#ao3 wrapped code

[whywasmaddie]

AO3 Wrapped

This is my version of an AO3 wrapped code!! It can run for any year (although if not the current year (2025!!) it requires you to click around a bit in your ao3 history). It also requires you to log into google, unfortunately, but I can't change that.

Please please PLEASE let me know if something isn't working or the code has an error - I didn't write it in google colab and while I've tested it, there might well be things that work slightly differently. Make sure to read the notes at the top, and have fun with what you read in 2024!!!

This has been my little project for basically the whole year, and I owe a lot to the authors of the original code, klipklapper and teresachenec, as a lot of the code is still theirs and this has taught me a lot about coding and python as I've tried to make this work, so thank you!

[toa-greatmind-nothingislittle]

here is my ao3 wrapped 2024 which is a very fun thing to do and maybe reveals too much about me.

[wigglesforsquiggles]

‘the code will pause every 10 pages of history browsed’

me, w like 1500 fics read this year:

[oldangryslytherin]

CAN SOMEONE HELP WITH THE AO3 WRAPPED

I NEED A STEP BY STEP BC THERES CODING AND I STUDIED DIPLOMACY WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT

[imdyingslowly]

pls someons help me why does this keep popping up 4 my ao3 wrapped

[kinasecrystal]

In case some of the “fics” were comics with zero words, the code repair is this:

word = s.find('dd', attrs={'class':"words"}).text

# Check if word is empty before converting to int

if word:

word = int(word.replace(',',""))

else:

# Handle the case where word count is missing (e.g., set to 0)

word = 0

AO3 Wrapped Check

it's basically-- in @nikoniclove and @storiesofsvu we trust !!

also i didn’t even read cardigans and converse— pretty positive i just accidentally opened it because it’s in the jemily x reader tags

link to do your own!!

[cuntyji]

PANT0NE 6969 ❤︎‬ VARIOUS JJK MEN X FEMALE READER

Synopsis: A bold color choice, a little too much free time, and way too much devotion. One question: is that really the shade they think it is?

Warnings: 18+ sexual content, MDNI. Smut & crack. Established Relationship. Geto has not deflected, Toji is a DILF/older than reader (can be just by a couple of years, but feel free to read it how you'd like), Sukuna true-form is not implied since he only has one cock, but feel free to read it as such. Reader has a vagina + bush/fem-bodied. Hair pulling, doggy-style, P in V, dirty talk, creampies [implied], oral (seperate f. and m. receiving), riding, 😺 referred to as "her", dom! Nanami, top! Toji and Geto (seperate), sub! Choso, power bottom/switch! Sukuna

Note: From @nkopurin and I with love 😍 Thank you for helping me brainstorm this idea hehe <3

✶⋆.˚ Ao3  

GOJO SATORU

It started with a need.

Not a hair-related one, not initially. It began with something far more sacred and carnal. You were in bed one night, Gojo passed out like a very tall, very dumb angel after an equally dumb but impressively athletic session of “babe, let’s try standing up this time” — and your eyes, glazed but focused, landed on the thing.

Not the thing. His thing. Your phone, really, but more specifically, a photo of his dick. It wasn't anything risqué; in fact, it was borderline artistic. Backlit like a renaissance painting, his hand casually wrapped around the base like he was offering it to a museum. It was… majestic.

And pink.

Not an obnoxious pink. Not bubblegum, not fuchsia. It was a warm, flushed, expensive pink. Like blushing porcelain. The kind of pink that made you understand why entire cultures assigned gender to colors. This one? This was the tip of Gojo Satoru pink. A pink that made you feel cherished, cursed, and absolutely deranged all at once.

So you screen-shot it.

Uploaded it to a color picker site. 

Hex code #F7A5B3. 

Suspiciously gentle. Suspiciously perfect. Definitely suspicious, considering the site immediately tried to sell you 400 crypto coins and an NFT of someone else's nipple. But you took that code and ran.

Now, you couldn’t just buy that color in a bottle. No one in the hair dye industry had taken the noble, godly risk of bottling Gojo Satoru's dickhead hue. Cowards. And so, Saturday morning, armed with seven different pinks from a local store, a bowl, and a wildly misplaced sense of purpose, you began to mix.

“This is what God made me for,” you whispered, wrist-deep in dye, adding a smidge more ‘peach dazzle’ to your cauldron of horny alchemy.

The end result? Perfection. If a cherry blossom had an orgasm, this would be the aftermath. You smoothed it into your scalp, grinning like a lunatic as your bathroom mirror caught the glint in your eye—the kind of glint that only comes from knowing your hair now looked like your husband’s dick tip.

When Gojo walked through the door that evening, adjusting his blindfold with one hand and tossing his bag with the other, the first thing he did was stop. Blink. 

And then blink again, which was impressive, considering he was blindfolded.

“Oh?” he said, already walking toward you with the cautious reverence of a man approaching a shrine. “New hair?”

You didn’t say anything. Just angled your head in the light so it caught that very specific pink, glowing like divine foreskin in the golden hour. Gojo's brows lifted, then furrowed, then lifted again. 

He leaned in.

“Is this… me?”

You nodded solemnly. “Tip-inspired,” you clarified. “I color-matched.”

He said nothing for a long moment. Just took your chin gently in his hand and peered at your hair like he was identifying a long-lost artifact.

“…Baby, that’s so fucking hot.”

You snorted. “I figured you’d like it.”

“Like it? I feel seen. My dick feels celebrated.”

He kissed you hard, and somewhere between the makeout session and him half-carrying you to the bed, he muttered:

“I should return the favor.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding seriously. “Solidarity. Pubes.”

“No.”

“C’mon, I could go pastel! Lavender balls! Romantic!”

“Satoru, no.”

He was already halfway to the bathroom. You heard drawers opening. Things crashing. You had to throw a towel at him to stop the chaos. He caught it, grinning.

“You’re no fun,” he pouted, clearly half a second from ordering glitter dye off the internet.

“You’re not dying your happy trail. That’s the hill I'll die on.”

“Fine. But next time you do highlights… might I suggest the undertones of my shaft?”

You slapped him with the towel.

Your hair, though? Flawless. Divine. Blessed. And every time Gojo kissed the top of your head afterward, you could tell he knew exactly what he was kissing.

TOJI FUSHIGURO

It started with the nails.

Well—technically, it started with Toji giving you a lazy grunt of “go treat yourself or whatever” and sliding over a thick roll of cash like he was paying off a hit. And you did treat yourself. Just not in the way he expected.

Toji didn’t ask many questions when you came home, freshly manicured, tapping your newly adorned fingers against the countertop just loud enough for him to notice. You watched him squint, suspicious already. “The fuck’s that color?” he muttered.

You gave a tiny smile, tapping the pad of your thumb against your ring finger for emphasis—the ring finger that had his initials done in dark, bold lettering, sharp and crisp over the muted pink polish. “Oh, this?” you said sweetly. “Just something inspired by you.”

He blinked. Then looked again. His brow creased. 

“That’s my—wait. That’s my fuckin’ d—”

“Tip,” you offered helpfully. “Yup.”

Toji clapped a hand over his face and groaned like he’d aged ten years in a second.

“You’re despicable,” he mumbled through his palm. “Absolutely insane.”

And you just shrugged. because he hadn’t not given you the money for it. And anyway, it was a lovely color—rich, dusky, masculine in that very specific flushed way. The shade that only existed when he was half hard and half annoyed and half threatening to fuck your brains out for misbehaving, which was often. But then, of course, the nails weren’t enough. Because what’s a set without a matching main event?

The next time he saw you, it was in the evening light, your freshly dyed hair catching the low amber glow. And you swore you saw his soul leave his body.

“You didn’t,” he said flatly.

“I did,” you grinned.

He stared long and hard. The color was perfect. That dusky, raw pink, slightly darker at the roots. You’d even toned it to match that exact heat-flushed, post-shower hue he sported when he was about to fuck you against the nearest surface. He didn’t ask how you explained the shade to the ladies at the salon. He refused to. The possibilities alone were giving him a headache.

“Y’need therapy,” he grunted.

“Probably,” you chirped.

He dragged a hand down his face. Muttered, “...Fuckin’ hell,” and shook his head.

Still—when the lights were out, and your ridiculous little tribute of a hairstyle was bouncing under his hand as he pounded into you from behind like he had something to prove, he didn’t complain. 

His grip was punishing in your hair, the strands twisted tight around his fingers, just enough pressure to keep your head arched back perfectly so he could see your expression melt every time he shoved in deeper.

“Look at you,” he grunted, his voice ragged, his thrusts brutal and steady, “Wearin’ my fuckin’ cock like a badge.”

He tugged harder, yanked your head back until your mouth parted and your eyes fluttered. His hips snapped forward again, loud and wet and obscene. 

“Crazy fuckin’ woman,” he rasped, biting down on your shoulder now, lips dragging against sweaty skin, “—gettin’ salon dye to match my dick, the fuck’s wrong with you?”

“Everything,” you choked out, nearly delirious. “I’m so gone for you, baby, fuck—”

And he laughed. Full chest, low and amused, filthy even in his exasperation. His hand smoothed over your scalp for a second—like he might show you tenderness—and then he pulled again, drove in with a force that knocked the breath from your lungs.

“You’re gonna have to go back to that salon with a limp,” he growled in your ear, “Let ‘em see what happens when you walk in smellin’ like my cum.” You moaned, shuddering, knees almost giving in.

Toji was too old for this. Too grizzled, too tired to understand your generation’s brain rot. But that didn’t mean he didn’t fuck like he was born for it. Didn’t mean he didn’t leave you twitching and trembling and ruined by the end of it.

And when he finally collapsed next to you, panting, sweat-slick and sore, he rolled over just enough to look at your hair again.

“…It is a nice color,” he muttered reluctantly.

You smiled against his chest. “I'll get the matching lipstick next.”

He groaned again, reaching over to slap your ass, hard. 

“Despicable.”

“Yep.”

“…Fuck, I love you.”

“You'd better.”

CHOSO KAMO

Choso is agitated.

Not angry—no, that would’ve been easier to deal with. Choso doesn’t really do anger the way others do. He just gets… tense. Quiet. Eyes narrowed, arms crossed, head tilted slightly like he’s watching a very slow train wreck he’s emotionally invested in. He's standing at the edge of the bathroom now, shoulders stiff, gaze locked on your hair like it personally offended him. 

“You didn’t tell me it would be permanent,” he says, voice calm but too calm.

You blink. “It's not?”

His whole body jerks like you just threw a bucket of ice water at him.

“...What?”

You laugh, a little confused, a little charmed. “Baby. It’s not permanent. It's semi-permanent. It’ll fade in, like, six weeks.”

He's silent. Comically silent. His eyes dart back to your hair. 

Then to your face. 

Then to your hair again.

“…Oh,” he says softly.

And then—

“Oh.”

He sounds heartbroken.

You watch him slowly sit down on the edge of the tub like you just told him you were dying.

“It’ll… fade?”

You nod.

“But—" he gestures vaguely at your head. “You did it for me.”

“I can touch it up,” you assure him, walking over, hands light on his shoulders. “You can even help.”

He brightens subtly. Barely. But it’s there.

“…Okay. Okay. But I wanna be there when you do it.”

You raise an eyebrow. “To help?”

“To supervise.”

“Supervise what?”

His voice drops to a mutter. “The accuracy.”

Which is how you end up here, two weeks later, with a towel around your neck, gloves on, dye ready—and Choso already pantless, sitting obediently on the closed toilet seat with his dick in his lap like a willing participant in some sort of medical study.

“You sure you’re okay like that?” you ask, flicking open the dye tube.

He nods. Quickly. “I don't wanna interfere with the process.”

He's already a little hard. You try not to giggle. Try.

You crouch, squinting, face inches away from his flushed, semi-erect cock. 

“Hmm. Looks a little warmer in tone today.”

He shivers.

“C-could be the lighting,” he says, voice pitched slightly higher than normal.

You tilt your head. “Or blood flow.”

He inhales through his nose, thighs twitching. “Possible,” he says weakly.

You bring your face even closer, inspecting from another angle. Your breath ghosts over the tip and he whimpers, hands flying to his thighs like he’s trying to pin them down from shaking.

“Stop me if this is too much,” you murmur, not moving away at all. He nods quickly. Too quickly. “No, n-no, ’m good. I'm—I'm fine. I wanna help.”

You hum, pressing a kiss to the underside, featherlight. Then lick a slooow, curious stripe up the length.

He chokes. “N-not during the dye,” he says, voice paper-thin and trembling. “I-it’s not safe—what if the chemicals—”

“I'm careful,” you murmur, already taking him in. He breaks. Visibly. One hand reaches for your shoulder, but he doesn’t push, doesn’t pull—just holds, clinging like he’s about to float away.

“Oh—fuck,” he breathes, already leaking, already shaking. “Fuck, you can’t—you c-can’t focus on the color like this—”

“I don't have to,” you whisper against the head, lips slick with him now. “I already got it memorized.”

He lets out a noise so soft, so pathetic, it makes you suck harder just to hear it again.

By the time the dye’s halfway through processing in your hair, he’s slumped back, completely undone, flushed all over and breathing like he just got resuscitated. His thighs are twitching, his hands are useless, and his eyes are glassy, blinking at you like you just changed his worldview.

“That wasn’t supervising,” he mumbles, dazed.

“It was quality control,” you reply, deadpan.

He groans.

“...When’s the next touch-up?”

You grin, leaning forward to press a sloppy kiss to his lips.

“Four weeks. Mark your calendar.”

RYOMEN SUKUNA

Sukuna is, at first, appreciative.

He’s lounging on his throne, fingers lazily tapping against the armrest as he watches you strut in with that smug look on your face and new hair on your head. The color hits him first. Soft, almost sugary—like the inside of a bleeding peach. Not quite natural, not quite real. A pink that seems too whimsical to exist in his world of blood and ash. He hums, raising an eyebrow as he gestures vaguely in your direction. 

“An offering, is it?”

You grin. “More like a tribute.”

“Hmm,” he muses, and you can see the faintest curve of amusement on his lips. “A show of worship. How very devoted of you.”

But then he really looks at it, tilting his head as he squints. 

“…What the fuck kind of color is that.”

You blink.

“It’s the color of your cock.”

The silence is immediate and violently loud. Sukuna stares at you like you just announced your intention to marry Gojo Satoru instead of him. His eye twitches, something deep and ancient inside him glitching. And then:

“What the everloving fuck does that mean, you insolent little—”

“You’re loud for someone whose tip looks like a cherry blossom, Suku.”

“It does NOT—”

He's on his feet now, pacing, hands in his hair, swearing in languages the Earth has long since forgotten. The sheer rageful fluster radiating off him is so intense, the walls tremble. He points at you, points at your hair, then points at his own crotch like he’s about to hold it up as exhibit A.

“What part of me—what part of that—makes you think it looks like that color?! Have you lost your mind?! Are you blind? Are you mocking me?!”

You’re nearly doubled over, wheezing with laughter, half in awe and half terrified that you’ve managed to turn the King of Curses into an angry little ball of embarrassment. He growls, bare-chested and barefoot and furious, stomping back to his throne with his arms crossed.

“You’re never allowed to speak again,” he grumbles, sulking. “Blasphemy. Absolute heresy. You should be punished—”

“Say less,” you chirp, tossing him a wink.

He sputters.

Later that night, the punishment is you straddling him on his throne, bouncing on his cock with your pink-stained hair swinging wildly around your face—and it turns out, for all his complaints, he has not stopped staring at it. His head’s tipped back against the throne, jaw clenched, trying to focus on anything else but the way your hair bounces perfectly with each slam of your hips.

“Fuck—quit movin’ like that,” he rasps, voice strained.

“You mean riding you?” you ask sweetly, snapping your hips a little harder, watching his hands twitch at his sides like he’s barely holding back.

“No—the hair. Your fucking hair.”

You grin.

He grabs your waist suddenly, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, and slams up into you, making you squeal.

“You gonna do it again?” he huffs against your throat, panting. “You gonna keep it that color just to drive me mad, you little slut?”

“Yup,” you whisper, biting your lip, rolling your hips just right. His hands shake as his head drops to your shoulder. You feel the smallest, most pitiful groan leave his chest.

He’s losing it. Completely. Eyes hazy, body shuddering under yours, trying desperately to focus on the feel of your cunt and not the goddamn glow of your cursed hair in the dark.

“Never been more disrespected in my life,” he groans, dragging his tongue across your throat. “I hate you. Fuck, I hate you—”

“You’re gonna cum inside me again, aren’t you?”

He whimpers.

And it’s the prettiest little sound you’ve ever heard him make.

NANAMI KENTO

Nanami is speechless.

Not the stunned, dazed, jaw-dropped kind. No—this is the quietly judging, emotionally restrained, deep sigh echoing from the depths of his tired soul kind of speechless. Glasses pushed up the bridge of his nose, brow twitching, card bill in hand.

“You spent how much on what?”

You sit innocently on the couch, hair freshly dyed and glowing with that faded, strangely warm blush-pink hue, scrolling on your phone with the nonchalance of a criminal who thinks they've pulled off the perfect heist.

“...I had to match it perfectly.”

He rubs his temples. 

“With my—?”

“Yup.”

He closes his eyes, breathing through his nose as he reconsiders every life decision that led him to this moment. Not that it’s entirely surprising. You’ve always had the most questionable taste in financially irresponsible love languages. This isn’t even the worst of it. 

No, the worst was that one time you used the card to commission a hand-stitched, button-eyed plushie of him from a niche artist in another country. He found it tucked under your pillow one night, arms outstretched like it missed him. He didn’t say a word. Just...sat down and took a long sip of his whiskey.

But this? This has his hands in your hair more often than he consciously intends. Long fingers carding through it when you're curled up in bed beside him. Resting on your shoulders while he's driving, letting his knuckles brush the strands of your hair absently as he shifts gears. Sometimes even during mundane moments—while you’re reading, eating, brushing your teeth. He's obsessed in spite of himself.

The problem is, he notices the fading.

“Have you not been using the sulfate-free shampoo I bought you?”

You pause mid-bite of your snack. 

“...There’s special shampoo?”

His eye twitches.

And now you’re here—kneeling on the bedroom floor, blinking up at him as he stands tall, sleeves rolled, belt long forgotten somewhere on the bed. His cock is heavy in his palm, leaking against the curve of your cheek, and he’s dragging the tip slowly across your flushed skin like he’s painting strokes on a blank canvas.

“Hm,” he muses, low and annoyed. “The pink’s uneven.”

You whine, shifting closer, trying to suck him in—but his other hand tightens in your hair and pulls.

“Ah-ah. Not yet. I'm still inspecting.”

“‘Nami,” you whimper, thighs pressed together. “Please—”

He swipes the tip across your cheek again, purposefully slow. “I give you a card. I tell you to be responsible. And you blow hundreds on a dye job you didn’t even bother maintaining.”

You’re panting now, needy, humiliated, as you try to squirm closer for a taste. But he’s holding you exactly where he wants you—on your knees, burning up, mouth open and empty.

“You know,” he mutters, voice dropping lower, “Maybe if you showed me how sorry you are… I'd consider booking the touch-up appointment myself.”

Your eyes sparkle. He scoffs. “Not for free, sweetheart.”

And then finally, finally, he slides the head past your lips, slow and deliberate, watching your lashes flutter and jaw slacken like you’ve just taken communion. He doesn’t fuck your mouth—no, not yet. He holds you there, just the tip resting on your tongue, sighing deeply like he's indulging your little obsession only out of obligation.

“If the color’s still uneven tomorrow,” he mutters, stroking the crown of your head with firm, possessive care, “We're going back to the salon.”

His hips shift just enough to press deeper, and you moan around him.

“After you shampoo. Twice. With what I tell you to use.”

He smiles faintly as your eyes roll back.

Finally. Some accountability.

GETO SUGURU

Geto is trying. Really, truly trying not to laugh.

He walks in, drops his keys in the bowl by the door like always, and greets you with that same low, warm “I’m home” he always does—but then he sees you. Sees the way you’re standing there, all proud and glowing, doing a little turn in your socks like you’re unveiling a whole new self.

And then he sees the hair.

He freezes.

You beam. “Surprise!”

He stares, tilting his head a little as he walks a bit closer, slow and deliberate, like he’s analyzing a cursed object.

“…You dyed your hair,” he says eventually, in that careful, measured tone he uses when he’s trying to piece together a truly confusing curse puzzle.

You nod enthusiastically. “Guess what the color is?”

He squints. Then he blinks.

Then he looks you straight in the eye and says, completely flat:

“My dick?”

Your smile turns so wide that he groans immediately and drags a hand down his face.

“Baby…”

“Don’t you love it?”

“It’s not that I don’t—I mean, the color’s nice, but… that’s what you chose to color-match?”

You puff your cheeks out. “It’s a soft, warm tone with pink undertones! It's romantic!”

“It's the color of my tip.”

“Yes!!”

And that’s when it hits him—just how absurdly hilarious this is. And how absolutely you. He tries to keep it together, he really does, but a smile breaks across his face, tired but amused, and he’s shaking his head like he’s going to lose it. “Oh my god,” he mumbles, wiping at his eyes. “I can't believe you spent money on this. I can't believe I'm involved.”

“You’re the inspiration!” you say defensively, fisting your hands by your sides like you’re presenting a noble act of sacrifice.

He loses it again.

But hours later, when he’s on his knees between your legs, the teasing is far from over. His tongue drags up your thigh slow and indulgent, and he hums like he’s appraising a piece of art. “So... she got the full treatment, huh?”

You moan softly, head falling back. “Mhmm.”

But then he pauses, finger resting just above your mound as he raises a single brow.

“Then why was she left out?”

You blink, dazed. “...What?”

He leans in closer, kisses just above your clit, right at the edge of your bush, and whispers, “She didn’t get a dye job too.”

You slap his shoulder.

“Stop calling it that!”

“Why not? She’s the one who got snubbed,” he says with an exaggerated pout, kissing lower now, slow and taunting. “All that love for my tip, and poor baby down here didn’t get a single brush of attention.”

Your thighs twitch as your face burns. You’re whining now, hips shifting, trying to chase his mouth, but he pulls back just enough to keep you squirming.

“Don’t worry, baby,” he coos, dragging a finger along your slit. “I'll make sure she gets a little pampering tonight.”

“Sugu—”

But you’re cut off by your own gasp when he licks a stripe up your folds, groaning like he’s tasting a five-star meal. His grip tightens around your thighs, spreading you wide, burying himself between your legs like he’s trying to eat the embarrassment right off of you. You’re squealing now, every moan mixed with some mortified whimper as he talks to your pussy like she’s got her own name, her own needs, her own complex about being left out.

“Mmm, she’s being shy,” he murmurs, flicking his tongue with practiced precision, “but I know what she needs.”

You buck against his face, legs shaking, trying and failing to close them around his head.

“Stop making me blush you—fuck—”

“You’re the one who dyed your whole head the color of my cock,” he says, eyes glinting as he looks up, mouth shiny and smug. “You don’t get to be shy now.”

And that’s how your plan to be sweet and romantic ends with your legs thrown over his shoulders, his tongue fucking you open while you babble apologies and try not to die from the sheer secondhand shame of being verbally roasted by your own pussy. And Geto? He’s never been more in love.

a/n: hello !! it has been many a moon since i have written smut....i even pulled out the fancy layout i used to use back in the day :PP (i post smut panels/headers on @cuntpress if you're a writer btw <3) be nice please

[shigussy]

OH YEAH HERES MY SPOTIFY WRAPPED

[yaut-jaknowit]

Story idea: pregnant human gets to the point where she just says fuck it and walks around their home in the nude because it's the only way she can be comfortable. Her yautja mate sees this as an absolute win.

Eyes Never Wander

Character: Wolf (Male Yautja) x AFAB!Pregnant!Reader

Warnings: Suggestive content

Word Count: 2208

Summary: In your homes with Wolf, you are currently pregnant. One thing you've come to learn about Yautja Prime: it's fucking hot and humid. No matter where you lived before could never prepare you for the humidity in the air or the heat that pelted you. With your pregnancy, it has only made that feeling worse. Your clothes would stick to you like a second skin. What's a way to fix that? Go naked around the house. Wolf doesn't mind one bit.

Author Note: Absolute win on both sides. And if you do this while not pregnant. You're about to become pregnant.

Masterlist

Ao3

Out of all the places for you to end up in, this isn’t where you had hoped. The average temperature was a few degrees too high for you to comfortably handle everyday. The humidity was killer as well. It drove you insane when nothing could get dry in a reasonable time. Plus, these aliens have never heard of a dryer. So, any closes you’ve worn take days to dry outside. Even then, they never feel completely dry.

Said clothes would stick to your skin and drive you insane with the over sensitivity of your skin. Everything grew too much for you to handle. In a place you weren’t used to; in home you hadn’t grown up in; with a man you loved so much. He’s the only reason you’ve stayed here, enduring such a harsh environment that wasn’t meant for such a soft human.

Let alone, one so pregnant.

One look at your closet had you closing the door with a slam. “Fuck that,” you murmured and stomped out of the bedroom. Your swollen belly made it evident to everyone what your condition was. No male dared to say a word to you. Yautja or not, do not mess with a pregnant creature. They’ll do everything in their power to protect themselves and their unborn children.

Your male Yautja lover hovers nearby when you go out to the vendors. Wolf will not let you out of his sight around so many people. Though, it was against their code to injure or harm a pregnant creature, he does not trust everyone. You are only human after all. Heavily pregnant and waddling around.

A sight you know he heavily enjoys. His eyes find you whenever you are around. He watches the evidence of his potent seed taking place in your ravish body. You know he likes observing you. He’s never felt this way before with another.

The sound of your fast foot steps catches the male Yautja’s attention. His head peered over the edge of the couch. His gaze immediately finding you marching through the house towards the kitchen. You feel his gaze, piercing through your skin. Nothing to hide the shape of your form moving through the dwelling he’s built.

In the kitchen, you snatched up a fruit that was similar to a dragon fruit mixed with a banana. Strange to look at but it was delicious to consume. When you were about to turn around, large hands gripped at your waist and tugged you flush with a warm, humid body. Despite hating the heat and humidity at the moment, you sighed and relaxed against Wolf’s body. His presences calms you in an instant.

Wolf leaned over your figure and let his tresses create a curtain around the two of you. “What a sight to see, love,” he purred and gripped your hips tighter. “What has caused this? Do you need help with the laundry?” You are stubborn and independent, even in your heavily pregnant state, and want to do everything yourself. Only asking for help when you are in a pinch.

Both of your arms wrapped around the back of his neck and tugged him down a little further. “No. No offence but I fucking hate this area. It’s hot, humid. My clothes won’t dry in less than a day. My clothes stick to my skin uncomfortably. I decided to say ‘fuck it’ and go without. I know you won’t complain.” You find a thin strain of his tress underneath the rest of them and toyed with it, mindlessly.

And boy, were you right.

To have his pregnant mate walking around their shared home, naked. He growled low in his throat and rubbed his jaw against the top of your head. His scent further rubbed into your skin. Though you were pregnant with his child, he loved to continuous mark you up, scenting for everyone to steer clear of you.

Wolf let his hands drift up your sides, skating his claws over your ribs then back down to palm at your thighs. “To see my mate, naked like the day they were born, pregnant because of my doing, walking around in our home… it’s a life I could only dream of.” His claws carefully grazed the tops of your thighs as he touched whatever part he wanted of you.

Then, his hands wandered back north and palmed at your swollen belly. The Yautja was large, towering over your form. His hands slid down a little more to the lip of your stomach and gently lifted up. Instant relief flooded you. You sighed heavily and rest as much as you could against him. Your mate held you there, letting the weight be his burden for the moment.

“This needs to be an everyday thing, Wolf,” you mumbled, voice going hoarse from the lack of power you gave it. Said Yautja chuckled. The vibrations running up your back and spreading out to the tips of your fingers.

“Yeah?” he teased, arms not faulting. “I can’t help it if my seed produces such large offspring.” You elbowed him in the side. He takes the hit without even making a sound.

“Yeah, this is all your fault. Mate can’t keep it down.” Wolf growled, arms flexing without moving your belly. The weight still in his hands.

“I didn’t hear you complaining each time I took you,” he rumbled back to you and lowered his mouth next to your ear. A purr starts in his chest and creates goosebumps. They run across your skin and cover your limbs.

You turned your head enough to send the Yautja a glare and a huff in tandem. Wolf’s purr deepened and helped you relax again, softening against his thick scales. The tress you were playing with, you decided to tug on it. Wolf tensed up, purr stuttering for a moment. “You may never hear a complaint from me in those moments, but you’ve heard me plenty of times now.”

With all the medical care you have access to at your mate’s status, you still can’t get rid of the aches and pains. Sweet, old Wolf does his best to draw baths, massage your aches, and feed you delicious foods. Only those could so far while dealing with a situation such as this.

Slowly, he lets your weight return to you. You whimpered but put your hands on top of his. Your fingers carded between his in a reassuring grasp. The texture of the scales on the back of his hands is stark to your own skin. You mindlessly run your thumbs up and down the sides of his palms.

“That may be true, but I’m beyond thankful for allowing for this opportunity to continue.” He knows if the pregnancy was too far of a risk, even above ten precent of serious injuries or death, he wouldn’t let you talk him into it. A healer had been brought in with the help of a scientist. They were able to give the facts to Wolf about this very situation before it happened. It helped calm his older heart, reassured your chances of passing were low.

Same with the strain it would put on your smaller frame. It took months upon months trying to convince him that this was safe, you would be fine in the end.

Not that he didn’t want to have a child with you. That’s one of the things he wanted most in his life. To see his permanent mate pregnant. The thought of losing you greatly outweighed that want though. It was simply brushed to the back and forgotten about.

Finally, he had broken about eight months ago and took out the implant he had requested you used. For both of your safeties. Weirdly enough, it was instantaneous that you had wound of pregnant that same night. It was as if your body knew it was the perfect time for this to happen.

Now, look at you. The happiest you’ve ever been with your mate, on the verge of starting a family.

Your eyes softly shut as you leaned towards his face and nuzzle against the softer, wrinkly scales on his cheek. “And I thank you for this. I know you are scared. I won’t deny that I’m not either.” You took a deep breath and opened your eyes to find him already watching you closely. “Considering this is hybrid baby. And the father is a towering alien that could pop my skull open like a grape.” Of course, he never would.

His purring deepened again. An upper mandible slowly reached out and caressed my cheek. “I won’t lie to you, little one. I am scared. Still scared. You are the most precious thing to ever walk into my life all those years ago.” He squeezes your fingers in a firm yet gentle grip. “To have this opportunity to create life with you is amazing.”

The two of you stayed like that, just enjoying the moment. The warmth of the other person. It was a beautiful, soft moment. Two lovers basking in their love for the other.

Until the ache in your ankles grew too much. As you took a breath in to speak up, Wolf was easily scooping you up and carrying you over to the couch. The lean Yautja sets you down on the cushiony couch.

Wolf goes over to where the dragon fruit-banana had been dropped and picks it up. His eyes roam over the piece of fruit and walks back over to the kitchen. A whine comes from you as he takes away your snack. Your bottom lip pushing out into a pout.

Said fruit is tossed into the trash can next to the counter. You gasped, ready to argue about throwing away a good piece of food. Then, he grabs another, fresh one and grabs some pink colored grapes. Wolf brings them to you spot on the couch and kneels down in front of you. The bowl of grapes is set off to the side. The banana-like fruit is held in front of you.

The moment you tried to grab it, he pulls it away and starts to peel it. Your hands drop back into your lap as you looked at him with a confused look in your eyes. It was easily peeled. Wolf offers it to you again. You attempted to take it from him but he pulls away enough for you to get the idea. You snorted with a small smile. Then, you leaned forward and take a bite from it.

For a fruit, it had a hint of spiciness to it. Strangely enough, you’ve grown a liking, a need for spicy stuff during your pregnancy. These types of fruit have made your life ten times easier to deal with this stupid craving all of sudden. Well, until your stomach decides it doesn’t like it for a week. That’s been fun to deal with.

He fed it to you until it was gone. The peel was set off to the side on a small side table. Next, was the bowl of grapes he knows you enjoy. Wolf holds them to you in an offering, allowing you the chance to take or deny the gift.

The lovesick smile on your face tells him everything he needs to know. Wolf sets the bowl down in your lap and plucks a grape up. Just like before, he holds it close to your mouth.

Gingerly, you leaned forward and took the piece from his pointer finger and thumb. Once biting past the thin skin of the fruit, it’s flavors burst across your tongue. You groaned and licked at your lips.

This continued until the bowl was empty and you were happy and well fed until lunch. Said bowl was set off to the side. Wolf shuffles closer to you and scoots his way between your legs. Before he touches you though, he looks into your eyes. No words were needed. Not after all this time with each other. You gave him a simple nod.

Wolf timidly rests the side of his head against your belly. His bright eyes were hidden. All his focus was narrowed down on the life growing inside of his wonderful mate.

Something underneath your skin nudged against his cheek. Wolf reared back, head snapping to face you. The expression he held was the most you’ve ever seen him make before. You laughed, head tilted back and savored the image for the rest of your life.

“I-I felt them kick,” he sputtered, astonished at the findings. You placed a hand on your belly and ran a thumb over the stretched skin.

“Yes, you do. They probably recognized that their father was close by. Isn’t that right?” you cooed towards your stomach. Another powerful kick had you wincing. “Alright, alright, thank you for letting me know you’re there.” For some reason, they always got kick shy when Wolf came to feel. This was his first time feeling it.

He placed his throat over the mound of your stomach and started to purr. The kicking instantly stopped. Shit, that works?! It worked on you too. You leaned back against the couch and looked down at him.

For someone who his species consider old, you would’ve never picked another male. Never.

[writerpeach]

Studious Seduction

Oh My Girl Arin x m! reader

10k words

Thanks to @i-am-lifeform24 for help with editing

Part One | Part Two

---

Read on AO3

"This seems like a bad idea, Miss Choi."

"It's a terrible idea, professor. Which is why we're doing it." 

Without a doubt, there’s very little chance that you won’t be spotted here. Heading up a stairwell that leads up to who knows where is hardly ideal, especially with the sudden rain shower that's started to pour above, foreshadowing this bad decision made in tandem. 

Yet, you’ve never been one to make the best choices. An inappropriate relationship with one of your students has to be ranked at the top of the list, wrong for a myriad of reasons—all that could get you fired. Still, it somehow continues unimpeded, knowing the risks, both of you doubling down even. 

At this point, you’re not sure if you’re a bad influence on Arin, or if she’s a bad influence on you. 

To make matters worse, today’s outfit of choice is this poor excuse for a school uniform that draws all your attention. A risky little ensemble that consists of a white shirt and black tie combo that only pretends to be proper, covering very little of her midriff, as well as this dark little pleated miniskirt so short it might as well not exist for how little of her thighs it hides. It leaves more of her creamy skin uncovered, and being her professor, you know it's not appropriate to look—yet you can’t stop yourself from doing so anyways. 

And then there’s those dark frames on her face, the cherry on top that puts this whole thing together, that takes her from an innocent, responsible student more than invested in class, to this devilish vixen who struts into your office, demanding to be ruined, never taking no for an answer. 

There’s almost no room for imagination, offering you such an obscene view when Arin heads up the stairs, purposefully walking in front of you with slow, deliberate steps. You can see the shape of her perfectly round butt cheeks exposed, her tight fitting thong doing anything but covering up delicious pale flesh. Of course, she knows exactly where your line of sight goes when you walk behind her, making an effort to shake her wide hips a little more with each step, giving you a shameless view of her tight, succulent ass.

This outfit is every dress code violation she could possibly make rolled into one. 

But who's going to admonish her? You? Who can't even think logically at the moment when all your thoughts have turned to mush? Not a chance when all you want to do is slip your hand between her thighs too delicious to resist until she makes a mess on your fingers, the floor, and anywhere else that becomes collateral damage.

Right now, you have the perfect opportunity for exactly that. You’ve lost track of how many steps you’ve walked, but eventually, the stairwell comes to an end, with a set of metal double doors that leads up to the rooftop. As good a place as any other, you think, especially when there's little reason anyone else would want to venture towards the top level during this never-ending rainstorm.

“Here?” you question, when Arin presses your back against the cold wall just underneath the final level of the stairwell. A solitary gaze into her eyes is all you get before she wraps her hands around your neck and plants a heated, sloppy kiss on your lips. She nods in affirmation, but doesn’t give you the time to catch your breath, slipping her tongue into your mouth to make an attempt to taste all of you.

“It's really open here. Pretty easy to get caught," you tell her when she moves from your lips, placing wet kisses across your jawline, moving lower down to your neck. 

"That's the point, professor." Arin places your hands firmly around her waist, leading you exactly where she wants your touch. Her legs spread a little further apart so you can push her skirt up, revealing just how tiny of a thong she's wearing. "I don't care if we get caught. Make a mess of me—" 

She sighs when your fingertips press against her clothed core, so aroused you can already feel her slick leaking through the flimsy fabric. You add more pressure in response, rewarded with Arin's soft gasps against the sensitive skin of your neck.

"We could get in a lot of trouble, Yewon," you breathe out, barely paying attention to anything beyond this. In fact, you hardly care about what could go wrong either, so consumed with lust, one singular desire that Arin shares, and your fingertips ache to slip underneath these panties and sink right in. 

"When has that ever stopped us before?" 

She has a point. 

This is risky as it gets. And that’s what makes it all more exciting. 

Without wasting any more time, you slip a finger underneath the fabric of her panties, into her ridiculously warm cunt. A second one slides in right after, and soaked as she already is, barely puts up any resistance, the entrance of her tight little hole eagerly swallowing you up.

“Professor—“

A few strokes is all you manage before Arin throws her head back in delight, rolling her hips, moaning from nothing more but your fingers slowly pumping in and out of her needy cunt. 

Arin clings to your shoulder as the tempo picks up, her other hand quickly traveling down your torso until it reaches your pants. She finds the button to your slacks right away, unzipping them to slip a hand inside your boxers. You let out a groan when she runs a gentle hand along the length of your shaft, slow and teasing—until she wraps her entire hand around it and grips you tight.

“Yewon..." A wave of pleasure rushes through your whole body. She's stroking your cock with such a perfect grip, slender fingers reaching down to fondle your balls, eager for what they’ve stored up just for her. Meanwhile, the sounds that come from her own throat as she rides your fingers become a necessary distraction, urging you to thrust into her a little faster, a little rougher— 

"How many loads are you going to give me today, professor? I hope they're all as thick as they were yesterday—"

It's rather ridiculous, the things you hear come out of Arin's mouth. The demure looking girl in the front row, raising her hand up high, blushing just at the sight of you, now says the filthiest things when she's got her mouth on your earlobe and her pussy filled with your fingers. She's every bit the opposite of an exemplary student, but you suppose that's your fault, given you're the one who's trading straight A's for the roughest, raunchiest sex that almost always ends up with you finishing inside her. 

But the way Arin sounds when she moans directly in your ear, riding your fingers so selfishly while they stay buried inside her cunt, it makes you forget all that. None of that matters. All that does is satisfying her needs and yours, and you won't stop until she's absolutely drenched your fingers, even if it ruins that pathetic pair of panties. 

"Don't stop, professor. I'm so close…"

She's lost all inhibitions in her frantic desire to keep rocking her hips hard against your fingers. You can feel the tension about to snap, her walls squeezing the life out of your slick digits—all while she tries to keep a steady rhythm in her own pumping, giving your cock a good squeeze each time your fingers plunge to the hilt.

"Professor, please, don’t stop, don’t stop—" Arin’s breathing grows unsteady, heavy, and she gasps for air between every syllable that escapes her lips. You’ll do everything to oblige her, steadily thrusting, curling your fingers to find that sweet spot that gets her to moan the loudest until she lets go of your cock, clinging her entire weight onto you.

"You're gonna make me fucking cum—"

Nothing gets said in response, obeying Arin’s pleas, an uninterrupted stream of juices beginning to coat your fingers while she lets out one continuous moan, unable to speak coherently upon climax. Biting down hard on her bottom lip, she nearly draws blood before the wetness gushes down your fingers, rendering her panties useless, completely ruined with all this sticky arousal.

Her walls flutter around you, this explosive orgasm lasting far longer than you expect—but you don’t let up, pumping away as she spills more, riding this out until it turns into a second one shortly after. And when you press your thumb firmly against her clit, right as she starts to come down from her high, the violent trembles in her body repeat, sending her over the edge a third time, forcing her body to shake against yours, another loud, shameless moan spilling out of her in overstimulation. 

It's a wonder how the rest of campus hasn’t heard the screams echoing all the way down the staircase. Were it not for the rain pouring overhead drowning out her cries of pleasure, it would be near impossible for anyone passing by to not hear a thing. So you’re blessed by the rains, both above, and between Arin’s sticky thighs. 

After it’s all said and done, she can hardly support her own weight when the sensation of your fingers inside her becomes too much for her oversensitive cunt, Arin’s sweaty frame nearly toppling over as she breathes heavily. Good thing you're right here to do what she temporarily can’t, clinging to your body, your hard cock still poking against her as you keep her upright amidst these intense aftershocks. 

"That was, fuck—you've really outdone yourself, professor. I can hardly stand."

When you pull your fingers out, you can’t hide the smirk that spreads across your face with all this slick clinging to your fingertips as she leans on your body to take a breath. The praise washes over you while Arin unexpectedly grabs your wrist, bringing your soaked fingers, all the way up to her lips to fervently suck the delicious liquid off. 

You intently watch her lick herself off you, tongue lewdly swirling around the length of each wet digit, making an effort to swallow all of her mess. Her lips glisten with spit and wetness, a ravenous look in her bespectacled eyes as she cleans whatever she can, tasting every drop of her delicious essence, staring at you seductively until nothing is left. 

"Guess I don't need these anymore," Arin says after a pause, gradually recovering as she peels her drenched thong down her legs, letting it drop to her ankles before she slips it off, stuffing it into your front pocket. A cute little smile later, and she looks more than eager for what's next, unable to tear her gaze away from how hard you’ve been left thanks to her. 

"I should finish what I started, don't you think, professor?" 

You don't even get to answer when Arin drops to her knees on the cold floor, tugging your pants and boxers further down, freeing your cock that so desperately needs it—so desperately needs her. With a cute, light giggle, she spits onto your swollen shaft, pumping the entire length with her delicate fingers, a low moan rising in your throat as she pays extra attention to the underside where she knows you're the most sensitive.

Her slender fingers work up the length of your cock, coming back down with a grip so wonderfully tight. She’s so ready, so eager to have her soft lips around it already. You can practically see her salivating when she leans in a little closer to lap her tongue around your cock in one long, lazy lick, pressing her lips into a light kiss on the tip of your shaft. 

“Yewon—“

You can’t hold in a grunt when Arin rubs your tip against her mouth, not opening up enough to take you whole yet, instead tracing her full, soft lips over your needy cockhead. 

“Don’t you worry, professor. Gonna make you feel so good. I promise.” 

The anticipation explodes all at once as she parts her lips, slipping the entire head of your cock inside. The moment her wet mouth makes contact with your shaft, you groan at the sudden warmth, a sharp contrast from her icy cold hands. She takes more of your length down, hollowing her cheeks, keeping an intense, erotic gaze while slowly bobbing her head up and down. 

"Mhmph—" Her warm breath sends shivers down your spine as her lips slip further and further down, the tip of her tongue flicking against what hasn’t disappeared into her mouth. You can’t help but let out all types of unabashed moans while she guides more of you inside, spit dripping down to your balls as she slides deeper, until nothing of you is left to swallow up, the head of your cock hitting the back of her tight throat with ease. 

"Yewon, fuck,” you say, nearly breathless, and the way Arin looks up at you with her mouth so proudly sealed around every inch—there’s nothing better. “I'll never get enough of your pretty fucking mouth.” 

Arin hums against the length of your shaft at your praise, working more of her magic on you, lips getting down so devastatingly deep against your base. She’s oh so eager, so unwaveringly committed to covering every single inch in saliva. Her hot little mouth slides down effortlessly, bobbing her head back, each stroke just a bit sloppier, a little wetter than the one before, with zero intention of giving you a chance to gather yourself.

“Nobody gives a blowjob like I do, right, professor? Nobody can make you cum as hard as I can. I love being on my knees for you so much, being a good little slut for my professor. That’s what I am, aren't I?"

Nodding your head is all you can do, breath heavy in disbelief of how good this oral assault is, the enthusiasm on display really proving how much Arin enjoys having your cock shoved down her wet, inviting throat. 

You’d sacrifice your entire livelihood for a blowjob like this. 

It’s quite simple to lose track of how many times her talented mouth takes your entire length down, so good at pleasuring you it's impossible to find words. The way her wet tongue flicks against your slit when she slides off, only to have you plunging all the way back into the heat of her throat—it's far, far too good.

"I want you to cum on my face, professor," Arin tells you, so casually as she pulls away for a brief second before going right back to licking up the length of your hard cock, spitting all the excess saliva over the rest of you. Then she’s back to placing hungry wet kisses against each inch, her tongue making a slick path before she gives the leaking slit of your cock another teasing, torturous swirl. "I want all of it."

At this rate, you think you could blow a load anywhere she wanted you to, already so close to bursting just at her tongue lavishing your cock with these feverish licks. She has this way of making you feel so special, like worshiping your cock is all that matters to her, your pleasure the most important aspect in her life. Her greedy mouth proves just that, making you groan so easily, especially when she dips down to pay attention to your balls and slurps so messily on them like she wants your load at any cost. 

A few lazy licks down your sack and you’re back down her throat—just trapped there helplessly as she holds you, her pretty mouth so goddamn overwhelming when she swallows as much of your length as she possibly can, not showing even the slightest hint of strain. Her full lips stay motionless when they slide right down to your base, gaze locked tight, making your cock throb within her tight, wet throat. 

“Stay there, Yewon, shit,” you groan, hands clutching her head against your crotch to speed up the path to climax. Each second she remains there feels like absolute heaven, fostering all this unbearable bliss, all while those doe eyes speak for her when her mouth can’t—impatiently waiting, desperately wanting to empty your balls. 

When she releases her lips from your length, there’s a sexy little gasp that comes with the messy string of saliva pulling her back down. Repeating the act, she plunges right back down, nose nestling comfortably against your abdomen, lips wrapped entirely around the base of your length. “Yewon, god, you know what’s gonna happen if you keep doing that.“ 

"Oh, you’re gonna cum? Want you to paint my pretty face. Don’t you, professor?” 

There’s no answer to offer other than what she wants, all thoughts drowned by another wet slurp when Arin once again takes every inch of you down her throat, the overwhelming warmth of her mouth suffocating your length. Then she rises, exposing your shaft to the cool air for only a moment until her throat tightens when you’re back down, fully sheathed. 

Arin’s so dedicated to hearing you moan that these steadfast strokes show no relent, slurping from base to tip, hair all a mess as she bobs faster and faster, maintaining never-ending eye contact that’ll be the death of you.

“Need it. Need it so bad, your hot cum dripping down my face when I walk back down these stairs. Can’t wait to feel how thick and heavy a load you’ll give me.” 

Her pace only begins to go into overdrive, picking up rampantly when Arin places her hands on your thighs for better stability, the hot slickness of her mouth far too much to handle. She takes every inch, all of you disappearing down, without needing to stop to take a breath, like she’s proving a point at how good she can get you off. There's no restraint as she bobs her head without inhibitions, sloppily, noisily, not even gagging when her throat delivers an unimaginable level of pleasure. 

"Oh my god, Yewon, fuck—"

With each desperate stroke, you're so close to that edge, quickly approaching the inevitable. The tightness in your balls grows beyond your control, and there’s no time to think straight when her mouth feels this fucking good, almost there, absolutely about to—

"I'm gonna fucking cum, Yewon," you groan out just in time, with no qualms about how needy you sound. One last slow descent down to your base, then Arin pops your needy shaft from her mouth right when it seems you’re about to burst any second. 

And looking as salacious as possible, she simply tilts her head slightly backwards, jerking you off while directing the tip of your cock straight at her face, eagerly anticipating the release that's about to cover her.

“Cum all over me, professor.” 

You let out a strained, guttural moan the moment your first pearlescent stream shoots out, streaking across the bridge of her nose. These frantic strokes don’t let up, guiding your milky seed that unloads onto the perfect target—her glasses, coating the lenses in white and getting it all over her rosy cheeks. Another strand fires off as she shifts your cock downwards, a thick stream blasting across her parted lips that deserve so much of this load for helping you reach an explosive release. 

She pumps, and pumps, until there’s nothing left, and by the time your orgasm winds down, Arin is a total mess, one you’ll never get tired of seeing your load plastered all over her. Her stunning features wear you like a proud smile, drenched in her handiwork, thick streaks that cling to her cheeks, those soft lips, and anywhere else it happens to land as she strokes your length to ensure not a drop goes to waste. 

That look is all too familiar when the weight of your load starts to drip down, an orgasmic feeling that brings a grin onto her cum-stained face.

“That’s a big load, professor. Just what I wanted," she says as she removes her stained glasses, taking a nice, long lick right over the lens and making a show of the entire thing. "I think I'm obsessed. With your cum. It tastes so good, but looks better on my face."

"Yewon—you're ridiculous, you know that?" you tell her as she carefully slips the glasses back on, and wipes up whatever has run off to the corners of her lips, bringing her sticky fingers into her own mouth to slurp them clean.

"It's not my fault my professor's cum tastes so good."

But before she can even begin to clean off your cock, or savor what an absolute mess she’s covered in, the sound of footsteps nearby force her to stop mid-stroke, causing both your heads to turn with a shared look of panic. There's only enough time to tuck yourself back into your pants, but there's nothing to do at all about this massive load that's dripping all over Arin, nor what’s done a number on the stairwell. 

"Get behind me, Yewon. Quick."

Arin nods and does as you say, scrambling to her feet, also making sure her thong is still tucked away into your pocket as you zip your pants up. The sounds of footsteps echo louder, yet there's only one real way to escape this stairwell, because you're not going out that door when the rain hasn't let up one bit. 

When the moment those footsteps approach the stairwell entrance, they slow to a halt, making your heart beat faster. Arin moves fast enough to get behind you just in time, out of sight and behind your broad frame. And the two of you wait there, her body pressed against yours, trying to hold her breath, dreading to explain yourself to whoever just made this abrupt end to your fun. 

"Professor? Is that you?" The voice sounds so familiar, but you can't quite pick it out, too muffled by the rain. But there's no doubt you've heard this voice before. It's certainly one of your students, so at least you won’t have to explain this to a faculty member. "What a surprise, seeing you here!"

Normally, you'd have all the time in the world for pleasantries and small talk, but this is the last place where you can do anything of the sort as you try to shield Arin. From who exactly, you have no idea as they walk into frame. Their name escapes you, not that you really care when all you want is to get out of this situation. 

"Is something the matter, professor? Why are you standing there?"

"Oh, uh, nothing. I had some time between classes and came up here to check out the rain. It's not letting up is it?" You put on the best smile possible, knowing Arin can't be spotted right behind you. Luckily, your taller frame can block her body completely, and given how the area is poorly lit, there isn't much worry about the mess that's on her face at the very least.

"No, it isn't. We don't usually get so much rain this time of year, huh?" The unnamed student asks as she glances out the window, and for a brief second you fear the worst—but she doesn't seem to notice anything at all that shouldn't be there. "I didn't even bring an umbrella today either..."

"You might check the library, they'll have them."

"The library?"

"They used to offer some a few months back, but I guess everyone forgot. I'm sure they still have a few left."

"I might give that a try then, thanks. It's good to see you, professor." 

When your student smiles and waves goodbye, heading back the stairs without another word, you're able to finally breathe a huge sigh of relief, knowing the ordeal is finally over, despite taking years off your life. "Jesus, Yewon."

"That was close.” Her own breath stays ragged and heavy, almost completely forgetful to the mess you've left on her face that still glistens. "Good save. Really pulled that umbrella story out of thin air, didn’t you?” 

“Whatever it takes. Hey, they might have umbrellas. I’ve never gone there except to rail you.” 

Arin laughs, then suddenly remembers she still has your filth all over her. “Better go clean up I guess..."

"This was a really terrible idea."

"Hey, this was my terrible idea," Arin corrects with a grin that manages to shine through all the mess. "And I don’t hear you complaining about me giving you a nice, sloppy blowjob, professor.” 

“I could never complain about seeing my favorite student on her knees.” 

“I'll go on ahead. Maybe I'll see you later? For office hours?"

You say nothing more as you let her pass you to head down the stairs first, standing here a bit longer for your heart rate to calm before you too make your exit. You've got a class in under an hour that you haven't prepared for, and now how could you, coming so close from potentially losing your job. But yet, somehow, through all that, Arin was right—the rush of getting caught is exhilarating, but that was far too close for comfort. 

✦ ✦

So after all that, logic would dictate that you should be a little more careful, that maybe you should stop having sex with your student in places you're bound to get caught—but logic went out the window the moment you bent Arin over your desk for the very first time. What else are you going to do though, take her home to your apartment where there's actual privacy, where you don't have to keep quiet?

That sounds so very drab and mundane, and you'd rather spend another ten hours grading papers than go the proper route. You don't even know what you would do if you wound up in Arin's bedsheets, having all the freedom to rail her for hours instead of the thrill of being in public where you have to be quick and quiet.

There's nothing wrong or unhealthy with this relationship. Not one bit. 

You've told yourself on multiple occasions that you should dial it down a notch, not meet quite so often, or at least not in places that will put your career at risk. After all, your luck is going to run out one of these days, and the day could very well come when more than just a student catches the two of you, maybe one of the other professors, or god forbid the university staff. 

And then it's all over for both of you. 

Yet, there isn't a day when you don't seek each other out, find some empty closet, a vacant faculty office, or that spot near the back of the library that's so dusty that no one frequents. 

The risk is almost as good as being balls deep inside Arin itself. 

You can't exactly help yourself when she wears these slutty little outfits that practically beg you to rip them off her, nothing but the shortest skirts imaginable to class, where you have to stop your eyes from wandering throughout the entirety of the lecture. 

Arin sits in the front row for a reason, and that's not to get a better view of the whiteboard. No, it's so she can spread her legs open when no one's paying attention, flash whatever sexy pair of panties she has underneath (or the lack thereof on occasion), and sometimes even play with herself so she can show off how wet she is. 

Somehow, no one's really noticed how often you have her in your office, where there's less talk about class going on, and more your head buried between her thighs, or having her bent over your desk in some obscene position with her mouth stuffed by her ruined underwear and screaming through it.

With everything that’s transpired today, one would think you’d call it early and pack up. Not you though. Not even an hour has gone by since your close call, and Arin is in your office again, sucking you off underneath your desk while you work on grading papers—at least you should be, if only you could focus for more than a few seconds without this warm mouth slobbering on your cock. 

"I bet none of your other students can deepthroat you as good as I can."

"You said you were going to be quiet."

"And you said you were going to fuck me, professor."

You haven't exactly broken that promise, it's more like Arin decided she wasn't going to wait until you finished, always finding an excuse to get in her favorite position whenever she wants to suck you off. 

Luckily, for your students, you're going to be in such a tremendous mood after finishing in this girl's hungry mouth. These papers are downright horrendous—so fucking awful and unreadable it makes you wonder if you should intentionally pound Arin in your office with the door wide open, just so you’ll get caught, lose your job, and never have to deal with some of these students ever again.

Not even a few papers in and you’ve lost every ounce of focus, groaning while Arin empties your balls, her mouth right at your base when your spills right down her throat. With your fingers gripping the back of her head, it's impossible to not avoid bucking your hips into her pretty, sloppy mouth as she drains each thick shot from your pulsing cock, swallowing it all with pride to make sure there's not a single trace of your creamy release that hasn't gone directly into her stomach. 

"All those students probably failed anyways," she tells you, letting the saliva fall from her lips as she shows off her empty mouth with a pleased smile, planting a nice, loud wet kiss on your tip before getting back up to her feet.

"Yeah? Including you?"

"Of course not, professor. We both know before you even look at my paper that I've got a perfect grade." 

"Is that so? And what have you done to deserve that, Yewon?" 

Before you've even gotten your pants back on properly, Arin is already claiming a spot on the edge of your desk, undoing her tie so that it hangs loosely around her neck, and then spreads those luscious thighs as wide apart as they can go, her gorgeous, dripping pussy on display without any underwear in the way. "I can think of a few things. Doesn't emptying you down my throat count for something?"

"Hm, I dunno,” you ponder, shamelessly staring between those delectable thighs at what’s all yours. “Maybe a few points. That'll get you a passing grade at best."

"Just a few? What about all the times I've ridden your cock this week alone, professor? And how many times did you cum inside me?"

"I've completely lost track, Yewon. I guess that'll get you at least ten percent higher."

"How generous of you," she retorts, tone all full with playful sarcasm, unbuttoning her white shirt enough so you can see the color of her bra. It's purple, just like the thong in your pocket that serves as a nice trophy. "Are you forgetting how many times I took your thick cock in my ass until you blew your load inside?"

"Does that really count if you beg me to do so every time you step in my office?"

"Oh no, you can't blame me for how much you love my ass, professor. That's at least twenty points."

"That's a little greedy, don't you think?"

"Absolutely not. If anything, I deserve extra for all those times I let you fuck my face," Arin suggests, spreading her legs further apart to give a clearer view of her bare cunt that’s glistening so beautifully, accompanied with a set of fingers teasing herself for your benefit. 

"Again, you're forgetting the part where you keep dropping down to your knees and begging for it."

Arin can't help but smile, both at knowing you're right—and also how you can't take your eyes off the show her fingers put on when she rubs at her clit, getting wet so easily from playing with herself while staring into your eyes. It's the look on your face that drives her crazy and gives her the urge to show off even more, sliding two digits past her swollen lips into her tight hole, so eager to get herself off in front of you. 

"What about now, profess—" she asks before a moan interrupts her words, leaning backwards to prop herself up so you can watch every bit as she fingers herself. "Does this count for anything?"

"It depends. If you can make yourself cum without my help, then maybe, that'll bump up your grade, Yewon."

"Twenty-five. For making myself cum right in your office," she manages between hitched breaths, pumping her fingers deep in and out, almost bucking her hips off the table at her own touch.

"Twenty. You're not there yet, Yewon," you correct, watching Arin roll her head back with her eyes shut, so beautiful when she's in bliss, achingly sexy how her slender fingers disappear knuckle deep into her own cunt. You've barely had any time to recover since emptying your load down her throat just a minute ago, but the mere sight is more than enough to have you as hard as the wooden desk she’s writhing on. 

Arin reaches down to further unbutton her shirt, giving the full glimpse of her breasts covered up in that pretty lace as her tight frame falls back against the cold surface all splayed out. While this shameless girl continues fingering her pussy, you simply enjoy the view, stroking your cock every few seconds to spur her on. Every desperate moan and gasp from her lips gets louder, all that nectar trickling down between her spread thighs you’re dying to lick clean—but you won’t, because she has to do this on her own. 

You let the lack of words exchanged linger in the air while Arin fingers herself a bit rougher, moving a bit more frantic, knowing all the signs from experience that she isn't too far from that much craved release. 

“Professor," Arin breathes out, the quiver in her voice an obvious indication. Her fingers get so drenched, pulling them out from her heat for a moment to reveal how sticky wet they are as she groans, not bothering to hide how she slides them back in to curl right into herself. "Oh god, professor—“ 

When the pleasure becomes too much, when her back arches off the desk with breathless cries, there's no missing the split second Arin's entire body tenses up—thighs quivering, fingers buried so deep you can hear the wetness while she shakes on the desk from the intensity of her orgasm. It's a moment of euphoria that's only reached because you're watching so attentively, eyes glued the entire time as she rides her fingers long past completion, toes curling, moans echoing through your small office.

Even when Arin is finished, she's unable to regain her composure for more than a few ragged breaths, eyes still closed while the bliss hits hard, long after her high. And you savor every second of her looking so beautiful in this post-climax haze, an absolute mess on your desk that you’re thankful hasn't soaked into your papers.

"Fuck, that was too good, professor," Arin murmurs, slowly pulling her fingers out from herself, just to rub her oversensitive clit, borderline crying from the overstimulation. “It’s too bad it wasn’t your cock I came on.” 

"Then maybe I should deduct points for that?"

"Hey, that's not fair… you just told me—I’d get points for making myself cum."

"I did, but—you would have earned extra for waiting for me to do it. Guess you'll just have to earn back those points another way."

"How exactly should I do that, professor?" Arin asks with the best faux ignorance possible, sitting herself up to scoot off the desk, then leaning down to wrap her slick fingers around your shaft. "If you bend me over and pound me with this cock until your cum is leaking inside me, would that be enough?"

"Perhaps. That would certainly help raise your grade some points.” 

"Give it all to me then," she pleads, giving your cock a handful of languid strokes, just enough to leave a nice trail of her slick along the entire length. "Fuck a load into me, professor. Fuck your top student all over this office."

"Top student? Really?" You can't help but laugh at that, knowing full well Arin is certainly anything but. Far from it actually, not even top ten. "Then I better go find her then."

"Hey! Just shut up and give it to me already," Arin says with that pout still intact, keeping these strokes going on your cock that make you throb so easily, and you’re not sure who needs it more at this point. 

"Fine, but not here. I'm tired of this place. Let's go somewhere else."

It's rather late into the afternoon, with the majority of classes for the day having ended already. That leaves enough of the campus vacant, lowering the risk of getting caught wherever you decide to take Arin—but the risk still isn't zero. Wandering around the university after hours isn't the best idea, especially when there are plenty of places for students to hang out, and worse, faculty offices open late.

So you keep it simple. 

You keep several feet ahead of each other, heading up a couple floors to that really small bathroom by the science department that no one ever uses because it doesn't lock properly. There are much bigger and better bathrooms scattered about, so everyone usually forgets this tiny, shabby thing exists, especially late into the day. Not the most romantic spot, but it’s suitable, and keeps you from scouring the halls without having to dodge other faculty and students. 

You enter first, flicking on the light, and do a quick scan around the room while Arin slips in, pulling the door shut as quickly as possible. There's nothing but a toilet, a sink, and a mirror, but most importantly it looks clean, which is the most important thing. It's not that surprising given that nobody really uses it to begin with.

It’s as perfect a place as ever. 

Double checking the lock still doesn't work, nothing has changed on that front. Arin quickly moves to lean against the wall, and she’s already unbuttoning her shirt, all the way this time, to give the full view of those perky breasts without any bra to ruin the view. You're on her in a flash, claiming those lips with a kiss full of nothing but aggression to match just how badly you want to ruin this girl right now.

"Fuck me," Arin urges as she palms your bulge through your pants, impatient to get your cock inside of her. Her fingers fumble with the button to your pants, thoughts clouded with desire, and she’s so eager to release your aching shaft, to give it all the attention it so desperately craves.

You’ve got just a modicum of patience left to not let that happen quite yet.

Instead, with your lips still attached, you pick Arin’s slender frame off the ground, and guide her over to the sink, placing her there as gently as you can. When she settles down on the edge of the counter, there's no hesitation to shove that tiny skirt up past her waist, revealing her absolutely beautiful cunt still left glistening in the aftermath of her orgasm from a moment earlier, and you're just dying to fill her all up. 

Still, somehow you hold back for a moment, to let it all sink in. The sight is divine enough, this privileged student of yours in this rather pathetic excuse for a school uniform, half naked, shirt wide open with her tits fully out, that barely-there skirt, and those sexy thigh highs that bring all the attention to her immaculate thighs that make you want to ruin her even faster. She knows that’s your biggest weakness, knows how weak in the knees they leave you whenever you get to slide them off with your teeth—but now they make her look like pure sin. 

"I know you wanna get that dick in me," she says, voice so sultry, and her thighs spread obscenely wide apart, so that every inch of her mouthwatering cunt is put on display with not a drop of modesty—not like Arin even knows what that word is. 

"Not yet. Haven't gotten to taste you today." As per usual, Arin’s been more than a little greedy, and it feels like she’s had her lips on your cock all day and this is the first opportunity to return the favor. 

Any protest in those pretty eyes doesn't last when her hands wrap around your skull, drawing your face straight between her thighs that you have no trouble diving into. With your lips feasting on her cunt right off the bat, you give Arin all the attention she craves so badly, licking along the length of her slit, all the way up until your tongue starts flicking at her engorged clit. 

"God, so fucking good," Arin breathes out, the silence in the empty bathroom getting cut with all her beautiful moans that ring out. For your efforts, you’re rewarded by her thighs locking around your head, as your lips get a tight seal around her swollen clit that has her grinding that delicious cunt all over your mouth. 

"Professor!" she chokes out, while continuing this harsh grip on the back of your head while you slurp on her clit so mercilessly, every bit hungry to taste all those delicious juices that spill out. "Oh my god, professor, oh fuck!"

Your mouth doesn't quit, because nobody tastes better than Arin. You're an addict, every bit obsessed with this girl's cunt since the first time that you slid between these thighs. There's nothing you love more than this, her taste lingering on your tongue, all while these delicious thighs squeeze around your head, suffocating you perfectly as you eat her out with so much fervor she almost can't handle how good you make her feel.

"My god, Yewon—you taste so fucking delicious," you tell her between long licks, slurping on her clit without restraint to savor every last bit of her soaking cunt. "I can eat your pretty pussy all day. For hours and hours."

"I won't say no to that, professor.” Her desperate hands dig into your scalp to hold your face right there, exactly where she wants, where she needs, gasping when her hips grind down against you. "Fuck, your tongue is so, so good."

This is your favorite part about going down on her, being trapped between those perfect thighs that squeeze and tremble while you sloppily eat her out, drowning in her heavenly aroma and all this nectar, her delicious pussy that tastes even better the longer you indulge. 

It's never enough though, no matter how much time you get to spend with your tongue buried inside her cunt, or how many times she cums all over your face—the taste of her is heaven, and you love turning this girl into nothing more than a whimpering, quivering mess who can’t even think straight. 

"Just like that, professor, fuck, don't stop, oh my god, don't fucking stop, please—“

She whines so freely while grinding down hard against your hungry lips you can hardly breathe. Not that you have any problem about that, because you know exactly where Arin is, can feel those thighs vibrate all around you to know those limits are about to be surpassed, and you don't plan to let up for even a moment.

You ramp up your efforts in devouring her cunt without a moment to rest, your tongue all over her clit, sucking so harshly, so relentlessly, drowning in these delicious juices. It’s obvious how Arin's hips can't stay steady for a second longer, seconds from losing herself entirely. "Professor! Fuck, I'm so fucking close. Keep going, keep—oh fuck, right there, I'm gonna cum so fucking hard, fuck—"

Arin bucks her hips into your face with wild abandon, her juices smearing across your lips when you bring her to the verge of release, until she finally topples over completely. 

Everything goes muffled while she keeps her thighs squeezed tightly around your head, violently trembling throughout her orgasm as you lick her through the entire thing. Like every other time you've brought her over that blissful edge, it's beautiful, turning your face into a mess, and you greedily lap up everything that freely spills into your mouth from her overflowing cunt. 

When those thighs let off and relax, you look up at Arin's blissed out visage, completely enamored in the pleasure, shivering and trembling with a high-pitched squeal as you give her clit one more loud slurp for good measure. Your focus then shifts back to her messy folds, delving deep into them to clean up those juices she's gushing so profusely, a never ending stream of wet, sticky deliciousness. 

"Fuck, your cunt always tastes so amazing," you mutter, lapping at the girl's slick covered thighs, getting out every drop that leaks out with a few soft licks. Arin stays motionless on the counter, looking straight up to the ceiling while her chest heaves, still seeing stars.

After indulging a little while longer, and spending all the time necessary getting those warm thighs mostly clean, there's only one thing left to do. Your mouth pulls away, but only so you can yank your pants down to your ankles, your stiff cock aching to get inside of her. 

"Gonna fucking ruin you, Yewon. Hope you’re ready for me to wreck that tight little cunt."

"When am I not? Please, give it to me already," Arin desperately pleads, pulling herself from her haze to look at the throbbing length you're stroking as her eyes beg you to sink in and fill her up. 

Sitting herself up on the sink, she keeps herself propped up with her hands planted behind her body, spreading her thighs apart as far as possible, with her wet cunt presented so lewdly and invitingly. "Shove that dick right in me, professor. Give it to me as hard as you can."

Without another thought wasted, you slowly guide the swollen tip of your cock past those drenched lower lips, groaning unabashedly when all this slippery warmth welcomes you deep inside. It's far too easy, how you slide into her, walls so dripping with arousal that allow this ache to dissipate when you effortlessly impale Arin all the way, right to the hilt.

"My god, Yewon, fucking love this tight pussy," you groan as her walls clamp down, holding you right inside that delicious grip with no plans to release you. 

She's so soaking wet when you start pounding away inside, each thrust coated in all those messy juices as your cock bottoms out every time. Your deep strokes make full use of her open shirt, causing her modest breasts to bounce as her back hits the mirror with each hard slam. Arin clenches around you with such an unyielding grip as you pump in and out, loving how rough you are, how forceful your hips are, moaning louder and louder, still sensitive from the previous release. 

“And I love being stretched on your huge fucking cock.”

There's not an ounce of mercy in your thrusts, just pure carnal lust taking hold. Her wet folds remain parted, taking the full length of your pounding shaft, every last inch driving into that slick little cunt without restraint. You take advantage of how her legs drape over the sink, grabbing her thighs, spreading them to give you more leverage to angle your thrusts deeper, and she kicks her heels off to give you even more control, allowing you to use her body however you please.

"It feels so good, professor," she says, while each thrust stays rough and deliberate, buried to the hilt in her wetness. "This cock of yours—is so perfect."

"That's because your cunt is made for it," you groan, sweat forming on her skin under your grip as your hips slam against her. It's absolute bliss, watching the way her entire body responds each time you sink in, hearing her soft whines that she’s unable to hold any back while getting fucked so mercilessly over this counter top. "You take my cock so well."

"Of course I do," she insists, the biggest grin on her face that gets interrupted with more moans. "I'm the professor's favorite student, after all."

"But definitely the worst one," you fire back, fingertips digging hard into her bare thighs all wrapped up in these sexy thigh high stockings as they jiggle with every relentless thrust.

"So—how many points is this?" Arin asks, bracing herself against the mirror when you pound into her even harder, every inch of your cock covered in her sweet essence.

"As many as you fucking want, Yewon."

"Then make it a thousand. I can use them on the next assignment, right?"

"Use them on whatever you want, the final exam even. So long as I get to cum inside you."

"Of course, professor. Fill me all the way up. Cum inside me as much as you fucking want," she says, and those tits bounce more hypnotically every time you pick up the pace, slamming deeper with more force each time. After every plunge balls deep, that tightness becomes more overwhelming, urging you to give your all, as if the sight of her all sprawled out and creaming on your cock isn't enough already. 

It's merciless. And your hips start to reach their limit, but Arin's desperate cries of pleasure become so loud, that she has no choice but to muffle herself with her hand, almost forgetting that this seldom used bathroom is still right by the science lab—and anyone could be lingering around. 

"Fucking fill me, professor. Empty your balls. Just keep—oh god, fuck, fuck," Arin whimpers, the limits of her body creeping up fast as your cock pistons so harshly in and out of her hot cunt. "Wanna milk every last drop right out of you, make you cum so fucking hard."

"Only if you’re good and cum on this cock, Yewon. Cum all over me, and I'll fucking fill this cunt up."

"Yes, god, yes," she says, practically falling back against the mirror while you brutally hammer into her at full force. She barely keeps the coherence when it all peaks, when you feel those impossibly tight walls clenching around your cock, borderline painful, forcing you to use every ounce of strength to not burst inside her just yet. 

"Fuck, professor, this dick is so amazing—I'm gonna cum all over it, all over your fucking huge cock," Arin says as her pussy squeezes the life out of your cock with every impale in that wet, intoxicating heat. A flood of her fluids almost forces you out, an absolute mess that drowns your shaft in slick rips through her body without any care, and all you can do is fuck her through it. 

Even when her orgasm subsides, and she somehow becomes tighter, wetter, easier to sink into, you don't show any remorse while fucking her tight pussy until you can't possibly hold on any further. 

"You're close, aren't you, professor?" Arin gasps between collecting her breath as the pleasure begins to fade, watching the struggle you're going through to hold it back. "I know you are. Please, let me have all that cum. Blow your fucking load in me, let it all out." 

That's all you need to be shoved straight over the edge, taking a few final strokes before that pressure builds up to a boiling point, and nothing’s going to stop you when you’re about to burst. “Yewon—“ 

Her name barely escapes before you’re throbbing, letting out all types of lustful grunts while her pussy smothers you in  warmth, offering the best place for such a messy release of seed that shoots out, coating her insides the way she begs for. 

Your cock violently pulsates until you’re left with nothing but orgasmic relief, unloading shot after shot deep inside Arin with the thickest spurts imaginable that empty into her warm little pussy. These tight, tight walls take every drop, welcoming such a huge load that’s even somehow stronger than what her mouth did to you earlier.  

There’s no way you could do anything else with how delicious she looks on this bathroom counter. With whatever remnants of energy are left, you use all the power in your hips until they lose steam, remaining inside her euphoric cunt that refuses to relinquish you. You ride out wave after wave, each spasm pumping more cum into her, all this intoxicating bliss that feels like it’ll never end. 

And truly, both of you wish it never would. 

“Professor…” Arin can barely speak between breaths, riding this collective high that fills the room with heavy panting, and sweat glistens on whatever bare skin her revealing outfit offers. You’re right there with her, caressing her thighs, her messy cunt wringing out as much out of you as possible, like it doesn’t want your cock to escape, even after your entire load is buried inside that delicious warmth. 

“Came so hard on you, professor, fuck... I love the way your cum feels when you push it deeper, all the way into my womb. Wanna keep it all here until you’re ready for round two.” 

"You're fucking insatiable, Yewon," you sigh, dropping Arin's legs back onto the counter, which relinquishes the intense grip you’ve held, allowing her body a chance to relax. When your breathing returns to something somewhat stable, you lean over to give her a tired kiss, one that’s easily returned with whatever remaining energy she has. 

“Can you blame me when your dick is this good? It’s only your fault I turned into such a greedy little cumslut.” 

“Or maybe you were already like that before I even met you…"

"Yeah. Maybe."

Arin looks away as she starts to giggle, giving you a perfect chance to kiss that exposed cheek. When she glances back, you share an impossibly long stare, one that goes on far too long without words until you lean in for another kiss—

One that gets interrupted by a knock at the door. 

"Hello? Is anyone there? Custodial services, I'm here to clean up." 

You must have angered some kind of god for this to happen two times in one day. Even worse, there’s no easy way out of this while you're still buried inside Arin, the least of your concerns as this creamy mess threatens to spill out. 

"I, uh—need a moment. Spilled something on my shirt that won't come out. Be out in a bit," you blurt out, barely thinking while you look around at the poor bathroom that's been defiled. Arin can't help herself, covering her mouth to help from not immediately bursting into laughter as she fumbles to button back up her shirt. 

“You’re such a bad liar,” Arin whispers, but you just roll your eyes at her, glancing over the sweat on her body that you’d no doubt be licking clean were the two of you not nervously waiting to see if this unfamiliar man outside will buy your story.

"No problem, sir. Take your time, I'll be back after.” The janitor shuffles his feet, and you listen carefully, wondering just how obvious the two of you were being. When you can no longer hear footsteps, you release the longest sigh, and slowly pull out of Arin, along with an utterly unreal amount of hot semen that spills out. 

"Can't believe he bought that," Arin sighs while hopping off the counter, where more of your cum gushes out as soon as she stands up. "Can't believe you came so much inside me, either."

"If I recall, you were quite literally begging me not to stop."

"No need to be smug about it, professor."

Arin does her best to look presentable in the mirror and fix her disheveled hair, shirt only half buttoned, and skirt a complete mess, but it all seems so futile. There's no real way to hide how she looks after getting railed over the sink relentlessly, or the cum still dripping all over her thighs that she doesn't even bother to clean up. 

"We should get out of here before he comes back," Arin says after giving her appearance a once-over, making any minor adjustment to try and fix how ruined she looks. "Shall I leave first, professor?"

The question has only one obvious answer, but you still can't form your lips properly to speak it. "Not so fast, Miss Choi."

"Oh? Am I forgetting something?" Arin asks while running fingers through her hair again. You step towards her, pressing into her back to wrap your arms around her tiny frame before planting a kiss on the side of her neck.

"Yeah—me. You're not leaving this room without me."

You notice her grin in the mirror as your lips graze her skin again, nipping right on that sensitive spot that makes her gasp. 

"Don't tell me you're wanting to go again. After we almost got caught. Again—"

"No, not yet," you say between kisses, drawing closer and closer up her neck. "Need a little bit more rest for that."

"You poor thing. Did my pussy wear you out that much, professor?"

"You can barely stand upright as it is," you retort, taking your mouth away from her neck for a moment. Arin stifles a laugh that turns into a moan when your hand creeps up her skirt to touch her dripping folds still leaking your cum. "You need this a lot more than I do."

"Is that so? Well—fuck," Arin moans, unable to hide her body betraying her words as she grips the edge of the counter when two of your fingers slide into her without warning, pushing a mixture of her nectar and the load you pumped inside deep into her messy cunt. 

"It's too bad I can't continue this," you say, and withdraw those fingers from Arin's clenching pussy that so desperately tries to keep them in to no avail. "Let's get out of here. But you're not leaving my side."

"If you insist, professor." Arin has no further words, fixing up her skirt while so much thick seed oozes beneath. "But isn't it a little risky to leave together?"

"Probably. But besides, even if somebody does see us, so what? There's not much they can do about it even if they can already tell what just happened. And what are you always saying—how much you love the risk?"

"Guess I'm rubbing off on you, hmm?"

"Not a chance, Miss Choi," you correct, causing that grin across her face to grow wider. "I'm just tired of sneaking around so much."

"Me too, professor." 

You turn to leave, opening the bathroom door to poke your head around the corner. Luckily, there doesn't seem to be anyone around, only a couple of students you don't recognize standing nearby chatting, paying no mind as you and Arin sneak out successfully together.

“Where are we headed?” asks Arin as she settles in right next to you, something that's going to take getting used to. 

"Dunno. Cafeteria is still open. Guess we can head there first."

"Not if it's still raining. It's a bit of a trek, isn't it?" 

"My car's right out front. And if we so happen to take a little detour..." 

"Now who's being insatiable, professor?" she asks, with this little teasing giggle in her voice. 

“What? Who said I planned on doing anything with you other than grabbing some dinner? You know, I don't think you've had anything in your mouth today but my—"

"Professor!" Arin's not used to your conversation being this open, or being on the opposite side of being so flustered. "Save it for when we're not outside! Or better, the back seat. With the doors locked, preferably."

"As you wish, Miss Choi. Besides, but there's nothing I rather eat than your—"

She desperately covers your mouth to stop any further words from escaping as you head to the parking lot, surprised to see there's nothing but abundant sunshine now. Even more surprising is the fact nobody looks twice as the two of you walk together. Maybe it's luck, or maybe everybody here knows damn well what happens on campus between you two. 

And maybe you'll stop sneaking around campus every day, finding just enough time to spend the last half of your lunch hour buried between Arin’s thighs while she tries to hold her moans. 

But maybe you won't. 

[gogogodzilla]

day 23, virginity loss

edward cullen x reader warnings: nsfw 18+, unprotected sex, fingering, maybe ooc!edward, slight dirty talk, human!reader kinktober ☠︎︎ main masterlist ☠︎︎ read on ao3

Edward Cullen was a man who pretended to have a strict moral code when it came to you, but the way he was ravishing you tonight was downright sinful. 

Your wedding was nothing short of extravagant, of course. The Cullens spared no expense for your union. However, all you could think about was Edward ripping your dress off of you and taking you right there and then. By the way he gripped your side tightly the entire night, you could tell your wandering thoughts were getting to him. 

Your lips quickly attached to the side of his neck as he drove to the airport and your fingertips trailed up his thigh. He grabbed your hand and nipped at your inner wrist, a silent warning to behave. 

You were on your best behavior after that, only allowing your thoughts to veer off course once or twice, just to keep Edward on his toes. 

Isle Esme was gorgeous, and you couldn’t wait to see it in the daylight. You were glad to finally be alone with Edward. As you approached the threshold of the front door, he swept you off your feet and a high-pitched squeal left you at his movements. 

“Little warning next time?” you raised a brow as he carried into the main room of the villa. He spun you around, a grin gracing his features. 

“I am nothing if not traditional,” he replied as he set you down. His hands lingered on your waist as you looked up at him. 

You pursed your lips, “That’s for sure.” 

He chuckled, before pressing his lips to yours in a soft kiss. His cool fingers traced a delicate path across your jawline, and you shuddered against his touch. Your heartbeat quickened in your chest, and you wondered if Edward’s thoughts were racing just as fast as yours were. 

Your lips parted and his breath fanned across your cheek. He laced his fingers with yours and led you deeper into the house. It was luxurious and open, and you never wanted to leave. 

Soft lighting bathed the master bedroom, and a sudden wave of nervousness overtook you. You’d been intimate before but never like this. 

He pulled you into the bedroom and wrapped his arms around your waist. “I promised you we’d try,” he murmured, his gaze never leaving yours. 

You forced yourself to focus on his touch lingering on your hips and the ocean breeze drifting through the open double doors to the bedroom. Your tongue darted out to wet your lips as you formulated your plan in your mind. 

“Think you can wait a bit longer while I change into something more comfortable,” you questioned, pulling yourself out of his embrace. 

He grinned, “I’ve waited 104 years, a few more minutes isn’t going to kill me.” 

You grabbed one of your smaller bags and brought it into the bathroom with you. You sifted through the various sets of lingerie Alice had meticulously packed for you, looking for something that wouldn’t be impossible to put on. 

You settled on a lacy dark blue, but not navy, bralette and panties with little to no straps. Easy enough.  

Once you had the lingerie settled onto your features, you took a moment to gaze at yourself in the mirror. You couldn’t deny Alice’s taste when it came to anything you wore. The lingerie fit you like a glove and looked amazing. You looked amazing. You spritzed some perfume on yourself before exiting the bathroom, shutting the door softly behind you. 

Edward turned to face you. He was still wearing the light blue button-up that he donned after the reception. The two buttons at the top were undone, which was definitely not because of you. 

His eyes raked up your body, and you struck a pose, attempting to diffuse the tension in the air. He chuckled and the next thing you knew you were lifted into his arms. His hands cupped your ass and held you steady against him. You wrapped your arms around him and kissed him, deep and slow. 

With every moment, your kisses grew deeper and more desperate. Edward laid you softly onto the plush mattress, his lips still attached to yours.  

“You’re exquisite,” he breathed as he took in your features. He left featherlight kisses along your cheekbones before moving to your jawline and to your neck. His tongue grazed over the skin of your pulse point and you tangled your fingers through his hair, tugging lightly.

“Don’t go getting any ideas,” you teased. 

“Trust me,” he assured, moving up to peck your lips, “the ideas I’m having do not involve taking your life.” 

You slid a hand across his chest and began undoing the buttons of his shirt. “Thinking of taking something else?” you hummed against his lips. 

“Yes,” he replied as his hands wandered down your abdomen and brushed against your clothed core. Your breath shuddered as he teased you through your underwear, stroking your clit before sliding down to dip a finger in your entrance. 

A soft whine escaped you as he pressed sloppy kisses against your neck. You bucked your hips against his hand, desperate for more. 

He hooked a finger through the waistband of your panties and with the flick of his wrist they were falling off of you. Your gasp was quickly swallowed by his lips against yours and his deft fingers sliding through your folds. 

“So wet for me,” he praised as he circled your clit. He slowly inched a finger into your entrance, like he had multiple times before. He quickly added another finger and pumped it languidly within you, savoring the way you swallowed him whole and were begging for more. 

“Fuck me,” you whimpered as you ground your hips against the palm of his hand. “Please, Edward.” 

He removed his fingers and slipped them passed your lips, groaning as you eagerly swiped your tongue across the pads of his fingers. He fumbled for the buckle of his belt with his free hand and the smooth leather bumped against your inner thighs. You took the time to unclip your bra, allowing it to fall freely off your shoulders. You threw it elsewhere in the room, not caring where it landed. 

You gripped the side of his pants and helped him shimmy out of his slacks. His lips were back on yours faster than you could process. You were still getting used to his super speed after all this time. You reached down to palm him through his briefs, and he moaned against your lips. 

You looked up at him through your lashes as you slipped a hand past the waistband of his briefs and wrapped a hand around his cock. You pulled his length out of his briefs so you could freely stroke him. You slid your thumb over his pink-hued tip, which was the same color as his lips, spreading the precum that had begun to form. 

He bit back a gasp, his teeth sinking into his soft lips. You wanted to hear him. You knew all of those pretty little noises he could make, why was he holding back from you? 

“Please, Edward,” you begged, tugging him closer to you, “you promised.” 

He settled his hips between your thighs, one hand roaming your body while the other slid his length through your dripping folds. You arched against his touch and rested your hands on his shoulders, his soft skin under your fingertips grounding you. 

“I love you,” he murmured as he slowly pushed inside of you. A soft hiss escaped your lips as he inched inside of you. His eyes scanned your face, searching for the slightest inkling that you were uncomfortable. 

Quickly, the slight pain of him inside you morphed into pleasure. You’d never felt so full— so deeply connected with Edward. 

“You’re okay?” he asked, voice strained and pleading. Your hands shifted up to cradle his face, and you swiped a thumb over his cheek as you gave a quick nod. 

You pulled him toward you and pressed your lips against his, “I’m okay.” 

The plush skin of your thighs sunk under his grip as he started rocking into you. You buried your face into the crook of his neck, leaving kisses and nipping at the skin there. Each and every one of Edward’s thrusts is purposeful and deep, almost as if he’s trying to mark you as his own. The thought turned you on, and you clenched around him.

He propped himself up on the headboard with one arm to let his eyes rake over your form. Your tits bounced with each roll of his hips against yours, and his grip tightened on the headboard. The wood cracked and then splintered under his palm, but you didn’t care. You were making him feel good, and pride swelled in your chest. His eyebrows were pinched, his expression a mix of pleasure and thinly veiled restraint. 

“Don’t stop,” you begged, wrapping your legs around his hips and bringing him closer. “I can take it.” 

He groaned against the crook of your neck as his thrusts quickened. The room was filled with the sounds of the squelching of your heat and the soft music Edward had put on while you got changed. His free hand trailed across your thigh and moved to draw quick, tight circles around your clit. A breathy moan left you, and the familiar heat pooled in your belly. 

He left open-mouthed kisses along the column of your neck. His thrusts became short and sloppy as you neared your climax, your walls fluttering around him. 

“You feel so good,” he breathed against your neck, “wanna feel you cum around me.” 

You clenched around him in a vice grip as you came, a strangled cry and his name gracing your lips. You threw your head back into the pillow below you as your orgasm washed over you. Edward whined against you as he helped you ride out your high. 

Edward’s hips faltered against your own and he quickly pulled out of you. He didn’t get very far, though, and his release coated your thighs. You whimpered as it ran down your thighs, warmer than you thought it’d be. 

You panted, attempting to catch your breath. Edward leaned down and captured your lips in his. You reached up and ran a hand through his hair, pulling him closer. 

“I love you too,” you finally whispered as you pulled away. 

His lips curved into a smile, “Was it everything you imagined?” 

“Better,” you replied, your mind racing with a thousand different scenarios. Edward met your eyes before groaning, a boyish smile gracing his features as he lay beside you. 

[jamingbenn]

year in review - hockey rpf on ao3

hello!! the annual ao3 year in review had some friends and i thinking - wouldn't it be cool if we had a hockey rpf specific version of that. so i went ahead and collated the data below!!

i start with a broad overview, then dive deeper into the 3 most popular ships this year (with one bonus!)

if any images appear blurry, click on them to expand and they should become clear!

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before we jump in, some key things to highlight: - CREDIT TO: the webscraping part of my code heavily utilized the ao3 wrapped google colab code, as lovingly created by @kyucultures on twitter, as the main skeleton. i tweaked a couple of things but having it as a reference saved me a LOT of time and effort as a first time web scraper!!! thank you stranger <3 - please do NOT, under ANY circumstances, share any part of this collation on any other website. please do not screenshot or repost to twitter, tiktok, or any other public social platform. thank u!!! T_T - but do feel free to send requests to my inbox! if you want more info on a specific ship, tag, or you have a cool idea or wanna see a correlation between two variables, reach out and i should be able to take a look. if you want to take a deeper dive into a specific trope not mentioned here/chapter count/word counts/fic tags/ship tags/ratings/etc, shoot me an ask!

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with that all said and done... let's dive into hockey_rpf_2024_wrapped_insanity.ipynb

BIG PICTURE OVERVIEW

i scraped a total of 4266 fanfics that dated themselves as published or finished in the year 2024. of these 4000 odd fanfics, the most popular ships were:

Note: "Minor or Background Relationship(s)" clocked in at #9 with 91 fics, but I removed it as it was always a secondary tag and added no information to the chart. I did not discern between primary ship and secondary ship(s) either!

breaking down the 5 most popular ships over the course of the year, we see:

super interesting to see that HUGE jump for mattdrai in june/july for the stanley cup final. the general lull in the offseason is cool to see as well.

as for the most popular tags in all 2024 hockey rpf fic...

weee like our fluff. and our established relationships. and a little H/C never hurt no one.

i got curious here about which AUs were the most popular, so i filtered down for that. note that i only regex'd for tags that specifically start with "Alternate Universe - ", so A/B/O and some other stuff won't appear here!

idk it was cool to me.

also, here's a quick breakdown of the ratings % for works this year:

and as for the word counts, i pulled up a box plot of the top 20 most popular ships to see how the fic length distribution differed amongst ships:

mattdrai-ers you have some DEDICATION omg. respect

now for the ship by ship break down!!

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#1 MATTDRAI

most popular ship this year. peaked in june/july with the scf. so what do u people like to write about?

fun fun fun. i love that the scf is tagged there like yes actually she is also a main character

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#2 SIDGENO

(my babies) top tags for this ship are:

folks, we are a/b/o fiends and we cannot lie. thank you to all the selfless authors for feeding us good a/b/o fic this year. i hope to join your ranks soon.

(also: MPREG. omega sidney crosby. alpha geno. listen, the people have spoken, and like, i am listening.)

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#3 NICOJACK

top tags!!

it seems nice and cozy over there... room for one more?

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BONUS: JDTZ.

i wasnt gonna plot this but @marcandreyuri asked me if i could take a look and the results are so compelling i must include it. are yall ok. do u need a hug

top tags being h/c, angst, angst, TRADES, pining, open endings... T_T katie said its a "torture vortex" and i must concurr

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BONUS BONUS: ALPHA/BETA/OMEGA

as an a/b/o enthusiast myself i got curious as to what the most popular ships were within that tag. if you want me to take a look about this for any other tag lmk, but for a/b/o, as expected, SID GENO ON TOP BABY!:

thats all for now!!! if you have anything else you are interested in seeing the data for, send me an ask and i'll see if i can get it to ya!

[foxtrology]

saturated (1)

dr!joel x resident!reader

inspired by the pitt on hbo | series | ao3 link

notes: this took me way too long to write. but i had to. couldn't stop watching the pitt and thinking about our old man. joel is basically if dr robby and dr abbot had a morally complicated, emotionally constipated lovechild. also abby does not kill joel in this, everyone is friends! god bless america.

warnings: this contains intense and graphic deceptions of medical trauma, emergency room scenarios, death (including children), physical violence, workplace assault, substance use, bodily fluids, mass casualty events, and realistic portrayals of burnout, grief and PTSD in a high stakes-medical environment.

it also includes themes of misogyny, harassment, and implicit threats of sexual violence. reader discretion is strongly advised. please take care while reading--especially if you are sensitive to medical distress, depictions of pediatric injury or real-time crisis response.

word count: 15.k

─────

The morning of the Fourth of July in Austin, Texas, feels like a moment held in the lung, right before the exhale.

That breathless pause before fireworks, before the sirens scream and the ER radios stuttering with trauma codes and stroke alerts and the endless crush of the heat-baked, alcohol-soaked chaos that follows any major American holiday. It’s always the calm before the storm—if you could even call it calm.

You pull into the staff garage at 5:52 a.m. and sit in the car for a moment longer, letting the silence stretch. Black scrubs still freshly laundered, badge clipped, hair pulled back, and your shoes already forming to your feet like muscle memory. You reach for your tumbler, still warm from the coffee Joel handed you in the kitchen an hour ago, already half-drunk.

There’s that brief moment you consider calling out. Just for today. Just to stay in that house, in that bed with him, where he kisses your bare shoulder before telling you to be safe.

But you won’t. You never do.

Because no matter how bad the ER gets—and it always gets bad—this is the only place that makes any kind of sense to you.

Inside, the air conditioning hits like a slap, and you walk past the security station where Bill gives you a small nod, already sipping from his thermos like a man bracing for war.

“Morning, sunshine,” he says. His voice is gravel, his beard immaculate. “You ready for the circus?”

You offer a tired smile. “You know we don't get clowns. We get drunk uncles with bottle rockets.”

He chuckles, shaking his head as he scans another nurse’s badge behind you. “Same difference.”

The ER already smells like overcooked coffee and sterile gauze, and the waiting room—visible through the thick glass partition—looks like an airport at Christmas. People slumped against the wall, some pale, some bleeding, some just desperate for help they’re not sure they need. A woman with a crying toddler in one arm and a vomit bag in the other is standing at the triage desk. Behind her, a man in a tank top clutches his ribs and moans like he’s in labor.

Inside the main ER pod, the low hum of monitors, pagers, and movement never really stops. Maria Miller stands at the hub, perfectly composed, her hands wrapped around a travel mug and a tablet tucked in the crook of her arm. 

“Six a.m. and already short three nurses,” she mutters as you step up beside her. Her eyes flick to you. “Happy Fourth. You look like hell.”

You arch a brow. “Why thank you, Maria.”

She smirks, amused. “I saw your name on the schedule and bumped Henry’s start time earlier. Figured you’d need someone to boss around.”

“Nice. Nothing says holiday spirit like free labor.”

Her mouth twitches into a smile before she heads off toward the trauma bay. You breathe in the scent of antiseptic and coffee. Your shift hasn’t even started, and already you can feel the heat pressing behind your eyes.

“Doc!” Jesse calls out, sliding past with an IV pole in one hand, his badge swinging. “Your favorite guy’s back. Bed three.”

“Which one?”

“Golf cart DUI. Same guy from last month. Says he’s got chest pain.”

You groan, snagging your stethoscope from your pocket and making your way toward the row of curtained bays.

“Hey, doc,” Marlene calls, intercepting you with a chart. “You’ve got a belly pain in seven. NPO since last night, vitals stable, but she’s already mad she’s waited an hour.”

“Great,” you sigh. “Let me guess—says she’s dying?”

“Says she wants to die,” Marlene says dryly. “Progress.”

Inside Bed 3, the familiar face of Mr. Golf Cart is flushed and sweaty, his eyes darting from you to the EKG leads on his chest. He tries to smile through chapped lips. 

“Hey there, doc. Long time no see.”

“It’s been three weeks,” you reply, glancing at the monitor. “You said chest pain?”

“Felt like a raccoon sittin’ on my sternum.”

You don’t bother asking how he knows what that feels like.

“I’ll get your labs and a troponin. Don’t eat or drink anything, and don’t try to leave AMA again.”

“Cross my heart,” he grins.

“You did that last time too.”

Outside the room, Tommy is coming in from the ambulance bay, gloved hands smudged with dried blood, sleeves rolled to the elbow. He spots you and tips his chin up.

“You get the kid with the fireworks burn?”

You didn't fucking get the people who lit up fireworks before the actual holiday.

“Not yet.”

He shrugs. “He’s all yours. Level 2, maybe deeper dermal. Holding it together, though.”

“Great,” you say, and Tommy claps you on the shoulder as he moves past, already shouting something to Frank who’s restocking their rig with trauma dressings.

Frank pauses to shoot you a quick smile. “Morning, doc.”

“You ready for hell?” you ask.

“Born in it,” he replies with a wink, disappearing into the supply closet.

By 6:40, the line to triage has doubled. You slip into Exam 7 where Abby and Mel are squinting at a portable chest X-ray.

“I think it’s a widened mediastinum,” Abby says, uncertain.

Mel frowns. “I think it’s a terrible film.”

You glance between them and sigh. “You’re both right. Let’s get a CT angio. Rule out dissection.”

Abby lets out a breath. Mel nods, jotting it into the chart.

You turn to leave, only to be stopped by Henry in the hallway.

“I finished my charting on the chest pain in four,” he says. “Do you want me to see the laceration in bed nine?”

You nod. “It’s a head lac. Two-centimeter frontal scalp. Walk-in. You can staple it.”

Henry brightens just slightly before hurrying off, excited to staple someone's scalp.

Kathleen stands at the nurse’s station, arms crossed, lips pressed into a line as she watches three nurses hustle to cover six rooms. She barely glances at you, but when she does, her voice is velvet over steel.

“You better love this job, sweetheart. Because it sure as hell doesn’t love us back.”

You offer her a tired grin. “I’m in a toxic relationship with medicine.”

“I’d say get out,” she murmurs, tapping something into the computer, “but I’ve been saying that for twenty years.”

You’re interrupted by Ellie appearing behind you like a caffeinated ghost, her voice quick and panicked. “I just had a guy vomit blood on my shoes and I don’t think that was in the orientation packet.”

You blink. “Was it a large volume?”

“Like a tarantula of blood exploded out of his mouth.”

“Sounds like a GI bleed. Grab Marlene and get him on O2, two large bore IVs, and get a CBC, type and screen, and a bolus of saline.”

Ellie stares at you, eyes wide. “...I love you.”

“You’ll hate me in two hours.”

Dina slides past a moment later, rolling her eyes as she scribbles a note onto a file. “You need me for the kid from the group home?”

“Yeah,” you say. “Bed twelve.”

“I’ll bring stickers,” she mutters, already moving.

You turn a corner to find Riley standing outside a room, fidgeting with her stethoscope.

“I tried to get a BP but the patient wouldn’t stop yelling at me.”

“Welcome to emergency medicine,” you say, opening the curtain.

The hours between 7 and 9 blur into a tangle of trauma activations, overdoses, and one elderly woman who insists she’s seeing angels. Joel appears somewhere around 7:30, silent and gruff, already charting by the trauma desk. His sleeves are rolled up, hair still damp from the shower both of you shared early this morning. He looks at you like he’s already tired for both of you.

You pass behind him and your hand grazes the small of his back, just enough for him to shift his weight and glance at you from the corner of his eye. That’s all. That’s enough.

He doesn’t need to say anything. Nobody talks about it, but everyone knows.

By 9 a.m., you’ve had three traumas, two psych consults, and a toddler with a swallowed battery. A man in a star-spangled bikini was just escorted to the waiting room by Bill, Ellie and Abby giggling in each other's arms watching the scene.

You think you might be sweating through your scrubs.

You duck into the breakroom, finally, and find Tess already in there, sleeves rolled, sipping black coffee and glaring at the microwave like it owes her money.

“Fourth of July,” she says without looking at you. “God bless America.”

You groan and collapse into the chair next to her. “How many stabbings so far?”

“Three. One with a fork. Guy said he was trying to get the last sausage off the grill.”

You snort, leaning back and letting the moment hold. Outside, another ambulance pulls into the bay. The day is only just beginning. And no one’s getting out early.

Just as you sat down, Ellie burst into the break room like her body was still moving faster than her brain could catch up. Her face was flushed with adrenaline, lips parted, hands trembling just enough to tell you this wasn’t a drill.

“Hey—hey—uh—can you—can you come? Right now. It’s that guy in Bay Two. He—he fucking lunged at me.”

Tess straightened up immediately, coffee forgotten. You were already on your feet, coffee sloshing onto the table as you moved past Ellie, her hand catching your elbow.

“I didn’t even touch him. I was just checking his vitals and he went off. Said women shouldn’t be in medicine, shouldn’t ‘touch him,’ called me a goddamn slut, and then he lunged. I didn’t—I mean I moved back—he didn’t land it, but—”

“I’ve got it,” you said, your voice already lowering, the calm hard edge setting in. “You’re okay. You did everything right.”

Tess looked like she wanted to follow, to keep an eye on things, but you shook your head. “Stay here. I got this.”

You headed for Bay Two with a kind of purposeful gait that had nurses flattening themselves against the wall. Marlene caught your eye from the main desk and gave you a look, sharp and knowing. She didn’t need an explanation.

The man in Bay Two was middle-aged, built like someone who spent more time drinking beer than going to the gym, his hands cuffed to the rails, red-faced and sneering. A big, mean, fleshy kind of guy with the kind of grin that made your stomach twist—not in fear, but in a deep, guttural revulsion.

“Here she is,” he crowed when he saw you enter. “Another whore with a stethoscope. They just handing out medical degrees to anyone with a pussy now, huh?”

Your heart didn’t even skip. You had heard worse. But not recently. Not in Joel's ER.

You approached, eyes flicking to the security strap readouts, the monitor, the vitals. Elevated BP, slightly tachycardic, but stable. You stood just out of reach, arms crossed, voice perfectly even.

“Sir, you’re in the emergency department of Austin General. My name is Dr. —”

“Don’t want your fucking name. Don’t want your hands on me either,” he snarled. “Get me a real doctor.”

“That would be me,” you said, unfazed. “You assaulted a medical student. You will now deal with me.”

“You little bitch. You think you got any right to—”

He spat. At you.

The glob landed on your scrub top just left of your collar, thick and glistening.

You didn’t flinch. You refused to give him that.

But when he jerked forward against the cuffs—catching you off guard with a sudden surge of movement—his nail scratched across the base of your neck. Not deep, but enough to burn. Enough to make Marlene, who had followed you at a distance, shout for security.

Enough for Joel, who’d been passing by and caught the tail end of that violent motion, to come to a dead stop at the doorway like a goddamn thundercloud.

“What the fuck did he just do?” Joel’s voice was low, calm. Terrifying.

You blinked, your hand gently coming up to feel the small scratch. Warmth there. Nothing that needed more than a Tegaderm. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine.”

You turned to him, quiet, eyes locking. It was one of those moments where a single breath passed and everything unsaid between you stood on the edge of a blade.

“Let me treat him,” Joel said, stepping closer. His voice wasn’t a request.

“Joel.”

He turned to you—deliberate, slow. “You got a goddamn cut on your neck. You’re not treating him. You treat the people who deserve you.”

And then, to your absolute surprise, Joel stepped in.

The patient was smirking again. “Oh, now we got a real man in here,” he said, a mocking grin. “What are you, her boyfriend? Fucking lucky bastard.”

Joel didn’t say a word. He just walked over, gloved up in one fluid motion, and began to examine the man with a detached, surgical coldness that sent chills down your spine.

“What, she send you in ‘cause she can’t handle me? Tch. Figures. You look like the type to put a leash on your bitch, huh?”

Joel wrapped the BP cuff tight—too tight.

“You son of a—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Joel said evenly.

The man froze.

Joel leaned over the bed, voice low and sharp as a scalpel. “You don’t talk to my staff that way. You sure as hell don’t touch anyone. And if you so much as blink wrong again, you’re not gonna like how I handle it. You understand me?”

“You can’t talk to me like—”

Joel pressed the cuff bulb once more. The man hissed in pain.

“I asked if you understood.”

The man’s breath was shallow, face flushing again. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Jesus. Fine.”

You stood just outside the curtain, your jaw tight, watching Joel work with a professionalism sharpened by fury. You’d seen him rough before—on the job, during trauma—but never like this. Never with his jaw clenched like that. Never with his hands steady as stone but his body bristling with quiet rage.

Kathleen appeared beside you at some point, arms crossed.

“Jesus,” she muttered, watching through the curtain. “What happened?”

“He assaulted Ellie,” you said. “Tried to hit me.”

Kathleen’s eyes flicked to the small scratch at your collar. Her mouth went tight. “Should’ve let Bill loose on him.”

Joel finished dressing the man’s wound with the grace of a wolf playing surgeon. Then he turned, gloves off, and met your gaze. His face was unreadable. But his eyes told you everything.

He was done being polite. For the rest of the shift—and likely the day—he’d be wound tight. He would do his job. But that thin line he normally walked between professionalism and unfiltered rage? It was gone.

You met him halfway in the hall, his hand brushing yours for a second, a brief, nearly invisible contact.

“You okay?” he asked, low, barely audible.

“I’m fine.”

“He hurt you.”

“Barely. Joel—don’t do something that’ll get you written up.”

He exhaled slowly, jaw ticking. “Let ‘em write me up.”

You stared at each other in that fluorescent hallway, footsteps pounding, phones ringing, voices shouting. But all you heard was him.

Behind you, Ellie reappeared, her face tight and pale but determined.

“I’m okay,” she said quietly, more to Joel than you. “He didn’t land it.”

Joel nodded once. “You handled yourself.”

Ellie smiled, just barely. “You going to tell HR about your bedside manner back there?”

He didn’t even look at her. “HR can kiss my ass.”

The ER didn’t slow. The next wave of traumas rolled in before you could even sit. A car crash. A fireworks explosion that nearly cost a teenager his hand. Jesse passed you gauze with one hand and held pressure on a neck wound with the other. Frank and Tommy burst through the ambulance bay doors with another critical, blood on their uniforms, sweat streaking their faces.

The air smelled like burnt flesh and Betadine. The walls were closing in with noise and heat and the never-ending, never fucking ending churn of human pain.

You didn’t stop. You didn’t flinch. Joel didn’t leave your side for more than five minutes at a time. And no one said a word about it. But they all saw. They always did. Even when they pretended they didn’t.

Especially when it came to you and Joel. The glances in the hall, the stillness that took over his body when your name was called out overhead, the way his eyes always found you first, scanning for blood, for bruises, for the smallest fucking thing that might’ve happened in the last ten minutes he hadn’t been watching.

Everyone saw it.

And no one said a goddamn word.

Because Joel Miller didn’t take kindly to anyone prying. And more importantly—he was a better doctor when you were around. They all knew it. It made them like you more. It made them protect you, in a way. Quietly. Stealthily. With a kind of respect that was hard-earned in a place like this.

But respect didn’t stop the world from burning. The ER was a fucking pressure cooker by the time the sun hit its apex. And even though you couldn’t see it from inside—no windows, no light except the harsh fluorescents—the shift in the air was tangible. It was the crescendo. The peak.

The waiting room had filled an hour ago. Now it was bursting. You heard the shouting first. Low and muffled from behind the secured double doors, the ones that kept the main ED from descending into chaos every time someone with a sprained ankle thought they were dying. Then the angry thuds—boots on linoleum, chairs scraping, someone pounding their fist on the glass partition near triage.

You caught the tail end of it from the nurse’s station. Kathleen had her jaw set, arms crossed, standing like a statue of stone as she radioed for Bill. She didn’t flinch as someone outside yelled about waiting four fucking hours with a sick kid. About how the government should burn for the state of the American healthcare system. About how their taxes should be buying better care.

How fucking ironic telling a healthcare worker that.

Jesse muttered under his breath as he wiped his hands on a towel, “People think ERs are fucking drive-thrus now.”

“They’ve always thought that,” Kathleen snapped.

You heard the buzz of the security door unlocking and then saw Bill stride out into the storm, calm as a mountain, broad-shouldered and stone-eyed. The crowd parted enough for him to speak in that deep, measured voice of his. You didn’t hear the words, but the tone was clear—this isn’t a negotiation.

Someone pushed. Big mistake.

Bill moved faster than anyone expected, crowding the man backward with one hand braced on his chest, steering him toward the wall. “Don’t. Touch. My. Staff,” you heard him growl.

The man’s arms lifted—weak, blustering, drunk or angry or both—but Bill wasn’t even winded. He radioed for APD, kept himself between the chaos and the front desk, and when the doors buzzed shut again ten seconds later, the noise behind them didn’t stop—but it dulled.

“Fourth of fucking July,” Marlene muttered as she walked by. “Every goddamn year.”

The real storm, though—the one that mattered—was what came through the ambulance bay.

The first call came at 10:41. Child. Near-drowning. Backyard pool. No adult supervision. ETA: two minutes.

Then another. And another. And another.

You stood in Trauma One as Maria directed the incoming flow like a symphony conductor, her tablet clenched in her hand like a sword. “Put the six-year-old in Trauma Two. Get Pediatrics paged down here. Respiratory on standby. Tell CT we need head and C-spine for all drownings, intubate as needed.”

“Where the fuck are we supposed to put them?” Jesse asked, not even trying to hide his frustration. “We’re at max capacity!”

Maria’s voice sliced through the noise. “Make room. Stack if you have to. Double rooms. Trauma hall overflow. I don’t give a shit. We are not turning away pediatric codes.”

And you were moving before you even processed it. Pulling on gloves, snapping goggles over your eyes, shoving trauma shears into your pocket.

The first kid—boy, seven or eight—was cyanotic, limp, his chest rising only slightly under bag ventilation. Joel took point, barking orders with brutal precision.

“1 mg epinephrine IV push. Get ready to tube. Peds crash cart now. We need a line—Jesse, get that line. You, get that IO if you have to.”

“Got it.”

“Push faster.”

The parents were in the hallway screaming. You didn’t stop. There was no room for that. You could fall apart later.

The second kid—blonde, five, blue lips, vomit around her mouth—was rushed into your room. You caught her from the gurney mid-transfer, nearly dropping to your knees with the dead weight.

“Started CPR on scene,” Tommy said breathlessly. “No pulse for four minutes. They pulled her from the shallow end.”

You moved on instinct. “Start compressions. Get the crash cart. I need 0.01 mg/kg epi. Let’s go.”

You worked until your arms felt like jelly. Until sweat was dripping down your spine, soaking through your black scrubs. Until your fingers ached from bagging, from checking pulses, from writing code notes that your brain refused to absorb. You snapped orders, half-yelled at Abby for hesitating too long on a tube size, and didn’t even feel guilty.

These were kids. And they were dying.

By the time you got the third one—a boy, barely three—he was already cold. Tommy handed you the chart with blood on his cheek, his eyes hollow.

“Nothing in the field,” he said.

You stared at the kid. You didn’t say anything. You intubated anyway. You tried.

Joel came in halfway through and didn’t even look at the clock. He just picked up the ambu bag, his face carved from stone.

“Come on, baby boy,” he murmured, almost too quiet to hear. “Come on. Breathe.”

The rhythm of the bagging. The flatline. The futile compressions.

You heard Mel whisper, “He’s gone.”

But you kept going. Just long enough. Just to make sure.

When you finally called it—when the silence came—you felt it ripple through the room like a knife through skin.

Joel didn’t move. He looked down at the boy for a long time. Then up at you. His jaw clenched.

You looked away. You left the room. And still, the day didn’t stop.

Another crash. Fireworks embedded in a thigh. A man who’d tried to jump a fence with sparklers in both hands and shattered his femur on landing. Someone else with a roman candle burn across their cheek and no fucking idea how they got it.

Again. It was daylight. Why the fuck are people doing fireworks already.

You caught a glimpse of Ellie across the trauma hallway, covered in soot, helping Riley wrap a dressing. Her hands were steady. Her mouth was set.

Marlene passed you a water and said, “You need to drink something or you’re going to pass out.”

You didn’t even realize your hands were shaking.

By the time you made it back to Joel, he was standing at the med station with his palms flat on the counter, shoulders hunched, breathing slow and heavy like a man trying not to crack his ribs from the inside out.

You stood behind him. Quiet. Present.

“He was so young,” you said, voice hoarse.

He nodded once. “I know.”

“We did everything.”

“I know.”

You didn’t touch him. You couldn’t. Not here. But his hand brushed yours when you reached for the pen, just the smallest press of his pinky against your skin. It was enough.

You stayed like that for a breath. Then two. Then the radio crackled again. Another code. Another ambulance. No rest. Not today. And not now.

It was barely past eleven and the ER had transformed from a battlefield into something more biblical. Plagues of chaos. Floods of noise. Screams from the trauma bays, sobbing from the waiting room, blood on the linoleum, and no time to wipe it up before someone else was bleeding over it.

You were halfway through stitching up a forehead lac—nine-year-old girl, tripped chasing her older brother with a sparkler—when your pager buzzed again. Rapid succession. Three back-to-back calls.

You looked down at the kid, her tiny legs swinging off the gurney, lips trembling.

“You’re doing amazing,” you told her. “Almost done, sweetheart. Just five more.”

She gave a brave nod, but her chin wobbled anyway. Jesse handed you the next suture without speaking, the tension behind his eyes saying more than words ever could.

The second the stitches were in, you stripped your gloves and tossed them toward the bin, already moving. The noise hit you in waves as you emerged back into the hallway. Another stretcher wheeled past, pushed by Tommy and Frank, both breathless.

“Sparkler injury!” Frank shouted. “We’ve got a foreign object in the left orbit. Firework’s still in the goddamn eye!”

You blinked. “Still in?”

“It’s lodged. Like a fucking spear.”

They wheeled the teen—maybe fifteen, maybe sixteen—into Trauma Four. Blood was pouring from the socket, and he was screaming loud enough to rattle your skull. The jagged metal tip of a bent, burnt-out sparkler jutted from the flesh where his eye should’ve been. His hands were tied down. One eye wide with terror.

“Why the fuck are people lighting fireworks before the sun even sets?” you muttered, pulling on a fresh gown.

“Because Americans are stupid,” Marlene said flatly, handing you saline flushes.

It was chaos in the room. Abby tried to push meds, but the kid kept thrashing.

“Stop, stop, stop,” Abby shouted. “I can’t get the vein!”

“Hold him down,” you snapped. “Get a sedative on board. Joel!”

He was already beside you, steady hands gripping the boy’s shoulders, voice firm and low, “You gotta stay still, kid. We’re gonna fix you up. Just hold still.”

“But my eye! My fucking eye—!”

“We see it,” you said. “You’re not gonna lose more if you let us help. We’ve got you.”

Blood ran down your gloves. The sparkler was still hot when Tommy pulled it from the wound—safely, slowly, with Joel guiding the angle—and the kid passed out from the pain.

You stepped back, adrenaline crashing into your bloodstream. No time to breathe. No time to break. The second you stepped out of Trauma Four, Ellie sprinted up, pale and winded.

“There’s a kid in triage with full-body hives,” she gasped. “Face is like—bad.They think it’s an allergic reaction. Face paint.”

You blinked. “Fucking face paint?”

“Red, white, and blue stripes,” she said, still panting. “Apparently it was ‘organic.’ Mom said he’s never had allergies before.”

“Where is he?”

“Exam 6. Jesse’s already pushing Benadryl but he’s wheezing. He’s scared.Like full-on panicking.”

You followed her down the hall, cutting through noise and stretchers and the rising scent of blood and chlorine and burning hair. The kid was around six, covered in angry red welts, his face ballooning, lips beginning to swell.

His mom was sobbing.

“I didn’t know—oh God, I didn’t know—I thought it was just paint, it was from Whole Foods, it said natural—”

“It’s okay,” you said quickly, crouching down. “Hey buddy, can you take a deep breath for me?”

He tried. It wheezed out in a thin rasp.

“Epi,” you said. “Right now. Auto-injector to the thigh. Push fluids. O2.”

Ellie already had the mask on him. Jesse handed you the pen.You jammed the injector into his leg through his shorts. He jolted, eyes wide, and then started to cry. That was a goodsign.

“Good job,” you said, breathless. “You’re gonna be okay, kid. Just keep breathing for me, alright?”

A nurse from Peds rolled in with an Epi drip and you handed off. Your hands were shaking again. You didn’t even realize it until Jesse brushed his fingers against yours.

“You alright?”

You looked down at your scrubs. More blood. More paint. More fucking sweat.

You nodded. “Yeah.”

You were lying. Your stomach hadn’t stopped twisting since the last code. But you kept going. Because that’s what everyone here did.

You barely made it two steps out of the room before Henry came barreling up the hallway.

“Doctor!” he wheezed. “We’ve got a—uh—a patient from a hot dog eating contest! They—they passed out mid-competition. Obstructed airway, I think. They’re coding in Bay Eight.”

You ran. By the time you got there, Riley and Mel were already doing compressions. A man—mid-thirties, athletic build—was purple-faced and frothing at the mouth. His stomach was distended and there was a faint smear of ketchup across his cheek.

“Hot dog still in there?” you asked, snapping gloves on.

Riley nodded. “We tried Heimlich. Failed. We’re suctioning but it’s not clearing.”

You stepped up. “Forceps. Laryngoscope. Bag valve.”

You shoved the scope into his mouth, peered past the pink folds of tissue. There it was—a slick, greasy chunk of frankfurter lodged in the airway like a cork.

Joel appeared behind you.

“You good?” he asked.

“Hand me the damn forceps.”

He did. You fished for it—deep, too deep—and pulled it free with a sickening squelch. The hot dog thunked to the floor like something cursed. Mel jumped in with the ambu bag.

“Pulse is back,” she confirmed a moment later. “It’s weak. But it’s back.”

“Never,” Riley panted, sweat plastering her baby hairs to her face, “never fucking entering a hot dog contest. Ever.”

You were leaning against the wall now, chest heaving, and your neck throbbed where that earlier patient had scratched you. You’d forgotten about it. The pain was back now, a dull ache that pulsed with your racing heart.

Joel stood in front of you, brow furrowed. “You’re not okay.”

You looked up. “Neither are you.”

“I know,” he said. “But I’m not the one bleeding.”

You glanced down. The scratch had reopened, blood soaking the collar of your scrub top. Not much. Not dangerous. Just another wound in a long, long list.

You swallowed hard. “Just a scratch.”

Joel didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. He just stood beside you as the chaos surged around you again.

Because there was no end to it. The doors would keep opening. The stretchers would keep rolling. And you’d keep going. Because no one else could.

That was the brutal, blistering truth of it.

You stood there—goggles tight on your face, blood crusted on your collar, gloves pulled on with a snap and your spine locked straight—not because you had some noble sense of duty or unshakable resolve, but because you couldn’t afford to stop. Because every time you even thought about sitting down, someone coded. Someone crashed. A kid stopped breathing. A man lost an eye. A woman sobbed over her infant’s tiny hand as the nurses tried to get a line in, whispering, “please, please, please” like a rosary.

And now, apparently, someone had blown themselves up in a fucking Porta-Potty.

"Incoming," Tommy said grimly, as the double doors from the bay burst open.

“Trauma One!” Maria barked from across the hub. “Now!”

Frank came in with the gurney, face tight, jaw locked. The smell hit first—burned fabric, scorched hair, shit. Literal human waste, clinging to the burned man’s clothes, his skin. His legs were torn up—open wounds studded with plastic and fragments of shattered porcelain from the toilet itself. One hand was charred black. His skin was red and sloughing, patches of it bubbling.

"Jesus Christ," Jesse muttered, yanking a mask up over his nose.

"Firework in a Porta-John," Tommy said as he wheeled the guy in. "M-80. Don’t ask me how."

"Someone fucking would on the Fourth," you muttered, snapping on another gown. “Where was it placed?”

“In the bowl,” Frank said. “He sat on it.”

“Of course he did.”

Joel was already across from you, snapping on a pair of surgical gloves with a sound that could slice through bone. His jaw was clenched, face unreadable.

"Vitals are trash," Mel said, sliding in with a monitor. "BP’s in the tank. O2 sat’s crashing. We need to intubate now."

You grabbed the laryngoscope while Joel prepped the tube. He was calm—dead calm—the kind of calm that comes before an explosion. His voice cut through the room with that hard, sharp edge.

“Lidocaine in. Cricoid pressure. Bag him.”

Jesse handed you the blade. You guided it into place, careful and precise. The airway was distorted but patent. Joel took over. The tube slid in on the first pass. Of course it did.

You looked down at the man’s legs, charred and littered with embedded shrapnel and what looked like wet confetti.

“Someone tell me that’s not toilet paper in his femoral wound.”

“Oh, it is,” Joel growled.

Marlene gagged.

“Flush the wounds. High-dose antibiotics. He’s septic already, or he’s about to be.”

You cleaned what you could while Kathleen handed you a syringe. “Chemical rash on his back. He landed in the tank.”

“Tank was full,” Tommy added helpfully, stepping out of the way.

“Jesus,” you muttered.

“He’s not gonna make it through the hour,” Joel said, bluntly. “Let’s get plastics and trauma surgery down here. He needs a burn unit bed but I’m betting San Antonio’s full.”

You didn’t ask how he knew that. You just nodded.

“Let’s call it in anyway.”

There wasn’t a single clear patch of this man’s skin left untouched. He looked like the Fourth of July had tried to swallow him whole and shit him back out.

You worked fast, coordinating with a speed that could only be honed by months—years—in this warzone of a hospital. Joel didn’t look at you once, not directly, but he moved around you like gravity, always one step ahead, always covering your blind side. He handled the patient with a kind of ruthless efficiency that others might’ve called cold.

You knew better. Joel wasn’t cold. Joel was focused. He didn’t waste softness on the people who didn’t deserve it. That man on the table? He might have deserved pity. He sure as fuck wasn’t getting it.

Joel tore his gloves off once the patient was stabilized enough for surgery and tossed them in the bin like they’d personally offended him. His hands shook once—barely noticeable—before he shoved them into his pockets.

“Fucking idiot,” he muttered.

You didn’t disagree.

And you didn’t stop moving.

Because the very next second, Ellie poked her head in.

“Uh, we’ve got a kid in Exam 3? Swallowed a toothpick? Like…a flag one. From a cupcake.”

You blinked. “A flag?”

“Yeah, like the American flag. From the dollar store. She’s five.”

“Is she choking?”

“No, but the family’s…a lot.”

“How a lot?”

“You’ll see.”

You left Joel in Trauma One and headed toward Exam 3. You could hear them before you opened the door.

The mother was sobbing. Loudly. Hiccuping breaths and wailing cries like she was auditioning for a soap opera. The father was yelling—at the kid, at the mother, at the air. Clearly drunk already, beer-breath sharp in the room.

“She’s gonna die,” the mom wailed. “My baby’s gonna die from a cupcake!”

“She ain’t fuckin’ dyin’,” the dad snapped, swaying slightly. “Y’all makin’ a big deal about nothin’!”

“Why did you even let her have the cupcake? You always do this—you don’t watch her!”

“She’s five, she can eat a goddamn cupcake! We all did when we were kids!”

“She swallowed a fucking flag, Kyle!”

In the corner, Grandma was sitting in a plastic chair, swaying gently and singing America the Beautiful off-key and with unnerving enthusiasm.

“O beautiful… for spacious skies…”

The child—the only reasonable person in the room—sat on the bed kicking her heels, totally unbothered.

“I feel fine,” she said. “Can I have another cupcake?”

Dina was already in the room, crouched next to the mother, talking in that soft, steady voice she used when everything was teetering on collapse.

“She’s okay,” Dina said. “She’s alert, she’s talking, she’s not choking. Let’s just take a breath, alright?”

The mom sobbed harder. You stepped in, hands in the air like you were entering a hostage negotiation.

“Hi, I’m one of the doctors. I hear we had a little cupcake situation.”

“She swallowed a flag,” the dad said proudly. “America!”

“She’s fine,” the mom cried. “But what if she’s not? What if it cuts her up on the inside?”

“Ma’am,” you said gently, approaching the little girl. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Kaylee.”

“Hi, Kaylee. Can I press on your tummy a little?”

She nodded solemnly. “You’re pretty.”

You smiled. “So are you.”

You examined her—no abdominal tenderness, no signs of perforation, vitals stable. You made a note to get an abdominal X-ray, just to make sure the damn flag wasn’t sharp enough to do damage. But this wasn’t a code. This was a circus.

Dina stood up slowly, easing the mom back onto the chair.

“She’s gonna be fine,” she said firmly. “We’re gonna monitor her and make sure everything passes okay. But you need to breathe.”

The grandma took that moment to hit a high note.

“...for purple mountain majesty…”

You looked at Dina. Dina looked at you.

“I’ll give them some water,” she muttered. “And maybe a Valium.”

You squeezed her arm gently. “You’re a national treasure.”

Dina smirked. “Someone has to be.”

You stepped out of the room and leaned your head against the cool wall for just a moment. Just a moment of silence. Of stillness. But there was no such thing today.

There were voices shouting again. Footsteps pounding. Another trauma called overhead. And Joel’s voice, snapping sharp in the distance—

“Get me a fucking gurney now or I’ll throw this guy over my shoulder myself!”

You straightened your spine. Wiped your hands. And ran toward it.

You didn’t know what room it was yet. You didn’t know who was bleeding, coding, or screaming—but the air in the ER had changed again, like it had decided to climb one more goddamn rung on the ladder to hell.

By now it had bled into noon, and that meant it wasn’t just a peak anymore. This was the full boil. No more build-up. No more lulls. Just the ER at its most unhinged, bloated with bodies and chaos and pain, stinking of chlorine and antiseptic and sunburned skin.

You rounded the corner, expecting another trauma code, expecting the worst—and instead, you got two teenage boys, one on a wheelchair, the other pushing him with the nonchalant energy of a kid who thought his own mortality was at least a decade away.

“We tried to do a Slip ’n Slide,” said the one in the chair, grinning despite the fact that his wrist was visibly fractured and his shoulder was dislocated at an angle that made Jesse wince. “It was sick.”

“We used trash bags and Dawn,” his friend said, absolutely proud of the decision. “It’s, like, eco-friendly, right?”

“Yeah,” the injured one added. “Until he slipped and hit the sprinkler head buried in the lawn. I thought his bone came out of his arm, but it was just soap and panic.”

“Yo, are you my doctor?” the boy said, eyes dropping to your badge, then slowly crawling back up to your eyes. “Because like…you’re so hot.”

You blinked. Behind you, Jesse choked on his laugh.

“Yeah,” the boy continued, winking despite his very obvious pain. “I think I just dislocated my heart.”

“Okay,” you said, stepping in. “We’re going to get your vitals, your arm back in its socket, and absolutely never talk like that to a medical professional again.”

“But if I die—”

“You won’t.”

“—will you come to my funeral?”

“I’ll resuscitate you just to kill you again.”

Jesse wheeled the kid into Exam 5, cackling.

“I love this job sometimes,” he muttered. “Teens flirting with trauma. Classic.”

You didn’t get far before Joel appeared. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t have to.

Just looked at the kid, then looked at you, and that single blink—slow and pointed—said all of it.

Joel was not the jealous type.

Joel was the territorial type. Like a wolf. Like a loaded weapon just waiting to be cocked.

“Relax,” you muttered under your breath as you passed him, shoulder brushing his. “He’s seventeen and concussed.”

Joel growled low in his throat. Actually growled. “Little bastard keeps looking at your ass, he’ll leave here with more than a cast.”

You fought back a smirk. “He’s barely out of diapers.”

Joel shot you a look like that wasn’t the goddamn point.

But then Tess was suddenly at your side, moving at speed, hair half-falling from her bun, eyes wild and voice sharp.

“Hey—Miller. You. Room 12. Right now. I don’t have time for this.”

“What is it?” you asked, already falling into step beside her.

She didn’t break stride. “Geriatric. Took too much THC lemonade. She thinks she’s ascending. I need backup before she climbs the fucking bed rails.”

You and Joel both followed.

Inside Room 12 was an elderly woman in a red-white-and-blue shawl, lying in a hospital gown with her arms stretched out like she was ready to be crucified.

“I hear the trumpets,” she whispered, eyes glassy. “They’re calling me home.”

Ellie stood nearby holding an EKG lead in one hand and what looked like an empty bottle of artisanal lemonade in the other. “Her granddaughter brought this,” she said. “She thought it was regular lemonade.”

“I thought it was an Arnold Palmer,” the woman corrected, voice dreamy. “It tasted like freedom.”

“She chugged half the bottle in the sun,” Tess explained. “Heart rate’s 140 and rising.”

Joel moved to the monitor, eyes flicking over the numbers. “BP’s shit too. You got a line?”

“Yeah,” said Mel, double-checking the drip. “But she keeps pulling at it.”

“Ma’am,” you said gently, approaching the bedside. “You’re not dying. You just had too much cannabis.”

Her eyes found Joel. They widened. “Saint Peter?”

Joel stared. “No.”

“Have you come to escort me?” she whispered, reaching out a hand.

Joel took a single step back. 

“I’m ready,” she continued, eyes glistening. “Take me into the light.”

“She needs Ativan,” Abby said, handing it off. “And maybe like…a priest.”

“Just keep her in the bed,” Tess said. “She keeps trying to crawl toward the halogen light in the ceiling.”

Joel turned away, muttering, “I fucking hate this holiday.”

You looked at him, lifting a brow. “You hate every holiday.”

“Yeah,” he said. “And this one’s the worst.”

It would’ve been funny, if the ER hadn’t chosen that exact moment to go off the rails again.

Marlene poked her head in. “You guys got a throat bleeder in Exam 2. Woman swallowed a metal bristle from a grill brush. Says she noticed halfway through her hot dog but didn’t wanna be rude.”

“What the fuck,” you muttered.

“She’s stable,” Marlene added. “But her sister’s already yelling.”

You and Joel exchanged a look. Of course.

You followed Marlene down the hall, Ellie falling in behind you with Riley trailing behind her, both clutching their tablets and trying to finish charting from the last five traumas. Henry passed you in the other direction, visibly sweating, muttering something about a broken ankle in the hallway again.

Inside Exam 2, the patient sat clutching her throat, blood on her napkin. Next to her stood a woman in her fifties with perfectly curled hair, a clipboard, and the righteous fury of a suburban mom who read one article once.

“She swallowed what?” Joel asked, arms folded.

“A grill bristle,” you said, eyeing the bleeding. “Probably from one of those wire brushes. They snap off sometimes. I read about this.”

The sister stepped in front of the bed like a lawyer at a press conference.

“This is why I tell everyone not to use metal tools when cooking. There are non-toxic options. Bamboo. Silicone. But nobody listens to me. And now this happens!”

“Ma’am,” Joel said flatly. “I don’t give a shit about your non toxic options right now. Your sister is bleeding.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re excused,” he said, walking past her to check the monitor. “Let the doctors work.”

You fought a smile and grabbed gloves. The woman on the bed gave you a tired, slightly woozy grin.

“I mean, it was a good hot dog,” she rasped. “Didn’t wanna ruin the vibe.”

“Next time,” you said, gently tilting her head, “ruin the vibe.”

She chuckled. Then winced.

Dina appeared at the doorway, her voice a breathless sigh. “There’s a baby on the floor in the waiting room trying to eat a Pop-It firework. No parents in sight.”

“I’m gonna commit a felony,” Joel muttered.

“I’ll hold your pager,” you said.

Everyone laughed. For half a second, it felt like the room wasn’t collapsing. Then the lights flickered. The power hiccupped. And another trauma was called over the PA.

You looked at Joel. He was already moving. And you followed him. Because no one else could.

That sentence followed you like a goddamn shadow.

It echoed in your head as you and Joel passed through the final security doors into the waiting room—a wall of sweaty, shouting, sunburned humanity. It was packed to the gills. Coughing kids, cranky geriatrics, one guy snoring against the vending machine, another pacing the floor in flip-flops and nothing else but an American flag wrapped around his waist like a towel.

The Fourth of July in Texas. The absolute worst kind of magic.

And right in the middle of all of it—by the edge of the grimy tiled floor, next to an overflowing trash can—was a baby. A real-ass baby.

Maybe nine months old. Crawling across the fucking floor with a soggy diaper and an open Pop-It firework gripped in his drool-slick hand like it was a holy relic.

“God damn it,” Joel muttered, and you were already moving.

You scooped the baby up before he could slam the firework into the floor. He shrieked in protest, flailed in your arms, and then—somehow—managed to sneeze directly into your mouth.

You froze.

“Did he just—?”

“He fucking did,” Joel confirmed.

Your jaw clenched.

Joel took the firework from the kid’s hand and hurled it into the nearest trash bin like it had personally offended him. Then he looked around the room with all the tenderness of a hunting dog tracking a wounded deer.

“Whose kid is this?!” he bellowed.

Silence. No one moved. No one looked up.

“I said—whose fucking kid?!”

You rocked the baby gently on your hip. “He doesn’t have a wristband. He’s not registered.”

Joel scanned the crowd, eyes narrowing. “We’re calling CPS.”

“I’ll call 'em,” Dina said, appearing from nowhere, eyes exhausted and jaw tight. “Jesus fucking Christ. This is the third abandoned kid today. Do people think this is a goddamn daycare?”

“Apparently,” Joel growled.

The baby cooed in your arms and drooled on your scrub top.

You sighed. “Okay. This one’s mine now. I’ll call him July.”

Joel looked at the baby. The baby blinked at him, completely unbothered.

Joel didn’t smile. But you could tell he wanted to. He just touched the baby's foot making him giggle.

Then the screaming started. Not from the baby. From the ambulance bay.

You both turned just in time to see Tommy and Frank wheel in a gurney that looked…wrong. The patient wasn’t lying flat. She was…angled? Propped up in some kind of twisted plastic hellscape. And she was howling.

“I’m stuck!” she screeched. “I cannot feel my ass!”

“She got melted into the chair,” Frank explained as they wheeled her past the desk. “Aluminum frame, plastic seat. Left it out in the sun too long. She sat down and… boom. Cheeks fused.”

“She tried to stand up and the chair came with her,” Tommy added, still holding the IV bag. “Had to cut the lawn hose to fit her through the door.”

You blinked. Marlene blinked. Joel’s eye twitched.

“Get her into Procedure Three,” Maria barked from behind the main hub. “And prep a burn tray. This is gonna be a surgical extraction.”

You followed the gurney in, July passed off to Dina, as Joel grabbed the trauma shears. Dina disappeared down the hall to hand the baby off to Social Work. Jesse, Tess, and Riley were already in the room. Henry stood against the wall, pale as a sheet, staring at the patient like she was some rare museum exhibit.

“Don’t just stand there,” Joel snapped at him. “You’ve seen an ass before.”

“Not like this,” Henry whispered.

The patient was red in the face, gripping the sides of the chair like it was a ride at an amusement park. 

“She’s got second-degree burns on the posterior,” Mel said, pulling on gloves. “We’re gonna have to cut the chair off in sections.”

“She’s got third-degree pride damage,” Abby muttered.

“I heard that!” the woman yelled.

“We’ll get you out, ma’am,” Tess said, rolling up her sleeves. “But you need to hold still. If you twist, you’ll rip skin.”

“I’ve been twisted since brunch,” the woman moaned. “Do it fast!”

You stepped in with trauma scissors and started cutting the straps of her sundress where it had fused to the chair legs. Joel knelt at the base, prying at melted plastic.

“Jesse, saline. And get me lidocaine. Abby—scalpel. Riley—monitor. Now.”

They moved. You moved. The chair creaked as Joel wedged the blunt scissors into the side and began to snip.

“You’re gonna feel pressure,” you warned.

“I feel humiliation!” the woman shouted.

The room was chaos. Screams. Grunts. Sweat. Abby nearly slipped in a puddle of saline. Jesse started humming The Star Spangled Banner under his breath like it was going to save his soul.

“Pressure coming,” Joel warned.

“Now,” you said. “Mel—on the back panel.”

One final snap—and the chair split. The woman yelped. Joel caught her before she could slide off the gurney. Burns covered the backs of her thighs and ass. Angry red welts. Plastic still clinging to the skin.

“Get burn cream,” Joel barked. “And wrap it. We’ll get plastics to consult. If this gets infected—”

“It won’t,” you said quickly. “We won’t let it.”

The woman sniffled. “Do I… still have an ass?”

You nodded solemnly. “It’s just less optimistic now.”

Joel gave you a look. But it was almost—almost—amused.

Jesse gently covered her with a sheet. “You’ll be fine, ma’am. But maybe next time, check the chair temperature before you park it.”

“Fuck you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

Tess wiped her forehead. “Somebody better bring me a margarita after this.”

“I got a jug of hospital juice,” Riley offered.

“Go to hell.”

Ellie leaned in through the curtain, tablet clutched in one hand. “Someone just walked in with a buncha sparklers taped to their chest.”

You stared. She stared. You sighed. Then reached for your stethoscope.

You didn’t even get the damn thing around your neck before it happened. The world cracked in half.

A boom, deep and cavernous, roared through the hospital like a goddamn earthquake. The lights flickered. The floor shook. Somewhere far off, car alarms screamed to life. You had just turned to Joel, mouth open to ask what the fuck was that, when the second explosion hit.

It was louder. Closer.

You staggered, caught the edge of the stretcher to steady yourself. From down the hall came the sound of shattering glass. An IV pole tipped, clattered to the floor. Somewhere, someone screamed. The lights dimmed, buzzed, then held steady, flickering like they were considering going out entirely.

Joel was already moving. You didn’t even see him react—just felt it. A hand on your arm. Hard. Gripping. Yanking you in, fast.

He pulled you to him, one arm curling instinctively around your back, his chest flush to yours as the wall behind you both trembled under the blast’s echo.

You could feel his heart racing through his scrubs. His breath was sharp, tight, furious.

“Are you hurt?” His voice was low and sharp, a breath away from a growl.

“No,” you panted. “I’m—what the fuck just happened?”

Across the ER, controlled chaos exploded.

Maria’s voice bellowed from the central hub, clear and commanding, her voice slicing through the panic. “Mass casualty protocol! All trauma bays cleared now. Abby, Mel, start staging the clean beds! Riley, Henry, grab gurneys and start lining the main hallway. Jesse, Marlene, alert radiology and prep the portable X-ray machines—now!”

Joel looked out the window. Smoke. Billowing, black smoke rising from the supermarket lot across the street. People running. Screaming.

“Oh, fuck me,” Kathleen said from the nurse’s desk, eyes wide. “It’s the firework truck.”

“The illegal one,” Marlene added, her voice flat with horror. “That vendor with the fucking tent full of black market shit—it’s gone.”

“Exploded,” said Ellie, appearing at your side, breathless and pale. “It just—exploded. Twice. We felt it inside.”

You looked toward the windows. The supermarket parking lot was chaos. Fireworks still going off mid-air—rockets bursting into reds and greens like it was New Year’s instead of noon. People were running toward the hospital, some limping, some screaming.

A kid was carried by a man soaked in blood.

A woman fell into the bushes near the entrance.

The hospital doors hadn’t even fully opened before Bill was there, already barking into his radio, hand on his hip, stance like a fucking soldier. “We’ve got multiple casualties inbound. Lock this place down, route ‘em to emergency access. Tell APD we need crowd control now. No civilians inside the ER.”

“Tell Fire they’re still igniting,” Tommy shouted as he hauled a backboard off a gurney. “Shit’s not out yet. We’re gonna have more.”

Maria turned to you and Joel. “You two. Trauma Three. First waves’ll be here in thirty seconds.”

The doors burst open again. Sirens now. So many sirens.

Then they came.

The first patient—dragged in by two strangers, clothes still smoking—was screaming, half his face red and blistering, the skin peeling off his arm like plastic wrap. “It was in my goddamn truck!” he yelled. “I told him not to park it next to the propane—”

“Vitals tanking,” Mel called, rushing up with the monitor. “BP 84 over 40!”

“Get fluids. We’re intubating now,” Joel barked. “You—” he pointed at Henry, who flinched— “cut that shirt off and watch for chest expansion.”

“I’ve got an O2 mask!” Ellie shouted, barreling in behind him.

Abby was already trying to start a line, fumbling.

“Abby—center that angle or you’re gonna blow it,” Joel snapped. “Get out of the way. I’ll do it.”

You slipped in with the burn kit, pushing the cart to the side of the bed. “We need lidocaine, silvadene, morphine. He’s gonna crash.”

Second patient came in a minute later.

Woman. Late twenties. Not screaming.

Because she couldn’t breathe.

A rocket had shot straight through the windshield of her car. Glass shredded her chest. One rib cracked. The pressure had collapsed her lung.

“She’s hypoxic,” Jesse called, wheeling her into Trauma Two. “Sat’s in the fifties. Trachea’s shifting. We’ve got a tension pneumo.”

“I’m needling her now!” you said, already gloved up.

Joel moved to your side without hesitation.

“Three fingers below the clavicle. Do it fast or she’s gone,” he said, voice calm, commanding. Like the world wasn’t on fire.

You pierced the chest wall with the needle, felt the rush of air, watched her chest rise.

“She’s stabilizing,” Riley said, breath catching.

Another one.

A child.

Carried in by a stranger, his leg soaked in blood, a metal shard sticking out just above the knee. Screaming. Wailing.

“Shrapnel,” Marlene said. “Straight from the explosion.”

Dina rushed in behind them, voice shaking. “Mom’s not with him. Said she ran off looking for his little brother—he’s alone.”

You pushed the adult crash cart aside, swapping in peds trauma.

“Stay with me, kiddo,” you whispered, eyes locking with his. “You’re not alone anymore.”

Joel appeared beside you, hands already working to stabilize the limb. “Get that pressure dressing on. Marlene—lidocaine local. I’m not cutting metal until he’s numb.”

“Roger that.”

“We can’t pull it here,” you said. “Not without imaging. We don’t know what it’s resting against.”

Joel’s jaw clenched. “Then we work around it. Until radiology’s ready.”

The ER was vibrating with sound. The doors slammed open again, and Frank came in pushing another gurney.

“Burns and lacerations,” he said. “Lost a shoe, still has a firework tube in his hand.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Tess muttered, meeting him at the door with a splint and gauze. “Get me a tray. And a scalpel. I think we’re cutting around this one.”

“Where’s Ortho?” Maria asked, hands on her hips. “Someone page Ortho, I want consults in fifteen minutes or I’m dragging them down here myself!”

“Dr. Gail is in surgery!” Riley shouted back. “I’ll grab second call!”

Kathleen blew past the hub with four gurneys trailing behind her like a train, three med techs jogging to keep up. Her face was stone.

“Ten more ambulances on the way,” she called. “The parking lot’s a war zone.They’re staging by triage. We need everyone outside of Trauma Hall to prep overflow.”

You grabbed a portable monitor and a trauma checklist, snapped at Henry to follow.

He hesitated.

Joel barked—“Go.”

Henry went.

You didn’t see where Joel ended up for the next ten minutes. You were too busy. You were stitching, packing wounds, answering rapid-fire questions from Ellie, who was practically vibrating from adrenaline. You passed Jesse in the hallway, sweat pouring down his face, three soaked gowns already in the trash. You heard Abby shouting for a bolus in Room Seven, saw Mel carrying a tray of wrapped scalpels like her life depended on it.

And then—

Joel was beside you again.

You didn’t know how long it had been.

His eyes scanned you fast, checking every inch of you in a breathless beat.

“You okay?”

You nodded.

“You?”

He didn’t answer.

But his fingers brushed your hand for just a second. Just long enough to say still here.

And then more patients poured in.

And you both ran toward it.

There wasn’t even time to think about how long it had been since you’d eaten, or went to the bathroom, or even blinked without your eyeballs stinging. The air in the ER had thickened—hot, metallic, sour with sweat and sterilized burn dressings. Every inch of your black scrubs was soaked in blood, saline, and god knew what else. You couldn’t tell where your pulse stopped and the noise around you began.

There was no clock anymore. Just waves of patients. Gurneys rolling in, IV poles clattering against corners, bloody towels slapping the linoleum. You moved through it like muscle memory—stitching, bagging, ordering scans, barking instructions to interns who hadn’t even hit their first bowel movement on the job.

Joel was a few paces ahead, pulling a C-collar from a wall mount, jaw tight as iron, barking over his shoulder to Riley, who was jogging to keep up with a trauma sheet.

“Have the trauma room ready before I get there, or I’m working on this guy on the floor. Got it?”

“Got it, Dr. Miller,” she said breathlessly, already sprinting down the hall.

You saw Henry leaning into a hallway crash cart, face pale and shiny. He’d just finished assisting with a child whose femur had shattered clean through the skin. His gloved hands were still shaking, and you wanted to say something—something decent—but the next gurney was already coming in, and someone was shouting for an airway and suction, and the moment was gone.

Then the doors opened again.

You heard the change in the room before you saw who it was.

There was a shift—like the sound dropped an octave. Like gravity changed hands.

A firefighter came in.

He wasn’t screaming.

He wasn’t saying anything.

That was worse.

Frank was wheeling him, and the medic at his side looked fucking wrecked.

“Flash burns,” Frank shouted. “Second and third degree, neck down to his hip. Helmet took most of the blast. He was on top of the truck when it popped the second time.”

“Vitals?” Joel asked, already snapping on gloves.

“Dropping. BP’s shit, O2 sat’s low 90s. He needs fluids, airway’s tightening.”

The man’s skin was cracked, dark, curled. Parts of it bubbled, weeping plasma.

“Get him to Trauma One,” Joel barked. “You—” He pointed to Ellie, who was two steps away. “Get Respiratory down here right now.”

“He’s trying to talk,” you said, leaning in.

You crouched beside the gurney as Frank slowed it beside the trauma bay. The firefighter’s lips were blistered. His voice was gravel.

“My…my wife’s here…”

“We’ll find her,” you said. “But you need to stay with us, alright? You’re at Austin General. You’re safe.”

He blinked slowly. “It hurts.”

“I know. I know it does.”

“Push fentanyl, IV,” Joel said, already cutting away what was left of the turnout gear. The skin underneath peeled off with the fabric.

“Motherfucker,” he growled, tossing the gauze aside. “This is third-degree over at least thirty percent. Get the burn team on standby.”

Tess appeared at your side with two nurses and a trauma surgeon. “Ortho’s full upstairs. Trauma Two is open but we’ve got a bleeding scalp lac in there. I’ll switch ‘em if we stabilize him in the next ten.”

You nodded. “I’ll start cooling compresses now.”

You grabbed a silver-coated burn dressing, opened it, and started gently laying it over the exposed tissue. The firefighter didn’t even flinch.

That was the worst part.

The not flinching.

Then came the second shift in the air. The kind you only felt a few times a year.

The doors opened again.

A uniform came through.

Police.

Dragging another.

The cop on the gurney was groaning, blood pouring from a shoulder wound, his vest soaked through, cheek torn open. One of his boots was missing. There was soot on his face.

Joel looked up. Groaned. Loudly.

“Fucking great,” he muttered, wiping his hands on a towel. “Just what we fucking need.”

You barely caught your laugh before it escaped. It wasn’t funny. But it was also so goddamn Joel.

Because whenever a cop rolled through the trauma bay, it meant one thing, the rest of the department was about to show up.

And they’d be in the ER. Hovering. Pacing. Armed.

It turned your trauma bay into a political minefield.

And Joel? Joel didn’t play that game.

“Officer was helping crowd control during the blast,” Tommy reported, voice clipped, wheeling the officer in beside Tess. “Got hit with some shrapnel and then trampled.”

“Vitals?” Joel asked, walking over.

“Stable. But barely. Pressure’s borderline. Laceration on the scalp, and that shoulder’s fucked.”

The officer groaned. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” Joel said. “You’ve got a puncture wound half an inch from your subclavian artery, and you’re actively bleeding onto my floor. Shut up and let me work.”

You stepped in behind him, grabbing gauze, gloves already on. “Do you want me to start a second line?”

“Yes. Left AC. Jesse—clamp this.”

“I’m clamping, I’m clamping,” Jesse muttered, hands bloody.

And right on cue, the cavalry came.

Five more officers entered the ER like they owned the place, guns holstered, expressions hard. They didn’t say a word, just hovered outside Trauma Three like sentries.

Dina appeared at your side with an exhausted expression. “I’m going to need a Xanax just from looking at this testosterone.”

“They’re gonna breathe down our necks until this guy’s transferred upstairs,” you muttered, snapping the catheter into place.

Joel didn’t even look up.

“Hey,” he barked, without turning. “One of you pacing jackasses wanna be useful? Go get your boy’s blood type from dispatch and stop fucking crowding my hallway.”

A few of them stiffened.

One opened his mouth.

Joel glared.

The cop closed it again.

Marlene slid in beside you with an extra tray. “You want me to log this guy’s injury for the report?”

“Document it for surgical,” you said. “He’s not going to need an incident report if he bleeds out on the floor.”

“I heard that,” the officer mumbled.

Joel leaned over him. “Good. Maybe you’ll listen better now.”

And then, somehow, like some cruel joke from above, a sixth cop walked in carrying a teenage girl with a bruised face.

“Hit by a rocket while filming a TikTok,” he said. “She’s got glass in her cheek and maybe a concussion.”

Joel blinked.

“Riley. That one’s yours,” he said.

“Me? I—I've never done this before—”

“You’ve got me,” Joel barked. “She’s stable. Triage her. I’ll double-check your assessment before discharge.”

You caught his eye.

You didn’t say anything.

You didn’t have to.

You could see it in him—the storm building behind his ribs. The fire that never quite went out. Joel wasn’t just in charge. He was containing the whole fucking hospital with the force of his will.

And still—when his eyes met yours, something shifted.

His jaw relaxed. Just a fraction.

You wiped sweat off your brow and nodded.

He didn’t nod. He just looked at you.

You pressed your glove to the officer’s wound and let yourself feel his gaze for one more second before the chaos swallowed you whole again.

It was four-thirty p.m. now. Or close to it.

The firework truck disaster had slowed—not ended, not resolved, but dulled just enough that you could hear your own breathing again. Maybe even someone else's. EMS was still ferrying in stragglers from the blast radius, but the heavy flow was stemmed. Controlled. Stitched and stapled back into some semblance of order by a crew of exhausted, bloodstained healthcare workers who hadn’t took a break since sunrise.

The ER was open again. Technically.

The triage desk was back on, the phones buzzing, the automatic doors kissing open with every new patient. The city hadn’t paused just because a truck of illegal fireworks blew up across the street. This was Austin. People still choked on hot dogs, burned their hands on grills, took edibles they didn’t understand and panic-texted their exes from Exam room 2.

And every. Single. Fucking. Room was full.

Overflow was full.

Trauma bays were full.

Peds, Ortho, Neuro, Med-Surg, Hall Beds 1 through 5, and the goddamn family bereavement room were full.

You were treading water, heart beating in your ears, sweat soaking your scrubs. There were two paper cups of coffee you hadn’t finished and three patients you hadn’t followed up on yet. Ellie was at the nurse’s station reviewing a chart with one hand and eating a banana with the other, eyes glassy from too much input. Riley had just returned from the stairwell, where she admitted to crying for two minutes, washing her face, and then saying I can do hard things.

That was you during your first year too. 

You hadn’t even taken your gloves off for the last hour. At some point, they just fused to your skin.

But then it happened.

The way it always does.

Sudden.

Loud.

Violent.

The radio crackled in from EMS. The voice was fast, panicked.

“Male, mid-thirties, penetrating chest trauma, left thoracic cavity—multiple stab wounds—no pulse for the last thirty seconds. We’re two minutes out—we’re performing compressions en route but he’s—he’s tanking.”

There was silence for one breath.

Just one.

Then Joel’s voice, low and lethal from the trauma bay, “Clear Trauma One. Now.”

You dropped the file in your hands onto the desk.

Tore off your gloves.

And you ran.

By the time you got to Trauma One, Joel was already there—mask on, arms scrubbed to the elbow, gown halfway tied. His jaw was clenched, eyes scanning the crash cart like he was inventorying a fucking battlefield. The room smelled like sweat and sterile burn cream, and still, something in the air cracked open, the second you stepped in.

Not panic. Not fear.

Something heavier.

Something that whispered this one’s gonna be different.

“Get them all in here,” Joel snapped to Marlene, who stood at the door. “Everyone. Jesse, Abby, Mel, Riley, Henry. Ellie too.”

“They’re not all on rotation for—”

“I don’t give a fuck,” he barked. “They want to work in the field? They want to become doctors? They watch. They help. They need to see this.”

You stepped in beside him, already pulling on a new pair of gloves. “Is it…?”

Joel looked at you. Really looked.

And when he nodded, your pulse jumped.

“Emergency thoracotomy,” he said. “If he arrests, we crack the chest.”

Your heart stuttered.

This was it.

This was the thing you’d been obsessing over for months—talking Joel’s ear off about it over half-empty glasses of whiskey at his kitchen counter, watching old procedural videos while curled up next to him in bed, asking him over and over what was it like the first time you did one? Did it work? Did it feel real? He never answered in full. He just grunted, or said “bloody,” or told you to go the fuck to sleep while he digs his head back into your warm neck.

And now it was happening.

And he was here.

And you were ready.

The doors burst open.

The paramedics wheeled him in at a dead sprint. Literally. Because the man on the gurney was dead.

Pulseless.

Agonal.

The first medic was shouting, “We lost him for thirty—make that forty seconds now. GSW to the chest, left thorax, suspect a knife. Maybe a piece of pipe. Whatever it was—punched straight through.”

Joel was already at the bedside, yanking off the sheet.

You followed without needing to be asked.

“Jesse, get vitals on monitor. Abby, you’re on line. Riley, grab the thoracotomy tray. Henry—”

Henry paled. “Yeah?”

“Don’t fucking faint again.”

“I won’t.”

“You faint, I leave you there.”

He nodded. Swallowed. Backed up.

The man’s skin was waxy. Blue around the lips. The gaping chest wound glistened and bubbled with thick, frothy blood—the worst kind. Pulmonary. Wet. Final.

“We’re cracking,” Joel said to the room. “Now. He’s not coming back with compressions. We open.”

Ellie blinked. “You mean like—like open open?”

“Like ribs-on-display open,” Joel snapped. “Don’t move unless you want your shoes soaked.”

And then—Joel turned to you.

Paused.

Looked at you with that sharp, knowing edge that said this is the moment you've been waiting for.

“Do it,” he said.

You blinked. “Me?”

“You’ve been begging for this for six fucking months. Talking my ear off. You want it—take it.”

The room froze.

Everyone stared at you.

“No pressure,” Mel whispered. “Just someone’s life on the line.”

You didn’t blink.

Didn’t flinch.

You stepped forward, and you cracked his fucking chest.

Joel guided, hands over yours, voice low but never soft. “Midline. Left thoracotomy. Rib spreader. Go now.”

Riley handed it over with trembling hands. Abby dropped suction tubing on the floor and didn’t even pick it up.

You made the incision.

Deep.

Fast.

Confident.

The blood poured.

Joel caught it.

Jesse cursed under his breath. Ellie made a sound like she was swallowing vomit. Henry straight-up whimpered.

You cut through the muscle.

Joel barked again. “Keep going. Don’t stop until you see the goddamn heart.”

You spread the ribs. The crack was wet and obscene and louder than you expected.

It wasn’t like TV.

It was real.

Inside, the left lung was collapsed, the pericardium filling with blood.

You could see the heart.

And it was still.

Joel didn’t say anything.

You didn’t need him to.

You reached in.

Your gloved hand slid into the cavity like a blade. Warm. Tight. Full of potential.

And you found it.

The heart.

“Massage it,” Joel said. “Rhythm. Controlled. You’ve got this.”

You started compressions—internal. Thumb and fingers. Slow, then faster.

Riley was in the corner, trying to stand tall. 

Abby whispered something that sounded like a prayer.

Mel had gone quiet, which was somehow worse.

Henry was gripping the counter, white-knuckled.

Jesse stood frozen until Joel barked at him to bag the fucking patient.

And you—you were the one keeping the man alive.

For ten seconds.

Then twenty.

Then thirty.

Then—

Beep.

Faint.

Then stronger.

Joel leaned over the monitor.

“Sinus rhythm,” he said, eyes flicking to you. “Goddamn. You got him back.”

A gasp filled the room.

Abby nearly dropped her syringe.

Mel exhaled like she hadn’t breathed in minutes.

Jesse muttered “holy shit.”

Ellie said, “you just—he was dead. And now he’s not.”

Joel looked at you.

Just for a second.

And his face didn’t soften.

Not quite.

But his jaw relaxed. His eyes cooled.

“Good work,” he said, voice like gravel. “Now close him up.”

You did.

You fucking did.

You closed him. The room moved around you—cleaning, charting, reeling—but you stayed still. Hands deep in blood. Covered in it. Gowned and soaked and shaking just a little.

Joel stepped up beside you.

“Looks good,” he said.

You turned.

“Did I do it right?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

He just nodded once.

A single, hard nod that meant more than words ever could.

Everyone else eventually left. One by one. Except Joel.

When it was just the two of you, he reached out and wiped a streak of blood from your cheek with his gloved thumb.

“You’re disgusting,” he said.

You grinned, breathless. “So are you.”

“Don’t let it get to your head.”

“Too late.”

He rolled his eyes.

But then, under his breath, like it wasn’t meant for anyone else,

“Proud of you.”

You almost missed it.

But you didn’t.

You never did.

Because it was Fourth of July, and the world outside was still burning.

But inside this room, for just one breathless moment—

You had brought someone back to life.

And Joel fucking Miller had watched you do it.

And he wasn’t going to forget it.

Joel Miller didn’t say things twice. If he was proud of you, that meant something. That meant everything.

You peeled off your gloves and stepped out of Trauma One with the sting of adrenaline still buzzing under your skin. Your hands trembled slightly—not from fear, but from the absolute goddamn power of that moment. You’d cracked a chest. You.

And Joel let you. Trusted you.

That kind of trust didn’t come easy from a man like him.

It was 5:00 p.m.

One hour left.

You told yourself you’d make it. You could do another hour. You’d get through whatever the Fourth of July still had left to vomit into your ER. You’d go home, peel off your scrubs, crawl into Joel’s bed, and maybe—maybe—you’d even get to fall asleep with your face buried in his neck before another fucking Code Blue ripped through your subconscious.

You turned the corner and nearly ran into Kathleen, who stood like a weathered pillar of war-torn exhaustion at the nurse’s station. Her face was flushed, arms crossed, brows pulled into a flat, unimpressed line.

“There’s a call for you,” she said. “Line two. Marlene has it.”

You blinked. “Someone called me?”

Kathleen didn’t blink. “Apparently it’s urgent.”

You stared.

She didn’t explain.

Marlene handed you the receiver with the grace of someone physically holding back a cackle.

You pressed it to your ear. “This is—”

“Thank fuck.”

Owen’s voice. Too loud. Too fast.

“Owen?”

“Hey. Yeah. Hi. Listen—I need a huge favor. Massive. I’ll owe you a kidney or three consults, I don’t care, just—please, can you cover the first three hours of my shift?”

You glanced at the clock.

5:01 p.m.

“I’ve been here since five this morning.”

“I know. I know. You’re a goddamn hero. Literally Jesus in black scrubs. Just—three hours. Please. Just until nine. I’ll come in at nine. Nine sharp. Not even a minute late.”

“Why?”

There was a pause.

And then, “I wanna have dinner with Mel.”

You inhaled slowly.

“Seriously?”

“I made a reservation,” Owen said, like that was somehow a valid excuse. “At the fancy new restaurant, the one Joel took you to. I bought cologne. I haven’t eaten real food in two weeks.”

You turned to look behind you.

Abby was standing by the vitals board, arms crossed, trying not to look like she was listening.

But she was.

And her face had gone tight in that way you recognized—the jaw-clench of someone pretending they don’t care.

Shit.

“Owen,” you said carefully. “This is your shift. You’re scheduled. You’re—”

“I’ll trade you! Anything. I’ll do your whole weekend. I’ll take all your psych evals for a month.”

“That’s a bold offer.”

“I’ll clean the vomit buckets in the peds trauma room!”

“You should already be doing that.”

“I will now.”

You sighed. Rubbed your forehead. Glanced at Abby again. She was now fake-charting on a blank clipboard. Poorly.

You shouldn’t do it.

You knew you shouldn’t.

But then Marlene handed you a new chart—incoming trauma. Level 1. ETA five minutes.

“Goddammit,” you muttered. “Fine. Three hours. But you owe me your soul.”

Owen cheered on the other end.

You hung up and looked over at Abby.

She didn’t look up.

You stepped closer. “Hey.”

“I’m fine,” she said. Immediately. Too quickly. “Totally fine. Not my business. Not even my night. Just…you know. Cool. Love that for them.”

“Abby.”

“I said I’m fine.” She slammed the clipboard on the desk and walked off, her ears visibly red.

You sighed again.

Before you could process any of it, a stretcher screamed into the trauma bay.

Tommy was at the head, barking orders, and Frank had blood on his shirt again—big surprise.

Teenager. Male. Fourteen, maybe fifteen. Slumped over. Screaming.

“Lawnmower accident,” Frank snapped, pushing hard. “Fucking dad didn’t check his blade height—hit a rock, launched it like a missile.”

“Penetrating orbital trauma,” Tommy added. “It hit the kid in the eye. He’s bleeding like hell. Not responsive.”

Jesse was already snapping gloves on beside you. “Tell me that rock didn’t puncture the fucking globe.”

You moved to the side of the bed as the kid’s head rolled. His left eye—Jesus fuck—his left eye was gone. Or at least it looked like it. Crushed inward, blood and viscous fluid pouring down his cheek.

Riley gagged.

Mel paled.

Abby reappeared beside you, full fury now replaced by full panic.

“What the fuck,” she muttered. “People should need a fucking license to own a lawn.”

“Vitals?” Joel’s voice cut through the trauma room as he entered, already gloved, already dark-eyed and tense.

“BP dropping,” Jesse said. “Heart rate climbing. He’s crashing.”

“Jesse, get a line,” Joel barked. “You—” he pointed at you. “Ocular tray, now. I want that eye covered. He so much as twitches and the optic nerve’s gonna shear.”

You grabbed the tray from Riley’s shaking hands. “We’re sedating?”

“If I don’t, he’s gonna start fucking thrashing and drive that rock deeper into his skull.”

The father—still in a goddamn polo shirt and sandals—stood at the door, blood on his arms, face pale.

“I just wanted to mow the yard before the guests came,” he kept whispering. “We were gonna grill—he was helping—I just—”

“Sir,” Joel said coldly, without turning, “if you don’t shut up, I’m going to have you dragged back into the waiting room.”

The dad shut up.

You placed the rigid eye shield over the wound. Blood pooled around the edges. It was already soaking the pillow. The kid groaned, twitching.

“Don’t move,” Joel growled. “Do not fucking move.”

“He’s coding,” Mel snapped. “BP’s bottoming out—seventy over thirty.”

“We need a cric tray ready,” Jesse said. “I can’t get the O2 past the swelling.”

You were moving, hands slick, adrenaline high and sharp.

Joel grabbed the ultrasound probe. “FAST scan. I want to rule out abdominal trauma while we stabilize the head. If that rock skipped through—”

“It didn’t,” Tommy said grimly. “We found the fucking thing in the driveway. Looks like a meteor.”

Joel’s hands moved fast. Surgical. Terrifying.

You mirrored him. Fast. Exact. No room for error.

This wasn’t like the thoracotomy. This was slower. Messier. No clean incisions here. Just trauma. Raw and violent. The kind that steals things. Childhood. Sight. Fucking Fourth of July barbecues.

Abby pressed gauze to the kid’s neck. “He’s tachycardic. We need to intubate.”

“I’ll do it,” Joel said, snapping his fingers. “Get the tube. Bag him. Suction ready.”

“You want me on airway?” you asked, stepping in.

He looked at you. That same look from earlier.

“I trust you.” he said.

So you did it.

You took the tube. You got the line. You shoved the fucking endotracheal tube into a kid who just lost his eye and might still lose his life. You did it because you had to. Because no one else could.

And because Joel trusted you.

You bagged until the O2 sats climbed back out of hell.

Mel ran labs.

Riley got a chest film.

Abby called Ophthalmology.

Jesse finally got the dad escorted to the waiting room by Bill before Joel could murder him with his stare alone.

Joel stood at the foot of the gurney, arms folded, eyes dark and burning.

“He’s stable,” Jesse said, breathless.

“For now,” Joel muttered. “Get imaging. Stat.”

You leaned over the bed, wiped some of the blood from the kid’s temple.

And then you felt Joel behind you.

Close. Not touching. Just there.

“You did good,” he said, low, just for you. “Again.”

You turned slightly, eyes meeting his.

“You keep saying that,” you murmured.

“That’s because it keeps being true.”

And then he was gone.

The kid was wheeled to CT.

You turned to the trauma team, who were collapsing one by one against the wall, soaked in blood and sweat and the sheer weight of almost.

Ellie looked ready to cry. Riley was holding a juice box. Jesse was on his second bottle of water and muttering something about moving to Canada. Abby was pacing, muttering Owen’s name under her breath.

And you?

You checked the clock.

5:43 p.m.

You still had two hours and seventeen minutes left in the shift you weren’tsupposed to work.

And already, it felt like a whole new fucking war had begun.

You cracked your neck. Wiped your forehead. Took a deep breath. And turned toward the doors.

Another stretcher was rolling in. Because of course it was.

Happy Fucking Fourth of July.

It was six when the first wave of soldiers walked off the battlefield.

The day shift clocked out like they were fleeing a warzone—scrubs stained, hair plastered to their foreheads, eyes too wide and hollow to belong to people under thirty. The fluorescent lights had aged them by decades. Some had blood on their shoes. Some had blood in their hair. Some weren’t sure whose blood it was.

Kathleen passed by the desk with her bag over her shoulder, muttering, “If they page me before five tomorrow, I’ll set this place on fire.”

Jesse was limping, dragging one foot behind him like a wounded animal, sipping a smoothie someone handed him two hours ago that had fully liquified into soup. He waved weakly in your direction, eyes dead. "Don't let anyone else swallow a flag," he said. "Just… don’t."

Ellie was practically vibrating on her way out, holding a foil-wrapped bundle that had been a brownie Dina was eyeing earlier. “I’m gonna eat this and then sleep for six days,” she told Riley, who was chewing on ice like it was a coping strategy.

Dina had her phone pressed to her ear, her free hand gesturing wildly as she talked to some poor soul on the other end. “No, I can’t go out tonight, I literally watched a baby eat gunpowder. Yes, literal gunpowder. Like from a firework. I don’t care if it’s rooftop karaoke, I’m not fucking going.”

Mel, fresh scrubs on now but still blotchy from everything, lingered at the front with her bag slung low and her hair half-down. She spotted Dina and beamed like the sun hadn’t just tried to kill everyone inside the ER.

“I’m serious,” Mel gushed, linking her arm with Dina’s as they walked. “Owen made reservations. He was so sweet. I think he even bought a new shirt. He didn’t say it, but it wasn’t wrinkled, so that has to mean something.”

Dina snorted. “Wow. A man wearing a clean shirt. You better marry him.”

You weren’t listening on purpose.

You just…couldn’t not hear it.

Because Abby was two steps behind them, standing by the elevator bank, still in her half-zipped hoodie and Crocs, staring at the tiled floor like she could melt through it.

You stood near her.

Close but not close.

She noticed you before you said anything.

“I’m not gonna cry,” she said flatly. “So don’t say something nice.”

You shrugged. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Good.”

She paused.

Then, quietly, “Did you know?”

You didn’t answer. Because you had. Of course you had. The way Owen had started standing closer to Mel. The way he’d brushed Abby off the past two weeks with half-assed excuses.

“I’m not mad at her,” she said, still staring forward. “I mean…maybe I am. But it’s not like she knew.”

You leaned next to her against the wall. “You don’t have to be fine.”

“I know.”

“I’m not fine either.”

She nodded.

And that was enough.

The elevator dinged.

She got in.

Didn’t look back.

You stayed in the hallway for a beat longer, the hum of overhead lights buzzing in your teeth. Your eyes were dry and scratchy. Your hands smelled like latex. There was blood on the cuff of your sleeve again, and you didn’t even remember who it belonged to.

The night shift was officially here now.

Soon the night staff began pooling into the ER.

They shuffled in with the kind of dead-eyed resignation of people who knew exactly what they were walking into. They looked at you with curiosity, confusion.

“You're still here,” one said.

You just nodded. “Still am.”

The ER had quieted in the way a battlefield does after the airstrikes stop—still full of smoke, rubble, and bodies, just… quieter. The screams were fewer. The alarms less frequent. But the stench of bleach and burnt flesh still clung to the walls.

You were working a bay in the corner, checking on a man who’d driven straight into a ditch after swerving to avoid a firework that had launched into the road.

“Wasn’t even my firework,” he mumbled, a gash splitting across his temple, blood matting his hair. “Some asshole two blocks over. Guess they didn’t like my truck.”

You were scanning for signs of concussion, clicking the penlight, asking about nausea, when he squinted at you.

“You’re cute,” he slurred. “Like real cute. Do you—uh—do you always look this good when you save lives?”

You didn’t answer.

He tried again.

“You got a boyfriend?”

You snapped the light off and looked him dead in the eye.

“I’ve got a scalpel,” you said.

He laughed.

You didn’t.

Across the ER, you heard a sharp voice bark, “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”

Your heart skipped.

Joel.

He was back.

Fully suited in trauma gear again, hair still damp with sweat, scrub top stretched over tense muscle. His eyes were already narrowed, fixed on you.

You didn’t even see him walk over—he was just suddenly there, all heat and static and restrained violence. He looked down at the chart in your hand, then up at your face, then over at the patient who still hadn’t stopped smiling.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Joel said, voice low and lethal.

“I’m working,” you said, frowning. “Owen called and asked me to cover—”

“Owen’s a fucking idiot,” Joel snapped. “This isn’t your shift.”

“He begged. He wanted to—”

“See Mel. Yeah, I fucking heard.”

Joel looked down at the driver again, eyes narrowing. The man blinked at him like he wasn’t sure if he was about to be murdered or offered another morphine drip.

“Go,” Joel growled. “Get the fuck out of here.”

“I’m almost done.”

“No. You’re not.”

He stepped forward, crowding your space. Not touching, but too close. His presence filled your lungs like smoke.

“I didn’t let you walk out of that trauma room with your hands inside someone’s goddamn chest just to have you stay late because some piece of shit didn’t want to miss his fucking dinner reservation.”

“I said I’m fine—”

“You’re not. Your face is pale. Your knees are shaking. You’re bleeding from your neck again—”

You touched your collar.

Shit.

The scratch had reopened.

Again.

You hadn’t even noticed.

Joel’s voice dropped lower. Quieter. More dangerous.

“You stay here another hour, I’m not gonna be able to stop myself from saying and doing something that gets me fired.”

You swallowed.

“You need someone to finish the chart.”

“I don’t need anything but you out of this hospital and in my bed before I fucking lose it.”

You blinked.

His eyes locked on yours.

“This isn’t up for debate.”

He turned to the driver without breaking eye contact.

“She’s off,” Joel told him. “She doesn’t work for you. You want someone to hold your hand and stroke your ego, call your fucking wife.”

The man gaped.

Joel turned back to you.

And this time—softer, just slightly—he added, “Go home.”

You didn’t argue.

Because he wasn’t asking.

You peeled your gloves off. Dropped them into the bin.

Your scrubs were soaked. Your throat burned.

And for the first time in hours, you realized how goddamn tired you were.

Joel’s eyes followed you until you reached the staff hallway.

And you could feel the heat of them still burning between your shoulder blades as you stepped into the elevator—

Finally, finally—

Done.

[tinytalkingtina]

Who could not be happy?

Written for the February @steddiemicrofic prompt, using the word "rose" and 367 words

Rating G | Ao3 link

Tags: language of flowers, Eddie has a crush on Steve, love confessions, first kiss

See under the cut for some notes on flower language, and thank you steddiecameraroll-graphics for the lovely divider!

Eddie stared at the book clutched tightly in his hands. There was a rose carefully tucked away among its pages. The color had faded a bit, but a pink hue still delicately tinted the petals. And that wasn’t all. Fragments of other flowers were also dried and wrapped in protective layers of wax paper: camellia, columbine, gardenia. Under the last page, a green carnation peeked out.

Steve came back into the room juggling a few more empty boxes.

“This should be the final load, if we add anything else the Beemer won't make it to Chicago without tipping over. Hope you don't mind us driving up without the rearview mirror.”

Steve grinned, but Eddie didn’t respond. The grin faltered a little.

“You okay man? Not getting cold feet now.” Wordlessly, Eddie held out the book.

“Oh, thanks, this one needs to be packed flat.” A tiny smile crept over Steve's face. “You know how people used to decorate their crush's locker for Valentine's Day? My senior year there was this whole bouquet tucked in waiting for me. Dunno who put it there, Nance and I'd broken up months ago. They're nice though, right? I mean you never see green flowers. Wish I could've thanked them, whoever it was.”

A tiny spark of hope bloomed in Eddie's chest. Before he could swallow it back down, his brain blurted out:

“I had perfect attendance in Spanish that year.”

Steve's eyes squinted in confusion.

“Huh?”

“My second-go around at senior year, and I was still stuck in Hawkins, then freaking King Steve sits behind me in Spanish 3,” Eddie barreled on. “You never used to pay attention to anyone who wasn't in your inner circle, but in that class you'd mutter to yourself about how cool my doodles looked, and told folks to knock it off when they called me trailer trash. So I found a book on flower meanings and did something incredibly stupid.” He didn’t dare look at Steve as he finished his confession.

The kiss caught him off-guard.

“Guess I've got three years worth of dates to make up for. Prepare to be romanced off your feet Munson.”

That February, Eddie gave Steve red and yellow tulips.

Author's notes

-The fic's title comes from a quote by Victorian playwright Oscar Wilde: "With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?" The green carnation is associated with Oscar Wilde himself, and wearing a green carnation on ones lapel might have been a code for gay men at the time to identify one another. Wilde was famously convicted for homosexual acts in 1895. Let's say Eddie picked up a copy of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and learned about the symbolism from a coded forward written for it.

-The meanings within the original bouquet were "happiness" (pink rose), "longing for you" (pink camellia), "foolishness/folly" (columbine), secret love (gardenia), and homosexuality (green carnation). Eddie was being very dramatic putting together the original bouquet for his forbidden love, and definitely dyed the carnation himself.

-Red and yellow tulips represent passion/declaration of love and sunshine in your smile respectively.

[missaengg]

Stealing Xavier's Hoodie

Pairing: Xavier x f!reader Tags: nsfw, mdni, developing relationship, fluff and smut, pwp, vaginal sex, cunnilingus, vaginal fingering, f!masturbation Word Count: 1658 You stripped to nothing, only wearing his hoodie. The inside of the sweater was softer than it was on the outside. You felt feverish from how sensual the soft fleece felt against your bare skin. ao3 link here.

You loved his hoodie, that soft, white hoodie he always wore on his days off of work so when you saw that hoodie left behind in your apartment, you knew exactly what you wanted to do with it. You brought it up to your face, inhaling his scent, a fresh cotton smell reminding you of cozy blankets and the warm, gentle sun. The fabric was soft, so soft on your skin, and you couldn’t help rubbing your face against it breathing him in. You pictured him wearing his hoodie, wrapping his arms around you from behind, resting his chin on your shoulder, brushing your face with his nose, tickling your cheek with wisps of his hair.

A gentle stir began igniting in your core, soft at first, but growing as you grew drunker off of his intoxicating scent. Each rub of the hoodie felt electrifying against your skin, the ache in your core growing with each swipe. Soon you were dripping with need, dizzy from your desire for him. You stripped to nothing, only wearing his hoodie. The inside of the sweater was softer than it was on the outside. You felt feverish from how sensual the soft fleece felt against your bare skin. 

With a soft sigh, you dragged your fingers across your thigh, imagining that it was the gray-brown haired owner of the hoodie with his own long, slim fingers. You slid it down between yourself, feeling the slick arousal, gliding your fingers between the slit until they were covered. Your clit throbbed painfully, so sensitive you moaned when your finger brushed against it, the rush of pleasure spreading through your body. You started slow, stroking a lazy circle around your clit, stimulating the sensitive organ without touching it, but soon your pace quickened. The muscles in your hand and forearm burned as your finger shifted to touch your clit directly and kneaded it in rapid circles. You closed your eyes, your breath quickening, breaths exhaled as soft moans. You felt the pressure build in your belly, the muscles in your legs tensing, the electricity of your ecstasy swelling.

Your eyes snapped open at the sound of the beeps of your code being entered and the door being opened.

“I think I left my hoodie here, have you–” the speaker froze at the sight of you on the couch wearing only an oversized hoodie, hand between your legs, face flushed with arousal.

“Xavier,” you gasped out, panting, very much aware that it was blatantly obvious what it exactly was you were doing.

“That– that’s my hoodie,” Xavier stammered.

You blushed, immediately removing your hand and pulling the clothing item in question down to cover yourself – as much of yourself as the length would allow. “Um, yeah, you– you left it here.” You cleared your throat, looking away from him after you answered, cheeks turning a furious red. When he didn’t say a word, you peeked at him, searching his face for any signs of displeasure.

Xavier simply stared at you, his mouth opening and closing rapidly, in a stupor. He shifted between you and the door, a rather cute sight if you weren’t so embarrassed at having been caught in such a compromising situation.

“Do you want it back?” you asked, breaking the silence. “I’ll go put something else on and take this off…” You trailed off, standing up from the couch.

“I want it back right now.”

“What?” You blinked rapidly at Xavier. His eyes were wide, almost as if he had surprised himself with his own statement. 

Xavier licked his lips, and after a beat, repeated with more confidence, “I want it back right now.”

Your mouth dropped open wondering if you had heard him correctly. “Immediately right now?” He nodded.

“Like right this second right now?”

He nodded again.

You hesitated, frowning at him, hands fingering the edge of his hoodie. While you were somewhat certain that there might be a spark of something between the two of you, nothing had been confirmed, and while there had been accidental glimpses of one another during battles with Wanderers due to injuries, he had never seen you so exposed before, which you would be if you were to take off his hoodie right this very moment. 

There was something dark and intense in his eyes, the intensity of which was only adding to the throb between your legs, now more painful than ever from your interrupted release. Without looking away, you grasped the edge of his hoodie pulling it over your head, shivering from the air conditioned air hitting your bare skin. Xavier swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down, and within a few strides, his lips came crashing down onto yours, nibbling on your bottom lip with hunger. His hands roamed your back, leaving trails of fire. You reciprocated, meeting his kisses with fervor, moaning, feeling your desire dripping down your leg. Xavier slid his tongue in between your lips, flicking at yours until they were intertwined. One hand slid down your back to grasp your ass and the other slid forward pinching your nipple. You gasped and pulled away.

Xavier stopped, removing his hands from you. “Do you want me to stop?” He peered into your eyes, concern joining the dark heat gleaming in his.

You felt your breath hitch in your throat at his expression, feeling breathless at the intense need in his blue eyes. You slowly shook your head. “No.”

Xavier didn’t need any more encouragement. He brought his lips back to yours, a bit more gently this time, and picking you up, laid you down on the couch. You temporarily broke off the kiss, pulling his shirt up and over his head. Xavier was happy to oblige. He threw his shirt aside and brought himself back down to plant soft kisses along your collarbone down to your breasts. His hand cupped one while his mouth claimed another, rolling his tongue over your nipple causing your muscles to tense from the shiver that went down your spine. You trembled underneath him, his hand and tongue simultaneously stimulating your breasts and their pert peaks, leaving you disoriented.

Popping his mouth off of your chest, he pressed wet kisses down your torso. Shuddering with delight, you stroked the back of his head, running his silky hair through your fingers. Your gasps turned into moans as his mouth found your clit, gently sucking on the swollen bud. Your grip on his hair tightened, eliciting a sharp hiss from Xavier, but he kept going, ravishing your clit with his tongue. His hands gripped your upper thighs, holding them apart while you writhed under his touch, hips twitching at each stroke. Using his shoulder to hold your thigh in place, he slipped in two fingers dragging them against the inner wall slowly, his mouth still working its magic. A loud moan escaped you as he started to pump his fingers in and out slightly curled so that they would rake across your G-spot with each entrance and exit. Your hips were moving with him, your ass coming off the couch with each pump. His touch had you seeing stars, your fingers and toes curled in his hair, on the couch.

“Xavier,” you whimpered, tears beginning to form in the corners of your eyes at the intense pleasure you felt. “Please, I want you.” You looked down at him, his blue eyes fixed on yours, darker than before. You felt his fingers pull out and his mouth leave you.

“You sure?” 

You nodded, one hundred percent sure that you needed him in you right this very moment. Xavier brought his fingers to his mouth, sucking off your essence. Panting, he unbuttoned his pants, pulling them and his boxers off carelessly and roughly. You gulped at the sight of his hard member, stiff and glistening with precum, your pussy clenching in anticipation.

“I want you inside me,” you whispered, trembling, reaching for his neck.

Xavier rubbed himself against you, lubricating himself in your arousal. He positioned himself, pressing the tip against your opening. He slowly pushed in, taking his time to sink further into you. You exhaled sharply when he reached the hilt, your arms around his neck and shoulders. He paused, waiting for you to adjust to him. You felt so full from his presence inside you, walls stretching to accommodate both his width and length. Your walls clenched signaling for him to start moving. Xavier grunted as your walls pulsated around him, squeezing him as he pumped in and out, massaging his shaft. He brought his lips to yours again, claiming you with intensifying passion, matching the pace of his thrusts. Xavier stroked your clit, only adding to the dizzying build, the blazing fire burning deep within your core. His movements grew frantic. He was moving so quickly, it left you no room to think, only feel. His grunts became louder, more feral, and he drove into you, his tip hitting your cervix with each deep thrust.

“Xavier,” you cried out, spasming around him, eyes rolling back into your head, reeling from the wave crashing through you.

Xavier let out a strangled groan at your release, his breathing becoming erratic. “I’m cumming,” he grunted, slamming into you until he finally burst, filling you with his warmth. He breathed heavily, chest heaving, barely supporting himself on his arms above you.

You stroked the back of his neck, feeling spent, struggling to catch your own breath. You looked up at Xavier. His body glistened from sweat. The dark intensity of his eyes had disappeared, leaving in its place a cloudy haze. You reached for his cheek hesitantly. Xavier caught your hand, bringing it to him the rest of the way, pressing his lips to your palm before nuzzling his cheek against it. He laughed. 

He leaned forward kissing you lightly, and murmured with his lips still on yours, “Maybe I should leave my hoodie behind more often.”

[moody-alcoholic]

This Is Going To Hurt

Part 8 - Nothing Is Okay

Summary: Poly141 x reader, established relationship, medic reader, kidnapped reader, mini fic.

CW: CPR, cardiac arrest, medical drama, medical inacurrices, PTSD, flashbacks.

Previous parts - masterlist- next AO3

Enjoy <3

You’re not sure how long you’ve been laid out on the floor for. Enough time for your eyes to start stinging and your arm to go numb. 

“Remember that training we once did where Soap had to pretend to be injured?” Kyle asks. It makes you smile, you do remember that day. He was only supposed to roleplay his hand being blown off. Instead he threw everything at you and didn’t once break character. 

He pretended to have everything from internal bleeding to cardiac arrest and seizures. At first you were mad at him, you thought he was messing with you but your stubbornness got the better of you and you were both riding it out to the bitter end. Eventually John had to step in and tell you both to stop.

To this day you still joke about who did a better job. 

“I remember.” You say, Kyle’s hand comes up to stroke your cheek. 

“He’s a terrible patient.” Kyle says, chuckling. 

“I heard he’s been keeping Ghost on his toes.” You say, Kyle rolls his eyes. 

“You have no idea.” You both end up laughing as Kyle pulls you back into his arms. You lay there just breathing into his chest, he has a familiar scent, gunpowder and something woody, mellow and inviting. 

It’s not long before Kyle is encouraging you to slowly get up off the floor. “You should get some sleep, you’ll feel better tomorrow. You’ve been working everyday since you were discharged.” Kyle says. You don’t bother fighting him, you could use some sleep, when you’re sleeping at least you don’t need to worry about the guilt. 

When you leave the room you see John standing at the end of the hall. Your eyes linger on him as he smiles at you quickly before you let Kyle lead you away. You let them all down. Not only that you let the medical staff down, especally the doctor. He trusted you took your bullshit psych evaluation at face value, and you ran, instead of helping innocent people you ran.

You don't deserve their kindness.

...

“Captain Price?” He turns to see a doctor walk up behind him. “I’m sorry I had no idea there were civilians coming.”

“It’s okay. It’s no one’s fault.” Price sighs.

“Is she going to be okay? The nurses- we all like her. She’s a good person. We’re willing to vouch for her.” The doctor says, Price smiles. 

“It’s okay, she’s resting.” Price says.

“Captain.” He calls as John turns away. It stops him in his tracks and he raises an eyebrow looking back at the doctor. “I think I have a way to help her. With your permission of course.” 

Price presses his lips together looking back down the hall where you and Gaz turned down a few minutes ago. He looks back at the doctor. “What do you have in mind?” 

…

“I think it’s a bad idea.” Ghost says. 

“I’ll be there the whole time. The moment I think it’s too much I will step in.” The doctor says.

“That could kill her confidence even more.” Price says.

“It could but it could also be the biggest confidence boost in the world. I avoided giving her cat 1 patients. I thought she needed to be eased back into work, she’s an adrenaline junkie like all CMT’s, she needs something she can just close her mind off to.” 

“Last time there was a mass trauma she panicked.” Ghost says.

“This isn’t a mass trauma, it’s running a code.” The doctor replies. 

“Last time there was a civilian airstrike she was almost executed over it. It makes sense she panicked.” John says. He picks up the radio from the center of the table. He looks at the red tape wrapped around it. 

“Okay. We want to be there too.” Price says. The doctor smiles and nods. 

“I would expect nothing less.” 

…

You wake to an ear piercing screech. You know that sound, you reach over feeling for the emergency radio. You must have forgotten you’re on call. You feel Kyle move next to you.

“I can get it.” He says trying to reach over you. 

“I got it.” You say opening your eyes and seeing the red taped radio. 

“Send traffic.” You say half asleep. 

“Code blue-” You're already jumping out the bed reaching round for your jacket. “-Med bay, resus code blue.” 

“Wait!” Kyle calls. 

“I can’t wait. I have to go.” You say. Your heart is pounding in your chest.

“Copy, on route.” You say into the radio as you pull your boots on quickly tying the laces. 

“Are you sure you can do this?” Kyle asks as you open the door. You can, you have to, you’re not going to let anyone else die. 

“I can do this.” You say clipping the radio on your belt and running out the room. You feel the adrenaline pulse through you as you rush over to the resus bay. You can hear the beeping of machines as you squirt sanitizer on your hands, rubbing them together as you walk in. 

There are multiple nurses running around, another medic at the person's head. One of the nurses is doing CPR while the medic is manually pumping the bag by his head.

“Abdominal GSW, intubated en-route, GCS 5, BP 180 over 100.” The nurse next to you says. You look back up at the person on the bed, your eyes flick to the monitor. He’s in VF, you can have a defib, you can save him.

“Get him connected to the auto pump, is there blood on the way?” You ask. 

“Yes,” the nurse next to you says. 

“Has he had any adrenaline yet?” You ask going over to the crash cart.

“Negative.” The medic at his head says. You pull gloves on watching him, he looks nervous, there is blood all over his uniform. He’s going to panic, you can already see the shaking in his hands. He’s missing beats while pumping the bag.

Your head feels so clear as you pull the crash cart over watching the monitor and counting the beeps in your head. You can do this, you can save him.

“Let's push adrenaline and charge to 200.” You say holding your hands out for the defib pads to be handed to you. You hear the nurse squirt gell on the pads, you rub them together waiting until the other nurse has moved. 

“Clear.” You call pressing the pads on his chest. His body jolts, you look over at the monitor. 

“Restart CPR.” You call as a nurse pumps on his chest again. Still VF. You can save him, you look down at another nurse pushing more gauze into his stomach.

You can save him, you’re not going to let anyone else die. You can see the patches on his shirt, American, lieutenant. This could easily be Simon laid on the table. You look up at the worried medic by his head, short brown hair, a worried look on his face. 

That could be Johnny. “Let's push epi again, charge 200.” You shout, you see nods, you hear beeping of the machine behind you. 

“Charged.” You press the paddles on the chest. 

You’re not dying today. “Clear!” You shout. His body jolts under your hands. You look over at the monitor. You see the gentle beats of sinus, you can count it on the monitor. He’s safe, he’s safe.

You stand up turning to put the pads back on the crash cart. You see the doctor walk into the room

“Let’s prep him to move to CT. Central line and blood.” You say. The doctor picks his folder up, looking at it.

“Good job, I can take it from here.” He says as the nurses push the bed out the room. You start pulling your gloves off looking round the room. The only person left is the medic. He’s looking down wide eyed at his open palms. 

One thing is for sure Johnny would never leave Simon's side. You would never leave any of their sides, you feel guilt build up in you as you look down at the blood soaked gauze on the floor. You left Johnny's side though, he never deserved that.

You can hear the medic's breathless pants, you step over to him placing your hand on his shoulder. His head shoots up looking at you. 

“First trauma?” You ask, he nods, you can see his hands shaking. 

“It gets easier. He was your mate right?” He nods again. 

“Go.” You nod at the door. “He’s going to need you. He needs you, your work is not done yet.” He still looks like a rabbit in headlights, you reach over gripping his other shoulder and shake him. 

“Hey! Move, you’re a medic, people rely on you, your squad mate? He’s going to need you. You got that sergeant? Move your fucking ass.” You snap. He stands up straight and nods pushing past you out the room.  

You let out a breath, your hand coming up to press on your chest. The adrenaline is waning, you can feel your heart thumping rapidly. You squeeze your eyes closed. You can smell the blood in the room.

The vision of Johnny being tied up, bloody and beaten flashes in your head. You should have worked harder. You should have saved him. You open your eyes, turning in the room you walk over to the exit. You need to see Johnny, you need to be by his side. 

You’ve been selfish, ignoring him, you let him down. You walk up to a computer and type his name in. As soon as you see what room he’s in you leave. The corridors are empty, it’s way past midnight. There are only limited staff around. 

You come to his room, you can see him through the thin window, the lights are on low and he looks like he’s sleeping. You open the door slowly trying not to disturb him. You go to stand at the end of the bed looking down over him. He is asleep, rolled on his side with a hand under his pillow. You pick up his chart and flick it open. 

GSW to the stomach, he had a bullet lodged in his liver. Blood transfusion, he coded in surgery. You look over at him, he looks fine, he looks peaceful. You put the folder down walking round the bed over to his head. His hair looks longer, there’s stubble on his face. You reach over to stroke his cheek feeling tears form in your eyes. 

You lower the bed guard bending down by his head. “I’m sorry I let you down.” You say reaching out to cup his face. The moment your hand lands on his skin his eyes open. You freeze your hand resting on his face, your thumb brushes his cheek. He smiles blinking at you, he turns his head kissing your palm. 

“Hey.” He smiles. 

“Hey.” You sniffle, you can’t stop the tears now. He props himself up in bed as you throw your arms around him. 

“I’m sorry I left you. I’m sorry you got hurt.” You sob. He presses his nose into your neck holding you tight.

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” He says, you pull back pressing your lips to his, you don’t want to break from the kiss but you're straining over to hug him.

“Get up here.” He says pushing you off him, his hands gripping your shoulders. You look over at him as he scoots back in the bed pulling the blanket up leaving you room to slide in next to him. 

You kick your boots off and throw your jacket and trousers over the chair before climbing into bed with him. He pulls you against his chest, you wrap your arms around him as he pulls you against him and you rest your head against his chest. You can hear his heartbeat, he's alive, he's safe and he's alive. 

“Johnny.” You whisper.

“Yeah?” 

“If you ever pull that shit again it’s not Ghost you need to be worried about.” You say, he chuckles and you look up at him seeing the glint in his eyes. You sigh, you know he would do it again, he would do it again in a heartbeat. 

You reach up to kiss him, he kisses you back, squeezing you against him, running his hands around your body like it's the first time he’s touched you in months. You don’t mind though, you’re glad he’s alive you thought he was going to die, instead here he is holding you. 

“I love you Johnny.” You breath relaxing into his arms as he pulls the sheets over your shoulders. 

“Yeah, well I love you more.”

You relax against him letting the guilt eat you away. You have to make peace with your choices especally the ones that will hurt them the most. You think back to the medic in the resus room, you will never let yourself be like him. You will never let them down again, even if that means them being without you.  

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