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fireheartpages · 23 days ago

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WANT YOU IF YOU SAY IT FIRST TO ME ; jack abbot / f!reader

⭒ ݁ . PART TWO

summary; A story told in 4AM cups of coffee, the unsteady beat that is the emergency department, and how it feels to fall for a man wired for crisis; slowly, deliberately, in the quiet moments between chaos, where respect becomes gravity and love finds room to breathe.

word count; 9.5k

warnings/tags; 18+ mdni. trauma surgeon resident!reader. slow build, falling in love, misunderstandings, jealousy, emotionally constipated jack, bars and alcohol, depictions of blood and surgeries, coworker meddling, one (1) scene inspired by grey's anatomy, queer coded reader (though never explicitly mentioned, just know that this isn't a straight woman), explicit sexual content: choking, semi-public (in a car), vaginal and protected sex. let me know if i missed any.

A/N; worms in my brain. worms. i don’t know where this came from, nor how it got to nine thousand words. i think i hauve covid. uh, give me your thoughts? your prayers? the things stirring in your brain about this man that'd set women back at least a century? (but seriously, comments & reblogs nurture me in the enclosure. askbox is always open. feed your local writer <3). jack abbot… you have bewitched me… body and soul…

⭒ ݁ . read on ao3. gif from this set by emziess. special thanks to my love @imagines-r-s for feeding the brainworms for this with me.

“Oh, this is painful. Like, genuinely, physically, ripping-my-hair-out painful—”

“Alright,” you groan into the salted rim of your glass. The lime in the Margarita singes your taste buds, numbing them in a tequila-dipped haze that slowly but surely slithers its way into your head, thumping in your throat and behind your eyes.

Yinzers’ is as busy as it can possibly get. Cramped booths and stools fully occupied, makeshift dance floor nearly packed. Sticky floors and cheap drinks, the underlying thrum of drunken conversation that beats in tandem with the music: some club classics playlist from the late 2000’s, familiar and dizzying and exactly what you need right now. Something to drown out your swirling thoughts, to reduce your brain down to a pleasantly useless mush.

Yeah, you think, taking another sour sip. You’ve done enough critical thinking for the day.

Samira is at your side, sipping her strawberry Daiquiri, half-choking on her chuckles as Usher’s DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love echoes from the speakers. Heather sits across from Mohan, cheekily sipping her Sex On The Beach and stealing glances behind her back. Squinting her eyes, as if in thought, she says: “Actually, I think ripping hair out would be less painfu—”

“Either kill me,” you cut her off over the music, “or shut the fuck up about it.”

She has the gall to laugh. As does Samira, as does Yolanda. Fuck, you do make for a painful sight, you’ll give them that. Still, your eyes lock into Yolanda’s, sharp and clouded. “Oh,” you laugh, but it gets lost under the beat, “I know you’re not laughing right now, Romeo.”

She almost chokes. “Fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

You shrug, smirking into your glass, eyes catching onto a certain intern a few tables away whose eyes are locked into your friend’s back for what feels like hours now. You must’ve caught Santos’ eye over Garcia’s back, like, three times in the past fifteen minutes. If Yolanda noticed, she hardly made it known.

Still, as cheap a shot as that was, it worked. Now Yolanda’s silent, staring into the half-melted ice cubes of her Rum & Coke, and the looks exchanged over the table are not about you. You fight dirty when you’re cornered, but you’ll take any win you can get.

This is rare; day and night shift merging after work like this. Shoulders tense and weighed down by code-blue’s and lives lost and the metallic stench of blood, soldiering through it only for the ones you manage to save. It feels almost cosmic. You damn-near begged on your knees for Mohan to tag along, and naturally, she could never say no to you. Even Javadi is here, staring at Mateo with stars in her eyes, sat in the booth with Santos and Whittaker.

Even though it’s your night off, the antiseptic still lingers in your nostrils from yesterday, the ice-cold chill of the OR, your hands raw from scrubbing in. Technically, that all happened today, but you’ve found the days and hours get blurry on the night shift.

Lines get hazy, too; everything does. Boundaries rewritten, reservations forgotten, walls knocked down with nothing but a quirk of the lips and lukewarm coffees under the blaring fluorescence.

You shake your head, tongue curling in your mouth. Fuck.

Well, however you call it, today was a fucking shit show. There’d been a car pile-up just a little after 6AM. “So close. So, so close,” Shen had sighed in the ambulance bay. Two or three or four fucking cars with college boys drunk off their asses behind the wheel, determined to be goddamn gentlemen and drive some girls home from their frat. If only chivalry was dead.

Only two out of the six girls made it. One bled out right in your hands, her shredded abdominal aorta gushing red-hot rivers faster than you could’ve ever stitched her back together. Her name was Sydney, and she had her whole life ahead of her. Besides the smell of her blood, that’s all you can remember about her.

If you focused really hard right now, even over the deafening bass, you could still hear her flatlining on your table. Still taste the bile in your throat from when you called it, breathless, ripping off your surgical mask and moving on. Because you had to. The boy you operated on next, blond and baby faced and crushed behind his friend’s wheel, made it. He nearly hadn’t, but he pulled through.

Jack was… he was there when you entered the trauma room, gait planted and hands methodical as ever. They don’t call him an ER cowboy for nothing.

Sharp eyes and even sharper tongue, he’s precise like the ten-blade that’s as much an instrument as it’s an extension of your palm. “I need to open him up,” you said over the beeping monitor. Jack had already placed a chest tube, but the boy’s vitals were tanking, and his lungs were a ticking time bomb. You didn’t have to say as much, he knew, but you did anyway. It’s terrifying to think you would’ve said anything to make him look at you.

Jack hardly spared you a glance. You like to think you didn’t care, that you didn’t notice he spoke with his eyes pinned ahead, anywhere but on yours. It almost felt more disorienting than the chaos itself. More destabilizing than the wails and moans and heaps of blood on the linoleum, than the nurses and residents all whirring around the department like scattered animals.

Because, that’s the thing with Jack Abbot; his eyes are anchors. Heavyweight, like snares. They catch on yours and keep you there. Steadying, lingering until he’s satisfied, head tilted until he can see the message has registered behind your eyelids.

So, when that lighthouse in the storm suddenly shut you out, you felt stranded. Hurt. Maybe even angry. But you pushed through, because you’re a damn good surgeon, and that boy needed you.

You performed a thoracotomy in OR 3; paged Dr. Walsh for the green light and wheeled the patient past Jack and his bloodstained gown, eyes searching for his in the storm. Only then did he meet your gaze, just as the elevator doors closed, hands curling up to his neck as he ripped the gown off. You were left breathless, staring at cold, humming silver instead of two warm pools of hazel.

The change was sudden. No more than a few days ago, it was all so…

Fuck. It wasn’t like this. It was… good. Dizzying in all the right ways. You were walking on uncertain ground, uncharted waters, but you like to think you were treading them together. Like two sailors in a storm, trudging through disaster side by side; like a log that’s keeping each other from getting swallowed by the waves.

That’s how it started, anyway. You craved it; that comfort, the blanket of warmth only he could’ve given. It was a few months ago—maybe four or maybe more—that you switched to the night shift.

“Giving up one of our best here, brother,” Robby had said during the daily hand-off; your first time working after 7PM.

“Night shift wins again,” he’d quipped beneath his breath, iPad already in hand. The smile he’d shot you was small, tight-lipped, genuine. “Welcome. We love ourselves a scalpel jockey ‘round here.”

You’d quirked your brows. “Scalpel jockey?”

But he’d already turned away from you as he walked off. He’d shot you a look behind his back, smirking, pointing with his thumb. “Wear it proudly.”

In your second week, you went through a brutal shift together. Two kids had died on your watch, and you’d been exhausted. Drained physically, mentally, in every way that mattered, in every way it didn’t.

After talking to the parents, after providing them with a social worker, after showing them their babies’ bodies, you damn near fucking collapsed.

You still don’t know why it hit you so hard. During your residency, you’ve lost more patients than you can count. Kids, teens, parents and friends and strangers. You’ve felt their temperature drop, you’ve heard the echo of a flatline beside the overhead lamp, smelt the staleness of the OR after calling time of death.

Perhaps it’d been because one of the little boys looked so much like your baby brother when he was that age. Perhaps it was their mother’s hopeful eyes as you’d shuffled your feet to the family room, scrub cap clutched between your hands like a cross, a rosary, a lifeline.

The woman’s eyes were beautiful, red-rimmed as they were; they crumpled up like paper when you forced the words out of your throat. “We… I did everything in my power.” “The injuries were far too severe.” “I’m sorry.”

Perhaps it was none of these things at all.

His brother never even left the ER; he’d been DOA. Nothing more to be done other than work on him longer than necessary, just so they could tell the parents they’d done everything they could’ve. Jack stood over him as you’d wheeled on by, eyes catching on his as the flatline echoed.

Backed up against the door of an empty viewing room, heaps and piles of x-rays glaring down at you, you’d heaved and gasped and clasped your mouth shut to muffle the sounds. They sputtered and clawed their way out of your throat regardless, white-hot tears clogging your vision.

He’d knocked on the door. Three precise taps, no room for argument. Still, though, your back had remained glued to the door, even as he’d pushed his way inside. There, bathed in the dim blue light of the imaging, it was as if you truly saw him for the first time.

Wrinkled eyes, kind and steady, anchoring you in their hold. Tilted head, arms tight as he’d laid a tentative palm on your shoulder. You don’t even remember what he’d said at first. Does it even matter? He was there. Warmth seeping from his palm, eyes holding your gaze in their death-grip. He’d made you breathe with him, letting the air sit deeply in his lungs, nodding and muttering an encouraging, “Yeah?” when he felt your stuttering ribs even out.

And, suddenly, you could breathe again.

“Crying is good. Feeling. Means you’re still human,” he’d told you, whispers of a breath. “Means you still got fight left in you. Don’t ever let the job take that away from you. You’re good, jockey. Trust me.”

It was a week after that when the coffees started.

Bleary-eyed under the hospital lights, the stillness of the hallways echoed in a way that’s only possible during the night. You’d been leaning on the nurse’s station down at the ED, staring into nothingness as the iPad screen in your grip shut itself off.

It’d been a particularly quiet shift, not that any of you had dared to say so out loud. When Shen attempted a few hours prior, you’d launched a half-eaten protein bar at his head. You’d missed by an inch. Ellis had nearly pulled a muscle laughing, and you swear you’d seen Jack huff out a chuckle as he passed. A win, in your book.

It was like the coffee had materialized out of thin air. But, no. He was there. Staring at his watch, unassuming and quiet and there. You’d eyed the coffee cup he slid between you with narrowed eyes and pursed lips. When he’d met your eyes, his lips had quirked up. Just slightly, just enough. The sight of that almost-smile was slowly becoming as familiar as the well-trodden hallways to the ORs.

“What’s that about?” you’d asked.

“Can’t have you falling asleep over someone’s cracked chest, can we? Too much paperwork.” He’d lifted his shoulder in a shrug. As if bringing you coffee was something he’d done a million times before and would do a million times again.

“You… got me coffee,” you’d said dumbly, eyes shifting between the brown cup and the hazel of his gaze like a pendulum. Not a question—just a statement, the same way the sky is blue and grass is green—but he’d answered anyway.

He’d softly tapped his fist on the counter. Once, twice. Nodded. “I got you coffee.”

And, that had been it. No more acknowledgement, no further comment; just the piping-hot paper cup next to your hand. Just the look he snuck from further down the ED when he’d seen you bring it to your lips, that’d felt more intimate than having someone’s tongue down your throat.

You’d pretended not to notice, but you think he saw right through you. Of course he had.

It became a ritual, of sorts. A routine. Every night on call together, right around the 4AM slump, a brown paper cup would somehow find its way to you. Always hot, always sugary; you don’t know if he somehow guessed or overheard it, but that’s exactly how you drink it.

“Sugar with a side of coffee, for the lunatic in OR 3,” he said once, monotone and dry in a way that made him funny. That was half his charm, some days.

The cup had felt heavy in your palm. Biting the inside of your cheek, you’d asked: “Why do you keep doing that?”

He’d looked at you, long and hard. The overhead fluorescence made every edge of his face sharper. Your eyes had caught on the grey in his temple, the way it blended with the brown of his curls. He’d shrugged, looked down at the iPad in his hands.

“Told you. Can’t have Walsh’s best triage tourist falling face-first into an open cavity. Don’t need that kinda headache.”

You’d raised a brow, laughed into the cup as you brought it to your lips. The coffee scaled its way down your throat, hot and sweet. You’d felt it settle down your chest. Or, maybe, it was the way he’d looked at you out of the corner of his eye, pursing his lips in that half-smile that made his dimples show.

“Triage tourist, scalpel jockey… I left Langdon and his ‘Edwina Scissorhands’ bullshit for Garcia to put up with. Can’t catch a fucking break with you people.”

He’d huffed a breath, a chuckle. “Someone’s gotta keep you on your toes, jockey.”

You’d felt brave. “Alright, big guy. Careful not to pull a muscle next time I wring a patient from you.”

That was the first time you’d seen him laugh the way he had. Surprised, eyebrows raised and mouth open, nodding in a way that invited challenge. “Wow, okay,” he’d rasped, “give somebody an inch, they’ll take a fucking mile.”

“Patients is what I take, old man.” You’d clicked your teeth.

“Fuckin’ sawbones,” he’d huffed, shaking his head.

“You know it.”

You never questioned the coffee again. You even missed it on the occasional odd day when your schedules did not line up. Kept looking at your watch around 4AM, unconsciously waiting for a cup of coffee that wouldn’t come unless you dragged your ass to the break room yourself. You’d been fucking Pavlov’ed. Jesus.

One time, though, he had a rough night. Kept limping his way through the ED, brows tight and lips curled. It’d been busy, busier than usual. Broken ankles, lacerations, burns, a bike crash victim. Even a head trauma that’d been sent up to neuro immediately. Fucking gnarly.

The guy didn’t make it; vet, homeless, victim of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Much of that these days. Every muscle in Jack’s body had been tense, you’d seen it. Felt it, even. You’d kept wincing everytime you saw him grabbing onto the counter of the nurses’ station, letting his weight fall on his good leg.

He’d found you in the break room by 4AM, coffee cup in his hand.

Maybe he’d Pavlov’ed himself, too.

You’d nodded at the empty chair across from you, silent. Shaking his head, he’d dropped the cup on the table and slid it towards you.

“C’mon, humor me,” you’d said, grabbing the cup. “I just… just want your company. So.”

The look in his eyes had called your bullshit. Still, he’d sat down. You’d seen the way his shoulders drooped, the way he craned his neck, clenched his eyes. His palm had trailed down to his knee, massaging the skin above the prosthetic.

The lights had kept humming above you, white sterile noise filling the deafening silence. It’s always quiet around that time of night; a small window where everything pauses before surging again.

“I’m fine,” he’d rasped.

“Didn’t say you weren’t,” you’d quipped, head tilting in a way that parroted his own habit.

“You’re a shit liar.”

“And you still believe me. What does that make you?”

He’d hummed. Touché. You’d sat like that for a while. Mutual quiet, a shelter in the storm, blanketed by headache-inducing fluorescence and the smell of teeth-achingly sweet coffee. Until one of the nurses, Bridget, poked her head into the break room and said: “Incoming. GSW to the chest, head trauma, the works.”

You’d locked eyes with him, more awake than you’d been all night. Cup forgotten, you’d smirked. He didn’t need your pity (not that you had any to give); he needed the rush. The knowledge that you could offer him respite and keep him on his toes as easy as you could breathe. You’d huffed, ready to bolt: “Catch me if you can, cowboy.”

You’d found him on the roof that morning; it’d been Robby who told you. (“Yeah, he does that, sometimes. You wanna…?”) Jack had been leaning his back against the outside of the railing, soaking in the early light spilling from behind the clouds. The sunrise is always beautiful on the roof; blooming pink and orange aflush by the white yolk of the sun. It’d been chilly, and you’d felt a shiver run through you as you moved to him, the wind licking at his sleeves.

You knew he’d heard you; heard the click of the door shutting, heard the shuffling of your soles on the ground. Maybe he’d even known it was you. You like to think he had. If not, he never let it show. Only looked at you from the corner of his eye as you stopped at the railing, leaning your elbows on the cold metal.

You hadn’t spoken, not at first. Had simply let your eyes fall on the skyline, tracing the city with your lashes.

A beat passed. Two, three. Suddenly, your voice rang out. “You jump, and I’m not putting you back together.” He’d turned his head. Latching onto his gaze, your lips had quirked; not too much, just enough. “Conflict of interest, y’know.”

He’d shaken his head, lids falling, smile persistent. A scoff had punched its way from his throat, but it was light. Relieved, maybe. Soft around the edges in all the right ways.

“Oh, I’m sure,” he’d rasped. “Fuckin’ addict, you are. You’d pounce at the chance.”

You’d looked away from him, setting your eyes ahead, letting the silence hang. As seriously as you could’ve mustered, you said: “Yeah. Bet your ass I would.”

He’d chuckled, and you’d bottled it right up. Sobering up, you’d continued. Not looking at him, letting your words spill out like morning dew instead; his call to acknowledge them, or let them dissipate. “You don’t need anybody to put you back together, though. That’s a you job. But, jockey as I am, I’m still here. With my 4AM coffees and all. Just… just so you know, or, whatever.”

Fuck, the way he’d looked at you then? You’d felt every muscle in your body somehow tense and melt all at once. Two hazel whirlpools pulling you right the fuck under. You just let it happen.

“Yeah. ‘Or, whatever.’”

And, there it was. That quiet acknowledgement. The hand pulling each other from the ledge. The person you looked for first when the elevator doors to the ER opened and you were thrust into action. The man who was a rock amidst a hurricane, unmoving because he has to be; the one pulling everyone down to their feet beside him.

But, who was there to drag him down to steady ground, except himself?

The first time he kissed you, it was nearly bone-shattering. Sinews splitting apart in his hands, skull crushed in two, heart ready to spill from your throat and into his. He would’ve swallowed it, you really believe he would’ve.

It’d been another circus show at the PTMC Emergency Department, barely past 1AM on a Friday night. Or, was that technically Saturday? Fuck, you don’t even care. Mass casualty: a shooting at a club downtown, with half a dozen victims and twice as many cops flooding the hallways. It’d been all hands on deck. Blood, lidocaine, the moans and yells and calls for attendings who already had their hands full to the brim.

The shooter had landed on your table, shot straight in the chest by the club owner. You had to perform a pericardial repair to address the gunshot wound near his heart, to stop the hematoma from draining the life right out of him.

Instructed to salvage any bullet fragments for evidence, you’d let the world around you fall apart; until all you could see was the red gushing from his heart, and all you could smell was its metallic tang between your fingers. In the end, seven bullet fragments lay on a surgical basin to your right, and the man lay lifeless before you.

Time of death, 2:37AM.

The bleeding had been too much. Too erratic, too tricky for a resident to handle alone. Not because you lacked the experience, but because you lacked the hands. By the time you were ripping the mask and gloves off alongside your gown and throwing them in the bin by the OR door, your fingers had been shaking like leaves.

You hadn’t been good enough to save him, or smart enough to request an attending, or strong enough to accept that this was the hand you were dealt and you did the best you could’ve.

You’d brushed past the OR floor, all the way down to the ER and through the waiting room. People looked at you; at your sweaty scrubs and disheveled surgical cap, at the way you bit your lip until it bled, breezing through the pedestrian entrance doors and into the night air.

Even through your tunnel vision, you saw the state the ER was in; lulled, the first and worst wave of the trauma washed away. The most emergent cases dealt with and admitted to surgery or the ICU, the less-gravely injured cared for and checked up on, families called and statements given. You hadn’t realized how much time had whizzed by while you were wrist-deep into the man’s chest.

Time passes differently in the OR. Slows and twists out of your control. Out there, though—past the cop cruisers and at the park outside—it stood still completely. The wood of the bench you’d fallen on felt cold, even through your scrubs.

Minutes could have passed, or hours, as you sat in the quiet chill. It tickled the goosebumps on your arms, the rawness of your bitten lips as you’d smoothed your tongue over the skin.

Jack had followed you out. Of course he had. There isn’t a world where he wouldn’t have.

“What happened?”

The scoff that spilled from your throat had been tired. Spent. You hadn’t looked at Jack once, not even as he took a seat beside you on the bench, thighs millimeters apart. His warmth spread through the meat of your thigh and right into your bloodstream. You’d sniffed, sharp, tongue curling on the roof of your mouth to stop the tears from gathering.

“I lost him. The shooter. I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t… wasn’t good enough, I guess.”

A hand on your knee, big and strong and sure. So, so familiar, it nearly hurt. “If you couldn’t save him, then he couldn’t be saved.” Firm, unshakeable, as if he’d been stating a truth as universally accepted as the stars hanging above your heads. Is that what he truly saw in you? A trust in your abilities so strong, he believed his words like they were set in stone?

You’d shaken your head, eyes clenched shut, a single breath pushing its way out your ribs like a hydraulic press. “I couldn’t fucking do it. Isn’t that messed up? I’m sitting here, crying over a man who shot up a club.” You’d swallowed. “Maybe this was justice. Have him make it to help, only to end up with a surgeon useless enough to let him drain out. Like I’m a goddamn first-year, or something. Fuck—”

“Hey,” Jack had cut you off mid-spiral, grip tightening on your knee, the feeling punching through you all the way down to your belly. He’d tilted his head, searching for your gaze, finding it and keeping it in a headlock. “Don’t fuckin’ say that. You know it’s bullshit. Hey, hey, look at me. You,” he’d paused, “are one of the best. I’ve seen you. I know it, and I’m telling you. So stop fucking saying that.”

He’d looked pained, severe. As if hearing you tear yourself down was like a punch to his gut. You hadn’t known what to make of that realization in the moment. Or, you had, and you just weren’t strong enough to admit to it. Not even to yourself.

You’d nodded, if not for anything else, just to see his brows soften. His shoulders laxing, lips curling softly and dimples showing, thumb softly stroking your skin over your scrubs.

Silence bathed you, louder than the clamor of a war torn emergency room.

“Didn’t know you liked me that much,” you’d quipped after a few moments trickled by, eyes locked on the hand that still rested on your knee. It’d felt deliberate now, the way he’d made no move to remove it. “You getting soft on me, Jack?”

Jack. Not cowboy, or big guy, or Dr. Abbot. Hell, not even old man.

Just… Jack.

It’d taken him a second to respond. Blinking, quiet, surprise melting into something much softer yet unnameable. “I’m not telling you shit again,” he’d chuckled. “Watch it.”

He hadn’t once let his eyes fall from yours, even when you had. Jack Abbot and his fucking staring problem. Pulling you in, making the world melt into nothingness as his hand had stilled. Fuck, why couldn’t he have just looked away?

You’d felt it before you saw it. His other hand—the one nearly touching yours—drifting up to your face, the other still scorching your knee. Curling around the edge of your scrub cap, unruly on your head and halfway down the side of your forehead. Like a deer in headlights, you’d frozen. He’d stared at the cloth intensely, fingers drifting across your face, pulling it back on your hairline, tracing the outline of your burning cheek with the back of his fingers.

Your breath had stuttered, swelled like a balloon about to pop. “What’re you doing?”

“Your cap,” he’d said, fingers hovering. “There. Fixed it.”

“Oh,” you’d exhaled. “Thanks.”

“I might call you jockey,” he’d breathed suddenly, eyes lifting from the curve of your mouth and catching yours again, “but you’re not one. Not really. You know that, right? You have to know it. Can’t even remember all the times you’ve let us mortals try and keep someone from gettin’ sliced up.”

He’d inched closer, and if you hadn’t felt his breath tickling yours as he spoke, you might not have even noticed. Lashes fluttering and eyes shifting from the hazel down to his mouth, to his hands—back and forth, back and forth—you’d breathed: “Jack?”

“Do you? Know?” he’d rasped out, barely a whisper, barely a breath. He hadn’t been looking in your eyes. His gaze had drifted under again, past the slope of your nose, to the angry flare of your bitten lip. But as he said it, he’d looked up. Just for a second. Hand sliding down towards your nape, nearly engulfing your neck whole.

He’d be looking for an answer to a different question. Still, you’d nodded in his hold, lids nearly shut and hands shaking against the wood of the bench. Why did you nod?

Idiot. Is there a world where you wouldn’t have?

A breath, a surprised yelp muffled by his lips, the feel of him pressing you closer. Earth-shattering, bone-splitting, all-consuming. Jack Abbot—the fierce attending, the hardened veteran, the shelter in every storm—kissed you with his entire body, explosive warmth seeping into your skin with every deep swipe of his lips. And when he’d broken away with a sigh, you’d felt the sound curling its way around your skin. Fuck.

“Now you do.”

And, that’s how it was from then. Tentative, unknown, undefined. Real. An, “I’ll walk you home,” at the end of the shift. More 4AM coffees, and rooftop gazing, and brushing past each other in a hallway only to stop for no reason at all other than to soak the other in. No further than heated kisses shared in empty on-call rooms and wandering hands that stopped respectfully just before the threshold was crossed.

(“Damn. You fucking like me, don’t you?” you’d teased a couple weeks back. Breakfast burrito in hand, walking side-by-side on a cracked sidewalk with his hand hovering over the small of your back.

He’d scoffed, smiling in that characteristic way of his. Lips pursed, dimples out, head swerving. “Tolerate, more like. Gotta get those patient satisfaction scores up, somehow. Can’t do that if our best tourist doesn’t get her nightly sugar-induced overdose.”

“Fucking comedian, over here. Poor man’s Carlin.”)

You didn’t mind it; the waiting, the tiptoeing. This… thing felt far too fragile and far too young to have a name yet. At least, out loud. You knew how you felt, you think you knew how he felt. No need to rush. No need to panic. You were content to let the waves carry you.

That brings you to three days ago. You were leaning back against the nurse’s station, almost 4AM, head pounding from the artificial stillness. Bridget was standing beside Ellis, both shaking from laughter. They made you burst into a fit, too.

“Fuuuck,” you moaned, “can’t believe I told you this. Ancient history. Next time I open my mouth, slap me fucking dead—”

Hand clutching her stomach, Ellis wheezed: “And then what’d he fucking do?”

“Ugh,” you clenched your eyes, cheeks flushed from embarrassment. “He was such a pussy, I swear to God. Tried to smooth-talk his way out of it. Can you believe that shit? Anesthesiologist who doesn’t know how to choke a girl right?”

“Sounds like the opening to a bad joke,” said Bridget.

“Right?!”

“What’s that about you getting choked?” piped Shen as he strutted over, slurping on a coffee cup.

“You eavesdropping on us, now?” you asked, leaning to the side to look at him.

He shrugged, smirking as he leaned an elbow on the counter. “It’s not eavesdropping when you’re in the middle of the ER, sawbones.”

Turning to the girls, you pointed a finger at him, jokingly exasperated. “This fucking guy…”

“No manners,” tutted Ellis, shaking her head. Bridget clicked her lips, looking at him as if disappointed.

“Hey,” Shen voiced with his lips around the yellow straw. “Not my fault you go on and on about Stan from Anesthesia and how he almost broke your larynx tryin’ to go all Fifty Shades on you. Quit blamin’ a guy for getting curious.” He winced, grimacing: “But, like, dude… really?”

“Mhm. Worst lay of my fucking life. Scratched the itch, though—”

“—Oh, hello, Dr. Abbot,” sang Bridget from your side. “Right on time,” she glanced at her watch. 4:02AM.

Your blood damn near clotted in place. Oh, fuck. How much did he hear?

The coffee cup—brown, hot, familiar—landed on the nursing station counter with a thud. Two hazel whirlpools found yours, then vanished with a nod. Curt, stern, the attending on call, the veteran medic who barked orders from the back of a helicopter and onto a sand-baked tarmac. Dr. Abbot, not Jack.

Shit, did he think that was…? That you…?

“Get back to work, this ain’t a tea party. Guy in 12 needs an IV change, kept whining when I walked past.”

“Fuck me, that guy’s been on my ass about the food since 10PM. Jesus,” groaned Ellis.

“I got it,” chirped Bridget with a nudge on Ellis’ shoulder. She left to change the IV, Shen made a beeline for the break room, Ellis grabbed an iPad and moved to sit behind one of the monitors. And just like that, you were left staring at Jack’s retreating figure, the steady gait you’d come to think of as familiar. The only warmth was from the coffee, but that was getting cold, too.

You hardly saw him for the rest of the night. Stupid, stubborn, emotionally constipated old man with walls higher than Mount Everest. Even as you waited by the pedestrian entrance for fifteen minutes at the end of the shift—the early morning chill slithering over your exposed arms, the steady beat of people just waking up thrumming all around—he was nowhere to be found.

Fine.

You walked home alone that day, probably for the first time in weeks. You had the next two days off, but you could’ve called him instead. You didn’t. Couldn’t quite muster up the courage to press the button, even as his name glared back at you from the screen in bland sans serif.

Fuck. You hate confrontation; always have, probably always will. It’s kind of ruining your life. You hate feeling shut out, yet something invisible still keeps you from taking that first step to resolution.

It’d have been so easy to just pick up the goddamn phone and say: “Hey, that thing you overheard? Old fucking news, back in my second year. I like you and didn’t go get dicked down by some other guy just because you haven’t had your way with me yet. Don’t shut me out. Dumbass.”

But, you didn’t. Because, like always, the fear of confrontation morphed into something more ugly—more jagged—as the hours and days passed with not one text received. Something like indignation, bullheaded pettiness that oozed from every pore.

He’s pushing fucking 50, and he acts like this? If I wanted to relive my high school boyfriend, I would’ve just texted him.

…Well. In hindsight, that wasn’t entirely fair. Not at all, even. Maybe he was hurt, betrayed, embarrassed. Maybe he needed a day or two to collect his head. Maybe he saw your inaction and perceived it as indifference. Maybe, if you’d just pulled your head out of your ass and called him, this would’ve been ancient history by now.

Fuck. This whole thing had spiralled into mutually assured destruction real fast, and the worst thing?

He’s here now.

Past the sweaty throng of bodies and sitting with Robby, who hasn’t once stopped looking your way. Jack’s in a black button-up, sleeves pulled to his elbows. Brown strands streaked with grey sweating at his temples, salty stubble on a tight jaw, lips curled. His forearms are bulging as if to fucking mock you; thick and corded as he snatches the dart from where it’d landed on the black-and-white target by the side of the bar, gripping it in his hands as he moves back again.

“He’s totally picturing your face,” giggles Mohan, letting her head fall on your shoulder as she hums around her straw.

Heather almost chokes on her drink, the liquid bursting from her lips as she laughs. “He so fucking is—”

“Shouldn’t have told you bitches anything,” you groan, eyes still locked on Jack. He’s watching you back. ‘Fuck you too, old man,’ you hope your eyes say. Shaking his head and taking a sip of the foamless beer that’s been sitting on the bar counter, he shoots another dart. Sharp, precise, sure; looking in your eyes the whole time.

Bullseye.

From the speakers, Ciara has just begun singing about riding (the beat) with Ludacris. The song is familiar, the bass settling down your body like water. Your shoulders sway with it unconsciously, and with a last sour gulp of your lukewarm Margarita, you stand and grab Yolanda by the hand. She gets up with a start, a confused furrow settling on her brows, an easy smile curling at her lips.

“C’mon, Romeo,” you tell her over the music. “Scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours?” Your eyes point to Santos, and Yolanda’s fall on Jack by the bar. She smirks, eyes narrowing in understanding. Atta girl.

“I market it so good,

They can’t wait to try-y-y me-e-e,

I work it so good,

Man, they tryna buy-y-y me.

They love the way I ride it,

They love the way I ride the beat,

How I ride the beat,

I ride it…”

Her hands are on your sides, your back against her chest, ass moving in tandem with her hips. Side to side, again and again, a dizzying whirl of motion that has your head reeling.

You picture it’s Jack behind you instead; his strong frame bracketing yours, his fingers digging in the meat of your hips, his breath on your neck. It’s all too easy to imagine as a shiver wrecks your frame.

Jack is watching. Your entire body burns with it; the weight of his gaze, the clench of his jaw, the cording of his muscles as they strain against his pulled-up sleeves. Fuck, he looks so good. Even at fifteen feet away, even in the dark, even in the chaos.

Eyes hooded and lipgloss smudged, you let Yolanda guide your body as you feel her head swerving back. Santos must be gawking, too.

Quid pro quo.

Ciara hasn’t finished singing when you see Jack pushing his way past the small crowd and to the back-door. You pout, laying a hand on Yolanda’s at your hip, motioning with your head towards the door. With a knowing look and a nudge, she sends you off.

“Go get ‘em,” she laughs.

Outside, the chill of the night feels like an old friend. Biting as your body adjusts to the temperature change, humidity giving way to the smallest of breezes. The pavement is cracked, the bottoms of your short heels weaving in-between.

Jack is leaning his back against his car that’s parked by the curb, dark and sleek, just like him. Waiting, like he knew you’d follow; maybe even hoped. And—just because the alcohol made you brave—perhaps even flushed at the sight of you grinding against someone that wasn’t him.

If you squint your eyes, you can almost pretend you’re outside the ER again, and he’s kissed you for the first time.

Stubborn, stubborn old man.

“Piss break?” you breathe. You were going for teasing, but your voice is hoarse from the tequila and all the yelling-to-be-heard inside. You don’t think the tone quite struck the landing.

He scoffs—a dark sound that lands right between your legs—and shakes his head, eyes gliding across your frame. Black polished heels, burgundy sheer tights; mini skirt tight around your thighs, fitted black blouse to match; hands littered with bracelets and rings. The you outside the hardass trauma surgeon clad in scrubs, outside the death and antiseptic that lingers for days at a time.

“Something like that,” he rasps. “You?”

“Something like that,” you echo.

A stretch of silence, the muffled beat of a strong bass still nagging in the atmosphere. His eyes on you, unmoving, anchoring, burning. Fuck. He looks so good like that, brooding because he’s fucking jealous.

Shit.

“I missed you,” you breathe, heels clicking as you inch closer. You see him shift, posture tightening, eyes still locked on yours.

“I’m sure you managed just fine,” he says slowly, clicking his lips. “Stan from Anesthesia, was it? He treat you right?”

You can’t help it, you literally cannot help it: you giggle. Tipsy, flushed, elated; palm shooting up to cover your lips. This fucking idiot. Damn all these past three days of silence, this is amazing. He’s so fucking jealous it makes your heart run like a racehorse, threatening to burst.

“You jealous, tiger?”

Brows lifting, nostrils flaring. “Yes.”

Oh. Oh, there he is. The trauma attending, the seasoned physician, the man who jumps headfirst into calamity and makes sure everyone’s unscathed.

“You idiot,” you snort, smile so wide it’s splitting your face in half. You’ve drifted closer, now; right in front of him, barely ten inches apart, hands ghosting over his tight biceps. He makes no move other than clenching his jaw, huffing a breath.

“Watch it.”

“Or, what? What’re you gonna do, big guy—?”

The way he grabs you has your stomach doing somersaults. One hand on your waist, the other burning on your nape, swivelling your positions in place as your back collides with the cold metal of the passenger door.

He’d cushioned the impact on your skull with his palm, a bulging forearm now stretching past the side of your face. You can see the vein that’s there. Fuck. The breath that punches out of you is half a whine, half a gasp. Equally desperate, disproportionately charged. Like a live wire.

“This what you want?” he asks, low in his throat, two hazel pools of warmth nearly black as tar.

You smile, victorious. No point in holding anything back now, right? In for a penny, in for a pound. “He was a one-nighter back when I was a PGY2. A fuckin’ limp-dick who didn’t know what to do with his own hands, much less with me.”

Silence.

“…What?” He blinks, stupefied.

“Yeah, genius,” you smirk.

Oh, he actually looks in pain. Clenches his eyes shut, drops his head on your shoulder with a sigh so visceral it must’ve come from his gut. “Fuck. Fuck. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry is right, you bitch,” you hum, lids fluttering and smirk widening. Shit, the Margarita must’ve done a number on you. But his head lifts, and those bottomless pits surrounded by hazel are burning you again. He looks so pretty up close like this; you can trace every dip and wrinkle on his face, map it in your mind. His hair is so nice, have you mentioned before? Frames his face just so, thick and curly and salty and hot. So hot.

“You let me not talk to you for days—?”

“Nu-uh. Did that all by your lonesome, cowboy. But don’t worry. I like my men older, riddled with workaholism, and with ‘bout as much emotional intelligence as a brick wall.”

That last part? Again, not fair or factually true, but the alcohol has loosened your tongue way past the point of return. In vino veritas, but not always. Still, he doesn’t protest. He’s secure enough not to.

“You’re in luck then, baby. Got emotional baggage in fucking spades,” he mutters, gaze falling on the exposed expanse of your neck, head falling as his lips seek it out.

It knocks the breath right out of you, shocks the ground from under your feet, liquifies all logic in your brain. “‘Baby’?” you echo, voice a static sort of noise, trembling and broken.

You feel him humming against your neck, nipping at the skin, both his hands tightening on you, reeling you in further, pulling you in closer. “Mhm. I’m fucking sorry. For all of it.”

“Yeah, w–well, you fucking should be…”

“Uh-huh,” against your neck. Dizzying and electrifying.

“Jack…”

“What is it?”

Your hand had somehow found its way into his hair, curling around it at his nape, the other thrown over his shoulder, body arching into him. “Kiss me?”

And, he does. He really fucking does. And, somehow, it feels better than any other time. Every sense wired to the maximum, every brush of his button-up against the exposed skin of your arms, his mouth on yours; gasping and aching and perfect. You feel him swallowing every last bit of your lipgloss, the faint aftertaste of berry-tinted glitter sliding over your tongue.

You moan into him, open-mouthed and desperate. The pulse between your legs has worsened, thumping in tandem with the muffled beat of a song you can’t recall right now.

He breaks away with a sharp breath, and it’s like you feel it as it settles in his lungs. Eyes hooded, looking at you in a way that has you clenching around nothing. “How much have you had to drink?” he rasps.

“Just a watered-down Margarita. Fuckers ripped me off.”

He chuckles, you grin. And then, the hand on your nape drifts forward, so, so slowly. Curls around your throat—feather-light in its touch—thumb and pointer on each carotid. Not applying pressure, just… there. You heave out a breath as your lashes flutter. “What are you doing, Jack?”

“Did he touch you like this?”

“What?”

A kiss on your cheek, down to your jaw, up to your ear. His breath is hot against it. “Did he?”

“No,” you manage, one of your palms tightening around the hair at his nape, the other trailing up and down his strong side. “T–told you, he couldn’t touch me for shit.”

“Figured,” he hums. Leaning his head back to look at you fully, capturing your gaze and not letting it go. He purses his lips, grins. It makes the burning in your cheeks deepen.

You can do nothing but smile back, staring at him from under your lashes. The hand you were trailing down his side comes up, curling around his palm on your throat, pushing and making his hold on you tighten.

It feels heavenly. Two fingers pushing on your carotid, warm and big and firm. Already you feel the telltale signs of reduced-blood-flow induced bliss, and he’s barely even started. You feel your eyes nearly roll back as you moan, mouth closed tight and from within your throat. There’s a fire licking at your insides, spreading from your center and into every neuron.

“Yeah?” he mutters, voice teasing, light and heavy all at once. He lets his hold slacken, and the world comes into focus again.

You grin. Instead of an answer, you seek his lips. He meets you halfway, swiping his tongue against yours, and it’s so hard to think right now; with the breeze making your hairs stand, the heat that scorches your blood, the sounds that keep bubbling out of you and into his mouth.

Your hand is still on top of his palm on your neck, anchoring. Jack leans more of his weight on you, blanketing you under the golden yolks of flickering street-lamps. You break apart with an inhale, spit clogging your throat.

When he pulls back, he looks pained. Brows caving in, a groan clawing its way out of his chest. You feel the suffocating tendrils of concern wrapping around your limbs, and suddenly, anything else is forgotten. “Are you okay? Is it your leg? D’you wanna—”

“My leg’s fine,” he rasps, meeting your eyes. The hand on your neck falls back, grabbing yours and guiding it down. Past his chest, making you cup him through his cargo. Fuck. “This ‘s all you, baby.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

He’s hard, painfully so, straining against the tough fabric as you push against him. It makes him suck in a breath, forehead falling against yours, hand on your waist pulling you in, sandwiched between his frame and the car door.

“Open the fucking car,” you mutter against his lips.

He doesn’t need to be told twice. Deftly swipes a hand down his pocket, clicks the lock button on the remote, grabs the handle of the back door and holds it open for you. With a giggle and a breath, you get in, knees gliding against the back seats as he follows. Sloppily, you drag your tights and underwear from under your skirt and down your legs, huffing at the lack of space.

“Come here,” he says, door thumping shut behind him as you bunch your tights and panties in your palm, flinging them away haphazardly. Throwing a leg over his lap, you take one of the best seats in the house. There’s a hand on your naked skin, digging in the meat of your thigh. His other softly ghosts over the small of your back, where your blouse has ridden up, toying with the seam.

Just as you let your full weight fall—grounding yourself against his hard-on, skirt completely bunched up—he pushes up. Adjusts his stance in that way men do, spreading his thighs and lighting you on fire. His head tilts, seeking your eyes. He knows what he’s fucking doing.

“You got a condom?” you ask, hands around his neck, fingers weaving in his hair. You think he’ll say no, and you’ll kiss him and say, ‘I’m on the pill. There’s no one else. I need you.’

But, he surprises you. Huffs bashfully, reaches in his side-pocket, retrieves a single shiny foil package. Bunching your brows, your smile is devious as you tilt your head back at him, cooing: “What the hell is that?”

Is he fucking blushing? You can hardly tell in the darkness, but it feels like he might be.

“Robby may or may not have bribed Heather for intel.”

You gasp, playfully, smacking him softly on the shoulder. “Fucking snakes, all of you! I’m surrounded by goddamn sellouts.” But then, quieter, mellower: “You knew I was here? That’s why you came?”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” Sorry for the abrupt shut-out, the fleeting jealousy that wrecked through him faster than a bullet, the way he had no idea what the fuck to do with it.

You tut your lips, shaking your head. “Talk to me next time, alright, big guy?”

“Done,” he breathed, capturing your lips.

You melt against him, grounding your hips with a sigh he swallows, rocking your clothed center against his. With a shaky hand you snatch the condom from him, breaking the kiss. Watching with a bitten lip as he unfastens the cargo, pushes his pants and briefs down, wraps a hand around himself and sighs. His frame vibrates with it.

You put the condom on with little fanfare and a shaky palm, giggling breathlessly when you catch his eye. He kisses you, hands tight around your hips, guiding you forward.

And when you finally sink down on him, having him this way for the first time, it’s tectonic. Cataclysmic in the best of ways, devastating as you feel him stretching you, feeling full and warm and yours.

The sigh that leaves you is a broken thing, hot against his lips, eyes rolling back as he bottoms out. You’re pulsing with it, this need, slick and aching as his palms start guiding you into a steady rhythm.

“Fuck, Jack…” you whine against his lips when he starts rocking up, holding you still instead. Your head falls on the junction between his neck and shoulder; nipping at his skin, mouth falling apart when you feel him sneak his palm between your bodies, thumb catching on your clit and toying with it.

You’re scorching. Sensitive, hips swerving, chasing after a climax that draws nearer with each snap of his hips. His breaths are ragged next to your ear, deep and searing as you clench around him.

“Yeah?” he croons breathlessly, turning his head against your neck. “You feeling good, baby? Tell me, tell—”

“Y–yes,” you gasp out, backing up and sitting straighter. With a shaking hand, you grab the one that’s on your hip, making him wrap his fingers around your neck again.

It’s tethering, blistering, right. It’s showing you trust him in a way you haven’t yet explored together. It’s narrowing down the world to just his eyes as his fingers apply calculated pressure on your arteries; nothing existing past the heat of his gaze, his open lips, his breathless groans, his cock that’s still rocking inside you.

It lasts for a moment, and then it’s gone. Fingers slackening around your neck, his thumb rubbing the skin of your throat, your head swirling and swimming on cloud nine. A little harder to think, to feel time passing. It’s so fucking good it’s bordering on senseless.

“I’m gonna come,” you cry out as his fingers find your clit again, finding a rhythm and holding it; much like he locks someone’s gaze, much like he fixes crises before Surgery even gets the page.

“Do it,” he moans against your lips, “I wanna feel you. Do it, sweetheart, I know you can…”

He doesn’t speed up, he doesn’t slow down; he keeps hitting every motion steadily, surely, like making you come around him is as easy to him as breathing.

It’s only when you feel his hold tightening beneath your jaw again—when the world narrows into a slit, when your head starts swimming in a cloying haze, when each touch is cranked up to eleven—that you melt.

Shaking, writhing in his steady hold, falling down like jelly against his arms, his name on your lips and your tongue in his mouth. It spreads from the bud of your clit like tendril up your muscles, weaving between nerves and arteries like syrup. It leaves you spent.

He’s not far behind. With your body like putty in his hands, with your husky voice in his ear—nipping at him, whispering filth you’re not half-sure you even remember—he comes apart the only way he knows how. Sharp, intense, real. Keeps pushing against you through it, riding it out. The stimulation is dizzying, viscous and nearly too much.

Holy shit.

The car is quiet in the aftermath.

Windows fogged up, keys and underwear and a pair of burgundy tights you got on sale forgotten on the floor, breaths mingling in post-orgasmic haze.

It’s perfect. Or, better yet, it’s right.

His hands are on your back, curling around you completely as you try lifting yourself up. The movement is shaky, and his eyes shine when he catches onto it. His palm comes around, cupping your flaming cheek, thumb rubbing the skin with such softness you think you might actually die. The look on his face is worse, though. Soft, brows furrowed, drinking you in like he’ll go blind and this is his last chance at picturing you. Your chest swells with it, this… fuck, what even is it?

Love feels like too big of a word, too scary; staring you down like the maw of a gaping gorge ready to drag you in its depths. But, like feels too small; too insignificant and wrong for the way he makes your heart surge, the way you look for him first in every room you walk in.

You don’t know right now, or you’re too fucked-out to think, or you do know and it just feels more like being held at gunpoint rather than a self-actualization. Whatever the fuck it is, you’ll figure it out later.

Right now, you just let your lips melt with his own, giggling as his stubble tickles you, huffing a moan together as he pulls out. Back in his place, you’re looking at him from where you’re leaning on his kitchen counter, eyes softening as he places the prosthetic against the arm of the couch, as he sighs and lies back into the cushions with a hand rubbing his aching skin. But then his voice rings out: “I got a new sugar pack, 500 grams. Try not to use it all, yeah?”

And you know. You know.

You love him.

(It’s fifteen minutes before 7AM, and slowly, the day crew has begun trickling in. First it was Dana, then Robby, then Yolanda. You handed patients off, updated last-minute details on the charts, exchanged hello’s and quips. Jack is at the nurses’ station, smiling as Dana tells him about a recipe whose name you missed. Just that it is a ‘must.’ He turns and looks at you, eyes softening around the edges, mouth quirking, dimples showing. You shoot a wink, and maybe, if you were asked, you could pass it off as aimed at Dana instead.

Perlah and Princess are watching; goddamn walking security cameras. You don’t mind, though. Maybe you can even fuck with them about the bet.

Oh, yeah, the bet. When will Dr. Abbot and his favorite jockey finally drop their pants? Find out on page four in the ever-growing PTMC hot-goss column.

Bridget and Shen started it, and then it trickled over to the day shift, and you kind of love Robby and Garcia and Collins and Mohan for being tight-lipped about it. You actually believe it’s because they want the money for themselves, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers.

“D’you see that wink? You think they did it already?”

“Are you kidding me?! I got money on another week, tops.”

“Walk you home?” asks Jack.

“Yeah,” you grin, shooting a look over your shoulder just to watch two of your three favorite day-shift nurses fumble and flail. “Let’s go.”)

#this was so good i ate her up omg #the pitt #fic recs

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fireheartpages · 1 month ago

Text

forever | b.d.

bodhi durran x reader

masterlist

word count: 3k

summary: You trace his bare shoulder. “Is there anything I can do? Make you feel better?” “Marry me,” he mutters, and you’re absolutely certain you didn’t hear him right.

notes: second person pov, no use of y/n. heavy onyx storm spoilers. literally the whole thing is an onyx storm spoiler. poe dameron-ification of bodhi durran. fluff and a lot of angst and im so sorry. came to me in a dream. i heard it was bodhi week, so my nod to @empyreanevents even tho this doesn’t really fit any of the prompts, i just can’t let that slide by without writing something bc i love this boy! and i miss him! and just reread onyx storm twice. he reminds me of a labrador puppy. in my head this is bodhi and baby from toml. guys onyx storm messed me up so bad. this is kind of all over the place. sorry again. (proofread while sleepy)

There’s a reason the expression “heavy is the head that wears the crown” exists.

Squad leaders and Wingleaders, captain and generals, kings and queens and viscounts. People in power were under a burden, a visible, tangible one with nasty effects. Good leaders wore the burden on their chest, and bad leaders put it in their back pocket, trying to hide it away and ignore it. Often, the weight of power is mixed with the confidence it bestows. Assurance in stride and worry in raised shoulders. Perfect posture and a scrunched brow. Easy confidence accompanied by tapping fingers. There was no way of knowing what was going on in someone else’s mind—the Navarrian law made sure of that—but it wasn’t hard to decipher someone, if you knew where to look.

For example, it was easy to compare one Wingleader to another. Dain Aetos wore power with less grace than Xaden Riorson. He felt the weight like a strung bow, carrying it on his shoulder with a soft heart. Whereas his predecessor favored a mask of cool indifference. He wore the weight in the tick of his jaw, and in his grasp of control.

Or, one could compare the Commanding Generals of Basgiath. General Sorrengail wielded her power like a dagger, sharp and succinct, and carried it with perfect posture and a broken heart. General Aetos wielded his power like a battle ax, and carried it with a menacing stride and blackened soul.

Royalty tended to carry power differently than Leadership. The quiet acceptance of a bloodline bestowed upon a person, versus the fight to prove oneself as worthy of it.

There’s a reason royalty doesn’t wear rider black, they say. But what happens when it does?

｡･:*˚:✧｡

The day Xaden Riorson was named Duke of Tyrrandor, Bodhi Durran had a panic attack.

You could not believe it was his first. Ever.

“Honey,” you croon. You nestle your fingers into the curls at the base of his neck, using your other hand to bring one of his to your own heart. You keep your voice low, as comforting as you can be. There’s no real danger, and for a second, you can’t really understand why he was reacting this way. “Breathe for me. Feel my heartbeat and try to use it to slow yours.”

Bodhi drops his temple until it rests against your collarbone, but he obeys. His hand splays against your chest, and he sucks in a breath. He’s trying. His breaths are coming in ragged gasps, all hiccupy and sharp, but he is trying.

“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” he chokes out. “This feeling—”

“Shh,” you soothe, brushing your hand over his shoulders, down his back, and up to his hair again. You curl the fingers holding his hand between his own, careful to keep his palm pressed to your skin so he could feel the steady beat of your heart. “It’s a panic attack. Just try to calm down for me so you don’t make yourself sick.”

He’s propped against a desk, with you standing between his thighs in an empty classroom. When he’d found you, he’d barely been keeping it together, a choppy rise and fall to his shoulders and unshed tears shining in his eyes. The second you got him alone, he broke down, tears flowing freely until he was gasping for air, and you had a brief moment of panic yourself before the problem solving part of your brain kicked in. You sat him down, trying to get him to speak, but it was nearly impossible between his sobs. Okay, regulation first, questions later.

“I feel like I’m going to throw up,” he says, low and muffled by your jacket.

“You’ve got yourself so worked up that you’re not breathing,” you respond. You go to take his face in your hands but he shudders and coughs, and you reach for the water skin at your hip instead, holding it to his lips. “Just take a sip.”

He does, and for a moment, he seems to have calmed down. You bring your hands up to brush along his jaw, interlocking your fingers behind his neck. His hand falls from your chest as he brings his gaze up to meet yours. The sight breaks your heart clean in two, the feeling so prevalent in your chest that you’re glad his hand was no longer pressed there, since you were fairly certain he would have been able to feel it. His skin was splotchy, tear tracks staining his cheeks, eyes rubbed red and puffy, lashes stuck together with the moisture. His eyes fell shut, and his body heaved with a shuttering breath. And you pressed a delicate kiss to his temple.

“Talk to me, Bo,” you whisper into his dark curls.

“That’s never happened to me,” he says, still breathless and hiccuping. “I feel like I can’t get a deep breath.”

“You had a panic attack,” you say, rubbing circles into the place his neck meets his shoulders. He was still shaking, and a sob wriggled its way up his throat again. You sit him up, placing one hand on his cheek, one hand on his chest, crooning, “Hey hey hey hey hey, none of that. Breathe with me.”

You take a dramatized deep breath in, counting to five. Hold for three. Exhale and count to seven. You repeat that a few more times, until his hiccups are few and far between, and he’s slumped against your chest.

“‘M sorry,” he mumbles, low and slurred and electric against the skin of your neck.

“For what?” you ask, and you can’t help but laugh. “Sorry for having your first panic attack?” He nestles his nose against your skin, and you feel him take a breath on your counts of his own accord. “Which is insane, by the way. How are you that well adjusted?”

That earns you a small laugh. “Well adjusted is the last thing I’d say to describe any of us here.”

“Never had a panic attack,” you muse, containing your path over his shoulder, letting him wrap his arms around your waist and pull you closer. “Well, first time for everything, as they say. Guess I’m just glad I was here to witness it. Gods, no one is going to believe me!”

His face is smushed against your clavicle, so his words come out muffled and unintelligible, but you think he said something in between shut up and I love you—three words you had yet to speak aloud to him, but that played on repeat in your mind day in and day out. Bodhi was fond of them, though.

Across the breakfast table, picking at your eggs until your appetite manifests in the later hours of the day? I love you.

A stumbling dismount off your dragon after so many hours in the seat you were pretty sure your ass had scale imprints and you would never move properly again? I love you.

When he has you pinned down after losing yet another sparring match, curls falling into his eyes when you’re both breathless and worked up? I love you.

After he places a kiss to your knuckles as you walk hand in hand through Basgaith, the weight of the day heavy on you and exhaustion tugging at the corners of your vision? I love you.

When he slips two fingers inside you, makes you shudder and arch against him in a way no one has, when you should be getting up to face the challenges of the day or sleeping to better prepare for them in the next? I love you.

When he holds you tighter than anyone ever has before, skin against skin, limbs so intertwined neither of you are sure where one person ends and the other begins, his hand splayed over your back and your fingers in his curls? I love you.

You were dumb for not saying them. You were so wildly in love with the man it often made your chest hurt, feel like you could explode with it. But, at this point, it just felt awkward. Like when someone has your name wrong and you let it slide and then realize they’re going to continue to have your name wrong and by now it just feels too late to correct them? That.

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on now?” you whisper.

He slowly excavates from your person, blinking up at you, expression bleary and hazy. “Lindell and Lewellen got sanctioned for hiding Aretia. We all knew it was going to happen, but the Senarium is so scared of losing our numbers in the riot, they gave it to Xaden.” He shakes his head, and your mind whirls. “I feel so selfish.”

That brings a furrow to your brow. You smooth your thumb along the line of his bottom lip, shaking your head like you can shift the puzzle piece into place. “Why are you selfish?”

“Xaden is the Duke of Tyrrendor, and all I can think about is that it makes me next in line.”

Your heart falls straight out of your chest, past your stomach, and hits the floor. You swallow hard. “What?”

“He has a seat in the Senarium. He found me, and he told me, and he basically benched me. Said I have to be safe in case something happens to him, and that—” He cuts off, screwing up his face, trying to bury himself in your chest again, but you hold him there. You wipe at the tears still staining his cheeks.

“I don’t—”

“I can’t tell you,” he says, with so much hurt in his voice. “Just look, please, and then I won’t have to have told you.”

“Bodhi,” you chide, nearly a reprimand. “I won’t.” You never use your signet. He’s the only person who knows, who knows the extent of it. The only person you trust enough not to get you killed for your inntinnsic abilities.

“Please,” he whispers, and you can feel the moment his shields drop.

Your own dragon is, thankfully, quiet in that moment. The issue is that you never use it, so you don’t have it honed very well. You look at him, and it’s all to easy to slip into his mind. Your terrified to take more than he’s offering, but—

Red. You see red. You’re not angry, but Bodhi definitely is. The fury associated with Xaden’s red-rimmed eyes is the first thing you feel, then your own shock. He’s a fucking venin.

You can’t help the gasp that escapes. “He’s—”

“Shh.” Bodhi stands. He’s shaken, unsteady, but his hands are firm on your waist as he brings his temple to rest against yours. “You cannot tell anyone. Only Garrick and Imogen know. Well, and Violet. And you, I guess.”

“And now he’s the Duke of Tyrrendor. And if he goes too far, or someone else finds out,” you breathe.

Bodhi looks at you, and it’s fucking intense. In that moment, he is the physical manifestation of every term in a psychology tome. Tense, worried, anxious, manic.

“Then I’m the Duke of Tyrrendor.”

｡･:*˚:✧｡

Above all else, you’re glad to be the one person Bodhi doesn’t have to pretend in front of. He gets into fights with his friends now. He’s bull-headed and tenacious in his unwavering loyalty. But he argues, with Xaden mostly. With Violet sometimes, with Garrick and Imogen once or twice. He’s stubborn in the way he refuses to back down, just to let Xaden be reckless because he knows there’s a successor to the throne. That Aretia and all of Tyrrendor are safe, just because there’s a back up. A spare.

Before you knew him, you’d always thought Bodhi handled leadership with grace. He was solid, unwavering in his choices. He went above and beyond to help those under his command. But the more time you spent together, the more you saw just how much it weighed on him. How worried he was he would make a wrong choice. This latest development only added to that. He would crawl in bed next to you, crashing the second his head hit the pillow. Physical exhaustion was one thing, mental exhaustion another. But emotional exhaustion? That shit was heavier than an anvil.

You did your best to support him, but most of the time it seemed futile. The way he would wrap around you, rest his head on your chest and play with your hair made it all seem worth it, though. Like maybe you were helping. Lightening his load, if only for a moment.

It wasn’t until Violet’s Quest Squad returned empty handed that all hope seemed to be lost.

He crawls in bed that night, hair still damp from the shower and a bone-deep sort of tired lining every inch of his body.

“I don’t know what to do,” he mumbles into the pillow. “I love you.”

“Bo,” you whisper, lying down beside him. “You’re doing enough, I promise.”

“He won’t let me do anything.” He cracks an eye open, the dark brown of his iris nearly black, no demarcation line to see where his blown pupil begins and ends.

You trace his bare shoulder. “Is there anything I can do? Make you feel better?”

“Marry me,” he mutters, and you’re absolutely certain you didn’t hear him right.

You sit up. He follows.

“I didn’t mean—okay. Yeah, I do.” He shakes his head, dropping his face into the palm of his hand. He’s fucking smirking. He looks back up at you. “Marry me.”

“Bodhi.”

“My mom would have fucking loved you,” he says, and your eyes go wide. “Almost as much as I do. And I want to spend the rest of my life with you, however much time I have left. Forever, or something close to it.”

You can’t breathe. There’s no air left in your shared bedroom—his bedroom. The one he basically moved you into, since leadership gets their own bunks. “Is this because of—”

“No. Yes. Kind of. I really love you. Will you marry me?”

You stare at him.

“That’s usually a question that requires an answer,” Shocair chimes in helpfully.

“Butt out,” you hiss down the bond, into the deepest crevices of your mind.

“I love you. You love me. I think we know where this is heading—”

“I do,” you say, cutting him off.

He blinks. “That’s usually saved for the vows—”

“I haven’t said it yet,” you scramble to explain, like suddenly you don’t have enough time. Like this moment will slip through your fingers if you don’t get the words out fast enough. “But I do, and I should have so much sooner—”

“Is that a yes?” He’s laughing! You’re making a fool of yourself while your boyfriend proposes and he’s laughing!

“I love you,” you spit out. “Yes. Yes, I love you, and I will marry you.”

He looks elated. His smile is the brightest you’ve seen in months—at least since you left Aretia—and his hand goes to the chain he wears around his neck. The one with the gold band you’ve never asked him about.

“This was my mom’s,” he says, unclasping the chain so he can slip the band off. “She gave it to me before the execution, and I swear the first time I kissed you I knew I would be slipping it on your finger.” He takes your hand in his and does just that.

The second the metal touches your skin, you plant both hands on the side of his face and bring his lips to yours.

“Now we both get to be in line for this stupid crown,” he says in between kisses, nipping at your skin and moving down your neck.

“Don’t remind me, or I might change my answer.”

The ceremony is small. The closest temple and the closest priestess you can find the next morning. Xaden, Garrick, and all of Second Squad—which Bodhi had argued made it less than small, but you refused to do something like this without first real family you’d had.

It was jovial, and Ridoc made you promise to get drunk afterwards. You were married in your flight leathers, and all felt right in the world, for just a moment, as you took his last name, and made the second most important bond of your life.

For a moment, forever seemed like a tangible concept.

｡･:*˚:✧｡

Moments are never meant to last.

Bodhi realizes this, mid-battle, as he watches you ride away on your massive blue. He couldn’t watch you be hurt, couldn’t watch his wife succumb to the evil all around them. They were losing. Losing hard, and the battle wasn’t nearly over.

Bodhi looked to where Xaden stood, utterly still and furious. He’s staring up at where Seagyl is ensnared. The venin have fucking dragon catching nets. And he realizes—he’s next.

The venin looks to the sky, at your retreating form, and raises his hand.

Bodhi’s signet doesn’t work on venin. That doesn’t make any sense, his signet is always be balance. It’s in the name. But he’s not powerful enough to stop them, not powerful enough to save you from whatever is about to happen next.

“Don’t!” Cuir roars into his mind. “She will live, and be pissed at you if you do this.”

“I have to save you both,” he sends back to him. Cuir had an annoying habit of being able to talk him off a ledge, but this time, it might not be enough. “I have to do everything I can.”

He feels it. The thrum and churn of the power of the earth beneath his feet. He could be complete with this. It would amplify his signet, and then it would work. He would be able to fight the dark wielders, and it wouldn’t matter if he had to become the thing he hates most in order to do so. It would keep everyone here safe. Basgiath, Tyrrendor, Navarre—everyone would be safe. For the price of the soul he had just promised to you the night before. Forever.

He would keep you safe.

Bodhi placed his hand on the ground and drew, and moved you one step closer to the Tyrrish throne.

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