andrew cody who just doesn’t know how to fuck! his cock is just so big that whenever he gets close to fucking one, either he chickens out or the other person does. so, when andrew starts dating you, and hasn’t fucked you in the first six months, you think it’s just an issue from his past! not an issue, per say, because you’re perfectly contented to have him eat your pussy day and night as he so desires. but you just think maybe it’s trauma from his mom or a byproduct of his stay in prison, and he just wasn’t able to get hard. but then, one night once he’s finished licking and sucking at you for the past three hours and your practically wrung dry, you watch him go to the bathroom. he does this often after he’s finished making you cum, but that’s just because he needs to get ready for bed!
the only difference is that this time you follow him there, after a few moments that is. it’s almost your bedtime and you’d like to brush your teeth before falling asleep. this is not what you’ve expected to see. andrew has his head thrown back and he’s white knuckling the sink. the only hand is stroking up and down his cock, that’s bright red and angry. angry, weeping, and fucking huge. you don’t ever think that you’ve seen a cock that big but andrew doesn’t seem to see you, biting his lip harshly and eyes closed tight.
he does seem to notice when you whine out a soft holyyy shit. his eyes snap open and he whimpers at the lust in your eyes. he comes into the toilet, tips of his ears and cock the same bright red, and you whine petulantly at the fact that he’s not coming somewhere on you. yeah, you need to talk to him and reevaluate your sex life.
so what if you did a little porn here and there to help pay through med school? it's not like you were making millions; it helped put ten extra bucks in the bank that paid for dinner for the week. you never showed your face, never put your real name on anything, never showed more of your room outside of one angle. it was anonymous as anonymous could be…until your attending pieces together that you're the amateur creator he keeps going back to. 11.5k
⟢ pairing: jack abbot x fem!reader
⟢ tags: MDNI/18+; f!reader; starts out in jack's pov sorry, i promise it's important for the plot; jack feels guilty about porn; brief m!masturbation; reader used to make amateur porn; reader is jack's coworker; insinuated age gap (reader's age not specified, insinuated to be late twenties); shen and ellis are here; shen's a little shit (affectionate); jack's kind of an asshole; little confrontation for the drama; bc reader does not put up with shit!; texting that leads to sexting; a lot of build up lol sorry; phone sex; pillow humping; open ending
⟢ A/N: WOOF it's finally done. i hope yall like it or i will be very sad. the idea/scenario popped into my brain one day and i needed to write this. i kinda lost steam towards the end and i feel like that's obivious sorryyyyy but i'm already considering a part two idk !!! have fun freaks <3
read on ao3
♡ support me here !
Jack Abbot never considered himself a righteous man. With a laundry list of regrets and an even longer list of mistakes, he was always the last one to argue in favor of his virtue. But one thing Jack Abbot was not…was a pervert.
At least, that's what he was currently trying to convince himself.
And truth be told, he wasn't exactly doing a very good job at. Lying in bed half-hard and trying to will his blood to flow literally anywhere else, the corners of his mind kept floating back to fantasies that relieved him of the loneliness that life seemed determined to keep him under. It wasn't the desire itself that he fought his brain trying to repress. He'd lived too long to even attempt wrestling his body's urges or feign embarrassment from an overactive imagination. The only thing he'd been fighting was the urge to indulge using…the internet.
Jack liked to believe he could pride himself on his willpower. That whatever he set himself towards, he could do. Including the simple act of getting off to his own fantasies instead of relying on strangers on the internet to feed it to him with fake smiles and even faker moans. It wasn't like he was against the idea of porn—his track record of stolen Playboys and single college nights would prove that hypocrisy quick—it was just something about the internet aspect of it that made him feel…perverted.
Maybe it was the knowledge that he could be watching anyone post their body or their sex with the intention of other strangers getting off to it. Maybe it was the realization that most people who did the posting were half his age. It was there for a reason; it shouldn't have mattered, but he still felt like he needed to make excuses to justify why he turned to it.
Luckily, that pestering voice in the back of his mind always had an excuse to justify what he was doing. When he relented long enough to grab his phone, it was "to check the work email". When his thumb gravitated towards the internet safari, it was "to look up the Pirates' score" (when he knew full well baseball season was practically over). But the excuses started to fade when his free hand drifted over the front of his pants and palmed the bulge that was only growing larger with each second he tried to ignore it. Damn blood flow and its resolute persistence.
So, without any self-pitying justification to soften the blow, Jack Abbot succumbs to a weakness he'd never admit he has and pulls up the first website that pops up when he keywords amateur.
That was the one thing he wouldn't budge on when all the other willpower faltered. When cold showers and "imagination" couldn't solve the problem and he reluctantly turned to the wide scope of the internet, the one necessity was the lack of production value. He didn't want stage lights and camera crews and actors with more plastic than flesh. He didn't want a movie with advertisement. He wanted something as real as filmed sex could offer. Something he could envision actually happening that was actually desired by the performer.
And Jack couldn't decide if that made him more or less of a pervert. On one hand, it was a surefire way to feel like the world's biggest voyeur. On the other, he figured being so picky made him less of a target for the internet's average depiction of a pervert.
So picky, in fact, that he'd scrolled to the fifth page of this website and still struggled to find something that caught his attention. This was exactly why he didn't watch porn; the hand still lazily palming the outline of his dick was probably the only reason any blood kept flowing there. But he'd gotten past the hardest part of justifying it to his own brain—he just needed to pick something to jerk off to and deal with the post-nut clarity and regret when he got to the other side of it.
It was the sixth page that held the video he finally settled on. Nothing extravagant—as that was one of the qualifiers—with barely any views. Based on the thumbnail and title, it was a solo video. Just a woman, sat on her bed, getting herself off. Simple and easy and exactly what he wanted to see.
As soon as the video starts, he's met with less-than-ideal lighting that makes the camera fuzzy. Not enough to turn him off of it, just enough to give that homemade feel he preferred for this type of thing. The woman in question could be seen just fine; the angle cut off at the neck and highlighted everything from her chest and downward. She's sporting a thin little slip, body softened by the camera's grain, her skin highlighted by the soft glow of what Jack assumes is late afternoon sun filtering through beige curtains. The quality doesn't obscure the curves of her body or the soft pink of her cunt. Hell, he swears he can see her drip when she rubs circles against her perky little clit.
The video itself isn't unlike others he's seen. His dick seems to understand that as well as his brain, thickening behind his briefs to the sight on his phone. The fight's bled out of him by now; no need to justify himself when he fishes his cock out and strokes himself lazily. Especially not when the woman on-screen is spreading her own slick on her fingers and mewling sweet little sounds that make him twitch against his hand.
And that's exactly what he's focusing on by the time he spits into his palm to slick up his strokes. The little sounds that escape her—soft moans, choked breaths, and split-second whines—land straight in his gut. He can almost tell she's trying to stay quiet. Like if that camera inched up just a bit, he'd see her with a lip caught between her teeth. But she lets a little moan escape as those nimble fingers sink inside her cunt and Jack can't help but respond in vain with his own guttural sound. He tries to match the pace of her hand with his own, pumping his cock in time with her fingers disappearing into her slick hole, in some sort of pathetic mockery of actual sex. It's wet and sloppy and every kind of desperate. And it satisfied that itch just as quickly as he feared it would.
As the video comes to its (literal) climax, he can't help but imagine how her brow might furrow when she cums, how swollen her lips might look from biting back moans. Trying to picture a face as cute as the body on screen. That was another weakness he'd never admit to—always too curious about things he had no business wondering. He'd gotten off to a stranger's body and, before he'd even wiped his stomach clean of his own spend, he was wondering if she was always this quiet. Somewhere in the back of his mind was the question of why she was so quiet. Where was she? And why did she record in the middle of the day? Before the video cut off and turned the screen black, he wondered if the band poster on the wall behind her naked body was her favorite.
Jesus, he was getting old. Embarrassingly sentimental over a stranger in a porn video.
He tosses his phone onto the mattress beside him with a dejected sigh. The voice in his head that had initially come up with excuses to justify it had swiftly turned sour with guilt. There were enough things in life that lingered with regret (and this surely wouldn't be the last), but on the list of offenses, it sat pretty low. It was just a lapse in judgement he'd surely forget by tomorrow when he's wrist-deep in someone's chest.
But Jack most certainly did not forget about that video.
To be fair, it never popped into his mind while he was working. The never-ending onslaught of the hurt, sick, and broken didn't allow much time for his mind to wander where it didn't belong. This was when he had the right to be proud of his willpower. When, after three back-to-back traumas in the middle of the night, he was still focused on directing a team and getting the job done.
The weakness only came when loneliness settled too heavily on his shoulders. When he came back to an empty home after nearly 13 hours managing lives and had to pretend like taking care of himself was something easy. He liked to tell himself that being alone didn't bother him. Or that the quiet got easier to exist in. But the argument quickly died when he pulled up that same video only two days after the first time. The same video, borne from the same lapse in judgement—only this time it carried more guilt. Because it was bad enough to turn to the internet and take whatever it offered, it was another thing entirely to seek out something specific because he had an affinity for a goddamn stranger.
It wasn't every day, thank God. Some days, after working himself to the bone in hopes of clearing his mind, the only urge Jack came home with was the desperate need to sleep. That was how he operated; no opportunities for weakness to seep into his synapses and make another bad decision if he was overworked and dead on his feet, right? But the curiosity eventually became worse than the loneliness. And it was that same curiosity that led him back to that explicit sight to seek out that same woman, scroll through her profile, and see what else she'd shared with the world.
And that might've been the worst possible thing he could've done. Because seeing that small collection of videos only gave him more to latch onto. Gave him a reason to be disappointed when he saw every single video was dated eight years ago. Gave him a choice in favorites that he'd prefer over the others. (Right now, it was a short video of her grinding against a pillow—he could see the slick left behind on the fabric when she circled her hips like that.)
No matter how many times he fought his own brain, it always ended with that same woman on his screen and a hand choking his dick while he fantasized about being the one to draw that pleasure out of her. It was unlike him to get so attached—Christ, he hated even using that word—but something in him was addicted. She was just so…sweet. Her body, of course, but it was also the mannerisms that snuck their way into her videos and those cute little sounds she made when she felt good. She felt so real.
Jack Abbot was definitely a pervert.
"Jesus, this is the longest shift of my life."
You groaned into your hands as they ran over your face. Barely halfway through your scheduled twelve hours, your feet already ache, you're starving, and it seems like the universe has cursed you with some of the most insufferable patients. People freaking out over gas pain, MVA injuries that could've been avoided had anyone decided to wear a seatbelt or call a designated driver. Nothing that made you feel like the "savior" this job sometimes afforded you.
"So, not up for a double, then?" Shen circles you at the nurse's station, slotting one of the staff tablets into its charging slot. "Bummer," he sighs, "I thought you loved it here."
You laugh, bracing your hands against the countertop. "Don't start." Your head aches when you look up at the patient board and see the assortment waiting for you. The list of complaints sits like a taunt to your exhaustion. "I'm this close to walking out and leaving you fools."
"Oh, quit that." Lena doesn't even have to look up the papers in her hand for you to know she's talking to you. Forever observant, the nurses were. "Don't give Abbot more reason to be grumpy." That's when she looks up at you, peering over the rim of her glasses. If you didn't already agree, her glare would've convinced you to.
"Yeah," you roll your eyes and they land on Shen, "he doesn't need that."
You don't miss the little smile on Shen's face when he rounds the curve of the counter. "C'mon, you won't leave." He carries himself to one of the computers, scanning his badge with an accepting beep. "What've you got going on that's better than this?"
"Okay, ouch."
"No, I mean—"
"I do have a life, John."
"I…bet you do." He concedes with a shrug of his shoulders. "You just…" he takes a breath, searching for the right word, and you're already bracing for something too blunt. "Y'know, you work a lot."
You roll your eyes even as the back of your mind acknowledges his words to be true. "Which is why I need the break. You guys are driving me crazy."
"Big happy family." Shen gestures to the space around him as if to highlight the constant rush of people.
That almost earns another eye roll. You snatch a tablet off of the rack and tap through the screen prompts, checking for test results that should've been back ten minutes ago. "If you have to know, I'm meeting up with an old friend. Met her back in med school—"
"She teach you not to kill people?"
"Ha ha. I haven't seen her in a while since she moved out of town for her residency." Bingo, test results back. "Unlike you freaks, she's actually nice."
Shen responds with a laugh that comes out as a snort. "Don't leave us for too long. One taste of freedom and you really will ditch this place, I'm sure." Lena echoes the sentiment with a short 'don't tempt her' as she scurries past.
"Are we working or are we talking?" Abbot's voice seems to barrel over the emergency department's constant, hectic buzz. He braces two large hands against the countertop's edge, occupying the space between you and Shen. He looks between the two of you with that arch of his eyebrow that never seemed to soften.
Shen relents first, taking your silence as an opportunity. "She's leaving us, man," he gestures towards you with an accusatory glance.
Jack's eyes land on you, brow furrowed. "Leaving us?"
"No—Don't say it like that." You'd smack Shen if you could reach him. Especially after seeing him smile as he types away at a chart he surely had no interest in.
Jack straightens, sliding his hands off of the counter. He looked at you with that same assessing stare he gave everything he couldn't quite figure out. "You better not be. You're not allowed to leave."
You sigh, silently damning yourself for opening your mouth. "I took tomorrow off. You won't even miss me."
Before you even registered he'd moved in your direction, Jack stops just behind you. Stood with his hands behind his back—the same way he always did—he peers over your shoulder to look at the scans on the screen in your hands. A low sound rumbles from his throat. "I'll miss the extra hands." You look back over your shoulder to find his eyes on you instead of the screen. "At least go do your job before you leave us, yeah?" He holds that look, something indecipherable and intense, as he steps away.
You have to take a breath to level yourself. Jack could be such a difficult book to read sometimes; it was hard to tell what went on in that head when he wasn't working through an active trauma. You could tell he'd lived too long of a life to put up with nonsense and waste time on whatever he deemed unnecessary, small talk included. Slipping in and out of conversation to occupy himself with the responsibility of his job as an attending wasn't uncommon. Still, you liked to believe that unique brand of sarcasm was how he chose to show affection.
The smile Shen flashes in your direction, complete with a raised brow that seemed more intrigued than accusatory, only confirms that belief. "Wow. He might actually miss you while you're gone."
"Shut it." You sigh, sore feet carrying your body back to one of the patients waiting for your care. You just hope Jack doesn't realize you're cherry-picking the easier cases for the sake of your sanity. If he knew you were cherry-picking, he might've kept you charting well into day shift. At least then you could argue he wanted to keep you around.
Clocking in on Sunday reminded you exactly why you never took days off for social events. The rhythm of the night shift had been interrupted and you were left to live in the consequences. It was a fun day, but the change in sleep definitely had you dragging your feet. Shen made it a point to tease you with a pointed 'this is why you can't leave us!' And as hard as you rolled your eyes, the chaos did comfort you in some strange way. Still, the chaos would've been a little easier had you not been exhausted.
Ellis, never one to mince words, was the one to urge you towards the coffee in the break room when she saw the hunch in your shoulders. "You need to wake the hell up," she'd told you, "go get some of that coffee and figure it out."
So, figure it out you did. Even though the break room coffee had run cold and thick, sitting bitter in the pot, it was better than trying to brute force another eight hours. You yawn as you pour the lukewarm brew into a mug found in the depths of the break room cabinet. It was a wonder there were still clean dishes left to choose from.
Footsteps sound out at the doorway. You peer up with tired eyes to see Shen beelining for the fridge. He nods toward you, a sweet little "hey" dropping from his lips. The fridge creaks open under his hand. "Haven't had a chance to ask about your day of freedom," you hear from behind the door as he reaches inside.
"It was good," you nod, "I'm…exhausted now, though. Didn't get much chance to catch up on sleep."
Shen hums a sound of acknowledgement. He straightens up, now holding a half-empty cup of fast-food cold brew. "Hope your friend was worth it."
Your nose wrinkles at the bitter taste that hits your tongue when you take another sip of your own coffee. Man, something sugary and sweet and overly caffeinated sounded heavenly right now. "Yes, she was worth it. I missed her. She lives over in Philly, so we never really get to meet up anymore."
"Philly?" He whistles with a shake of his head. "Man, all for you?"
"No, for her family. I just met up with her for lunch." Another sip of bitter, thick coffee has you setting the mug on the countertop before continuing, "You don't think my company's worth the four-hour drive?" You look up at him with a cocked brow, but when his lips press into a thin line, you raise a hand to cut off whatever snarky response he could come up with. "Don't answer that." Shen holds his hands up in mock surrender—the same way he always did when his sarcasm was stopped before it could manifest. "We took some pictures while she was here…"
You pat the pockets of your scrubs, searching for your phone in the fabric, and pull it out with another yawn. Half a cup of lukewarm coffee didn't seem to do much in terms of waking you up, it seemed. You inch closer to Shen as you thumb through your phone and pull up the few photos from the day before. One of you and your friend smiling at the table of a cafe, another taken outside, a few silly photos that Shen doesn't find as hilarious as you do. But he humors you with a quiet aww that almost sounds like the reaction to a cute animal rather than a photo of his coworker.
"Well, look at you wearing something other than scrubs!"
You nudge him with your elbow, "Yeah, I told you I have a life."
Another set of footsteps crosses the threshold of the break room door, but it's the sharp whistle that follows that catches the attention of both you and Shen. It's Abbot, hovering like always, eyebrows raised at the sight of you two hunched of your phone. "Scatter, kids," he urges, thumbing back towards the bustling hall, "C'mon, no gossiping."
"M'not gossiping! I'm bragging about my day off." You turn your phone around, screen facing outwards to show off one of the photos from yesterday.
Jack doesn't seem to pay it much attention as he moves to pour his own cup of coffee. "Yeah?" He humors you long enough to look at the screen for a moment. He nods, as if granting his approval. "How was that?"
"Uh, great." The emphasis you put on the word is dramatic enough to prove your point. "I met her back in med school, but she moved to Philly for her residency. Haven't seen her in a while. But we were both happy to just…be out of the hospital for a day." Turning your phone in your hand, you scroll up through your entire collection of photos in search of a particular photo from years ago. "I'm sure I have a picture of us from back then. That was…God, eight years ago?"
"Eight years?" That seems to pique Jack's attention. You think he's poking fun, but the look on his face is one of disbelief. "You were in med school only eight years ago? Christ, way to make me feel old."
"Feel old?" Shen pipes up. You shoot him a look that he reciprocates before hiding his smile behind a sip of his cold brew.
"Oh, here we go. Wow, I look like a baby…"
An old photo from nearly eight years ago pulls up full-screen on your phone. It's of you with the same friend, both eight years younger, in the apartment you resided in during med school. You didn't look much different aside from a fuller face devoid of the stress lines your job had come to give you. But showing the photo off made the image feel like it was from a lifetime ago. Shen makes a cheeky comment about the unique style you sported back then. It's when you show Jack that something seems to land awkwardly.
You don't notice it, but the photo lands like a punch to the gut. Not only was it a shock to his system to see a young, twenty-something you fresh into med school, but he knew that room. He knew those sheets, the band poster hung over the bed, the curtains framing the window at the foot of the mattress. He'd seen it countless times on his own phone screen until the layout was burned into the recesses of his brain. Jack takes a deep breath to will away the sudden thrum of his heart.
"That's…" He clears his throat when the word comes out broken, "that's your apartment?"
"Yeah. Well, was. Don't judge it!" You laugh, turning the photo back towards yourself. "I know it looks shitty, but I was broke in med school. Cut me some slack."
Shen mutters something about it being 'not that bad' as Jack practically chugs the rest of his coffee. He sets the mug down in the sink harsher than any of you expect and straightens with a huff; the sharp clink of ceramic catches your attention, but the hard set of his jaw keeps it.
"Get off your phone," he grumbles without turning to look at you. He carries himself hurriedly, like he's trying to get out of the room as fast as he physically can. "Get back to work. People need you out there."
Your eyes follow the broad set of his back as Jack slips out of the break room. His absence leaves his tone to settle over you and Shen—who shares a look of disbelief your way—and something unwelcome shifts in the air. You slip your phone back into your pocket, embarrassment and uncertainty tightening in your chest. It was his job to keep you in line and on task; a simple reminder shouldn't have weighed on you the way it did.
"Yeah, told you he wouldn't miss me."
It was childish, sure. Unprofessional, definitely. But you cared too much about what he thought. You liked to tell yourself it was strictly about the job and that staying in the good graces of your attending would make life easier. And that was true, to an extent. But you didn't often let yourself acknowledge the curiosity in the back of your mind that constantly questioned what went on in his head. It would only serve as a distraction to concern yourself with whatever he stressed over. The easiest thing to do was just catch him when the night offered a break and he wasn't pulled in ten different directions. He was fine when he wanted to talk. The hard part was just finding the right moment.
And, unfortunately, that moment never seems to come. The night had its lulls, which were nothing more than minute-long breaks that allowed you to catch up on a paragraph of charting at a time. And, to your surprise, Abbot wasn't hovering or breaking heavy tension with dry humor that only he ever found funny. Well, he was…just not with you.
What you thought was just another sour mood slowly turned into the realization that your attending was treating you differently. Rather, he wasn't acknowledging you at all. He didn't turn the other direction to avoid you—he just looked past like you weren't even there. He didn't check in with a little tap on your arm and a thumbs-up that silently asked, 'Are you still with us'. It took a few hours to realize, but once it hit you, it settled heavy on your shoulders.
It really came to a head when you had to present a case. You slunk up beside him when he'd finished a conversation with one of the nurses, deliberately trying to catch him before he could busy himself with another task. The entire time you relayed the patient's status—test results, symptoms, possible diagnoses and why they didn't fit criteria—you looked up at Jack and waited for him to meet your gaze. But it never came. Instead, he signed off on another scan, handed the tablet back to you, and scurried off like the interaction had wasted his time.
You didn't consider yourself a favorite, but it was really unlike him to be so short with you. And when he brushed you off so easily over something work-related, the last thing you wanted to do was confront his attitude. You settled for the next best thing: interrogating your coworkers.
Ellis was the first one you landed eyes on. She was clearly on a mission, carrying herself from one room to the next, but you still sidled yourself up next to her. "Hey, uhm..." You matched her pace, hugging the tablet in your hands close to your body. "Have you noticed anything…off with Abbot?"
She tears her eyes away from the destination in front of her to look over at you. "Off?" She echoes in a plea for more information.
"Yeah, just…" you trail off, trying to find the right words, "I don't know. I'm getting a weird vibe."
"He seems fine to me."
"Really? You haven't noticed him being all…avoidant or whatever?"
"I mean," Ellis shrugs, trying to find the answer you're looking for, "I guess he's been in his head a bit more. Nothin' crazy, you know how he is."
You nod, all-too-aware of what she means. But you aren't satisfied with that answer. With what essentially served as confirmation that the sudden change in demeanor was only directed towards you, now came the urge to understand why. And while you didn't expect Parker—or any of your colleagues for that matter—to have the explanation you needed, it didn't stop you from questioning.
"Nothing happened while I was gone, did it?" You stop in your tracks, hoping she'll humor you long enough to give an actual response. "No…veterans came in yesterday? Was he with SWAT this morning?"
Ellis does stop, but she huffs a sigh as she turns in your direction. "Not that I know of. Look, if you think somethin's up, just ask him. We got shit to do, yeah?"
"Right." You concede reluctantly. "Yeah, of course."
Ellis cocks her head towards the North rooms as she takes her leave, a silent urge to distract yourself with productivity. She was right—your job was more important than gossiping about your attending. Patients didn't care whether or not you felt ignored. You take a breath and steel yourself for the remaining hours of chaos.
An ache in your hands reminds you of the tablet you're still hugging against your chest. You weren't even aware you were white-knuckling the device. You shake your head as if it'll clear the stress and suffocating stream of questions and carry yourself over to the nurse's station on tired feet. The board overhead never fell below a certain threshold of patients; the rotation of color made your head spin. As you slot the tablet into its charging dock, Lena rounds the corner. The first amusement you've felt in hours comes when she scolds a small group of NA's over their tendency to talk instead of work.
A voice in the back of your head tells you to get back to your charting. Instead, you lean against the countertop and hope Lena's the only one listening to you when you call out.
"Hey, Lena, how's my favorite charge nurse?"
The look she gives you is exactly what you expect. Skeptical. "Favorite?"
"Yeah, of course," you shrug. "Don't tell Dana. Hey, listen, have you noticed anything different with Abbot today?"
Lena doesn't answer you immediately. While you fill the silence with every possible response that would send you into a panic, she just grabs a clipboard and looks at you from over the rim of her glasses. She has the courtesy to step closer, keeping her voice as low as the bustle around the two of you would allow. "Now, why are you asking me that?"
Hearing it from her mouth gives you pause. She was great at making the trivial things feel as silly as they were. "I dunno, I just…" Your eyes scan the halls and, though you don't say it, you both know you're looking for him. "He's acting a little bit off, I think."
"Yeah. 'Cause he is 'a little bit off'. Aren't we all."
"Right." Concession was starting to come easy. "Just…keep an eye on him, please? You're always watching, you'll notice better than anyone."
That manages to earn a laugh from her. "Flattery will get you nowhere, sweetheart."
You flash a smile and drag yourself back into the fray. Her sentiment is already settled in the back of your mind. Yeah, you think, clearly not.
Seven A.M. couldn't have come any slower.
The night was one of the longest drags you'd ever lived through. Least of all because of the actual work you were expected to do; everything clinical moved like clockwork. Patients, paperwork, even charting was enough of a distraction to make time tick a little faster. The real problem was Abbot and whatever had him convinced that avoiding you was the best course of action. Time moved slower when every minute was a reminder that he wasn't acknowledging you.
If it were anyone else, you'd chalk it up to a bad day and try again tomorrow. But Jack didn't do this—the unprofessional silent treatment that bled into every aspect of the job. He was an adult. He was the one rallying teamwork and perseverance and how not to let baggage seep into the job. If there was a problem, he talked it out.
Until now, apparently.
When handoff finally came and the day shift slowly flooded in, you didn't find the relief you typically did with their presence. Yes, you could finally get off your feet, maybe catch up on the sleep you'd missed, and eat a real meal for the first time in hours. But it didn't feel right going home with uncertainty hanging over your head.
Lucky for no one but yourself, Jack's role as an attending kept him busier than others. Meaning you had time to do rounds and catch the day shift up to speed with the patients without worrying about him slipping away. It doesn't stop you from keeping an eye on him whenever you're able, though. He could ignore you in favor of work, but once the two of you were clocked out, there was no choice but to listen to you. At least, that's what you told yourself as you cornered him in the stairwell.
He barely gets through the heavy doors, bag slung on his shoulder, when you call out to him. The same quiet little "hey" you always greeted him with. It isn't lost on you the way he pauses before turning to face you.
"Hey." He tosses back. You think this is the first time he's looked at you in eight hours. It quickly diverts when he fidgets with the watch on his wrist instead. "How'd tonight treat you?"
You recognize it for what it is: a formality. He's not genuinely asking because he wants to know. If he were, he'd take care to close the nearly two feet of space between you.
"Fine. It was fine." Jesus, this was awkward. It would've been easier to just go home and sleep the shift off. But that wouldn't have given you answers. You sigh, clasping your hands together only to part them seconds later when you gesture to yourself. "Did I…do something?"
That makes Jack pause. His eyes dart up, looking at you, then past your form to the heavy doors leading back to the ED, then back at you. "Not that I'm aware of…Did you do something?"
"I…I don't know." Your shrug is one of exasperation. "It feels like you've been deliberately avoiding me all night. I felt like you didn't even want me to present cases or ask for your input." Your throat feels tight halfway through the explanation, your chest heavy with all the frustration and confusion that's built throughout the night. You take a break to steady yourself and shove your hands in your pockets. "You're my attending," you know he didn't need the reminder, "if I can't come to you, there's clearly a problem."
Jack doesn't offer a response, but at least he looks at you while the muscles in his jaw tick under white stubble. He didn't like it when people felt the need to state the obvious and tell him what he already knew. But reality and how it settled on your shoulders was far more important than his feelings about it. When you think he's going to leave you with nothing, he shifts his bag on his shoulder and shakes his head.
"There's no problem."
It's your turn to be silent and stare.
Your lips press thin in a tight line as you try to swallow some of your frustration. No problem? Right, because he'd been ignoring you just for the hell of it. Because the same man who always asked how you were doing and questioned how you spent your days suddenly decided your existence had no relevance. You take a deep breath and straighten your spine. If anything, it's to ground yourself and remember that cursing him out and risking your job wasn't worth it.
"Look," you start with a huff, voice as level as you can possibly manage, "if I did something to upset you, I'd like to know so I can fix it. If I did something wrong professionally, you need to tell me so I can better it."
Jack was always a particular case study—one you liked to think you were starting to understand—but the way he looks at you now is indecipherable. Part of you is just happy to have his eyes on you, but it doesn't feel as reassuring as you thought it would. Just when the silence stretches a moment too long, his eyes tear away from you and dart around the stairwell as if surveying the area around you.
"I'm not having this conversation here," he mutters, crossing those thick arms over his chest. It's meant to be a finality, but there's no way you're letting the conversation end unfinished.
"Uhm, yes we are? If this is something interfering with work, then the conversation can happen here."
"I promise this is not a conversation you wanna have in the hospital. You'll be better off if you wait." You scoff at that, annoyed, and he doesn't miss it. He's already starting to turn away, ready to leave it at that, before he adds, "You should have my number. Text me when you're home. We'll talk about it then."
You step after him when he moves away. What started as confusion had fully bled into frustration. "So, just to be clear, there is a problem. And you're not telling me how to fix it."
Jack huffs your name in an annoyed breath that's sharp enough to make you pause. "You didn't do anything. There's no problem." When he looks back at you from over his shoulder, you swear a shiver runs down your spine. "I promise." He shifts his bag on his shoulder one final time—something you're starting to assume is a nervous tick—and you watch the muscles in his back play under his scrubs. He starts down the corridor before tossing back, "We'll talk when you're home."
That was the finality. Not that he gave you much choice in the matter, but you make it a point to stay rooted in the stairwell. You aren't sure how long you stand there, replaying the conversation in your head. It felt less like a conversation and more like the prelude to something that made your chest feel tight the longer you thought about it. Whatever it was, it was bad enough that he couldn't even look at your face. Great. Now you were dreading the return home.
The walk to the lockers feels like a display of shame, even though you're the only one who knows what just happened. It's hard to tell if your sluggish movements are from exhaustion or the subconscious desire to get home as slow as possible. But the inevitable was exactly that, and curiosity still reluctantly pulled at the back of your mind. If he really was willing to talk, you wanted to hear it. Even a harsh truth would be better than being lost in the dark.
You didn't know what to do with yourself when you got home. The smartest thing to do would be to whip up something proper to eat and change out of your scrubs. A text conversation shouldn't have taken much attention, let alone a ton of effort.
What actually ended up happening was you, thumbing away at your phone as soon as you got through the door, desperately searching for Jack's contact information to send a haphazard 'I'm home now' text. And as soon as it sent, you paced through your kitchen just waiting for him to see it and respond. The minutes feel torturously long. Part of you starts to fear he'll ghost you and refuse to have the conversation. But he promised there was no problem. It felt childish to latch onto something as feeble as that, but it was all you had. Even more embarrassing was how much it ate away at you to be so blatantly ignored by him. The longer you thought about it, the more pathetic you thought yourself for craving his approval.
Maybe the only thing more pathetic was how you perked up hearing the chime of your phone. Three long minutes after your initial message came Jack's response. And he got right to the point.
Abbot: Is there anywhere someone might be able to recognize you from?
The question left you even more confused. One, what the hell did this have to do with work? Two, why would anyone recognize you? As the questions flooded your mind, you wanted to reply with an annoyed wall of question marks. Instead, you settle for more clarification:
You: i'm sorry?
Abbot: Answer the question.
You scoff at your phone, wondering how the hell you were meant to answer.
You: i mean i don't think any of my patients would recognize me
Abbot: Not what I meant.
Okay, dick. You weren't surprised to find him as blunt over the phone as he was in person. A beat passes before he sends another message.
Abbot: Have you ever posted anything online that people might recognize you from?
Somehow, this was clearing up nothing and only leaving you with more questions.
You: what?? you mean on like instagram or smth??
You: i doubt my 20 followers would recognize me
Twenty followers that were mostly friends and family that already knew you. But you kept the sarcasm minimal in hopes it'd make his point approach quicker.
When it takes another minute for him to respond, you decide to finally retreat to your bedroom and rid yourself of the scrubs you'd been stewing in for hours. Getting off your feet and into a warm bed and fresh clothes was the closest thing to Heaven right now. You hear your phone chime as you settle in and close out the Pittsburgh dawn with thick curtains. When you slip into bed to check the messages, there's two waiting for you.
The first is just your name, plain and simple. It makes you think of the way he spoke it in the stairwell—stern and final—and something about that makes your throat run dry. The next message makes your heart skip a beat:
Abbot: Okay, I'm not asking you this as your boss. We're off the clock.
Then, possibly the last message you ever could've expected from him:
Abbot: Have you ever shared anything pornographic?
If you weren't already in bed, you swear you could've fallen over. Your heart sinks so low it reaches the floor. Maybe, just maybe, you actually already died and this was Hell.
There was no way this was real.
And the worst about it? You couldn't even laugh it off or feign disgust. You couldn't send back an angry 'what the fuck are you talking about?' and why he'd ask such a thing. Well, you could've, but it would've felt pretty disingenuous. The absurdly formal way he posed the question aside, the only thing you wanted to ask was how the hell he found out. It was years ago, a stupid endeavor to make a little pocket money during med school. You'd barely even made content before deciding the effort wasn't worth the pay. You hadn't done it in so long—hadn't even thought about it in years.
With shaky thumbs and an erratic heartbeat, you managed to type back:
You: what the fuck jack
You could lie. You could say no and make him feel terrible for bringing it up. But there's no way he would ever bring it up if he didn't have a reason to.
You: ok yes but it was years ago. i told you i was broke in med school
Jack still hasn't responded. You felt sick wondering what he was doing with that confirmation. Maybe he was already typing up an email to HR. Maybe he was wondering how to bring up to the team that you'd no longer be working with them. Fuck. Panic sits in your gut and crawls up your throat until it's nearly impossible to breathe.
You: wajt how the fuck did you find out??? did soneone tell you????
Every possible scenario ranging from bad to awful to worse ran through your mind. What if someone told him and now he had to bring it up to someone higher. What if the whole emergency department knew, or someone in particular knew and was slowly sharing it. Oh, God, what if you walked in there tomorrow and everyone started asking you about those stupid videos and—
Abbot: No, no one told me.
Thank God. At least you could push away that particular worry for now. But it didn't answer the first question you posited.
You: so you just found it?? on accident??
Abbot: I didn't know it was you until today.
Abbot: I recognized the apartment when you showed me that picture of you in school.
Ah. So that's what was going on.
In hindsight, that made the entire night way less stressful than it felt in the moment. It almost made you laugh to think about; your attending had been avoiding you because he realized you made the porn he watched. Yeah, you weren't too sure you could've looked him in the eye after that, either.
But as the realization sinks into your brain, the reality of it hits you. To recognize the walls of your apartment, he had to have watched a video. More likely, several videos. The guy who ran your department had seen a 20-something-year-old you spread your legs on a shitty phone camera. He'd seen you touch yourself and put on a show for approval of strangers on the internet. Christ, you couldn't even remember half of what those videos contained—who knew what he'd witnessed you do in the desperation for a paycheck.
And for some perverted, selfish reason, it didn't repulse you in the slightest. It should've. You should've been typing out an apology and promising that content was from the past. You should've asked that he never watch it again because of the breach of privacy. Instead, you sat in your bed and wondered if he had a favorite. You wondered if he got off to any of it, and if the knowledge that it was you made it better or worse for him.
The chime of your phone snaps you back to reality. It's then you realize you've left Jack on read for nearly eight minutes.
Abbot: I'm sorry. I should've acted more professional at work. This isn't coming into work with me tomorrow.
Abbot: It's cleared up and done. Thank you for being honest.
Honest? He all but admitted he'd watched a porno of you, and he was thanking you for the honesty of clarifying it was you? The guy you reported to had seen you naked and trembling and desperate and then had the audacity to say he'd forget all about it by tomorrow?
Yeah, right.
You: did you at least enjoy the videos?
There's a stretch of silence with no response. You regret the words for a moment, wondering if the overstep was breaching further than a tease. Then he sends another message containing nothing more than your name. It's exactly the same as last time, but you can feel the difference in tone. Shakier. Warning you. Or maybe it was all in your head.
Abbot: I said this is done.
You: i thought we were being honest :/
Yeah, you were being annoying. But Jack left you unnecessarily stressed out for most of your shift. Surely he could put up with a little bit of pestering. He had a sense of humor about everything. But you watched the text bubble pop up and disappear five different times before he finally sent a response.
Abbot: I don't think that's appropriate.
You: jack. do you really think i'm gonna judge you for watching porn when i used to make it??
You don't get a response to that message. In the minutes that follow, as you're waiting for something to pop up, you wish you could jump through your phone screen and figure out what he was doing. Was he ignoring you on purpose? Did you finally annoy him enough? A far-too hopeful voice in the back of your mind hoped he was going through the list and figuring out which video was his favorite. Aside from being unrealistic, you cringe at the thought of him going back to old videos instead of reaching out for something new. The thought creeps in—not entirely unwelcome—wondering if he'd ask for that. Debating whether you'd fulfill it while knowing damn well you probably would.
Five long minutes pass and you huff a sigh. You knew he was right; this wasn't appropriate. And Jack was a man who lived so strictly to his regiment and rules.
You: sorry
You: just curious
You set your phone down with a finality you aren't too keen on accepting. That wasn't exactly the message you'd hoped to leave off on.
The darkness of the room creeps in without the light of your phone to light up your face. You slip under your sheets and try your hardest to prepare for a longer stretch of sleep than you had the previous day. Exhaustion hit you hard and sudden, pulling at your aching muscles, but your brain couldn't stay quiet. All it did was replay the night, every little conversation, what you could've done differently. Conjuring up scenarios where you confronted Jack earlier and saved yourself the stress, or what would've happened if you never showed him that photo of you and your friend. It was a whirlwind of what-ifs, more than enough to give you a headache.
The buzz of your phone, when it comes, is far too loud. And you, despite your exhaustion, are far too eager to see what it's from. The light of the screen nearly blinds you, but as you squint to look at the notification, your heart skips a beat.
It's Jack, with a simple message that responds to a specific one of your own. Replying to your earlier question about enjoying your videos, all he says in response:
Abbot: Yes.
Heat blooms throughout your body embarrassingly quick. Yes, he liked your videos. One, several, it didn't matter. Jack had seen you naked and whining, and he liked it.
You: wait which video
Abbot: Several.
Oh. So he really liked it. Must've been a hit in his browser history.
You: oh wow. okay
You: glad i could be of service then ;)
You plan to leave it at that and quit while you're ahead. Coaxing the confession out of him was precarious enough. Even though you were dying to know every detail and figure out exactly what he'd seen and what he liked best, you were content with just knowing he liked something about it. Teasing him was fun, but anything more would've been an HR disaster. It'd be interesting to see how Jack would explain that one.
But just as you're about to set your phone down, another message comes through:
Abbot: Yeah, you're really helpful.
Curiosity killed the cat and all that.
You: ?
You: with what?
You knew, in the back of your mind. Or, at least, you really fucking hoped. Every second drags out far too long for your eager nerves, itching to know how he'll respond. Thankfully, it's along the lines of something you were hoping for.
Abbot: Can I show you?
Always so formal.
You: yes please
Your heart was already thumping out of your chest. Working yourself up over whatever he was sending next, heat pumps thick in your veins and lands in your gut. You nearly chewed your lip raw lying in wait. You knew you were being impatient, but when the next message pops up on your screen, you decide every second was worth the wait.
It's an image (exactly what you wanted to see) taken awkwardly in the dark of a bedroom. In it is Jack's hand, which you recognize by the fine lines and freckles on his skin, wrapped loosely around the base of his cock. You assume the only light comes from the camera's flash when he'd taken the picture, but it highlights the pearls of precum welling at the red and ruddy skin of the fat tip. You realize he's still in his scrubs when your eyes trail down to see the waistband pushed down just underneath his heavy balls and the top bunched up to expose the soft pudge of his lower stomach.
It's no expert nude, but it's got a charm that undeniably fits him. And made you so absurdly wet in what you feel confident claiming is record time. You're throbbing at the sight of his cock on your screen. You were glad to see he also thought it fair that he show off in return after he'd seen you bare and desperate multiple times.
Your thighs press together to quell the incessant pulse between your legs as you hurriedly type out a response.
You: are you watching one right now??
Abbot: yeag
Abbot: *Yeah.
You: oh youre unbelievable
You laugh behind your phone screen. You aren't scolding him, just shocked at his audacity. Rolling over to reach your bedside, you flick on the closest light. It wasn't much, but it was enough to make the camera's job a little easier and make the final product a little more flattering.
You rid yourself of a majority of your clothes and kick the sheets off of your body. When you're stripped down to nothing more than a pair of unassuming panties, you lift your phone above your reclined figure, angle it just right, and snap a photo. The golden light from your lamp makes your skin look warm. Of course, the angle cuts off everything above the neck—old habits.
You send the photo with a message attached:
You: why are you watching an old video when you literally have access to me right now??
His response comes back in seconds:
Abbot: Jesus Christ
Abbot: Yeah good point
Abbot: Take the rest off. Let me see how wet you are
The command alone is enough to make you throb. You could snap a photo of the outside of your panties, focusing in on the fabric where it clings to your wet skin as slick seeps through the cotton. But you're both, decidedly, too worked up for any more teasing. So you slip the fabric off, kicking it somewhere on your bed, and bring your phone down between your parted legs.
Trying to find a flattering angle reminds you exactly how difficult it was to film the same thing years ago. It takes an awkward grip on your phone, but the camera catches the sheen of your cunt where your slick sits. Your puffy clit, all swollen with arousal, peeks out when you run your fingers through your slit.
You send two photos this time—one with your fingers teasing the bud of your clit, the other with you spread open and dripping. You send both out, typing out a message one-handed.
You: been wet since you said you liked my porno
You: wish you could feel it
Abbot: Yeah?
The gap of time between messages tells you he's probably typing one-handed as well.
Abbot: You like knowing I was getting off to you?
Abbot: Love watching that pretty pussy cum baby. Wish I could feel it too
You throb against your own hand, cunt fluttering at the filthy words on screen. You could almost picture that rumble in his voice he'd get when he was annoyed. Your fingers swirl against your clit, still slicked up, and picture how Jack's hands would feel instead. You scroll up through the messages, seeking out the picture he'd sent earlier. His fingers are thicker than yours, so confident and sure when they work, you know they'd stretch your cunt perfectly. He'd have to if he wanted to fit that fat cock inside—
Abbot: Can you do something for me?
The message pops up, bringing you back to the present conversation. You're already shivering trying to figure out what else he could want. Far too eager—bordering on desperate—you fumble through more messages.
You: yes
You: what do u want
Abbot: Do you have a pillow you can use?
You: u want me to ride it
Abbot: Fuck yes
You smile to yourself at his zealous reply. You knew that was something you'd recorded once upon a time—multiple times, if you recalled correctly. Must've been one of his favorites of yours to request an updated version.
You drag yourself up until you're sitting in the center of your mattress. Once you settle on a pillow to sacrifice, you fold it over and wedge it between your legs. The first brush against your clit makes you shiver, hips jerking into the friction. Already you can feel your arousal seeping into the pillowcase, slicking your movements when you give an experimental roll of your hips. Holding the pillow between your thighs, you fish around for your phone to prepare a picture. You take one, angling it below the neck, but that's not enough.
Finding something to prop your phone against was a nightmare, but once the camera sits steady with your body in frame, you tap the big, red 'record' button. It's an oddly nostalgic feeling; worrying about what's in frame, trying to get the best angle, wondering if the lighting will ruin it. But Jack's waiting, and your cunt's throbbing with the need to get off.
You rock your hips into the pillow with a slow grind that sends zaps up your spine. It's not enough to get off, but it's enough to keep you worked up. Your hands fist in the pillow, grabbing it from different angles, holding it in place while you grind. Your thighs hide most of the action from this angle, but you have a feeling it's the motion of your body that he cares about most. The way your hips swirl and your ass ripples with the motion, the way your chest moves and your tits bounce when you rock down, the way your thighs tense when the fabric drags just right against your clit.
Along the line of curses and swears, you pant Jack's name in that same pathetic whine. Who knew if he'd watch it with the sound on or if the camera could even pick it up from this distance. But you wanted him to know you were thinking about him. All of this was for him, no one else.
Another minute ticks by and you capture the hurried, desperate movement of your hips against your pillow. You know you aren't getting off from this alone, but it's left you hot and dripping. You cut the video and end the recording, not bothering to check the quality before sending it his way. Quality clearly wasn't an issue he was too picky about.
In the minutes that follow—waiting for him to respond—you keep rocking into the soft plush of the pillow. Your head spins trying to imagine the look on his face. You wanted to see what he did when he heard his name drop from your lips. Maybe you'd get another photo—or a video of your own.
Instead, your phone began to buzz incessantly, rhythmically. Jack was calling you. The screen changed, his name in bold letters up top with the taunting 'Accept' and 'Decline' buttons below. You stared at it for a moment, unsure how to respond once the barrier of text was removed and you got to hear his voice in real time. Your thumb moves before your brain.
You bring your phone to your ear, panting heavier than you realize. You mutter a shaky "Hello?" that sounds more timid than you feel.
Jack's voice comes through on the other end, preceded by a heavy breath you feel in your bones. "Are you still on that pillow?"
"Mm-hmm," you whine, nodding along as if he can see you
"Good." His voice is raspy, thick with a kind of desperation you didn't know he was capable of. "Good, I want you to cum like that."
"Yeah? Fuck—you gonna make me cum, Jack?" You swirl your hips and drag your clit along the soft swell of the pillow. The wetness you've left behind makes the glide easy, slicking your sensitive flesh.
"Fuck," he groans, breath catching in his throat. "Yeah, been waiting...been waiting to make that pretty pussy feel good." You swear you hear the wet schlick of his hand moving in the background. If you closed your eyes, you could almost picture one of those broad hands pumping the length of his cock. "You got awfully wet for me, huh?"
Another mm-hmm sounds out from your throat. Your fingers tighten around the length of your phone, the other in the fabric of the pillow. "M'so fucking wet…bet you'd fuck me so good."
"Fuck, yeah, I would. Ah, shit—I'd give you whatever you want, sweetheart."
Sweetheart. The name settles somewhere deep in your gut, stirring alongside the heat pulling at your core. "Yeah, you know what this pussy likes, don't you?"
All Jack offers in response is another low, rumbling groan. The wet schlick, schlick, schlick of his hand sounds out rhythmically in the background of his audio. Somewhere in the mess of sounds is your name, breathless and heavy, on his lips. Your thighs clench tight against the pillow as you rut, chasing the friction of the soaked fabric.
"Bet you'd look so good full of me. God…" He huffs. You can tell his jaw's set tight, cursing spilling out from behind grit teeth. "Can't wait to feel you around me…" You moan at his words, too afraid to speak lest you interrupt his filthy train of thought. "You'd take it, wouldn't you? You'd take it so fucking good, huh?"
Your hips stutter in their rhythm, twitching in an effort to chase the mounting pressure building in your core. "Fuuuck, Jack…" You whine, barely able to catch your breath.
"You gonna cum for me?"
"Mm-hmm…"
"Say it, baby, tell me you're gonna cum for me."
"M'gonna cum for you, Jack."
You're rutting like an animal, grinding against your pillow with energy you didn't know you had. The desperation gnawed at you, frenzied and greedy, pushing you towards a high you needed more than anything else. Between the soft, wet plush between your thighs and the hot, needy sounds he made in your ear, you were barreling towards the edge alarmingly quickly.
Jack curses, the sound heavy and strained, "Cum for me, baby. Let me hear you." He urges you with a desperation that rivals your own.
Pleasure shoots white-hot down your spine, seizing every muscle in your body. Your thighs clamp tight around the pillow, keeping it close and in place for the frantic rock of your hips. You nearly double over as you shake and whimper. The last thing on your mind is your phone, but when Jack's breath grows heavier, your awareness focuses in on the noises coming from your speaker. The groan that tears from him is unlike anything you've heard from him before. You know he's coming down from the same high when he's left panting into the phone wherever it sits on his end.
You aren't sure how long the two of you stay like that. Eventually your spine straightens, a small whimper escaping your throat when your sensitive flesh grazes the pillow. With the adrenaline and ecstasy wearing off, an ache begins to creep into the small of your back.
Jack's the first to break the silence. "You alright?" He asks, still winded himself.
"Mm. Yeah. You?"
"I am now. You were…a pretty great help."
You laugh a soft sound, feeling a flush creep up to your cheeks. It felt ridiculous to blush over a compliment when you'd both cum from the sound of each other's voices. He sounded so…pleased. With you or himself, you weren't completely sure.
"Told you, I'm glad to be of service." Now he laughs, the sound heavy with exhaustion. "Can I ask…how many of those videos you watched?"
"Uh…four?"
"Really? Only four? Thought it'd be more than that."
"Yeah, well…" He interrupts himself with a groan that makes you wonder if he's aching the same way you are. "Didn't have the time. I'm a busy man."
"And here I thought you were my biggest fan."
"Oh, no doubt about that." He sighs, and a beat of silence passes between the two of you. "Sorry about…how I acted today."
You move off of the pillow, wincing at the ache in your hips, as you move to gather your discarded clothes. "Oh, Jack, it's fine."
"No, I…It was unprofessional. I'm sorry." You slip your clothes on while he speaks, just letting him speak the apology. He needed it more than you did. "I'll…make it up to you. How about that?"
"More than this?"
"Oh, absolutely."
You find yourself easing in the lulls of silence, not too pressured to fill it with mindless chatter. As you turn the lights down and crawl back into your sheets, you aren't pressured to keep up with mindless chatter. What else was there to say, really? The rhythmic sound of his breathing, the airy feel of the lingering high, made you sink into your mattress.
You both needed sleep. Desperately.
"Okay, old man, I'm…I need sleep."
"Old man?"
"You should sleep, too."
"Hold on, 'old man'?"
"Jack."
"Fine." Another groan sounds out from his end. "After I clean up."
"Actually, could you…" You trail off before the request can form, heat creeping back up to your cheeks. You can picture his face, that cocked brow he always sported, waiting for you to use your words. "Could you take a picture before you clean up?"
"A picture? Of what, the mess you caused?"
Your mess. If you were less tired, that might've reignited something inside you. "Yeah. Just…I wanna see."
"You wanna see…" Jack echoes your words with a sarcastic tinge, but you can hear the smile in his voice. "Alright, fine. But you better sleep right after."
"I will. Promise."
"Good." Another beat passes where both of you take a deep, settling breath. "I'll see you tonight?"
Tonight. Right. You had to face him tonight for your next shift. That was a level of embarrassment and awkwardness you weren't ready to acknowledge quite yet. "Yeah," you concede, "see you then."
The call ends with a beep sounding out from your speaker. The lingering high has nearly worn off, only coaxed along this far by the sound of his voice. You hoped the ache in your back and the meat of your thighs would right themselves by the time you woke up. It was hard to know what, exactly, you were meant to feel. Truth be told, you were too tired to process anything outside of your exhaustion. Maybe you'd regret it when you realized it wasn't a dream. Maybe you'd still be riding a high. You quickly decided it was a problem for a future you who was more rested and level-headed.
One last chime rings out from your phone. Yet again, the screen blinds you in the darkness when you bring the device close. But seeing Jack's name with the notification of an attachment made your heart skip a beat. He'd followed through—always a man of his word. A similar photo taken from the same angle, his ruddy cock dribbling white onto his skin. The mess of liquid is larger than you'd anticipated, pooled over the soft pudge of his stomach and dripping down to the wiry, pale hair that trailed downward.
Yeah, even exhausted, that was enough to make something stir.
You: thank you <3
You: wish i was there to clean u up
Abbot: You said you'd go to sleep.
You: yes, sir
Abbot: Don't start with that or we won't get any sleep.
He was right, but would it really be that big of a shame? You'd worked doubles on less sleep before. The more you thought about it, though, the less you wanted to face the possibility of explaining yourself to Shen. And as selfish as you were, you knew Jack needed the rest more than anyone else could've. For the sake of his job, of course. But as you drifted off and let your mind wander to every possibility of what your next shift could hold, you quickly realized you needed him well-rested.
You had a real goal now. A goal that involved him and proving you weren't the same amateur from eight years ago.
Dirty Little Secret | Peter Parker x Fem!Stark!Reader
Summary: Tony Starks daughter, Wanda’s powers (but purple), dating the new intern in secret. What could possibly go wrong when Clint falls through the vents right after you sneak in your secret boyfriend?
Peter Parker one shot inspired by the song, Dirty Little Secret by The All-American Rejects!
Warnings: None
WC: 1.9K
Masterlist!
“I’ll keep you my dirty little secret”
You dating the new intern was your biggest secret.
Your father was the one and only, infamous, genius, billionaire, Tony Stark, aka Iron Man.
Of course, you somehow managed to be kidnapped by Hydra and experimented on, giving you powers that, oddly enough, were just like Wanda’s, but purple.
Due to this, your father was the most over protective person in your life.
You went to Midtown High, and tried to live a semi normal lifestyle. Everyone knew you were Tony Stark’s daughter. Who didn’t?
What they didn’t know was that you had super powers.
That was just one of your secrets.
Your biggest secret was that you were dating the new intern at the tower.
You were shocked to see the boy in your chem class at the tower one morning. Your father introduced you two and made it clear to the Parker boy that you were ‘off limits’.
But, oh boy, could Peter not resist you.
It didn’t take long for him to find any excuse to be around you.
He was officially an Avenger now. Of course he had to check your room for any potential threats.
He was totally failing science. Of course he needed to study with you.
It didn’t take long for you to take a liking to the boy. But, you couldn’t date him. Your father would kill you. The rest of the team wouldn’t live it down. Your first boyfriend and it was the intern?
What you could do, was date him in secret.
You were perched on the edge of your bed, in your pajamas, rock music playing from one of your speakers.
You were busily tinkering with one of Peter’s web shooters. He accidentally broke it and totally couldn’t fix it on his own.
He’d have to come by your room that night to pick it up from you.
You jumped and gasped at the sound of something hitting your window.
You rose to your feet and drew back the curtain to reveal your boyfriend in his spider suit.
“Hi!” he beamed from outside, clinging to the window.
You chuckled and opened the window, shushing him. “Someone might hear!” you whisper shouted.
Your heart beat in excitement. There was something exhilarating about doing something you knew you’d be crucified for.
Peter climbed into your room with ease, shutting the window behind him. “No one ever hears,” he replied, taking his mask off.
His hair was an absolute mess. His eyes were bright and full of love. He placed a kiss to your check and smiled down at you. “Did you finish fixing the web shooter?” he asked curiously.
“No,” you sighed dramatically. “This is sooo hard to fix,” you said sarcastically.
Peter hummed and his hands found your waist. “Guess I’ll have to stay then.”
You looked up at him with loving eyes. “I guess so.”
Peter giggled as he pulled you in close for a kiss.
His lips were warm and soft against yours.
Your arms wrapped around his neck, pulling him closer.
You pushed him back gently, he stumbled back, legs hitting the edge of your bed. He sat on your bed, pulling you on top of him.
His hands roamed your hips and back as your lips moved in perfect harmony.
He pulled away briefly to admire your face. “Gosh, I love you,” he breathed out.
You smiled and ran your fingers through his hair. “I love you too.”
He smiled and pulled you in for another kiss.
Your hands found his chest and you pushed him back, so that you were both now lying down, you on top of him.
One of his gloved hands held your waist while the other roamed through your hair.
Suddenly, you swore you heard the sound of something in your ceiling.
You pulled away and Peter gave you a confused look. “Did you hear that?” you asked.
Peter blinked. “No. Just the music,” he replied.
“Edith, turn the music off, please,” you asked the artificial intelligence.
“Turning the music off Stark Jr.”
The music turned off and the room fell silent.
“Maybe it was the song,” Peter suggested, pulling you back in for another kiss.
You hummed against his lips, ignoring whatever it was you thought you heard.
Thud
You gasped at the loud thud in your room. You pulled away and looked to your bedroom floor.
None other than Clint was on the floor looking at you with a petrified expression.
“Clint?!” you shouted, nearly flying off of Peter. “I told you to stay out of the vents!”
Clint had a bad habit of hanging out in the vents, and of course he had to just fall out of the vent in your room.
Where you were making out with your super secret boyfriend.
Peter jumped out of your bed and stood beside you, looking guilty as hell.
Clint looked between you and Peter with his jaw dropped. “You’ve been kissing on the new intern?!” he exclaimed. “Ooo, I’m telling your daddy!”
Your eyes, as well as Peter’s, widened in horror. “No!” you both shouted.
Clint looked at you, amused. “Give me one good reason to not.”
“He’s gonna kill me!” you exclaimed. “Please, Clint! Be the cool uncle you are!”
Your father was the last person you needed to know about Peter.
Clint, sure.
Tony Stark? No way.
Clint shrugged. “That’s not a good reason. I don’t really care.”
Your jaw dropped, but before you could say anything, there was a knock at the door.
“Everything okay in there?” Natasha asked from outside.
Your eyes widened as Clint raced to the door to open it and show Natasha the scene that was unfolding. “No!” you exclaimed, sticking your hand out to throw Clint back, a purple mist covering him.
“Hey! Don’t use your powers on me you little witch!” he shouted, sliding across the floor.
Natasha furrowed her brows from outside. “Clint? What’s going on in there?”
“Nothing!” you told her.
“I’m coming in there,” she said, barging through the door.
The door flew open and she looked to see you, face flushed with embarrassment, and Clint lying on the floor.
No Peter in her eyesight.
“What is happening?” she asked, confused. “Why are you yelling?”
“Because he won’t stay out of the vents!” you said, pointing a finger at him.
Clint rose to his feet with a laugh. “Tell her what really happened.”
“It’s true!”
Clint shook his head. “No, she was making out with some boy,” he told Natasha dramatically.
You swallowed, hard, eyes darting to Natasha who blinked. “What boy? There’s no one in here.”
Clint furrowed his brows and looked around your room.
Peter was gone.
“What?!” Clint exclaimed. “He was just here!”
Clint ducked to look under your bed, marched to your closet and opened the door, even checked your bathroom.
No Peter.
You looked up at your ceiling slowly.
There, Peter clung to it, putting a finger to his lips.
Your eyes widened, praying no one would look up.
“He was here!” Clint defended himself. “I swear!”
Natasha looked at you with raised brows. You pulled your lips into a tight line. “Right…” she trailed off.
You screamed and jumped back, as Vision phased through the wall. “Vision! Use the door!” you ridiculed.
“My apologies Tiny Stark,” he said sheepishly. “I heard yelling. I was concerned.”
Clint marched over to Vision. “Hey, check this place out. She just had a boy in here.”
“Clint!”
Vision blinked in shock. “A boy? Who?”
“No one!”
“It was that-”
Clint couldn’t finish his sentence before Loki walked in with a loud, dramatic, groan. “Can you mortals stop bickering? It’s awfully annoying.”
“You!” Clint beamed, pointing a finger at Loki. “You use magic. Find the boy!”
Loki furrowed his brows. “What boy?”
“The one she snuck in here,” Clint replied.
Loki looked at you, knowing exactly where Peter was. Your eyes were full of worry as your shook your head at him, a silent plead to not expose you.
Loki smirked at you.
“You mean the intern on the ceiling?”
“Loki!!!” you shouted at him.
Everyone in the room looked up at the ceiling to see Peter clung to the wall, eyes wide in horror.
“Ha!” Clint exclaimed. “Told you!”
Vision tilted his head slightly. “Peter?”
“You’re dating the intern?!” Natasha asked excitedly.
“Did someone say that Parker kid’s name?”Footsteps in the hallway approached your room.
Sam and Bucky.
Just your luck.
“Aye!” Sam exclaimed. “Get your ass down!” he yelled at Peter.
Peter flipped off of the ceiling, landing on his feet. His face was red with embarrassment. This was not the way he wanted your family to find out you were dating him.
Bucky sucked his teeth, giving you a disappointed look. “The spider guy? Really?”
Sam shook his head and crossed his arms. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” he lectured Peter. “Sneaking in here at night. I always knew he was a bad influence,” he muttered under his breath.
You groaned and threw your head back. “Sam, please leave him alone.”
Louder footsteps boomed down the hallway, Thor appeared in the doorway with a box of Poptarts. “Hey, why didn’t anyone invite me to this party?”
His eyes scanned the room and he hummed in thought. “Why’s he here?” he asked, looking dead at Peter.
“He snuck in,” Bucky explained. “I say we kill him for it.”
“What?!” Peter exclaimed. “Kill me?” he repeated in horror.
Sam nodded slowly. “Yeah! Kill you!”
“No!” you shouted. “No killing people! No nothing! How about,” you proposed, voice leveled. “How about, we all leave my room and pretend none of this ever happened?”
“Or,” Loki proposed. “We tell your father. I’m sure he’d love to hear you snuck in the intern he forbade you from dating.”
You narrowed your eyes at him. “Or,” you began. “We kill you instead!”
“What happened to no killing?” Sam asked with a laugh.
Seconds later, Bruce and Wanda wandered in. “What the…” Bruce trailed off.
“Oh, hi, Peter,” Wanda waved at the boy.
Peter awkwardly put his hand up, keeping his head low sheepishly.
This was too awkward.
It was only a matter of time before your father found out.
“So…” Clint trailed off. “Who’s gonna tell Tony?”
“No one! Please!” you begged. “I’ll do extra chores for a month! A year! I’ll never move out for college! I’ll never play my music loud again! I’ll do anything, just don’t tell him!”
Clint raised his brows up in shock that you were willing to do such things. “Okay,” he agreed. “Extra chores for a month.”
“And you won’t tell my dad?”
Clint nodded. “I won’t. I pinky promise.”
“I’ll tell him,” Sam spoke up.
You narrowed your eyes at him. “Why?”
“I just don’t like him,” he said, pointing a finger at Peter.
“What did I do?” Peter asked, genuinely confused as to the one sided beef between him, Sam, and Bucky.
“Because,” Bucky replied.
“That’s not even a reason!”
“Look,” Natasha spoke up. “No one is telling Tony anything. This stays between us. She’s old enough to kiss boys, who cares. If anyone says anything to Tony, you’re dead.”
You let out a sigh of relief.
Everyone feared Natasha.
Your father wouldn’t know.
“Too late, I already know.”
You all turned to your window, the curtains wide open.
Your father was in his suit, floating right in front of your window.
“Mr. Stark!” Peter exclaimed. “I can explain!”
“No,” Stark interrupted. “No need,” he said calmly.
Peter swallowed hard. “Does this mean I’m fired?”
“No,” Tony chuckled. Peter let out a sigh of relief. “It means you’re dead!”
He lifted his hand and aimed it at the window. He fired his repulsor right at the widow, Peter dodging it just in time.
You were going to need a new window, and maybe, a new boyfriend, by the end of this.
Summary ⟅ After falling in love with Peter, you accept that he just doesn't love you back, that is until he lets three words slip free during one of your hookups.
Peter Parker x fwb!Reader / ⟣ SMUT & ANGST/ 1.2k ⟢
Warnings: bnd!peter, no spoilers that aren't in the trailer, enhanced arachnid DNA!peter, friends with benefits, hurt no comfort (with possibilities of a comfort part 2?), smut, dom!peter, mentions of choking, belly bulge kink, multiple orgasms, creampie, slight praise, love confession, unrequited (but secretly requited) love, peter is stupid and sad
Lily's note — 🪷 guys do not put a sad man in front of me im so serious 😭😭😭 okay i will make a part 2 if this does well but also my next one will be peter full of joy and whimsy because i have hurt him far to much!
Every time Peter found his way into your bed, you promised yourself it would be the last time.
I’ll confess tomorrow, you lied to yourself, knowing that the minute he flashed you his pretty brown eyes and smile, you’d lose your courage.
When you first became entangled in this arrangement, you only possessed a small crush for your friend. You’d found each other at the perfect time in your lives, both of you seemingly at your lowest. He’d swung himself onto one of the highest corporate buildings in the city, shedding himself of his mask and unknowingly exposing himself to you, sitting on the edge of the roof with your legs dangling over the side.
He panicked, of course, until you merely turned away from him, uncaring for the superhero behind you.
Eventually he moved to sit beside you and the rest was history. You both found an unlikely friend in one another, spending your nights together just talking, then your days.
Beneath the melancholy he was funny, smart, and incredibly sweet—it was no surprise that the crush developed. But then your relationship did too one random night when the troubles of your lives felt like too heavy a burden.
You weren’t sure who leaned in first, or who took off whose top first. All you remembered was his body pressed to yours, his cock driving into you over and over again until you saw stars, dispelling any and all worries from your brain.
The new escalation occurred monthly in addition to your friendship. And each time it did, your affection for him deepened. But you’d noticed him start to pull away from the emotional aspect as of late.
He started having less time to hang out, and more time to fuck you. With the newest development of his enhanced arachnid DNA—something you realized made his appetite for sex significantly higher—the monthly hookups turned weekly, your feelings for him growing deeper with each intimate night.
It was when he visited you twice in one week where you decided you needed to confess to him your feelings, the post orgasm clarity a brutal knife twisting low in your belly.
You couldn’t keep pretending like everything was fine, not when you were falling in love with him, not when you wanted something he couldn’t give you.
You knew for sure it was one sided when he’d hastily pull on his clothes and escape back out the window instead of spending the night with you like he usually did, avoiding eye contact and stumbling out a mess of excuses as he did so.
It made you feel bitter, it made you question why he couldn’t love you the way you wanted him to, especially when everything had started off so well.
Today was the fifth day in a row he’d come over, seeking relief. You could tell he was becoming needier and needier as he struggled to learn how to cope with this new part of him judging by the way he drove his cock into the deepest parts of your cunt, his hips pushing you deeper into the mattress.
You’d already finished twice, your cries muffled first by his hand wrapped snug around your throat, and second by your face pushed into the sheets below you as he showed no signs of slowing down.
The one hundred eighty degree switch since he first started changing was mind numbing. In the beginning he always came so quickly, likely from all the sensory overload. But now? His stamina must’ve been evolving too.
He gripped the flesh of your ass in his hand, kneading the skin while his other smoothed down your arched back. “That’s my good girl, taking my cock so perfectly.”
You whined from the overstimulation, fisting the sheets in your tight grip. He dropped your hips to the mattress, pressing himself against your back. But it wasn’t enough, he needed more.
He rolled you onto your side with one arm snug around your waist, the other hooking under your knee to hike your leg up, spreading you open for him. He rutted into you with a newfound sense of urgency, his face buried deep in your neck.
All you could feel was him, overwhelmingly engulfed in just taking what he wanted to give you, your head spinning with a dizziness as he fucked you dumb.
“So good,” he gasped into your ear. He pressed his hand over your lower stomach, groaning when he felt the outline of his cock pushing through the surface. “O-Oh fuck, you feel that? So full of me…”
“S-So—nghh—f-full…”
You turned your head, seeking his pretty brown eyes for comfort, finding them and the whites of his eyes engulfed in a pool of darkness. Your lips parted to whimper at the sight until he swallowed it with his own, capturing your mouth in a searing, sloppy kiss.
He shoved his face back into your neck, his thrusts turning erratic, his breaths leaving him in frantic, sharp exhales.
You could feel his cock swelling in your ruined cunt and a second later, he stilled behind you. With a guttural groan, right before he dissolved into his release, the words spilled out, raw and vulnerable.
“I love you.”
He spilled into you, his cock shooting jets of warm cum deep inside as the blood rushed to your ears, filling them with a loud ringing.
You remained still as he filled you up, trying to decipher whether you’d heard him correctly or if the words were a figment of your imagination, something you conjured from the desperation of wanting your love for him to be requited.
As the last tremors of pleasure passed through him, he carefully pulled out. Not a second later his warmth was gone from behind you. You shivered, pulling the blanket to your chest, turning to watch him dress with a hollow ache settling in your stomach where he’d been.
He didn’t turn to look at you once.
“What was that?”
He paused, his hand slipped through the sleeves of his shirt, your voice startling him. “Hmm?”
He pulled it over his head, deflecting your question as your eyes burned into his side.
“Why’d you say that, Peter?”
He turned, a confused chuckle spilling from his lips, his eyes dim. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You said you love me…” you whispered, a hint of hope in your voice.
His throat bobbed as he swallowed hard, his voice flat and devoid of any emotion when he spoke. “It was… the heat of the moment. You know how it is.”
You’d never felt a dread so vast engulf you. “W-What?”
He regretted looking at you the second his eyes met yours, filled with a painful devastation, all hope stripped away. His indifference faltered, his pupils blowing wide with panic at the sheer amount of hurt on your face.
“Peter,” your voice cracked. “I love you.”
He shook his head, glancing away. “You don’t mean that.”
“Yes I do!” you sobbed. “I’ve been trying to tell you for weeks but you… you keep pulling away from me. Every time I get close—”
“Look, I’m sorry,” he choked out, his own eyes turning glassy as he looked away, betraying the detachment he tried to put on. “But I don’t… I don’t feel the same way.”
“Well then why can’t you look at me?” you challenged through a trembling voice.
He stubbornly kept his gaze glued to the floor.
“Peter.”
He lifted them back to you, finding the tears in your eyes spilled over, streaming down your cheeks.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he lamented.
“Say it again… Tell me you love me back,” you pleaded.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, the words hollow. “I can’t”
“Why?” Your voice rose, bordering on hysteria.
“I just can’t!” he shouted back, his control finally snapping. He ran a hand through his hair, tugging at the strands, his chest heaving.
He did nothing to hide the sorrow on his face now, his expression contradicting the lies he spoke. “I never wanted to hurt you.”
“You’re not just hurting me,’ you murmured, the fight draining out of you. “You’re hurting yourself. You don’t have to, Peter… You don’t have to push me away. You’re allowed to be happy.”
He gave a mournful shake of his head, the words slipping from his lips, broken and final. “I’m sorry.”
He couldn’t bear to look at you anymore. He turned to the window, shoving it open, the city sounds rushing in.
Just as he placed his hands on the windowsill, seconds away from leaping out and away from the wreckage he’d caused, your voice came.
“Goodbye, Peter.”
His shoulders fell. He turned his head slowly, wanting to glance back at you one final time, but he knew if he did, he’d crumble.
Unknowing to him, you’d already turned away from him, sinking into your sheets, your eyes clenched shut. You heard the whip of his web, felt his energy dissipate from the room, leaving you alone with only the ghost of him as a memory.
It's so nice being on tumblr because you don't even have to make your own post but people would still follow you anyways if you're good at rebloging posts they like
we don’t censor words here stop acting like a fool, when you censor words and tags people who have that word filtered due to triggers will still see it
I love that "avengers level threats" are peters side quests. hes like yeah yeah thanos chitauri whatever. have you seen the 6 cackling freaks that have literally unionized against me as an individual
summary – you’d spent months loving andrew in the shadows because it was the only way to keep him. he knows smurf rots everything she gets her hands on, and you had to learn that as long as she’s still holding the leash, loving him in the dark was never going to be enough to keep him out of it.
warnings – [ 8.1k ] infidelity/emotional betrayal (no cheating, but reader sees pope with another girl), established relationship, reader and pope’s dynamic is Slightly Toxic (secret relationship, and it’s implied he’s the one who decided it), smurf and her Horrible Antics (sending women to pope), reader wishing smurf dies (Obviously!), talks about pope dissociating during unwanted contact, mentions of animal kingdom canon violence but nothing shown on page, reader’s lowk a crybaby, a Lot of this is her reflecting on the relationship, lots of hurt, no comfort/very Little comfort, pope mean and defensive for a few seconds, pope groveling and sad immediately, TWO seconds of pope being happy and domestic (savor it!!!)
notes – who is the AH or does NAH or ESH hmmm i thought i knew where this was gonna go but don’t know if i pulled it off buuuut i rly wanted to write this idea! also inspired by ‘dirty work’ by steely dan it’s what i listen to while i clean my messy room bc double entendre !!!
Your fingers had been singing an unmistakable itch for the last three hours that, on any other day, you would’ve considered to be born out of something medical. You knew better, for you’d diagnosed this months ago. It lived in the pads of your fingers and flared in proximity to Andrew Cody, and the only treatment was contact, and it never quite mattered where. The back of his neck or the dip of his spine, the belt loop you were allowed to hook a finger through at his apartment, in the daylight, in front of the windows, where nobody died from it. Here, you had to keep your hands busy with a beer and stand the regulation distance from him (close enough to hear him breathe if he ever breathed loud enough to hear, far enough that no one watching would think the word ‘hers’).
You’d kept rerouting your hand all night to your hair, to the can, to the chain between your collarbones that you wore inside your shirt at this house, because everything he’d given you lived inside something else. He’d handed it to you in a little box, at arm’s length, watching your face like you may refuse the box. When you’d lifted it out, he’d said, “If you don’t like it – ” and never finished the sentence, because you already had it on.
Across the room, Smurf held a glass of bourbon that caught the dim lights every time she laughed. It was a prop, you knew so. It was the same as the huge gold chain she wore around her neck. It was a prop like the arm she drifted around whichever son drifted into range. You’d watched her do it to Craig twice tonight. You’d watched Andrew watch her do it, hands in his pockets with his spine so straight and rigid.
Deran had told you that, “You’ve been lookin’ so fuckin’ sad recently.”
He’d looked half-worried through his grin, and you had your answer ready. “Work’s just been a lot.”
He’d nodded and clinked his can against yours. You stood there an accumulation of your little lies, calendar lies, where-were-you-Saturday lies, each one costing a coin of something you couldn’t stop spending. You were getting better at that than you would’ve liked. Work had been a lot, and no you weren’t seeing anyone.
You’d said the latter to some girl making conversation by the pool. The “no” had come out before she’d even finished her question while thirty feet away stood the man whose bed you’d woken up in this morning. No. You weren’t seeing anyone.
You needed a minute. Craig was high off his shit – or, maybe, someone else’s – telling a story. Your mouth curved when his did. But the noise pressed in from all sides – the house made it possible to feel like you were within twenty walls instead of four – and you needed just about thirty seconds where you could stop pretending you weren’t in love with the eldest Cody in this house. How many seconds could you steal with him? Ninety, maybe. You’d take forty.
Andrew’s door stood open, and it was a hand’s width of a gap. Through it, your eyes fell onto the gold lamplight laid down across the runner and that was the second you saw the shadows of movement play inside it.
It’d irked you, the fact that the house he grew up in – the house where you’d flocked into with Deran and circled around Andrew for years before you knew you were circling – had never once held the two of you the way you were. You’d been safe in this house your entire life, in the shadows where Smurf registered you as a mindless stray. And then you’d gone and fallen in love with the eldest son, and converted yourself into the only contraband ever smuggled through this house without Smurf sniffing it out.
You wanted – very badly – to hold Andrew. You wanted to get your hand around the back of his neck where he ran hot and press your thumb into that knot of muscle that never once in his life had come loose. You wanted to tell him that you loved him against his collar so his mouth would curve up just a degree like it always did.
Your hand was on the door and then the gap was wider. It was when the gold of his lamp spilled fuller that you saw Andrew’s rigid posture at the edge of his bed, his back to the door. With a girl.
You could’ve sworn you’d seen her just earlier. She was someone from the party’s outer rings, someone Smurf had summoned out of the general dark. Andrew had told you she did that – “She brings girls around when she thinks I’m stressed.”
You’d thought it was history when he told you, something she used to do. You supposed the past tense had been your invention – your brain cradling you unknowingly – and that he’d never conjugated it that way.
Your breath came out heavy through your nostrils once, and you couldn’t be sure if you took a breath after that.
She was talking to Andrew; you could see her mouth moving close to the side of his face. You could see the little nods she gave herself between words. Her hand was on his shoulder, and then it moved up the side of his neck to the place your own hand went.
You knew what that patch of skin felt like from the outside, warm as bread. You knew what your hand looked like there, you’d thrown your head back against the couch and watched as his shoulders lowered as your fingers worked into it. Hers looked the same. It made you sick, that it looked no different when she did it.
Her fingers spread against his jaw and drew his face around toward her. It turned. A head is a heavy thing – Andrew’s had phantom in it besides, whole cemeteries of weight, Julia and everything this home had taken and done – and it came around under four of her fingers, easy as a door. All that weight, and she moved it with a wrist.
You had to swallow down a lump so your voice wouldn’t yell out. Andrew’s secret, you had to tell yourself. You were Andrew’s secret, and if you did anything that showed you knew him better than the guy you sometimes talked to – if the space allowed it – then Andrew wouldn’t be happy.
His profile came into the lamplight and his hands closed on his lap, knuckles blanching, then opening again. He pressed them flat against his thighs. His shoulders were up around his ears.
He shook his head once, the action so small you might have made it up. It was a fossil of a refusal.
She smiled – like he was growling at her from inside a kennel, fenced and adorable – at him. She kept her palm in your place and said something else, and his head stayed shaking its tiny trembling current of no, no, no.
She shifted closer to the mattress. For some awful reason, you heard the bedsprings creak even though you could hear none of what she was saying.
His weight tipped just an inch – toward the pull of her hand – one of his hands came up off his thigh, crossed the small dark between their bodies, and found her waist and rested there.
You found that nothing about his hand looked like the hand you knew, and that thought – the creepy, monstrous thought of something of Andrew’s that you’d thought was only ever yours to know being spent here, on another waist – had teeth. It bit you under your ribs, and there was a physical pinch that wrapped around your body.
Pope, you thought.
The name arrived from everywhere in this house, because the man on the bed wasn’t anyone you’d ever held. He’d never let you. Andrew was yours. Andrew had given you the chain that now felt like it was steaming up against your skin.
It was a little proof-of-ownership tag pressing its details into you at the precise moment his hand certified someone else’s waist. You’d worn it inside your clothes all night, hidden it like everything he gave you. It occurred to you that perhaps the girl’s hands on his neck was more public than anything the two of you had ever done.
His hand had gone, had done this small obedient thing his mother intended it to do. Some part of you believed – stupidly, tenderly, for months – that you had gotten there. You’d had this dumb little faith that you reached whatever was underneath and embalmed it so thoroughly that Smurf could never truly put her fingers back on it.
You hadn’t. You saw that now, that you hadn’t reached what lived under and made it yours in some way that predated his mother’s claim, that love didn’t go deeper than training. Andrew could love you when the air allowed it. The moment the air tangled with her breath, the love folded up and waited.
You were the newest thing in Andrew. You’d been pouring yourself into the top inch of a man and calling it the bottom.
You thought about it, nailed it into your stupid, stupid brain as your fingers closed on the steering wheel. You hadn’t even remembered getting into the car.
If Smurf had him pliant the way you knew she could, Pope would be above the girl right now.
You wondered if it was silly to carry that small little faith that Andrew wouldn’t fuck her. It felt childish in the face of the monstrosity. It was a girl’s faith. Silly girl, he’s not yours there.
You didn’t know. You’d left, coward you were. Now there was a room behind you that you couldn’t see into, and your brain – quick, disgusting – went right on ahead and finished it for you.
Even under it, you hoped that if it happened, it didn’t hurt Andrew. The enormous, completely ruined, loving part of you hoped that if he was in that room doing what she sent the girl for, then at least Andrew was spared.
You wanted the girl to be gentle with him, wanted her hands to be warm, wanted her to slow the way he needed. Because if his body had to be spent tonight on his mother’s errand, then let it at least be spent somewhere soft.
It had all the footage it needed; it remembered his hands in one fold, knew exactly what they’d do, and how that live wire running through your body would light up when they did.
That wire was crossed now, the light going somewhere else, curling in on itself like a millipede when it dies. You’d learned that with Andrew on a documentary. You’d been half-asleep against him and he’d been all-awake, and the millipede had done its slow curl on the screen. He’d said, into your hair, “That’s how they go.”
Now that was ruined, too, wasn’t it? Now that little curling death was with you, in your chest, in the car, everything he’d handed you turning in your grip and pointing back at itself.
The weight of his mouth on yours. The weight of him going slack on you when he stopped holding himself up with his forearms. The sound, that little soft grunt. Your brain had all the memories, had held it close and swaddled it like something meant to be cherished forever. It was playing them on her, and you pressed the heel of your hand into your eye socket to make it go away.
Coward. Coward, you could have stayed. You could have stood in the doorway of his childhood bedroom and let him see you. You could have been the thing that stopped his hands for him, and instead you’d taken your stupid soft feet and gone, and bought yourself this reel that you’d never get to see the end of. Your head would have to keep guessing the ending forever, generous with the details, cruel as Smurf herself.
You let out a full-fledged sob, dropping your head against the wheel as you pulled over on some side. You were crying about it and wishing Andrew well in it, hoping a stranger was being sweet to the man she was taking from you.
Your love – somewhere along the way – for Andrew had stopped including yourself. You’d have lain down under the wheels of it if it kept him warm. You think you would’ve given him away nicely, if it was what he had to do.
The waiting sat low and ugly in you and wouldn’t resolve. You were sure it wouldn’t resolve unless you popped something bad for you to go to sleep. You’d swallow just about anything just to feel different.
There was nothing in your apartment for you to swallow. The ceiling was the only thing that was moving – headlights, then gone, then another – and you could feel the sour taste the one drink had left in your mouth. You lay there and hated your own spit. You hated the chain warming against your sternum. You hated, distantly, the specific idiot you’d been for him tonight, brushing your teeth for him, choosing your earrings.
He’d texted you an hour after you’d left, and then again. It was the grace of your routine. If you left without saying goodbye, it was normal. He’d show up whenever what needed to be done was done, and somewhere between then there’d be a text. Tonight, the first one had come in on schedule, lighting the ceiling blue for one second.
Andrew: Home?
He’d sent another one forty minutes later. There usually was never a second text.
Andrew: Shouldn’t be long. You good?
Your thumb hovered, wanting to type out a ‘yes.’ Your hand wanted to answer him the same way his hand had wanted that waist, muscle memory greased and aimed. You watched your own body try to be obedient now, to the same thing that was killing you. So, you put the phone face-down on the mattress.
You’d lay wondering if Andrew had done with the girl what his mother had sent her to him for. He could be inside her right now. Right now, while you lay here rationing your own breath. The thought went through you serrated, dragging its teeth. You let it, because some penitentiary part of you had decided that if you couldn’t know, you’d serve the worst sentence available.
You snorted softly to yourself through the tears. Wasn’t that the night’s filthiest joke? Smurf didn’t even have to know your relationship with Andrew to teach you how she could’ve hurt you. You were doing the work for her, free of charge, your brain cruel as the woman herself.
He sent another one later.
Andrew: On my way
Andrew was looking at your silence and noticed, if you were lucky. Maybe he hadn’t.
You heard the graceless fumble as he used his spare keys hours later, the metal worrying the other metal. Andrew who’d cracked safes and still had a difficult time working his own girl’s front door quietly when he was spent. The bolt turned and you felt the air sing through the house, then heard the long nothing of him crossing it in the dark, no lights, because lights woke people. He’d learned that it was the polite thing to do – he never turned on lights, choosing whatever default setting a person had chosen – and the fact broke your heart on a normal night and tonight it just sat there like dead weight.
You closed your eyes, never deciding to fake it but your body clearly wanted to. Coward, same as you. You arranged your face slack, and that was when you’d realized how every inch of your skin that could’ve scrunched up had been holding that position for the last three hours since you got home.
The room took him in and the mattress went down under his weight. His boots came off one at a time, and then he was lowering himself into the bed with his arms taking the load so the springs wouldn’t talk.
Somewhere along the way, Andrew’d stopped feeling the pressing need to shower before he got in bed with you. Eager, now. He used to scrub the day off before he’d let himself touch you, like he thought he’d track something in. It had taken you months to get him to stop.
Eager thing, you were, too. Dumb little wanting of wanting him now, now, now, after being starved of him for all the years he’d held himself back from you. The night he’d finally let himself climb into your bed smelling of work and himself, and let you have him unwashed, you’d understood it for the enormous surrender it was. Andrew laying down a guard he’d held since boyhood, trusting you now with the unrinsed version.
You felt bile rise to your throat at the thought now.
His knee found the back of yours, testing to see if you were awake. When he received no answer, his arm came over – the weight of it, God, the sheer heat and heft – and drew you back against the long line of him until there was nowhere left for the dark to get between you.
That rumbling inside you didn’t care what you’d seen; it only knew the heat of him against your back and wanted to turn to it.
His face went to the back of your neck, and he breathed out. The breath went on and on and on, billowing raggedly against your skin at the end of it, everything in him coming down at once. You felt his body get heavier against you with the relief of having arrived.
His hand found your fist under your chin and capped it, thumb going into the groove below your knuckles. His mouth moved on your nape, his lips resting there like they’d found home.
He breathed you in slowly, so rationing constantly. He never took anything at the rate he wanted. You could only feel the true rate underneath – in the pressure of his fingers when they curled and then remembered themselves and went flat, in the abortive flex of his arm that wanted to crush you to him and delivered, instead, a gentle cinching – held at the gate, metered out in doses he’d decided you could survive.
You’d seen it as reverence for much too long. It had felt like being cradled by somebody who tried to remember you constantly.
Tonight, lying rigid inside his heat, you realized you’d only gotten halves of Andrew. The withheld remainder lived somewhere, didn’t it? Everything unspent had to go somewhere, and now you knew where.
“Hate that house,” he murmured quietly. “Whole night. Wanted to get back here.” His thumb moved once in the groove of your knuckles. “To you.”
His knee pressed into yours. “Shoulda left earlier,” he murmured, after a minute. “Looked for you after. Asked Deran – you were already gone.”
It’d taken so long to place Andrew into himself, for him to find the version of his body that could lie in a bed. Years he’d spent flinching. Years learning the flinch back down to nothing, learning the bed you were in was a place the past couldn’t reach through the floor and grab his ankle. His heart was going slow and unafraid against your spine. You’d built that heartbeat, he’d told you once. You’d built it with all of the halves Andrew brought you.
You didn’t want it to go. You wanted to keep being the house he came into, the one where he was unclenched and humming with arrival, happy. You’d made a place out of yourself where he could fall into, and you were only now learning what it cost to be it.
You kept your breath long and level, which was the mistake. It was too level, too clean. Andrew’s thumb stopped for a second, and he blew out another soft breath against your skin.
“Playin’ possum?” The corner of his mouth moved against your neck, and you could feel that little thing he’d started doing more, the closest to a grin he could get. “Nah. C’mon.”
His arm cinched tighter to haul you back flush into him, and there was a low gruff of breath in your hair that was his laugh. His nose dragged up behind your ear and his hand slid off your fist to spread wide and warm over your stomach.
“Waited up f’me?” he murmured, pleased, “and won’t even say hi. What sort of welcome’s that, huh?” He pressed a true kiss under your jaw, lingered there for a moment too long that you could feel his lips curve downwards against your skin, the frown arriving inside of the kiss. “Say hi.”
His mouth dragged up from your jaw hesitantly, testing on your skin. His tongue touched down at the corner of your jaw – savoring the salt he thought was just your skin – and that was the exact second it went wrong on him. His lips flattened again, and you could feel his body go still as he held his breath against you. Andrew knew the taste of tears.
He drew back an inch, enough to break the seal of his mouth from you, and the cool of the room rushed into the space where his warmth had been.
His palm lifted from your stomach and came to your cheek and dragged a thumb – slowly, the pad of it rough – through the track running down toward the pillow, and stopped at the wet gathered at your lashes, and turned it. Against your back, his heart kicked once, then found a faster gear. A swallow went down his throat where it pressed to your shoulder, and his breath developed a small hitch at the top of each inhale.
Andrew had never been one to keep his fear where you could reach it, but you could always feel it anyway. You felt it now, the tell of it thumping against your back.
He made a sound in his throat, like he was clearing it but instead only managed to lodge it more.
“You’re crying,” he said, thumb at your lashes. “Why?”
His hand slid from your cheek to your jaw, cupped it, and pressed, suggesting a turn with a quarter-ounce of pressure. Then, he waited like he always did with you. He proposed, and you completed.
When you didn’t complete it, he applied the tiny pressure again, saying, “Please.”
You let him turn you, because you couldn’t not. That please had that boy in it, and because you were done being a coward in one direction only to be one in another.
You turned in his arms and saw his face for the first time, the memory of his hand around her waist surfacing behind your eyes even as you looked at him. For a second you saw both, his face here, creased and worried in the grey light, and his hand there, resting and obedient on skin that wasn’t yours.
He made a small, confusedly wounded sound in his throat as his eyes went back and forth along your face. His thumb wiped once at your cheek, catching what was leftover, and he didn’t even seem to know he was doing it. You leaned your cheek into his hold, and his palm came to your cheek immediately, brows furrowing.
“What?” he murmured, and it came out in a breath like it’d been punched out of him.
You could feel his fingers curl to the shape of your face, cradling, the closest he could get to gripping without letting himself grip. Your jaw sat on the heel of his palm as his thumb brushed along your cheekbone while the pads of the others curled behind your hair.
It was the sick tender wretchedness of it, letting the same hands that made you almost throw up bile only hours ago cup your face in the dark, leaning into it, because your body had never known what else to do with the enormous nearness of Andrew. You turned to him like a plant to the window even now, even knowing, and you hated that you couldn’t stop it.
You heard his teeth clench together in your silence. His forehead came down, wanting to touch yours, and you let that, too. The weight of his head rested against your hairline and his breath billowed unevenly against your mouth. It was your first touch, you remembered with such tender cruelty. It was the only one he could do, his oldest word with you.
“Somebody do something?” His thumb swept your cheekbone in haste, gathering another one you hadn’t even registered falling.
Your throat wouldn’t work. His fingers curled behind your ear, pads pressing lightly, counting something.
His breath stalled at the top of an inhale, holding it there, and then it came out slowly as he moved closer, nose grazing yours just barely. His tongue peeked out slightly between his lips, and you felt his breath quilt. His head made the smallest motion against yours, no.
His palm flattened some hair back from your face, and his lips pressed to the bridge of your nose and you felt them tremble there. He pressed harder to stop it. When he pulled away, his lips twisted slightly.
“I do something?” he asked, voice cracking in the middle.
You opened your mouth, and your voice came out broken out of disuse. “How was the party?”
His hand tensed up against your face and he tugged his lower lip between his teeth, eyes pinching shut. You felt the second he took his hand off your face like it was burning you, felt the exact millisecond he realized the hand he was touching you with.
Andrew, who reached for you like people did railings on staircases, curled his hands into a fist against the sheet beside you. The whole hand you knew so well – and not at all – held away from you like he’d decided he’d forfeited his right to it.
“Bad,” he murmured. “I didn’t like it.”
You breathed in sharply through your nose at Andrew being the picture of himself, always meeting the worst things in life with the smallest words. You pushed your face further into the pillow, leaving his head hanging with the tiny gap between. Even with his eyes shut, his lips twisted into a small frown. And even as your own heart felt like it was burning up with something ugly and violent, you wanted to press your mouth at the edge of his self-flagellating scowl.
He sucked in a sharp breath and from the corner of your eye, you could see his fists curl tighter on the sheet. You heard the cotton strain under them, threads ticking. One of his fists came up and pressed its knuckles hard against his mouth, like he was stopping words at the gate.
Tell me, you tried to telepathically communicate. Tell me so I don’t have to say it for you.
“How was it – ” he tried, coming out past his knuckles. His lip curled off his teeth a flinch, and his head one hard motion like it was shaking off a fly, hating the question. He put his fist back down and picked a spot on the pillow an inch from your face and spoke to it. “How was it for you?”
“Andrew – ” He tilted his head to the side, brows furrowing at your voice, the tremble in it. You continued, forcing yourself to ask the question. “Did anything – ”
“I’m sorry,” he said, overlapping your voice. His head went back, throat curving long and pale in the light. From here, you could see the curve of his throat bob as he swallowed. His eyes had come open and found the ceiling, shining wet along the bottom lids as he blinked hard, furious little shutters.
“I’m so sorry.” He kept going, repeating it. “Sorry. M’so sorry. Sorry, sorry,” he said, each one softer and faster than the last.
His hand came up and dragged down his own face, knuckles scrubbing at his jaw.
Your body, quicker than your heart, turned to stone. Your head reared impossibly back. If it was possible, you would’ve gone into the pillow. Your nose started to burn and you felt a new pressure build up in your eyes all over again, jaw clenching.
He looked down again, trying to meet your eyes when he felt your body go stiff. His hand came up off the sheet to cradle your face again, but just as quickly as he reached, he put it away.
“I shouldn’t be here. Put my hands on you. Didn’t even –” he rambled on, voice crumpling. “Came here ‘cause I missed you so much – sorry. I’m sorry.”
Your mouth opened as you let out a breath, sounding close to a defeated laugh. Your wires were crossed and you suddenly felt the stab of a thousand sharp knives as the images that had been playing on repeat came to your mind again.
“What happened?” you asked, tearing out through the middle of his words in a voice you weren’t sure even belonged to you.
When he continued apologizing, the words tumbling over yours, you said, “Did you – did you fuck her?”
His head came up and he looked like he’d been struck, horrified and gutted all at once; the answer was in the line between his brows before his mouth caught up. But you needed the mouth, you needed to hear the word, so you held his eyes with your whole body gone rigid.
“No,” he said, voice trembling on the word. “What?”
That made your nose burn even more, the complete brokenness in his voice at the insinuation, discovering you believed him capable of. You had to roll your eyes to the ceiling to get away from his face, and that let the pool gathering at your waterline spill slowly once again down your cheek.
“Why would you think that?” he asked, pushing his face closer to get back into your eyeline, hunting it, needy to be seen completely for the first time maybe his entire life. “Why would I do that?”
You turned your neck so your cheek fell onto the pillow and away from him. He made a pained sound at you turning away from him, also maybe for the first time in your life.
“I would never do that,” he said, firming his voice. “Don’t want anyone else. Don’t want anyone,” he said, rougher, correcting himself in the same breath down to the barest true thing. “S’only ever been – doesn’t work like that with me. You know that. Doesn’t work with anyone that’s not – that’s not you. You know that,”
The words all came out like he was drilling it back into you, like he thought that some base mechanism in you had been accidentally tossed over the hours you’d been away from him, and if he said the words with enough torque he could reseat it, will it back true.
It hadn’t been. The mechanism was still wired and running charged, so completely charged. You knew Andrew down to the bone, loved him down to the phantoms in his brain and the loving hadn’t dimmed a watt for what you’d seen. If anything it’d gone sharper, meaner, more itself, the way a burn brightens a nerve. You lay there charged to the teeth with it and it did you no good at all, because being wired for Andrew didn’t mean the same as having him, and tonight the gap between those things was the whole width of the bed.
Loving him hadn’t been enough to keep his hand off another waist when his mother willed it there. You could know him to the bone and love him to the phantoms – you knew you would, forever – and still lose him to a pull that predated you by a womb and answered to a name that wasn’t yours.
“What’d you do with her?” you murmured, voice falling onto the pillow under you, because God it was easier to focus on the girl than the shark of a mother behind her.
“I paid her,” Andrew said quickly, the words tumbling out in his haste to explain, “to tell Smurf it was done and go.” His breath came quickly through his nose. “Didn’t do anythin’ with her, I swear. It stopped – I stopped it. Just gave her cash and got her out the door.”
There was a horror in the competence in the transaction, how he’d had a procedure to it. Was this the rest of your life? To protect your relationship from Smurf’s claws, was this what it would take – forever? A lifetime of Andrew keeping a folded stack of bills ready like a fire extinguisher, of the two of you building your whole love in the negative space around a woman who’d never been told once it existed? You saw the stretch out ahead, year after year of him coming to your door, of you lying awake wondering if tonight had been just like this, and something in you buckled at the length of it.
“How –” you said, voice going small, embarrassment clawing at your throat. “How many times has this happened?”
“A few,” he mumbled.
Your brows rose, and you felt fresh heat crawl behind your eyes again.
“Since we’ve been – ?” His eyes went somewhere else, out past your shoulder. You tried again at the silence, pulling your brows back down so as to not let any more tears fall. “Andrew?”
“Doesn’t matter.” He shook his head, and his eyes found yours again. His tongue pressed into his cheek, molding a small hill there, and left. “They come. I handle it, they go. That’s all,” he said, leaning down just slightly as if to press the words onto you. “It’s handled.”
There was a quiet sort of bell that rang in your mind the same second he hesitantly let his forehead drop back to yours, reaching, reaching, reaching for the same old ease. You pushed your arms up from your sides, palms finding his chest, stopping. You were shaking your head, eyes fluttering as you tried to slide the picture of Andrew – your Andrew – back into your mind, to feel it whole like it always did.
His eyes went down to your palms as if to make sure he wasn’t imagining the weight. “Stop,” he murmured. “Please.”
Your eyes forced themselves shut. “And it’s gonna keep happening.”
“I don’t care about any of them – ”
“I care,” you said. “I care that your plan was always just – hope I don’t find out. Say the plan, Andrew. There’s no part where it stops.”
“You weren’t,” he said, voice going rougher. “You weren’t supposed to find it. Got nothing to do with you.”
You knew one day Smurf was going to die. One fateful fucking day, she would. Andrew may not believe so, but even Smurf would rot into the ground some day, same as anything that lived. She wasn’t god, however she’d built herself into one in the person of him. She was just a woman who one day would face the same fate anyone else does, and the string she kept through Andrew’s ribs would go slack for the first time in his whole life.
Fuck, you felt selfish. Was it so wrong to hope for an Andrew that only existed on the far side of his mother’s grave? To lie in your own bed wondering – her age, her habits – while her son shook beside you? You were wishing a woman dead so you could love her son openly.
You always came up empty. Smurf could die tonight, next year, or tomorrow, and it wouldn’t matter. She took from Andrew without lifting anything heavier than an intention. A dead woman kept that kind of reach. The string through his ribs didn’t need her hands on the other end of it anymore, for it’d learned to pull all by itself.
Andrew watched your face as you watched the stretch of your life you’d have if it kept going on just like this. “This is why. Anything to do with her’s only gonna hurt you.”
You reeled back at that, pulling your body to sit up so quickly Andrew flinched away, making space.
“This is why?” The sheet fell off you and the cold hit your shoulders, the cotton of your tank top doing nothing to help. “Andrew, I don’t like this.”
“Stop,” he murmured, reaching a palm across the distance as he sat up, even though his jaw was clenched. “I know. I know you don’t, just –”
“There have been girls who’ve been with you, god knows how many,” your voice cracked, and you had to crane your neck to look at the ceiling at the thought. “Why haven’t you just told her to stop sending them?”
His jaw shifted, a flinch. His lips pushed out slightly, shoulders coming up into a small shrug like you’d just asked him to walk through a wall. “It’s nothing. I don’t do anything with them. It’s – two minutes of my life, Smurf thinks she won. It costs nothing – ”
“It costs me,” you interrupted, the words coming out of you louder than anything you’d said all night. You both froze at the sound of your voice, and his head snapped back to your face. Your fingers went up to find the chain around your neck, clasping. “You might be fine with it, but I’m not – not when you’ve been hiding this from me the entire time. I can’t spend my entire life wondering if there’s another girl – another chance for you to –”
“It wouldn’t – ” he started, shaking his head. “I’d handle it.”
“I’m tired, Andrew,” you said, head dropping slightly. “I don’t know how to deal with this.”
His breathing had gone shallow. His eyes were on your fist, and his lips were pursed like he was fighting himself out of saying something – the softness trying to surface as the fear shoved it back down – and after a moment, he said, “You knew what you were getting into.”
“I knew about the jobs,” you said quietly. You breathed in one small pull through your nose and your fingers came off the chain.
“I knew about the guns under your pillow and how you do things you can’t tell me at three in the morning. I knew that and I have never once – ” you had to click your tongue to process the sudden disbelief at yourself, “ – asked you anything you didn’t want to answer.”
He opened his mouth, as if to argue. You raised your palm, and his teeth clicked together audibly, obedient to your hand in a manner that on any other night would’ve undone you.
“I didn’t know about the girls. How many times you must’ve come here after – ” Your voice shook, and you had to push yourself off the bed, away. Suddenly, you felt too aware of the enormity of Andrew. You’d welcomed it, loved it, made a home out of the sheer size of him. Now the bed felt too close to standing next to a parked truck. “I don’t know what else I don’t know.”
Your arms crossed over your chest, hands gripping your elbows. You looked at the window, the parking lot lights coming through the blinds in stripes, and started flipping backward through the years like a rolodex to see if there were any hints.
“There’s nothing else,” he said, voice going quieter. He’d moved himself to the edge of the bed, feet on the floor, palms fisting the fabric of his pants as he watched you. “Nothing else. I’ll tell you if it happens again.”
“If it happens again,” you said, the words coming out through a resigned chuckle. “It’s going to happen again.”
“What do you want me to say?” Your heart kicked as he said the words, his eyes wide and wet and lost. “I can’t – I don’t know what you want me to do. I don’t know what I can do that isn’t already – ” His hand vaguely motioned between the two of you. “I’m already doing everything. This is everything.”
“I want you to tell me when this ends.” Your own voice cracked throughout the entire sentence, your shoulders coming up to your ears as you folded yourself further away from him, like your asking the question was enough to fill the space. “I’d wait, Andrew. I’d wait forever if I knew there was – I just, if I’m staying, I need to know it’s going somewhere.”
He craned his head up to look at you then, brows furrowed and lips parted, and you watched how his breathing kicked up.
“Don’t,” he murmured, the words coming out more to himself than you. “Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“That,” he murmured, pulling himself off the bed. His hands hesitantly reached up to your face, both palms cupping unsteadily, as he dropped his forehead to yours. “Don’t gotta put an ‘if’ in it. Don’t. Please.”
You pressed your lips together, eyes clenching shut as you tried to pull away from his hold. His grip tightened just slightly, pressing his forehead impossibly closer into yours.
“Please. Hey. Please.” He tapped your cheek once desperately, forcing you to open your eyes. “Why’re you thinkin’ of leaving? Stop that – nothing happened. Nothing’s gonna happen.”
You let out a pained sound at the words, feeling yourself weaken in his desperation. Nothing happened, nothing was going to happen. No, it was going to be exactly how it was. The good, and the hiding it came wrapped in.
“S’good here,” he murmured. “Don’t take the whole thing for one night.”
Was this enough?
The selfishness, the greed crawled through your body like the largest organ. Was this enough for a life, to have Andrew when you could, while he lived another?
You’d continue trusting that the women got paid at the door. You’d continue learning about them at doorways, by accident. You’d get older inside a few hours’ worth of a man. There were women who did it – you knew there were, whole quiet populations of them, mistresses to marriages, to churches, to armies – who took the visiting hours and meant it when it was love. Maybe they were happy. Maybe the trick was to stop measuring and stop waiting on something.
“We’re good,” he said again, voice going softer as his chin dipped slightly, and you realized he was repeating it because you weren’t.
He took in a sharp breath of air at your silence, fingers moving from your face down to your arms.
Your eyes focused on his collar instead, at the top button of his shirt. It never sat right. You thought you’d fixed it about a hundred times without thinking, your fingers at his throat while he stood statue-still and let you, letting you be the only person allowed to be the one to fuss over him. Your hands stayed at your side.
“I hate this,” he said after a moment. His thumbs moved at your elbows in small circles. “Hate that I made you cry.”
His arms went up again, over your shoulders, up the sides of your neck, until he was tilting your face in both hands up to him, thumbs sweeping under your eyes to clear it. His fingers were moving in haste now, the desperation overriding the second-guessing.
“Will you look at me?” he murmured, and you did.
His mouth came down to your cheekbone, then higher to the corner of your eye, kissing along the damage slowly. His hand loosely slid back into your hair, tilting your head to the other side, doing it again. His breathing was ragged against your skin as his body crowded you, chest brushing yours with every breath.
“Will you let me?” His mouth moved to your temple and pressed there, voice breaking slightly. “Will you let me make you feel better?” His nose dragged along your hairline and his lips landed just under your ear. “Know how. Please let me.”
You knew he would, he always did with every good intention. He’d make you feel better tonight like he’d made you feel better a hundred nights, and tomorrow you’d remember how much Andrew you had, and how much he kept. The next party would still come, and there would always be another better to make you feel because that was one thing he could manufacture and changing anything was not.
You cleared your throat, and hated how his entire body perked up at the small sound.
“I’m gonna sleep,” you mumbled, slowly prying your body away from his hold.
You moved your body on autopilot and got onto the bed again, facing the window. The mattress dipped, and he placed himself at your back.
His mouth pressed against your shoulder, then an inch higher at the curve of your neck. His breath shuddered against you. “Been so good to me.”
You sucked in a shallow breath, turning your face slightly to meet his eyes, “Andrew – ”
His hand slid along your jaw and his mouth came down onto yours, swallowing his own name from your lips. He kissed you so slowly, hope running the length of it, as his fingers stroked whatever inch of skin it could find in its haste.
You matched it, trying to move when he did, body feeling completely weightless. Somewhere in it, as his fingers reached up to your hair, your breath broke, one small wet hitch against his mouth, and the tear went hot, down onto his palm.
Andrew halted against your mouth, then pulled away to angle his head to rest on yours. He let out a short breath through his nostril, and pressed one last peck against your lips.
“Don’t cry while kissin’ me,” he said, voice so broken. “Please.”
His thumb moved through the dampness collected on your cheek again, then pressed slightly into the track. His eyes went down to your mouth, and his throat moved as he swallowed hard.
“It feels bad now?” he murmured, eyes trained to your cheeks.
“No,” you said quickly, hands finding his wrist. “No, Andrew.”
His thumb stayed there, and his eyes stayed down. His lips moved slightly as you watched his brows furrow in understanding, watched him not believe you.
“M’sorry,” he said quietly, jaw clenching. “Been hurting you all night. You’ve been crying all night–”
“No.” Your hand came up to his face, palm to his cheek, and he flinched into it. “No. It’s not bad – never been bad. You could never feel bad to me.”
“Look at you,” he said, voice coming out in a whisper. “Why’re you letting me be – ”
“Because I love you,” you said, leaning up slightly to meet his eyes properly. “I love you, and that doesn’t change just because – ”
You felt like you were both understanding it at once. His tongue came out to press against his own lip. He scrunched up his whole face – eyes screwing shut – before silently turning his face down and away, into the pillow, hiding even now.
You took in a shaky breath, and your hand came up to land at the back of his head, palm curving to his skull. He rolled into you, knee knocking into yours. His arm hauled you in too hard and then flinched, correcting himself. His face pressed into your chest, into the cotton over your sternum, over the small shape of the chain, and the entire weight of his skull rested against your heart. You felt the warmth soaking to your skin as he let out a sob, pooling around the metal. His fists gripped your shirt at the ribs, both sides, holding on, and his shoulders moved in that arrhythmic way.
“Please don’t leave,” he said, muffled against you.
Your throat closed as you let out a close-mouthed sob, hands moving in his hair. “Stay tonight.”
summary: your boyfriend sammy has no reason to feel insecure about his his weight, so you prove to him that you love the way he looks with some naked reassurance.
cw: MDNI !!!! chubby!sammy bryant, afab!reader, nicknames 'baby' & 'sweetheart', established relationship, talks of weight insecurity/weight loss app, unprotected p i v, creampie <3 wc: 1.3 k
a/n: repost because once this was once taken down by you know who... based on an ask from an anon! to my moots who got to read this already, here it is again teehee <3
sammy always got home later than you did. most times you'd be in bed asleep when when your boyfriend snuck into your shared bedroom after eating one of the home cooked meals you left in the fridge for him.
so it was normal for you to be half asleep by the time sammy quietly pressed a kiss to your forehead, set his things on the night stand, then went to take a shower. it was not normal however, for there to be a weight loss app notification pop up on his phone when you peeked at it to check the time.
your heart sank. when did he download this? there was no reason to. you loved sammy's body, he didn't need to lose any weight. what he looked like now was what attracted you to him in the first place.
you were fully awake, pouting and confused when sammy walked out of the bathroom. fully dressed in sweats and a t-shirt of course, because in the 5 months you'd been dating, he had never changed in front of you once. he also liked to keep his shirt on during sex and the lights off, having you face away from him or be on top.
"sammy, whats this?" you held the phone out to him, notification lit up brightly on the screen as he padded over to the bed. even in the dark room, you see sammy's plump cheeks go splotchy with pink.
he snatches back the phone and drops it on the wooden table, keeping distance between you as he stands next to your side of the bed, "nothing baby its just..." he scratches the back of his neck and sighs, "the guys at work were y'know.. makin' comments and stuff about, uh, my weight."
you balk and shoot up onto your knees, utterly offended. "what?! that's awful sammy!" he stuffs his hands in his pockets when you shuffle over to him and rub at his shoulders. he sounds so defeated that you want to cry, "no they're right sweetheart. i gotta do somethin' about it."
you bring your hands to his caress his chest, knowing that he won't let you go any lower towards the belly pudge that he never lets you feel in missionary. "you don't need to change anything about you sammy. i love the way you look." he scrunches his freckled face in disbelief, cringing as if you'd said the exact opposite. " 's alright baby, you don't have'ta lie." you huff when he grabs your hands, stopping their descent to his soft belly.
"i'm not lying." deciding words wont work, you shift on your knees, leaning forward to press kisses to his neck. you feel yourself get needy even just having him in the same room as you."i love your body sammy." his breath hitches at your words and warm lips that trail to his round jaw.
"i love you under me, i love you against me, and i love you inside of me." he lets out a broken sort of sound when he drops your hands. you push past the ache of sadness in your chest when you run your hands along his stomach and you feel him suck in.
you peck at his chubby cheeks then his lips, trying to pour all the want you feel for him into the kiss. you break away with a heavy breath to reassure him. "i love your body sammy... it gets me so wet." his eyed widen, fingers tightening at your side. "y-yeah?" you nod as you grab his meaty hand, moving it to cup the center of your dampened panties. "feel."
sammy groans when he runs his swollen fingers along where you're dripping for him. "jesus baby, y-youre soaked." you nod again and kiss at his face, "all for you sammy. for all of you." he whines before surging forward, catching your lips in his and falling on top of you onto your bed.
instantly your legs circle his thick waist, you gasp when you feel his heavy erection rub your aching cunt. he grinds his hips into yours as you whimper, both of you pawing at each others bottoms to try to shove them aside.
once your panties and top have been discarded, your hands grip the bottom of sammy's t-shirt. he freezes mid kiss on your breast as you start to pull, he reaches to tug the fabric back down before you've even gotten to his belly button. "baby- i don't-" "please sammy." you whine, rolling your hips against his boxers that you've left a wet patch on. "wanna see you. please."
he buries his face into your neck, curls tickling your cheek as he places a weak kiss to your collarbone before whispering. "o-okay. you can take it off." you hum contently as he loosely lifts up his arms for you to pull his shirt off as he kicks off his boxers.
you don't bother holding back the loud moan that sounds from you when you feel his round stomach press against yours. you loved how intimate it felt, the warm curve of his belly fitting like a puzzle piece on top of yours. "feels so good sammy." you whimper onto his lips, and he doesn't know if you're talking about him being completely naked for the first time, or his fat cock pushing into you.
in reality, it's both that have you panting like a dog in heat, running your hands all over the exposed freckled skin of his back and stomach while whining and hiccuping about his length stretching you out enough to brim tears in your eyes.
you're already embarrassingly close just from feeling his soft body bare on yours and the position that he finally allows you to stay in. your legs are wrapped boa constrictor tight around his waist, crying out when he grinds as deep as he can and you feel his coarse pubes rub against your sensitive clit.
you babble as he kisses at your throat, his thrusting turning animalistic. "sammy- feels so good- so good! oh god-!" each moan of yours has your boyfriend feeling more confident, in a matter of minutes he's pulling back to gaze down at you, letting you see his blushy chubby cheeks and the bouncing of his cushy chest instead of hiding in the crook of your neck to make himself seem smaller.
your unfocused eyes catch on his tummy and you whimper, clenching around him in a way that has his hips stuttering. you claw at the pudge, trying to bring him back to press himself against you to feel the proof that you treat him well enough for him to physically wear it.
"does- fuck- does that feel nice sweetheart?" he asks nervously even though you've been screaming about it this entire time. you're soo close, gut twisting in pleasure as you kiss whatever part of him is closest, licking the words onto his thick, sweaty neck, "yes- feels s'good! love y-your body sammy. loveyouloveyou!" he curses as he pushes your legs back until your knees hit your chest and his cock drives even deeper.
you're coming instantly when the head of him hits a soft spot that makes you choke on air, moaning praises and his name until sammy's right there with you, groaning and squeezing his hazel eyes shut tight. both of you shudder and pant iloveyou's against each others lips as you're filled until he's dripping out of you.
once his thrusts slow to a stop, his hefty frame collapses on top of you with one final whimper of your name. you stay lying there for a while, wrapped in each other and lazily running your hands on the warm skin you're entangled in.
sammy moves to withdraw his softening cock and you whine, tightening your ankles at his back. you grip his curls and force him to meet your eyes, pouting through your voice thats hoarse from moaning his name, "i don't want you to lose weight."
he huffs a laugh, surprised you even remembered how this all started. sammy nods and places a soft kiss to your lips, "if you let me pull out and get you some water, i'll delete the app right now then we can go again baby."
Sammy Bryant who loves when you ride him, but only if he gets to hold you. He wants to have his arms wrapped around you while you bounce in his lap, keeping you pressed so close you can hardly pull off an inch before you push your hips back down. He's kissing your neck and collarbone, occasionally pulling you into long, hot kisses.
When you feel like punishing him (or just like to see him whine), you'll push his chest down and make him lay back. He'll look up at you in betrayal, pouting as his arms immediately come up to reach for you.
"Baby..." he says, sounding honestly hurt but is quickly distracted by you straddling his lap. Begrudgingly, he lets you mount him and his hands rest sadly on your hips.
The whole time you're riding him, his whimpering and whining. "Wanna kiss..." "touch me, baby, c'mon." But its no use, you won't give in. When he gets closer, he really ramps it up, desperate to be held by you.
When you finally open your arms to him he shoots up, crushing you in his embrace as he pistons his hips up into you, chasing his release. He's practically drooling on you, covering your neck in kisses. "Thank you, thank you... l-love you..."
follow up of this ask. i love sammy bryant so bad i want to torture him.
sammy still thought some sort of cruel joke was being played on him when he got off of work that evening. why would a girl like you give him your number? he was awkward, chubby, quiet. you were fit, loud, bubbly. you could've picked any officer in that station, why him? he stared at the piece of paper you wrote your name and number on like it was an ancient relic he had just discovered, like it was the most amazing thing he had ever seen in his life. he couldn't get the picture of you out of his head. your sweet voice. the gum smacking in your mouth with each chomp. your tits basically flowing out of your top. he didn't even realized he had typed your number into his phone before it was ringing through, a shaky hand moving to hold the phone up to his ear.
"helloo?" you questioned into the phone, sat on your balcony as you painted your nails. you always were one to answer unrecognized numbers. it excited you. "y/n?" sammy hesitated to speak, loosening his tie a little bit. you couldn't help the butterflies that erupted in your stomach at the sound of his voice. "is this sammy?' you cooed, setting your nail polish down to fan at your toenails. you could hear the hard swallow he did through the phone, a wide grin spreading across your lips. "got so scared, sammy. was worried you weren't going to call me back," your voice came out as a whine, the sound having sammy chubbed up immediately in his slacks. "i-uhh.. i got busy with work. sorry," he spoke, hand immediately going to just his half hard dick in his pants.
it was quiet for a moment, before a small giggle left your lips. "so you called. does that mean you want to come over? yknow for the report," you hummed, chewing on your bottom lip as you immediately stood. you had zero plan to tell him what happened. you just wanted to see how far he'd let you go. it was like you could hear him fighting with himself in his mind over whether or not he was actually going to come. you felt a slight bit of guilt trying to coax the freshly divorced officer to your help. you only wanted to take his mind off of things. "i'm going to take your silence as a yes. i'll text you my address. see you soon sammy," you spoke quickly, a little giggle leaving your lips. "wait i-," he started but was immediately cut off to the sound of the phone call dropping, his head immediately throwing back against the couch.
poor oblivious man thought he really was coming over to take a report from you. he didn't even change out of his work clothes, his tie laying loose around his neck as he drove to the address you sent him. his head was spilling with hundreds of thoughts. why was he doing this? why didn't you just make the report at the station? what color panties were you wearing? he hadn't realized he was already there, parked outside of the apartment. what he didn't see was you peeking out of the curtain, a slick smile on your lips as you moved back at the sight of him walking up to the door. you did a once over of yourself in the mirror, a satisfied smirk on your face as the doorbell rang.
sammy felt like all the wind was knocked out of his lungs as the front door to your apartment swung open to reveal you standing there. a baby pink nightgown was the only thing covering you. covering used lightly. he could see your nipples straight through your night gown, the bottom hem just falling below your cunt. the room was filled with pink, and glitter, and diamonds. "hi sammy," you cooed sweetly, batting your eyelashes at him as he stood speechless. your small manicured hand wrapped around his much larger one, pulling him inside before slamming the door shut. he swears he's watched a porno that started just like this.
andrew 'pope' cody knows how to braid and he looooves doing it for his girl (or any kind of hairstyle really) ! his brows would be furrowed in concentration, he looked angry almost. but never mistook it for actual anger — he just wanted his girl to look perfect !
but then, he'd get so frustrated when there's a single strand out of place or when there's a stubborn bulk on the side, he'd click his tongue and redo it again.
"what'll it be for today, sugar?" he asked as he thoroughly brushed the tangles out.
he carved his fingers through your hair so so gently, careful not to accidentally jerk your head back because of an annoying knot.
you usually sat on the carpeted floor, tucked in between his legs. but today, you needed to be closer to him — so you laid your head on his lap. your favourite way to get your hair done.
"hmm. . . braids?"
he breathed a laugh. "can't exactly do your hair like this, baby. sit up for me, will ya? please."
"you can just do one side first then i'll switch when you're done." you argued, though there was no real bite behind it.
then you added, "don't worry – when you grow your hair out a bit more, i'll do yours."
'how's that gonna work? my hair will still be too short,' andrew thought to himself.
he was so clueless.
your eyes were already closed. he didn't have the heart to budge you any further — you just looked so calm, so relaxed. he liked that he could make you feel that comfortable. it made him feel like he was good for something — good for you.
you fell into a deep sleep after some time. . . looking so perfect and so beautiful on his lap. ♡
🐑 : andrew cody are u ready to get ur luscious curls butterfly clip'd by me ? ALSO s1 andy who else cheered ! :D
Im sorry but it is so funny how people outside of tumblr view us. Like why are the tiktokers treating tumblr like some professional ass website you need to do extensive prep before you begin posting on. And the follower farming advice is so fucking funny to me when this is the website where people actively hate getting new followers
Tumblr is the website where you ramble to yourself like a madman until someone decides they like you and put you into their pocket like a shiny rock. That's how you get followers
"have some idea of content you want to do", "have lots of drafts before posting" - no, silly, just post whatever comes to your mind at 2 AM. the best thing about tumblr is that you can start rambling about some obscure background character from a 3000 year old poem, and there'll always be someone equally invested
↳ Warnings/Themes: CONTAINS BRAND NEW DAY PLOT POINTS! PG. Fluff. Barely!Angst.
↳ Pairing: Peter Parker x F!Reader
↳ Words: 4012
↳ Summary: 4 years after Dr.Strange's spell, Peter finds himself face-to-face with you again.
☁️: i LOVED these requests!! very challenging but fun to get out of my smut comfort zone. there are plot points from the movie, but they're not used in a linear way and are not exact scene matches.
Requested: here. General Masterlist here. Peter Masterlist here.
The headache started before you were even fully awake. A dull pressure that built somewhere in your skull until it settled just behind your eyebrow. It was a familiar enough situation that you weren't at all surprised.
At first, they had been easy to ignore, a fleeting headache every couple of weeks that could easily be attributed to life at MIT. But two years ago, something shifted. The headaches became more insistent of being recognised and acknowledged.
They began to be accompanied by fragments of images that you couldn't place flashing through your mind; a laugh that wrapped around you; a hand that fit perfectly in yours; the feeling of rising and falling through the air without fear; and the worst, places you didn't recognise but somehow missed.
Every scan had come back normal. "There isn't anything medically wrong with you," the doctor had gently insisted. She had smiled in a way that you knew was an attempt to be encouraging but it had missed its mark. At least if there was something medically wrong, you would have some sort of an explanation.
You pinched your eyebrow tightly and stayed where you were for another minute, staring at the ceiling whilst you waited for it to pass. Most of the times, that was enough. This morning, however, it wasn't.
Letting out a slow breath, you pushed yourself upright. Outside was a normal day, car horns echoed somewhere below your apartment, followed by the sounds of arguments. The familiar rumble of the subway beneath the street sounded through the air.
Today was a normal day, and so yours would be too.
By the time you were dressed and made it to the kitchen, the headache had dulled into something more manageable.
MJ was perched on the kitchen counter, sipping a hot drink while watching Ned wrestle with a string of fairy lights that had somehow tied itself into an impossible knot.
With a genuine attempt at a smile and a grumbled good morning, you moved through the kitchen almost on auto-pilot. Pulling out breakfast ingredients without a thought as to what you actually wanted to eat.
“I hate decorations,” Ned muttered sometime later.
The snort that came from you was louder than intended and two pairs of eyes turned to look at you. MJ had a shit-eating grin on her face, while Ned's eyes narrowed.
“My sympathy is very low,” you shrugged. “You're the one that brought them.”
“I know.”
“You also suggested the party,” MJ added helpfully.
“I know.”
“Plus, invited half of the population of our graduate class,” you added, mouth full of toast. “So, our home has to look presentable.”
“I know.”
MJ took another sip from her mug to hide her smile. “So... whose fault is this?”
Ned sighed dramatically, his head dropping. “...Mine.”
“Bingo.”
Turning his attention back into the project before him, Ned continued untangling the fairy lights. It only took five minutes of silence before he was sighing again.
“You're hanging those back-to-front,” MJ called out.
Ned's eyes widened as he looked between you both. “Fairy lights have a front?”
“They do,” you smiled, Ned made it too easy sometimes.
Ned's eyes continued to move between you both, waiting for one of you to break. It was always you. The laugh slipped past your lips before you could contain it.
“I swear,” Ned muttered, shaking his head, “we need another person to balance this...” Ned gestured between you both “...out.”
For a few seconds, everything went quiet, like someone had turned the volume down on the world.
An image flashed in your mind, you, MJ, Ned, and a fourth figure that was there, but not really. You could see where they were supposed to be, where they'd fit if they were actually there. It was like someone had taken a pair of scissors to the picture, leaving behind nothing but the outline of a person.
Before you could focus on it, it was gone.
The headache arrived a heartbeat later, sharp enough that you instinctively reached for the edge of the counter to stabilise yourself.
“You okay?” MJ's voice cut through the haze.
The apartment rushed back into focus as you blinked, willing the image away. Ned was already looking at you. It was irrational, and you knew it, but the look of concern only made you feel the sudden urge to shrink until completely invisible.
“Yeah,” you said. You straightened to quickly and your words came out too snappy to be the truth. “Fine.”
Ned ignored it. “Headaches getting worse again?”
“Not worse. Just...” You searched for the words, finding it harder when two pairs of eyes looked at you with a pity that rested uncomfortably on your skin. “...I don’t know. It’s stupid.”
“Try us,” Ned said, untangling the fairy lights from his arm to move next to you. He rested his hand on your forearm.
When you offered no more words, MJ set her mug down and turned to you. “You know, Governments like us to think what’s going on in our heads is stupid, keeps us compliant.”
You would have laughed if you thought MJ was joking.
Fingers drumming against the counter, you swallowed the lump in your throat and began trying to pull non-coherent emotions into something logical. Your eyes remained fixed on the counter as you stumbled through your words.
“It’s like... not worse because it’s more painful. It the feelings that come with it. And... like...the images. It’s a lot.”
There was so much more that could be said, “My headaches make me feel like there’s something I left behind.” “They leave me searching for something I can’t name.” But they barely made sense to you and, despite their reassurances, you knew it was something you’d have to try to explain, so you trailed off.
“You’re seeing things?”
There were probably nicer ways that Ned could have asked that question. He clearly noticed it too, because he immediately winced.
“Harsh, dude,” MJ said.
“It’s okay,” you said quickly, stopping Ned’s response before it could even form. “It’ll pass, I think it’s just stress or whatever.”
MJ watched you with that same unreadable expression she always wore when she was thinking something she wasn’t sure she should say aloud.
The resulting silence stretched over the three of you in a way that made you shift on your stool. You glanced around the apartment, grounding yourself with what you saw. The unpacked boxes that still lined one wall despite having moved in nearly a month ago, the ragged sofa that you’d watched Ned and MJ argue over, and the clock, that flashed a time that told you you were boarding on lateness.
“I’m with Dr. Banner today... I should go.” The words came out quieter than you intended. You cleared your throat, forcing a warmth back into your voice. “I hope those decorations will be ready for later.”
Ned dramatically stood, straightening his spine and raising his arm in a salute. “I will make it my sworn mission.”
Dr. Banner’s lectures always followed the same pattern.
He’d make a genuine attempt to impart years’ worth of knowledge, while at least half of the lecture hall made equally genuine attempts to steer the conversation towards his time as an Avenger. Every so often, the guy that always turned up in green body paint would shout, “Hulk smash.” And, every time, the lecture hall would descend into a fit of giggles and cheers.
By the time the lecture came to an end, you were fairly certain that everyone knew more about what an Avenger had for breakfast than they did about the actual topic.
You smiled to yourself as you zipped your bag shut and made your way down the steps.
Dr. Banner was already talking to a student by the time you reached the front.
He had his back to you, but even with his back turned, there was something strangely familiar about him. You didn't mean to listen in to the conversation, but it happened so naturally as if something declared your attention was needed.
“My name's... Ned.”
The hesitation caught your attention before the name did.
“Ned?” Dr. Banner sounded unconvinced.
‘Ned’ shifted awkwardly, his hand finding the back of his neck. “...Yeah.”
“Well, Ned,” Dr. Banner said, folding his arms, “what you’re talking about is dangerous. If you were going to target specific strands, how would you decide which ones are the ‘bad’ ones?”
You hadn't heard enough of the conversation to know what they were talking about, but you’d never heard Dr. Banner sound as serious as he did now.
“Just... theoretically,” ‘Ned’ responded.
Dr. Banner held his gaze for a moment, looking deep in thought as if he was considering whether or not to answer the question.
“Theoretically,” he repeated, more to himself than anyone else.
“Please, sir.”
Whatever he found in ‘Ned’s’ expression seemed to reassure him. “Yes. In theory... it’s possible.”
“Thank you.”
Before you could try to piece together the conversation, Dr. Banner glanced over ‘Ned’s’ shoulder.
“Ah, there you are,” he smiled, all traces of seriousness gone from his features. “Would you mind meeting me in my office in about ten minutes?”
Banner barely waited for your response before making his way out of the lecture hall.
“Of course,” you replied anyway.
At the sound of your voice, ‘Ned’s’ shoulders stiffened. He turned around slowly, eyes finding yours immediately. No words came out when his mouth opened, and then closed, and then opened again. He just stood there, brown eyes wide and slightly glassy.
Without thinking, you smiled at him. It wasn’t the polite smile usually offered to a stranger who happened to make eye contact, but something warmer and more familiar. Like seeing someone you'd forgotten you were looking for.
Something shifted in his expression, a flicker across his face that you might have missed had you not been looking at him. It was replaced by a small, tentative smile of his own.
Neither of you looked away, even after the socially acceptable length of time for staring had long passed. His gaze wandered over your face, lingering on your eyes before dropping to the smile you'd barely realised you were still wearing.
His hair fell in soft brown curls in a way that made him look like the kind of person who had their life together, but there were faint shadows beneath his eyes, the kind that only came from too many late nights.
Under your gaze, he swallowed hard, his fingers gripping the straps of his backpack. When he finally spoke, his voice was somehow softer than it had been before.
“Hi,” he murmured, the word tentative, as if testing whether he was allowed to say it at all.
“Hey,” you replied. “Do I... know you from somewhere? You look really familiar.”
“No,” he said softly. “No, I don’t think you do.”
That should have been the end of the conversation. You could laugh it off, wish each other a nice day, and walk away. But the desire to know more about the boy with the familiar soft brown eyes and a curious mind who felt the need to lie about his name consumed you.
You tilted your head slightly, studying him. “What’s your name?”
He pointed to himself, eyebrows lifting. “M-my name?”
The corner of your mouth twitched, a smile threatening to break through. “Yes, your name.”
He looked caught off guard by the question, lips parting, and then closing again. It was like you could see the lie forming on the tip of his tongue.
“And don’t say Ned,” you added, unable to hide your smile now. “I’m pretty confident that’s not it.”
A breath that sounded suspiciously like a laugh escaped him. “You caught that, huh?”
“You weren't exactly convincing.”
“I've never been very good at lying.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
The words slipped out of you so naturally that neither of you questioned them.
He rubbed his thumb along the frayed edge of his backpack strap as he drew in a deep breath. For a moment, he looked like he was working up the courage to say something far more difficult than his name.
“It’s Peter.”
“Peter,” you repeated.
The name vibrated against the walls of your mind like it was a word that you had thought of a thousand times.
“Yeah,” he said quietly.
You tilted your head slightly. “It’s nice to meet you, Peter.”
“You too.”
Silence settled over you both again and you found yourself trying to think up ways to start the conversation again. Your eyes drifted past him, towards the hallway where Dr. Banner had disappeared. The question came to you almost immediately. “Are you a fan of the Avengers?”
Peter blinked, his hands shifting nervously on his backpack straps. “Uh... what? Why do you ask?”
You smiled slightly. “Why else would you be pretending to be one of Dr. Banner’s students?”
“I just wanted to pick his brain about something,” Peter admitted. “He’s... kind of brilliant.”
“I mean I agree, but why do you think so?”
The way Peter’s face changed when the topic of science came up was almost unfair.
He spoke with an enthusiasm that was impossible not to get caught up in, his hands moving just as much as his words while his thoughts raced just ahead. More than once, he caught himself drifting off-topic, only to circle back again a heartbeat later.
You found yourself smiling, a warmth spreading across your chest.
“...Sorry,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I kind of talked your ear off there.”
“I enjoyed listening to you,” you said easily. “Now I understand why you risked committing identity theft in front of a literal Avenger.”
Peter groaned, his head tipping back for a moment. “When you put it like that...”
“It sounds unhinged?”
“Very.”
“Good. Just so you’re aware.”
He laughed again, this one a little louder. “What about you? Are you a student of his?”
“No, I’m doing project work with him for my PhD.”
Peter’s face lit up, his eyes crinkling deeply around the corners with a pride that felt entirely too big for someone you'd only met less than ten minutes ago. “I’m happy for you. You’ve always wanted to do that.”
“Yeah, I have actually.” You tilted your head, eyes narrowing on him. “How did you know?”
“Would you believe me if I said that was supposed to be a question?”
His question earnt a small laugh from the both of you, his cheeks turning a pretty shade of pink. Peter had a dangerous ability to disarm you, you realised. Even more dangerously, you weren’t sure you were bothered by it.
Students drifted past in the hallway, heading towards their next lectures as you and Peter settled into another round of silence and stares.
“So...” Peter said eventually, shifting his weight to break the heavy silence. “I should probably let you get to your meeting.”
“You probably should.”
Peter rocked back on his heels, but made no attempt to move. It was such a small thing, but the fact he seemed just as reluctant to leave as you were sent a pleasant tingle through your body.
Sighing, you opened your mouth to say goodbye, but instead, you heard yourself ask, “are you doing anything tonight?”
A woosh of air left Peter’s mouth, as if he’d been holding his breath. “...Tonight?”
“Yeah.”
“Um... I don't... think so.”
“My roommates and I are throwing a party. You should come.” The silence from Peter was long enough that you wondered if you’d completely misread the situation. “If you've got other plans-.”
“I don't,” Peter interrupted. He let out a quiet breath through his nose. “I'd... I'd like to come.”
A grin spread across your face before you could stop it. “Really?”
He mirrored it, smaller than yours, but no less genuine. “Really.”
“Great.”
“Good.”
You reached into your bag for your phone, then paused. “Actually...” Holding out your hand, you nodded towards the phone sticking out of his hoodie pocket. “Give me your phone.”
Peter raised an eyebrow, even as his hand slowly moved towards his phone.
“I mean, unless you're planning on memorising my address.”
“Oh.”
He fumbled the phone out of his pocket so quickly it nearly slipped through his fingers. Once unlocked, he held it out to you.
Your thumbs flew across the screen, typing in your number and name before shooting yourself a quick text.
“There,” you said, sliding the device back into his hand. “Now you have my name too, since you forgot to ask.”
Peter looked down at the contact for a long moment. When he looked back up, there was something in his expression you couldn't quite place.
“Thanks.”
You smiled. “I’ll see you later?”
“You will,” he promised.
You’d changed outfits five times before finally deciding that the first one had been fine. The apartment was already loud by the time the first wave of guests arrived and you found yourself glancing towards the front door more often than you cared to admit.
By the time the party was in full swing, you’d convinced yourself you weren’t waiting for anyone even though your eyes kept scanning over the crowd.
The disappointment that settled in your chest was irritatingly disproportionate for someone you’d only known for a few hours and had one conversation with.
You were halfway through a conversation you weren’t really listening to when the front door opened. Without thinking, you looked over. The relief that washed through you was immediate.
Peter stood just inside the doorway, a red cup in his hand, looking around the apartment like he was still deciding whether he belonged there.
You excused yourself before you could think better of it and crossed the room.
“You came.”
Peter smiled softly when he saw you. “I promised.”
“Good to know you keep promises.”
It took less than thirty seconds for Ned to spot the unfamiliar face. He appeared seemingly out of nowhere, all smiles and unnecessary enthusiasm, a half-eaten slice of pizza in one hand.
“Hey! I don't think we've met.”
A look flashed across Peter’s face; one you’ve become all too familiar with in the short time you’ve known him.
“I'm Peter.”
“Ned.”
As they shook hands, Ned turned to you, his eyes twinkling. “You invited him?”
“Evidently, Ned.”
“Wow. Good for you.” He nodded slowly as he disappeared back into the crowd.
“Sorry about him,” you said, turning back to Peter. “He gets overexcited.”
“I know,” Peter laughed softly, the words a little too confident.
You spent the next few minutes introducing Peter to people and trying to coax more information about himself out. But as the party grew, so did the tension in his shoulders.
“Do you want to go up to the roof?” you asked. “It’s less crowded there.”
Peter looked back at you. “Yes, please.”
You set your drink down on the counter. “Come on.”
A rush of cold New York air met you the second the door to the roof opened. You stepped out first, pulling your sleeves over your hands as the breeze caught against your skin. You rested your arms against the low brick wall and looked out over the city. The noise of the party faded behind the door, replaced by the distant hum of New York.
“I forgot how nice it is up here.”
Peter moved beside you. “The view is always nicer from above.”
Glancing over, you caught him staring at you. The second you caught him, his eyes shifted away.
You smiled slightly. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Sure, Peter.”
You let out a soft huff of laughter, turning your attention back to the city in front of you. Out of the corner of your eye, you watched him shift his weight, his shoulder brushing against yours before he pulled back.
The contact was brief, but the warmth of it lingered through the fabric of your top, leaving a strange, electric tingle in its wake. You kept your eyes fixed on the traffic below, suddenly hyper-aware of the distance between his arm and yours, waiting to see if he’d move closer again.
Instead, the wind picked up, sharp enough to cut through the quiet and make your shoulders shiver. Peter looked at you, his jacket was already coming off before you could stop him.
You immediately shook your head, waving your hands. “No.”
“It's fine.”
“You'll freeze.”
“I'll survive.”
“Peter...”
“I promise,” he said, holding the jacket out to you.
You hesitated, looking from the fabric to his earnest face. Then, quietly, “thank you.”
It was still warm from him as you put it on. You pulled it a little tighter around your chest, eyes closing as you buried your face slightly into the collar, and breathed in absentmindedly.
“Mhm, your aftershave smells good.”
The smell of the jacket brought a dull pressure behind your temples, like something was gently gnawing at the back of your head.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
Your eyes opened as you turned to face him. He was much closer than you’d realised. Close enough that the rest of the city lights seemed to blur out of focus. Peter's hand came to cover yours, his thumb brushing over your knuckles. You weren’t sure if he even noticed he was doing it. But maybe he had. Maybe that's why he looked as though he was trying very hard not to breathe.
Your eyes drifted, just for a second, to his lips. When you looked back up, he was already looking at yours.
Peter couldn’t seem to stop himself from taking a small step forward, crowding into your space. Your fingers curled instinctively into the fabric of his jacket.
His hand lifted slowly, hesitating for the briefest moment before reaching you, as though he was giving you one last chance to pull away. You didn’t. His fingertips brushed against your chin, his skin warm against the chill of the night.
“Can I?”
When you nodded, Peter tilted your face up slightly. His breath warmed your lips, the tip of his nose brushing against yours as he titled his head.
He was so close now, less than half an inch away when the heavy rooftop door swung open. Your entire body flinched, and you practically fell into Peter’s arms.
“There you are.”
Ned's voice carried across the roof before you’d even had time to register what had happened.
Peter let go immediately, dropping his hands to his sides and taking a step back. The cold air rushed back into the space between you where his warmth had just been.
You cleared your throat. “Hi, Ned.”
“MJ sent me,” he explained, narrowing his eyes slightly at Peter. “She’s deeply mistrusting of people and we don’t know you.”
“She is,” you admitted, looking up at Peter. “We're alright,” you called back to Ned, surprised by how steady your voice sounded.
Ned looked between the two of you, his eyes lingering on the jacket. “MJ said to tell you there's cake.”
You managed a small smile. “I suppose we can't ignore that.”
“No,” Peter murmured, his voice quieter than before. “I suppose we can’t.”
Before anyone could move, Peter’s phone buzzed. The smile disappeared from his face as he looked down at the screen.
“I have to go.”
You tried to hide the sudden drop of disappointment in your voice, but it leaked through anyway. “But you just got here.”
“I know.” Peter looked at you and for a moment, he looked almost as disappointed as you felt. “I’m really sorry. I have to.”
“Okay.” You immediately started to slip your arms out of the sleeves to hand his jacket back. “Thanks.”
He hesitated, his hands resting on top of yours to stop you from taking it off. “Why don’t you keep hold of it?”
“Won’t you need it?”
“I’ll come back for it.”
You bit your cheek to stop the smile from showing too brightly. “Is that your way of saying that I’ll see you again?” “Yeah,” he whispered, words heavier than you knew. “It is.”
I genuinely only seem to be capable of writing smut, so I'M SORRY THIS WAS SO BUNS AND THE PACING IS BAD. I TRIED OKAY!! xx
