After the gentleness he'd shown you all night, even after your blatant rejection, your restraint was frayed.
"Jack?" You said after a few minutes.
"Yeah?"
"Do you think…Could you hold me?"
Without hesitation, you already felt him shifting on the bed, "Of course," He slung an arm around your middle and tugged you to his chest.
You closed your eyes and focused on the warmth of his body behind yours. Without meaning to, your hand grabbed ahold of his and you tucked his arm even tighter around you. You brought his hand to your mouth, pressing a kiss to his calloused palm.
He sighed in what sounded like contentment into your neck and pressed a kiss just below your ear.
When you were about to drift off to sleep, comforted by the warmth and solidness of Jack behind you, his scent enveloping you, you thought you heard a muffled, rough "love you."
He was likely already half asleep, maybe thinking of his wife. But for just a moment, as you slipped further into sleep, you allowed yourself to believe he was talking to you. That you got to fall asleep like this every night, wrapped in his arms, safe and loved.
***
Jack wasn't sure what he should be feeling when he woke up the next morning, still wrapped around you. You were still sleeping when he woke, the sun streaming in from the windows haloing around your head.
As his eyes carved paths down your face, the curve of your neck and shoulders, he felt overwhelmed with adoration. He wanted to stay like this forever, transfixed by the peaceful expression on your face. Unable to resist, he gently stroked a knuckle against your cheek. You didn't wake, but you hummed softly at his touch.
Man, was he in love with you. He knew especially after last night that you'd likely never return those feelings. You were still hung up on David and even if you weren't, you deserved something that was uncomplicated. Not a traumatized, widowed, amputee, vet who was pushing fifty. He was grateful just to be your friend and to have this weekend with you to play pretend. He'd lock the memories carefully away when you returned to Pittsburgh, only to revisit when he was alone and wistful.
You interrupted his thoughts with a heavy sigh, blinking slowly until you woke fully. You shifted in his arms until you saw him, awake next to you, and smiled.
"Good morning," you murmured, voice raspy from sleep. He wished it didn't, but the sound of your voice the first thing in the morning had him wanting to do unspeakable things with you in this bed.
"Morning," he said softly, smothering his desire as he pulled his arm away from you, "How'd you sleep?"
"Good," You said, rubbing the sleep from your eyes and then stretching your arms over your head. He pretended not to notice the way your nipples peaked beneath the thin cotton of your shirt, "You?"
He nodded, "Good. How're you feeling about today?"
You inhaled and exhaled slowly and then shook your head, "I don't know. I'm not looking forward to it."
He nodded, "Do you wanna go home?"
You frowned, "After all this, you would drive me home right now?"
He shrugged and ran a hand through his hair, "I think maybe I was wrong about this whole thing. You've been hurting the entire time."
You shook your head, "Not the entire time," you said softly and squeezed his hand, "Anyway, I spent a fortune on a dress and I look hot as fuck in it so I can't let it go to waste."
Jack smiled slowly, "You're sure?"
You nodded, "I don't want to give them the satisfaction of leaving early."
He nodded, "Alright, let's get ready then."
You weren't kidding about looking hot in the dress. It was black and clung to your every curve, flowing out just below your knees.
"What do you think?" You asked, moving to bend down to put your shoes on.
Jack was faster though, sinking to a knee at your feet with a heel in his hand and gesturing for you to lift your foot into it, "I think," He said, buckling the strap around your ankle, "You look breathtaking."
Having helped you into your shoes, he straightened to standing, letting his fingers trail against your calf as he did. Face to face with you, you reached out to straighten his tie, which he thought was mostly just an excuse to step closer to him. His tie was already straight.
"You look good in a suit, Abbot." You said, smoothing your hands across his shoulders before meeting his eyes.
Pleased, he smiled and ran a hand along his jaw, "I was thinking about shaving—"
"No, don't—" You said quickly, causing him to meet your eyes in question. You bit your lip and looked away, "I just, um, I like the… scruff."
You were a tough puzzle to crack. Clearly, you were into him, physically anyway. Yet you had cut it off when you got too close to the edge. He knew he hadn't imagined your moans and the contracting of your walls around his fingers. You had been close and something about that had spooked you. Your explanation had been David, and he believed that for the most part, but he couldn't stop noticing the way you reached for him when you were scared or uncomfortable. How you had asked him to hold you the previous night. The physical intimacy between the two of you that had grown over the last two days seemed to soothe you.
And maybe that was all there was to it. That you were lonely and you trusted him and his touch made you feel safe. Maybe he was just seeing what he wanted to see when he thought there was a bit more to the way you looked at him.
His mouth twitched, "Alright, no shaving, then."
***
The ceremony was difficult to sit through. You and Jack had done a shot of tequila before walking over, which had been helpful in loosening you up, but still. You looked almost anywhere else the entire time. Tried to ignore the nearby gushing of guests of how beautiful Maya was and how great they looked together and David tearing up when she walked down the aisle.
The vows were the most difficult to sit through and thankfully, you couldn't recall what had been said. The entire time, Jack's hand had been on your knee. But when that hadn't proved to be enough of a distraction, he had taken your hand and started thumb wrestling you. By the end of the ceremony you were having such a difficult time not laughing, people's heads were beginning to turn towards the two of you.
Once you'd made it to the reception, Jack had immediately tugged you to the bar— and was promptly disappointed when the bartender refused to serve you shots.
"Really, man? This is the bride's sister—"
"Jack—"
"I'll tell you what," Jack fished out his wallet and pulled out a hundred dollar bill, sliding it across the bartop, "Can we have those shots now?"
Your head swiveled as you watched the bartender pocket the hundred to see if anyone else was watching. Jack turned back to you, "What kind of bar doesn't serve shots at a wedding?"
You scoffed, "Have you been to a wedding in the last ten years?"
He turned to you, frowning, "Are you implying that I'm old?"
You smirked, "I didn't say that. Every wedding I've been to in the last decade that had an open bar refused to serve shots."
He narrowed his eyes, "That's insanity."
You shrugged, "As an emergency physician I would think you could understand why that may be the case."
"Eh," he shrugged, "Weddings should be a little messy. What's a wedding if your uncle doesn't get a little too drunk and start a fist fight with your third cousin?"
You laughed as the bartender slid you each a tequila shot, lime wedges on the rims. You took the lime off and turned to Jack, "Cheers," you said, clinking your shot glass against his.
After you both had slammed empty shot glasses back on the bartop, you were wincing as the tequila burned a path down your throat.
Jack winced too and then gestured yuou over with his hands, "C'mere."
You frowned, but stepped to him nonetheless, "What—?"
His hand cupped the back of your neck as he pulled you in for a bruising kiss. At first, the surprise of it had you tensing, but then you went molten in his arms, his tongue licking languid strokes in your mouth.
As quickly as it started it was over and you felt dizzy as you pulled away, clearing your throat, "What was that for?" You asked, conscious of the heat in your cheeks.
"Needed a stronger chaser," He said and winked at you, "lime wasn't enough."
Smirking, you let him lead you away from the bar and to your table. What the fuck were the two of you doing?
***
You probably should have been more careful about your drinking. Drinking when feeling vulnerable and sad and also wistful had never ended well for you. You were staring at Jack for too long, which for his part, he seemed to find amusing.
"I look that good, huh?" He leaned in and joked, nudging his nose against yours.
You had nodded, biting down on your lip, "You look sinful."
And it was true. As the night progressed, he had removed his jacket and tie, unbuttoned a couple of buttons at the top of his shirt and you could see some of his chest hair peeking out. You had an idea of what he was working with, broad chest and muscled arms that you had long admired in t-shirts and scrub tops, but tonight you felt like ripping his shirt off entirely. You wanted the buttons to pop and you wanted to ravage him.
You were drunk enough that the fear had seemed to leave you and Jack was a welcome distraction from everything else. But when the home videos started playing after they had cut the cake it was difficult to keep a smile on your face.
"You were adorable," He whispered in your ear, arm resting on the back of your seat. A video was playing of you helping your dad teach Maya how to ride a bike, "And a great big sister," You were about seven years older than Maya and had taken a lot of pride in being a big sister.
You inhaled slowly through your nose and pushed the ice in your glass around with your straw, "Yeah, and look where that got me."
Jack tilted his head, "Come on, don't do that."
You shrugged, "It's the truth." You felt the tears pinpricking the back of your eyes. This was what the alcohol did to you, brought everything you tried to bury to the surface. "I did everything for her and she stabbed me in the back. Sorry," You said immediately shaking your head, "I just need a second."
You pushed away from the table and went to collect yourself outside. Your hands shook and you cursed lowly under your breath. When you heard heels clicking behind you, you expected to see your mother, but when you turned it was your sister following you outside, white dress billowing behind her like an angel.
"Hey, are you okay? I saw you run out—Oh, you're crying."
You knew immediately that Maya had no idea how to comfort you. It was always you comforting Maya. And even after everything had imploded with you and David, you had never cried in front of her.
Awkward and stilted, she tried to wrap her arms around you, but you shrugged her off, "Please don't touch me."
"I'm just trying to help—"
"Don't you think you've done enough?" You snapped.
She scoffed and took a step back, "God, can't you just for one fucking day get over yourself? Today is supposed to be about me."
You laughed and shook your head, "Every day of my fucking life from the day you were born has been about you!"
"Oh, God, I'm so fucking sorry for the crime of being born—"
"That's not what this is about and you know it. Even my marriage ended up being about you—"
"I'm sorry he wanted me and not you! But that's not my fucking fault! Get over it!"
You scoffed, "Me? You want me to get over it? You stole my fucking husband—"
"You can't steal someone who doesn't want to be stolen!"
"Oh my fucking God," Your rage felt like a living thing in your chest. For a moment, you forgot where you were and it was just you and Maya. "Are you ever going to take accountability for what you did to me? Don't you think it's time you finally grow the fuck up?!"
"That's enough!" David swept in and placed himself between the two of you, Maya behind you, and lowered his voice to a hiss, "People are fucking staring, could you shut the fuck up?"
It was the alcohol, it had to have been. You never would have been behaving this way if you hadn't been innebriated to the level you were. But the rage you had suppressed for months and months was finally bubbling to the surface and the alcohol was like gasoline on the fire.
"Go fuck yourself," You said to David before you spat on his shoes.
Turning, you intended to leave and go back inside, but then your arm was being grabbed and pulled so aggressively, you thought your shoulder might pop out of your socket.
"Did you just fucking spit on me?" You were face to face with David again, his hand still gripping your arm no matter how you tugged.
"You're hurting me." You said calmly. If you were less drunk you might've been able to use those self defense classes Jack had mentioned last night to get out of his hold. But your brain was muddled and all you could focus on was your anger.
"Dave, let her go." Maya was saying in the background, but David wasn't listening.
"Hey!" That voice, you would recognize anywhere. But you were only used to hearing it that angry in the emergency department. With an unruly patient or fighting with admin. But Jack was pissed now as he stormed outside, laser focused on David and where his hand gripped you tight enough to bruise.
Upon seeing Jack, for his part, David immediately dropped you. But that did nothing to deter Jack, who although a couple of inches shorter than David, had no problem getting right in his face, "What did I fucking say to you last night, huh? You think this is a game?"
"Jack—" You said gently in warning, but he was lost to you.
David smirked down at Jack, "You gonna throw fists at my wedding, old man?"
You hadn't ever seen Jack this angry before and you were worried that he would start throwing punches. He fisted the lapels of David's suit in his hands and spun until he slammed David's back into a wall.
"Jack—" You said more insistently, a little more desperate since you heard Maya getting hysterical behind you, "It's fine he didn't hurt me—"
"You are so fucking lucky she's here—" He jerked his head in your direction, "—And I don't wanna embarrass her because I would take such fucking pleasure from ramming my knee into your groin if we were anywhere else. I may be an old man, but all that means is I've won way more bar fights than you have. And you're a fucking coward if your baby soft hands are any indication."
David set his jaw and looked around Jack to you, "Could you get your fucking meathead boyfriend off of me?"
Jack rammed David against the wall one more time for good measure before dropping him. Grabbing your hand, scowl still on his face, he dragged you back inside, "Jack—"
"I know, I'm sorry," He said finally, dropping your hand and running it over his face, "I know you can handle it yourself, but he just makes me wanna fuckin'—"
"Hey, it's fine," You said quickly, ignoring everyone else who was whispering about the scene you'd just made, "It was my fault anyway, I—" You bit your lip and looked down at the floor, embarrassed, "I spit on his shoes."
"I know, I saw," Jack said, sounding amused. And then his finger curled under your chin, pullng your face up gently so you could see the shit eating grin on his face, "It was kinda hot."
You snorted and rolled your eyes, "Shut up."
"No, I'm serious. It was nice to see you stand up for yourself with him for once. And your sister too. Did it feel good?"
Shyly, you nodded, "It feels awful to admit it, but yeah it did feel kinda good."
"'Atta girl," He said softly and your stomach did a somersault. You weren't sure what was going on between the two of you anymore. The line had blurred so much between what was being done for show and what was real that it was impossible to find anymore.
You weren't blind, you knew he wanted you physically and clearly he cared about you, but neither of those things necessarily combined to I'm in love with you.
And even if he were in love with you, that didn't mean he wanted to be with you. Love wasn't always enough, you knew that more than anybody. There was work to be done in a relationship and not everybody was willing to put in the work.
You were drunk enough that you were thinking of articulating all this to Jack, though a small part of you knew that was a mistake, but the second you opened your mouth someone was tapping you on the shoulder.
You turned to see Brandon, David's best man, glaring at you with a beer in hand, "Can I talk to you alone for a second?"
Brandon was known to be an explosive drunk. There were several times when out with a group of friends at the bar that David had had to carefully remove him from situations that would have gotten him arrested for assault. In fact, when David wasn't there, it wasn't unheard of for him to get a call in the middle of the night from Brandon saying that he needed to be bailed out of jail.
You didn't like Brandon, never had, and you certainly did not want to be alone with him when he'd been drinking.
"You can talk to me right here."
Brandon shook his head, then shrugged, "Fine. I think it was disrespectful of you to show up here with him and now you've made your own sister cry, saying her wedding's ruined—"
"Oh, give me a break, no one's gonna remember our little spat by the end of the night," You said rolling your eyes, "And if David and Maya wanted a perfect wedding they probably should have married different people. I'm so sick of everyone acting like what they did to me was fucking normal!"
"Stop acting like the victim when you cheated with him first!"
You blinked, "I never cheated and frankly I'm tired of everyone saying I did. I was recovering from surgery after miscarrying his fucking baby and he was busy sleeping with my sister! It's sociopathic behavior and I'm so tired of all of you making excuses for him!" You were shouting again, angry tears streaming down your cheeks, all the people around you were quiet and staring.
Brandon stepped closer to you and you stepped back—into Jack's broad chest behind you. Immediately comforted, you softened, until Brandon was wagging a finger in your face, "If you had any fuckin' decency you wouldn't have come here."
You rolled your eyes, "Oh, go kick rocks, Brandon. You're a drunk loser who's been riding David's coattails for the last decade. You don't know anything about decency."
You turned on your heel and grabbed Jack's hand as you tried to lead him away from the growing wildfire—When there was a sound like shattering glass and then a scream.
You and Jack both turned towards the commotion on instinct—And found that Brandon had gotten so angry, he'd thrown his beer bottle in your direction, but his piss poor aim meant it had shattered about three feet to your right—Right where Maya was standing with David—And there was blood on the floor.
It wasn't immediately clear where the blood was coming from because of Maya's billowing wedding gown, but judging by her tears it was definitely her who was injured.
Without thinking about it all that much, you and Jack both began walking towards her—
"Both of you, get away from her," David said, "I think you've done enough."
Jack's hands were raised in surrender, "We're probably the only doctors here, I just wanna make sure she doesn't need stitches, that's all." You noted his immediate shift in tone and posture: this was emergency medicine physician Dr. Abbot in front of you. All traces of Jack were gone.
"It's okay, David," Maya said softly, "Let them take a look."
Reulctantly and with his jaw set, David stepped aside. As you both moved to Maya, turned and pressed his car keys into your palm, "Why don't you go grab some supplies from my truck? And a suture kit just in case?"
You frowned, "But I—"
"Don't take this personally, but I think Maya's still upset with you and would be more comfortable with… someone else assessing her injuries."
You looked from Maya, who was carefully avoiding eye contact with you, back to Jack. He really had shifted into supervising attending mode. You were his senior resident again and he had just given you an order. You were annoyed, but shrugged and backed away, "Fine."
***
Jack trailed behind as David carried Maya off into another room. As he did, he couldn't help but think how David had downplayed you almost bleeding out from a miscarriage, but was now babying his new wife over a cut on the foot. He wasn't sure what that said about the man. If maybe he was truly better off with Maya or that maybe he was like this with you in the beginning as well. Maybe that was why you seemed to have such a hard time letting him go.
When David set Maya down on a chair in the bridal suite, Jack took a step toward Maya, but she stopped him with a raised hand and turned to David, "Davey baby, why don't you go check in with my parents? I'm sure they're wondering what all the commotion was about, they'll be looking for me."
David frowned, "No, I—" He glanced at Jack, "I don't want to leave you alone with him."
Maya gave him a skeptical look, "Whatever beef you guys have, I don't think Dr. Abbot would do anything to hurt me," she turned to look at Jack, "Right?"
Jack shook his head, "I just wanna check on that laceration."
Maya turned back to David as if to say see? And eventually, he folded, sighing, "Fine. I'll be right back."
With David gone, Jack lowered himself to the floor to get a look at Maya's ankle. She had pulled the skirts of her dress up so he could access it more easily. His limb was beginning to ache where it sat in his socket, and the lowering of himself to the ground wasn't helping, but the alcohol was doing a pretty good job at masking the discomfort.
There was one lac, about three inches long on her ankle and it seemed to already be clotting. He turned her ankle this way and that to see if there was anything else, but it seemed to be just the one. He'd have to flush it out with saline to make sure there was no glass in the wound, but she'd just need a bandage. He told her as much and she sighed in relief.
"Look, um—" She sighed, "You seem like a loyal man who really cares about my sister so I understand if you probably don't like me, but I just wanted to say that I am really happy for you both. You seem really good together." At the look on Jack's face she added quickly, "And I'm not just saying that to relieve my own conscience, I—" She sighed, "I know what I did, what I allowed to happen, I know why she can't forgive me, I just—" She blinked, eyes going glassy, "I just really miss her, you know?"
She looked a lot like you when she cried and it softened Jack to her immediately, "I think that in your rush to be forgiven and not lose her, she feels like you keep trying to dismiss why she feels so hurt."
Maya sniffed and nodded, "Is she really still that devastated? Now that she has you?"
God, she was so young. You and Jack weren't together, but he thought even if you were this would still be a sore spot for you. Did she really not get it? "Two of the people she loved and trusted most in her life lied to her and snuck around behind her back for almost a year. That's not something that heals that easily, and not without a scar."
Maya was silent for a moment and then her voice came out small, almost childish, "Do you think she'll ever forgive me?"
Jack sighed and shrugged, "I can't answer that, kid. I know she really misses you, but I think she's just as angry."
She nodded, fingers knotted in her lap, "Can you at least promise me," She said, reaching out her pinky to him, "That you'll take care of her? She's always taking care of everyone else and I think she really just… Needs someone else to. At least for a while."
Well, that was easy. He'd never stop looking out for you. "Sure," he said and wrapped his pinky around Maya's, "I promise."
***
You don't think they heard you when you stepped into the bridal suite, but what a sight it was. Jack on his knees in front of your sister, smiling up at her, his pinky wrapped around hers.
You wished you could say the way you reacted had nothing to do with jealousy or trust issues. That it had nothing to do with how the last person you had been in love with had turned you in for the newer, fitter model in front of you.
It wasn't even the way he was looking at her. You'd worked with Jack for years, you knew he smiled at everyone like that. You knew he was a habitual flirt.
It was the pinky promise that really gutted you, combined with everything else. You felt like you were being slapped in the face with the fact that you weren't special, not to anybody, and certainly not to Jack. Something that had felt almost like a secret handshake over the course of the weekend now trespassed upon by your sister.
And of course, the alcohol in your system just fed on these insecurities, nurtured them until they were all you could see.
So, heart aching in your chest, you walked towards them and set the supplies you'd brought down next to Jack.
For your sister's part, she jumped away from him when she realized you were there, but Jack seemed unbothered, "Hey, could you start a saline flush? She just needs a bandage—"
"I need another drink, actually, so do it yourself."
You saw Jack stiffen at your curtness, but you turned and started walking before he could say anything else. He barely got out your name before you had left the room.
It wasn't long, though, before he caught up with you, "Did I do something wrong?" He asked quietly.
"Nope." You tried to feign cool and casual, but the truth was it felt the walls were closing in on you. You had nothing and nobody. You were so goddamn lonely it had started feeling like karmic punishment, for what you didn't know.
"Really," he said, "so there's no reason for the way you spoke to me back there? In front of your sister?"
"I don't know what you're talking about, I need a drink—"
He grabbed your arm, not unkindly, and turned you so that you were facing him, "I think you've had enough to drink today—"
You pulled away from him, stumbling a bit so that he reached out for you, but you regained your balance without his help, "We are not in the ED so you don't get to tell me what to do."
His brows knitted together and he shook his head, "I don't understand, we were just good like five minutes ago, why are you acting like this?"
"What does it matter? You're not my boyfriend, it's not your responsibility to figure it out." You turned and started walking again, "I'm actually just gonna leave, I think, I don't wanna be here anymore."
"Okay," Jack said slowly, "That's fine, let's go then—"
"No," you said, "Not we, me. I'm going. Alone."
Jack threw up his hands, exasperated, "Are we not friends, at least? Can you tell me where you're going? You're drunk, you shouldn't be wandering by yourself—"
"I'm going back to our room, getting my things, and then I'm calling an Uber to take me home."
You started walking again and Jack had to jog to catch up. You felt a pang of guilt when you noticed his slight limp. He'd been on his feet most of the day.
"You're gonna call an Uber to take you back to Pittsburgh? Right now?"
"Yes."
He sighed heavily, "Sweetheart, please, throw me a rope, anything: Why are you so upset with me?"
You felt childish when your vision swam in front of you, "What did you promise her?"
He frowned and shook his head, "What? Who?"
"My sister," You said, swallowing past the lump in your throat, "You pinky promised her something, I thought that was our thing."
His face fell and you could almost see his brain doing calculus behind his eyes as he shook his head, "That is our thing, we were just talking," You were shaking your head, trying to keep a stiff upper lip, "Come on, baby, it's you and me, remember?"
He was holding his pinky out to you and you hated the way you instantly softened at his term of endearment. Anytime he called you baby or sweetheart you melted. But that was how you'd been for David, too, and look how that had turned out. Jack himself said you gave into him too easily and you used to think that's what love was. You wouldn't fold like that anymore, not for anybody.
"I'm going home," You said again and then began walking outside.
Jack chased you the whole way, going on and on about how he knew you were hurting but he thought you were misdirecting your anger at him. When you got to the room he kept talking, begging you to stay and just get in bed with him and you could talk when you were sober. Please, I'll drive you home first thing in the morning, I promise. He was growing increasingly more desperate the longer you ignored him and when you went downstairs to meet your Uber, he carried your bag, but still repeatedly asked you to stay with him.
"Please don't get in the car," He said quietly, even as he put your bag in the trunk for you, "Please come back upstairs with me, I'm sorry. I was talking about you the entire time I was talking to your sister, I didn't mean anything by it."
Looking back on it later, you knew you should've stayed. Somewhere deep behind the anxiety and the pain you knew you were being unreasonable. Punishing Jack for crimes he hadn't committed.
You were looking for problems to make it easier for you to leave so he couldn't leave you first.
The truth was, in all the time you'd been with David, he had never once chanced after you when you were upset with him. He'd never made the effort to try to understand why you were upset. Not even when things were good between you.
Jack was nothing like him, but you were punishing him anyway because you were afraid of how much you cared about him. It was easier to think it wouldn't work out between the two of you because he had fucked up instead of the truth that he more than likely didn't want you like that.
So you got in the car, stared at your phone instead of Jack's receding form as your driver pulled off the curb.
***
Jack Abbot thought himself a patient man. After you left that night, he'd stared off after the Uber feeling sorry for himself and only sent you a single text: Please just let me know when you get home.
On the way back upstairs to the hotel room, he ran into your mother who he apologized profusely to as he explained you had left.
"It's not your fault," She said quickly, "Honestly, I'm impressed she'd made it this far. I expected her to cuss them out as soon as she set foot on the property."
Jack frowned, "Why'd you encourage her to come then?"
"Oh, well, that was the outcome I wanted," She smiled, "I know it seems crazy, what mother wants their daughters to have it out in front of everyone they love? But I've watched her bury it over the last two years. It was eating away at her. And I know that because I did the same thing."
Jack nodded slowly, "She mentioned. That you'd been in a similar situation with her father. I'm sorry."
She shook her head, "The only thing I regret now was not letting myself get angry." She sighed, "I'm sorry you were in the cross fire though, that I didn't want. I was actually hoping that you being here would remind her that her life wasn't over, but I underestimated how much she likes you."
Jack frowned, "I don't follow."
Your mother looked at him with a sad smile on her face, "She's scared of you. Of how you make her feel. That's why she left."
She had left him with that and he'd mulled it over in his head for a while, but decided he couldn't confront that and what it might imply right then. He was still drunk and now he was sad. He had only shared a bed with you for two nights, but he thought he'd probably sleep like shit without you.
He woke up the next morning in the empty hotel bed and saw you'd texted him just before dawn: home.
He wanted to say more. He wanted to call you, he wanted to hear your voice, make sure you were actually alright. But he didn't do any of that. He packed up his truck and headed out without saying goodbye to anyone and drowned out his thoughts with the radio.
Jack was patient when he arrived at his first shift back since the wedding, eager to see you, only to have Lena tell him you had called out. Fine. You had never done that before, but fine. If you still wanted space he could do that.
The second night you called out, he was irritated and finding it difficult to think about anything else. But still, he remained steadfast. He would not push you when you clearly wanted nothing to do with him.
The third night, he snapped.
"What the fuck?" He hissed to Lena, "She can't keep calling out like this, have you—I mean, have you actually spoken to her?"
"No, just texts," she leaned closer to Jack, "What happened while you guys were upstate?"
Jack scrubbed at his face, "Doesn't matter. Could you please call Shen and see if he'll come in tonight? I need to go check on her."
He tried calling you while he waited for Shen to get there, knowing you wouldn't pick up, but at least you didn't deny his call. You had enough decency to let it ring until it went to voicemail instead.
As he headed to your place, his fingers drummed anxiously against the steering wheel. He had no plan, no idea what he was going to say to you when—if you opened the door. Regardless, he was eager to see you. Even if you just screamed at him to fuck off.
He paced outside your door after ringing the doorbell, fists clenching and unclenching—he felt like a fucking teenager.
When the door cracked open, he stopped and turned, taking you in.
You were barefoot in sweats and a hoodie, eyes swollen and puffy. It was clear to him immediately that you hadn't been sleeping and you hadn't been taking care of yourself.
"Hey," he said softly, feeling like he was trying to coax a stray dog into his car, "How are you?"
Stupid. Dumb question. Especially when the answer was written all over you.
You crossed your arms, "What're you doing here? Shouldn't you be at the hospital?"
He raised his eyebrows, "Shouldn't you?"
"I'm sick."
Jack hummed, "Well, I'm sorry to hear that. Maybe I can take a look at you since I'm here."
You sighed and shook your head, "I don't understand why you're here."
He tilted his head, "You don't?"
Your eyes grew wet and you sniffled, "Are you here to fire me? Is that it?"
"No," He said softly, "Of course not. I'm here because I'm worried about you. Why're you calling out? Is it me? You don't wanna see me? Because I can—I can talk to Robby and see if we can move you to his shift, but I don't want you throwing your career away—"
"I don't want to work on Robby's shift, but I—I have a hard time even looking at you right now," You looked up and screwed your mouth to the side, the way you sometimes did when you were trying to stifle an emotion. He waited, though he was hanging on your every word, "I'm… mortified by how I acted when I left. I—I shut down I was too drunk and I got scared—"
"Scared of what, honey?"
Your lip wobbled, "Scared of loving someone again, of giving someone else the chance to hurt me."
Oh. Jack's heart squeezed painfully in his chest. Your mother had said something similar to him just a few days ago, but after sobering up and the repeated call outs, he assumed she'd gotten it wrong.
"It's stupid and you probably don't even feel like that about me—"
"I'm gonna stop you right there," He said and stepped towards you. He reached a hand up to stroke your cheek, thumb swiping at the tears just below your eyes, "I am madly in love with you."
You hiccuped, bringing up your hand to rest on Jack's wrist, anchoring him to you, "Really?"
He nodded, "And I—I can't promise you that it'll never hurt, I'm…not the easiest to love. I'm old and sad and stubborn and probably have more PTSD triggers than the number of years you've been alive. But I won't ever treat you the way he treated you," He reached his pinky up between you, "That I can promise."
You wrapped your pinky around his and then used your intertwined hands to pull him closer and rested your forehead against his, "I don't think you're hard to love at all. I think I'd be very lucky to love and be loved by you, Jack Abbot."
He sighed shakily against your mouth before kissing you. You'd kissed before, but this felt transformative. As his mouth moved against yours, warm and soft and pliant, he felt overcome by how much he loved you—Something he didn't think he'd get to feel again after his wife passed. But when he was with you, it felt like he was starting over. Like maybe he could step in the light of the sun again and not get burned.
With a groan, he pulled away from you, breathless and euphoric, "I don't want to be presumptuous, but… may I come inside?"
You smiled and looked away shyly, "I… was not prepared for guests I know how neurotic you are."
He gaped at you, eyebrows raised, "I am not neurotic."
You laughed and stepped aside, allowing him a path inside, "I give you thirty seconds before you hightail it out of here."
Jack barely made it past the entryway. There was clutter everywhere, the kitchen sink was full of dirty dishes, towels and clothes in varying states of clean and dirty littered the floors and hung over the doors.
He could tolerate mess, really, he could. But this level of mess reminded him of living with three other men in college, something he promised himself once he had the money he'd never live with again. He could not fathom wooing you and taking you to bed in this pit of entropy.
"You still love me?" You asked, voice small.
He gave a surprised laugh and ran a hand through his hair, resting at the back of his neck, "Yes, but we're leaving. Pack a bag."
"Where are we going?"
"You're staying with me tonight," He eyed your overflowing trashcan, a takeout container perched precariously on top of it, "Maybe forever," he added softly.
He helped you pack, dismissing every embarrassed apology you threw his way about the state of your apartment. He had been to your place before when you lived with David, once, after your miscarriage when you ended up needing surgery. He remembered the place had been neat and tidy—not sterile, but cozy. The state of your apartment didn't worry him, it was simply a manifestation of your mental health as of late. Something that was fixable. And fix it he would—later.
Once at back at his place, Jack immediately started running you a bath. He had copious amounts of epsom salts to ease his muscles, especially his leg, and he poured these in while the hot water ran. You stood in the threshold of the door alternating between watching him and taking in his house.
"When was the last time you ate anything other than Doordash?" He asked, gently tugging you by the hands fully into the bathroom.
"Um, I don't—" You sighed, "I don't remember."
"I'm gonna make you dinner," he said softly, thumb running over your lower lip, "Do you like bolognese?"
You bit your lip as you looked up into his face, "You don't have to do that."
He shrugged, "I want to. If it makes you feel better I was gonna make it for myself anyway when I got off shift." He kissed your forehead, then your nose, then your mouth, "Do you want a glass of wine while you're in the bath?"
"Sure," You smiled, and when he went to step around you, you squeezed his hand, "Jack?" He turned back to you, question in his eyes, "Could you stay with me while I'm in the bath?"
He smiled softly and walked back over to you, kissing you a bit deeper, worrying your lower lip between his teeth before pulling away, "Of course."
***
It felt a bit surreal, sitting in Jack's bath with a glass of red wine in your hand and the man himself staring at you with adoration as you soaked. This morning when you'd woken up you'd contemplated moving across the country so you'd never have to see him again. Now you were in his home and he'd told you he was in love with you.
You were still afraid, terrified really, of giving him the power to hurt you. It wasn't something that could be turned off so easily—but still, you trusted him. There was a persistent voice at the back of your head that reminded you you had trusted David at one point as well. But with Jack, it felt different. With David, even when you trusted him, there was an anxiety, a resentment, quietly brewing in the background. With Jack you felt only peace.
Your legs were thrown over the lip of the tub and the hungry look in Jack's eyes as he eyed them was not lost on you.
"You can touch, if you want," You said quietly.
His eyes dragged up to yours and then he smirked, "Is that why you asked me to stay?"
You sank lower beneath the water and shrugged, "Maybe."
His fingers tread carefully along your skin, at first kneading gently at your feet. You couldn't help the groan of contentment that escaped you almost immediately at his touch. It had been a long time since someone had touched you so lovingly.
Soon, you felt his lips at your ankle, pressing featherlight kisses along your leg as his hands traveled further up—Until they dipped beneath the water.
Your eyes stayed locked on his as his calloused fingers ran slowly up your thigh, your breaths quickening.
Slowly, he ran his tongue along his lips as his fingers reached the apex of your thighs, "You sure?" He asked, and his voice was rough and husky.
When you nodded, you watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed and beneath the water his fingers parted your lips. He began slowly, gently circling your clit as you sighed and arched your back. When you began whining beneath his touch, he pushed a finger inside you and you moaned in earnest as he slowly and gently curled it upward, thrusting in and out of you.
His fingers felt so good, warming you up and stretching you out, but you needed more. Your hands wandered up your torso until the cupped your breasts and you began pulling and pinching at your nipples.
"Fuck," Jack cursed and you watched as he palmed the bulge in his pants with his free hand, "You're gonna fuckin' kill me, kid."
Already, with Jack's fingers inside you, you were embarassingly close to the edge. You hadn't slept with David since before the miscarriage, so it had been something like two years since you'd been with someone. Since anyone had touched you with desire.
"You close, sweetheart?" Jack cooed, "You wanna come on my fingers?"
"Mmm," You whined, "Please, Jack."
There would be time for slow, for teasing, for edging later, you thought. Much later. Now you were ravenous for him. Altogether you thought it had only taken him about two minutes to get you to unravel on his fingers, and when you did, crying out, he hummed appreciatively, "You're so gorgeous when you come for me, baby."
As soon as Jack pulled his hand away from you, you were standing up. Jack laughed in surprise, "Where are you going?"
"Need you to fuck me," You said shortly, "Can't do that in here."
"Oh," Jack said, seeming surprised, and you watched as a flush worked its way into his cheeks, "You want to—Now?"
Getting cold now, you lowered yourself back down into the water, "Do you not want to?"
"No—No, of course I do. I'm just, um—" He shook his head quickly, "—It's been a—long time for me."
You nodded, "Me too."
He sighed and hung his head, "No, I mean, I haven't slept with anyone. The last person I slept with was my wife."
Ah. Well, that was quite a bit longer than you. Still, it didn't bother you, "We don't have to do anything you don't want to do," You said slowly, "I hope that goes without saying. But I'm not going to be judging you on performance, Jack. I just want to be close to you right now."
He looked back up at you, a hesitant smile on his face, "I wanna be close to you, too."
Jack held your hand as you climbed out of the tub and wrapped a towel around you, kissing you tenderly as he helped you dry off. But his kisses became hungry, sloppy as the two of you maneuvered to the bedroom, his hands wandering to your hips and ass.
"God, you're so sexy," he murmured into your mouth. You licked into his in response, making every kiss impossibly deeper and hungrier, like you wanted to consume him.
When the back of his legs hit the bed, you dropped to your knees in front of him, looking up at him with wide eyes as you began unbuckling his belt. From this angle, from any angle, he was gorgeous to you, but he bit his lip now as he watched you free his cock and you felt your heart stutter in your chest at the sight of it.
He hissed when his cock sprung free and you wordlessly tugged him down to sitting on the edge of the bed as you admired him. He was thick and leaking, a patch of graying curls at the base, beautiful. You were practically salivating at the sight of it. Taking him in your hand, you lapped at his tip, taking his precum onto your tongue. Immediately, he was groaning and you watched him fist the sheets.
Looking up at him, you took one of his hands, watched it uncurl from the bed and placed it on the back of your head, "I want to feel how desperate you are for me," You said, looking up at him. He looked a bit helpless, almost stunned, and you nodded at him, eyebrows raised, "Okay?"
Finally, he nodded. This time, when you took him in your mouth, his hand gripped you. As you found a rhythm, bottoming out with him hitting the back of your throat, you were pleased when his hips began bucking into your mouth, his hand guiding your head on and off his cock.
After a couple of minutes of this, Jack groaned and gently pushed you off him, "Come up here," he said softly and watched carefully as you wiped the spit from your mouth with your arm and rose to standing.
He kissed you greedily and began to pull you into his lap, but you pulled away slightly, "Can we take all this off, please?" You tugged lightly at the shirt he was still wearing and his half off pants, "Want to see all of you."
Already nodding, he pulled his t-shirt over his head. You knelt back down to the floor to help him take his prosthetic off so the pants could come off too.
With everything off, Jack pushed himself backwards towards the pillows and you admired him from the foot of the bed for a moment. He was as broad chested as you imagined, covered in freckles you wished to connect like constellations. He was muscled, but soft around the middle, a generous happy trail that you longed to lick in its entirety.
You shook your head, almost at a loss for words, "You're the most beautiful man I've ever seen."
Jack blushed, but rolled his eyes and shook his head immediately, "Stop that, my body's—It's not what it used to be."
You shook your head, "I'm sure you were gorgeous then, too, but you're—" You bit your lip, "I wanna lick every inch of you."
You crawled over to him and straddled his hips, hands wandering eagerly across the planes of his chest while you ground your slick folds over his cock. Jack groaned appreciatively, hands gripping your hips hard enough to bruise, "Fuck, you're so wet," You dragged your folds along the length of him again and he sighed, "That all for me, sweetheart?"
You nodded, eyelids fluttering as you rubbed your clit against him, over and over.
"You wanna come again, baby? Rubbing your clit on my cock like that?" He lightly slapped your ass and you moaned, quickening your pass to chase the friction.
You were close again, could feel your impending orgasm just on the cusp and Jack saw it all over your face, "Go on, baby. Be a good girl and come on my cock."
His praise easily pushed you over the edge, Jack continuing to forcefully move your hips along his length as you came down.
With a hand on the back of your neck, Jack pulled you down to kiss him again, "So good," he mumbled, "feel so good."
Gently, he maneuvered you off of him and positioned you so you were on your side, you back to him, as if you were spooning. Flexing his left leg over your hips for purchase, he pushed inside you slowly from behind, the stretch of him making your eyes roll back into your head.
He kissed the back of your neck, "I'm—I'm not gonna last long like this, fuck—"
"That's okay," You ran a hand down his thigh and rocked your hips back into him, "We can go again later."
He chuckled and then started rocking into you fully, cursing occasionally or biting down on your shoulder hard enough that you were sure it would bruise later. Jack was overwhelming every one of your senses as he thrust in and out of you and you were being very vocal about. So loud, in fact, that Jack reached around and stuffed his fingers in your mouth and ordered you to suck on them as if they were his cock. This quieted you, but only just.
As you moaned around his fingers, he began slamming into you with more force, the sound of his hips snapping into yours filling the air until he stuttered and you felt him fill into you, warm and wet.
The two of you were panting as he finished, hips slowing until they stopped completely. After a moment of recovery, Jack tightened his arms around you and kissed up the side of your neck, "Are you alright? Was that okay?"
You almost laughed, "'Okay'? It was incredible. How was it for you?"
"Yeah," He said, kissing your shoulders, "About the same."
For a long while, the two of you laid there in the quiet, just holding one another—Until your stomach rumbled.
Chuckling, Jack ran a hand over your stomach, "Let's go make you dinner, sweetheart."
***
With the dishes cleared and your stomachs full, you had gotten ready for bed in Jack's en suite bathroom. When you walked back into the bedroom, he was under the covers, his face lit up with the blue light from the TV. When you climbed into bed next to him, you looked to see a baseball game on.
"Do you mind this? I can change the channel—"
You yawned and shook your head as you snuggled up next to him, throwing an arm over is chest, "I'm gonna pass out probably in the next five minutes, so, no need."
He hummed and ran a hand over your back, "Well I was planning on working tonight so I might be awake for a while longer."
"That's okay," You burrowed your nose into his neck, inhaling the scent of his aftershave, "As long as you stay here with me."
He kissed the top of your head, "No place else I'd rather be."
As you fell asleep, Jack kept looking back down at you, as if to check if you were still there. Every so often, he'd touch your face or kiss your head and you'd hum in contentment.
With you sleeping in his arms like this, he began to fantasize of another wedding, a couple of years from now. The dream wedding you'd always wanted, but didn't get the first time. He could practically see it, you in a white dress, him watching you walk down the aisle to him.
Both of you beginning a new chapter together, starting over. He didn't think he'd ever get to be a husband again. But with you warm and safe in his bed, he thought he'd very much like to be yours.
Leaning over you, Jack kissed your cheek and then whispered in your ear, "I love you."
Still half asleep, you murmured back, "Love you."
For the first time in a long time, Jack Abbot was looking forward to the sun rising and a new day beginning.
🖤 a collab fanfic by @keer-y and @sheisjoeschateau
🤍 a modern stranger things au//steve harrington centric
masterpost + chapter links + extras
Steve Harrington x fem!readerstrangers to childhood friends + pen pals to stepsiblings to lovers. ultra emo/angsty smut, hurt/comfort. modern day au, no upside down. porn with big plot.18+
Chapter Six: "Never Been Kissed" -> 2010/2011
SUMMARY: This year, back to school means back to the absence in your chest returning. You’ve only had two Summers with Steve, but you’re already learning that they’re everything and then some.
This year, back to school also means making another friendship that’s almost as formative as the Waldorf/Harrington dream team—and that’s the union of Waldorf and Wheeler. Yet despite your quick closeness, part of you still holds back, and you can pretend that you don’t know why as much as you want, but inside you know the truth.
This year, you and Steve take your friendship to an even deeper place: Sharing fears, insecurities, the dark places that no one else has ever seen.
You can’t imagine being luckier than you are right now.
Chapter Six
"Never Been Kissed"
FALL 2010
Boarding school is something that you never really get used to, even though you've been attending since 6th grade. It's just—there's something about the air, the grass, the inherent stiffness, and of course the endless amount of girls that you can't escape.
Barely a week ago you were with Steve in the Hamptons, laughing and dancing and watching him smoke a cigarette; sparklers and ice cream and hair crunchy from saltwater; tan lines and chipped nail polish and fiddler crabs. Now you're in Massachusetts with a ribbon in your hair a la Violet Baudelaire wearing knee socks and Mary Janes.
You send Steve a picture of the school's coat of arms in the entry way, but he doesn't respond right away. It's early and you know he doesn't start school until next week, so you aren't really expecting a response until noon at best.
You report to the auditorium along with the rest of the students, where Headmistress will greet you before you break into your grades (Class of 2015—woohoo) to receive your dorm assignments and course schedules.
Headmistress Gonzales takes the stage to raucous applause and a few scattered boos, which are immediately cut off as teachers start looking for the dissenters.
“Welcome back,” Headmistress says, “to our hallowed halls.” She lifts both arms and gestures to the auditorium as a whole. “I trust the summer treated you well. I see many a smiling face.”
You look around at the people immediately beside you. No one is smiling.
“We have a lot for you to look forward to this school year, including a new variety of lunch and dinner options, and a slew of new, updated textbooks.”
There's some tentative applause at these announcements, half of which interests you: The food half. Thankfully, she (or the board) saw fit to do something about whoever did the previous food service, because it was god awful. You made a mental note to tell Steve about this later, because maybe the verbal letter you guys had narrated to America as a whole two summers previously had finally come true.
“We're welcoming a few new staff members this year, replacing Mrs. Tipton and Mr. Nguyen,” she says, and you scowl immediately. Mrs. Tipton was the librarian, and one of the best people on campus. Mr. Nguyen taught AP US history and you weren't quite there yet.
“And,” Headmistress goes on, “we're also welcoming a whopping seven new students this year!”
This was whopping, actually. Normally the new student intake number was three, or two if it was an off year. Seven new students was unheard of—well, at least from what you'd heard older students talking about.
“I trust that you will all make their transitions here as easy and fun as possible,” Headmistress says, then goes on to thank the board members and trustees and shout out multiple students' families for their generous donations—one of which is your own—and you promptly zone out. You'll hear this all again and again at assembly every week for the rest of the school year... and every school year until you graduate, probably.
You stand up and stretch once Headmistress dismisses you all, and file out toward the student government volunteers who are doling out room keys, schedules, and roommate assignments. You’ve never minded sharing space before, because your parents give a substantial amount of money to the school which is, apparently, enough to secure you the best room for the past two years.
At the 8th grade table, you're given an updated student ID card, your course timetable, the key to your dorm room and a slip of paper with a few sentences typed on it, with blank spaces filled in with handwritten words. Your roommate assignment.
You're so enthralled with who your new roommate is going to be that you need to be reminded to leave the table, and you apologize quickly to the girls behind you and rush off to the bathroom, juggling everything you're holding while you're trying to take in the writing on the paper you're holding.
There’s scant information on it, but it gives you the basic details of your new companion for the next nine months (and maybe more, if you decide you’d like to stick together for ninth grade and beyond too).
In mixed typewriter font and slanting script, you read your roommate’s information:
Name: Nancy Elaine Wheeler
Birthday: August 16, 1996
Hometown: Hawkins, Indiana
Focus of Studies: English
There are some other details that you remembered filling out about yourself at the end of last year, to better match you with a roommate (taste in music, hobbies, etc), but you were focused on the hometown. She was from Hawkins too? You wondered how you’d never crossed paths with her before, but it made sense—you were in private school in Massachusetts for most of the year and spent the summer typically on a beach somewhere. If you were hardly ever in Hawkins, you weren’t likely to meet anyone else who lived there unless their parents knew your parents (like the Harringtons).
You make your way to your dormitory—marveling over somehow being put into the same room as a girl from where you were from—and once you make it to the huge, white-stone building dedicated to the “middle school” girls, even though that is not what the administration calls your grade, you find a huge crowd outside.
“What’s up?” you ask the nearest student, a redhead with striking blue eyes who you think it’s named Francine or Maxine or Jeannine or some kind of “-ine” name.
“Someone pulled the fire alarm,” she says, pushing her hair back over her shoulder as she sighs heavily.
“Already?” you ask, and she snickers.
“Hey, I’m just glad they did it during the daytime,” she says. “Better than waiting until we’re all in bed.”
“Bold of you to assume they won’t do it then either,” you quip, and she laughs a little, looking you over before another girl with reddish hair drags her away from you.
“Max, come on,” she says, “Libby found a pretty decent rail around behind the cafeteria.”
“See ya,” Max says to you, and then she’s gone and you realize, as she jogs away with her friend, that she was holding a skateboard, which you’re pretty sure are banned on campus, but whatever—her funeral.
You return your attention to the main door of the dormitory, where there are now firemen trailing out with ladders and axes and scowls on their faces. It’s the first day on campus so there’s no classes just yet, which allows all of the students to arrive and get settled and fraternize before there’s classes and bells and homework to worry about.
The crowd grows bigger as more girls make their way over to the dorm, but as the firemen disperse, the dorm monitors start allowing you all into the building. You make your way to the third floor—everyone’s bags have already been brought up and left in their assigned room, so all you have to worry about getting there is yourself.
When you arrive to your room, it’s empty. Well, of people. Your things are piled in the middle of the floor along with two suitcases, a duffel bag, and a few cardboard boxes you don’t recognize. Your things would have been immediately discernible from Nancy’s even at a glance—you have a trunk and designer luggage, and at least twice as much as she brought.
You don’t quite want to choose a bed without letting Nancy at least see the room first, so you pull your things away from hers and decide to start unpacking your clothing. There are two closets and two chests of drawers, and out of respect for your heretofore unseen roommate you choose what you deem to be the worse of the two: tucked into the corner, not as easily accessible. You're just kneeling before your trunk, opening it, when the door to your room opens and a slight, mousy-haired young woman bustles in clutching papers, her school ID, the room key, and a laptop, the charging cable trailing behind her.
“...Hi,” you say, pushing yourself to your feet and watching as she tugs the cord for the computer into the room before the door swings shut behind her.
She takes a deep breath, steadies, then nods once, almost to herself, and looks at you, still holding everything she'd come in with. “Hi,” she says, her tone clipped but not rude.
“Nancy?” you ask, stepping forward and holding out your hands, asking wordlessly if she wants help.
“That's me,” she replies, looking around but not giving you any of the stuff she's holding. “Do you care which bed I take?”
“Oh,” you say, already withdrawing a little because of her big personality, which you can feel already. She's taking up the entire room, or you feel like she is anyway. “Well, I—no? I was going to take that closet,” you say, pointing, and she looks at it, then back at you.
“Well, since you got the worse closet I'll take the worse bed,” she says, and promptly crosses to the bed tucked against the wall, leaving the one by the window for you.
“Oh,” you say again, echoing yourself. You'd started to think that Nancy might overpower you just by sheer force of will, but that was actually pretty nice. “Thanks.”
She dumps the papers and computer onto the bed she chose, then looks around at you. “You are my roommate, right?” she asks, stating your name.
“Yup,” you say, then echo her for some reason. “That's me.”
She smiles at you, then strides right over to you, holding out her hand. You take it and shake her hand.
“So, are you old money or did you get lucky like me?”
“Huh?” you blurt out, then remember your manners and try one more time. “Sorry, come again?”
“I'm here on a scholarship,” Nancy says, “only one of two this year, apparently. Thought you might be the other.”
“Oh,” you repeat for the third time, and berate yourself internally for it. “No, um, I'm...” you were going to say 'actually a student here' but that's incredibly offensive because Nancy and whoever the other scholarship student is are also actual students here. “I've been attending for years, my parents... donate a lot of money to the school.”
She quirks an eyebrow. “So is the Waldorf Library Annex yours, then?”
Your cheeks warm. “It's not mine—” you stammer, but Nancy is grinning.
“That's cool. I wish my dad could buy me a library.”
You lower your gaze and look back behind you at the emptiness of the room, your unmade bed, the closet you'd opened yawning, waiting for you to fill it with your things.
“Well,” you say, trying for a joke, “you can visit mine any time.”
Nancy looks at you for a beat, then her lips curve into a smile. “Deal.”
&&
You don’t expect to like Nancy as much as you do. Normally you’re the quiet one, the one who observes, who sits peacefully aside and blends in, and doesn't really react super well to forceful or loud personalities. But Nancy feels different. She's not quite a hurricane of a person, but she'll grow into it, you can tell. It's like she's the eye of the storm, chaos ringing her, but she's not ready to move on to that just yet. Once she gets a read on your vibe, she starts to match it. She lowers her voice, she speaks to you calmly, though with latent excited energy you know is waiting to be let out.
The two of you spend the rest of your first day together in the dorm room arranging your desks and the singular book case you've been provided, making your beds, and chatting. She tells you about how her family just moved to Hawkins at the end of summer, right before school started, and you tell her how you’ve lived there your whole life, even though you travel more than you’re home, usually. The conversation turns to your favorite school subjects and eventually, sports.
“Well, I like running,” you say. “Track, you know?” After a beat, you add, “And basketball. Just watching it. Mostly.”
“Are you fast?” Nancy asks, as she's pinning photos to a corkboard you'd helped her hang above her bed.
“Um, yeah,” you say. “I have some medals at home.”
“Nice,” she says, tacking up a photo of her with two younger children, ostensibly her brother and sister. “I like archery and skeet shooting.” She looks back at you over her shoulder. “I’m pretty good.”
“My hands aren’t steady enough for that.”
“You only need to keep them steady for a moment,” Nancy says. “It’s more about steady eyes.”
You shrug. The whole afternoon passes you by as you decorate your room, some of your own photos next to your bed, taped to the wall because you didn't think about how you'd hang them up and also because you don't have very many at all. Nancy has a lot more, and it almost makes you feel self-conscious. You have friends at home, you just…don’t have too many photos with them. And it doesn’t help that one of your friends is someone you have a huge crush on. You don’t think you’d be able to have a picture of Steve around without either staring at it, bragging about him, or both.
“So…” Nancy says, hopping up to sit on her bed opposite yours, once you're both seemingly finished with each half of the room. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Me? No,” you reply, almost too quick, too practiced, like you answer the same question repetitively every couple days.
“Really?”
“Really,” you say, shrugging. “I’ve never really dated anyone.”
Nancy purses her lips, frowning. “So you’ve never had a boyfriend?”
“No…” you say, trailing off, shrugging one shoulder.
“What the hell?” Nancy scoffs. “Are all the guys in Hawkins like, celibate or something?”
You loose a nervous laugh, mostly because that had been unexpected. “No! Honestly, I'm not...really in Hawkins that much. I'm either here or, you know... away with my parents.” You smile a little to yourself, thinking of Summer, and then look back at your corkboard, noticing Steve’s absence. “There is this one guy I kind of like, though.”
Nancy perks up, hands moving to grip the edge of her mattress as she leans toward you. “Ok, then, spill. What’s he like?” She smiles at you, eyes twinkling a little, and you shrug again, looking away.
“He’s…I don’t know. He has really nice hair.”
Nancy nods, waiting for you to go on, but when you don’t, she needles you. “Hair? That’s it? You don’t just like him for his hair.”
Huffing a quiet little laugh, you shake your head. “No, I just… don’t really know how to explain him. We met a couple years ago, kind of by accident… at the coast.” Nancy nods, a half-smirk on her lips. “We spent Fourth of July together at the club.” You look up at her. “The yacht club.”
“Well I didn't think you were talking about the bump-n-grind kind,” Nancy quips, and you giggle nervously.
“They suck for kids, and we were the only ones there our age.”
“When was this?” Nancy asks.
“Two years ago... we were twelve.”
Nancy nods, gesturing for you to go on.
“We just had a... really great day. We were together for like, every minute. We went swimming and watched the fireworks and he asked if he could write to me when I was at school. Because he was staying there for the summer but I was leaving before that.”
“Like... letters?” Nancy asks, and you nod.
“Yeah,” you say, lowering your face again so she wouldn't see how happy that made you. “It's so old fashioned, I know, but...”
“It's romantic,” Nancy declares.
You look back up at her. “You think so?”
“Definitely.” She gives an appreciative hum. “All right, well. Honestly, he sounds great.” She pauses, smirking a little. “Have you kissed him yet?”
“Wh—no!” you protest.
“Why not?” Nancy asks.
“I don’t know. I don’t…know if he knows I like him like that. And I’ve never kissed anyone, anyway.”
“Wait,” Nancy says, standing up. “What? No way. How? You’re so…” She gestures vaguely at you with her left hand, her right resting on her hip.
You feel your cheeks warm and look at the floor, the flower-shaped area rug you’d begged your parents to get you specifically for your dorm, and which they had purchased without a second thought because of course they did. “I don’t know,” you finally answer, because Nancy is still waiting.
“Ok,” Nancy says, in that clipped way you were starting to learn she had. “That’s simply unacceptable.”
Glancing up at her when you saw her stepping closer, you barely have time to wonder what she’s talking about when one of her hands comes up near your face, threading through the hair at the side of your head and then tipping you back, just a little, so she can lean down and kiss you.
Nancy. Your new roommate. Who you’d met maybe six hours ago. Is kissing you.
It isn’t romantic, it isn’t thrilling, and it definitely isn’t how you imagined your first kiss would go. She pulls away, smiling sweetly down at you, and rubs her thumb over your temple before she steps back and throws herself onto her bed like it was just any other day.
“Well, now you have.”
&&
Steve finally texts you back later that afternoon, and you're halfway to telling him about The Incident (as you've started to call it in your mind) before realizing that you absolutely can, under any circumstances, not talk to Steve about kissing.
Steve: sorry dad made me go in to his work after lunch
Steve: well after i woke up and he had lunch lol
You: that's ok
Steve: hows the first day going?
You: it's going
You: met my roommate
Steve: how is she
You: she's nice. i'm still adjusting
Steve: why? uve been at boarding school for years
You: no, lol. to her.
Steve: why whats wrong with her?
You: nothing! she's just... pretty forward
Steve: is that bad?
You: it's not bad, it's just... i'm used to more reserved people
Steve: oh u mean like me B)
You: i don’t think i’d categorize you as reserved
Steve: please
Steve: im cool as a cucumber, kid
Steve: remember that
You: you know i'm the same age as you
Steve: a technicality
Steve: youre built like a kid
You: what?
Steve: ur so short and small
Steve: tiny and cute
Steve: so, kid
You're trying to figure out a response to Steve calling you small when he instead calls you cute, and your brain short circuits.
You: i'm going to come up with a nickname for you based on what you look like and it will be very cutting and apt
Steve: should i stop calling u kid?
Steve: i will. if u want me to.
You hesitate, then answer.
You: no, it's fine.
You: i guess i like it
Steve: hell yeah :)
“Is that the guy?” Nancy asks, pressing her side into you so suddenly that you almost throw your phone across the room. Instead you just lower it, pressing the screen against your thigh.
“I don't—no, it's not him,” you lie, and she just gives you a look that says she blatantly does not believe you, but she gives it up.
“Ok,” she says, but her tone tells you this isn't over.
You head out for dinner together, her needling you about Steve all but forgotten, and by the time you're back in your dorm getting ready for your first day of classes in the morning, you're talking about TV shows and books and makeup (she leads that conversation, really). Fast and best friends.
Your phone trills the next Friday evening, drawing your attention with a quirked eyebrow, because the only person who ever calls you these days is your grandmother, and last you heard she was extending her summer trip to Tuscany by about...oh, three months give or take.
But it isn't Gammy calling. It's Steve.
You look up from your desk, head snapping up fast enough to give you whiplash, but you know Nancy isn't here. She told you she was going on a “study date” with someone from her history class, and you weren't sure how literal the date part had been. Considering she'd kissed you without a second thought, you couldn't be sure.
“Hey,” you said, swiping to answer the call, then lift it to your ear.
“Hi!” Steve nearly shouted. “How was your first week?”
“It was my second week,” you correct him. “This was your first week.”
“Right,” he says, a little sheepish, you figure because he probably realizes he should have called you last week but didn't. “Well, how was your second week?”
“Just like the first one,” you say, shrugging and standing up from your desk. “Classes, homework. I go out for a run in the morning.”
“Still wake up super early?”
“Yeah,” you giggle, almost surprised that he remembered but not sure why. “I'm up late studying now though, so it's so hard to get up on time.”
“Have you tried coffee?” Steve asks, laughing. “It's amazing.”
“Where would I get coffee from? I'm stuck on campus all the time.”
“What, they don't have a cafeteria there? I'm sure all of your teachers are mainlining the stuff.”
“I dunno,” you say. “We're too young for coffee.”
Steve doesn't answer for a moment. “I figured out how to work my parent's espresso machine when I was like, 9.”
“You've been drinking coffee since you were 9?” you ask. “No wonder you look so weird, it stunted your growth and development.”
“Wow,” Steve deadpans. “That's rude.”
“And yet you're not denying it,” you say, giggling again, and this time he laughs too. “So how was your actual first week?”
“It was pretty good,” Steve says. “It was great to see all my boys again and get back into playing basketball. It's still hot here, how is it out there?”
“It's hot here too,” you tell him, but you know that the heat by the ocean is nowhere similar to the heat in a landlocked town. “But the ocean breeze...” You aren’t even that close to the coast.
“Yeah, yeah, shut up,” Steve says and you laugh. “How's your roommate?”
“Oh,” you say, without meaning to, because you didn't expect him to bring up Nancy. “She's ok. She's not here right now though.”
He makes a small noise. “No, I meant like, do you like her?”
You hesitate. Do you like Nancy? Yes, you like Nancy very much. You two talk about everything (except Steve). You know all about her family and her home life, her little brother Mike and her little sister Holly. You even know a little bit about Mike's friends because they spent all of their time in the Wheeler's basement before they moved, so while you don't have faces to put to the names, you know that Will is softspoken and sweet, Lucas is kind and selfless, and Dustin is loud and really funny.
You know Nancy is also smart, like almost effortlessly smart; while you have to study past midnight to keep up with your schoolwork, Nancy is in bed by 9 with her work finished even after cavorting with anyone who caught her fancy throughout the day. You envy her, a bit, her carefree attitude and her boldness: the way she always rolls her skirt up and gets a warning for it at least once a week; the way she pushes the limits of her makeup, wearing lip shades that are close enough to natural that they can pass for bare skin, but also drawing on winged eyeliner every morning, feathering her bangs to help hide it.
“Yeah,” you say to Steve after a few decisive moments. “I like her.”
The semester passes the same as it always does: slow at first, then once you hit midterms, it flies by until you have final exam study groups to attend and term papers due. You’ve always been fixated on your grades—one of the only things you ever felt like you could really control—and it’s easy to do when Nancy spends a lot of her time out of the dorm. You know that she’s made other friends, because she’s pretty and smart and outgoing, plus many other things you’re not, like confident and curvy and cool.
It makes studying easier, since it’s silent and you can concentrate—but it also makes talking to Steve even easier too, since he’s something that you want to keep secret, just for you. There’s no real reason why other than you're afraid that Nancy might somehow take him from you, like that could happen. For nine months of the year, he lives inside your phone. She couldn't take him if she tried.
The two of you return to Hawkins for winter break, and for once, you're home for Christmas while Steve is away. He and his parents go out to Connecticut, to the club and the place you'd met. It leaves you wanting, wishing you were there, even though you're not sure why the hell they would go to a beach town in the dead of winter, and Steve's only explanation to you with regards to why is that it's a “family thing” and the entire Harrington crew is congregating there to deck the halls and ring in the new year.
You watch the ball drop in your living room by yourself—because even though you didn't travel for the holiday, it didn't stop your parents from accepting an invitation to a party last-minute and leaving you with cash for food delivery and a bottle of sparkling cider like it was a consolation prize.
You don't order anything, and you leave the cider in the wine fridge where they'd put it. You just watch Dick Clark's New Year’s Rockin' Eve all night, scowling at Ryan Seacrest, who you vehemently dislike and have not enjoyed watching one minute of this evening.
It’s 11:58 when you decide to go get the cider. Ryan is hooting and hollering about the ball dropping in just two minutes, and you stand up from the couch, wrap your fleece blanket tighter around your shoulders, and tie two corners together to make yourself a cape. You pull open the wine fridge as you hear them shout about only 60 seconds left! from the living room and you tear the wrapping from around the neck of the bottle only to find that it’s got a cork and not a twist off cap like you thought.
“Damn it,” you mutter, because now you have to find a corkscrew—not that it’ll be hard, your mother has plenty—but because you’re probably going to miss the ball dropping and the clock changing to 12:00.
The kitchen drawers rattle as you fumble around inside them looking for a corkscrew, and you finally find one just as you hear 30 seconds! emanate from the TV. You screw the pointed metal into the cork and start to work it out of the bottle just as the ten second countdown begins.
5! 4! 3! 2!—
You finally work the cork free on 1!, but that just means that you’ve missed seeing the ball drop, which was the entire reason you even 1) stayed up this late to begin with and 2) suffered Ryan Seacrest for two hours.
You toss the corkscrew onto the countertop, not really caring if the point scores a line in the marble, and sip straight from the bottle. There’s some little pieces of cork floating in it, because you botched the removal like you always do, but you just grimace and keep drinking anyway.
Padding back into the living room, you scowl around the bottle as you see everyone celebrating and laughing and being happy with other people while “New York, New York” by Frank Sinatra blares out of the screen. Your parents are probably watching this too, at whoever’s fucking house they’re at, without you, clinking champagne and kissing while you’re alone in your house with a stupid blanket tied around your shoulders drinking apple cider with bubbles and cork floating in it.
Biting your lip, you think you could have called Nancy—maybe she would have wanted to do something—or Steve—but he’s not around—and so instead you let the rage and frustration and pain rise up in your stomach until it hits your heart and you toss the mostly-full bottle of cider at the television, feeling a sick sense of satisfaction as it not only shatters but breaks the TV and showers broken glass and glorified apple juice everywhere.
You sink back onto the couch as the righteous indignation you were so sure you felt immediately melts away into embarrassment and shame, and you just stare at what you’ve done. Not because the TV will cost money to replace or because the cider is staining the pristine white area rug your mother has over the genuine hardwood floors of the living room—no, because this is something she would do and it only terrifies you into thinking that you might someday be like her.
A shuddering breath wracks you as you curl up over your knees, pressing yourself as flat as you can against your thighs, and while you’re trying to stop shaking, you hear a muted buzzing.
You look around and reach for your phone, where it had fallen behind the throw pillows on the couch, and you see that, at 12:06AM, Steve Harrington is calling you.
The lump in your throat refuses to budge even as you swallow repeatedly around it, but you answer anyway, voice thick.
“...Hello?”
“Kid!” Steve half-shouts, because you can hear a ton of background noise behind him. Your house is so quiet you can hear a pin drop. “Happy New Year!”
“Steve?” you ask, even though you know it’s him.
“Happy New Year!” he says again, clearly wanting you to say it back.
“Happy New Year,” you mumble, because he wants you to and it feels normal.
“Sorry I didn’t call at midnight. It just kept saying ‘circuits busy,’ isn’t that crazy? I didn’t think they had circuits anymore, I thought it was all just… waves.”
“Waves?” you ask, smiling a little despite yourself.
“Yeah, you know, wireless waves.”
“I guess,” you reply, because you don’t know how cell phones work either.
“Hey, hold on,” he says, and hangs up. You stare at your phone, confused and still residually upset, when your iPod Touch, facedown on the coffee table, vibrates barely a moment later as you see he’s trying to Facetime you. You accept but keep the screen pointed up at the cavernous ceiling, the overhead lights making stars in your iPod camera.
“Hey!” Steve shouts. “Where are ya?”
You look down at him. It’s dark wherever he is, the only light the glow of the TV and Christmas lights behind him. You see the silhouettes of many people behind him, walking around, drinking, laughing—his family, presumably—but the only one in focus is Steve, whose face is so in shadow that he may as well not be.
“I look really tired,” you say, and he just laughs.
“Haven’t you been drinking your coffee?”
“It’s midnight, I’m not having coffee now,” you say.
“Hey,” Steve says, like he just clocked your somber tone and is now concerned. “You ok?”
“I’m fine,” you say, giving your stock answer to that question that you always have prepared; enough lightness and bounce to really sell it.
But Steve isn’t buying. “What’s wrong?” he presses, and you see him moving now, hear the sound of a sliding glass door opening and closing and then there’s just peace and quiet, the sound of waves lapping at the shore even though it’s January 1, 2011, just after midnight, and Steve has gone outside for some reason.
“You’ll freeze,” you say, and he just laughs.
“Then you better start talking.”
Slowly, you tip your iPod up to show yourself in the front camera. You look normal, really, except for the eyes. You hadn’t gotten to the point where you’d started crying, so even though your eyes are a little glassy, they’re not red and there’s no tear tracks on your cheeks.
“Hi,” you say, and you see Steve really look at you.
“Are you… by yourself?” he asks, and that is what does you in.
You nod, trying to screw your eyes closed to avoid the tears falling, but that doesn’t help and in fact just pushes them out of your eyes faster.
“Hey, whoa,” Steve says, and even through your blurred vision you can see how pained he looks, too, that you’re in pain and he isn’t there to stop it. “Honestly, you’re probably the only person who could potentially have enjoyed their night. My parents have been at each other’s throats since we got here.”
You sniffle, glad for the distraction. “Why?”
“No idea. My mom hasn’t gotten off her phone since the cocktail hour and my dad is pissed that she won’t stop texting whoever she’s texting.”
“Are you ok?” you ask, voice throaty.
He smiles a little in the moonlight; it’s not as bright as it would be if the sky were clear, so there must be some clouds overhead—but you can still see him, which is the important thing.
“Yeah, no, I’m good,” he says. “I mean, I got to talk to you at midnight even if I didn’t get to kiss you at midnight, right?” he says, and it’s a joke, you know it’s a joke, but even still, you swallow around that goddamn lump that seems to have set up permanent residence in your throat.
“You called at 12:06,” you remind him, ignoring everything else he said.
“The circuits!” he shouts, and you laugh, actually smiling, and then you wipe your eyes.
“When are you coming back to Hawkins?” you ask, but he shakes his head.
“Not for a while,” he says, “I think, at least. Dad’s really…really being a hardass about staying here as long as possible.”
You nod. “Well, we’ll see each other for Summer.” Still capital S, still heavy with meaning on your tongue.
“Hell yeah,” Steve agrees. “Summer’s ours. Forever.”
“Forever,” you agree.
&&
Your good mood remains until about 3AM, when you’re asleep and your parents bustle into the house.
You’d cleaned up the broken glass and cider as best you could, but nothing could hide the busted television. You’re startled awake by your bedroom door being thrown open and the light turning on; even with the canopy above your bed, it still shocks you awake.
“Young lady,” your father says, and you are surprised that it’s him speaking. “What the hell happened downstairs?”
Sitting up, you definitely know what he’s talking about and you definitely decide to pretend to still be too asleep to answer.
“What?” you ask, mostly to buy yourself sometime to think. You’d been trying to think of a cover story before you fell asleep, but after you got off the phone with Steve and cleaned up broken glass with an entire roll of paper towels, you’d knocked out much faster than you’d intended to.
“The television,” your father says, as your mother pads into the room behind him, frowning.
“It—” you try to say, but he interrupts you.
“Were you drinking?” he asks, holding up the neck of the cider bottle, green glass with the cork still in it. “Champagne to ring in the new year?”
“What?” you ask, voice cracking. “No, Dad, it was—”
“I swear to god,” he says, interrupting you again as your mother takes a step closer to you, rounding him. “If we check the wine refrigerator and anything is missing—”
“It’s cider,” says your mother, her voice uncannily calm for the situation. “I got her a bottle of cider to celebrate.”
Your gaze slides from your dad to your mom, mouth open, then closing into a thin line as you swallow. You look back to your dad and nod.
“Cider,” he says, and you hear it now, the slight slur, the way he probably drank just enough that your mom had to control herself for once to drive home. She has now become the voice of reason.
“Cider,” your mother confirms, taking the broken glass from him. “Mark, go to bed.” She says it stern enough that he listens; it’s a tone of voice she uses on you all too often.
“Are you coming too?” he asks, snippy. “Or are you going to keep ignoring me for your phone?”
“Mark,” your mother says, clipped, and after a moment, you hear your father stagger down the hallway.
After he leaves, she sets the portion of the cider bottle down on your dresser and comes over to your bed, sitting on the edge of it. You cannot remember the last time your mother sat beside you in your room, much less the last time you actually even saw her in here. She reaches out her arm toward you, inviting you to move and settle against her side, and you do after a moment, wondering if it’s a trap.
Wondering if your own mother is setting you up.
You shift closer to her, tucking yourself into her arm.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” she asks, and it’s so tender that you almost let yourself sob against her chest. But she’s the reason you even did it in the first place, her and your dad, and so you just clench your jaw and shake your head no.
She nods.
“Fine. No questions asked—this one time. Don’t rely on kindness, Kitty, it too often pairs you with debt.” She stands abruptly, leaving you on the edge of your bed. The door snaps shut behind her as she passes through it, and tomorrow, a new television set is delivered, no questions asked, not even a mention of it as your dad struggles to figure out how to connect everything all over again.
&&
WINTER//SPRING 2011
Before New Year’s, you and Steve had had something of an understanding between you. The semblance of a deeper connection, though at your young age you couldn’t make sense of it and neither could he. But after New Year’s, it had been cemented. Permanent, unceasing, even though maybe it was still beyond your comprehension.
Things were different, though they hadn’t really changed. You still texted all the time, but now you both risked getting your phones confiscated to text between classes, sometimes even during class, and always during lunch, when you would brag about how your cafeteria served much better food than it used to and he always expressed his jealousy because they were still getting slop at St. Jude’s.
And you’d been hearing plenty about St. Jude’s since you got back to your dorm. Nancy had also discovered the private school while home for break. As a newcomer to Hawkins, she had been surprised but thrilled to learn that there was a whole army of private school boys (and girls, apparently) for her to sink her teeth into.
“I never went there,” you say, shrugging one shoulder as Nancy asks you if you know anything much about the school. “That’s where, um… my friend goes, though.”
“Oh, your Secret Summer Sweetheart?” she teases, and you nod after a moments’ hesitation. Maybe that’s what he is for real, you don’t know.
“Hope I didn’t hook up with him,” she says, laughing. You do not laugh.
“He was away for winter break, actually,” you say coolly, and it seems like Nancy realizes that she touched a nerve.
“Hey, I was just joking,” she says. “You know, if you weren’t so weird about him I’d know who to avoid.”
“I’m not weird about him,” you say, knowing that you full well are. “It’s just—did you ever just want something for yourself?”
You almost expect her to tease you for it, to poke fun because she doesn’t understand, but she just nods. “Yeah. It’s… kind of why I pushed so hard to come here. I wanted to have something just for myself. Being away from home is nice.”
“Being away from Hawkins is nice,” you say, changing the subject just a little. “Still can’t believe you moved there just to come to school out here too. Pretty big coincidence.”
She smirks. “I don’t believe in coincidences,” she says. “Everything happens for a reason.”
&&
It’s late the Friday morning before Valentine’s day when your phone buzzes you awake in the middle of the night. Your first thought is worry, fear—something happened to Gammy, or your dad, or Pongo—but when you see the caller ID it’s Steve. You take a deep breath and swipe to answer the call, pulling your covers over your head to muffle your voice, ensuring Nancy won’t wake up too.
“Hello?” you whisper.
“Hey,” Steve says, a little too casual for 2:56AM. “What’s up?”
“You called me,” you answer. “And it’s 3 in the morning.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Steve says, his voice low. Now that you’re focusing a bit better, you can tell it’s shaking too. “Sorry about that.”
“What’s wrong?” you ask.
“Oh, you know,” he says, almost flippant. “Existential terror.”
“What?” you ask, thrown.
You can hear him hesitate. “I had a bad dream.”
You pause. “Well, which is it? A nightmare or the real deep stuff that I’m not qualified to help you with?”
He huffs what might be a laugh. “Both.”
You shift a little beneath your covers. “What was your dream about?”
“No one could see me,” he says. “Like, I was there, I could pick stuff up and touch things and touch people but no one was… seeing me. Or feeling me. Like I wasn’t just invisible, I was… what’s the word?”
“Intangible?” you provide.
“Yeah. Intangible.”
“You’re not,” you say.
“I know,” he says, almost snaps. “It was a dream.”
“Well it’s affecting you after you woke up, so I thought maybe reinforcing that you are, in fact, a very real pain in my butt might help.”
There’s a brief second of silence, and then he laughs. “Yeah, all right,” he says. “Guess you got me there.”
“What time do you have to wake up for school tomorrow?” you ask. You’re a little lucky in that you don’t have to catch a bus or commute, so the only thing you need to make time for in the morning is your run and then your shower.
“Like… 5:30. Soon.”
You roll onto your side, holding your phone to your ear. “Do you wanna stay on the phone? We don’t have to talk.”
“Really?” Steve asks.
“Really,” you confirm.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’d…if you want to, yeah.”
You drift back off with the sound of his steady, even breathing lulling you to sleep. When your alarm goes off the next morning, you’re no longer on a phone call, but you do have a text message.
Steve: thanks kid.
That’s all it says, but that’s more than he needed to say.
After class you wait for Nancy to head out for a “study date” and then start on another letter to Steve. You’d kept them up during the previous school year but had, admittedly, fallen out of them for a while last semester. But, you thought, it was high time to get back to them. You pull out the stationery (orange, not peach, sorry Mum) and start to write another letter. In this one, you tell him about this reocurring dream that you’d had a few times when you were a kid, which now isn’t that terrifying but at the time was brutal.
You detail how the same person—your mum but not your mum—would hover over you from behind, not ever close enough to touch or harm you but a threatening presence nonetheless. You tell him how you woke up scared every morning, because the dream was never intense enough to actually wake you in the middle of the night. It segues into how you still feel like that sometimes, not always because of your mom, but because of everything else in your life. Being their only child, the pressure to perform, to keep your grades up because otherwise why are they sending you to such a grueling school if you’re just going to let your coursework slip? How everything is about appearances with them. How you could just hollow yourself out and smile and nod and wave whenever they looked upon you for it and they’d never even notice the difference. How you wonder if sometimes you shouldn’t have been born because you’re not really sure if they even want you.
You fold the letter and place it into an envelope, then slide it into the side of your drawer and pull out another piece of paper to start another letter.
This one, you just wish Steve a happy Valentine’s day and a good spring break. You rhapsodize (and embellish a little too much) about how much better the food has gotten at your school just to make him feel bad about how shitty the lunch still is at St. Jude’s, and after you get all of your lightness out onto the page after emitting all of your darkness too, you feel empty but in a good way.
You seal the second envelope and put a stamp on it, because that one, you’ll mail.
&&
LATE MAY 2011
Spring goes with sporadic letters from Steve and to Steve, Nancy always trying to peek over your shoulder at his scribbles, but you turn the letters away from her every time. She gives up eventually, always playing with your hair or rubbing your shoulder—you’re never sure what to make of that, honestly, so you ignore it—and when the time comes that you have to pack up your room and leave campus, you get more emotional than you’d expected.
Nancy hugs you even as her parents and siblings are waiting for her to vacate the room. You squeeze her tight, because aside from Steve she’s the best friend you’ve ever had, and you’re going to miss her this summer while you’re away from Hawkins. You have the crazy idea to ask if she could come visit you if your parents cover the cost, but then you think about having her and Steve together in the same place and all of her jokey comments about hooking up with him, and you can’t get the words out.
“We’ll see each other soon,” you croak out, voice choppy.
“Come on, Nance,” her little brother, Mike, whines. “Mom said we could stop at the aquarium as long as you didn’t take forever packing up.”
“Let your sister be,” Mr. Wheeler says, but you see him fidget a little because Nancy has been hugging you for like, a really long time.
“Are your parents coming, sweetheart?” Mrs. Wheeler asks you, as Nancy pulls away, wearing jeans and a frilly spaghetti strap shirt, finally not confined to a uniform during the day.
“Oh, um,” you say. “No…” You trail off, because you’re always a bit shy about flaunting your parents’ wealth to strangers. “I’ll be getting a car later… we’re summering on the south shore this year.”
Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler exchange a look and you feel your cheeks warm.
“Well, that sounds lovely,” Mrs. Wheeler says, and you’re not sure if she means it. “Maybe when you’re back in Hawkins you and Nancy can meet up for ice cream.”
“Maybe,” you say, but you know you won’t be able to. You’ll be back in Hawkins for maybe a couple of days, if your understanding of your parents’ plans are right: Connecticut, yacht club, maybe a day or two among the wineries on the north fork of Long Island, and then back to school for fall.
“See you soon,” Nancy says, grabbing your hands before she leaves with her parents. “Text me!”
You smile, nod, agree, wave, and then she’s gone and you’re alone in the room again, just like the first day you arrived back in August.
You’ll be alone until you get to the yacht club with the driver your parents’ hired, but at least when you get there, you’ll have Summer.
&&
Letter #1 (Unsent)
Dear Steve,
I know that this isn’t exactly existential terror or anything but have you ever heard of sleep paralysis? It’s almost like that I guess.
Sometimes when I was little I used to have this same dream over and over all the time. You know how sometimes when you dream there are people there that you know is supposed to be like your cousin or your neighbor but it doesn’t look like them? Like it’ll be “your neighbor” but really they look like Tom Cruise? That’s what was happening in mine.
It was my mom, but it wasn’t my mom. I would be in my room like doing homework or something, sitting at my desk and I’d just feel something behind me. I’d look and never see anything right away but I would feel it get closer. I’d keep turning around over and over but never see anything. And then all of a sudden it would be right behind me and I’d feel it there. And I would know if I turned around that time I’d see it, whatever it was. And I always felt like it was my mom.
I don’t know.
Not that I’m scared of my mom lol.
It never hurt me or anything, in the dream I mean. It never really even woke me up. It was just like it was there whatever I was doing, like if I was putting my laundry away, or homework like I said, or even making a sandwich in the kitchen. It was really scary though. I would always sleep through the night but the next day after I had one of those dreams I’d feel like it was behind me the whole rest of the day.
I haven’t had that dream in a long time but sometimes I still remember it and think about it. I still feel like that sometimes, like the pressure, you know? I know you know. I want to erase that part.
It just makes me feel like I can never be good enough. I’m an only child so I have to be perfect. They never even told me that. My parents. They never said it out loud but I know they think it. Or maybe they just want me to think it? But they’re perfect, my dad is great at his job and my mom is so… like poised all the time. I think that’s the word. I have to be good at school and be like her otherwise why are they spending so much money to make me go to this school?
Do your parents donate to St Judes? Sometimes I wonder if the only reason that I’m even still here is because of how much money my dad donates. I do ok in school. I have like a B average but it’s nowhere near good enough, I know my parents are disappointed. I’m even disappointed. But as long as I look the part I guess it’s fine.
If I could erase myself inside and just keep my skin on top of nothing I think I’d do it. My mom would be a lot happier if she could just make me do whatever she wanted and be pretty and vapid (I read that in a book) and just smile like everyone in the “Black Hole Sun” music video. You should look it up that song is really good.
Anyway sometimes I just think everything would be easier for everyone (except you) if I was never here in the first place.
Letter #2 (Sent)
Hi idiot,
Happy Valentine’s Day! I bet you don’t have a girlfriend yet still. I know you would have told me the second you found someone stupid enough to want to kiss you.
I think you might get this letter on your spring break? Not sure. I’m going to be spending the week with my parents skiing in Maine because the Waldorfs are a cliche.
Although I have to admit the food here is sooooooo much better than it used to be. I know you said that St. Jude’s lunch still tastes like ass, which TBH you deserve because you, also, are ass.
I know this is pretty short but my hand is all cramped already. I wrote like, this creative writing kind of project thing just before this so I’m all write-d out right now. hahaha
Have a good week off school! I’m sure we will talk before you even get this lol.
🖤 A Collab Fanfic, from @keer-y & Misha’s Masterlist Library.
♡ A Stranger Things Modern AU [Steve Harrington Centric]
📚+ 📁 Infodump file + all volumes and chapters (+more)
Chapter 5: “Handshakes in the Hamptons” [Pt. III]
-> 2010 (continued from last post!)
-> first part here | second part here
Steve Harrington x fem!reader
strangers to childhood friends + pen pals to stepsiblings to lovers. ultra emo/angsty smut, hurt/comfort. modern day au, no upside down. porn with big plot. 18+
🖤 SUMMARY: The end of summer 2010 is nearing. You try not to think about it, because if you do? Then you'll remember just how lonely your life is without Steve Harrington filling your days, the way he fills your daydreams every waking hour.
Little do you know, he's gotten just as dependent of your friendship.
So much so, that an unexpected few days apart due to stupid East Coast storms that come and go as they please leads to the Harrington's marital issues being put on full display as Danny and Roz have very different parenting approaches.
🖤 AUTHOR'S NOTE: Last half Ch.5 :) And then we're onto the magnificent Ch.6, which Jess has written so beautifully that it makes me weep every single time.
This is my first ever fanfic collab, and I'm still so beyond giddy about it... plus honored that it's with none other than Jess :') It started off as a blurb request, then immediately spiraled. Which you can read here.
We post new chapters Saturday’s & Sunday’s !!
Misha && Jess swap off week-to-week 🖊️
Xx, misha
Chapter Five
(continued...)
Each day spent together became yet another gemstone to add to your little treasure trove of memories made together.
Then there was a stretch of two days in late July when Steve got stuck away from you, and it put him in a mood so foul and restless that by the end of the first afternoon, even Roz noticed.
It started innocently enough. His parents had him with them out on the boat for the day — one of those long, drifting Hamptons afternoons that started with a late marina breakfast and somehow turned into three separate stops, six conversations he didn’t care about, and adults drinking white wine under the excuse of “it’s practically just lunch.” The weather had been gorgeous that morning, bright enough to be trusted, but by early afternoon the light had already started doing that ugly East Coast thing where it turned a little too silver, a little too heavy around the edges.
They’d tied up their boat near one of the country clubs by the marina for a while, because apparently some close friends of Danny and Roz had a table somewhere and everybody wanted crab cakes and cocktails and to stand around comparing tan lines and boat slips and whatever the hell else rich adults spoke about when they were trying to make leisure sound impressive.
Steve had gone along with it at first.
He sat where he was told. Ate the fries. Made enough conversation not to be considered rude. Even laughed in the right places. But every so often, he’d check his Razr under the table — getting a text from you. Then another, then another. Nothing needy, just little things…
kitty:
mum and dad are going to some thing tonight apparently
kitty:
i think it’s at the duffys or the bentleys or one of those weird people
kitty:
currently eating watermelon alone like a divorced woman
That one made him laugh under his breath hard enough that Danny glanced over and asked, “What?”
Steve only shook his head and typed back:
steve:
dont become emotionally dependent on watermelon without me
steve:
what time r they leaving
You answered almost immediately.
kitty:
like 7 maybe? why
He looked up from the phone and out at the water… Because the later it got, the more obvious it became that he was not getting home anytime soon. Because every adult around him looked rooted here for the long haul. Because the sky out over the bay was getting darker in a way that made him uneasy, and not just because of the weather.
Because you were going to be alone again.
He typed back:
steve:
nothing. just askin
Then put the phone down and tried not to keep checking the time every six minutes like a little psycho.
It didn’t work.
By four, he’d asked Danny twice what time they were heading back.
By five, he’d asked again.
By five-thirty, Roz lowered her sunglasses enough to look at him over the top of them and said, with a too-bright little smile, “Stevie, sweetheart, stop being such a baby. We’re not stranded in international waters. Be polite.” When he had slightly pouted down at his lap, she frowned deeply. “Your little friend will still be there when we get back.”
He kept staring at his lap. “I know—”
“Aren’t we your friends too?”
Steve looked up at her with awkward guilt. “Y-yeah—I just wanted to know—”
“Oh please don’t ask again,” Roz all but whined.
Her words weren’t even cruel, not exactly. Not on paper. They were the kind of thing some mothers could say and mean lightly.
But Danny’s mouth flattened at once.
Steve felt it happen before he even looked up — that shift in the air. That tightening. That awful little click in the room where a comment had landed wrong and everyone now had to decide whether to make it worse.
He looked between them quickly. “It’s okay.”
Danny didn’t look at him. He looked at Roz. “He’s just asking.”
Roz took a slow sip of her drink. “And I’m just answering.”
“You don’t have to answer like that.”
There it was. Not anger. Not even real sharpness. Just that low, clipped tone Danny got whenever he was trying very hard to keep himself from saying the other ten things behind it.
Roz’s face changed instantly…wounded in the most infuriating way possible. Like he had embarrassed her rather than corrected the comment.
“Well, pardon me for speaking,” she whispered, already gathering her purse.
Steve’s stomach dropped.
This was what he hated. Not yelling. God, he’d almost prefer yelling. At least then the fight would be out in the open where everyone had to admit that it existed. The little poisoned courtesy of it all was so much worse. His mother getting made to feel like the villain, then act like she’d been slapped, knowing it would inflict guilt. His father getting hard around the eyes, then being made to feel like a cruel man for standing up for his son. Both of them are always somehow injured by the other… and Steve was the one caught right there in the middle, aching for both of them at once.
“Mom,” he said quickly. “Seriously, it’s okay.”
Roz looked up at him then, and for a brief moment the social smile slipped. Something more tired and more real flickered underneath it as she caressed his cheek, ruffling his hair with a wobbly smile that bordered on tears.
Then she smoothed it back over and stood.
“I’m going to say hello to the Bancrofts before they leave,” she all but chirped to him. “Try to enjoy yourself, darling.”
And then she was gone, all perfect posture and white wine and bright forced laughter before she’d even fully reached the next table… as if she hadn’t just asked her son to be present with her.
For a second Danny just sat there.
Then he let out a breath through his nose and rubbed one hand over his mouth.
Steve looked down at his phone, seeing another text from you…
kitty:
they’re gone now. i can order pizza before u get here:)
He typed back before he could even think of anything useful to say.
steve:
im sorry
steve:
ill be home l8r tonight
steve:
promise im coming str8 there
Danny’s hand landed briefly at the back of his neck.
Steve looked up.
His dad’s face had gone gentler again, the anger burned off into something more like regret. “Sorry about that.”
Steve shrugged, because what else was there to do. “It’s fine.”
Danny’s hand slid up into his hair for one quick ruffle. “Still.”
Steve nodded once, solemn and quiet.
And later, when the sky finally broke open ugly and hard enough that nobody in their right mind was taking a boat anywhere, Steve felt his whole insides sink with the knowledge that no, he was not going home tonight. No matter what he had texted you.
The weather got rocky too fast after that, plagued (yet again) by one of those weird East Coast storms that seemed to build in layers until suddenly the whole marina looked hostile. So everyone stayed put for the night. Dinner turned into drinks, and drinks turned into “let’s just spend the night here and go in the morning.”
Steve texted you as soon as he knew.
steve:
storm got bad:( stuck here tonight
It took a few minutes, then some more, before he finally got a reply.
kitty:
its okay
kitty:
i’ll play Spyro 2nite & clean ur village up:)
And because he knew you, because he knew the exact way you’d say that out loud — softly, trying to be easy, trying to not make him feel worse — he hated it more than if you’d just admitted you were sad.
He called you the second he could step away.
You answered on the second ring, sounding sleepy and warm already — the television low somewhere in the background.
“Hi.”
“Hey.”
“…you okay?”
“Yeah.” He looked out the window of the guest room he’d been shoved into for the night. Rain streaked the glass in silver sheets. “You?”
“Yeah.”
He didn’t believe you for one second.
Not because you were lying, exactly. You probably were fine. Capable. Safe enough. But the thought of you all alone in that big beach house, with your parents off somewhere partying in another part of town and all that weather pressing at the windows, made something in him sit wrong. He could vaguely hear the cheerful Animal Crossing theme music playing in the background… and he wondered if this left it like that, in case the thunder got too loud.
So he just… kept talking.
About stupid shit at first. The kind of stupid shit that was actually the point — like what the fish in the sea would have to say about the storm, whether or not that Robin Buckley girl from the last splash would call lightning “metal” or just think it’s annoying, whether the decorative shell bowl in your house could survive being used as emergency cereal storage.
You laughed — and every time l you did, the knot in Steve’s chest loosened for a second. But as the night got later, your voice started to go soft around the edges. You grew weary, yawning between sentences, trailing off...and he could hear you getting tired.
“You can go to sleep,” you told him at one point.
“I’m not tired.”
That was a lie.
He was fucking exhausted.
But he also didn’t want to sleep. Not really. Not after the nightmare about you drowning. Not after this whole day of feeling trapped away from you with his parents orbiting each other like damaged planets and the weather turning mean and the knowledge of you alone sitting under everything in his chest like a weight.
Mostly, though, he just didn’t want to leave you.
Even if you were fine.
Even if it was only a phone call.
Even if he sounded insane in his own head.
“I’m coming over tomorrow,” he said for maybe the fourth time.
You giggled softly. “You swear that every ten minutes.”
“Because I mean it.”
“I know...”
There was a pause, before your voice got even quieter.
“…it’s okay, Steve. It’s not your fault.”
That nearly undid him for some reason. Because he wasn’t even sure what you thought you were forgiving him for. The weather. His parents. The fact that he wasn’t there. And somehow that made it worse… that you were trying to make him feel better when all he wanted was to be there making sure you weren’t lonely.
He didn’t know how to say any of that.
So he just said, “still mad we’re suck here.”
You yawned again.
He smiled to himself in the dark. “You falling asleep on me, kid?”
“Nm-mm….”
“Liar.”
“Shut up…”
“You shut up.”
Your little laugh came through the speaker all sleepy and sweet, and Steve shut his eyes and listened to it like a lifeline before the two of you finally hung up a minute or so later... though neither of you wanted to.
The Harrington’s still didn’t go home the next day.
The storm moved out in one patch, and then another ugly round rolled in by noon. Some stupid zigzag of weather up the coast, enough to keep everyone in place and half-irritable.
By that point Steve could barely focus on anything. Breakfast happened around him. Adults yapped nonstop. Roz tried to get him to go for a walk with them under one of the covered terraces and he did, but he kept checking his phone, kept drifting. At one point she finally stopped in the middle of some sentence about somebody’s daughter getting into Vanderbilt and looked at him properly.
“Steven.”
He blinked. “Yes?”
“Please have a good time with me.”
It came out more plaintive than annoyed, which somehow made it sadder.
His stomach sank as he shoved his phone into his pocket. “I’m sorry.”
His mother pouted. “Why don’t you want to hang out with me?”
“I do!”
“Well you don’t act like it!”
“Well—neither do you!”
Roz looked at him like a dismayed debutante. “Now why would you say that.”
Steve grimaced at himself. “I didn’t mean—”
“You seriously think I don’t want to spend time with you?”
He opened his mouth to apologize all over again, but he was so tired and so frustrated and so damn sick of feeling his chest pulled toward another house, another street, another person — that the words got stuck wrong on the way out as she kept rambling.
“I mean... honey, Stevie, you’re acting like I'm not the one trying—”
“I am trying!!!”
Roz looked startled.
He stared down at the deck boards immediately, angry at himself. Angry at everything. His big brown eyes had that awful burn in them that meant tears were coming whether he wanted them to or not, and that only made him all the more humiliated.
And then, because mothers know some things even when they know plenty else poorly, Roz didn’t ask again right away. She just pulled her son into her, hands smoothing over his hair, her voice going all soft and cooing in that way that would have made him want to die of embarrassment if he weren’t so wrung out.
“Baby, hey. What is it?”
He couldn’t tell her.
Couldn't physically make his mouth form the words I miss Kitty and I think she’s lonely and it feels wrong that I’m not there.
So he only stood there, eyes squeezed shut, face turned into her shoulder, and let her hold him while he hated himself a little for needing it.
And as expected, Roz later continued chattering with all of her friends, barely looping her own son into the mix as she yapped on and on and on about who -the-hell-knows-what while she held her beautiful son, who still clung to her sadly — because he’d rather be held than not.
Eventually they did head home.
And the second they did, Steve was texting you like a maniac.
steve:
leaving now
steve:
be there soon
steve:
u awake?
steve:
u better be there
steve:
omw
Then, before the car had even fully pulled up, he was turning to Danny. “Can I just go straight over there?”
Roz started to say, “Babe, at least unpack your—”
Danny cut in without even looking at her. “Go ahead.”
Steve was already halfway out the door.
“Thanks!”
He didn’t even bother taking the extra bag. Just grabbed his bike and took off. And when he got to your beach house, the only thing he saw at first was the Eno hammock slung between two palms in the side yard, swaying lazily back and forth in the cool post-storm breeze.
Then you came into view.
You’re curled sideways in it in your swimsuit with a book and a half-melted popsicle, entirely in your own company… exactly the picture that had been haunting him for the last two days in some much sadder form. You looked up at the sound of his voice when he shouted your name, and your whole face changed so fast it nearly knocked the wind out of him.
“TROY BOLTON!”
“LOOK ALIVE, SHARPAY!”
You sat up too quickly, tangled your own legs in the hammock, and promptly half-fell out of it with all the grace of a newborn deer.
He laughed so hard he nearly swerved the bike.
“Wow.”
“Shut up!” You were already scrambling upright, waving your little popsicle at him like it was a weapon. “I didn’t know you were home yet!”
“I texted you!”
“Oh—I left my phone upstairs.”
“Lame.”
“You’re lame.”
He dumped the bike and jogged the last few feet, grin still huge and helpless. “Kid, you fully launched yourself outta that hammock.”
You looked around, then pointed the popsicle at him again. “No witnesses.”
“Your ancestors witnessed.”
“Your ancestors—”
And then you were both talking at once. Babbling immediately — him asking what you’d been doing, you asking why he’d taken so long. Steve tried to explain the weather and the marina and his mom and the bullshit of all of it while your eyes stayed fixed on his face like he’d just arrived back from war and not two inconvenient days away.
By the time either of you had fully caught up, you were both starving.
“So what you wanna so?” you asked.
Steve looked at you like the answer to that should have been carved in stone already. “Fried shrimp baskets, duhhhhh.”
You gasped like it was genius.
And maybe it was.
By the final week, the summer had started to glow at the edges in that sad way things do right before they become memories. Not gone yet. Not enough to properly grieve. Just near enough to the end that you could feel the shape of that ending out there somewhere waiting.
One evening, the two of you sat on the beach with shrimp po’boys wrapped in paper and a picnic blanket spread over the sand. The sun was on its way down. The sky had gone all bruised peach and gold. You’d been hunting for tiny sea crabs at the edge of the tide, crouching in the sand and whispering like little idiots every time one darted sideways and then vanished back into its hole.
You were both covered in fine grit and laughter by the time you gave up and sat back on the blanket to finish eating.
The beach had emptied around you in the particular way it does when sunset becomes dark. Soon it would be too dark to leave the flashlights on because of turtle risks, and both of you had taken that information very seriously after a whole afternoon of dramatic whispering about sea life.
Steve wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then licked his thumb and held out his pinky.
You looked at it. Then at him.
“What?”
He lifted his brows. “Contract renewal.”
You laughed. “You are such a freak.”
“Maybe. Promise anyway.”
Your eyes shone. “I always promise to write.”
“Then let’s promise it again.”
You smiled down at the offered pinky, warmth spreading through you in slow helpless waves. Steve didn’t have to make you promise. You would write him from anywhere. Through anything. From Massachusetts snow and fall leaves and the weird lonely ache of boarding-school hallways. From every room that didn’t have him in it.
Still, you dusted off your hands and linked pinkies with him immediately.
“There,” you smiled, beginning to pull away..
Steve looked at your hands. “No. Kiss it.”
Your stomach dropped clear to your feet.
“What?”
But Steve was already lifting your joined hands. “For real. Annual terms and conditions.”
You laughed too quickly, too breathlessly… because if you didn’t laugh? You might simply perish. Steve kissed his own knuckles with ridiculous ceremony.
“See?”
And then he looked at you expectantly.
You had never been more aware of your own body in your life.
Your whole face went hot. Your heart did something insane. And because you would have followed him into just about any bit at that point rather than let him see what this was doing to you, you kissed your own hand too.
It should have been stupid.
It should have been nothing.
Instead you spent the entire one second of it wishing it were his mouth under yours, and then hating yourself a little for that and not nearly enough.
Steve seemed entirely satisfied. He let your hands fall and leaned back on his elbows, looking up at the darkening sky.
“High school’s gonna be weird.”
You glanced over at him as you laid back too. He was still staring upward, talking to the air now, words going looser with comfort.
“St. Peter’s is making us do uniforms right off the bat this year,” he went on. “Like they’re suddenly way more serious about us all looking like stuffy little businessmen.”
You snorted. “I’ve had uniforms forever.”
“Yeah, but you’re built for that whole haunted boarding school thing.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.” He waved a hand. “You get it.”
You smiled and took another bite of your sandwich.
Steve kept going. “It’s gonna be different though. You in Massachusetts, me in Hawkins. Whole different worlds.”
Your chest tightened just slightly.
But then, before the thought could settle wrong, he added with complete, effortless certainty, “Doesn’t matter though. You’re still my best friend.”
You turned your head so fast your neck nearly snapped. Steve was still looking at the sky — still talking. Not noticing, at first, what he'd just done to you.
Your eyes went wide.
He said it so casually. So plainly. Like it had never once occurred to him that there was any other possible title for you in his life.
Best friend.
Your heart swelled so big it felt painful.
And maybe that should have hurt more than it did. Maybe some wiser version of you should have felt the sting immediately — that Steve loved you, but only in this language. That what you meant to him was real and huge and maybe not the thing you were secretly wishing it could be.
But at thirteen, that wasn’t how it landed.
It landed like joy.
It landed like being chosen.
It landed like standing in the center of everything bright and knowing, at least for one second, that no matter what else happened, Steve Harrington looked at the whole world and still thought of you first when he said those words.
He finally glanced over and caught you staring.
“What?”
You blinked, smile sneaking up helplessly. “Nothing.”
“You’re being weird.”
“So are you.”
“Yeah but I flex it.”
You laughed softly and looked back out at the water before your face gave too much away. Beside you, Steve kept talking about schedules and classes and whether private-school boys in Indiana were all secretly idiots. You only half heard him. Because inside, your happiness had become this huge bright impossible thing.
You would take best friend.
You would take it over and over and over again.
You would take it with both hands and hide it under your pillow and write it into every letter and keep it alive all year if that was what he was offering. If that was what loving him had to look like for now, then fine.
Best friend.
Yours.
His.
Only even in the middle of all that joy, there was another prayer tucked inside it too.
Small.
Shameful.
Sacred.
That he never found a girl he liked more than you.
And that maybe, just maybe… one day, somehow, impossibly, he would be your first kiss.
The sun slipped lower along the horizon.
The shrimp po’boys grew cold in their wrappers.
Somewhere beyond the dunes the first stars began to show.
And lying down beside Steve Harrington on that beach blanket at the edge of summer, you let yourself want it anyway.
Girl Dad. Boy Dad. Andrew Pope Cody Headcannon/ Drabble
as requested by @cakeandcloth
ANDREW POPE CODY. BOY AND GIRL DAD This one kind of hurt...giving bby the ending he deserved.
Andrew Pope Cody and Reader who are the opposite of what the other should want and honestly should run the opposite direction of one another.
Andrew Pope Cody who doesn't sleep at night...not for long periods of time at least. He can't stand sitting up staring at the walls waiting for the hours to tick by until sunrise once again...so he goes for a walk and winds up at a 24-hour diner...that's how he meets Reader waiting tables because while art might be her passion it doesn't pay her bills.
She's lovely and bright and bubbly and doesn't mind the strange quiet man who sits in the corner booth and stares at her for hours.
She's sweet as can be as she refills his coffee cup and serves him the pie of the day.
Andrew Pope Cody who has been called off-putting. Andrew Pope Cody who is strict about cleanliness and likes order. Andrew Pope Cody who is used as a weapon by Smurf and practically everyone else around him. Andrew Pope Cody who rarely smiles and often has a dry sense of humor that flies over most people's heads.
Reader who is soft and cries at the drop of a hat. Reader who smiles at everyone. Reader who paints her nails with glitter polish and bright unmatching polish. Reader who wanders around in paint-stained overalls on her days off and has coffee cups and cups of water tinged with paint around her studio apartment along with a mess of various art supplies. Reader who lives out of her laundry basket and forgets to dust.
Pope who watches her knowing he's staring quite intensely...but that's kind of a bad habit of his...the staring...the intensity.
Reader hears plenty of concern from the line cook Frank over that "redhead who won't quit gawking" but she brushes aside any suggestion that Pope means any harm.
He's quiet but has been polite thus far. The staring doesn't bother her as much as it should. She doesn't know quite how to explain it...but maybe it's the way he tenses up when a group of drunk college guys come in and are leering at her and cracking gross jokes. She notices Pope gripping down on his coffee cup his jaw tense as he sends deadly looks their way...it makes her feel strangely...safe.
The first words that leave his lips to her other than polite nods as she refills his coffee cup and gruff orders from the menu, happen when he observes her cleaning a nearby booth with a sponge her nose scrunching as she tosses the sponge aside opening a new one. "You should set sponges in the sun...sunshine kills more bacteria than any household cleaner on the market."
She stares over at the strange quiet guy who's been coming in the diner every night for weeks now her voice soft. "Oh, really? Good to know. I'll try it."
He doesn't anticipate seeing her outside of the diner but life or fate maybe seem to have other plans. His brothers are throwing another loud crowded party. He hates it until he hears a familiar voice "Andy?"
Reader stares up at him the sundress so much more lovely than the soft pink waitress uniform he's accustomed to seeing her in. Her friend was invited to the party by Craig and dragged Reader along with her.
Pope who feels his heart flutter at the word "Andy." he's introduced himself to her after so many nights in the diner as 'Pope' explaining the odd nickname, but she's always called him Andrew or Andy...rarely Pope. He likes it....she's the only one who calls him by his first name and not a nickname that was given to taunt his faith.
Pope who spends the night talking to Reader, Reader who takes a chance a press the softest kiss to his cheek at the end of the night.
Pope who tenses at the kiss to the point where she's almost convinced that he hated it and she's made things awkward. Her worries die though as he grabs her hand and asks to see her again.
They don't look back after that. It isn't easy. Smurf isn't pleased and Pope keeps his girlfriend far from his mother. He knows what happens to people who Smurf dislikes.
Pope who spends all his time with Reader in her studio apartment watching her paint and draw while sipping tea and eating the pad Thai and beef stew she makes for dinners.
Pope who does come clean to Reader about who and what he is after a robbery almost goes awry. It's a close call and he knows he can't hide who he is forever. Reader who ignores her fight or flight instincts and refuses to ditch Pope even when he insists he might destroy her.
Reader who patches Pope up when he comes home beaten and bloodied. Reader who turns her eyes away when Pope pulls out fat stacks of cash to pay for their dates.
Reader who holds Pope when he arrives at her door sobbing admitting in between tears what has happened with Lena and how it's tearing him apart.
Reader who holds him while he cries and soothes him. Pope who tells her every awful detail of his childhood. Reader who tells him that she has him and he's safe.
Pope who considers leaving "the life" for Reader.
Pope who makes the leap when the positive pregnancy test is shown to him by a terrified Reader.
They're lying in bed on their sides, his face buried against her breasts. She's stroking his curls soothing him as he holds her tight against him. They're coming to terms with the life growing within her...the fact that it will soon be the three of them and not just the two of them.
Pope finds the words "We can leave...leave Oceanside. I have the money to do it."
"Where would we go?" Reader asks daring to say the words stunned by the statement.
"East...just keep going. Florida....maybe south Texas...or maybe up to Maryland. Just far from here...the three of us." the words spill from Pope's lips he feeling hope for the first time in his life.
He speaks again his voice growing more certain. "I can...You once told me I'm good with my hands. You told me I'm good at fixing things...that it's a skillset. You told me I'm more than a criminal...I'm more than what my family says I am. I can...I can use my hands. Find honest work....we can be normal, happy."
"What about your family?" She dares to ask not wanting to believe the dream he's selling her...it can't be that simple.
"You're my family...you and this kid. I'm choosing you guys."
They pack up a uhaul the next day. Most of the things Pope cherishes are already at Reader's apartment anyhow.
They drive east and Pope texts his family that he's "out" before tossing his burner cell out the car window. He knows they're going to freak out. He knows they'll hate him. He knows Smurf will wish him dead...he doesn't care. He's choosing the woman he loves and the life that love created.
They wind up in South Carolina in a little sleepy beachside town. it's quiet. It's nothing like Oceanside and they love it. They find a little house that needs some work, but its theirs. Life is simple. Life is happy.
Pope takes up handyman work. He's good with his hands...Reader was right. He gets hired by an older man who needs someone younger to help him out. His arthritis is making it rough, and he takes a shine to Pope. Reader finds a job she likes at the community center teaching art classes. Pope talks her into it insisting she loves art and she would love to help other people make art.
Their son is born and Pope is surer than ever he's made the right choice fleeing his old life behind.
He loves his son. Andrew Julian Cody is perfection. He's smiley and energetic and wonderful. Pope wants to protect him from ever knowing anything Pope has known. He wants his son to have the best childhood. He knows his son will never doubt he's loved. He will never know home as being a place of fear or chaos. He will see his parents and never doubt they only want what makes him happy. He will never be used as a weapon by them. He will never be placed in danger by them. They will never use him for their gain.
Pope has been known to stand over the crib at night just watching AJ sleep. He can't believe something so perfect exists...something he had part in making.
Pope who doesn't feel deserving of fatherhood. Reader who reassures him telling him that their son could not ask for a better father who will love him and his mother more. Reader who reminds Pope he loves her more than any man has ever loved her. Reader who tells him all the wonderful things he will pass to their child. Anytime he tries to bring up all the bad he's done Reader points out the good things he's done.
AJ who's first words are Dada and who makes Pope cry along with him when he's fussy and teething. Pope who feels so intensely feeling helpless when his son is sick or angry.
Pope who won't put his boy down for anything. They are attached at the hip practically. He loves bouncing him gently and talking to him his voice low and shockingly sweet.
Pope who smiles...genuinely fully smiles his eyes bright and his body looking so light when his son giggles.
Pope read all the parenting books he could get his hands on. He wants to do it right. He knows what he came from. He wants to be everything his mother was not.
Little AJ who is his father's twin; same curls same glare when he's pissed.
Pope who's totally teaching the kid to skateboard when he's old enough.
Pope who bounces his son on his knee and keeps him entertained while Reader paints. He knows she appreciates the chance to make art and not feel like she solely exists to breast feed and change a diaper.
Pope who changes diapers and deals with vomit even if it makes his germophobia spike.
AJ is always clean and always clearly cared for. Pope is happy to take on bathtime and smiles and laughs when his son splashes the water and holds up a rubber duck for Pope to admire.
Pope who has nightmares about his mother showing up on his doorstep, Smurf holding a sobbing AJ. Reader dead and bleeding on the ground.
Reader wakes up on those nights to find Pope holding AJ needing reassurance he's okay.
Pope who makes love to Reader with just as much passion as before if not more. She's the mother of his child. She has given him love he never thought he deserved. She's his everything.
Pope who proposes while balls deep in Reader and though she laughs at the inappropriate moment to pop the question she does say yes.
They get married at the justice of the peace when AJ is almost two.
Their honeymoon is short but eventful given the fact that Reader presents Pope with another positive pregnancy test not long after they return from their honeymoon.
The crash sounding out shouldn't have shocked Y/N too much as she was roused from her sleep. Kids tended to make for noisy mornings especially during the summer. She sighed shaking her head not shocked by the frantic words from a little voice sounding out behind the closed bedroom door. "AJ, Mommy and Daddy's gonna so be mad."
The gentle scolding from her second born Amelia earns AJ's groan "You dropped it, not me."
She rolled over giving her husband a nudge Pope finally opening his eyes sending her a small, displeased look. She spoke giving him another nudge "You know for someone who used to not sleep a wink you sure do snore."
He let out a huff pulling her closer to him mumbling something that sounded like 'too comfy. You're soft.'
The peace didn't last long the bedroom door swinging open their two children making their way into the room AJ holding a wooden tray in his hands as his sister and he spoke. "Happy Father's Day!"
Pope did unwillingly let go of his wife sitting up in bed his eyes bleary but the smile on his face genuine he looking far less grouchy at the sight of his children.
Y/N did reach out at least steadying the tray as their nine-year-old son sat it on the bed thankfully not spilling the contents. He spoke looking pleased with himself. "We made breakfast for Dad."
Amelia gave her brother a harsh nudge fast to speak. "And for Mommy."
Y/N gave her children a small knowing smile. "And what got dropped?"
"Uh...some toast." AJ provided Amelia quick to speak adding on to it. "And juice."
Y/N sighed spotting the slight twitch to Pope's eye from the corner of her vision...even all these years later he still was a bit squirmy about germs and messes.
She gave her son's hair a ruffle as she spoke. "Okay, Mom's gonna clean up the mess and you two tell Daddy about breakfast. I'll be right back."
She managed to swing her legs around getting out of bed the task not easy with her current state. She rubbed her massive pregnant belly ignoring Pope as he spoke. "I can clean, Babe. Get back in bed."
"It's Father's Day, relax." She pointed out making her way out of the room not shocked as her unborn daughter roused and began to squirm within her.
The mess wasn't as bad as she'd feared and she was proud to say she cleaned it in a way that would earn her praise from her husband. Andrew Pope Cody had a positive impact on her when it came to cleanliness. She used to be a bit of a slob...but her husband had maybe rubbed off on her...and motherhood too.
She made her way back to the bedroom after taking a quick pee break a smile crossing her lips as she watched her children sat on the bed with her husband all three munching on toast Pope listening to his son and daughter talk over each other.
She shook her head knowing he'd insist they change the sheets...she knew he'd hate the crumbs in the bed...but he was willing to tolerate it for now for their kids.
He smiled up at her holding out a piece of toast. "Come eat, Baby. They cut it diagonally."
She shook her head as she made her way over to her family. "Of course, the only way to cut it."
Pope reached out his hand sliding over hers as she sat down his eyes turning to his children.
The man he'd been a decade before was a stranger to him. He knew no one would ever think intimidating weird Andrew Pope Cody the criminal who made everyone flinch away would become Andrew Pope Cody the married father of almost three who worked hard at an honest job and settled into a sleepy little town where he felt at peace.
This was his peace. His family was his peace and for the first time in his life he felt like he deserved the peace.
when the guy from fleabag or shawn hatosey, people who already have a stable income do sex work it’s celebrated. but when women do onlyfans to support themselves on top of already working another job they have “no self-respect.”
when ariana and cynthia are close friends it’s annoying but when gerran howell and noah wyle are weirdly close it’s extremely adorable.
when hudson williams does an ad scantily clad it’s hot but when sabrina carpenter wears a lingerie costume on stage she’s a bad role model.
when men sing about breakups it’s brave but when women share their experience it’s cliche.
literaly it is always that deep because it’s a pattern.
