#this has been laying on my drafts for a while ^^"

[shabbysparrow]

And off they go, sailing off into the hopefully brighter future.

[fraudulent-cheese]

I think im actually going to change who wins in my team escope tdwt au?

Originally Noah was going to win and alenoah was gonna be the final 2, but it felt both like a disservice to Heather's character who does have development over the course of the season and it wasn't super compelling to me (she's way more invested in the competition than Noah is + my personal agenda of making Alejandro loose the competition in every single AU i write) + Noah winning just not making for a satisfying ending

Heather in this AU would end up in a similar "previous antagonist becomes antihero due to a bigger vilain popping up" position as she does in canon, but it's combined with her making a genuine friend on the show in Harold; she's shown in the best light she's ever been shown on the show and while a good chunk of the audience is supporting Noah for the finale, she still has a decent crowd of supporters.

It's also my personnal mission to make Alejandro loose in every Total Drama AU i write apparently, and him loosing the tie-breaker is perfect for angst. Also i've seen my fair share of tdwt alenoah rewrites and none of them have included both in the final 3 tie-breaker so it would be fun to explore, with Noah only standing a chance against Alejandro thanks to his dodging ability and wanting to put an end to their endless pining...

It could go two ways - either Noah wins the Tie-Breaker or Alejandro wins the tie-breaker.

Noah at this point in the competition is sure of three things:

Alejandro's a very competitive guy, with a flare for the dramatics

Him and Noah have had been semi-friendly semi-fighting all competition, with it dipping more into a rivalry as of late (the thing keeping him trying after Eva's elimination)

And based on both of these facts:

Alejandro's most likely looking for a dramatic victory over him. Noah's not willing to give him that.

So, mid-spar, Noah's trying to solve this conflict once and for all - Not his brightest idea, but he's joined Total Drama so he's made worse decisions - and opts to be genuine while dodging Alejandro's hits. His earnestness does break through eventually, and confesses to him. They're both standing near the edge of the fighting platform, and are both tired as hell from the previous challenge.

That is the only reason Noah considers as the one behind Alejandro leaning in and kissing him.

After this is where the ending would diverge depending on who ends up in the final two: Alejandro would win by Noah falling into the water right afterwards on his own accord, and Noah would win by tricking Alejandro into falling into the shark infested water.

either making it to the final 2 doesn't change the outcome of Heather winning in the end, but it would change the banter and Helpers; Heather would pick Sierra (who got over Heather booting her back in Paris because she's "a sucker for redemption arcs") and Leshawna (who's friendly with her in this AU) while the boys would pick a combination of the third placer + one of their closest friendship on the show (Courtney and Noah for Alejandro, Alejandro and Izzy for Noah). Heather still ends up in the cage trap and is genuinly pissed at this, but Harold and Leshawna (through the power of friendship) snap her out of it with a similar line as in canon (that she's a better person now and either 1. more deserving of the win for them if she's against Noah or 2. the 'good guy' if she's going against Alejandro) and manages to climb up the volcano.

If Heather's against Noah, she catches up to him due to his garbage athletisism and if it's Alejandro, it's the cast catching onto his distaste of the "Al" nickname and using it against him (probably Owen and Izzy, the latter joining in for shits and giggles). If it's against Noah it'll be a roundabout way of having a friendship finale, it's just the good guy with friends vs the less good guy who's gotten better thanks to friendship and self reflection, and if it's Alejandro and Heather it's just bad guy vs good guy, more like in canon :p they could have a stupid dramatic swordfight with the dummies that Alejandro looses like an idiot and it gets him slipping to the volcano's base (because it would be a funny visual).

The volcano still explodes at the end, but i don't know if i want the "alejandro gets partially burnt" ending or "everyone (but the million dollars) is fine" ending yet. idk

[doucious]

ㅤㅤECSTASYㅤ﹑ㅤpark sunghoon

﹙2O1O﹚────𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗂 𝖽𝗈𝗇’𝗍 𝖼𝖺𝗋𝖾 𝗂𝖿 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗀𝗈𝗍 𝗌𝗈𝗆𝖾𝗈𝗇𝖾 𝖺𝗍 𝗁𝗈𝗆𝖾. 𝗂’𝗅𝗅 𝗁𝖺𝗏𝖾 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝖻𝖾𝗀𝗀𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗈𝗇 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗄𝗇𝖾𝖾𝗌 ｡⠀

𝖿𝗅𝗈𝗋⠀ 诗人，⠀brother ’ s bsf sunghoon x fem readerㅤ゛MINORS DO NOT INTERACT⠀，fingering, nipple play, unprotected sex, secret relationship, not proofread.

爱,⠀⠀⠀for.⠀⠀⠀───⠀⠀⠀@riqomi : hi, cutie i changed this up a little since i already had a similar draft. not my best work but i hope you like it nonetheless :3

you draw the curtains over the glass doors arching from the ceiling to the floor, about to walk off to your bed when you hear a knock— a pause.

you have an idea where this is going.

“sunghoon?” you whisper, half surprised and half exasperated, unlocking the door to let him in. “can you stop sneaking into my room in the middle of the night?”

“no promises,” he doesn’t even wait— tripping over the door frame and cursing a little too loud. you cover his mouth with your hand in panic, and he presses a tender kiss to your palm. “missed you so bad, baby,”

sunghoon has a habit, a very bad one at that— climbing up your balcony in the middle of the night to meet you.

it’s a little shameful to have him over like this, as if you are trying to hide your bad habit. worst case scenario, it could wake your brother up— almost happened once— but it’s a risk you’re willing to take when your boyfriend fucks you senseless every time he has a chance.

and then he’s kissing you— because fuck, you are right there, barely an arm away from him. he presses you against the wall right behind you, slipping his tongue right past your lips.

“hoon,” you manage to whisper, despite the scowl on his face when you pull back. “my brother is literally next door,”

“don’t talk about your brother right now, please,” he mumbles, tugging the hem of your shirt to take it off and dropping it somewhere on the floor.

he is quick to hook a finger under the clasp of your bra and takes it off with practice ease. and he almost forgets to breathe for a moment, marveling in the sight of the same tits he has been missing and fantasising about for days.

he cups your breast, massaging as he presses a kiss to your cheek, then jaw, down your neck, eliciting a gasp from your mouth as he squeezes your nipple, pinching and rolling it between his fingers.

“been thinking about this for days,” he mutters, taking your hardened peak in his mouth. he swirls his tongue around your mound, feeling you jerk at the contact, while playing with the other.

sunghoon treats you like porcelain, no matter how bad he wants to stuff his hardened cock inside you already. he admires how your face is morphed in impatience as he grinds the throbbing erection in his pants against your core.

“sunghoon,” you say breathlessly. “please,”

sunghoon doesn’t wait another second before trailing his hand between your legs, teasing your clothed clit, chuckling at the damp spot under his fingers. “wet for me already,”

before you can even whine at the contact, he pushes the fabric of your underwear, brushing his finger against your slit. he flaunts a prideful grin at the way your hands tighten over his shoulder, and he slips two fingers past your folds deep into your cunt.

he watches you intently, taking in every reaction as he pumps his fingers inside you, relishing in the soft gasp that dances off your lips when he presses against that tender spot into your walls.

“s-sunghoon,” you pant, rolling your hips to meet his fingers as he continues to thrust them into you. his palm presses against your clit, drawing a needy whine from you that is cut off by your breathy words. “so close,”

“go on, baby,” he murmurs, curling his digits inside you just right. “make a mess for me,”

and just like that, you fall apart, gasps and broken wails of his name falling off your lips as he works you through the orgasm.

you let him back you towards the bed, laying down and he is quick to pull his sweatpants off to spring his cock free— flushed, leaking, more so when he teases your entrance with his tip.

he pumps his thick girth a few times before inching past your glistening folds, and sunghoon swears he could come from just how tight you are. “fuck— missed this so much, doll,”

you whimper, nails clawing into his biceps when he sinks deeper, stretching you out. it’s not long before he bottoms out, filling you up completely and nudging that sweet spot, earing a broken moan from you.

his thrusts get faster, impatient, having missed you dearly in a way that could’ve driven him to madness. his eyes refuse to leave your sight, watching your expression break into pleasure, lashes fluttering in pure bliss as you squeeze around his cock.

“that’s it—” he groans, bucking his hips into you. “never getting over this pussy,”

“feels so good—fuck,” you gasp out loud, clenching around him, his fullness overwhelming. he pulls out almost all the way out before slamming back in, earning a deep moan. he could actually have you screaming if it wasn’t for your fuckass brother.

“so fucking loud,” he let’s out a low laugh, putting his hand around your throat although making sure to not press. “keep quiet for me, yeah? don’t want your brother to hear us, do we now?”

he almost gets harder at the thought of your brother finding out about what his little sister and best friend are up to all alone. sunghoon would be dead, but fuck, you’re worth the risk.

he slams his hips into yours with increased need, burying his face in your neck to muffle his own moans and grunts.

“i’m close!” you whine, gasping when he rubs harsh circles on your clit as his thrusts get sloppier. you can tell he is close too with the way his pace increases, wanton moans whispered against your ear.

“come for me, doll,” he breathes out against your skin, feeling himself teetering on the edge with how well you take him, nice and deep.

your words are reduced to quiet pleas and chants of his name as his cock hits your sweet spot, and you finally come undone, milking him through your orgasm.

his cock twitches inside you and he pulls out, making thick spurts of mess on your belly. he leans down to press a sloppy kiss on your lips. “i’ve missed you so much, baby. another round?”

“what?” your voice is quiet, despite laced with a silver of surprise. “if my brother finds out, both of us are dead,”

and sunghoon almost groans at the mention of your brother again. he should know better, but his hand is already between your legs. “about fucking time he knows, angel.”

[nayeoniiz]

WEBCAM PERV! (1)

pairings ❥ heeseung x fem!reader

point of view ❥ third person, omniscient

warnings ❥ mutual masturbation, cyberstalking, noncon recording

synopsis ❥ you meet heeseung on omegle and quickly hit it off until you accidentally disconnect. feeling at a loss from not being able to find him again, you give up and live life as if it never happened. unbeknownst to you, however, he turns out to be a hacker who hacked into your camera, resorting to watching your secretly from behind the screen… until he didn’t.

genre ❥ smut

word count ❥ 4.4k

taglist: @rayofsunshineeee

Webcam Perv! (2)

author’s note: sorry it took me a bit longer to release, i ended up rewriting over the whole draft. i was gonna write the full story in one go, but if there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that i love making series. anyway i hope yall enjoy! & a reminder that my requests are open (send as an ask or submission pls do not dm me lol). go check out my other stories while you’re at it bc i have much more cooking! not proofread so don’t come for me!

y/n lay blank faced on her bed with her phone in hand. it had been hours since she’d gotten home from her classes, and now she was just scrolling mindlessly on tiktok out of boredom. her room was quiet except for the occasional hum of her heater and the everchanging audios blasting from her phone’s speakers.

she sighed, tossing her phone to the side resorting to staring at the ceiling. as the days were growing colder, y/n couldn’t help but to feel this growing sense of loneliness creeping in, like there was something missing that she couldn’t quite put her finger onㅡexcitement was the closest word she think of. she didn’t have many friends to talk to, or text, or hang out with—just her best friend natty, but the girl was currently unreachable as she had already fallen asleep after their brief phone call.

midterms were always the dryest times for y/n. after spending hours in the library, forcing far too many categories of knowledge down her throat for her own goodㅡ just to end up with barely above average scores, she was too drained to do much of anything else when she got home. but, it was hard to just sleep. she was intransigent when it came to resting after studying because she wanted to give herself the free time she’d lost instead. usually being on her phone, and rotting her brain away with the useless curated content that she handpicked for herself would suffice. but on days like thisㅡ where her studying ended close to (or in this case, after) midnight, it wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy the dopamine she was longing for.

after a few moments of lying in a frozen state of staring off into nothing, she reached for her laptop, opening it on impulse. omegle. it had been a while since she’d used it, and honestly, it wasn’t the best idea, but she figured it might help pass the time. and maybe it’d even give her some form of human interaction, though her hopes weren’t too high given the website’s reputation. she typed “k-pop” into the category field, hoping it’d narrow down the pool to people around her age who might share at least one interest with her.

the first few chats weren’t anything special. she ran through the typical brief hellos, the awkward pauses, and of course the familiar “stranger has disconnected.” a few times, however, she was met with the sight of creepy old men who took pleasure in flashing, reacting at lightning speed to skip the chats before things could get worse. some people seemed normal at first, friendly even, but as soon as they’d start saying weird thingsㅡor worse, making noises that gave away their intentions, it’d soil her mood once again as she refreshed her tab.

after getting skipped again for the umpteenth time, y/n found herself hovering her mouse over the “new chat” button, debating. she looked at the clock in the corner of her screen, she had already wasted 30 minutes trying to find a normal human being to talk to. she was beginning to wonder if this was really a good idea to begin with. was it even worth possibly getting harassed for another half hour, in the name of being social? she weighed her options: she could either waste another 2 hours on tiktok, or go to bed. neither seemed appetizing for the hunger of connection she craved. with a sigh, she decided to try one more. and if it didn’t work out, it just meant that it was time to call it a night. she clicked to start a new chat.

stranger is typing…

stranger: hii

you: hello

stranger: m23

you: f22

stranger: cam?

you: earn it?

this one didn’t seem too bad so far, but she wasn’t going to make an early judgement. the man seemed to respect her decision as he quickly changed the conversation. they kept things light, alternating on asking each other random questions back and forth about hobbies, favorite foods, movies, shows, and music. the conversation was easy, fun even, and y/n found herself smiling a little despite the earlier frustration. it was like she was finally getting what she was looking for. with the conversation being tame, he took it as a green light to ask again.

stranger: can i see you now?

you: fine lol

y/n hesitated before turning her camera on and adjusted her hair quickly before looking at the screen. the male in her vision had a sharp, almost angelic face, with delicate features that seemed to be personally sculpted by the man above. his hair was dark and tousled, the slight messiness giving him a laid-back, calm vibe with his headset only adding character to his visual as they laid over his ears. his eyes were a captivating deep brown. they were soft and friendly, it made it hard to look away. even through the webcam, it was clear he had this undeniable charm, his steady gaze hinting that he knew the effect he had on others. the two of them stayed still, ogling each other for a bit, the stare down only being interrupted when he abruptly started typing again.

stranger is typing…

stranger: damn ur fine lol

you: thx so are you

stranger: you in korea?

you: yeah

stranger: me too

stranger is typing…

stranger: audio?

you: yk what? yeah

heeseung and y/n both go to turn on their audio. while her room was silent, disregarding the small noise coming from her room’s heater, heeseung had r&b music softly playing in the background. it only added to this boy next door vibe she was getting from him. the two of them were silent for a second before heeseung decided to break the ice by speaking first.

“hello? let me know if you can hear me.” his voice came through clearly, deep and smooth, carrying a natural warmth that drew her in without him even trying. a part of her was convinced he had to secretly be a weirdo. what was someone as attractive as him even doing on this site, yet alone at this hour? she took a breath before answering.

“hi, yeah i can hear you,” she replied, her tone a little uncertain, unsure of how to match his cool energy. she wasn’t exactly the extroverted type of person to begin with, you can only imagine how much harder it was to speak when such a captivating face was waiting for her response in real time.

heeseung only chuckled softly, the sound seamlessly exuding natural confidence. “so… i guess we finally get to talk now.”

y/n smiled at his words, her need for approval rising as she juggled through all the responses she could make to keep him engaged, “yeah, seems like it,” she responded, her voice was steady now as she tried to shake off the nervousness creeping in. 

heeseung chuckled, shifting closer to his keyboard as his fingers danced over the keys. the music in the background shifted, the beat changing just as he leaned back in his chair, folding his arms behind his head. his voice lowered a notch as he spoke, a hint of amusement in his tone. ”i’m, heeseung, by the way.”

“y/n,” she responded.

“i gotta admit,” he said, “i wasn’t sure if you’d actually turn on your mic.”

“why’s that?” she asked, an almost muted giggle escaping her lips as she twirled a strand of her hair, her fingers displaying how nervous she felt. heeseung watched her with a quiet intensity, noticing every little movement she made. the way her fingers fidgeted and how she avoided meeting his gaze through the screen.

“i don’t know,” he said, his tone lazy and nonchalant, but holding a teasing undertoneㅡ a subtle shift she didn’t quite catch onto. “guess i’m just lucky you did.” he didn’t say anything about her fidgeting, though. he didn’t need to. she seemed like the type to change her behavior once it was called out, and he was more captivated by it than he let on. there was something about her shyness, moreso the way she couldn’t quite hide it, that intrigued him. “so, what do you usually do when you’re not chatting with strangers on the internet?”

his question had caught y/n off guard for a brief moment, another nervous laugh slipping past her lips as she tugged on her shirt’s collar, adjusting it to make sure nothing was out of place though she didn’t actually need to. she didn’t know why, but something about talking to him felt different from the others. “uh, not much… if i’m not studying, i just watch tiktoks or call my friend if she’s not tired.” she replied hoping the answer sounded casual enough.

“hm, sounds like you’ve got some time to kill,” heeseung smirked, inching his chair closer to the screen. he opened a second tab, the soft clatter of his typing blending effortlessly with the mellow r&b drifting through the background.

“yeah, guess i do. life’s… kinda mundane, you know?” y/n replied sheepishly. her gaze followed his, noting the slight movement of his hands just out of view, but chucking it up to him searching for another song to play as the music shifted again. he didn’t back away from the screen this time, though. instead, he kept his eyes locked on hers, unwavering.

“i get it,” heeseung replied, his voice lowering slightly, but still keeping its laidback manner, like they were just two people having an ordinary conversation. “i’m the same, but i'm more of a youtube guy, i found out about this site through a video on there.” as he spoke, his finger subtly danced across the keyboard, the screen flickering with the quiet download of her IP address. his eyes stayed on the camera, his expression open and unreadable, like he was genuinely listening to her.

“that’s interesting, this app usually has a bad rep. like, there’s only creeps on here,” y/n said, though her words seemed to be misunderstood as heeseung furrowed his brows.

“are you trying to insinuate that i’m a creep?”

her eyes widened in shock, and she quickly slapped a hand over her mouth. a stutter broke through her words. “what?! no! i’m just saying—i’ve run into a lot of them tonight before i landed on you. so i was just… i don’t know. forget i said anything.” she sulked, her face reddening with embarrassment at her failed attempt to relate. heeseung watched in awe, his lips curving into a small, knowing smile, at her mannerisms, finding every one of her reactions so cute. sensing her discomfort, he smoothly shifted the topic.

“i’m kidding, y/n.” he grinned, showcasing his pearly whites. “so… what’s one thing you’ve always wanted to do but never got around to?” he asked, his tone light, but there was an underlying intensity to his gaze. he wasn’t just asking out of curiosity; he was studying her, absorbing every word she said, as if her answers would tell him everything he needed to know.

y/n paused, thinking for a moment before she answered. “probably traveling more. i feel like i’m always stuck in the same routine.”

“yeah, routines can be… limiting. but they’re also comforting, right?” he paused, his eyes flickering to a different part of his screen for just a moment before he continued. “you know, sometimes it’s those little moments, when everything feels a little too safe, that you need to shake things up.” he spoke so casually, like he was giving advice, but it sounded a bit odd to y/n. she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to his words, though she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. regardless, she found herself wanting to stay, wanting to know more. and she was always too paranoid for her own good anyway. it was probably nothing.

“i guess.”

“oh. yeah, but is that the only reason you’re on here?” heeseung’s fingers were still moving on his keyboard, the quiet clicking of the keys going unnoticed now. he wasn’t just talking anymore—he was already pulling the strings, weaving a subtle web around her, all while his words remained smooth and harmless. y/n’s lips pursed in thought, the sudden change in the atmosphere making her feel more curious than she was letting on.

“what do you mean?” she asked, confusion creeping into her tone as she leaned forward, trying to get a better look at him. heeseung’s system, working silently in the background, had breached the security of her wifi by now, scanning through the connected devices, its main goal being to gain access to her phone.

“i mean… it’s almost 4am, saturday night. you’re a cute girl, seem kind of introverted, but you give off this vibe... like you’re looking for some fun.”

whatever dimwitted perception y/n formed of him had shattered. he was no different from any of the other men she’d encountered prior. “oh. i don’t really do… that,” she replied, a slight pout playing on her lips. she moved her mouse to hover over the skip button, but she didn’t click it. something was keeping her here. maybe it was the way he looked at her—too attractive, too confident. she wasn’t sure, but she didn’t move.

heeseung noticed her hesitation, his grin widening. “oh, neither do i,” he said in a humoring manner, brushing her reaction off as if his earlier comment didn’t mean anything. “i just had to test the waters. can you blame me though? it’s not every day you meet an attractive girl on here. you said it yourself, there’s usually only creeps on here, right?”

“yeah,” she laughed, the sound effortlessly drawn out as she got caught in the pull of his charm. any cautions she had before seemed to dissipate as she got lost in his eyes. she debated whether she should just give in—it wasn’t like they’d see each other again, right? but then, the stories about girls who made impulsive choices, and got extorted, crept into her mind. the fear of becoming just another statistic arose.

“what do you have in mind?” she asked, her words slipping out before she could think them through. her people-pleasing tendencies had kicked in, but the smile that spread across his face made her heart race. somehow, it felt good, like she was doing something right. and that made it feel worth it. rewarding, even.

“whatever you’re offering, baby,” heeseung replied smoothly, his voice dipping into an unfamiliar, alluring tone that made her body tingle. as he spoke, his hand moved subtly off-screen, clicking to start recording. the faintest smirk curled on his lips as he leaned closer to the camera, his eyes burning into hers with a suggestiveness that made her feel seen in a way she hadn’t before. desired. wanted.

“i don’t know,” she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper. a nervous smile played on her lips as her fingers fidgeted with the hem of her shirt. her eyes darting away from the camera before flicking back to his. “i’ve never done anything like this before.”

heeseung tilted his head slightly, his smirk widening as he studied her. there was something about her naivety, the way she danced on the edge of her own boundaries, that made his pulse quicken. he decided then and there that if he wasn’t already obsessed before, he definitely was now. utterly and completely.

“well, i’m honored to be the first,” his voice dripped with seduction, but his eyes glinted with something far more sinister.

her cheeks flushed as she hesitated again, her fingers picking at the fabric of her shirt before she finally blurted, “could you maybe…” she paused, laughing softly at how ridiculous she felt to ask. “show me something, too? just to keep it fair.” her words made heeseung pause for a moment before a low chuckle escaped him, growing into full, unrestrained laughter. he leaned back in his chair, shaking his head in amusement, his eyes never leaving her face.

she was truly a character—everything about her was so… adorable. her openness, her immediate trust in a complete stranger, and the impulsivity that seemed to pour out of her without a second thought. it was intoxicating. she was everything he’d been looking for, everything someone like him—a man with desires he dared not say aloud—would dream of finding. and yet, beneath his amusement, there was a darker realization. if she wasn’t careful and kept giving away pieces of herself so easily, someone would take advantage of her. someone crueler, more reckless, more dangerous than him. he couldn’t let that happen. not with anyone else at least. she was his now. and if she was going to be ruined, it would only be by him.

“would you like it better if i go first?” heeseung inquired, his voice smooth as the corners of his lips nearly curled into a restrained smirk. he watched her reaction closely, catching the way her quick, almost desperate nod betrayed her displayed excitement. it was endearing, almost painfully so. it drove him crazy. he pursed his lips, feigning contemplation, before his smile grew wider, softer. “thought so,” he murmured, his tone carrying just enough teasing warmth to make her feel both at ease. she was completely under his spell. 

he reached for his webcam, the movement slow as he decided to savor the moment. tilting it slightly, he aimed it downward, the lens capturing his relaxed posture, legs spread comfortably wide. the soft fabric of his sweatpants clung to him in just the right way, emphasizing his figure without him needing to do much at all. the unthought of confidence in his movements was enough to hold her gaze, her breath catching as the tension in the air thickened. his hands grazed over the fabric covering his length, a small hiss of relief leaving his lips as he did so. she had already gotten him painfully hard without even trying.

lifting his hips, he slides his sweats down. just enough for him to pull his cock out, an unintentional gasp falling from y/n’s lips at the sight of it. he couldn’t hide the rush of pride that surfaced at her reaction. it was a response he’d grown accustomed to from his long list of other victims on the site, but there was something about y/n that struck him differently. her wide-eyed gaze, the way her lips parted slightly as if she wanted to speak but couldn’t find the words—it was enough to ignite a deeper need within him, a desire to draw her in further, to leave her completely captivated by him.

a quiet curse slipped past his lips as he stroked, his hand barely being able to wrap around its girth. his movements were meticulous, unhurried as he moved to spread his precum over the rest of his length. he leaned back slightly, his gaze never leaving her face. his dark eyes carried a silent command, the faintest nod of his head urging her to follow his lead. he didn’t have to say a word—his confidence, his control, it was all laid bare in the way he watched her, waiting to see how far she would go.

it was then that y/n realized she couldn't back out now. not that she wanted toㅡ her curiosity, mingled with the pull he had over her, kept her rooted in place. but it was starting to feel too real, the weight of the moment sinking in as she hesitated, unsure of what he was expecting. the fact that he left it up to her made it even more difficult. her mind raced as she nervously tugged at the bottom of her shirt, praying her choice would be enough to satisfy him.

heeseung's gaze didn't waver, his expression unreadable but intent, as though he were savoring every second of her hesitation. when she finally moved, lifting her shirt to display her breasts. her cheeks burned as she moved her hands over one, massaging and pinching her nipples. his lips twitched into the faintest smile. to her, his reaction was subtle, leaving her questioning if she'd done enough. 

but to heeseung, it was everything. to him, everything about her was intoxicating, from the nervous way she moved, to the unsure glances she gave him. he would have been satisfied just seeing her collarbone. his heart raced at the thought of how easily she gave in, how willingly vulnerable she was in front of him. it inflated his ego even more, knowing he was the first to witness this side of her.

he forced himself to keep his expression composed, though his excitement was nearly impossible to contain. the speed of his fingers absentmindedly sped up, thinking of how he’d be able to relive it again later tonight. and he’d make sure to replay every moment, over and over, obsessing over the way she unwittingly gave herself to him.“ah~ fuck, y/n,” he whimpered, unable to contain the heat growing over him. his eyes snapped shut, immediately imagining his hand to be hers. his hips bucked, as he began thrusting into his fist chasing the feeling of a body he knew now that he just had to get his hands on. tonight wasn’t going to be enough, he needed more. 

y/n didn’t know where her confidence was coming from when her free hand snaked its way down to the hem of her shorts as she pushed past them straight into her panties. she scooted into a slouch allowing herself easier access as she began rubbing on her clit, the pressure soothing its throbbing ache and sending a sweet, shocking sensation throughout her body. she couldn’t bite back the moan that slipped outㅡ the noise sounding like music to heeseung’s ears. oh how jealous he was of her hands now. being able to touch her because he couldn’t. it wasn’t enough, nowhere near it.

”look at me,” he murmured, his voice rough, making her cheeks flush as she slowly opened her eyes to meet his. his gaze was full of desire, making her feel small in a way that was strangely exhilarating. she found herself wanting nothing more than to impress him. she bit her lip as she quickly moved to lower the camera, aiming it to display more of her chest and downward before returning to her prior position on the chair. it didn’t even matter to him that her shorts kept her beautiful cunt a mystery to himㅡ the whole picture was so fucking sexy. the way she was playing with her nipples, pinching and rolling them, the speed of her circular motions increasing as she chased her orgasm, the way her tongue rested on her bottom lip before she bit it, the way sheㅡ

“heeseung~ oh my god.”

fuck. if he was wasn’t already stroking fast enough, he was moving at godspeed now. he wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold back. he rubbed his thumb along his tip’s slit as he kept his pace, the action leaving his hips stuttering. he was so close, and y/n was too. she couldn’t control the volume of her moans, gripping her breast like her life depended on it. “i’m gonna cum, oh my god, oh my god,” the desperation in her voice made him come undone as he bit back a loud, throaty moan. but she kept going, still chasing her climax as her moans got choked out the harder she went on herself.

just as she was about to cum, when she was almost there, her computer suddenly shut down. the screen went black without warning, leaving only an empty, lifeless void. heeseung watched as her screen flickered and then turned dark, his heart sinking in frustration. “fuck!” he swore, shooting forward in his chair, eyes fixed on the blank screen. he slammed a fist on the desk in irritation before quickly ending the recording. his hands moved frantically over the keyboard, reopening his hacking program, desperately trying to figure out what went wrong.

y/n didn’t even notice, her orgasm crashed over her as she felt like every nerve, and cell in her body had come undone. she kept her eyes closed as she let out a breathless sigh, regaining her composure. after a few seconds, y/n opened her eyes to see that her laptop was blank. she frantically clicked on buttons trying to turn it on, clicking the power button which only displayed a red drained battery as if to mock her further. of all times it could have decided to die, why now? the frustration and panic settled in as she realized she may never get to see him again. she didn’t have any ways to contact him, but would he even want to hear from her again? doubt clouded her mind. now there was no way of knowing. she wanted to keep talking to him, but the odds seemed slim. with a heavy sigh, she jumped up, scrambling to plug her laptop into the charger.

meanwhile, heeseung was still navigating through her information. he had closed out of omegle and now his focus was entirely on troubleshooting. he noticed her computer no longer showed up on the network, the last activity was two minutes ago. “that piece of shit must’ve died,” he grumbled under his breath. he figured now would be the time to access her phone’s camera as it would be useless trying to find her again on the website. switching servers on the program, he downloaded the data to his phone and went to lay down. he watched through the front camera on her phone, but it remained in the same spot unmoving. he was getting frustrated.

y/n had wasted almost 45 minutes skipping through hundreds of people in search of his face on omegle. but to no avail, his face never came up again. it was 6am, and she had plans with natty to go through with in the evening. as much as she didn’t want to right now, she had to sleep. oth of them, in their own way, ended up resigned to their separate fates. y/n reluctantly accepted her defeat, bitterly acknowledging that the night had slipped away. but at least for heeseung, there was a sense of satisfaction in knowing he would have another chance to see her again. this wouldn’t be the last time they crossed paths. he’d make sure of that.

Webcam Perv! (2)

[marvelwitchergilmore]

Sleeping, Dancing and Mistletoe

Summary: Logan x Fe!Reader -> Times when people found evidence that you and Logan were possibly a couple, and the one time you both finally confirmed it.

Disclaimer: Mostly fluff, mentions/illusions to sex, Logan checking you out. Couple of swear words here and there. This has been unfinished in my drafts for at least a week so...yeah. This is finished. little Christmas at the end. Not Proof Read.

For what felt like the thirtieth time in the hour, you turned over with a huff and pressed your pillow to your ears, trying to muffle the sounds coming from next door. 

And just as it finally died down, you sighed and was just about to thank some ancient being for hearing your prayers when…it started again. 

“That’s it.”

Changing out of your longer pyjama bottoms and into some sleep shorts, you made your way out of your room, keeping your footsteps as quiet as you could until the noises faded away and you started to reach your intended room. 

Opening up the door, you found exactly what you were looking for. 

Shaking his shoulder as he lay on his stomach, you whispered his name, hoping he’d hear you. 

“Logan.” You shook him for a third time. “Logan.” 

Nothing. 

With another sigh, you slapped his face gently and said his name once more, a little louder and firmer. 

“Logan.”

Finally, he groaned. “What?” 

His voice was muffled by his pillow but you could hear him just well enough. Or maybe you were just used to his grunts that they were starting to become their own language you could understand. 

“Move over. I’m sleeping here tonight.”

“What’s wrong with your bed?”

“Nothing.”

“Then go and sleep there.” Logan turned his head away from you and scrunched up his pillow beneath his head.

“I can’t. My neighbours have decided tonight is Valentine’s Day 2.0.”

You pushed half of his body with your hands until he finally got the cue to turn over. 

“Too much information.”

You shook your head, “Too much information is what I’ve been hearing for the last hour.”

Finally, Logan rolled onto his back, his covers covering his bottom half, and groaned. “Fine.”

“Thank you.”

Logan straightened himself in his bed, giving you room to get in beside him. And the minute you touched his covers, you were glad you had changed into shorts. 

Logan was like a furnace. Just constant heat radiating from his body and for as much as it, at times, got too hot to stand near him, he was also, in your opinion, the best person to fall asleep beside. 

“Just shut up and go to sleep.”

Laying on your side, it wasn’t long until you closed your eyes, thankful that you could hear nothing other than Logan’s steady breathing and the distant clock down the hall that was forever ticking. 

However, just before you fully drifted off, you felt Logan’s hand take hold of yours and you smiled. 

He could be gruff all he liked, but when it came to you, he could be a softie. 

By the time morning rolled around, Storm was in search of both yourself and Logan. So, when she found your bed empty and cold, she figured Logan would know where you were. 

But he was asleep. 

Right beside you. 

Storm leaned against the door frame for a while, taking in the picture in front of her. 

Logan was fast asleep, something that was a miracle in itself, with you right beside him, your head turned towards the windows in his room, his own looking towards you, all the while, his arm slung over your midsection and one of your own hands, holding his. 

“Storm- what are you- Oh.”

Jean looked inside. 

“Looks like someone had a good night.” She smiled before looking back at Storm. “Do you think we can finally ask if they’re together?”

“I’d say this is confirmation enough.”

You shifted in your sleep as did Logan, and the two girls hid behind the corner for a moment. 

You turned your head and the rest of your body towards Logan, all the while his arm held you in a stronger grip and pulled you towards him. 

It took you a moment but you finally opened your eyes, adjusting to the light before your vision finally cleared on a sleeping Logan. 

For a moment, you allowed the hand between you both to reach up and brush the stray hairs from his eyes. It was rare you ever got to see Logan this…calm. 

Serene. 

Rested. 

Unknowingly, you started to run your left thumb over Logan’s arm that still held onto you. 

Then his fingers twitched, running over the exposed skin at the bottom of your back. 

“Are you watching me sleep?” His voice was rough, the first words in the morning. 

“Not anymore,” you smiled, brushing the final parts of his hair out of his face. 

“Thanks for letting me stay.”

Then a cough came from the door. 

Logan groaned. “Is this a new hobby; watching people sleep?”

Jean and Storm laughed from the door. “You two look cosy.”

You lifted your head and glared at Jean. “There is one reason I’m here. Maybe I think it’s time you make an investment in soundproof walls.”

Jean turned a little red and Storm laughed. 

“Look, we’ve got a busy day. You can kiss your boyfriend later.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” you called out just as Logan called; “She’s not my girlfriend.”

Storm and Jean nodded and just as Jean snapped a picture, she sent it to both yourself and Logan as they walked away. 

“Sure.”

Leaning up, Logan reached for his phone to see the notification pop up before he placed it back down and you climbed out of bed. 

“They’re got a point.”

“About us being a couple?”

You threw a t-shirt at Logan. “Having a busy day.”

Logan laughed a little, scrubbing his face as he watched you leave his room before he reached behind him and took hold of his phone once more. 

Jean and Storm were right. 

From the picture…they did look like a couple. 

A couple of days passed and you were sitting in the quiet living room, the fires on both sides roaring. 

All classes had been finished for two days and some kids had returned home for the holidays, which meant you had some free time on your hands. 

And for you, that meant finally reading. 

Until you sensed someone stood behind you. 

“If you want to know what happens, you could just ask me.”

Logan plucked the book from your hands and circled around the sofa before coming to sit down beside you. 

“Logan! Give it back.”

“I want to see what it’s about.”

You sighed and sat up, “It’s a romance, Logan.”

“A romance?” Logan had a hint of a smirk on his face. “Like the…trashy kind?”

“Like the romantic kind.”

Logan looked at you and smiled. “The trashy kind.”

You rolled your eyes and took the book back from him, leaving him to fix the blanket so it rested over both of you. He placed his arm over the back of the sofa, allowing you to lean into him, whether you noticed you were doing so or not. 

“Just because you might not believe in romance, doesn’t mean the rest of us are the same.”

“I believe in romance.” 

“Yeah, right.”

Logan couldn’t help but smile. “What?”

“The Wolverine,” you said with a deep voice. “Believes in romance?”

Logan nodded. “Occasionally.”

“Occasionally?”

“Do you just like repeating everything I say?”

You nodded and smiled. “Occasionally.”

Logan rolled his eyes and took the book back from you and read a line out loud. 

“People really talk like this?”

You leaned into Logan. “No, but in a book it’s not so bad. Go on, read some more.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

You nodded. “You’re like my own personal audiobook.”

Logan gave a short smile before getting a little cosier and continued reading out loud. 

It wasn’t long before Logan found you asleep against him and he shifted in order to avoid you getting a crick in your neck. 

“Keep reading.”

“I thought you were asleep.” 

“Now I’m awake.” 

“Fine, just be quiet.”

You gave a fake salute. “Yes, sir.”

Holding his arm around your body that was pressed between himself and the sofa, Logan quickly kissed the top of your head and went back to reading. 

And ten minutes later, you were asleep. 

And so was he. 

An hour passed before someone found either of you, but this time, it was Scott and Bobby. 

“They might be in- oh. What do we have here?”

“Oh my god, Rouge has to see this. I told her they were together.”

Bobby rushed off and soon returned, pulling Rouge with him. 

“What is it?” Then she gasped. 

“Believe me now?”

And what Rouge saw made her smile. 

On the slightly too small sofa for Logan, you lay both between him and the sofa, as well as partly on him with your hand a little over his heart. His head was turned towards you. The blanket had fallen a little, so she reached over and pulled it up both of you before turning around and throwing a log onto the fire. 

“Come on, let's leave them.”

“But-”

“No, you are not going to disturb them. Come on.”

Rouge dragged the pair out and closed the door behind her. 

The third time people suspected you and Logan were an item was one late evening in October. 

Half of the kids were playing outside with all the freshly fallen leaves, whilst some of the older kids helped them find different critters and point them out, and build them habitats. The rest of the kids were either in their rooms or studying. 

Save for two. 

Bobby and Rouge were hiding outside of the kitchen watching yourself and Logan cook. 

“I didn’t even know he knew how to…chop. Let alone cook.”

“You should have more faith in him.”

“Come on, Rouge. You can’t tell me you weren't thinking it, too.”

And she couldn’t. Because she was. 

Meanwhile inside the kitchen, Logan was watching you from the kitchen island as he continued chopping the veg. 

There was something different about you. From the way you practically danced around the kitchen finding the different items for the recipe, to just…you. Whilst he was (semi) shirtless, just having his zipper hoodie on, along with his jeans and socks. He would have been fully dressed, except you had come and ambushed him in his room – even though you denied the word “ambushed” – to get him to help. 

And you were just simply in your pyjamas (of sorts) along with one of his zipper hoodies. 

“Bub,”

Logan laid down his knife and walked over to you as you stood by the stove, standing a little higher to see how much water was left in the pot at the back. 

You hummed a questioned response, but was met with a question…you didn’t expect. 

“Dance with me?”

“What?”

Logan smiled lightly as he pulled the wooden spoon from your hand and pulled you closer to him, despite him walking backwards. 

“Come on,” his voice in a light whisper. “Dance with me.”

“Didn’t take you for a dancer.”

Outside the door, Bobby and Rouge mouthed to each other; “They’re dancing.”

And you both were. 

Gently swaying to the music for a while, you allowed Logan to lead you around a small space in the centre of the kitchen. 

“We’re gonna burn the sauce.”

Logan gave a slight smile at you as he spun you out and back in, “We’re not gonna burn the sauce.”

“Logan.”

“Can’t you ever just enjoy a moment?”

“When that moment doesn’t include burning the house down, yes.”

“Bit of a jump, don’t you think, from burning the sauce.”

“Ha, so you agree. We’re gonna burn the sauce.”

Moving over, Logan turned down the heat on one of the pans before taking your hand back into his. “Now we won’t.”

Bobby and Rouge watched, in shock, the rest. 

For one, Logan knew how to dance? Since when? And since when did he…cook and dance in the kitchen? Unless…

Then Logan did something even you didn’t expect. 

He dipped you. 

You hand tightened its grip on Logan’s arm as you let out a small, if a little nervous, laugh. 

Logan had been full of surprises recently. From the impromptu audiobook session in which you woke up in his arms, to him not only dropping off a cup of coffee during your break from teaching but also a freshly baked muffin. 

And now he was dancing with you in the kitchen. 

And dipping you. 

When you had rushed him out of his room to help you cook, you hadn’t expected him to know the recipe for the sauce from the top of his head. Something he just happened to rattle off whilst you were looking for the cooking notebook that should have been in the cupboard beside the oven. Let alone be the one to ask to dance in the kitchen, and dip you. 

Bring you back up, both of you gave a slight chuckle as you turned around, the music slowly fading away in the background. 

“Logan…”

Looking at him, you forgot what you were going to say. 

Had his eyes always had so much green in them? 

Logan’s palm became warm against your back as it pressed further into you. Or maybe you pressed further into him and he just held you tighter. 

Slowly, your hand left his bicep and trailed towards his chest all the while your eyes studied his face. You’d known him for years and seen him a thousand times or more. 

So why did now feel like you were seeing him for the first time? Noticing him? Noticing each particle he was made up of that allowed him to sway with you in the kitchen to the music that had changed on the radio?

Only, before the space between yourself and Logan became any more closer, a noise came from outside the door. 

A sneeze. 

A sneeze that shocked you and Logan back into reality. 

Still holding you, Logan looked towards the door and gave a hint of a smile when he saw the flash of white disappear behind the beam. 

Realising what was happening, you lowered yourself back to the ground and slowly stepped out of Logan’s arms. “We should finish up.”

Logan nodded in agreement, however did look back at you when you got back to the stove, not noticing you do the same a few moments later, watching him pick up the rest of the veg and toss it into the collider to be washed. 

Time passed and after more music, more conversation - including a burnt tongue from when you had shoved a wooden spoon with fresh sauce on, into Logan’s mouth for him to try - and a lot of scrubbing later, you found Logan sitting inside the library and collapsed next to him. 

“Good news, the kids loved the food,” you told Logan. “Double good news; Jean and Scott are on cooking duty tomorrow.”

“Thank fuck.”

“Thank you for helping me.” Turning to look at Logan, you found him already looking. 

“You did ambush me.”

“I didn’t ambush you.”

“I wasn’t dressed.” Logan examined himself. “Technically, I’m still not.”

You rolled your eyes with a slight smile. “Fine. Maybe it was a mini, tiny, miniscule ambush.” 

You made a small space between your fingers. “Like this big of an ambush.”

Logan looked at you, at your fingers and then back to you in slight disgust before moving your fingers wider with his own. 

“That big of an ambush.”

You rolled your eyes and dropped your hand. “And they say us women are dramatic.”

It was Logan’s turn to roll his eyes. However, as he did so, his arm wrapped around you, and pulled you back into him and the sofa. 

“Just shut the fuck up for a minute and listen.”

You did so. 

“I don’t hear anything.”

“That’s the point.” Logan’s eyes were shut as his head rested on the back of the sofa. 

Eventually you gave a shrug and joined him. 

An hour later, Storm found you both fast asleep beside one another so with a knowing smile, she found a blanket, covered you both up and closed the door behind her. But not before reminding herself she needed to get verbal confirmation from you both. 

She wasn’t handing over any money to Jean and Xavier until she had verbal confirmation of what exactly was going on between you two. 

And she didn’t have to wait long…at least in the long run, she didn’t have to wait long. 

Until then, there were plenty more incidents of falling asleep next to each other, bringing each other coffee, dancing to music in the kitchen, smiling and laughing – all before she finally got verbal confirmation that the inevitable had finally happened. 

Finally, it was acceptable to decorate for Christmas. 

Two days prior, Rogue, Logan and Storm had been helping you find all the old decorations in the attic and bring them down. Storm did try then to bribe something out of Rogue, but she apparently was just in the dark as the rest of them. 

But the smile she gave when she looked over at Logan, who was placing down another box from the back of the pile for you to take a look at, told Storm something different. 

“I can’t believe you leave it this late to decorate.”

Logan looked at you. “We’re still in November.”

“So?” 

Taking hold of the garland, you started to climb the ladder. Logan held onto the bottom just to be safe. 

“If you had it your way, the decorations would be up all year round.”

“Hey, no.”

“Hey, yes.”

“I’d take them down for…” you tried to think. “Halloween. You’d have a little break.”

Logan didn’t look entirely thrilled. “Halloween is one day.”

“Technically, it’s a month.”

“To you, it’s a month. To the rest of us, it’s a day.”

You looked back at him. “To you it’s a day, to the rest of us it’s a month.”

Then you looked back at the garland. “How does that look?”

“Great from where I’m standing.”

You looked a little confused for a second before quickly looking over your shoulder, realising where Logan was, in fact, looking. 

Not at the garland, but at your ass. 

You smiled and started to step down the ladder, hitting his shoulder on the way down. 

“I meant the garland.”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” Logan looked up. “Looks great.”

You laughed. “You didn’t even look.”

With a smile as you finally stepped back into his arm, he looked to the side and up. “It looks great.”

“Good. Now,” Logan turned back to look at you and you kissed him quickly. “We have to put up five more.”

“I get to watch you put up five more.”

You smiled. “This is why you’re my favourite person.”

Logan smiled. He could help you with everything else, but when it came to the garland, you had full control on where it went. Which, he didn’t mind. So long as he got to watch you put it up. 

You quickly kissed him once more, only to be pulled back when you tried to walk away. 

Then Logan gave you a real kiss. 

A little dizzy, you smiled and placed a hand on his chest and closed your eyes. “Wow.”

He gave you a quicker, lighter kiss. “You better get going before Rogue comes back with another box of lights.”

“Light?” Then it hit you. “Oh, yeah.”

Logan smirked a little as he watched you walk away and down the hallway. 

It was a couple of hours before everyone was in the same room, making the final touches all the while most of the other kids were either playing outside in the snow, were taking naps or decorating their own rooms. 

And the others had been watching you and Logan all day. 

The stolen glances, the stolen touches, the slightly knowing smiles from both Rogue and Bobby. And then, as Logan was helping you down from the ladder, his hand on your thigh, Bobby went to make the final hammer to hang up the mistletoe. 

“Wait, no. Not there.”

“Where then?”

Storm looked around. “I know. Y/n, hang this just above there. We don’t need a remake of Mistletoe Central 1997.”

Logan looked at Storm. “Do I wanna know?”

Storm shook her head. “Here.”

She handed you the mistletoe before Logan passed you the hammer back from his belt. 

Three knocks and the nail was set in and the mistletoe was above you on a corner beam, just a little to the side of the christmas tree. 

At least this way, those looking for it, would find it. 

"Oh, no, wait.” Jean said, looking at you. “Have to kiss someone. It’s tradition. You’re under the mistletoe.”

There was no one else apart from Logan.

Logan looked around at the others. He wondered how long it would take. 

Coming up behind you on the ladder, you moved over for him to stand beside you. His palm on your back held you steady and, leaning his other arm on the ledge of the ladder, his hand cupped your face and he kissed you. 

Lasting a little longer than the others had expected, you soon heard Rogue giving a little cheer, as well as a couple of whistles from the others. 

“Okay, I think they get it.” You whispered to Logan as he finally pulled away, a smile very noticeable on both of your faces. 

“Happy now?” Logan asked, turning towards where Jean and Scott were standing. 

“That was some kiss.”

You felt yourself blush at the comment. As did Logan. 

He helped you back down the ladder before you both turned and really saw the other's expression. As well as the exchanging of money between people. 

“Sooo…how long has this been going on?”

You were leaning into Logan, his hand around your back and on your hip. 

You looked at Logan, “A couple of months. We’re…what? November now so that would…”

“That would…” Logan counted back in his head. “May…June, July…six months.”

You looked back to the others. “Six months.”

A chorus of shocked faces and loud voices sounded out; “SIX MONTHS?!”

All before a small call from Rogue was made, which made both yourself and Logan smile. 

“I knew it!”

[butyoudidthis4what]

No Man's Land Part 3

Jack Abbot x F!Reader

You can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here!

25.1k || All my content is 18+ MDNI || CW: mentions of blood, mentions of guns/shootings/gunshot wounds, mentions of suicide/suicidal ideation, CPR, mentions of jack's injury and losing his foot, anxiety about partner's safety, angst (kind of), very emotional, probably incorrect description of medical events, potentially incorrect medical descriptions/knowledge, reader wears Jack’s clothes, self-hate, Robby has been to therapy, fighting/arguing (no raised voices), unprotected PIV sex (BC implied with their committed relationship), allusions to sex and oral sex, discussion of end of life wishes, descriptions of nightmares, discussion of someone dying in front of reader, panic attacks, vomiting (very brief, not reader), discussion of scars/wounds, grief, mention of UTI, myrna, reader likes candles, Jack is the best, I had this idea and started drafting before we knew Jack was a widow so in this world he has never been married, no use of y/n or related, not really proofread.

Summary: Healing is hard. Emotions abound. Somehow life goes on. [Author continues to suck at summaries.]

AN: I am so sorry this took so long 😅 The vignettes have a bit of a different feel here because the way we are moving through time is much different and on a larger scale. But each vignette 'happened' before the scene it precedes. Part 4 is already like 75% of the way done so it will not be as long of a wait, I promise 😭 I know some wanted it all at once and I'm sorry it isn't, but I can offer as an apology the fact that because we're getting another part we're getting more content both in Part 3 and in Part 4!! Also I promise Quiet Part 2 is next up after Part 4. Thank you all so much for your patience and support and for reading!! Your replies and likes and reblogs mean so so much to me and I know we're all busy so I really appreciate you taking the time to read whatever it is I do here ♥️

After the housewarming party, life is good. You and Jack are still home together while you recover, in love and soaking each other in and planning France and dreaming out loud about your wedding. And healing. Individually and together. 

Things get harder though.

You’re both in therapy, yes, but you’ve been through a lot in the last month and a bit, and an hour a week only does so much. You’re both struggling, struggling a little harder now that the kind of honeymoon period of you getting home from the hospital has passed. 

You and Jack talk about it sometimes, about how things feel harder in a way all of the sudden now that you’re not focusing on being home finally and getting your place painted and all moved into. You think it’s just because you have lost some of that distraction. The reality of what happened starts to sink in deeper. Especially because things are ostensibly returning to normal but not really. 

Because normal isn’t being at home together while you’re recovering. You’re back to that hospital feeling of waiting. Waiting for you to recover enough for the next step to get taken. Jack going back to work. You going back to work. The return of your true new normal. 

So things get a little harder, emotions more intense. Some days it feels like you guys are taking more steps backward than forward. But you’re taking those steps in whatever direction together and you have each other and are in love and that’s all either of you need at the end of the day. Each other and your love.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s day four. 

Four days now you’ve been in a coma. Four days with no signs of waking up soon, even after they weaned you off the meds that had been keeping you under to help you heal. No twitch of your fingers or toes, no flutter of your eyelashes, no little grunt, no breathing over the vent. Nothing. Just you laying there in a hospital bed. Technically still alive and with him, but are you really?

Jack stretches out. He hasn’t left the hospital since you got shot. Literally has not set foot out of the building, hasn’t gone to the roof or out into the ambulance bay or gone through the main doors to stand on the street. 

Dana brought him in clothes and toiletries. She brought some for you too, telling Jack that you’d want them as soon as you were awake. Half of Jack wanted to scream at her for tempting fate like that, now that she brought them there would be no use for them because you’d never wake up. 

And half of him wanted to just sob into her because he knows that as much as she did bring them for you, she brought them for him. To give him the option of smelling like you, or just smelling your shampoo to smell you for a second. To give him a shirt of yours to keep near his head when he tries to get an hour of sleep. It helped once. He was actually able to grab a couple of hours. 

It’s not the same though, because those products haven’t mixed with your body chemistry to become the unique scent that is you. But it’s better than nothing. Because until Dana had brought it in for him he’d forgotten what you smelled like. 

He’d forgotten what you sounded like too. The sound of your voice, the way you say his name. The way you say you love him. Your laugh. He just couldn’t hear it in his head. He cracked on day three and listened to a voicemail you left him, watched a video of the two of you that you’d taken one day. It was comforting to be able to remember what you sound like and what you look like when you smile, to have those little pieces of you back in his mind. But it was also a devastating reminder of what he might lose. 

Your things, the voicemails you’ve left him and the videos and photos you’ve taken together might be all he really has left of you at the end of this. The realization had made him dry heave a little.

Robby walks in as Jack is stretching, hands him a coffee and a brown bag. Breakfast. “You have to eat if you want the coffee or else it’s just going to shoot up your heart rate and give you more anxiety.”

Jack looks at him almost blankly as he sits down in the chair on the other side of your bed across from Jack. “I’m still a doctor, you know?” The words hit Jack. “A fucking shitty one apparently. I can’t even fix her. This shit is what I do and I’ve saved so many people but the one fucking person who actually matters.” Jack shakes his head. “And nothing.” 

Robby cocks his head at him. “No doctor could fix this Jack. She’s in a coma. You’re making sure she gets the best care possible. That’s all anyone could do for her right now, doctor or not.” 

Jack waves Robby off, takes a sip of the coffee but makes no move for the bag. It earns him a look from Robby that he ignores. They sit in silence for a bit. It’s hard to come up with things to say. But Robby knows Jack needs to start thinking about it. It’s still very far down the line but it’ll be better for him to start thinking and coming to terms with it now, Robby thinks.  

“Jack.” Jack pulls his eyes off you and over to Robby. “Have you thought about what you’re going to do?”

Deep down Jack knows exactly what Robby’s question means. But he doesn’t let himself go there. He can’t. Robby will have to spell it out for him. “What I’m going to do about what?”

“What you’re going to do if down the line she heals physically but doesn’t wake up?” Robby says quietly, as though saying it lower will make it somehow less painful, pull less of a reaction from Jack. 

“What the fuck is that? Why the fuck would you even bring that up?” Jack snaps at him. While you were awake after surgery you’d signed a healthcare proxy giving Jack the authority to make treatment and end of life decisions for you. It had been just in case. Better to have it because then you would never need it right? Wrong. “We’re so the fuck far away from that. She’s not even healed. You and Dana are the ones that keep saying ‘it’s only been four days Jack give her time’ and now you’re coming at me with this bullshit?”

“I’m not coming at you with anything. Just asking a question because maybe it’s better to start preparing now for something you’ll never have to do than to be unprepared.” Robby shrugs. 

Jack doesn’t say anything, just looks back at you. He scoots his chair closer so that he can hold your hand. You’re just so goddamn still. It’s unnatural. Even the way you breathe is, it’s mechanical. Chest rising and falling in time with the clicks of the vent. 

“I know that I don’t really know her, Jack, and certainly don’t know her well. But just from the little bit of time I have been able to get to know her I don’t think she’d want this Jack. Not indefinitely. I don’t think she’d want machines keeping her alive.” Robby watches Jack carefully as Jack takes in his words. Devastation is quickly covered by anger. 

“I don’t fucking care. She should wake the fuck up then and not leave this to me. Not make me fucking kill her.” Jack knows his anger at you is misplaced and a cover for how much this conversation is hurting him. Anger is just easier to deal with than heartbreak and grief right now. He sees Robby go to speak. “Just fucking don’t Robby. Don’t. You’re right. You don’t fucking know her. And I don’t care. I don’t fucking care if she wouldn’t want it because I need her. And having her here with me like this is better than not having her at all.” Jack knows how selfish he sounds, how selfish he’s being.

Robby doesn’t say anything, waits until Jack glances over at him, tilts his head and raises his eyebrows, asking him ‘really?’ without a word. 

Jack sighs and looks back over at you shaking his head. “No,” he whispers. “She would hate it. We fucking talked about it once, way before this when it was on some show or movie we were watching. It would be cowardly and selfish of me to keep her here like this forever, just so that I wouldn’t have to deal with completely losing her and could live in a perpetual delusion that she’ll wake up tomorrow.” Jack gives a short and hollow laugh through his nose. “Right before I left to go down to the ED and help, we… argued isn’t the right word, but I don’t know what is. She mentioned it, her dying. That if she had already died, in the OR or at the courthouse then I could be properly grieving, and I cut her off but she was going to say that I could be working towards moving on.”

Jack feels guilty for getting angry at you, for being selfish. He knows you’d understand and wouldn’t care and wouldn’t want him to feel guilty but it doesn’t help. He swallows thickly and then takes in a deep breath, squeezing your hand, praying you’ll squeeze it back, even just a little. 

“But there’s no moving on from her.” Jack shakes his head as he looks down at you. “The problem is that I don’t think I’ll be strong enough to do it. To sign the damn papers,” Jack admits, voice wet with the tears lining his eyes. 

Robby nods slowly. “You are now and you will be then, if that then does ever come. You will because it’s for her. And I’m not sure I’ve ever seen two humans love each other as much as you do, the way you do. She would do anything for you. And I know you’d do anything for her, no matter how much it killed you inside. So I know that if that day ever comes you’ll be strong enough to sign for her, to do that for her.”

Jack’s silent for a minute, trying not to give into the urge to grab your shoulders and shake you awake. “I don’t know Robby. I don’t know how to talk to her like this. I try, but I just never know what to say other than I love her and please come back to me and please don’t leave me alone. And I hate it. She deserves more. For it to not be about me,” he whispers, stands and runs the back of his bent index finger over your face like he’s trying to memorize you. As if he hasn’t already. He’s teary, voice small and raw from all the tears he’s already shed. “So how do I let her be taken from me? How do I give her up, give up on her, tell her it’s okay to let go? How do I stand there and fight all my training and every instinct and just watch her die and know it’s my fault?”

Robby has to take a minute to compose himself because his heart aches for Jack. It’s hard to see your best friend, your brother, contemplating losing the love of his life. Even though all of Jack’s questions are rhetorical he answers the last one. 

“You don’t,” he says simply. “You get in bed with her and you hold her and find it within you to talk to her. Tell her all of your favorite memories together. Tell her what she means to you. Tell her you love her. And you stay there in bed holding her until she’s gone.” 

Jack takes in a shuddering breath as he sits back down in his chair. “Hope seems so worthless and useless right now even though it’s all I feel like I have left.” Jack grabs your hand again, brushes his thumb over your knuckles. “I hope I never have to sign those papers.” 

Robby sniffles a little, not crying, just emotional. “That makes two of us, brother.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I think you should consider leaving your engagement ring here.” You and Jack are planning more for your trip to France, making packing lists. Well, you’re on the computer planning and making lists and Jack is chopping up ingredients for dinner. 

It’s been four days since the housewarming party. You feel like Jack has been more stressed lately, more on edge. Looking at you like he’s terrified of losing you again, like he did at times in the hospital and the first two days you were home.

“Why?” You pout at him from the stool you’re sitting on at the kitchen island. “I want to wear it and show it off and take photos with it on while we’re in France!”

“I know,” Jack hums lowly, his eyebrows raising a little as he focuses on chopping. “I worry about it getting stolen, you getting assaulted for it or something, especially in Paris.”

“But walking around with it on in Pittsburgh is okay?”

He sighs at you. He kind of hates that you said that because now it’s all he can think about. Whether he has put your life in danger for a third time by getting you a nice engagement ring. Because he’s already done it twice. When he didn’t check you over in the trauma room before letting you go and going to help Robby, and when he left to go down to the ED and wasn’t there to notice you going septic and throwing a PE. 

You’re the only one who would notice him stiffen the way he does, it’s so slight. You feel bad. You know he’s been struggling more the closer he gets to going back to work and having to leave you alone. Even starting with half shifts. And you know he’s struggling to talk about it with you because he doesn’t want to burden you with it or make you feel any guiltier. You’ve both fallen into that habit a little bit. 

“I really don’t think anyone is going to try to steal it off me or assault me to get it when I’m walking around with you.” You raise your eyebrows at him and give him a knowing smile, wait for him to lift his head to look at you once he’s finished chopping. He does. 

“Don’t look at me like that.” He points the knife at you teasingly and holds your gaze for a moment before grabbing something else to chop and getting back to it.

“But I don’t want to leave it here Peter!” you almost whine. It makes Jack chuckle to himself a little. “I don’t want to argue about it, but I really want to take it. I like showing it off, like everyone knowing I’m yours.” That makes him look up at you again and you smile at him and nod encouragingly. You can see the possessive look in his eyes, the way he breathes a little bit faster thinking about it. But he just clicks his tongue on the back of his teeth at you and shakes his head as he looks back down. “Okay, how about a compromise?”

“A compromise?” Jack echoes.

“Yes. A compromise.” 

There’s a beat where neither of you talk, only the sound of the knife hitting the cutting board. Jack pauses his cutting and looks up at you. “Are you gonna tell me what the compromise is?” 

“I’m thinking of one,” you grumble, knowing how satisfied he’s going to be. 

“Oh,” he draws the word out teasingly, “she suggests a compromise before she even has one!” 

“I’ll come up with one, just give me a minute,” you huff. Jack hums at you again, keeps chopping. “Okay, yes! I have one. What if while we’re in Paris or whatever bigger cities or places you’d prefer I wasn’t wearing it on my finger you wear the ring around a chain on your neck? Even on the same one as your dog tags if you’re bringing them. People are much less likely to try to snatch it from your neck and run, plus it’ll always be covered by your shirt unless you’re going to start wearing deep v-necks, which I doubt.” You smirk. 

You watch Jack’s eyes slide from you to the wall behind you and glaze over. It’s clear he’s going back somewhere, you just don’t know where or why or what happened. The smirk slides from your face as it twists into concern.

He goes to say something but stops as your words fully process. Wear the ring around a chain on his neck. Like he did at your funeral. 

Jack drops the knife, it falls out of his hand and clatters a bit as it hits the counter. “Jack?” you whisper, your heart rate picking up. 

The nightmare plays on fast forward in Jack’s head, every emotion he felt when having it slamming into him all at once and making his head spin. With the massive flood of epinephrine, norepinephrine and cortisol all those emotions cause his body to release, Jack’s turning and leaning over the sink to be sick. 

It’s all too much. 

“Jack!” You’re off the stool and over by him in a second, rubbing his back. “Hey,” you murmur, “it’s okay, you’re okay.” You have no idea what’s going on with him, but have a feeling.

Jack shakes his head at you as he dry heaves a few more times, trembling like nothing you’ve seen from him before. “I’ve got you.” Your hand keeps rubbing circles on his back soothingly and it’s simultaneously comforting him and burning him, because it’s all too much. There are too many emotions. 

You were dead. He was at your funeral. It was so real. 

Tears start to stream down his face silently as he rinses the sink and his mouth. “We can get you to bed, okay? I’ll make you some broth if you feel up to it.” 

He can hear the anxiety in your voice, the worry for him, your love for him. He loves it, he does, truly, but it almost makes it worse because you were dead. And if you were dead, if you had really died, he wouldn’t have this. He wouldn’t be in sweatpants and an old shirt at home chopping things to make dinner for the two of you while you sit in the kitchen to be with him and plan your trip. You wouldn’t be rubbing his back and so worried about him. You wouldn’t be taking care of him and offering to make him broth. 

You simply wouldn’t be. 

Jack shakes his head and sniffles. He turns to you and your eyes widen when you see him crying, pain and a heartbreaking and agonizing sorrow etched into his face that threatens to bring you to tears. You immediately know what this is about. He doesn’t need to say anything. He’s not ill. But you’re not sure how to support him, what to say, what exactly is wrong. “Jack what’s-”

You’re cut off by him crumbling in front of you, grabbing at your forearms to pull you closer as he slides down the base cabinets to the floor, bringing you down with him. “I,” he tries to choke out, “I, I…” He shakes his head again. 

He can’t speak right now, and you know it. “Okay, it’s okay,” you tell him as you reach for him and pull him close to you as you press your back against the cabinet, letting him almost lay on you. 

Jack buries his head in your chest, careful not to press into your still healing sternum too hard, and clings to you, both arms wrapped tightly around you, one diagonal up your back, hand clinging to your shoulder for just a second before it slides over to your neck, two fingers pushing down. 

He’s looking for your pulse. 

“Oh, Jack,” you whisper, your own voice thick with tears now. “I’m here. I’ve got you baby.” You hold him just as tight, let one hand find his hair and run your fingers through it, scratch at his scalp at times, kiss the top of his head and nuzzle your nose into him in hopes of soothing him. Sometimes you rock a little, but you’re not sure if that’s more to comfort him or yourself. 

And you whisper little words of reassurance and, you hope, comfort to him. “I’ve got you.” “I’m here.” “You’re okay.” “I love you.” You hold him and let him weep into you. Let him keep his fingers pressed into your pulse point. Let him cling to you like you’re the only thing left in the world, because to him you are. You’re his whole world. 

It kills you, seeing him like this, hurting this badly. This deeply. You know it has to do with what happened, know that it’s been building up in him for a long time. That he hasn’t said anything about it, not because he was trying to hide it but because he just couldn’t. And you understand that. A whole lot.

“Here baby,” you murmur at one point, try to move his head a little which just makes him sob harder and hold you closer. “Shh, I’m not going anywhere, just trust me, okay? I think this will help.” You try again and this time he lets you move his head, lets you turn it to the side and move it over and then pull him back to your chest, keep your hand on the side of his face, thumb brushing along his cheekbone. He’s confused until he hears it. 

The rhythmic beating of your heart in your chest. 

It makes him tremble against you harder, clutch at you tighter. But you don’t care. You wouldn’t care if he held you so hard it hurt. You’d take on all the physical pain out there without a second thought and genuinely smile about it if it would take away Jack’s pain.  

It starts to pass the longer Jack is in your arms, ear to your chest listening to your heart beating, fingers pressing into your skin feeling your heart beating. It calms him. He quiets, reduced to only sniffles and hiccuped in breaths and swollen eyes and an ache so deep in his chest he’s not sure it can be fixed. But you’re with him, still holding him on the kitchen floor and brushing at his cheekbone and scratching at the nape of his neck and kissing his curls and whispering soft words of reassurance to him.  

You’re here. You’re in your shared apartment. You’re alive. 

You have to be, right? The sound of your heart beating and the warmth of your chest and your voice whispering quiet words to him has to be real. It would make sense for you to come up with the idea of him wearing your engagement ring on a chain around his neck all on your own as a compromise. It doesn’t mean he’s still in that nightmare and just starting to realize it. It means the two of you just think alike. Right?

You aren’t sure how long you end up sitting there on the floor together, his head pressed against your chest. It doesn’t really matter. You know he’s really starting to come down when his fingers no longer press into your neck to feel for your pulse. “I’m here if and when you want to talk,” you whisper. You don’t expect anything back from him and aren’t hurt when he remains quiet.

Eventually Jack pulls his head from your chest and looks up at you. After a few seconds of eye contact he pushes himself up and sits with his back against the base cabinet next to you. He wipes off his face with his hands and once he’s done, one of your hands immediately finds one of his and squeezes. He needs it. Little things like a hand squeeze from you to remind him that you’re still here with him. Eventually he lets his head tilt and rest on your shoulder. You turn your head, give him a lingering kiss to the temple and then rest yours on top of his. 

And then you just sit like that. For as long as he needs. Even when your ass goes numb and back stiffens a bit. You stay just like that with him. 

Jack loves the way you don’t press him. You don’t ask if he’s okay, or if he wants to talk about it, or tell him gently to talk to you. You just let him be as he comes back to himself fully. And he knows it’s not because you don’t want to talk about it or don’t want him to talk to you about it but because you understand that sometimes there is simultaneously too much and nothing to be said. So you let him be. 

After a while Jack takes a big breath in and slowly lets it out. You feel him pull his head a little so you lift yours up and look over at him as he looks at you. 

He looks wrecked in a way you’ve never seen before. Eyes red and swollen, lips a bit swollen too. Mouth set and lips pulled just the slightest bit down, hair fluffier and more askew than normal because of how much you’ve run your hands through it. His shirt is wrinkled, part of the neckline darker than the rest of the shirt from his tears. He looks haunted. 

But mostly it’s the way he’s looking at you that really shows how wrecked he is. You’ve seen Jack look at you a lot of ways, with a lot of different expressions, especially recently with everything that has happened. Happy, sad, like he’s amazed and can’t believe you’re alive, like looking at you hurts him a little because it reminds him of what he almost lost and who he couldn’t protect.

But you’ve never seen Jack look at you like this. He’s looking at you like he can’t believe you’re alive, but not in an incredulous, happy sense. Jack’s looking at you like he truly cannot believe you’re alive, is scared to believe it even for a second. Like he doesn’t trust the world that you are in fact alive, doesn’t trust himself and his ability to know whether you’re alive. Like you’re a hallucination or a mirage, or a ghost who has been living with him and he’s just realizing it. Like you’re a dream he’s about to wake up from. 

“I…” Jack tries to start, voice raw, as unsure and questioning and wrecked as he looks. He just keeps looking at you like he’s about to come back to reality and you’re about to disappear right in front of his eyes, just cease to exist. 

He shifts and leans off the cabinet, gets closer to you and takes your face in his hands. Jack holds your gaze how he loves to do, lets his eyes burn into yours as though they’ll give him the answer to whatever question it is he can’t speak. 

You lean your head into one of his hands a little and then Jack’s kissing you, pressing against your lips hard at first like he was bracing to just move through air and never actually find your lips. It’s short, his head pulling back from yours for a second to look you in the eyes again before his eyes drop to your lips. 

Glassy eyes look back up at you, questioning. You nod slightly, because of course he can kiss you. And he does. 

Jack pulls your head back towards his as he leans in, both of your mouths opening just slightly. He takes the opportunity, licks into your mouth and starts devouring you, his head moving slightly with each kiss and slip of his tongue back into your mouth. 

It’s greedy the way he kisses you, nose smushing into your face as you both start to breathe hard, the sound almost lost in between the noises of pleasure you pull from each other and the pops of your lips with each pass. Jack kisses you like he doesn’t believe you’re real. Like each kiss might be the last one he’s ever able to give you, like it’ll never be enough, like he’ll never have enough of you. It’s not something you’ve ever felt from him before. You can tell he’s scared in a way but you aren’t sure about what exactly. 

He keeps kissing you but his hands drop from your face to grab at the hem of your shirt, start sliding it up your body, stopping to pop the clasp of your bra as he works the shirt up and eventually over your head, helps you shrug your bra off. You expect his lips to return to yours immediately but they don’t. 

Jack stands as he tosses your shirt and bra to the side, hands reaching down for you and helping to get you up on your feet. Before you can say anything his hands are on your hips and his lips are back on yours. He walks you backwards to the kitchen table until your ass bumps into the edge of it. Without breaking the kiss he moves his from your hips and blindly wipes off the table, sending some mail and books and whatever else happened to be there clattering to the floor.

He finally breaks the kiss to give you a chance to breathe and so he can check there’s nothing on the table. “Jack,” you breathe out with some surprise. He grabs your hips and helps you sit on the edge of the table before stooping to bring his face back close to yours. 

“Please,” he whispers against your lips, “please. Please, I need this.” He pushes his lips to yours once again, licking into your mouth once again. “I need to feel you.” He feels your hands at the hem of his shirt and moves apart just enough for him to get it off and throw it to the floor. “I need you.” It’s pleaded, desperate and needy, but not erotically so. 

“Of course, always.” You let him support you as he leans over you and guides you down until your back rests against the table. “You have me, you always have me.”

It’s quick then, the way he tears off your bottoms and then his. You wrap your legs around him as he leans back over you, chest to chest and kisses you again, like he can’t get enough, like each kiss is a surprise he wasn’t expecting to actually get. He grinds himself into you as he does and you respond in kind, tightening your legs around him and letting your hips buck as much as they can against him to search out more friction. His hands roam your body, pressing into you to feel as much as he can, groping at your breasts and squeezing your hips as his lips stay on yours.

“Fuck,” he groans into your mouth, hand sliding between the two of you to feel how wet you are for him. “Can you take me like this?”

“Yeah,” you pant softly, “yeah, please Jack.” You wrap your arms around his neck, hands tangling in salt and pepper curls you adore.

He shivers at the way you say his name, his lips leaving yours so he can look down at you as his fingers run through you and then over his cock to slick himself up as much as he can. “I need to know you’re real and still here. I need to be close to you.”

Jack notches himself in you and then moves to rest on his forearms with his hands holding your face, forehead resting against yours before he finally pushes himself into you slowly. His voice cracks with emotion part way through the needy and relieved groan he draws out as he pushes in. 

“Oh Jack,” you moan as you take a breath in and feel it catch in your throat. 

Once he bottoms out Jack stills, the two of you panting against each other’s lips until Jack’s are claiming yours once again. He stays still, lets himself relish in the way you taste and how you feel around him, so tight and warm and fluttering as you adjust to taking him with no real preparation. 

Jack finally draws his hips back slowly and steadily pushes himself back in with a grunt. “You okay?” Even with as out of his mind for you as he is, how desperate and needy and frantic he is to have you he’s still checking in on you. Would rather die than hurt you, especially like this. 

“Yes,” you breathe, “yes, Jack please. Need you.” Hearing that you need him has Jack pulling his hips back again, faster this time before snapping back in.

From there it’s all feral need and grunts and groans as Jack tries to be closer to you, to consume you, to be one with you. His strokes are hard as he tries to get as deep inside of you as he possibly can. His pace varies, keeps you on your toes, but it’s not deliberate this time. It’s Jack chasing what he needs from you however his body tells him, however feels right at that second. At some point one of his arms slides under your back, his hand wrapping over the opposite shoulder so that you tilt to the side just a little and he can pull you down onto him as he fucks you so hard your last clear thought is of concern he might break the table. 

Your hands tug at his hair, nails draw up his back when he starts mouthing at your neck, kissing and sucking, lips passing over the scar from your central line again and again. He rests his cheek against yours leaving his mouth near your ear allowing you to hear every little noise your body pulls from him. Jack is fucking you with pure need but it’s not an erotic need like it is sometimes when you tease him or he’s been thinking about you all day. It’s intimate. Jack needs you. He needs you. All of you.

Only you.

You’re so lost in the haze of pleasure that it takes you a moment to realize your cheek is wet where your and Jack’s touch. You realize he’s crying. “Jack?” You moan his name so sweetly for him, lace it with all the concern and worry and need you have for him. 

It makes him let out the smallest sob and breathe in hard through his teeth, shake his head a little against yours. He pulls his head from yours and looks down at you, hips slowing but not stopping. “Tell me you’re here,” a fresh wave of tears roll down his face and hit your cheeks. He’s unfairly beautiful when he cries. “Tell me this is real. That you’re real.” A few of your own tears slip out the corner of your eyes and roll down towards your ear. “Please,” his voice cracks, more of his tears joining your own on your face, “please be real. Please tell me you’re here and real and with me.”

You do. Over and over and over until his lips are back on yours and consuming you in a different way now. More confident, more convinced you’re real and here with him and letting him fuck you on your kitchen table to soothe himself and fix something inside of him he didn’t realize was broken. 

Letting him take solace from every part of you.

One hand slips between your bodies and with how well he knows you it’s not long before Jack has you soundless with pleasure for a moment as your orgasm crashes over you, voice coming back to moan out little whispers of his name, veiled pleas for him to take anything and everything he could ever need from you. 

And so Jack does. Lets himself give in and lose himself all the way in you, your name groaned with a relieved intensity you’ve never heard from him before, lower and more gravelly than usual right at your ear.

Jack works himself through it before stilling and resting his forehead back against yours, the two of you panting softly as you come down, bodies hot and sweat sheened and sticking together. “I love you,” Jack whispers, eyes opening and finding yours before kissing you, chaste but lingering. Just to feel you. 

“I love you too,” you murmur against his lips when you’re able, hand running through his hair and scratching at his scalp. Jack kisses your lips again and then your chin, down your neck and to your central line scar, lingering there before kissing down to the highest part of your thoracotomy scar. “Bed?”

Jack nods, lifts himself off of you and pulls out gently. He steps back and helps you up and off the table. “I should take care of all this.” He nods to the kitchen.

You shake your head and grab his hand. “The carrots and potatoes can live there overnight and it’ll be fine. We can order something from bed.” You squeeze his hand and pull him gently so he starts walking with you. 

Jack pulls back on your hand before you can get in bed, flicks his chin towards the bathroom. “Go,” it’s not an order, just a reminder. “We don’t want my… whatever that was to be the reason you get a UTI. You really don’t need that right now.” 

You smile at him gently and nod. Even after all the emotional turmoil he just went through, still is a little bit from what you can see in his eyes, he’s still thinking about you and your well being and keeping you healthy and safe. “You’ll get in bed?” 

He nods and drops your hand, sits on the edge and takes his prosthetic off as you go pee. He’s leaning against the headboard and staring into space when you get into bed. You slide up next to him so that your legs touch and lean back against the headboard, let your hand rest on his thigh and give it a little squeeze so he knows you’re here for whatever he might need.

“When you were in a coma,” Jack starts, voice strained and raw, “I started having nightmares.” He rests his hand on top of yours. You close your eyes and bow your head a little, heart sinking. “Some weren’t completely awful. But the one I got the most…” he trails off and shakes his head, grows quiet again. 

“You don’t have to tell me,” you remind him softly, lean your head over and kiss his bare shoulder. 

“I know, but I want to. At least enough to explain what that was.”

“You don’t owe me an explanation, Jack.”

“I know but I want to tell you.” He pauses for a second. “The worst, and of course most frequent, one was where you died in the OR. And I had to hold your lifeless body and somehow force myself to walk away from you. In the nightmare I’m thinking back on that while I’m sitting at your funeral.” You blink away tears because you can’t even imagine the level of pain that must have caused him. Multiple times. “The details, I… They don’t really matter, right now. In the nightmare I wore your engagement ring, the one that never got to go on your finger because I never go to ask, I wore it on a chain around my neck.”

“Oh fuck Jack,” you cringe, closing your eyes and squeezing his thigh tight and hating yourself. “I am so fucking sorry.”

Jack finally turns his head to look over at you. “Don’t be. Seriously. You had no way of knowing.” You appreciate him saying it but it doesn’t stop the guilt that builds inside of you. You were the reason he had the nightmare in the first place and now you’re the reason he had to go right back there. “So when you, when it got brought up, it just made it all hit me again, all the emotions from that nightmare and it made me panic almost. That this wasn’t real, that you weren’t. And I lost it a bit and so I did whatever that was and then needed to be as close to you as possible.” He shrugs a little. “I needed to know you were real.” 

Jack’s hand slides under yours and picks it up, laces your fingers together and squeezes. You feel vaguely lightheaded by his admission and then berate yourself and feel guiltier for thinking about yourself when this is about Jack and him still needing you. “I,” you try to find words to say, “I’m sorry,” Jack shakes his head but you continue, “I can’t even begin to imagine how painful that must have been.” You pause and have to look away from him for a moment, can feel his eyes remain on you. “Or maybe I can, to some extent at least, and that’s why I’m sorry and wish I could take it all away from you, make sure it never happens again.”

“That one has only happened once since you’ve been home. The first night.” You feel a little relief at that, are able to look back up at him. “They’ve kind of changed though, honestly. It’s not holding your dead body in an OR anymore, it’s walking in the door from work or the store or wherever and finding your dead body on the floor or in bed or wherever. Complications. Something else random. Freak home deaths I’ve seen roll through work before.” He lets go of your hand to bring his hand to your face again. “I wake up and have to convince myself you’re here. I’ve gotten quite good at the art of taking your pulse on your wrist without you waking up.” He gives a little laugh through his nose, trying to infuse a little lightness. It doesn’t work. If anything your lips pull down a bit. “Sometimes I just lay awake for a while watching you breathe. Sometimes I cuddle up to you a bit closer to feel your chest rise and fall against mine. Sometimes I fall asleep counting the beats of your heart while I feel your pulse.”

You take in a shuddery breath, trying so hard to focus on him and helping him and being here for him and not on the way this is all your fault. “Do you want to talk or for me to just listen?” You don’t want to force him to truly discuss this with you if he’s not in the headspace right now and it won’t surprise you if he’s not.

Jack thinks about it for a second. “Listen, please.”

“Okay.” You nod at him. “I’m not saying this to start a conversation when you just told me you wanted listening but I just need to make sure you know. You can do whatever you need to do Jack. When you wake up from one. Wake me up. We can talk, we can just sit together, whatever you need, okay?”

He nods, pulls his hand from your face to wipe away the couple of tears that have fallen down his own during this conversation. “Actually when you shifted us earlier, in the kitchen. Pulled my head to your chest so I could listen to your heart. It helped a lot. I just didn’t want to hurt you, before. With your chest healing.” He tries to laugh softly at himself. 

You give him the best smile you can manage with all the guilt and self-hate swirling inside you. “You can roll me into whatever position you want so you can listen anytime.” You know he’s trying to keep the conversation light because he knows how hard hearing it is for you. But that’s not fair. You should be the one trying to keep it light for him, should be taking care of him. “We could get you another stethoscope to keep on your nightstand,” you offer. “Then you could really listen whenever you wanted.”

He gives you a little more of a laugh at that and it makes your small smile become a little more genuine. “Could, yeah. But I like having my head on your chest, feeling you. I think it probably helps ground me in its own way.”

“Makes sense.” You rest your left hand on his chest, push down a little extra hard with your ring finger so he can feel the band that lives there now. “Thank you for telling me. I know it wasn’t easy and that you didn’t have to. And I want to do whatever I can to help you because I don’t want you to suffer.” You stop yourself from adding the because of me that you want to so badly. 

Jack picks up your hand, brings it to his lips palm first and kisses the band of your engagement ring before flipping your hand and kissing to the side of it the best he can with the setting. He brings your hand to the side of his face and covers it with his as he leans into it. “You always help. Even when you’re just laying there asleep and don’t know it.” 

You give him a little smile and laugh through your nose, try your best to take his words to heart because you know how much he means them. Jack knows you’re struggling, he can read you like a book. But he senses that you don’t want to acknowledge it so he doesn’t bring it up. 

His stomach growls then which makes you laugh a little more and he huffs. “Ruined our moment.” 

“Nah,” you shake your head and pull your hand away and rub his stomach, push off the headboard to sit up more. “What do you feel like? Can’t have my man going hungry.” The smile you give him is genuine, all the way to your eyes this time and it makes him mirror you, that smile of his you love so much pulling onto his face. 

He widens his eyes at you for a second and raises his eyebrows and you already know what he’s about to say. “You.”

“Yeah, I walked into that one,” you click your tongue at yourself. Jack gives you a smirk. “I don’t think I’m going to be filling enough for that-”

“I could go for seconds. Thirds, even.” 

“Mm, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but no.” You boop his nose and the way he scrunches his nose at it is so cute you could bite him. “Real food first. Me later, if you’re good.” He raises his eyebrows at you with a little smile. “What would you like? I’ll order.”

“Feisty. I’ll take it. Be so good for you so I can have dessert.” He nods all saccharine and put-on grin that makes you roll your eyes at him playfully. He thinks for a moment and then says the name of your favorite restaurant. 

You tsk at him and give him a really? look, but you’re smiling still, grinning, in fact. Like an idiot. It’s so sweet and so Jack, just one of those little casual ways he shows he loves you. 

“Whattt? I can’t want that?” 

“You can, but I don’t think it’s really your first choice, right now.” You shake your head a little as you speak. You start to slide out of bed and Jack whines, grabs at one of your arms. 

“Where are you going?” he pouts at you. 

“Gotta go get my phone so we can order, baby.” 

His pout lessens fractionally. “Alright, but hurry back.” 

“You’re very cute when you’re clingy,” you giggle at him as you get out of bed. He goes to make a smart comment back that he isn’t clingy but stops. He is right now and he doesn’t fucking care. He’s allowed to be. 

Jack has a favorite restaurant, just like you. Several, actually but you know the one that really tops the list. But you’ve also deduced that Jack has a favorite comfort restaurant that’s different from his favorite favorite. And you know what his favorite comfort meal from that restaurant is. So you add it, pick something for yourself and order it to be delivered before walking back into the bedroom with your phone. 

“Took you long enough,” he teases as you come into view. “What were you doing?”

“Ordering.” You toss your phone at him as you slide in and he unlocks it, reads it over. 

He swallows thickly and looks at you with glassy eyes. You make him feel more loved than he could ever possibly deserve, knowing him that well without him having ever said a word about it and doing it for him without asking. You give him a soft smile when you turn to look at him. “Okay?” 

“More than,” he whispers. “Thank you.” He pulls you closer to him so that you’re cuddling chest to chest, gives you the sweetest, simplest kiss. It’s everything. “You know,” he hums, starting to push you on your back. “I think you’re my appetizer and dessert.”  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“How about the day we met? We consider that our first date, it’s our anniversary,” Jack suggests. 

You and Jack are lounging on the couch together, half watching your show and half discussing wedding things. You’re not making any real plans, just thinking and dreaming out loud with each other. 

You can’t help but tease him. “Is that because you only want to have to remember one date?”

He shoots you a look. “No.” He wags his head at you as he says it. “I just thought it was kind of sweet. That’s our day, you know? And it falls on a Saturday that year.” He waves his phone that’s open to the calendar app at you. 

You grin at him. “You’re a romantic, Jack Abbot.” You’re crawling into his lap as you sing it, running your hands up his chest to hold his face so you can cover it in kisses.

“So you’ve said.” Jack moves his head and chases your lips with his trying to get a kiss on the lips. “Multiple times.”

“Because it’s true,” you mumble against his lips as he kisses you, running your hands through his curls.  

“Yeah, yeah.” He playfully waves you off as you settle on his lap perpendicular to him, one of his arms resting against your legs, hand spread over the thigh closest to him. His other hand rubs up and down your back absentmindedly. “You thought about where?”

“Mm,” you hum, look down at your engagement ring, “not so much. You?”

“Yeah,” he nods, squeezes your thigh. “I was thinking the bookstore.”

Your eyes come up from your ring and look at the wall in front of you for a second before looking at Jack. He can’t be serious. You open your mouth to say something, but close it as you struggle to find the words. 

“I didn’t expect speechless but I knew you’d love the idea.” Jack smiles. He uses the hand rubbing at your back to gently grab the back of your neck and bring your face close to his as if he’s going to kiss you. He drops his voice and lets a breath of hot air fan over your lips. “I’m fucking with you,” he murmurs before pulling his face away a bit and releasing you, letting his hand come down to your back again, a huge self-satisfied smirk on his face. 

“Jack!” He laughs at the shrill tone of your voice and the way you swat his chest playfully. 

“I really had you there for a minute,” he laughs as you fake pout at him. “But something I love about you is the way you were thinking so hard of a way to let me down without hurting me.”

“You did!” You huff at him. “I was sitting here thinking how am I going to explain to him that while I love our bookstore it doesn’t say wedding venue, nor do I want our wedding to be a near recreation of our first date with a bunch of extra people with us!”

Jack chuckles a little more. “I haven’t really thought about where either. Hard to think of where before you have a date to know the season.” You nod and hum, he makes a good point. “I only have one wedding requirement. And it’s not even really the wedding.” 

“Oh?” You raise an eyebrow at him in intrigue. “What’s that?”

“I plan the honeymoon.” Both of your eyebrows raise at that and you cock your head at him. You don’t know what you expected him to say, but it wasn’t planning the honeymoon apparently. “And you don’t get to know where we’re going until we’re at the gate about to board.”

“How will I pack?” You look slightly stricken. “Jack, I love you and I trust you with my life, truly, but packing-”

“I’m going to give you,” Jack cuts you off with an oddly reassuring smirk, “two packing lists. You’ll make two piles. Once you’ve left to go get ready I’ll put one of the piles into a suitcase. That way I get my surprise and you’ve packed for yourself.”

You blink at him for a moment. “Jack,” you whisper, swallow hard and will away the tears you can feel forming. “You have this all planned out just to surprise me?”

“I thought you might like the idea, but it’s okay if you don’t.” He nods to emphasize that part. “But if we do decide to do it this way we’ll still talk about places of course, it’s not like I don’t want any input from you. I’ll just be the final decision maker.” 

“No, I love it.” The laugh you give him is breathless. “It makes me feel so loved and taken care of. It’s hard to wrap my head around.” You lean into him to give him a deep kiss. “How long have you been thinking about this?”

“I think the general idea came to me a couple weeks after I knew I wanted to marry you.”

You beam up at him. “That long?” Jack nods. “Wow.” 

“Did you have a moment?” Jack asks you. You furrow your brows at him and shake your head slightly to ask him to explain. “A moment when you knew you wanted to marry me. That you knew you’d say yes if I asked. It’s okay if you don’t, honestly.”

“Of course I do!” You click your tongue at him. You let out a short laugh. “It actually wasn’t long after yours. Like two-ish weeks later, maybe? Things had been adding up, there were lots of things. This was just the first moment where I really consciously thought it.” You smile at him, wrap one arm around his neck so your fingers can scratch at the back of his scalp and nape of his neck how he likes. 

“You had just worked I think five nights in a row helping cover shifts. We hadn’t spoken on the phone that day, but exchanged some texts in the morning before you got home and went to sleep. And I could tell just from them that you were so beyond exhausted. My day, well. It was probably the worst and hardest day I had ever had at work and I felt so selfish but once I was able to leave I just went straight to your place. Without asking. So I knock and wait, get ready to leave because I know you’re asleep but then you open the door in your pajama pants, you’d clearly just woken up. And you give me this little ‘Hey Doll, come in’ as you open the door. I was frozen by that point. You took one look at me, grabbed my hand, pulled me inside and sat me on your couch and then disappeared. At some point you came back and gave me a tight hug, kissed my forehead and said ‘I’ve got you.’ And the next thing I know you’re stripping me and getting me into the bath you’d apparently drawn. You sat on the floor next to the tub with me. I still hadn’t said a single word to you at this point. Not even hi. And then you start talking to me. Just talking. I don’t remember about what. But you knew just from looking at me that I needed help getting out of my head. And as I listened I finally found my voice and was able to say I was sorry. You asked why and I said something along the lines of I was being selfish and knew you were exhausted and shouldn’t have come and made you do all this just because I had a bad day. And then you said, ‘Don’t apologize for needing me. Ever. For anything or for any reason. The day will never come where you need me and I am too tired for you.’ It wasn’t a big deal or a huge declaration. Just a casual fact you were stating. You knew what I needed just by looking at me. You didn’t care that I didn’t say a word to you while you did all this stuff for me. You didn’t ask what was wrong or for me to talk to you. You just met me where I was. And as you were helping me out of the bath and drying me off with a towel I just had the thought. I want to marry him.”

You wipe a few tears from your eyes. “Sorry, that was probably way more of a story than it needed to be to answer your question.” 

“Don’t apologize,” Jack murmurs. His eyes are glassy just like yours, a bit red. He gives a soft laugh. “I just feel kind of bad now that I didn’t give that much detail.” 

“Don’t.” You shake your head at him. “I promise, if I had been down on one knee on this floor that story would have been a whole lot fucking shorter.” 

That makes Jack laugh properly which makes you laugh properly. You turn a little and slide your arms around his neck to hug him, his arms sliding around you in return and holding you close. 

You nuzzle into his neck and then pull back for a kiss, let Jack deepen it as he begins moving to get you on your back on the couch, propping himself up on his elbows on top of you to keep too much weight off your chest and abdomen. You have to break apart for air but Jack goes straight to your neck, kissing and sucking and pulling all those pretty little sounds from you that he loves. 

“We have a date,” you whisper, hands tugging at his curls a little. 

Jack pulls back from your neck to look down at you, both of you grinning at each other. “We have a date.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You and Jack walk into the Pitt together. He needed to grab some stuff and sign a few things and was going to have Robby drop it all off so he didn’t have to leave you. You haven’t been outside much since the shooting. But you convinced him that you guys should go together, that it would be good for him to see people. As long as he would drive you guys, which he would of course. 

Jack was weary at the idea. You seemed to be struggling a bit harder lately and he worried something about being in the Pitt specifically might be too triggering for you. He knows that you have a lot of unresolved anxiety and guilt about what happened still. And that, while you’ve spoken generally about feeling guilty for putting him through all of this, you, like him, struggle to talk about it with him because you see it as burdening him or guilting him.

But you reassured him that it would be fine. You’d been back to the hospital since everything for follow up appointments. Not to the Pitt, but if the hospital didn’t completely trigger you why would the Pitt? 

You feel a little twinge of something as you walk through the ambulance bay doors, the ones you’d come through that day. Jack can tell and he squeezes your hand, stops and pulls to the side. “You sure about this? We can leave, right now.”

You shake your head. “No, no I’m sure. It’ll be good for me. I’m okay, really. It was just a little second of something.” 

He eyes you for a second but nods and starts walking you further in. It’s busy, nobody notices either of you as he leads you over to the break room. “You want to wait here? Shouldn’t take long. You can check the fridge. Anything with Robby’s name on it you can steal.” 

That makes you laugh, helps you relax. “I’ll wait here, yeah. Go do your thing, Dr. Abbot.” You wink at him. 

Jack lets out a little chuckle and shakes his head. “Don’t even start with me, Doll.” It makes you giggle as he leans down to kiss you. “I won’t be long, okay?” You nod at him, take a seat as he walks out. 

You scroll on your phone for a few minutes before your curiosity gets the better of you. You walk over and peek out the window of the door. It’s constant movement right now, people barely acknowledging each other as they rush to get somewhere else. You open the door and step out, just to look around. 

Before you’re even really aware of it you’re standing in front of one of the trauma rooms. That trauma room. The parts you can remember play in your head. Hugging Jack, Robby calling him over, you realizing what had happened and calling to Jack. And then nothing. Standing here you can only imagine what it must have been like for Jack, for him to have seen where you were shot and then watch you collapse. And then you made him live in the hospital with you for weeks. And now you’re making him stay home with you. Sometimes your guilt makes you feel like his jailer. 

Jack chats with Robby at the desk while he fills out one of the papers, gives whatever info it is HR so desperately needed to process all his leave correctly. Robby’s mid sentence when Jack spots you just in the corner of his eye, turns to see you standing in front of the trauma room. Jack leaves without a word to Robby and strides to you. 

“Hey,” he calls out as he gets close so that he won’t scare you when he steps in front of you and puts his hands on your arms. He sees that your eyes are a little glazed over when he gets a good look at you. “Why don’t you come over to the desk with me, yeah?” He’s not going to ask you why you were there like you’re a child who needs to explain yourself to him. He’s just going to redirect. “Yeah?” He asks again as he cups your face with one hand. 

“I just wanted to see. I, I got… curious. Just wanted to watch.” You explain anyway. “And then I was here.”

“That’s okay, Doll. You can sit at the desk with me, yeah?” 

You look around. There’s a chair against the wall a bit down, not facing the trauma room. “I’ll sit there. If that’s okay. Then I can watch.”

Jack glances over. “Yeah, that’s fine, that’s okay.” He walks you over to it, squeezes your hand. “I’m almost done, I promise.”

Being away from the room and back in Jack’s space snaps you back a little. “Okay, Peter.” You smile at him before he walks away. 

After a few minutes sitting there by yourself a woman rolls her wheelchair up to you. “And who are you that they’ve got sitting in time out?”

You glance around for a second to see if anyone’s coming after her and when nobody does you figure fuck it, and answer. “I’m Jack, um, Dr. Abbot’s fiancée.”

“Oh you lucky girl,” the woman smirks at you. “I’m Myrna.”

“Oh!” You smile widely at her. “Yes! I’ve heard a lot about you from Robby!”

“Have you now? Fruitcake’s talkin’ about me outside of this shithole. I knew I had that cocksucker wrapped around my finger.”

“Fruitcake?” You laugh. “That’s what you call Robby? Fruitcake?” 

“Yeah,” she nods. “He loves it.” Myrna gives you a conspiratorial wink. “He pretends it doesn’t, but I know it makes him feel things.” 

At the desk Robby looks up, sees you and Myrna talking and you laughing. “Oh that’s not good.” 

“Hm?” Jack raises his brows and then looks up. He smirks. “Not for you, but I think it’s going to be pretty funny for me.” Jack signs the last form and they both walk over to you. You and Myrna quiet as they get closer. 

“Myrna, are you harassing Jack’s fiancée?” Robby asks sternly, crossing his arms. 

“Not at all Fruitcake!” You answer for her. “We were just having a little chat.” 

Robby lets out a big sigh as Jack laughs. “See man, I told you. Not good for you, funny for me.” 

“Actually, we were talking and Myrna is free, Robby. She can be your plus one to the wedding! You said yesterday you were still looking!”

“That sounds perfect!” Jack smirks, clapping Robby on the shoulder. “I’ll let you see my vagina again for free Fruitcake,” Myrna offers, raising her eyebrows at Robby. 

Robby lets out another sigh and hangs his head. “The roof doth beckon.” 

You and Jack laugh while Myrna swats at him. “Ready Doll?”

“Yeah.” You look at Myrna. “It was lovely meeting you Myrna, I look forward to seeing you again.” You turn your attention to Robby, disguising your smirk with a warm smile quite well. “Bye Fruitcake!” You lean up and give Robby a quick kiss on the cheek as Jack snorts a laugh and holds his hand out for you. 

As the two of you walk away you hear Myrna giving Robby more shit.

“How come she’s allowed to kiss you on the cheek, cocksucker, but when I try you threaten to call the cops?” You and Jack laugh with each other as you walk out the ambulance bay doors to go back home. 

That night Jack thinks it’s a little strange, how long the shower has been running. And how it doesn’t sound like you’re in it. There’s no pause to the water raining down on the tiled shower floor, no slaps of water hitting against the floor suddenly when you step to rinse your hair or body, no muffled rain sound when you let yourself stand under the stream and soak. Only the uninterrupted sound of water raining from the shower head onto the tile. 

He glances at the alarm clock on his nightstand. You have to have been in there for at least thirty minutes. Jack looks back over at the bathroom door. It’s unnerving. Something is wrong. 

He gets off the bed, shirtless and just in his sweatpants. You guys had been winding down for the night before you decided to shower. He tries the handle. It’s unlocked. There’s an unspoken rule between the two of you that you can enter without asking if the door is unlocked. 

“Doll?” Jack calls to you softly as he opens the door. 

It’s like you don’t even hear him. Jack finds you in only your underwear staring in the mirror at your scars, one hand hovering over the bottom of the long laparotomy scar running up your stomach, another over your mouth, tears streaming down your face. Being at the Pitt today pushed you over some edge you didn’t realize you were so close to.

He knows now that you were using the sound of the shower to hide your muffled sobs. 

His eyes run over each of your scars, starting with the one up near your neck from your central line, that one fading quicker with how small it is, especially in comparison to the others. From there his eyes move down until he hits the scar from your thoracotomy. He traces the line with his eyes before he finds the laparotomy scar and lets his eyes drag along it. And then his eyes move over to the more circular scar. The bullet hole. 

“Doll, sweetheart,” Jack keeps his voice low as he walks into the bathroom. He steps over to the shower first and turns it off. Even that hardly seems to get through to you. He sees your eyes leave yourself in the mirror and flick to him for just a second. The tears start to fall harder. 

Jack walks up behind you so that his warm, bare chest presses against your back, his hands resting on your hips and lips kissing at your neck. Not teasing, just loving, soft and sweet and trying to soothe you when he knows words are only going to go so far. 

“What if you can never look at me the same way again?” You finally whisper, moving your hand from your mouth. 

You can see his brows furrow and a look of confusion fall over his face. “What do you mean?”

“I know you’ve kissed all of them, that you did the first time we had sex again after what happened. But I see you looking at them all, all the scars, whenever one is visible. And so what if you can never look at me the same way again, especially when they’re visible. What if my body is just always a reminder of one of the worst days of your life? A visual reminder that sends you right back there, that just, that just tortures you!” You let out a quiet sob. “What if that’s all you can ever see when you look at me?”

Jack takes in a deep breath and you can feel his chest press into you a little more as he does. He catches your eye contact in the mirror. “Doll,” he murmurs, “I think that you misunderstand why I look at your scars whenever one is visible.” Jack slides his hands from your hips around your front in a kind of backwards hug, pulls you back closer to him a bit. 

Your chin trembles a little. “Oh?”

He nods. “Will you turn for me? Sit on the counter?” Jack tilts his head a little so that it rests against yours. “You can say no and I’ll still tell you of course. You know I just like my eye contact.” He says it with just a hint of a smile and self-teasing tone to try and get you to smile. 

And it’s small, but it works. Your lips pull up just slightly for a second. You chew on the inside of your cheek for a second before you turn around and let him help you get you up to sit on the edge of the counter. 

“Thank you.” Jack steps between your legs and leans down to kiss your forehead. “You want me to grab your shirt?” He’s cognizant of the conversation you’re having and the fact that you’re topless, scars on display. You give him a little nod and he grabs it from the pile of your clothes you made to the side of the door. “I say your shirt, but I really mean my shirt, don’t I?” 

You’d been wearing one of his old shirts that’s a bit oversized on him, soft and worn in and smelling like him. You stay quiet and nod. Jack’s heart almost throbs in his chest at how much he hates seeing you like this, this upset. Your tears have stopped now though. Little victories. Once it’s on he rests his hands on the tops of your thighs, rubs his thumbs in what he hopes are soothing circles. 

“Your scars don’t remind me of one of the worst days of my life. Looking at them doesn’t send me back to the hospital or torture me. Pretty much the exact opposite.” This time it’s your brows that furrow. “They’re a reminder of what happened, sure. Of what I almost lost. But it’s that part that’s important. What I almost lost.” 

“You know what you didn’t have in any of my nightmares?” Your eyes widen a little because you know what he means, what he���s going to say. “Scars. You only had wounds, fresh, stitches still in them. No scars.” Jack squeezes at your hands. “When I was in that operating room holding your dead body, you didn’t have any scars. So your scars, looking at them, when I look at them, they don’t torture me or send me back to one of the worst days of my life. They tell me that you’re alive. They remind me how hard you fought to stay here with me. They remind me how strong you are. They remind me that you’re here with me, healing and living.” 

Jack moves his hands from your legs and sets them on the outside of each of your thighs on the counter, hunches over a bit and leans on them as he moves forward to kiss your forehead again. You bring your arms up and set them on either side of his neck, fingers playing in the curls at the nape of his neck. 

“Your scars are proof that you’re alive. And so your scars will never be anything less than one of the most beautiful and important and comforting things I could ever look at.” He says it so seriously, so firm and settled, looks you straight in the eye as he says it. It makes a few tears slide down your cheeks again. “Second only to your face and you in general, okay?” He nods as he says it. 

He brings a hand up to wipe away the tears that have fallen. “Can I give you a kiss?”

You nod as a couple more tears fall. Jack takes your chin between his thumb and index finger and tilts your head up so he can kiss you. It’s gentle, soft and sweet and lingering as he just holds you there. He pulls back but then goes back for another quick one. 

Both you and Jack are surprised you haven’t started fully bawling into him, but there’s something in your chest that stops it from coming out like it needs to. You couldn’t describe it if you tried. 

“Bed? Or you wanna shower?”

It takes you a moment to answer. Not to decide. Just to answer. “Just bed, please.”

“Of course, Doll.” Jack steps back from between your legs and helps you get off the counter safely before taking your hand and leading you back to your shared bed. You both slide in and Jack takes his prosthetic off and gets an arm around you, pulls you into him as he leans up against the headboard. 

You let him, let your head rest on his chest and let his arms wrap around you and let him hold you close as you think about everything he said. You believe him, you do. You know he would never lie to you and when you think about it all it makes sense. You just wish it were the same for you. Wish you could look at them and feel something, anything other than crushing guilt. 

Because for you they’re a reminder of a traumatic event but more than that they’re a reminder of what you put Jack through. What you continue to put him through now as you try to heal physically and mentally. 

Sometimes, maybe a lot of the time recently, you go back to that place. That place where you just wish it would stop, be over for the both of you. Wish you hadn’t made it out of the OR or the courthouse. That place where your brain tells you that Jack would be better off without you, that it’s unfair of you to ask him to do this all with you, that he’s only here with you still because he feels some sort of weird responsibility for what happened to you, that even if he doesn’t think he could, he would survive losing you and he would properly grieve and he would move on and find someone else. Someone who’s less work, less of a burden. Someone who’s better. That it wouldn’t even be that hard. 

The rational part of you knows that those thoughts aren’t true. That Jack is here because he loves you, more than anything, that he wants to spend the rest of his life with you. That he would not survive losing you or properly grieve or move on. That if he knew he would tell you that you’re not work at all, not a burden, that he could never do better. That he had an entire nightmare about having to bury you and it hurt so bad that even weeks later when he thought about it he was physically sick and broke down in the kitchen. 

Jack doesn’t push you, just like you never push him. He does get worried though. He hates to see you cry but this silence is somehow worse. 

“You wanna go to the bookstore tomorrow?” He asks it just to ask. Just to fill the silence and help distract you and maybe keep you out of your head. Or from getting further into it. 

You can feel the vibration of him speaking as your head rests on his chest. “Hm?”  

He kisses the top of your head. “Bookstore tomorrow?”

“Maybe, yeah.” It’s an odd answer from you. “I don’t know.” 

Jack nods slowly. “It’s okay to not know. And I’m here if you want to talk or have me listen. Whatever you need.”

You hum at his words. “I don’t know anything anymore Jack,” you admit. 

You feel his arms hold you a little tighter. He doesn’t understand and something about the way you say it scares him a little. “What do you mean?”

The something in your chest that was blocking everything from coming out starts to crack. “I don’t know,” you whisper, high pitched and cracking. “I don’t know how to do this.” You pull away from him and move so that you’re sitting next to him with your legs crossed so that you can face him. 

“I know I’m in therapy. And I know it helps. And I hate to think about what I’d be like without my therapist.” You shrug, chin trembling and tears lining your eyes as you look at him. You look so sad and it kills him. 

“But I still don’t know how to do this Jack. How to heal, how to grieve. I don’t know how to heal the tremendous guilt I feel. And everyone says to let myself grieve and what the fuck am I grieving? I don’t have anything to grieve. I didn’t lose anything! Not like you. It’s not the same as what you went through. You lost a piece of yourself. I happened to get shot and spent time in the hospital and yes I almost died but I didn’t lose a piece of me. And so I don’t know what I’m grieving and I don’t know how to grieve or what I’m grieving or how to heal from this… this amorphous concept. This thing, that just happened to me. This event. And I shouldn’t need to! I shouldn’t need to grieve or heal. There’s nothing there. I don’t have anything to grieve or heal from, and I shouldn’t be like this! And I’m not trying to throw what happened in your face Jack, I’m not, I promise, and I’m not for a second saying you somehow had it easier because there was a more tangible thing to grieve, if anything it’s the opposite, you lost a piece of yourself and I lost nothing. You had so much to grieve and heal from, you needing to grieve and heal and struggling that makes sense. I lost nothing. I don’t even know what I have to grieve. I don’t know.” 

All the tears in your eyes spill over at once. You bring your shoulders up to your ears in a held shrug. “I don’t know, Jack.” He’s never heard you sound so small. Not even that ‘okay’ you gave him in the hospital was like this. The guilt and shame and embarrassment all flood you, make it hard to look at him. “I didn’t say anything even though I’ve been struggling because-” 

You shake your head, try to wipe some of the tears off your face, look down at your hands in your lap. “I just don’t know how to do this, whatever this is. And it’s like recently I’ve lost all the words to even try and begin to explain how I feel or felt. I lost all the words.” You force yourself to look back up at him because when you admit this and apologize you need to be looking at him. “I lost all the words and my head got so fucked up that I didn’t know how to ask for help, from anyone.” 

Jack catches the change in tense. You had said you don’t know but now you’re saying you didn’t, like somewhere along the way in this conversation, this admission, this time with him, you found the words again. 

You shake your head a little as more tears slip down your cheeks. You whisper now, voice thicker than he’s ever heard with emotion. “Not even you. I didn’t know how to ask you for help Jack.” You try to hold back a small sob through your teeth. “And I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I just didn’t know, I wanted to, I just couldn’t. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m-” You’re cut off by the wracking sob that you’re finally able to let out as that something in your chest shatters.

“Okay, shh.” Jack shushes you softly as he reaches for you while you let yourself fall forward into his chest, rolling on your side slightly to get your legs stretched out as he pulls you on top of him and cradles you against his bare chest. He isn’t shushing you to get you to stop, only for the comfort of it.

Jack hates this. He hates seeing you suffer so thoroughly. He hates the way he can’t hug you and put you back together, the way he can’t fix this for you, can’t take away your pain. Can’t take on all of the pain for you. Jack believes you when you say you didn’t know how to ask, knows that you weren’t trying to hide it from him, just like he wasn’t trying to hide his shit from you. 

“I’ve got you,” he murmurs, kissing the top of your head. “It’s okay. You have nothing to be sorry for.” He repeats it as he continues to hold you, rocks with you at times like you did with him. “You have nothing to be sorry for.” “I’ve got you.” “I’m here.” “You’re okay.” “I love you.” One arm keeps you close, his other hand rubbing your back in circles. He knows there’s very little he can do right now except hold you through it. 

With time, you run out of tears, exhaust yourself out of crying and just sniffle and hiccup into Jack. He keeps holding you, doesn’t push for more from you. 

“It’s just so hard.” Your whisper breaks the silence after a good five or so minutes. 

You can feel Jack nod. “Talk or listen?” he whispers. 

You try to think about it. You’re not really sure what you want. “I don’t know,” you admit, “I’m sorry, I don’t know.” You try to stop yourself from getting worked up again, the reality of one more thing you don’t know hitting you hard. 

“Shh,” Jack soothes you, “it’s okay, you don’t need to apologize and you don’t need to know. It’s okay. I promise.” His hands rub up and down your back and he kisses the top of your head. With how escalated you are right now he thinks eye contact will be too much so he just holds you tight as you are. “I’m going to talk. And if you want me to stop, just say so, okay?”

You nod. Jack takes a breath in as he tries to think of how to start and how he wants to say what he has to say. “You don’t ever need to apologize for struggling and not knowing how to ask for help.” There’s a pause as Jack realizes how guilty he feels about that. He knows he can’t focus on himself right now. You need him. “I think maybe we need to try and find something that you could do, that both of us could do honestly, that doesn’t require words but would let the other know we needed help. So then we don’t need words and can still get help.”

“Probably, would be good, yeah,” you mumble against him.

“Good. We’ll figure something out, promise.” He’s quiet for a moment to give you the chance to say you’ve talked enough for the night, but you don’t. “As for the other part, I know and understand and hear you when you say that you don’t know what you’re grieving and that you don’t have anything to grieve. But Doll, you do. You have so much to grieve, so much you are grieving even if it’s hard for you to see or understand right now. There doesn’t have to be some tangible loss like a foot or a person for you to have something to grieve. I hate it, and I wish that I could make it different and better for you, but you did lose a piece of yourself.” Jack feels new tears wet his chest but you don’t ask him to stop or make a noise so he continues. He knows he’s not what’s making you cry. That it’s just hard to hear and realize. “You lost a piece of yourself the moment that gun went off, and the moment you watched someone die in front of you,” he addresses the one thing you don’t talk a lot about because you’re not ready yet. It took a while for you to even be able to tell him. “And the moment,” he has to take a breath to steady himself because it’s still so hard to say, “the moment that bullet hit you, and when you almost died and over weeks in the hospital. All of those things take something from you, even if it’s not something tangible. You’ve lost a piece of yourself. And you’re grieving the person you were before you lost it. You’re grieving the you who didn’t know this type of violence, the you who didn’t know what it felt like to be shot, or what it felt like to be drowning in your own blood, or what it felt like to be septic or what it does to you to watch someone die in front of you or how it feels to see reminders of what you went through permanently on your skin. You’re grieving the person you were. And you’re grieving other things that I don’t know because I’m not in your brain. But those ones I said, those are ones I can see you grieving and struggling with and I hope it doesn’t feel like I’m being condescending or trying to define your grief for you, because I’m not. I’m just trying to tell you what I see in the hopes that it’ll help you be able to see, or give you a starting point.”

You shake your head against his chest. You know he’s not doing any of that, he didn’t even need to say it but you find it sweet that he did. “I know,” you sniffle. “I do. And it does help and somewhere deep down I know what I’m grieving, all of those things. Some things I probably can’t articulate. I just feel like I don’t know how to grieve. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to grieve obviously but I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s all the guilt making me feel like I don’t deserve to grieve or heal and should be stuck in this weird limbo forever or what. I just don’t know how.”

You both sit with your words for a minute. “I wish I had answers,” Jack finally murmurs. “But I’m not sure if anybody really knows how to grieve.” He tries to think of more to say that might be comforting or helpful. Before he can you speak.

“I got you all wet and snotty, I’m sorry.” You lean off his chest a little and put your hand under your shirt and bring it up to try and wipe him off. Jack understands you. You’ve talked enough for the night. 

“Don’t apologize, it’s okay,” Jack laughs softly, grabbing at your hand to get you to stop. “Two of the most benign bodily fluids I’ve had on me, and they’re yours. Plus, I think I’ve done the same to you recently.”

“That’s different.”

“I knew you were going to say that,” he shakes his head, gives you a little tap on the ass. 

“It’s true!” you protest. “I was wearing a shirt. You’re not. That’s different.”

“Still.” He knows you’re technically correct. “I did the same to you. And I’m pretty sure I cried tears onto your face while we were, you know… at the table.”

You burst out laughing. “While we were at the table? That’s what we’re calling it?”

“It’s not incorrect.” He shrugs, beaming just from hearing you laugh and being the one to pull it from you. 

“Well, actually, I think it was more you were at the table. I was on the table,” you point out. 

Jack shakes his head and smiles at you. “Prepositions are overrated.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You and Jack don’t argue often. But you’re humans. Humans who went through a major trauma together. And humans aren’t perfect. Individually or as a couple. 

Neither of you even remember how it started. And you’ve somehow moved far, far away from what you were initially discussing and starting to bicker about. But you’re here now and things are escalating into a kind of argument. Even with the escalation you never raise your voices at each other, never yell. Still. It’s neither your nor Jack’s finest moment. 

Jack has never pressured you into going outside. He knows it’s still hard for you, knows how much it scares you. But he also knows that you really need to and that it’s never going to get less scary. He knows that he needs to go outside but doesn’t want to leave you, feels like he can’t leave you or something will happen like when he left you that time in the hospital. And you know that you need to go outside. It’s just so scary. You were shot. You’ve put Jack through so much, and when you think about outside you think about what if something else happened, when will it be too much for him, you can’t keep asking him to do this.

Jack isn’t pressuring you to go outside but he does ask. Again. In the space of minutes.

“I don’t want to, Jack.” Your tone has a snappy edge to it. You’re getting frustrated. At yourself more than Jack. 

“You’re going to have to go outside eventually, Doll. For more than me driving you to a doctor or therapy or the bookstore.” Jack tries to keep his tone even. He’s getting frustrated too, also more at himself than you. Something about his words stings when you know he doesn’t mean them to, know it’s because you’re escalated and more sensitive in a way. The way he says it makes it seem like he’s not doing those things with you, just driving you somewhere. Chauffeuring you. Like he doesn’t want to be doing it. “Around the block, please. Nothing major. I’ll be with you the whole time, okay? I won’t let anything happen to you.”

You shake your head from where you’re sitting on the couch, knees coming up to your chest. “I don’t want to. Asking me eight more times isn’t going to change my answer.” 

“I’m worried about you!” Jack stands across the living from you in jeans and a shirt. Actually dressed compared to you in lounge clothes that are effectively pajamas. “I’m not trying to pressure you,” you can’t help the little face you make at that, “I’m really not, I promise. I’m just worried. You need to go outside. Get some fresh air. You’re holding yourself hostage here. You’re holding me-”

Jack stops as soon as he realizes what he was about to say. But he knows from the look on your face that it’s too late. And he’s right. It hits you like a slap to the face, far worse than he even realizes or could imagine. Because you’ve never really explicitly or in any detail told Jack about the guilt you have from effectively asking him to do all of this with and for you, about how guilty you feel that his entire life has been turned upside down and that he was confined to the hospital and is now confined to home because of you, because you’re scared to go outside. About the guilt of feeling like his jailer. Or hostage-keeper, apparently.

It’s a silent type of panic. One that pulls a band around your chest and stomach making it hard to breathe and sends adrenaline through your veins to chill your fingers and toes and has tears hitting your eyes. 

“Doll, I didn’t-”

“No, Jack, finish the goddamn sentence.” Your voice is eerily calm now. Jack takes in and lets out a breath, tilts his head and goes to speak. “No Jack. Finish the fucking sentence.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, and you know that. I wasn’t thinking when I said it, phrased it like that.” Jack sighs, running a hand through his hair.

“Phrased it like what? Like you resent me? Like you’re getting tired of me? Of having to take care of me?” You’re pushing some of his buttons now, a little more deliberately than he had initially pushed yours. 

Jack clenches his jaw and tries to breathe through his hurt and rising frustration. “I don’t resent you, nor am I getting tired of you or having to take care of you.”

“You just feel like I’m keeping you hostage in your own home?” It’s cold, the way you say it. Icy. The guilt eats away at you. You hate yourself for what you’ve put him through. 

“You won’t even try, Doll! I know you know I need out of this house and you won’t even try!” A push back at your buttons. Jack knows that it’s not a matter of trying. He knows it’s not that simple. Just like you know he isn’t growing tired of you or caring for you. 

“You won’t try leaving me alone,” you fire back. “I got fucking shot and I don’t want to go outside. So why don’t you try just leaving me here alone if you want to go outside that badly?” That one really hits a nerve, harder than you realize because Jack hasn’t directly expressed just how guilty he feels about what happened when he left to go down to the ED that time in the hospital. How fucking responsible he feels for what ended up happening, for you almost dying. How he thinks it’s completely his fault and could have been prevented, easily. 

“Because the last time I left you alone you ended up coding in front of me and coming a centimeter and a half away from dying!” Jack takes a quick breath. He hates himself for what he let happen to you. “You don’t even know what you don’t fucking know! I watched my best fucking friend intubate you and do CPR on you and shock you. I watched them crack your chest. I have seen your literal fucking heart.” That’s all new information to you and it makes you hate yourself a little bit more even though you know that wasn’t Jack’s intention. “I have sat by you while you were in a coma for five fucking days, all because I-” 

You cut him off before he can finish his sentence. All because I left you and so I wasn’t there to notice you getting sicker and to feel your fever before you went septic and threw a PE. 

“Oh well I am so sorry Jack, that I went to work and got shot and almost died-”

“Don’t.” The way he says it is almost dark, low and deadly serious, face set and eyes piercing the thick tension between you. That’s the line for him. The almost flippancy in your tone. 

Jack holds his hands up. “I need air.” You don’t say anything as he walks over to the entryway and puts on his shoes. “I love you.” He puts his hand on the door handle and pauses.

“I love you too.” The door opens, Jack walks out and it shuts, key turning the deadbolt to lock a few seconds later. 

The sudden quiet of your apartment is what seems to bring you back down. You take a gasping breath in as everything you said to him sinks in. You bring a hand to cover your mouth, tears wetting the back of it. You’re pretty sure you’ve never hated yourself more. 

You stay there on the couch, are stuck there really, unable to bring yourself to move. All you can do is cry and think about how to apologize to Jack. You start ruminating and edging toward panic thinking about whether he’ll be able to forgive you, whether you guys will be able to work through this. You know it’s panic and that you guys will be able to. That both of you said things you didn’t mean and that were designed as jabs at the other. But yours feel so much worse than anything he said to you. Even when Jack forgives you, you don’t know if you’ll ever be able to forgive yourself. 

Jack takes a couple of steps away from your apartment door but stops. He can’t. He can’t go any further. He knows he needed air and was right to step out and get some and help diffuse things between the two of you because that conversation was not going anywhere. But his fear is still there. So he walks back and slides down the wall right to the side of your door, convinces himself that this way he’ll hear you fall, if something happens. He’ll know. 

Sitting in the quiet brings Jack back down too, gives everything he said to you the chance to sink in. He runs his hands over his face and through his hair before bringing the heels of his palms to his eyes and pressing in. He’s pretty sure he’s never hated himself more. He gets panicky too, it gets hard for him to imagine how you could ever accept his apologies, how he could ever make this right. He knows that you’ll forgive him, and that you’ll work this out. He just doesn’t know how he’ll forgive himself.

Neither of you even cares what the other said to you. Not really. Both of you can hardly even remember what the other said to you now, in part because it doesn’t matter. It was said out of frustration and hurt and a deep grief, none of it was meant. Things just boiled over. And in part because all you can remember is the terrible things you said to the other. 

Jack doesn’t sit there long. It can’t be more than twenty minutes. You’re on your feet the second you hear the door start to unlock, walking closer to it and trying to wipe the tears from your face quickly. Jack pushes it open and looks at you, looks just as devastated as you feel and you hate it. He walks in and closes and locks the door. 

“I’m so sorry.” You both say it at the same time and it makes you smile a little at each other. You’re both moving then, walking towards one another until you meet and pull each other into the tightest hug. 

“I was so out of line Jack, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean any of it.” Jack can feel your tears wet his neck and it makes him squeeze you a little tighter. 

“I was too. Way out of line. I didn’t mean it either. I’m so sorry, Doll.” Jack kisses the top of your head. 

The anxiety hits you a little harder being in Jack’s arms for some reason and you start to tremble. “I feel so awful, and I promise the tears aren’t manipulative or for guilt or to distract, I’m just so sorry and I hate myself for what I said and I don’t want to lose you.”

Jack frowns to himself. He’d like to have a strong word with whoever made you feel like you have to explain your tears. “I promise you that I never, for even a second, thought that. Now or any time in the past. I don’t want you to hate yourself, but I get it because I hate myself too right now. I don’t want to lose you either.” 

A few tears of Jack’s own slip down his face as he says it at the thought. “You’re not going to lose me,” you whisper.

“And you’re not going to lose me,” he whispers back. “Let’s go to bed.”

You pull away from him a little. “We can go out, if you just give me a couple of minutes to change-”

Jack shakes his head. “I don’t want to go out right now, I just want to be in bed with you, holding you close.” Jack brings a hand to your face and cups it, brushes some of the tears away. “I’m just as insecure as you are right now. Just as shaken. And not by anything you said. By myself, for what I said.”

You lean into his hand. “How do you always manage to do that?” Jack raises his eyebrows to seek clarification. “Read me so well. Know how I’m really feeling.”

He shrugs, like it’s simple and obvious. “You’re my favorite book. I’ve got you so well memorized you’re an easy read.” You give him a sad nod and look down at his chest. “Hey,” he guides your head back to look at him when you don’t resist. “That was so cheesy and deserved at least a pity laugh.” 

You give him the smallest one through your nose. You love this about him, it’s one of the ways he takes care of you when you’re upset, tries to make you laugh a little when appropriate to help distract your mind. Usually it works. You’re just a little too shaken yourself for it to right now. 

“I,” you try to find the words. “I’m not upset or shaken by anything you said either. I just want to make sure you know that.” 

“I do.” Jack nods. “Honestly Doll, I barely remember what you said to me. All I can hear in my head right now are the things I said to you.”

You give a slightly bigger laugh through your nose. “Same. I can only hear myself, only remember my words.” You know you’re preventing him from getting you in bed where he wants to be, but you have one last thing to say. “I don’t want that to ever happen again Jack, I don’t ever want to hurt you like that again, I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry too, and I don’t want to hurt you or say things like that to you ever again. But right now, I think we hurt ourselves more than we hurt each other.” He leans down and you share a kiss, three actually, each one lingering, an apology, forgiveness given and declaration of love from both of you to the other. “We’re going to figure it out, okay? I promise.”

Jack’s promise is how the two of you found yourselves here. Couples therapy. 

It wasn’t one person’s suggestion. After the argument the two of you had been talking in bed, trying to work some of what you each said out. You both talked about your own therapy and it just kind of dawned on you both at the same time and you both agreed, easily, even laughing together when you said it at nearly the same time. 

You stand outside the office with Jack. You hate the term, feel like it implies something. But nothing is wrong between the two of you. Just the opposite. After your argument you both knew you needed guidance on navigating your guilt and healing as a couple, not just as individuals. Both of your therapists had recommended the same couples therapist when asked, one who specializes in helping couples who have gone through an acute traumatic experience together.  

Nothing changed after the argument. You were both clingy the rest of that day and for a few days after. If anything in some ways it made you guys feel stronger as a couple. But at the same time neither of you ever want it to happen again. 

So here you are. You know it won’t make you as individuals or partners or your relationship perfect because that’s impossible. And you both know you’ll hurt each other again as you heal from this and move through life together because you’re human. Neither of you expect perfection.

Jack squeezes your hand as you stand there. You squeeze back, hard as you let out a big breath.

“Preventive medicine,” Jack reminds you. You’d admitted to him one day how much the term couples therapy freaked you out and how you knew it was stupid and nothing was wrong with you guys or between you guys but it still freaked you out. Jack had suggested calling it preventive medicine, asked if that might help. You weren’t sure you were sold but knew you’d pick apart any potential name for it and preventive medicine was better than couple’s therapy to you for some reason.

“Nothing is wrong?” Sometimes you just need reassurance from him. He’s always happy to give it. 

“Absolutely nothing. I’m not mad or upset with you. I’m not hurt. I don’t resent you. I love you. More than I did yesterday, less than I will tomorrow, whatever the fucking saying is. We’re okay. I promise. And if we’re ever not, if we ever even get remotely near being on the same planet as not being okay I will tell you.” Jack kisses your forehead. “This is a good thing. It’s smart. They tell people to do this before they get married even when one of them hasn’t just been shot and almost died.”

You smile at him, soft and a touch somber, but a smile nonetheless. “I know. And thank you. I’m sorry, I know I’ve been so insecure and worried lately and asking for so much reassurance.”

“I’ve been the same,” Jack reminds you. You hum and shake your head as if to question him. “I have been, at least a little bit. And you give me reassurance. You don’t mind. You say you’ll give it to me as much as I need it, never take it personally because you understand. The same is true for me. I will give you however much and whatever type of reassurance you need as much as you need whenever you need and I will never take it personally. I understand too. I’d rather you ask than live with worry that could be soothed by asking, yeah?”

You nod. “Yeah.” You lean into Jack for a second and take in a deep breath. “Alright. I’m ready. I don’t know why I even had to stand here and become ready, but whatever.” Jack smiles to himself because he loves when you do that kind of self-commentary. “You ready?”

“I’m always ready for anything with you Doll.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jack is obviously the first of you to return to work. It’s not something either of you are looking forward to really. In a sense you both are because it checks off another box on the return to normalcy. But you’re not looking forward to being alone and Jack isn’t looking forward to leaving you.

The two of you talk and decide he’ll start with half shifts, give you both some time to adjust back into things. He had been working days but he thought maybe nights would be better until you were back to work, you’d be asleep when he was gone that way. You were fine with it and so that’s what he worked out with Robby. 

It’s strange sitting on the bed watching him pull on black scrubs that have been folded so long they’re a little creased. It’s been a long time since you last saw him in scrubs. It makes you smile because it reminds you of life before the shooting. And he still looks incredibly, incredibly fucking hot in them. 

“What?” He smirks as he looks at you after pulling his scrub top on over his undershirt. 

“I didn’t say anything!” You give him a look of mock offense. You really are doing your best to temper your anxiety about tonight. 

He narrows his eyes at you a little and walks to stand in front of where you’re sitting on the edge of the bed. “You didn’t have to say it. I could just feel it.”

You lean your head forward onto his tummy and rest your forehead there for a moment before looking up at him. “That so?” He gives you another smirk and nods. “I’m not allowed to appreciate how good you look in scrubs anymore, Dr. Abbot?”

Jack steps back and takes your hands to pull you off the bed. “Of course you are. Doesn’t mean I won’t tease you about it.” He uses one hand to hold your face before leaning in and kissing you, hard, a little bit of tongue. Just because he can. He pulls back just far enough so you can see each other and gives you another smirked smile before kissing your forehead and releasing you. 

The two of you walk back into the front room together, and you sit on the couch and fidget with your fingers while Jack looks through his backpack to make sure he has everything he needs. You grab your phone, try to distract yourself with it so he doesn’t feel you staring at him the entire time. You don’t want to make this any harder for him. Both of you know the other is just as anxious. 

Jack glances down at his watch. He needs to leave. The urge to pull out his phone and call Robby to say he can’t make it in is immense. But he, and you, know that this day has to come eventually. He walks over and sits next to you on the couch. “You gonna be okay?” He grabs one of your hands in his to help ground you, get you to focus on him. 

“Yeah, I’ll be alright.” You try to give him a brave smile but you’re not sure how well it lands. 

“I want you to call me or text me if you need anything, okay? I mean anything. If I have to leave early then I have to leave early.” His eyes flit around your face trying to make sure he’s reading every little bit of you. “And if for some reason I don’t answer the phone, call the hospital, yeah?”

“I know Peter,” you murmur, bring his hand up to your face and lean your cheek against the back of his hand. “I’ll be okay though. Really. It might be hard at first but I’ll probably just end up falling asleep and then you’ll slip into bed beside me before I even know it.”

“I really hope so, Doll.” Jack leans in and kisses your forehead, lingers for a moment before he pulls back and looks back down at you. His brows are creased, mouth just slightly pulled down, eyes a little wider than normal. He’s concerned, worried about you. You hate seeing him like this. You know part of it goes back to his nightmares about coming home and finding you dead.

“It’ll all be okay in the end. You’re coming home to me.” You manage to give him a real smile, as small as it is, and it visibly helps him relax. 

He’s able to return it. “Yes I am. Always.” He stands up and you follow, walk him over to the door. 

“Text me when you get there, yeah?”

“Course. And you text me during the night if you need, okay?” You nod at him, give him another little smile as he pulls his backpack over one shoulder. He pulls you close to him in a tight hug, kisses the top of your head before letting you pull back and kissing you. “I love you. So fucking much.”

“I love you more,” you murmur before stealing another kiss. Normally he’d argue with you, but tonight he lets you have it. 

Jack opens the door and steps out and you close it behind him. You both know that if he turned and looked at you he probably wouldn’t end up going in. He waits to hear the deadlock before he takes a few steps away. He has to stop though and just breathe for a minute before finally setting off. 

You lock the deadbolt and then rest your forehead against the door, one palm flat on it. Tears hit your eyes and you feel so fucking ridiculous about it. Like some clingy, codependent fiancée who can’t stand to be away from her man for more than ten minutes. You try and remind yourself that this is okay, you’re allowed to feel what you’re feeling and you being upset isn’t because you’re clingy or codependent. It’s because you went through a major trauma and are healing and it’s your first time truly being on your own since you were shot. You know this won’t last, that it won’t always be like this, but in this moment it feels like it will and it overwhelms you.

Your hand itches to undo the deadbolt and dart out after him, beg him not to leave you. But you can’t do that. This is something that has to happen. So you pull yourself from the door and head back to the couch for a second before getting back up to go do the dishes from dinner. You thought it might be a good distraction. Instead it just reminds you that he’s not here doing them with you. 

Your phone dings as you finish loading the dishwasher and washing the pan that can’t go in it. It’s Jack letting you know he got to work. He keeps typing, and you chew on your lip as you wait to see what he’s going to say. 

J - I just want to let you know that it’s slammed here tonight so I’ll probably be busy and not around a ton. But I’ll check my phone often even if I can’t always reply. So text me if you need to, or call me or the ED. I love you. 

Your heart falls at his words and some part of you feels selfish for it. It’s good. It’s good for him to be there and be busy and have that distraction and get back to normal. It just sucks you won’t have him to talk to much. You had tried to prepare yourself for this, tried to operate under the assumption that he wouldn’t be around much but a part of you, apparently a big part, still held onto the hope he would. 

There’s also the unspoken meaning of the Pitt being slammed. The chances he’ll get off on time are probably slim to none unless some miracle happens. You try to tell yourself it doesn’t matter. You’re going to be asleep anyway. But will you really?

Jack is anxious to get a text back from you, glancing at his phone nonstop while Robby goes over the board with him. This was exactly what he did not want to happen. He didn’t want it to be slammed. Busy, fine. He appreciates the distraction it brings. He’d still be able to respond to you more even if not as frequently as he’d like. And slammed means the chances of him getting off in six hours are a fraction above non-existent. He knows you know that too. 

He also knows that he’s the lucky one out of the two of you. He can’t afford to be distracted here. So he has to do some kind of compartmentalization. It doesn’t mean he won’t miss or worry about you constantly. He will. He just has to force himself to stay present where he’s at. His inability to be distracted here is itself a distraction from his anxiety and missing you. 

It feels selfish. He knows that you don’t have the same luxury at home, if anything it’s the opposite. You have to try and find things to distract yourself so that you don’t end up getting too into your head. He knows that sometimes you struggle to come up with ways to do that, or that you think of ways but can’t convince yourself to do them. He gets it. He’s been there himself. And up until now he’d been there to distract you when you couldn’t do it for yourself. But now he’s not. 

So he’s anxious as he waits for a response. He knows you’re just staring at your phone trying to think of what to say. He’s trying not to think about the likelihood of teardrops hitting the screen of your phone and magnifying whatever they fall on. He’s trying not to think about what you look like when you cry like that, completely silent with the tears slipping down your face. 

You’re looking down at your phone enough that the first tear to roll off your face hits the screen. You shake your head at yourself. You need to get a grip. It’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. Jack will be fine. 

You - I’m glad you made it there safely. Thanks for letting me know, I hope the night isn’t awful. Let me know when you’re on your way home. I love you

Jack feels better for about half a second when your name finally flashes on his screen. But then he reads your message. He closes his eyes and tilts his head back for a second before looking back down at his phone. He can feel your dejection through the phone. For his part Robby gives Jack space, doesn’t comment on it, intercepts a couple of people who want to welcome Jack back. It takes Jack a moment to decide on what to reply. He knows that it doesn’t matter what his reply is, it’s not going to make anything better. 

J - Of course. Don’t forget you have a couple new books on the kitchen table and all of wedding pinterest and the knot to explore. I love you more

His message does manage to pull a little laugh from you. He’s so sweet, your Jack. Reminding you of things you could do to keep yourself occupied and distracted. You look around the kitchen and take in a deep breath, try to hype yourself up. 

It’s going to be okay. You’re going to do this and be fine and Jack will be so proud of you. You can do this. You grab your laptop and settle on the couch, put a show you like on and start looking through pinterest like Jack said. It goes well at first. Until you see something you really like and go to turn your computer and look over at Jack to show him. The realization hits you then that you’ve only ever done this with him. 

Fine. That’s okay. You have books. You turn the TV off and go look through the stack, pick one out and curl back up on the couch. Reading also goes well at first until it finally hits you that you’ve been staring at the same page for quite a while now because it’s hard to see through your tears. You set the book down and feel so defeated. You want to be okay so badly, for Jack and for yourself. But it seems the more you try to be the more you aren’t. 

You check your phone. 7:47. Nothing from Jack, not that you expected anything, especially since effectively no time has passed since his last message. You don’t know why you can’t do this, why it’s so hard. And that just makes you more upset. 

You get up once you start sniffling from the tears and just take yourself to bed, curl up in a ball on it with a box of tissues and let yourself cry. You grab your phone several times, have to fight the urge to call him and plead for him to come home. You have to fight the urge to get up and grab an uber and show up at the ED. The only good thing about crying is that it’s exhausting, and the swelling of your eyes makes you feel even more tired. And so you slip under without even realizing it. 

When Jack finally gets a second to check in and look at his phone sometime around 10:00 he’s a little surprised to see nothing from you. It’s unlike you. Normally you’ll text him often throughout your day, even if he can’t reply. Just little things. What you’re doing. Something funny that happened or that you saw. A photo of something that made you think of him. A moment on a show he doesn’t watch but that you want him to see. But then he realizes the problem with his thinking. Normally. 

Normal at this point is synonymous with ‘before you were shot.’ Because nothing has been remotely normal since then. It’s all been temporary. The hospital was temporary. Him being at home with you was temporary. Even his half shifts are temporary. And you both want normal back. But it’s not. And even when it is you both know it’ll be different, and that’s okay. A new normal is okay. But you’re not there yet and so, Jack realizes, thinking about what you’d normally do is futile and deceptive. He is surprised he hasn’t gotten anything wedding related though. He thought you’d take him up on that suggestion, go on pinterest, send him things you find and like. 

J - Finally have a second. You doing okay?

Before he can even start to wait for your reply Parker is grabbing him for help with a patient and his phone is back in his pocket. He tells himself he’s just been moving a lot and so that’s why he hasn’t felt his phone vibrate with your message. But when he pulls his phone out at 12:23 and there’s nothing from you he can’t help the pit of dread that starts to form in his stomach. 

Flashbacks of nightmares play in his head. You dead on the kitchen floor. You dead in your bed. You dead on the couch. He stops himself. You must be asleep. You just fell asleep early. Hell, maybe you took some sleeping meds just to make it easier for yourself and were asleep before his last text. That has to be it. Even though he’s sure you won’t see it, because you’re sleeping, he sends another one with the news you both saw coming. 

J - Hope you’re sleeping well. I’m going to be stuck here past 1. I’m hoping for 3/3:30, at most 4. I promise as soon as I can get out I will. I’m sorry. Love you

You wake with a start, covered in cold sweat, heart racing, chest heaving. It takes you a minute to fully come to. You had a nightmare. You were back in that courtroom with gunshots deafening you as you tried to hide. And then that body collapsed in front of you just like it did that day but this time you do recognize the person when their face rolls towards you as they bleed out, eyes fluttering closed. 

Jack.

You think you woke up before you even got shot, though you’re not sure. You’ve never been able to remember exactly when it happened. All you know is you saw Jack’s face and Jack’s blood and then mercifully woke the fuck up. You take a second to try and come down, look over at your phone and see it’s just after 2:00 and Jack’s messages. Your heart is crushed a little by the disappointment of him being home late even though you expected it. If he had gotten off on time he’d have been here, might have woken you getting into bed, might have stopped you from having that nightmare and that image of him seared in your brain. You know it’s not fair to put that on him and you aren’t, you don’t blame him. You just can’t help but think it. 

It’s what makes you burst into tears, again. Your disgust at yourself for even coming close to thinking about blaming him. And then you’re crying about all of it. Tears of anger at yourself, tears of frustration with yourself, tears of despondency about getting better, tears of panic from seeing Jack in your nightmare, tears of sorrow that he’s not home, tears of disappointment with yourself that you couldn’t do this one night, tears of confliction about being alive. You wear yourself out again. 

But this time you don’t go back to sleep. Instead you get up and take a shower to rid yourself of the sticky cold sweat that covers you. You hold some ice to your face once you’re out, hope it’ll help with the swelling of your eyes and lips enough that Jack won’t notice, especially in the dark. You toss the copious tear soaked tissues in the bathroom garbage and put the tissue box back where it was so that Jack won't see anything amiss and crawl back into bed. The exhaustion of crying pulls you under again. 

Jack’s out at 3:13. He hates it. He’s still on edge because still nothing from you even though he didn’t expect anything. He lets you know he's on his way home anyway. He cannot be home and have eyes on you soon enough. The drive is at least short at this time of night. There’s no lights on when he opens the door. Part of him is relieved because that would make sense if you were sleeping. But part of him is just put more on edge by the darkness. He doesn’t let himself think about it much, drops his backpack and gets his shoes off quickly and then is heading for your room. 

As much as he wants to, he doesn’t turn the overhead light on. He can make out your form on the bed so he steps over to the bathroom and reaches in to flick the light on, leaves the door open to give him just enough light in the bedroom to look at you. Normally the sight would turn him on, immensely. It still does, he can feel it. But tonight that’s overshadowed by the way it breaks his heart because he knows what it means. 

You’re curled up on his side of the bed, head on his pillow, wearing one of his shirts and holding another close to you, clutching it to your chest really. He lets out a slow breath through his nose as he takes you in. His brows furrow a little. He’s not sure if it’s the lighting or if your eyes and lips are really a little swollen. He makes himself let go of the thought for the moment so that he can grab a pair of pajama pants and just get in bed with you. 

When he walks in the bathroom properly it hits him. It’s a bit warmer than your bedroom, a bit more humid. And the smell. It smells like he just showered. Which means you showered recently and used all of his products so that you’d smell like him. It’s so sweet but it hurts, that he wasn’t here when you so clearly needed him. He tries to set that aside and not feel guilty, think about and apply what you guys have learned in couple’s therapy but it’s hard. And it gets harder when the pile of white catches his eye and he sees all of the tissues in the trash can. It wasn’t the lighting. The swelling is real. You cried. A lot. 

You’re not sure what wakes you but when you force your eyes open you realize the bathroom light is on which means Jack is home. It’s the first time you’ve smiled since he left. “Peter?” you call softly as you get out of bed to walk to the bathroom. Jack’s out of his scrubs in just his pajama bottoms.

“Hey, I’m sorry Doll, I didn’t mean to wake you.” You shake your head at him, meeting him at the doorway to the bathroom. 

“I’m just glad you’re home.” You push your lips out for a kiss he happily gives you. “Missed you. Were you okay?” 

“I was yeah. Being slammed was good at keeping me distracted." He frowns for a second because he knows how not the case that was for you. He leans in for another kiss. "I missed you more,” he murmurs against your lips, hands finding your waist. 

You hum back against his lips as he kisses you again. “I’m going to let you have that only because I was passed out most of the night.” 

Jack nods at you. But you can tell from the speed of it that he knows. You just give him a little shrug to tell him you know he knows. 

“Why didn’t you call?” It’s soft. He’s not angry at you or upset with you in any way. Just curious. You look away from his eyes down at his bare chest and give another little shrug. “Did you need me?”

“I was okay… eventually,” you admit. One of his hands finds your chin, gently pushes it up to see if you’ll move your head up to look at him. You don’t resist so he tilts your chin up. 

Jack gives you a small smile and keeps his voice low and gentle and he hopes comforting. “That doesn’t answer my question.” The hand still on your waist gives it a small squeeze. “You can be okay and still need me, or trying to convince yourself you’re okay and still need me, or trying to be okay and still need me.” He raises his eyebrows a little at you. 

You look at him for a beat and then let out a big sigh, lean forward and into him a bit so that your forehead rests against his chest. “I hate it when you do that,” you grumble against him. 

“What’s that?” He leans down and kisses the top of your head. 

You move your forehead off his chest but plant a kiss there before looking back up at him. “See right through me,” you murmur through a watery smile. “I don’t know how you’re so damn good at it.”

“Well,” Jack nods slowly, “in your fourth year of med school they pull a couple of students aside, obviously the ones they think are the best since I was one of them, and they teach us x-ray vision.” 

You let out a huffed laugh but smile at him. “I really thought I was about to learn something about med school.”  

“Are you saying you don’t believe me?!” He gives you his best surprised face. 

You roll your eyes at him and laugh a little with him but it quickly turns into trembling lips and you shaking your head. 

“Okay baby, come here,” Jack whispers, wrapping his arms around you and pulling you close, one hand finding the back of your head and holding your face against his chest. 

“It was so bad Jack, it was so bad,” you choke out through a strangled sob. “And I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to cry into you tonight or this morning or whatever the fuck it is. I just want to get in bed and be with you.” You sniffle and try to pull yourself together. 

“I know.” He rocks you just a little, presses his lips to the top of your head and lets them linger. “But we can be in bed together and you can be crying if that’s what you need.” As he speaks he flicks the light off and settles one hand on your hip and slowly begins walking you backwards toward the bed. 

“I’m tired of it being what I need,” you mumble. At least you’ve managed to stop the tears. You turn once your knees hit the back of the bed so that you can slide in, Jack following you once he has his prosthetic off. “I just…I had a nightmare.”

Jack cringes as he settles and holds his arms open for you. “I’m so sorry.” He knows all too well how much they can rattle you and fuck you up for days. How long it can take to get them to a point of only happening a few times a year. How much therapy and EMDR he’s had to do to help with his over the years. “Do you want to talk about it?”

You sigh as you curl into his side and drape your top leg over his, rest your head against the crook of his shoulder. The hand of Jack’s arm that’s now behind you starts rubbing your back up and down. “I was back there. In that courtroom on that day. And it was all the same and as much as that sucked it was fine. But then I got to the part where that woman collapsed in front of me and died but,” you have to pause and try and get yourself closer to Jack. “But it wasn’t her. It was you.” Jack’s shifting onto his side a bit more at that and pulling you closer into him, pressing the front of his body against yours. He positions you so that you can rest your ear up against his chest. “And unlike her you rolled your head to look at me as you were bleeding out and then I woke up.” 

You hear the click of Jack’s jaw as he opens it to say something. But it never comes, instead you just feel his head shake a little. You let yourself focus on the beat of his heart underneath your ear, the warmth of his skin. “I’m so sorry,” he finally whispers. “I know it’s not my fault but I am so sorry that you had to experience that Doll.”

You shrug a little. Apparently you’re all out of tears for the night. You’re too tired for them. And here in Jack’s arms with his heart beating under your ear it’s not so scary. There’s an odd sense of calm that fills both of you. You feel kind of bad, like you've taken this for yourself, haven't talked about how he did at work. But you know there's time. “Don’t be,” you whisper, turn your face a bit to nuzzle into his chest. “At least I didn’t have to live through your funeral. I’ve got that goin’ for me. More than you can say.”

He can feel your lips turn up in a smile against his chest. And he has to let out a laugh at it too. Because you’ve hit a point where you can start to make small jokes about what’s happened, what you’ve both been through. Because it’s all so miserable and horrific that if you guys don’t laugh you’ll cry. After a second you pull your head from his chest and look up at him. He looks so amused with his wide closed lip smile, shaking his head at you slightly that you have to bite your lip to stop from laughing. But that makes him crack and start properly laughing and so you do too. 

You guys laugh until it hurts, until the smallest tears slide out the corners of your eyes. “I’m sorry, that was probably so insensitive of me-”

“No,” Jack keeps laughing, “no. No, Doll that was so fucking needed, fuck me. The laughing feels just as cathartic as crying right now.”

“I agree,” you giggle as you both start to wind down. You lean in to kiss him and Jack keeps you there, nipping at your bottom lip and tugging at it a little when you try to pull away. “Needy,” you murmur teasingly.

“For you? Always.” You lay there and kiss. Kiss and make out in bed pressed against each other simply because you want to feel close and because you can. It’s not leading anywhere as good as it feels and as wired as it makes both of you. You can feel him growing hard against you and yourself growing wetter for him but you’re both content to stay like you are. 

Eventually the kisses slow. You’re both sleepy, and between snuggling with each other and all the kissing it’s quick to catch up with you. Just as you both start to nod off you think of something. “Hey Jack? Maybe no more night shifts.” It’s all sleep slurred and in that drowsy tone you get that he finds particularly adorable.

He laughs a little through his nose. “No more night shifts,” he agrees, just as groggy.

When you wake up the next day Jack is able to get in touch with Robby and switch things back so that he’s on days again. Something about the daylight makes it a little easier for you, and you don’t seem to have any nightmares when you sleep snuggled into Jack. The next time he goes to work for half a day shift sucks still, but significantly less than that first half a night shift. Each time it gets a little bit easier, even when Jack is finally back to regular twelve hour shifts. 

And then eventually it’s your turn to go back to work. It’s not just going back to work, it’s going back to the place you were shot. Both of you are on edge. Jack hates the thought of you having to go back there, it sends his anxiety through the roof even though he knows logically it’s probably the safest courthouse in the entire country right now with all the heightened security. 

“You’re sure you don’t want me to go with you?” Jack asks you for probably the tenth time this morning alone. 

“I’m sure,” you call to him from the bathroom as you finish getting ready. Jack appears in the mirror behind you, stopping at the doorway of the bathroom. You look at him in the mirror. “It’s okay, I’m ready. I can do this.” 

You sound more like you’re trying to convince yourself than you are Jack. “You can call me. If you need anything.” 

“I know,” you nod, “I promise I know and that if I need you I’ll call.” You turn to look at Jack and start walking towards him. Half of you feels ready for this, is craving the normalcy that being at work will bring. The other half knows you’re probably not quite ready. You haven’t even been by the building to expose yourself to it.

You pick at the breakfast Jack made you, stomach churning too much to feel hungry and making it hard to swallow anything down. He doesn’t comment on it as he sits at the table across from you working on today’s crossword, isn’t going to pressure you into eating more or potentially make you feel bad by calling you out on it. He gets it. He didn’t eat much dinner the night he went back to work for that one half a night shift. 

It’s going to put your shoes on where you really start to let yourself realize how not ready you are for this. You stare down at them for what feels like ten or so seconds but is in reality close to a full minute. Jack knows because he glances at his watch after the first few seconds pass and you don’t move to put them on. 

Finally you force yourself to and grab your bag. You take in and let out a deep breath and ignore how shaky it is as Jack walks over to you. He doesn’t want to smother you in reassurance and reminders you can call him or end up letting an ask for you to stay home slip out. “Have a good day Doll. Call if you need and I’ll be here waiting for you when you get home. I love you.” 

Jack leans down and kisses you, one that lingers followed by a bunch of softer pecks. “I will,” you nod. “I’ll see you tonight.” You put your hand on the door handle and open it a little. “I love you more,” you smile up at him. He lets you have it this morning. 

As you walk out the door and close it you know immediately you’re not ready. Jack knows you aren’t ready. But you try anyway and he doesn’t try to stop you because this is something you need to do for yourself. 

It doesn’t take too long to get there, the commute is generally fairly easy even though it’s busy. You walk up to the courtyard of the courthouse and stare at the entrance. It feels like you can’t breathe and you’re aware of how badly your hands shake. Your heart races as you try and tell yourself you just need a minute and then you’ll go in. 

But everything just gets worse. All you can hear is screaming and gunshots, taste that metallic flavor of adrenaline, and smell sulphur and smoke. You can’t do this. You so cannot fucking do this.

You get yourself back enough so a trembling hand can get your phone out of your bag, unlock it and hit Jack’s name. He answers on the first ring. “I’m not ready Jack, I can’t do this, I, I, I’m stuck outside and I need you, please come, I’m sor-”

“Doll,” Jack interrupts you. “Turn around.”

You do and standing at the edge of the courtyard is Jack. 

He hangs up his phone as he starts moving to you, shoving past a couple people with a distracted excuse me because he just needs to get to you. He knows that you don’t want to fully lose it here, not with the potential for people you know or work with every day to see. And Jack doesn’t want it for you either. He knows you hate crying in front of people, that it took a while for you to be able to cry in front of him. 

“I’m here,” he’s saying as he gets to you, arms reaching out before he’s even all the way there to start pulling you into him. “I’m here, I’ve got you, you’re okay.” Your hands slide around his waist and clutch at the back of his shirt as you close your eyes and press the side of your head to his chest. 

You breathe him in, smell your laundry detergent and his body wash and him. You focus and let his heart beating become the only thing you can hear. The metallic taste in your mouth starts to fade.

“Ready to walk?” Jack whispers as he feels you start to calm down. You nod against him and so he lets go of you. A hand finds your lower back and starts directing you over to a bench outside of the courtyard facing away from the courthouse.

You both sit and he pulls you as close as possible, wraps the arm closest to you around your waist to keep you close as you rest a hand on his knee. Jack brings his other hand across his body and rests it on top of your hand, laces your fingers together from above. 

Jack doesn’t pressure you, doesn’t ask you for details or if you want to talk or what exactly happened. He just sits there with you holding you close. You tilt your head and let it fall onto his shoulder. He tilts his head and his lips press against you where they can reach before he lets his head rest on yours lightly. 

“I feel so ridiculous,” you murmur after a while. 

Jack squeezes your hand. “Why?”

“I knew the entire morning I wasn’t ready. I just wanted to be so bad so I didn’t listen to myself.” 

“I know. I knew,” he murmurs. “But that doesn’t make you ridiculous. Just human.”

“You knew?” you whisper, pull away to look at him. “How?”

“You told me as much with your eyes and the way you hesitated before you did anything related to getting ready this morning.” He squeezes your hand. “Before picking up your hairbrush and putting your bra on and picking up your mascara, that type of stuff. Your hand hesitated for just a second or two before you grabbed whatever it was. And then when it took you as long as it did to get your shoes on I just had an intuition or gut feeling or whatever you want to call it that I should be here.” 

“You didn’t try to stop me?” 

“No,” he shakes his head and gives you a small smile. “It was obvious that you needed to do this. Come here. Try. Get yourself back in front of this building. You needed to do it for yourself and I wasn’t going to interfere with that, no matter how badly I wanted to stop you so you wouldn’t hurt. You needed to do this. My role is to support you and help you with your healing. Not to dictate how you do it.”

You take in and hold a long breath before letting it out through your nose and shaking your head a little. “You’re way too fucking good for me.”

Jack gives you a look. “Not even gracing that bullshit with a reply,” he parrots the phrase you love to use back at you.

You give him a little eye roll and a smile. “I just should be better, Jack. I should be able to go back and get back to normal. But then I got here and it’s like it was yesterday.”

He nods slowly. “I think it was yesterday in a sense, Doll. This is your first time even being in front of the courthouse since it happened. That’s one. Two,” he pauses to take a breath and look down and away from you for a second. “A very, very smart woman,” he looks back up at you with a small smile, “once told me that should is a stupid word. Nothing should or shouldn’t be. Things just are. And it’s okay for them to be as they are. It’s okay for this to be as it is.” 

You’re quiet for a few seconds before you let out a huffed laugh through your nose. “I can’t believe you just used my own words against me twice in a row.” 

Jack clicks his tongue and shrugs. “I can be a real dick sometimes can’t I?”

You roll your eyes at him again and lean back into him. “Maybe. But you’re my dick, so it’s okay, I’ll allow it.” 

That makes him roll his eyes at you and chuckle. “Yeah, I’m your dick, alright. I’m glad to hear you’ll allow it,” he teases. 

“I’m actually quite impressed that you remember that entire little speech I gave you,” you admit after a few minutes. 

“Repeated it to myself a lot. Still do. Well, really in my head you’re saying it to me and I hear it in your voice. So I guess I have you repeating it to me a lot.” He pauses. “It’s important to remember.”

“I suppose it is.” You pull away again to look up at him. “Thank you. I love you.”

“Always, Doll.” The kiss he gives you is quick yet ardent. “I love you too.” 

There’s a lull as the two of you just sit on the bench and exist together, soak in the sun.

“You wanna go to bath and body works?” Jack breaks the silence. An amused smirk pulls on your face as you pull away to look up at him. “Candles are on sale. $12.95. And they just released a bunch of new scents.” 

You know he’s offering and that he keeps tabs on when they’re on sale and when new scents come out because he knows how much you enjoy candles and the fun of smelling them. You bite your lip and look up at him all dreamy. “You’re perfect, you know that?”

“Nah,” he shakes his head and stands up, offers you his hand and helps you off the bench so you can head to the store. “Just in love.”

You take a bit more time for yourself before you try going back again, go and sit outside the courthouse with Jack and alone. And the next time you go back to work Jack goes with you, holds your hand all the way up to the employee entrance. He gives you a kiss goodbye and holds the door open for you, watches you for a second before he lets the door close. He waits outside on a bench for a bit, just in case you decide you’re not ready again and need him. But you don’t. And so Jack smiles to himself as he gets up and heads back home. 

Normal. Things are finally starting to get back to normal.

But, as it turns out, normalcy is a fragile thing. And so things are finally starting to get back to normal.

Until they aren’t.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you so so much for reading, I hope it was okay!

Part 4 is out now!

Part 4 will be out soon!! This weekend for sure! And then we're straight into Quiet 2 which I am so fucking excited for! I have many many plans! How many exclamation points can I use in a row!!!!!

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[plethorawrites]

can I request Damian x reader but reader is like the opposite she’s clumsy and messy (NOT DIRTY SHES JUST NOT REALLY ORGANIZED) and at first Damian is like no way I could ever like someone like that but then he’s like oh shit I think I like her you don’t have to do it but it was just an idea

(A/N- This has been sitting in my drafts for a bit because people are STILL calling me racist, so I've seriously considered wiping Damian from my page completely. But I love him as a character way too much to do that, so here we are!) (Requests are open again, btw!)

---

Despite being rather pretentious because of his upbringing, I think anytime Damian Wayne is assigned to do a group project, he'd want to go to someone else's house. They usually live in squalor (Middle class) but he deals with it for a few hours because it beats having his classmates fawning over his older brother's or asking his dad if he really used to date Harvey Dent or if that's just a rumor.

Usually, despite the condition of the house (Aka having a dish rack on the counter.) the room they'd work in was pretty clean. But you? Oh, no, no, no. He almost had a heart attack when he saw the state of catastrophe your study room was in.

Books on the ground instead of on the shelves, chair pulled out from the desk instead of tucked in, tons of sticky notes scattered on the walls and reminders pinned up. No one could have that short of a memory, could they? You seemed to.

The number of loose papers on the desk, the open notebooks with illegible writing, fidget toys to relieve stress or increase your focus, cups from when you needed coffee for a late-night study session that hadn't made it all the way to the dishwasher yet. (But it was on the sticky note! Right under the reminder to check your email.

Was that a thing people needed to remember to do?

He was utterly perplexed by the chaos you seemed so comfortable in. What he found most odd though, was how you never made any effort to fix it. He had been to your house three times thus far, trying to make a dent in the project that would take at least another week and each time, your room was the same. He even offered to help you organize (For his own sanity) but you turned him down, claiming you liked it how it was.

"How could anyone possibly like studying like this?" he questioned.

You shrugged. "I find having a pristine desk makes me uncomfortable, like I'm not actually doing work in a space I can relax in," you explained. "Plus, research shows environments like this increase brain productivity."

Damian wasn't sure if he believed that for a single second. But you clearly seemed to.

"But it's so messy," he muttered, motioning to your desk, so covered in God knows what that he couldn't even see what color the wood was.

"It's disorganized, not messy," you retorted. "And I know where everything is. Pencil sharper is by the white out because I use both rarely, erasers are where all the pencils are because I stab the led into them when I'm bored, highlighters are the ruler, which is.... under the syllabus I printed at the start of the year."

You pointed at everything as you said it and he slowly came to the realization that you weren't lying when you said you weren't messy. You kind of, in some weird way, had a system that worked.

Still, it felt uncomfortable for him. For a while. He'd watch you chew on your pencil and reach for tape that came from he didn't even know where, seemingly materializing things out of thin air. You barely even sat in the chair, he realized. He was always the one sitting in it, watching you sit or lay on the floor.

The only time Damian was ever on the floor was when Titus knocked him down or he got beat by his brothers during sparring. (Not that it ever happened..psh, no, don't be absurd.)

He slowly got a bit more accustomed to your room, even starting to find a bit of comfort whenever he stepped into it. It was welcoming, in a way, he'd come to think. When had that happened?

"Aren't you supposed to leave by eight?" you asked him, stretching your arms over your head as you sat on the floor across from him.

Damian frowned, looking at the time. He realized it was already 7:55. Had it already been four hours? It seemed like he just sat down on your rug, which, was surprisingly comfortable.

He hated to admit how much more productive he felt sitting on the floor than at a desk. "Uh, yes, right," he nodded, standing up and stretching as well. "I think we can probably get this finished by Tuesday," he added, feeling a weird pang of disappointment by the thought.

You nodded. "Alright, I'll see you tomorrow at four, then," you told him, watching as he packed up his books neatly, the pages fitting back in the nice folder perfectly. "Unless you wanna stay," you suddenly found yourself offering. "For dinner, I mean. If...if you want to. No pressure."

Damian paused, caught off guard by invitation. He stared at you for a few minutes, lips parting but words not leaving his mouth. Dinner? That was probably going to last at least an hour or two. Longer if your parents were the kind to serve dessert or chat a lot. He might not get home until ten or later.

"Sure," he agreed abruptly, though logically he knew he should refuse. He was supposed to be asleep by nine so he could get some rest before patrol. "I'd love to stay for dinner," he remarked, setting his bag back down for what wasn't one or two hours like planned, but four and a half.

How he would explain getting home past midnight to his father, he wasn't sure yet. But he'd find a reasonable excuse. After all, his dad was the one who told him to find normal friends and he was just doing what he asked.

...You were just his friend, right?

[guiltyc0nscience]

⋆˙⟡ yapper, chris sturniolo

chris sturniolo x fem!reader

synopsis. in which chris is yapping away with his fingers in your mouth because you kept interrupting him.

warnings. gagging, suggestive but no smut.

authors note. this has been sitting in my drafts for quite some time, i completely forgot about this.

“there’s so much shit i need to do for my brand tomorrow, like-“ chris says but being cut off by your voice for the fifth time and he’s only been talking for ten minutes.

“oh my god. i’m so excited for you to release the new items, they’re all so cute.” you gush with excitement as you think about the baby tees and hoodies chris has designed.

“yeah. i think this will be the-“ chris attempts to talk but gets cut off by you, yet again.

“that baby pink baby tee? that looks like heaven. it’s so cute, i can’t wait to-.” you say, but quickly stop as you turn to chris and see the unamused look on his face.

“what’s the problem, baby?” you ask furrowing your brows.

“you. you’re the problem at the moment, actually.” he says with a smirk growing on his face as he trails his hand up your arm, holding his hand in place when it reaches your jaw, “you’ve interrupted me so many times.” he whispers, leaning his face closer to yours as he moves his ring and middle finger up to yours lips.

you and chris kept intense eye contact as he pushes his fingers into your mouth until the lay flat in the middle of your tongue.

his finger’s sit in your mouth for a moment before he pushes them the slightest bit further in. “i swear you never let me talk.” his icy blue eyes stay locked on yours as he moves his fingers just a little more.

when he finally stills his fingers in your mouth, you attempt to talk again, “i do, i let you talk all the time” you try to say but it comes out muffled.

“all the time?” chris repeats back with a scoff, his fingers moving ever so slightly in your mouth, clearly not believing you. he knows you don’t ever let him talk. he just loves any excuse to tease you.

“maybe not all the time, but most of the time” you say but when you do chris plunges his fingers to the back of your throat, causing you to gag on his fingers and tears fill your eyes. and when they do chris pulls his fingers back to sit on your tongue, “now let me talk” he says.

his fingers sit with a little more pressure on your tongue as he waits for you to nod in agreement, watching the tears form in your eyes as you try to recover from the gag. he knows you’ll agree, you always agree.

you slowly nod your head. chris smirks then continues talking, “now you’re finally letting me get a word in. so yeah, the new drop is in about two weeks so i have a bunch of shit i need to sort between now and then.”

his fingers sit still in your mouth as he talks, his other hand that’s around your waist moving up and down your side gently. while his fingers don’t move, they do apply more pressure as he talks, making it harder and harder for you to concentrate on what he’s saying.

chris has yapped and yapped for the past 15 minutes with no interruptions, due to obvious reasons.

you let out a hum as chris brings up something you really want to talk about, but he glares at you and pushes his fingers further down your throat, causing you to gag again.

he smirks as you gag around his fingers again, he’s got such power over you at the moment as he’s in full control. every time you moan, hum, or try to say something, he gags you again. he knows there’s something you want to ask, and he finds this whole situation way too amusing, “there something you want to say, baby?” he taunts with a sly smirk on his face.

he watches intently as you hum and moan around his fingers, his smirk never leaving his face. he loves how powerless you are right now. no matter how hard you try to talk, his fingers will always stop you, and it makes him so amused. he knows that there’s something you want to ask, and he’s fully enjoying taunting you.

“sorry baby, it’s my turn to talk. not yours. but you’ll get your chance later, just not now.” he says in a mocking tone. chris lets out a small chuckle as he watches you struggle. he knows how badly you want to ask him the question, but he’s loving this too much to give you the chance too. “you’re just gonna have to wait a while, baby. i still have more to say. don’t worry.”

he continues rambling on for another ten minutes. this time he only had to gag you twice, unlike last time he had to do it countless times. you really wanted to talk so you brung your hand up to chris’ hand that is in your mouth and attempt to pull it away from your mouth, which chris doesn’t like.

as soon as your hand comes up to his, he pulls it back and pushes his fingers even further in your mouth, his smirk growing as he watches you. he lets out a small huff, “no, princess, don’t try that. this is my turn to talk, not yours. you don’t listen. i have to remind you who’s in charge, don’t i?” he says in a mocking tone.

you look up at him with pleading eyes, silently begging him to let you talk.

chris looks down at you, seeing your pleading eyes and he feels his heart fluttering. every time you look at him like that, he just wants to give in and do anything for you. but not this time, though. no, no, no. right now he’s enjoying how much control he has, and he isn’t giving that up. “ah, princess, baby. stop looking at me like that. that’s not gonna work this time. i’m in charge right now.”

your body deflates when he says that. you really thought chris was going to let talk this time, but you were wrong.

chris notices your body deflates, seeing you give up. he lets out a soft chuckle; the whole situation was so amusing to him. he’s got you right where he wants you - at his mercy. he loves having power over you like this; it’s such a huge turn on for him. he can’t help but tease you a little bit more. “aww, princess. did you really think i was gonna let you talk? after all the times you’ve cut me off? that’s really cute.”

[rinskazuu]

→ half asleep, wishing i still had you ⋅˚₊‧ 𐙚 ‧₊˚ ⋅

synopsis. ꨄ︎ weeks had passed since your breakup with the bllk men. it seems they can no longer handle your absence and decide to drink away their sorrow. it turns out that liquor is capable of bringing out the emotions they've carefully concealed, so with the liquid courage they've gathered, they decide to break their silence.

featuring. ꨄ︎ fem!reader x sae, kaiser, otoya, karasu (separate)

includes. ꨄ︎ post relationship, angst, happy ending, alcohol consumption, pining, yearning, begging, aged up!characters to legal drinking age (kaiser is already of drinking age in germany), characters might be a teensy bit ooc (not sorry), not fully proofread

notes. ꨄ︎ i was going to add yukimiya, aiku, and ness but this has been sitting in my drafts for weeks and i really didn't have it in me to do any more.

♪ track. ꨄ︎ your shirt by chelsea cutler

ITOSHI SAE ⋆｡°✩

sae isn’t the type of man to drink casually. sure, a celebratory drink here and there wouldn’t hurt, but even then, he would never leave himself in a vulnerable position.

sae is a precise and meticulous man, measuring his every sip, cautious not to go over his limit. yet, him gulping more than his usual was a direct result of his current state. i mean, sure, he knew the breakup would sting, but not this much. not to the point where he felt his entire being would shatter if he breathed wrong.

and that’s how life currently felt for him. like every single breath was solely to counter his existence—like his very presence was to appease you. and sae was not the type of man to put somebody else first.

the breakup was primarily sae’s fault, and he knew it. he didn’t have to see the disappointment on your face or the frustration in your teary eyes to know it. despite dating someone famous, you absolutely despised the publicity surrounding you; the attention, the lights, the rumors. so when he brushed off your concerns, feeling angry was more than an understatement. aside from the paparazzi, sae was cold. it wasn't to the extent of how he treated everybody else, but it shouldn't have been how he acted toward you. he was cold to where you would be excited and he would still have that look of indifference and boredom etched all over his face—as if he was saying, “this isn’t worth my time.” while it’s true sae was a loving and attentive boyfriend, those traits had its limits, and you were simply over it.

sae called when he knew you would be relaxing after a long, hard day worth of work, usually indulging in a book or playing a game. you were suspicious but picked up anyway. if anybody asked, you were not picking up because you missed him. surely not.

“come home,” he croaks immediately after you pick up. you were taken aback to say the least. he didn’t even bother to greet you, let alone attempt to make small talk, like asking you how your job was or how your parents were doing. but then again, itoshi sae had no space for unnecessary words or actions.

“i’m sorry?” was all you managed to utter out, shock still lingering in your system. a sigh was let out on the other end of the line. as you were shuffling and ordering your emotions, sae was picking at his supposed “genius” brain to see how exactly he was supposed to win you back. it was a miracle he won you over in the first place, considering his knowledge outside of football—or more accurately, the lack of.

he had missed your presence; seeing your face in the crowd, coming home to your sweet fragrance, holding your hand during even the most mundane everyday tasks, having you in his arms as he drifted to sleep, and everything. what was he supposed to say to convince you that he loves you?

itoshi sae is not the type of man for big gestures or fancy words. he won’t be the one to serenade you or put thought into a romantic poem, and you were more than okay with it, but you refused to lay down and take his disregard for your concerns like a good dog.

after a long stretch of silence, sae finally gathers his thoughts. “i want you to come home,” he repeats, a slight slur evident in his voice. “i want you to understand how apologetic i am. i should’ve listened to your concerns, and i should’ve protected your feelings better.”

“i appreciate your apologies, itoshi, but i think it’s best to stay on different paths.”

sae winces at the usage of his last name. to the world, he is itoshi. he is the prodigious elder brother of the itoshi family; he’s the calculating, genius soccer player, but to you he was just sae. he didn’t have to control his every move as if one wrong step would result in all his hard work falling apart. to you, he could fall apart in your arms and you would still love him.

“sae,” he corrects. “i’m not itoshi to you. regardless of what you might think, i’ll always be sae to you.”

his gaze directs up to the roof of his car, his seat cranked all the way back as his free hand grabbed the canned beer; an accurate representation of exactly what he was feeling—disappointed and bitter. it’s as if sae was purposely torturing himself for letting you go.

“i don’t know what to say,” you reply honestly, twiddling your fingers as you stare at the cover of your book, the words blurring as you zone out.

“i love you, cariño.” your heart stops for a moment. the way his lips utter the pet name so softly—like you would fade away from his life if he said it any differently—causes a hitch in your heart. “from this day forward, i will listen to you more honestly. not because i have to, but because i want to.”

your lips part, partly at his heartfelt confession—where his voice wasn’t devoid of emotion for once—and the other part because you were surprised. sae is opening up to you, even with the idea of rejection lingering in his mind, unlike the itoshi sae you knew who doesn’t toy with intentions that aren’t going to guarantee him success.

“i’m sorry i let you down. i’m sorry i allowed you to feel like i didn’t care. i’m most sorry that you didn’t feel the love that i felt for you. please, amor. i feel like my heart is going to jump out of my chest and throw itself into a fire.”

at last, you found your voice and answered him honestly. “i miss you, sae. i love you. i want you to treat me the way i want, but i can't just take your words at face value.” sae understands fully. you made it clear that actions were louder than words, and he is going to fulfill that.

“i know, amor. i just need you to understand that it’s you or nobody. you’re going to be the woman i marry,” he states. it wasn’t a halfhearted swear; he pledged it. “now, please. let me in at least. let me see you again.”

you open the door to a sluggish sae, reeking of beer. despite your dislike for it, you pulled him in for a long awaited hug on both ends. of course, the two of you were a long way from how you were again, but for now, this is perfect. for now, you’re okay with just holding him until the two of you fell asleep.

KAISER MICHAEL ⋆｡°✩

kaiser loathed alcohol. it reminded him of the helplessness and weakness he felt whenever he came home to his drunk father, fists curled up into balls, and angry about whatever it was that upset him that day. and yet, here he was, downing the whiskey like he was held at gunpoint.

here he was, turning out to be the man he detested. never having laid hands on you, kaiser still managed to hurt you, and in turn fucked up the only relationship he ever cared for. you never saw him as dollar signs, only as the broken shell of a man that he wanted to be. you had the patience to love, help, and improve him for his sake, and somehow, he broke you instead.

kaiser knew better than anyone how hurtful words could be, but when push came to shove, he chose to close himself off in fear of what you might think of him. contrary to his image, he was embarrassed to show you just how shameful he is. he could never understand how you were capable of loving him—loving the little boy who never got over his mother leaving him alone with the father who beat him senseless. he never understood how it was possible to still love someone who was never loved.

at first, kaiser was angry. you leaving him? how dare you?! how dare you fall into the same crowd of everybody else in his life; promising him a happy ending and then leaving when it got too hard? but then he came to the realization that you left because he couldn’t step up to be the man he swore to be.

kaiser didn’t bother to call or even text. his entire body was on fire, and he was determined to see you in person rather than speaking to you through a phone. so as you were preparing to snuggle into your bed—and totally not with the unicorn plushie he bought you—you’re suddenly startled by the sound of frantic knocks.

your immediate reaction was to stay in your room—a straight response to those horror movies you forced yourself to watch with kaiser. but the knocks never stopped. they grew more erratic and panicked.

the moment you open the door, you’re greeted with a visibly exhausted kaiser; blond hair a tousled mess, lips swollen from biting, and blue eyes dull—which was massively different from your kaiser.

you stand frozen in front of him, unable to react or even speak, so he takes the initiative. “i’m sorry,” is the first thing kaiser mutters, quiet but loud enough for it to send a shock wave down your spine. kaiser, the emperor, is apologizing.

“what?” his eyes turn down, a clear sign that he was embarrassed. nonetheless, kaiser couldn’t care less right now. all he wanted in that moment was to cease his hopelessness and earn your love back.

“the man i am—was—isn’t somebody i’m proud of. that man hurt you; me, i hurt you,” he pauses, taking a deep breath to collect his thoughts, because frankly, he didn’t expect you to actually open the door (despite his relentless efforts). “i-i’m not good at this. forgive me, mein liebling.”

on the other hand, you’re still motionless; hand gripping the door, heart pounding, and dozens of different emotions invading your mind. “kaiser, i don’t think we should do this,” you finally whisk up the courage to say. despite still loving him with your entire being, you made it impossibly clear that you were no longer going to love him at the expense of yourself.

“wait. just hear me out, okay?” he whispers, his hand finding its way to your door, not pushing but hoping to be heard. “i didn’t know that loving something—someone—could feel so rewarding. all i know how to do is take and break, and in spite of all your attempts to see me, i pushed you away. for that, i don’t think i could ever forgive myself. you make me feel human, mein liebling, and i despise that, because i have built this monster out of malice towards the man i resent. but i also know that if i let you go here and not shove my past away for you, i wouldn’t know how to live with just myself.”

you’re stunned because despite kaiser admitting that he didn’t know how to get his feelings through to you, he was very much capable of doing just that. his message tugs at your heartstrings; after so long of rotting as you waited for him to open up, you finally get to hear the words that stemmed from his heart.

“i’m not asking you to forgive me right away, sweetheart. you know i’m a man of patience, and even though it’s killing me to wait, i’ll bide my time for as long as you want me to, because i love you. i love you so much i’d defy every rule that defines me just to have you again.” discounting the fact that this was a very big and vulnerable moment for him, the shine in kaiser’s warm blue eyes return.

you heave out a sigh. knowing that this may very well end poorly, you still wanted to give it a try. you understand kaiser’s feelings are rooted in his troublesome childhood and you want to help him, because you love him just as much as he does you. “come in, mikka,” you reply in a whisper, tugging lightly at his sleeves.

the sound of his nickname rolling off your tongue warms kaiser’s heart. he’s aware now that you don’t hate him like the little voice at the back of his head keeps telling him. you still care for him; you still love him.

kaiser huffs out a long awaited breath of relief, his heart rapidly beating against his chest. you wrap your arms around him, inhaling his intoxicating scent along with the whiskey, which is evenly stimulating. he plants a kiss atop your head, silently promising that he would do better.

OTOYA EITA ⋆｡°✩

otoya is inherently a free spirit who does anything and everything based on his own whims. that goes for everything in his life, including the amount of alcohol he was consuming.

otoya, opposite of what the media claims, is immensely loyal to you, which came to a shock to even himself. as much as he disrelished being tied down, he couldn’t even bear the thought of another woman, let alone acting on any impulses to leave. regardless of his problematic past, he willingly devoted himself to you wholeheartedly, but it still doesn't erase the very fact of what he had done; what he was capable of.

he understood the limitations of your understanding and patience when it came to his past. in fact, he was grateful you stayed as long as you did. just the thought of you brought him a sense of humility that he surprisingly liked. needless to say, otoya was still devastated when you expressed your desire to leave. he didn’t stop you—as selfish as he is, he couldn’t. not when he knew that it would permanently destroy your relationship if he pushed you any further. then life changed for the worst—just like that. he saw it coming but he didn’t expect it to be as anguishing as it was. unfortunately, it didn’t seem like otoya cared much for your discomfort any time somebody would bring up another girl he messed with; whether it be a reporter, his friends, or his teammates. regardless of your longstanding tolerance, you just couldn’t endure the thought of coming home one day to find him in bed with another woman. so you broke things off.

it felt like otoya was constantly drowning, as if the thought of you—or lack thereof—was physically pushing on his heart. every breath was a reminder that this was his karma. this was the so called 'consequences,' that everybody spoke of. everything in his apartment reminded him of you—of what he had, what he couldn’t be strong enough to handle.

otoya contemplated going to your home, but the better part of him knew you were just going to slam the door in his face—as he rightfully deserves. then he thought of calling. he desperately wanted to call, to hear your voice, but in the end he was too ashamed to do it. his finger hovered over the call button for many long, stretched out minutes before deciding against it.

so he opted to text you. it was safe, even if it went against his usual do-what-you-please attitude. you were staggered to find a text from your ex boyfriend looming on your phone after your shift. even more confusing, it was a jumbled mess full of typos and nonsense. you kept asking him what he meant and in the end, just made the choice to call him.

when otoya sees your name flashing on his screen, he pauses. with an uncharacteristically anxiousness building up in his body, he hesitates to answer. but he can’t withstand another day without hearing the soft and gentle tone of your voice.

the two of you exchange greetings before you ask, “what did you mean in your text? i’m not understanding any of it.”

his voice hitches before responding, “i miss you. i hate that i ruined this. even though i’ve ruined relationships many times, you weren’t meant to be one of them.” he’s straightforward, not giving you a chance to even process the first part before continuing. “i know my actions—or actually, the absence of it—warranted this, but i refuse to spend another day without you.”

to say you are baffled is an understatement. you knew about otoya’s playboy personality, and you knew it was unlikely for him to settle down, so hearing this not only affirmed your feelings, but also emphasized his love for you. there was no point in your relationship that he had given you a reason to doubt his loyalty, besides not respecting your boundaries about his past, and you were suddenly getting a sense of clarity out of it.

“you’re not the type of person to settle down, otoya,” you reply accompanied by a sigh. even so, you still weren’t completely sure if you should trust his words.

“i know. and i’m sorry. i should’ve started with i’m sorry. listen, i’m not used to having someone to put before myself. as much as it goes against who i am as a person, i don’t hate it because you’re part of who i am now. you’re what i look forward to during every part of my day, and if it means i get to see you and spend every day with you, then yeah, i would gladly tie myself down. i love you and that’s never going to change.” otoya, who had downed just about enough to pass him out, is suddenly sobered. this was the first time he’d ever said i love you, and it felt amazing.

hearing his confession sent your heart beating so fast you were nearly convinced you were going into cardiac arrest. his voice ringing out of your device snaps you back into reality. “i. love. you. i love you and nobody else. i can’t love anybody else. you’ve officially ruined women for me. if it’s not you, nobody else is going to ever make me feel this way again. it’s just not possible.”

“otoya…” you start, unable to find the right words to reciprocate.

you hear the strong inhale of breath he takes on the other end. “eita,” he corrects. “your eita, remember?”

you let out a breath, a chuckle following after. “yes. you’re right. but this doesn’t mean we’re okay again.”

otoya’s heart pounds against his chest. he knows. “i’m aware. i know we’ve got a long way ahead, and i’m going to prove to you that i’m the right choice.” a smile graces your lips at this until you realize the slur in his voice.

“have you been drinking?” you ask cautiously, much familiar with his habits of doing things based on the context of his surroundings.

he admits sheepishly, “yes. it doesn’t help, but it gave me the courage to text you at the very least.” you roll your eyes at his statement, simply amused.

“you texted me a string of random letters. how am i supposed to decipher that?” you question.

given his disheveled state, otoya was pretty satisfied with the outcome of this. he makes a silent promise that he wouldn’t drink again unless given permission as to appease you. but still, he doesn’t regret it. currently, he’s content. everything in the world feels just about right.

“i’m going to bed if you care to join me,” you say, piquing his undivided attention. does he? of course he does!

otoya’s green eyes light up. “are you kidding? i’d be crazy if i said no.”

“okay. we’ve got things to work on and talk through, but for now, i think we did an okay job,” you say in response, laughing at his. “and eita.”

“yes, pretty?”

“i love you.”

KARASU TABITO ⋆｡°✩

karasu is very particular and self-disciplined, rarely consuming any alcohol as it leaves him in an unguarded position, which is a massive disdain. when he does allow himself to drink, he's cautious with the amount he's ingesting; still wary of his surroundings.

as opposed to karasu's attitude toward particular individuals, he was incredibly inferior toward you, always nitpicking his own actions, and holding you on a high pedestal. while he praised and cherished even the ground you walked on, it didn't take long for you to grow exhausted of his constant criticism against others he deemed lower than him. he generally focused too much on other people's ethics.

each insult went hand in hand with the very real belief that he was clearly better. karasu didn't need to see the dismay in your usually sparkly eyes to know he was losing you. and yet, when it mattered the most, he couldn't better himself for you.

life was unbearable and nothing could take him out of this state. karasu—as he does with everything—overanalyzes every detail of your relationship, examining your exact words methodically over and over until he swore his body would simply explode without your existence in his life. a small fire lit inside of him; an ugly, burning rage that was tearing him inside out. a blazing rage that he built against himself. he was hyperaware of his bad habit of scrutinizing others, and he's trying to work it out, now more than ever.

as you exited your work place, you could spot karasu's figure in the distance. perhaps it was your exhaustion after a long day, or the hazy november air clouding your view, but you couldn't help but submit to the pull of curiousity. cautious, you took a step. and another. and then another until you could see his face excruciatingly clear.

eyebags decorated his face, his pursed lips were tucked beneath the warmth of his scarf, and his physique was slumped. you stand halted just a couple feet away, his deep blue eyes boring into yours. karasu leans off his car and takes slow and steady steps in your direction.

you clear your throat seeing him stride your way. "what brings you here, karasu?" his eyes widen just the smallest amount, his step faltering the slightest at the mention of his family name. it's not very noticeable to the public's eye, but to you—who knows him like the back of your hand—it was clear. it was a sign of karasu's image falling apart at your feet.

"i came to see ya," he says casually. except none of this is casual. him showing up at your work place the exact minute he knew you were leaving wasn't casual. him appearing to pick you up like it was routine was not casual.

you blink at him, confusion written all over your face. "why?" slips past your trembling lips.

"because i miss you. i miss ya in my bed, snugglin' in my arms, in my life. i miss everything about life when i had ya." karasu is straightforward, enunciating every word with a breath of confidence. his eyes hold a cool fire that feels like it'll burn you if you kept staring.

you bite in your lip in contemplation. "i'm not so sure about us anymore," you admit in a mutter. "i don't know if it's possible for an us." his face twists in agony.

hearing this shatters karasu's heart and the confidence he had going into this. for a moment, he considers leaving; he knows more than anyone that he wasn't even close to your league, so why should he keep pestering you? but then he's reminded of his brightening love for you—the flame that can't be doused no matter the amount of water.

"i admit that the insults i hurl at people are nothing more than a cover. i know better than anyone that i'm nothing but just a man. i'm nothin' special, but you make me feel like i am. you remind me that i have the potential to be the man i claim to be. i want to turn that into a reality, darlin'. i can promise ya i'll work harder than anyone to become a version of me that you can be proud of."

karasu can only hope that you felt the plea and begs within his message. the plea to end his torment; to take him back. he'd willingly give up football if it meant he could spend every moment—waking and unconscious—with you.

"i'm an insecure, flawed man, and you... yer everything. i'm sorry you had to witness the things i said, the things i made others feel. i'm incredibly sorry for planting doubt in yer mind; that i would ever treat you the same. because i wouldn't—i couldn't."

you peer up at karasu through your lashes, your breaths quiet, and your heart heavy. your heart longs for him, but your brain is uncertain.

at your deafening silence, karasu adds, "there's nothin' i can do right at this moment to prove what i'm sayin', but i want—need you to believe the very fact that i'm so far gone fer ya. i'm so damn in love with you, you can ask me to jump and i'll ask how high. nothin' in this world can rip me apart from ya, sweetheart."

the heat in his eyes burn brighter, and with that last statement, it burns down your walls. "okay. i'm willing to try again, but if you go back on your word, it's over for good."

"i know, darlin'. i'm grateful yer even considering this." karasu sighs a breath of relief, wasting no time nor movement to close the space between the two of you. his arms wrap around you so tight, one would think you'd disappear if he'd let go.

"i'm driving though," you declare, your voice muffled through his sweater.

"why's that, darlin'?"

"you reek of alcohol, tabito." he huffs a chuckle, handing you the keys after parting.

end notes. ꨄ︎ i'm happy with the way this fic ended, but i'm also so relieved it's finished. dare i say good riddance. if u breathe hard enough, u might catch some dust particles flying off from how long this has been rotting in my drafts

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[goorgeousz]

lacy dreams | aaron hotchner

after hours au

lacy dreams | aaron hotchner

after hours au

18+ MDNI

pairing: aaron hotchner x profiler!female!reader

summary: hotch had been managing to do just fine in suppressing his desire for you, until he caught a glimpse of your lacy underwear peeking over your jeans.

content/tw: perv!hotch, masturbation (male), dirty thoughts, wet dreams, reader has the ass and tanned skin (I try my best not to describe the reader's physics but I just had to be a little self-indulgent on this one, sorry…) 

word count: 2.5k

a/n: again, I attempted to focus on the steamy part of this but I got too invested on the build-up. I liked this one more than I thought, hope you guys do it too <3

my requests are opened, for this series or not!

just a heads up, this series is a slow burn so it will take a while for them to be together. I'm focusing more on the build up, their relationship and the construction of it! so if you want to have requests involving any of that, I'll be happy to write it! I have at least ten drafts in the making for this series, I'm super excited!

after hours masterlist

main masterlist

Between dealing with serial killers, terrorists and, maybe the hardest, FBI bureaucracy, Hotch almost didn’t have time to think about you.

Key word: almost.

The unit chief of the behaviour analysis unit. Hotch deserved that title, he knew it. He was perfect for it. Not everyone is able to fully commit to the job. To lock their feelings into a tiny little black box and keep it hidden. To be entirely selfless, to give themselves – their soul, mind and heart – to the job. To abdicate free time, good rest, personal relationships. No one understands what it takes to be the B.A.U. unit chief. 

Unless, of course, THE B.A.U. unit chief.

No one in their right minds would ever doubt Hotch was perfect for it.

He was kind, respectful, smart, attentive, giving, centrate and ready to give it all for the job. The things he’d gone through… it wasn’t for the weak. But he wasn’t. So he took it. Silently, proudly and steadily. Like a knight, a fighter.

But Hotch was also a man. He ate, he drank, he slept. He had a soul, a heart, a brain. And he had memories. Good memories. Precise, even. And despite being incredibly professional, he still remembered.

Every. Thing.

It was a blessing and a curse.

Every time you stretched, your shirt slightly rose up, showing the skin of your stomach, and he remembered how he licked and kissed that very same part. Or when you laid on your side on the jet, he remembered how he fucked you at that very same position the morning after your night together – and before your first day at the B.A.U. Or whenever you get a papercut because you went through your files too eagerly, and you let out the tiniest, most delicate and breathless sound, and he has to fight every cell on his body not to lean closer and beg you to say it again.

Point is: he remembered.

It wasn’t like he had an eidetic memory – poor Spencer – or anything, but it was hard not to replay that night in his head from time to time. Whenever he had time for it. Or whenever images of you invaded his thoughts, uninvited and demanding. Ruining him, piece by piece.

He didn’t let it show, though. It was harder at first, when you and him were still on thin ice. Poking the water with the tip of your feet to see if it was safe enough to dive in. Not knowing each other's boundaries, wanting, needs. Only one thing for certain: you wouldn’t let that get between your job. Surprisingly, it worked just fine.

You were an amazing addiction to the team, and he was proud to see how good of an agent you turned out to be. Your relationship was strictly professional – unless the filthy thoughts inside his head, but those didn’t count –, even the team started laying off of you two.

Hotch, ever the profiler, noticed how they whispered around, throwing glances at each other and winking here and there. He knew they wondered. He also knew neither of you would give it to them. So they waited. And waited. And when nothing happened, they waited a little more. He was a little smug to see their frustrations, honestly. He beat those odds, surprisingly – again, how he felt about you didn’t count. And eventually, thankfully, they laid off of you. Maybe they gave up, accepted defeat. Giving up didn't fit their profile, but well, he’ll take it!

He was good at suppressing his emotions. A professional, if you will. He even managed to look at you in the eyes with a straight face and discuss about disposal of bodies while thinking about bending you over and fucking you right on the top of the table you were tapping your sharp nails against.

It was a whole other job to contain his thoughts when he was home – whatever he did in the privacy of his own bedroom was his business only. But for now, he was handling just fine.

In some ways you helped him. Despite whatever went through your mind, you never gave him the satisfaction of a reaction. Not even a blush, a stutter, a lingering touch… Nothing. Ever. Every fantasy he had with you was solely the work of his bright and evil mind.

So, long story short, Hotch was kind of a pervert.

Secretly.

With all that said, there was one time Hotch absolutely lost it.

At least as much as someone like Hotch could lose it.

It was a Tuesday morning. The team sat together after a morning briefing, still chatting around. He was deep in conversation with Spencer when he heard Morgan’s teasing.

“So, where is it?” 

You frowned “Where what is?”

Emily and Morgan exchanged a smile “You’re always wearing a red item somewhere” she explained “Today you’re all in charcoal grey.” 

Hotch had noticed it, obviously. From the moment you walked in, a quick inspection of you later and he noticed it. He thought you’d just forgotten it. So much for his profiling skills. He wouldn’t dare to point it out, though. He had boundaries. 

You laughed “You guys take the job that seriously, huh?” 

“They even bet on you” JJ snickered, chuckling. You gasped, faking surprise.

“I’m winning.” Garcia sing-song it “Maybe you should rethink their profiling skills, sir.” she told Hotch, in a mock serious tone.

“Wow. I’ll have to step up my game, then.”

“Come on, doll.” Morgan nudges your hand with the tip of his pen “Where’s the red? Ten dollars at stake today.” you laughed loudly, leaning closer to him.

“Trust me, the money would be the smallest of your winnings if you knew where the red is.” you whispered, loud enough for the whole team to hear.

JJ barked a laugh, walking past you to go grab herself a coffee and giving you a high-five in the process.

Hotch watched it all unfold without a word. He even managed to change the subject after that rather smoothly. No one would have guessed what was going through his mind while he explained statistics and budgets. He didn’t blush, didn’t stutter, didn’t let his eyes wander.

He was a gentleman, afterall.

But when the meeting ended, all the team standing and heading out the door all together, you were right in front of him.

He stayed a few steps back behind you, more to his own safety than to yours. So he witnessed what happened in slow motion — at least that’s how his mind played it.

You were laughing at something Derek said, smacking his shoulder and letting your hair clip fall in the process. With your quick instincts and — good god — your easy flexibility, you bent over to pick it up.

And that’s when it happened.

He wasn’t looking, you see. Blame it on his academy years, his school-soccer years even. His unit chief abilities™, if you will.

It was just like in the field, his senses had to be turned to a maximum to see any possible threats. And that for sure was a hell of a threat.

As you bent over, knees bending just slightly, the rem of your button-up rose up. Simultaneously, the waistband of your pants slide down an inch, to cover the — voluptuous and perfectly round, bless you — curve of your ass.

Then, he saw it. The flash of red blinding his sight like in a lighthouse. Exactly like a gun pointed at him in his peripheral vision, his eye darted to the flash of red in order to eliminate the danger. He was trained for this, he couldn’t just turn off his spider-senses federal-agent-senses.

Peeking over your pants there was a thin, lacy and beautiful red underwear. The exact same kind you wore that night. Not the same, no.

Again, not an eidetic memory – god bless reid – but no matter how hard he tried – not that hard, really – to forget, he couldn’t. His stubborn mind insisted on replaying the view of your bare ass, covered only in those dark-red lacy panties, pushing back against his very expensive suit pants, teasing his hard on still very much covered. A sinful view, your toned body displayed for him across your wooden dining table like a four-course meal. Better than that, honestly.

Back to the subject, the colours were different. This one was a brighter shade of red, its colour very distinguishing from the sober grey of your clothes. So beautiful, calling for him. Begging for him, really. It was a siren’s song, enchanting him and luring his eyes into you. Deadly, dangerous.

As fast as it came, it was gone. You stood back up with an ease that made his backbone jealous. Unfortunately, not fast enough for the sight not to be engraved in his brain.

He stopped mid track, his eyes widening slightly. Thankfully, he was the last one behind, so no one could see his reaction. Not-so-thankfully, you turned around at him, a polite but cheerful expression on your face, the remains of your laughter still on your face.

“Hotch, the file of that Minnesota case I was working on is already on your desk. I left it there before the meeting, forgot to tell you.” the easy smile you had on your face faltered for just a second, confused by the stunned look on his face.

He quickly covered it up, building his walls back up in a record-deserving speed “No problem, thank you.”.

You just nodded, seeing he walk away in that always-hurried way of his before you could manage to ask him what’s wrong.

And just like that, his facade was ruined – it wasn’t really. No one bat an eye at him or his reaction, but he did try to fool himself and pretend he didn’t care. And that facade was, in fact, ruined.

A four-months, twenty three days – the exact time you’ve been on the team – streak of being reactionless vanished with a quick glimpse of your underwear.

How pathetic of him.

How twelve-year-old-boy-just-discovered-women's-breast kind of pathetic of him.

It wasn’t just about how his heartbeat quickened at the sight. Just how the blood rushed to his veins. Just how his eyes widened and his mouth slightly parted. Just how his breath hitched loudly enough that if someone were behind him, they would’ve noticed it.

It was all that, added to the fact that he had to basically lock himself in his office all day. Two bathroom breaks. One coffee break. One lunch break. All of them combined, in order to reduce his breaks at a minimum.

He got work done, somehow. It took him the entire work-day for him to finish what would’ve taken him a single morning? Yes. But it got done, anyway.

His thoughts mid reports wandered towards you. Did you do it on purpose? Of course not, he was that self-assured. But you were a tease, so it was very on character for you. But you seemed so innocent, telling him about your reports. Again, that never stopped you from making the dirtiest jokes he ever heard. Was it all a punishment? Some destiny cruel joke on him? A way for the universe to tell him he doesn’t have control of anything? It seemed like all the options above.

The day passed in a rush, humiliating so.

Deciding – after a lot of guilt and self-deprecating thoughts – he wasn’t being any useful for the country and it was best for him to rest and come back renewed – read free of dirty thoughts of you – the next day, he went home.

His ride home was silent, he didn’t even turn on the radio. Or did he? It didn’t even register. It was a win how he managed to get home safe without causing any accidents in the process.

He ate a quick dinner, an improvised sandwich of everything he could find in his fridge. And finally had the – oh so deserved and waited – glass of scotch. And a second one. And a third one.

After finally having his gain back the control of his own thoughts, because of the shameful amount of work he’d done, he decided to ignore the very prominent and aching volume on his pants. Yes he was that controlling.

So, he took a freezing shower and went back to bed without a single thought of you.

Yes, he was proud of himself.

No, it didn’t last.

It was 02:17 in the morning when he woke up from the most wonderful yet terrible dream of his life, with an aching boner and a stain of cum in his underwear. How lovely.

He opened his eyes and stood there, his chest rising and falling while he tried to steady his breaths. He came to the realization that whatever happened was just a dream. A very wet dream.

You haven’t actually showed up at his house, still in your work clothes. You haven’t really thrown yourself in his arms, kissing him so hungrily he almost fell down. You haven’t really taken your clothes off, your eyes locked in his while you stripped down until you were only in those red lacy panties. You haven’t really laid down on his bed, your legs stretched and your hands touching your perky breasts. He haven’t really fucked you senselles, raw and stupid on his mattress – yes, that very same mattress he was currently laid on – until you both came at the same time while you moaned his name over and over. His first name.

He replayed the dream in his mind, groaning to himself when his hand unconsciously roamed to his shaft, gripping straight under his sweatpant.

It was no use to fight against it. He let himself have it.

Hotch squeezed himself, his cock sticky with barely wet and warm cum. He hummed, half in annoyment, half in satisfaction.

He stroked himself to the thought of you. His dream wasn’t real. But the images of you, the sensation of his cock buried deep inside of you, his names on your lips like a mantra, like a spell. They were all real, all memories.

And he held on to them for dear life.

The feeling of his tight grip to your flesh. Your yelps, moans, hums, groans. Your dirty words, your dirty mind. Your velvety and hoarse voice. Your eyes – oh, your eyes. So beautiful, slightly open, deeply darked and overly glossed. The tear of pleasure that fell after you came for the third time, its salty taste on his tongue when he licked it. Your mouth. Full, glossy and tasteful. Your tanned and smooth skin, little red sports he proudly bruised.

He quickened his movements, his eyes closed shut and images of you behind his eyelids. He memorized all of you. And with the sound of his own heartbeat and the memory of your voice hoarsely begging his name, he came again, letting out a long and dragged groan.

He stayed there for a while, waiting for his breath to get back to normal and his heartbeat to slow down.

Just for a moment he let himself be, not drowning it sorry and guilt. Just enjoying the relief coursing through his body.

But like almost everything in life, the moment passed.

Almost.

[auggieblogs]

freckle kisses ֶָ֢ | MV1

Max Verstappen x fem! reader

Author's note: Hello, lovelies!!! I hope everyone is doing good. This fic has been in my drafts for a while now and I finally had the motivation to edit it today. The Max brainrot is very real, I cannot stop thinking about his little freckle. He is so beautiful🥹. Anyways, I hope you all like this piece. Happy reading<3

ALSO fun fact, I have a freckle that's right below my lower lip jshshdjdhs I don't know I think it's a sign!!! (im delusional)

―୨୧⋆ ˚masterlist

Max was used to the routine. Before the haze of sleep fully left him every morning, he would feel the soft, warm press of her lips against the tiny freckle on his upper lip. It was her unique ritual, a habit she had never skipped, and he had come to adore.

As the sun streamed through the blinds of their bedroom, she stirred beside him, her eyes fluttering open. Without missing a beat, she leaned over and planted a gentle kiss on his freckle. Max smiled, his heart swelling with love.

"Morning, love," he murmured, his voice still heavy with sleep.

"Morning, Maxie," she replied, her voice light and cheerful.

Every day followed this pattern. Whether Max was leaving for a race, taking a break between practice sessions, or they were about to make love, her lips always found that freckle. It was her little act of love, and Max never questioned it. He cherished it

One lazy Sunday afternoon, they were lounging in their living room, a movie playing in the background. She lay on his chest, feeling his steady heartbeat. Max absentmindedly played with her hair, occasionally pressing soft kisses to her forehead. She sighed contentedly, snuggling closer.

Max felt her shift slightly, and there it was again. Her lips met his freckle in a gentle kiss before trailing a line of kisses up to his lips. "I love you," she mumbled softly against his skin.

"I love you too," Max replied, pressing a soft kiss to her lips.

He paused momentarily, a curious look crossing his face, "Why do you always kiss my freckle?"

She looked up at him with a shy smile, her cheeks turning a light shade of pink. "It's silly," she said.

Max tilted her chin up gently, his eyes searching hers. "It’s not stupid if it’s something you do," he said softly. "Tell me, please."

She took a deep breath before explaining, "Well, my mom used to tell me that freckles or moles are spots where lovers used to kiss you in past lives. She said they’re like beauty marks, little reminders of love."

Max's expression softened, a tender smile spreading across his face. "That's beautiful," he said, his voice filled with genuine emotion.

She laughed softly, the sound like music to his ears. "I told you it was silly."

"It's not silly," Max replied, taking her hand in his and bringing it to his lips. He kissed her knuckles gently, his eyes never leaving hers. "It's one of the sweetest things I've ever heard. And I love you for it."

Her heart swelled with love as she looked at him, feeling incredibly lucky to have someone like Max in her life. "I love you too," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

He pulled her closer, wrapping his arms around her and holding her tight. They stayed like that for a while, wrapped up in each other’s warmth, the movie long forgotten.

Max chuckled softly, breaking the comfortable silence. "So, every time you kiss that freckle, it’s like you’re saying hello to my past lovers?" he teased.

She laughed, playfully swatting his chest. "Or maybe it’s just my way of marking my territory," she quipped back.

Max laughed, the sound rich and joyful. "Well, consider it marked," he said, leaning down to capture her lips in a loving kiss.

[batboyblog]

This year’s Trans Day of Visibility hits differently than in years past. This is a frightening time for trans people. I know many of you are scared. Truthfully, I am, too.

Since day one of this administration, they have pursued a crusade of cruelty against trans people – hurting us for the sake of hurting us. They’re requiring our forced outing on several identity documents. They’re summarily firing qualified federal workers who are disproportionately LGBTQ, Black, women, and veterans. They’re trying to purge patriotic transgender servicemembers. They’re trying to insert government between patients, parents, and providers to stop medically necessary care and support. They’re targeting students for bullying and invasive inspections. And they’re trying to make it harder for us to participate in public life by making it difficult and dangerous to use necessary facilities.

The stakes couldn’t be higher and, because of that, we need allies now more than ever before. We’re understandably worried and vigilant for any evidence that our defenders won’t be there when we need them. After a lifetime of pushing progress, from passing nondiscrimination protections in Delaware to helping to draft the Equality Act federally, I won’t stop fighting for the dignity of every person I represent, including my trans constituents. I've been trying to fight hard and smart since taking office in January. I won’t always be perfect. But from joining my trans constituents at rallies in Delaware to joining my colleagues in DC in opposition to this administration’s anti-equality actions, it’s going to take all of us speaking out publicly and speaking with people one-on-one to meet this moment.

Those conversations, sometimes uncomfortable, can lead to critical solidarity precisely when we need it most. In this Congress, nearly every House Democrat voted against the only anti-trans bill that has come before us – laying the foundation for the Senate Democrats to block its passage. I’m grateful for the allyship of my colleagues.

We must remain firm in our values and our vision in this moment – and, just as importantly, we should never give up on our ability to win over more people to more fully see our humanity and support our rights. It’s not always fair work, and it’s certainly not always easy work, but through the power of our proximity we can still open the hearts and change the minds of imperfect or unlikely allies.

It has been through the power of our proximity that we find our superpower. We exist in families and communities across every region and race, across every income and ideology. We are organic changemakers when we live lives of joy, humor, brilliance, and kindness in view of — and for some of us, in difficult conversation with — people who have more to learn. And while we won’t win everyone over, when we both build community among ourselves and forge a coalition beyond us, no amount of progress is impossible.

That’s what we celebrate on this Trans Day of Visibility. Our visibility not only has the ability to inspire one another. It also has the capacity to push past the caricatures to invite more people in, to grow the tent of allies, to defeat the hateful attacks, and to lay the foundation for freedom and safety for trans people in every corner of our country and every part of our globe.

-Congresswoman Sarah McBride Democrat, Delaware 3/31/2025

[fear-less]

₊˚⊹˚ 𐙚 she ignored my letter!

pairing: james potter x f!reader

➥ In which, James writes you a love letter and hides it into your luggage carrying your clothes, not knowing he put it in a pocket you never open.

Warnings: angst, fluff, james pov, this inspired by awae (aka the best show ever)

a/n: heyyy... i had sm fun writing this, can't wait to write the rest of this bc i literally LOVE anne with an e and this is inspired by it ofc!!!! anyways, im barely writing now..smh, its cause im reading manacled and its literally heart breaking... im also editing on ae and its so hard so im slowly learning😭 but i want to finish this mini series by next week!!

series masterlist ! - divider creds: i-mmaculatus & dollywons

James had liked you for a while now. He wasn’t quite sure when it started—maybe it was the way you laughed at his jokes, always the loudest in the room. Or perhaps it was when he’d catch you staring at him, your gaze lingering just a bit too long, thinking he was too distracted to notice.

With the Christmas holidays fast approaching, James knew he had to make a move. He had to let you know how he felt. If you didn’t feel the same, maybe the time apart over the holiday would make it less awkward. But he couldn’t let another term slip by in silence.

Knowing your love for all things old-fashioned, James decided there was no better way to confess his feelings than through a handwritten letter. It felt personal, genuine—something you’d appreciate. But writing it turned out to be harder than he imagined.

He’d written and discarded at least a dozen drafts, each one crumpled and tossed aside in frustration. Finally, after half an hour of agonizing over the perfect words, he settled on this version. It was short, straightforward, and sincere:

Dear, (Y/N)

I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a complete idiot. I’ve tried a hundred times, and every single attempt has been worse than the last. So here’s the truth—I’m hopelessly in love with you.

You’ve probably guessed I’m not great at being subtle. But what I’ve never been able to say outright is how much you mean to me. The way you laugh, the way your nose scrunches when you’re concentrating—Merlin, you make it impossible to focus on anything else. I want you to know that you’ve made me braver, happier, better. If you don’t feel the same, that’s okay—I just needed to get this off my chest.

Yours, James

He sighed deeply, folding the letter carefully before slipping it into an envelope. Your name was written on the front in his slightly shaky handwriting. Taking a steadying breath, he tucked it into the inside pocket of his robes. He’d leave it somewhere you’d find it tomorrow, just before you both left for the holidays.

As he lay awake that night, James tried to figure out the best way to deliver the letter. Should he hand it to you directly? No, that was too nerve-wracking—he’d probably end up babbling like an idiot. Maybe he could slip it into your bag and avoid the risk of witnessing your reaction.

The morning was crisp, the kind of cold that painted your cheeks red and sent little clouds of breath swirling in the air. On the platform, the train sat waiting, puffing out plumes of steam that mingled with the frosty air. It was alive with the sound of students saying goodbye and dragging their luggage over the cobblestones.

James walked beside you, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He was doing his best to appear casual, though every step he took felt heavier with the weight of the letter in his robe.

“Let me take that for you,” he blurted suddenly, nodding toward your luggage.

You blinked, surprised by the offer, but your lips curved into a warm smile. “Oh, thanks, James. That’s really sweet of you.”

He shrugged, trying to play it cool, but his ears turned a telltale shade of pink at your words. “What kind of bloke would I be if I didn’t help you out?” he mumbled, his voice tinged with nervous humor.

The two of you chatted as you strolled toward the train. You told him about your plans for the holidays—how you were excited to see your family, how your mum always made far too much food, and how you couldn’t wait to decorate the tree. James listened intently, nodding and laughing at all the right moments, even as his mind raced ahead to the task at hand.

Then, his opportunity came.

You turned away for a brief moment, waving at one of your friends across the platform. James acted quickly, pulling the envelope from his pocket and slipping it into the outermost compartment of your bag. His fingers brushed the fabric for only a second, but it felt like an eternity.

His heart was hammering so loudly he was certain it could be heard over the clamor of the platform. He straightened up just as you turned back to him, completely oblivious to what had just transpired.

“Thanks again for carrying that,” you said with a smile, your eyes meeting his.

James gave a small, lopsided grin and shifted your bag on his shoulder. “Anytime,” he replied, his voice steady despite the storm of nerves swirling inside him.

As the train’s whistle blew, signaling it was time to board, James knew there was no turning back now. All he could do was wait—and hope that when you found the letter, you’d read it and understand the words that had taken him so long to say.

It had been days since you’d left for the holidays, and James still hadn’t heard from you. Each passing day only worsened the sinking feeling in his chest.

Did you not feel the same? Did you hate him for ruining the friendship? Or worse, were you so disgusted by his confession that you couldn’t even bear to send him a letter saying so?

By Christmas morning, the knot of worry in James’s stomach had become unbearable. He’d stopped pacing and pretending not to care. He spent the early hours staring at the window, waiting for an owl that seemed as though it would never come.

But then, just as the first rays of sunlight streamed through his frosted window, he saw it—a familiar owl perched outside, clutching a small envelope in its talons. His heart leapt with a desperate flicker of hope. Maybe you’d only just found the letter. Maybe you’d taken your time because you wanted to write something perfect.

James hurried to open the window, shivering as the cold air rushed in. The owl extended its leg, allowing him to untie the letter. “Thanks, mate,” James murmured, absently offering the owl a treat before it flew off into the winter sky.

His fingers trembled as he opened the envelope, eager to see your handwriting. But his heart sank the moment he read the first line.

“Happy Christmas, James!”

No mention of his letter. No response to his confession. Just a short, cheerful note wishing him a wonderful holiday and apologizing for not writing sooner. You explained that things had been hectic at home and promised to catch up with him soon.

James felt his chest tighten, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. The hope he’d been clinging to was slipping through his fingers.

You’d ignored his letter.

You’d chosen to act as though he’d never written it at all, as if he’d never poured his heart out on that piece of parchment.

James scoffed, his grip on the letter tightening. Fine, he thought bitterly. If you were going to pretend his confession didn’t exist, he could do the same.

He shoved the letter onto his desk, glaring at it as if it were the source of his frustration. Deep down, though, he knew the truth: he didn’t want to ignore you. He wanted to write back, to ask if you’d found the letter, to make sure you weren’t upset with him.

But pride was a stubborn thing, and James Potter wasn’t about to let his vulnerability show again—not now.

As the snow fell softly outside his window, James sat in silence, staring at the letter and wondering if he’d made a mistake by ever writing to you in the first place.

When it was time to return to Hogwarts, James made no effort to find you. Normally, he’d scan the platform, pretending it was a coincidence whenever his eyes landed on you. This time, he couldn’t bring himself to look.

He saw you anyway, just briefly—standing near your family, your face lit up with that familiar smile. His heart leaped in his chest, and his legs almost betrayed him, ready to stride over and say something, anything. But he stopped himself.

Instead, James turned sharply, mumbling a quick goodbye to his parents before heading onto the train. He didn’t want to see you—not now.

The walk through the train felt heavier than usual. He knew exactly where his friends would be—the same compartment they’d claimed since their first year—but it felt like an eternity to get there. When he finally slid open the door, the familiar faces of Sirius, Remus, and Peter greeted him.

“Oi, Prongs!” Sirius called cheerfully, but his grin faltered when James slumped onto the seat next to Peter with a loud huff.

James leaned his head back against the wall, closing his eyes. He could feel Sirius’s gaze on him, curious and probing.

“What’s got your wand in a knot?” Sirius asked, unable to resist.

“Don’t.” James’s voice was sharp, firm. It was rare for him to be in a foul mood, let alone snappish.

Sirius raised his hands in mock surrender. “Alright, alright. I won’t say a word.”

The tension in the compartment was palpable. The train rattled on, and the usual chatter of the four friends was noticeably absent. Sirius kept stealing glances at James, who sat brooding, arms crossed. Peter fidgeted nervously, while Remus flipped through a book, clearly uncomfortable with the silence.

Finally, about an hour into the ride, James broke.

“She ignored my letter.” His voice was low, bitter, but it shattered the quiet like a hex.

The others exchanged looks before Peter spoke hesitantly. “She really ignored it?”

“Yes, Peter,” James snapped, his tone sharp enough to make Peter flinch. Realizing what he’d done, James sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine,” Peter mumbled, avoiding eye contact.

“Maybe she didn’t see it,” Remus offered, his tone calm and rational. “What if it got lost in her luggage? Or someone else found it and hid it? Maybe you gave her another piece of parchment? There’s always a chance—”

“Moony, no.” James cut him off, his voice strained. “I double-checked. It was the right letter, in the right spot. And who doesn’t check their trunk full of clothes over the holiday?”

“Maybe she doesn’t,” Sirius said with a shrug, trying to lighten the mood. “You know, women can be unpredictable. Maybe she’s got a secret stash for random letters in her trunk.”

“No, she checks,” James said with certainty. “I’ve slipped plenty of things into her luggage before, and she’s always found them. She just doesn’t fancy me back.” His voice cracked slightly at the end, but he forced a small, bitter smile. “And it’s fine. I’ll get over it. I always do, right?”

The compartment fell silent again, the weight of James’s words sinking in.

Sirius leaned forward, a flicker of frustration in his eyes. “It’s not fine, James. If she didn’t fancy you back, that’s one thing. But ignoring you? That’s—”

“Don’t,” James interrupted quietly, his gaze fixed on the floor. “Don’t make it worse, Padfoot.”

Sirius bit back a retort and leaned back in his seat, muttering under his breath.

The rest of the ride passed more comfortably, but the shadow of James’s disappointment lingered. His friends cracked jokes and told stories, trying to lift his spirits, but even when he laughed, it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Deep down, James wondered if he’d ever stop wishing that you’d read his letter and felt the same way.

Hours later, everyone had gathered in the Great Hall. The enchanted ceiling reflected the dusky evening sky, and the buzz of students catching up after the holiday filled the room. Normally, James would sit with Sirius to his left, you to his right, and Remus and Peter across from him. It was a familiar arrangement, one you’d fallen into without question.

But tonight, James broke the routine.

He subtly nudged Peter into the spot on his right before sitting down, leaving the space where you’d usually sit conspicuously empty.

You walked in a moment later, scanning the Gryffindor table until you spotted your usual group. But when you approached, your steps faltered. Peter sat where you always did, looking apologetic but saying nothing.

Your eyes darted to James, silently questioning him, but he avoided your gaze, his attention fixed stubbornly on his plate.

Confused, you looked to Remus for an explanation. Out of all the Marauders, he was the one you trusted most to give you a straight answer. But Remus only shrugged, his expression carefully neutral, though the twitch at the corner of his mouth hinted at discomfort.

You scoffed, your chest tightening. First, James ignored you all through the holiday, and now he didn’t even want to sit near you? Fine. If he wanted to sulk like a child, you weren’t going to beg for his attention.

Without another word, you turned on your heel and walked further down the table, sliding into a seat beside your other group of friends. You forced yourself to laugh at their jokes and join in their chatter, but your mind kept wandering back to James.

At the Gryffindor table, James’s eyes flicked toward you more often than he’d admit. Every time he saw you laughing with your friends, his stomach twisted.

“Why is she acting like I’m the one in the wrong?” James muttered under his breath, jabbing at a piece of roast potato with his fork.

“Maybe because you’re acting like a prat?” Sirius replied, his tone laced with amusement as he leaned closer.

James shot him a glare.

“Look, Prongs,” Sirius continued, dropping the teasing. “She doesn’t know what’s going on. You didn’t even give her a chance to explain, and now you’re sulking like a first-year who lost his chocolate frog cards.”

“Explain what? She ignored my letter, Padfoot. What’s there to explain?” James hissed, though his tone lacked its usual conviction.

Remus sighed, setting down his goblet. “Did it ever cross your mind that maybe she doesn’t even know what letter you’re talking about?”

James froze, his fork hovering mid-air.

“Just talk to her, mate,” Sirius said, giving James a nudge. “Or don’t. But if you keep this up, you’re only making it worse—for both of you.”

James huffed, slumping back in his seat. The truth was, he didn’t know if he had it in him to face you just yet.

From across the hall, you caught the way James’s shoulders sagged, and for a brief moment, you considered walking over. But pride held you in place. If James wanted to act like this, fine. Two could play that game.

You and James hadn’t spoken in what felt like weeks. The once effortless connection you shared had been replaced with an awkward silence that weighed heavily on you. It wasn’t just James—it felt like the whole group of Marauders had grown distant, their usual antics and inside jokes missing their spark when you were around.

You couldn’t shake the feeling that you’d done something to upset him. But what? You racked your brain for answers, replaying every interaction from the past few months. James had always been one of your closest friends—why was he acting so strange?

Charms class was the hardest part of it all. You always sat beside James, sharing notes, exchanging whispers, and stifling laughs when Professor Flitwick wasn’t looking. Now, you sat in the same spot, the chair next to you glaringly empty.

You tried to focus on the professor’s instructions, but your thoughts were louder than his voice. Scribbling aimlessly in your notebook, you hardly noticed when someone approached your desk.

“Are you alright?”

Startled, you looked up to see a boy with a blue-and-bronze tie standing beside you. His face was vaguely familiar—you’d seen him around in class but had never spoken to him.

“Yeah—yes, I’m fine,” you stammered, blinking in confusion. Why was he talking to you?

He gave a polite, slightly amused smile. “Well, can you move your stuff? I’m sitting here now. We’re partners for the project.”

“Oh!” Heat rose to your cheeks as you hurriedly shoved your books to one side. “Sorry about that. I didn’t realize.”

“No worries,” he said, settling into the chair beside you. “I figured you weren’t paying attention—no offense. But I was, so I’ll explain what Professor Flitwick said.”

You managed a small smile, relieved by his casual tone. “Thanks. That’s… helpful.”

While he began outlining the project details, your focus wavered, glancing at James out of the corner of your eye. He was across the room, seated next to a loud and enthusiastic partner who seemed to be trying desperately to get his attention. But James wasn’t listening.

His gaze was fixed on you.

There was a flicker of something in his expression—jealousy, maybe? Regret? Whatever it was, it made your stomach twist.

You quickly turned your attention back to your new partner, nodding along to his explanation, even if you weren’t entirely listening. You felt James’s eyes on you the entire time, but you refused to look back.

Across the room, James’s jaw clenched. His partner waved a hand in front of his face, snapping him out of his trance.

“Oi, Potter! Are you even listening?”

“Huh? Yeah, sure,” James muttered, though his eyes drifted back to you moments later.

He hated this—seeing someone else sitting beside you, making you smile when that used to be his seat, his job. But he didn’t know how to fix it. The letter. The silence. The way he’d avoided you. It all felt too big now, too messy to undo.

Still, James couldn’t stop watching you, his heart sinking further with every laugh you shared with your new partner.

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[mercurial-chuckles]

Taut Thursday Thought

Pairing: Steve x F!Reader x Bucky | Stucky x F!Reader Warnings: Overloaded fluff | Language | Allusions to naughty times | Poly relationship | Two hot specimen | Bucky kissing | Unedited I think that's all. Lemme know if I'm missing anything. A/N: This Thought has been sitting in my drafts for so long. It’s a small, fluffy piece that can be enjoyed on its own or as the aftermath of Captain, Sgt. Grumpy, & their Doll! Note: Do not Steal, Copy or Plagiarize any part of my work! GIF credits to the OPs! Divider credits to @buck-star Thank you :) Check out my other works: Masterlist

♡ Weeklong Thingamajig ♡

Indulge Away!

You love them.

You do.

You'd lay down your life for them in a heartbeat. You'd kill for them, too.

But right now, you were this close to throttling them both because your two men, your stubborn, clingy supersoldiers, are being utterly insufferable little shits.

Ever since that fateful mission briefing two days ago, where Steve benched Bucky for that hydra mission, you were forced into the role of mediator, therapist, and occasionally referee.

You hardly ever minded their arguments.

Being stubborn was part of their inherent charm. And if you were being entirely honest, the sight of two hot, gorgeous-looking Adonis bickering like kids was utterly cute and extremely delicious.

And, most often than not, it ended up with you stripped and fucked within an inch of your life, which you never minded, of course. Welcomed even.

But right now, you were so done, watching your two days off work nearly slip away, marred by Bucky's passive aggressiveness and Steve's sassiness. They were really dragging this out. Bucky was really dragging this out.

Desperate for some alone time, you concocted what should have been a neat plan, grocery shopping. Also, you figured if they spent some time alone they would either talk and clear it out or fuck it out.

"I'm just gonna go to the store and grab some stuff," you said casually, already halfway out the door.

Who in their right mind would volunteer for that? Well, THEM.

Steve walked to the door. "Okay," he said, grabbing his jacket and that awful excuse of a disguise, the baseball cap, that fooled no one except him.

Before you could protest, Bucky vaulted over the couch, grabbed his leather jacket, and smirked. "I'm coming." He declared.

"No, really, it's fine," you insisted, your voice as calm as you could muster. "I'll be back in a jiff. No big deal."

But it was fucking pointless.

There was one impending issue, the cashier gave you heart-eyes and creepy vibes the three times you went there alone, and your men wouldn't take it lightly if they got a whiff of it.

You hoped the cashier was smart enough not to pull off any stunt tonight. Your drama quota for the month was done.

Grocery shopping with two Avengers, who people fawned over, gathered unwarranted attention! So, you tried ditching them most of the time. Tried. When your stubborn men denied leaving you out of their sight, even for a second, you shifted to a nearby local store where not many people frequented.

Plus, the store had your favorite ice cream stocked all the time.

"You coming, doll?" Bucky called out, holding the door open for you. Steve already started the car.

Ugh! So much for some alone time.

~

It wasn't as bad as you had anticipated. There weren't too many shoppers, either.

Steve pushed the cart beside you while Bucky was a few feet behind, stopping occasionally to inspect items closely. Steve and Bucky shared looks every now and then.

It was adorable, really.

When you stopped at the pasta section, you spotted a few packs of gnocchi on the top shelf. Stretching up on your toes, you huffed in frustration as it remained just out of reach.

When you turned to ask Steve for help, he was leaning casually on the cart, clearly entertained, with a smirk tugging at his lips.

"You've got this," he encouraged, chuckling. "Put your ass into it. Yeah…just like that."

You shook your head, glaring daggers at him. "Shut up," you muttered, feeling flushed under his gaze.

Steve's grin widened, utterly unapologetic. "I'm just saying, it's good form." He gestured to your ass, wildly.

Irritated, you swatted at his bicep. He barely flinched, laughing harder now. Then, without a word, he stepped closer, boxed you in against the shelves, and effortlessly plucked a few packets of gnocchi from the top shelf.

"Beanstalk," you grumbled.

He leaned down, kissing your lips before setting the packets neatly into the cart.

Behind you, Bucky was still immersed in his sauce analysis, completely oblivious to the girl who had wandered up to him. She smiled brightly, clearly interested, and positioned herself a little too close. Bucky, oblivious, took a small step away instinctively, still studying the jar in his hand.

Steve leaned closer to you, pulling you gently against his broad frame.

"Oh, boy," he whispered.

You tugged him down to your level, whispering. "Shhhh! Be discrete, Captain."

"This should be fun," Steve muttered, glancing toward the scene. "Think I should record it?"

"Don't you dare," you warned, biting back a laugh.

Meanwhile, the girl had turned up the charm, outright flirting with Bucky.

Bucky blinked, finally noticing her intentions.

"Uh, I..." He mumbled, clearly uncomfortable. He tried to step aside, but she pressed on, slipping him a piece of paper. "Here's my number. You should call me."

Steve and you froze, exchanging wide-eyed glances as you both tried not to laugh. Steve was practically vibrating with barely contained glee.

"Steve look away," you whispered, lips twitching. "Oh, no, no, no. Did he see us?" Steve cleared his throat and pointed to some fascinating-looking dried noodles.

Bucky cast a desperate look your way, catching you and Steve pretending to be busy.

He pointed a finger at both of you, "Actually, those two..." He cut himself off, handing her the jar of sauce with a quick, "You should try this," before rushing over to you.

Then, without warning, Bucky grabbed Steve by the collar, yanked him down, and kissed him.

Full. On. Kiss.

It wasn't a peck, either; It was a no-room-for-interpretation, "this man is mine" kind of kiss. Steve's cap tumbled to the ground. Somewhere, an angel probably got its wings.

The girl gaped.

You gaped.

Steve moaned.

Bucky growled.

When Bucky finally pulled back, Steve looked dazed, and the girl bolted out of the aisle faster than you'd ever seen anyone move.

Bending down, you retrieved Steve's cap and handed it to him with a grin. "Well, that's one way to make out… work it out, I mean."

Steve blinked at you, cheeks pink. "Didn't see that coming."

"Neither did I," you said, giggling as you glanced at Bucky. "But hey, I think you just saved that girl a lifetime of rejection trauma by kissing Stevie."

Bucky crossed his arms, his lips still pink from the kiss. "What're you giggling about?"

"Oh, nothing," you teased, waving him off.

He narrowed his eyes and stepped closer. He cupped your cheek and kissed you, too, leaving you breathless.

When you finally broke away, befuddled, Steve was laughing, ushering the three of you out of the aisle. Bucky wrapped his metal arm around your shoulder while scrolling through his phone with the other hand.

"We should probably erase that footage," Steve muttered, gesturing toward the security cameras.

"Already on it, punk," Bucky snorted.

"Of course you are," You mumbled.

"Don't you roll your eyes at me," Bucky groaned, "You're gonna get it," planting a loud, exaggerated kiss on your cheek.

Meh!

It seemed like the shopping trip wasn't such a bad idea, but knowing how things might go once you got home, maybe you should consider extending your leave for another day.

There there! How was it? Feed me your thoughts, please!

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[seoktized]

nsfw mdni!

a/n: cheol rot is back guys.. this has been sittin’ in my drafts for a while n i wanted to try n finish it :> hope you enjoy <3 reblogs are appreciated

thinkin’ about sugardaddy husband!seungcheol who’ll spoil you with so many gifts !!

whether it’s designer clothes or jewelry, if he thinks you’ll like it, he’s getting it for you!

loves to take you on shopping sprees, carrying all your bags and watching with a smile as you excitedly walk into another store. he loves to see you happy.

now if you two were to step in a lingerie store, he gets a bit excited, knowing you guys’ll walk out with something he can ravish you in later.

seungcheol, who looks absolutely delicious, manspreading with his sleeves pulled up, is watching as you show him different sets. yes, he was hard but he had a good bit of self restraint. but when you stepped out with a gorgeous color that complemented your skin so well, all that restraint went out the window.

next thing you know, you’re being pushed back into the dressing room, his lips finding yours. he pushed the door closed and locked it. his large hands felt around your body before he pulled back to get a good look at you before diving back in, kissing your jaw and down your neck.

“mmph- cheol, baby not here!” you whispered. he groaned into your neck, not giving up on his ministrations.

“baby i really need you to ride me right now. you look so pretty in this set.” he said in between kisses, “wanna buy a hundred of ‘em so i can rip ‘em all off of you.”

he moved over to sit on the chair in the corner of the dressing room, pulling you along with him and onto his lap.

seungcheol placed you right over his thick bulge, groaning as you rolled your hips against him.

you quickly unbuttoned his pants (which looked like they were going to burst at the seam at how thick his cock AND his thighs were) he helped you a bit by ridding himself of his pants and his boxers, his thick hard cock springing out and slapping against his stomach.

you spat on your hand, coating his length a bit before moving your own underwear to the side and sinking down on him. you never got used to the delicious stretch he’d give you every time, soft broken moans leaving your mouth.

“can’t make too much noise, princess. fuck- don’t want anyone to hear how dirty you’re being.” he said through gritted teeth.

when you began to bounce on his cock, seungcheol threw his head back, trying not to moan loudly himself. his bottom lip caught between his teeth while he watched you make a mess on his cock. his hands that were on your thighs went to your ass, squeezing the flesh softly.

trying not to moan was impossible as his tip was hitting that spot that sent sparks throughout your whole body. burying your face in the crook of his neck, you whimpered quietly.

“cheollie ‘m getting tired..” you mumbled.

“s’okay, doll, you can relax. lemme help you.” he reassured.

you relaxed your body and let seungcheol take over. your eyes rolled back as his thrusts were now a bit harder and quicker, desperately trying to get you both to reach your peak as you guys had been gone for a suspicious amount of time.

“fuck fuck fuck- cheol right there!” you whined before your mouth went agape, orgasm washing over you. you were gripping him so tightly seungcheol knew he wouldn’t last much longer either.

seungcheol gave a few deep thrusts before cumming as well, letting your cunt milk him dry.

he let you lay there for a second, allowing your to catch your breath before reminding you that you two needed to leave.

he somewhat kept his word, buying you that same set in every color they had. a dopey smile on his face while the two of you exited the store, his mind occupied with how many positions he’d have you in later tonight <3

[lcvecove]

♡ 𝆬 𝐓𝐎𝐎𝐊 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐄𝐍𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇

𝓹airing , quinn hughes x bsf!reader

quinn leads the canucks to round 2 of the playoffs and no one is happier than his best friend who is a life long canucks fan. . . (wc ; 1845 )

꒰ 𝓷ote , this is set during last years playoffs. it’s been in the drafts a while!!! as always I hope you enjoy <33 . . . ꒱

your heart jumps in your chest when you feel arms loop around your waist from behind, your mind distracted as you watch the sunrise out quinn’s floor to ceiling apartment windows. your erratic heartbeat calms when you recognize the cologne of your best friend. he tightens his arms around you, burying his head in the crook of your neck and you giggle as his beard scratches against your skin. you wiggle in his arms until you’re fully turned around, looping your arms around his neck and smiling up at him brightly. quinn feels this weird feeling in his stomach looking at you, as if every nerve cell under his skin starts buzzing when he lays eyes on you.

he was forever jealous of how much joy you had in the morning, not because he felt the need to erase his hatred for early mornings, but because he wanted to be the only reason for that expression on your face. he wanted all your smiles to be as a result and directed towards him. that’s how deep quinn’s affection went for you, that he harboured irrational jealousy towards the sun for making you happy. but he’s never been good at sharing his best friend’s attention and affections with anything or anyone else, even his brothers who were utterly obsessed with you when they met you in quinn’s first year on the team, who quinn has always been more than happy to share with. you were the one thing that quinn wanted all to himself.

“good morning sunshine,” you tease, running your hand through his hair and he responds with a simple groan against your neck.

“or should I say… good morning captain of a team who made it to the second round,” you state, pride obvious in your tone and quinn lifts his head to give you a dopey smile.

“there he is!” you tease and quinn squeezes your hip in response before reaching behind you to pick up your cup of coffee.

“um sure, just drink all my coffee, when the full pot is right there,” you say sarcastically and quinn takes another big sip, lips quirking up at your annoyed frown.

“what’s yours is mine. and what's mine is yours, clearly,” quinn says drily, tugging on the edge of his dress shirt that you were wearing and you pout slightly.

“I showered this morning, and it was warm, right from the drier,” you defend and quinn smiles softly, tugging you closer by the material and wrapping you in a bear hug. he just holds you for a few seconds and you smile thinking about the first time you heard the guys refer to quinn as “huggy bear”. your guy’s always loved a good hug.

“I have a team event coming up after the playoffs. like an end of the year banquet type of thing, will you go with me? I know you’ve been to like ten events with me this year and you’re probably sick of them by now so if you don’t want - ” quinn says but you interrupt before he can finish.

“I’d love to go with you. I never get tired of seeing captain quinn in action. I have fun, all I have to do is stand and try to look pretty while you woo people,” you say and quinn scoffs.

“you don’t have to try. you’re always the most beautiful girl in the room. and I don’t know how much wooing I can really do-”

“a lot. these people and this city adores you quinn. I don't think you realise just how much you mean to this organisation,” you say, and quinn feels a lump in his throat building a little as your words hit him. you grew up in Vancouver and you’ve been a diehard canucks fan since you were a kid, so quinn knew you weren’t just saying this because you were his friend and you wanted to make him feel better about himself. you genuinely believed it. and that unwavering faith you had in him meant more than he could ever put into words, so he doesn’t even try and instead just presses a gentle kiss to your forehead, hoping it’ll say everything he can’t seem to articulate.

–

you attend all home games in the second round, just like you did the first, you and ellen cheering until your voices go away all the way until the canucks get eliminated. you were once again amazed by quinn and the graceful way he handled the elimination, knowing it was about progress, not necessarily perfection and the canucks had made tremendous progress this past season with him leading them. of course it didn’t hurt that he had you reminding him of that the few days after the brutal loss, asking you to stay with him while he wraps things up for the end of the season, claiming it was so that the two of you could spend more time together before he heads to michigan for the summer.

it wasn’t unusual for you to stay at quinn’s place though, and you had done so many times over the course of your friendship, and it seems to happen more often as the years go by. you had probably spent more time at his apartment this past month than your own. you don’t even bother staying in the guest room anymore, opting to sleep next to quinn as the two of you always fall asleep while watching a movie or reading side by side in his bed at the end of the night.

you awake like you do most mornings when staying over at quinn’s, with his arm thrown over your stomach, and his soft breaths against your neck, one leg intertwined with yours. you successfully sneak out quietly, going to the living room and doing your daily morning scroll through social media while waiting for quinn to wake up but the bed must have been colder than usual without you because it wasn’t even five minutes after that he woke up and entered the living room with a tired groan, collapsing next to you on the couch and nuzzling his face into your chest as he mumbled, “why you awake so early. come back to bed,”

“quinn,” you say softly, as not to startle him but the hesitancy in your voice makes quinn lift his head and meet your eyes with a sleepy little squint that makes your heart squeeze.

“what’s wrong?” he asks with a yawn, immediately knowing something was bothering you and leaning on his elbow so he can meet your eyes.

“you know how I follow some canuck fan accounts?” you ask and he furrows his brows

“I told you to unfollow them,” he points out, smiling slightly at the guilty look on your face, only realising now his body was plastered to yours but he didn’t want to move and you didn’t look like you were uncomfortable with the closeness, so quinn just snuggled closer, his thumb rubbing soothing patterns on your hip.

“I am ‘nucks fan to my core quinny. I can’t just unfollow them,” you argue as if it’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard and he chuckles slightly at your dramatics.

“you can if what they’re saying upsets you. what you see?” quinn asks, and you hesitate for a second before telling him, knowing his reaction was gonna affect you, whether you wanted it to or not.

“pictures of me and your mom sitting together. and pictures of the two of us leaving the game together. us at dinner with your family and me wearing your jersey. there’s one of us at a bar with the team and we look …” in love, you think but can’t voice it. “cosy. people are speculating that we’re – you know, together.” you explain, biting your lip anxiously and quinn gently tugs it out from between your teeth, running his thumb over it.

“oh,” he replies, distracted by the thumb still against your bottom lip.

“oh? that’s all you're gonna say?” you ask, grabbing his wrist and pulling it down to your stomach again, the way he was caressing your face was way too distracting for the conversation you were trying to have.

“I uh – already saw that. basically everyone I know has sent it to me. my brothers, the team, even my mom,” quinn explains, and it makes sense now why he didn’t seem shocked by the news.

“your mother?” you squeak out, mortified at the thought of his mother reading the things people have been saying online about the two of you.

“yeah. wouldn’t be surprised if she started these rumours herself though. she was excited to say the least, going on and on about how happy she was that we were finally together and that it took me long enough to lock you down” quinn jokes, and your heart warms slightly at his words.

“you’re not - upset by it? I know it’s probably weird –” you start but quinn cuts you off by pressing a gentle and unexpected kiss to your cheek.

“it’s not weird. I’m honoured actually, that people think I have enough game to pull someone as hot as you,” he says and you scoff, rolling your eyes and gently hitting him against the chest.

“be serious,” you scold lightly, picking at the blanket thrown over your lap and he laughs, hand nudging your chin, prompting you to look at him.

“I am serious. you’re way out of my league angel. It’s a bit of a cruel joke that people think you would date me,” he says and you immediately frown, wondering if your best friend must have gotten a concussion somehow in the last 24 hours because there was no way Quinn Hughes actually believed the words coming out of his mouth.

“that’s an utterly ridiculous thing to believe considering you have every quality I love in a man and I’ve had the biggest crush on you since the day I met you,” you say without thinking, your cheeks heating up when you realise what you just said, your embarrassment only multiplying when you see the amused grin on his face.

“you have a little crush on me, eh?” he teases, and you sigh lovingly

“quinn, shut up and kiss me already, would you?” you say, and both of you can’t keep the grins off your faces as he leans closer and connects your lips in a sweet, tender, long overdue kiss.

“Your mom was right, you know? It took you long enough to lock me down,” you mumble against his lips and quinn doesn’t even get a chance to respond when the front door suddenly bursts open and ellen walks in.

“Talk of the devil,” quinn mutters and you hide your laugh in his shoulder as his mom observes the position you two currently found yourselves in.

“Hi mrs. Hughes,” you greet her, both you and quinn sending her matching, sheepish smiles.

“Quintin Jerome Hughes, you are such a little liar! I raised you better than lying to your own mother”