Chapter Text
Self-preservation is a funny beast. In the wild it pushes you to higher ground, into thicker cover, towards whatever keeps you breathing for one more day. It doesn’t care if you’re happy. It cares that you’re alive. Translate that into a moderately corporate open-plan office and it stops being dramatic and starts being pathetic: instead of fleeing a predator, you smile through a migraine, stay late, laugh off the chest pain. You learn which parts of yourself need to be hidden so no one gets ideas about ‘restructuring’ or ‘fitness for duty.’ You choose a slow grind over the clean break, because the grind is the devil you know.
Robert’s beast keeps him on a narrow ledge between heart-on-sleeve and padlocked shut. He’s not hiding the soft bits that make him a fool for second chances and best intentions; everyone can see those, they’re practically in the job description. What he buries is worse. The part that’s convinced he deserves every bad thing that happens. The part that thinks his job is to work himself to the bone for whatever scraps of good land on his desk, then apologise for wanting even that.
And while he’s mastered the game of hide and seek in front of almost everyone, there’s at least one person (besides Chase) who can see straight through him. The doctor.
The doctor, whom he managed to offend on day one by making a crack about not trusting anyone who’s probably closed wounds with a stapler. The doctor, who got her experience stitching up goons but still has the softest touch that’s ever landed on his forearm. Who caught him out on two half-hidden colds and one not-at-all-hidden burnout with nothing more than a glance. The doctor, who answers every attempt to shrug off his long-standing depression and desperate scrabble for purpose with that infuriatingly calm, all-knowing look that says: I see what you’re doing, and it’s not working.
It would be fine if it stopped there—professional irritation, bruised pride, a healthy dose of avoidance. But somewhere along the way self-preservation seems to have grown a rival instinct. Not at all beastly this time. Just a sad, wet dog lodged under his ribs, scratching at the door it thinks hides comfort. It wants things he doesn’t have the language for: fingers at pulse point with no intention of measuring pulse, frown of concentration aimed at his chart (or somewhere closer to his body, were he so bold) instead of his latest screw-up, your voice saying his name in something other than exasperation. It’s needier than Beef and nowhere near as charming. It’s a completely unnecessary thing. A whim. A complication. Some idiotic yearning he’s much too tired and too old for.
So he does what he’s good at: he pretends. Pretends he’s annoyed by you. Pretends he doesn’t notice the whiff of your perfume on Colm when that one comes back from a check-up. Pretends the reason he dodges your appointments is purely bureaucratic and not because sitting on that exam bed under your scrutiny makes him feel naked in ways no HR form has a tick-box for. He does all of that while smiling.
You are the person who kicks his creativity up to cosmic levels. He’s never come up with so many excuses to miss a check-up. But even that has a limit—the moment an old-school paper notice appears on his workstation, stamped in glaring red capitals: OVERDUE. Right in the med-check row, under his ridiculous name.
So he drags it out to the bitter end. Answers every last pointless query on the board. He checks, double-checks, and triple-checks handover notes no one will read. Solves a printer jam that was in no way his problem. One by one, people peel off: Chase with a clap to his shoulder, Galen with a muttered ‘night,’ the floor supervisor with a reminder about the staff survey he is absolutely never filling in.
Comms taper from overlapping chatter to the occasional bored check-in. Then even that dies. The city, miraculously, stays quiet. The big wall clock over the dispatch screens drags its way to seven and tips over it.
There is still a chance you’ve gone home. He sits with that for a minute. If you’ve left already, it’s not his fault, is it? He tried. He had to stay late, had work to do. He can come in early tomorrow and—
He peels the slip off the desk. Two instincts pull in opposite directions as he walks the empty corridor towards Medbay: the well-trained one that keeps his head down and his mouth shut, and the younger, needier thing that sits up whenever it hears you stifling a laugh.
He stops outside, hand hovering for a second. He’s not even sure what he’s hoping for—for you to be gone and grant him a temporary stay of execution, or for you to still be there so he can stop thinking about this and just… get it over with. Or not just that. He doesn’t look too closely at that part.
He knocks before he can think better of it.
“Yeah?”
Your voice, muffled through the door. Still here, then. Of course. A fellow overachiever at everything, including giving him nowhere to hide. The door creaks when he pushes it open, and the sigh punches out of you on instinct.
Robert fucking Robertson.
He looks exactly as you’d expected him to if he ever turned up this late for an overdue med-check: headset finally off, hair a little flattened where it sat, SDN polo rumpled and half-untucked, smile apologetic around the edges.
You’ve never met a man who seemed to file you under definitely not so quickly. From day one he’s kept you at full arm’s length—baseline polite, a bit wary, doing his level best not to need you. Apprehensive at best. Most likely just plain resentful, and for reasons that would be very valid if he ever bothered to voice them.
You know what you look like on paper. Ex-villain medic, Phoenix Programme intake, years spent helping people he used to fight. First day had set you on a certain path with his joke, technically. You laughed. Then you watched him flinch away from your hand when you reached for his arm.
Since then, he’s dodged you with an agility most capes would envy. Barely makes eye contact in the hallway. Sends messages through the Z Team when he can. So when he appears in your doorway at seven p.m. with that sheepish, caught-out expression and a crumpled notice in his hand, your first instinct is not concern. It’s exasperation, sharp and familiar.
“You're joking,” you say, caught mid-way packing up your bag. “Robert. It’s seven. I was about to leave and this close to pretending I didn’t see that form.”
“I, uh… Exciting life you are in a rush to get to?”
Standing there with the screens in sleep mode behind you, you realise this very overdue dispatcher is trying to make it look like this is an inconvenience for you. Of course he’s late. Of course he waited until everyone else had gone home to come and sit on your exam bed like a sulky teenager.
You frown. Fucking asshole. “What a fantastic approach to asking for an off-the-clock favour.”
“I thought it was your job.” He shrugs, flaps the crumpled notice at his face like it’s a fan, already half-turned as if he’s doing you a favour by leaving you to whatever thrilling plans you were ‘in a rush’ to get to.
Ignoring the attempted escape, you turn to the sink and start scrubbing your hands. “It is. But my shift ended at five.”
“Well, it’s ten past seven now. What are you still doing here?”
You catch his eyes in the mirror—big, sad, hopeful. Hopeful for what, you’re not sure. Probably for you letting him off the hook. But… that’s not happening. “Are you willing to answer the same question for yourself?”
“Oh, I was just fully avoiding you.” He laughs, scratching the back of his head, like that’s a charming confession and not a reason to sedate him.
“Hah. I should’ve seen that coming.” You dry your hands, reach up to the cabinet for test tubes, needles, tourniquet. He’s still hovering in the doorway like a particularly dim ghost. “Just… sit,” you sigh. “You can speed things up by taking your shirt off.”
He perches on the exam bed and reaches for his buttons with all the enthusiasm of a man about to be flayed. “You could at least buy me a drink first.”
You scoff. “I can let you sniff some disinfectant while I draw your blood. How does that sound?” Gloves on.
“Like an HR violation,” he mutters.
He doesn’t even know what he’s doing. Flirting as self-defence, maybe. Flirting while hoping for something? Definitely not. Not him.
“You started it,” you bite back, turning with your tray of things—only to walk straight into the sight of him sitting shirtless and hunched, all innocent and mildly terrified on your bed.
There are so many scars on him the canvas of his body is barely enough. Old and new, white and pink and angry, overlaying each other until he’s less man and more atlas of every punch, blast and cut he’s ever taken. He wears it like it’s nothing. You feel heat flood your face and hope to God he can’t read skin temperature as well as you read his.
Eyes down. Professional. You hem your throat and steer hard back into safe waters. “When was the last time you ate?”
“Lunch time.”
“So, like… six hours ago? Eh. It’ll do.” You loop the tourniquet around his upper arm and cinch it tight.
“Very heartwarming to know we’re equally eager to get rid of each other,” he says.
“I have nothing against you,” you reply, checking his vein with your thumb. “I just want to go home. To my exciting life.”
“What does that entail?” he asks, the fool that he is. He has no idea what the survival limit is on possible answers. A boyfriend? He’d probably take that hit, sulk about it, then mull it over within three to a hundred business days. Anything heavier might be lethal.
Salvation or damnation—he doesn’t know yet—comes packaged as one of your softest smiles.
“One very needy and lonely cat,” you say, patting the vein into prominence.
He inhales the sterile air like it’s personally betrayed him.
“What?” you ask. “Did you think I hustle black market organs on the side?”
“Something like that,” he says, because of course he did. He’d hoped for it, secretly. Something clean to work with. Villainy. An excuse to file you off under evil once and for all and stop stumbling over this ridiculous crush.
Instead you hand him something else to work with—a small, ridiculous domestic detail, a gentle crumb. An opening. The sad wet dog part of him immediately starts figuring out how to squeeze every drop of hope out of it. Breath stutters, arteries tighten.
“Are you afraid of needles?” you ask, the pad of your thumb caressed by the flutter of his pulse.
Body a traitor, the beat jumps under your touch. He tries to swallow it down and pukes up a deflection instead. “No. I’m not afraid of anything.”
“Just doctors, then.” You smirk. “Or is it a personal animosity?”
“No,” he says. “I hate you all equally.”
Your eyes meet. There it is again—that flicker that could be humour, could be panic, probably both.
“That’s reassuring,” you say, holding his gaze, and slide the needle into his vein making it absolutely, painfully erotic.
His mouth parts on a sigh, lids lowering. Under different circumstances you could probably sell this as a relaxation exercise. You watch the line of his lashes settle, the sputter of freckles across his cheeks, and pretend you’re paying attention to the tube rather than his face. His blood winds into the plastic in a slow, lazy thread.
“You’re dehydrated,” you say, rubbing your latexed finger over the firm line of his bicep.
“I had a lot of fluids,” he murmurs. “Coffee, mostly.”
“That explains it.” You drop the full tubes into the rack, strip off the needle, and reach for the stethoscope. “Alright, I need to listen to your breathing. It requires you to be silent. Are you able not to talk for two minutes?”
He fails to not notice the careful details. The way you hang it over your neck and pick up the diaphragm into your palms to warm it up for him. “Two minutes?” he whispers. “How will I cover up my discomfort?”
“I guess you won’t be able to,” you say, enjoying this more than you should. “It’s alright, just auscultation. Procedure known for its low lethality.” You rest the bell on his chest, right over where his heart thrashes around the ribcage. “Deep breaths for me.”
For you, he’d do either. Breathe deep or hold his breath until you tell him he can come up again. With the room gone quiet, the disobedient muscle pounds up into his ears. He closes his eyes again to salvage at least a little dignity.
You drag it out. A little longer. A little longer still. The stethoscope roams across his chest, then around his back, your fingers brushing here and there, cataloguing the topography of his scars and imagining the architecture underneath. Millimetres of latex have never felt so thick, or so useless.
“H–how much longer?” he asks, all choked up.
You pull yourself up short. His breathing is exactly as fine as it was three minutes ago and, yes, his heart’s running a little fast, but you’d be a hypocrite to point fingers. Yours is, too.
“Just blood pressure left.” You peel the Velcro of the cuff loose. “So eager to flee. Almost as if I’m a dentist.”
He smiles, caught. Offers the unpunctured arm. You cinch the cuff tight, start pumping it tighter still until his fingers begin to buzz.
“Last time you wrote me up, I got three months of weekly psychs,” he says, sounding more betrayed than he intended.
You chuckle between the hisses of air filling the sleeve. “Ah, so that’s the issue. I only recommend what I think is fitting. Do no harm, remember?”
He snorts at that, a sharp, humourless sound. Wonders how much harm you’ve done indirectly by dragging the wrong people back from the brink of death. “Do you even have some basic training in psychology?” he asks.
“No. But I have experience and knowledge of how trauma shows in the body.”
“Really?” He scoffs, seizing on it. Finally—something he can take you on. An opening his embarrassment-beast latches onto, mean and unprompted. “Were the goons traumatised after getting their asses kicked?”
It lands clean. A poisoned seed planted neatly in soft tissue.
“Not that I’m trying to justify villainy,” you say, smile turning sharp, “but not everyone can flex an epically tragic backstory where your genius, absent father gets killed by your arch-enemy.”
Straight for the jugular, no less. All the resentment of everything he brought in here today—freckles, pouty mouth, big brown eyes and that lickable stretch of stomach that would probably withstand you slicing your nails through it—compressed into a tight little ball and hurled right at his face.
His expression dims half a shade. It’s all it takes. Guilt floods you before the sentence has fully cooled in the air. “Sorry,” you blurt. “That was uncalled for.”
Well deserved, though. “A little,” he agrees. The pout twists into a smirk. “It might have triggered my trauma back.”
“Oh, fuck off,” you say, shaking your head. “You’re such a stubborn ass.”
“Alright, alright.” He lifts his free hand, a white flag of sorts. “I’m teasing. It’s self-defence.” His gaze drops to your fingers still curled around the pump. “What do you recommend?”
Your hand stills. “Just talk to someone. Doesn’t have to be a shrink, can be a friend. Otherwise your pep-talk well might dry out.”
“Can’t be my doctor, I suppose?” he asks quietly, hating himself as the words leave his mouth.
“I thought we’d already established I’m not qualified, Robert.”
He tilts his head, studying you, as if there’s a loophole he’s missing. “What good are you for, then?”
“Please make up your mind whether you’re going to be awkward or cocky,” you say. “Those two don’t fit together.”
“I wasn’t aware I was.”
“Cocky?” you repeat, and he lights up in a way he absolutely shouldn’t.
If he were a worse man, he’d ask you to drop everything after the ‘cock’ and say it again, clean and unadulterated, just to hear how it sounds in your mouth. As it is, he saves the moment under: things to think about at three a.m. when loneliness and shame tag-team me.
“No. Awkward,” he corrects, sheepish. “I thought I was incredibly cool.”
You’re barely holding it together. The laugh punches out of you, unbidden—charmed, disarmed by this absolute mess of a man who keeps turning up with a martyr complex.
“Will you stop fucking with me while I’m checking your blood pressure?” you say, because you need the ground back under your feet.
“Of course.” A beat. And then he just can’t help himself. “When you’re done, though—?”
You raise one eyebrow, the kind of eyebrow that has shut down far more dangerous men than him. He aborts mid-suggestion like you’ve hit the big red button.
“Alright, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” His shoulders hunch. “I hope you understand that all I am is awkward and this is just a smokescreen.”
“Real smooth, Mr Robertson,” you say, peeling the cuff off his arm. “Blood pressure slightly elevated. I can file you under ‘future risk of cardiovascular failure’ or you can admit you’re nervous around me.”
“I am nervous around you,” he says, instantly.
A beat stretches. Long enough for him to mentally draft his will, choose hymns and coffin type, just in case this whole encounter kills him on the spot.
“Nice try,” you say at last, and turn away to scribble the last note on his chart.
The script says this is the part where you tell him he’s free to go. He feels the moment coming like a drop on a rollercoaster. Which is exactly why he grabs the razor and holds on—figuratively, this time. Desperation works like that: a hand sliced open is better than drowning.
“What does my body say about me?” he blurts.
You look up, caught. For a heartbeat your mind serves up the truth: that you need to be kissed senseless. That you should have your brains fucked out while you say please, please, please. That you take too much on and push too hard, and there’s never anyone there to catch you when you fall. That you collect damage like it’s a hobby.
“What do you mean?” you ask instead, blinking the depravity away.
“How much can you tell about me from me,” he gestures at himself, bare-chested on the bed, “just sitting here in this compromising position?”
Challenge accepted, you strip your gloves off and drop them in the red bin. Then, you move behind him, fingertips skimming very lightly down the line of his spine. Goosebumps rise in their wake before he can order his body to behave.
“Either your mattress is made of planks,” you say, clinical, “or you sleep on the floor. Softest thing this back has seen is your desk chair.”
Your hands slide up to his shoulders, warm and slightly damp from the gloves. You knead once, thumb catching in the hard knot where muscle refuses to unclench. “You lift too much,” you go on. “Some anger, or… frustration?”
When you brush the fine hairs at the nape of his neck, his body shudders. Completely involuntary. Excellent.
You circle back around to face him, take his hand. His knuckles are faintly bruised, skin roughened where it keeps meeting things that hit back. You raise an eyebrow. “Does punching things help?”
The way his face twists, confused and defensive, is answer enough. Before he can scramble for a lie, you let his hand go and cup his face instead, both palms bracketing his jaw as you press your thumbs into the hinges.
“Stress,” you diagnose. “Or tetanus, given the number of scars on you.”
Oh, God. You’re too close. He can smell your breath, which is just breath—no coffee, no mint, no cheap sweets—just mouth. Mouth that should, by rights, have his tongue in it right now if the world were at all fair.
He counts your lashes instead while you stare at the tendon, pretending this is still medical. Merciful, in its way.
“My bet is on stress, though,” you say. “Some serious lockjaw.”
He swallows, the muscles shifting under your thumbs. When you glance up to check you haven’t actually hurt him, his eyes are gone nebulous—brown eaten away by black.
You’re both stuck in the same narrow strip of air. You between his knees, him perched on the edge of the cot, your hands framing his face like you’re about to break bad news instead of bully him into therapy. His skin is warm under your fingers, stubble just starting to rasp at the pads of your thumbs. He looks equal parts startled and wrecked, like he’s been caught out in something much more serious than lying on his wellness form.
You should let go, but how could you?
“Serious… lockjaw,” he echoes, a little hoarse.
One of his hands comes up, fingers curling around your wrist. It’s not restraint; it’s a small, desperate appeal, a please stay. The other finds your second wrist a moment later, grip faintly trembling.
“This is very…” he starts, but the rest gets lost somewhere between his teeth and his courage.
He cranes forward instead.
It’s very unpretty. His neck protests, shoulders hitch, nose bumps yours on the first attempt. But he gets there, mouth brushing yours in a quick, clumsy press that’s more question than kiss. You feel the breath desert him against your lips like he’s just stepped off a ledge.
He pulls back half an inch, eyes wide, as if waiting for the inevitable slap / formal complaint / HR seminar.
You answer by closing the distance yourself.
This time, it lands properly. Softer, more sure. He holds onto your wrists, but the tension shifts; his thumbs stroke along your pulse points as if he’s checking your heart rate by touch. (Elevated, you could tell him, if you trusted your voice right now.)
He makes a tiny, incredulous sound into your mouth when you part your lips for him. That’s all it takes for something to snap the other way. His grip loosens, slides down the length of your arms, slow enough to ask permission without words, then settles at your hips.
“Okay?” he breathes, barely a syllable against your mouth.
You nod, the movement brushing noses, and then he’s tugging you in.
The exam bed creaks under his weight when he drags you closer. Your hips meet the inside of his thighs; your knees bump the metal frame. One of his hands stays firm at your waist, the other climbs up your spine, fingers spreading warmly between your shoulder blades before curling around the back of your neck.
You step in, automatically. There’s nowhere else to go. You hook an arm over his shoulder, fingers sliding into the hair at his nape, making his face meet you properly.
From this angle, you’re suddenly almost towering over him. Your chest lines up with his throat, soft weight of breasts brushing against the base of his neck every time you breathe. For a man who spends most of his life haunted by bad luck, Robert spares half a wild thought to thank whatever fickle force arranges these things that he chose now to finally kiss you.
You tilt his head a fraction more, directing the kiss like you’re adjusting an angle of approach, and he follows without question. His mouth opens under yours, hungry now, the earlier hesitation melting into something that feels dangerously like relief.
He kisses like he does everything else: too hard on himself, too careful with everyone else. You feel the restraint in the way he keeps checking his own grip, the way his fingers flex on your hip and then ease, like he’s terrified of overstepping even while his tongue is mapping the topography of your molars.
It stops being sweet somewhere around the moment you nip at his top lip and he finally lets himself react. He makes a low noise, and answers with a sharper pull of your hips into his, a firmer grip of his hand over the back of your neck. You gasp into him, surprised that you’re the one making the needy sound, and that seems to give him permission to stop holding back.
It tips over from tentative to messy. Your teeth catch, noses bump again, neither of you cares. Heat floods up the column of your spine in waves. He tastes like bad coffee and mint gum and the faint ghost of a Twinkie. You’re suddenly acutely aware of every place your body is touching his: his thighs next to yours, chest pressed to your ribs, thumb stroking tiny, absent circles against the base of your skull like he’s trying to soothe both of you at once.
Then, he bites.
It’s not hard. Just a quick, sharp catch of your lower lip between his teeth, paired with a tiny tug. A hot, startling carnality that has the grooves of your brain smoothing by degrees. You hear yourself make a sound you do not recognise—high, broken, utterly unprofessional.
The realisation hits a half beat later. You jerk back, breath tearing out of you, but you don’t go far. His hand on your neck stops you, just holding you close enough that your foreheads almost touch. Your palm finds his cheek on instinct, thumb brushing the line of bone, and you feel the way his jaw is working, still too tight, breathless for an entirely new set of reasons.
“That’s very unprofessional,” you manage, voice rougher than you intended.
“Mhm.” He gives one tiny nod, like he’s agreeing to a meeting note. His eyes, those big sad brown eyes, have gone soft and heavy-lidded, well on their way from dispatch edition to bedroom version. They lock on yours like he’s bracing for impact and, at the same time, staking a claim.
“Do it again,” he says. “Please.”
You laugh, just to get some air into your lungs. Round two is stripped of neatness. His hands rediscover your pelvis like he’s lost his place, fingers digging in just enough to drag you back into the heat of him. You feel the tension in his shoulders ease by degrees as you kiss him again, like every slide of your mouth over his sands down a layer of panic. His thumbs press into the soft dip above your waistband, and your mind briefly whites out at the reminder that, yes, there are nerve endings there.
You break away, just by a few centimetres, breath sawing. The room feels smaller. Warmer. Too much air, too much skin.
“I thought you don’t trust me,” you hear yourself say. It comes out thinner than you’d meant, challenge stumbling over a confession.
He blinks, drag-slow. His pupils are huge. “I don’t—” he starts and feels you stiffen. The grip on you loosens instantly, like he’s bracing for a step back, getting called an asshole and thrown off the bed. He rushes the rest out. “I don’t trust myself around you,” he adds, voice low and rough. “That’s entirely different.”
Your brain tries to catch up with that while your body does something unhelpful like shiver.
He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing against your chest. “And you know way too much for a person I tried very hard to keep my distance from.”
That lands. You can’t help the small, sharp smile.
“I thought you didn’t like me,” he says, quieter.
It’s a ridiculous thing for a man currently groping your ass and wearing your lip balm to say, but there it is: naked, awkward, painfully sincere.
You snort. “You sure worked hard for that,” you tell him. “But I’m not easily discouraged, Mr Robertson.”
His mouth twitches, half way to a smile, half way to disbelief.
You feel something unfurl in your chest. The admission’s out. Both of them are. No going back to pretending this is purely professional irritation now.
You study him for a beat—the flushed cheeks, the mussed hair, that earnest, worried line between his brows that hasn’t gone away even now—and the next words tumble out before you can filter them.
“I hate how hot you are,” you say.
His eyebrows shoot up. For once, he’s the one caught flat-footed.
Then he laughs, short and startled. It spills out of him in a breathy rush, as if that was the last thing he expected to hear in this particular hellscape of a day. “Yeah,” he says, tugging you closer, greedy for ballast. “It’s a real curse. I can’t get a break.”
You roll your eyes and, because your dignity has clearly fled the building, let your fingers slip into the hair at the back of his head again. “Shut up.”
He grins up at you, all crooked teeth and ridiculous bravery. “Make me—oh—”
The oh breaks on a different note entirely when you slide your hand down, down between your bodies, and press your palm over the front of his trousers.
Heat. Solid weight. The faintest, involuntary jerk of his hips up into your touch, like you’ve hit a secret button to Robert Robertson’s dilapidation.
“Good—” His breath stutters; his fingers convulse on your waist. “Good tactic,” he manages, a little strangled.
“You talk too much,” you murmur, watching his face as you apply the smallest amount of pressure, thumb tracing an idle line along the seam of his fly like you’re drawing on a chart.
His head tips back, throat bared. There’s a flush creeping up from his clavicle, crawling over his neck, turning his ears pink. He looks wrecked. He looks like the kind of man who has not, in fact, been told often enough that anyone finds him hot, curse or otherwise.
“Occupational hazard,” he says weakly. “Radio etiquette. Fill the dead air.”
“Consider this… an intervention,” you say, giving him the kind of look you reserve for stubborn patients and malfunctioning equipment. Your fingers flex, and his breath hitches again, audible this time.
“Noted,” he says, voice gone low and ragged, the word like sandpaper. His gaze drags back to your lips. “I can… work on that.”
“Less talk, more—”
You don’t finish the sentence because he leans in and takes the hint, catching your mouth again. This one is all forward momentum, like he’s afraid if he pauses you’ll change your mind and send him back to the safety of terrible coffee and unfiled incident reports.
You kiss him back because you’ve clearly gone completely mad.
He shifts his grip, fingers doing that delicious tug on waistband about to denude you, about to touch where you’ve imagined different parts of him more times than you’d like to admit, and you let him. You let him, and set your own payback into motion, clawing at his belt, his fly, seeking out the very thing you can almost imagine from the way his crotch bulges.
There he is, warm, hard, heavy, perfect—you can tell by touch only. You lean in, just to have his face close to yours. He doesn’t waste time. It all goes; your trousers with the underwear alike pooled around your ankles, ready to be stepped out of. Likewise, his hand is wandering between your legs. Checking, assessing. Holding you while you hold him, he sighs; a lovely bare sound.
“Careful,” he murmurs against your mouth. “I’m… not going to be very dignified about any of this.”
“It’s much overrated, the dignity” you say, a little out of breath.
He laughs once, and then you perch your knee on the edge, swing your other leg over and just commit, straddling him properly. The bed complains, loud. His hands fly to your hips on instinct, thumbs pressing hard enough to bruise.
“Okay,” he says, like you’ve just given him a complicated instruction and he’s trying to follow it to the letter. “Okay.”
Another meeting of mouths before he overthinks his own access to gravity and the fact that your bodies are kissing elsewhere, too.
Time slows in that cheap, fluorescent way it sometimes does on shift. You take every sluggish second you’re given to just feel him, to just look. When you lean back, drag your mouth away to breathe, his cock slots against your groin, pressing insistently, begging to be let inside. The gasp that punches out of him, the sweet little draw of his brows—those you ignore. You have other data to collect.
You let your hands explore instead, the way you’ve longed to since he lost his shirt. Your fingers press to blemishes, red and pearly alike, mapping the mess of him like a new continent, inventing your gentleness from scratch.
“You don’t have to be this nice,” he says, poor bastard. His voice comes out thin, frayed at the edges. “And this is quite unfair.” There’s a little tug at your shirt, as if to underline exactly what the injustice is here.
“Oh, I think we’re rather even, no?” You pinch the waistband of his trousers between thumb and forefinger, then flick it, a tiny reprimand. Together you make about half of a respectably dressed person.
He smiles—doomed, askew—and slides his palms under the fabric instead, working with what he’s been given. His thumbs climb, rough pads dragging over your ribs until they find the edge of your bra and hook under it, pulling the cups down to bare you to his warm hands.
“I don’t have to be nice, hm?” you tease, arching a brow.
You tangle your fingers into his hair and tug, puppeteering him with a practiced pull. His head tips back, throat offered. You take your time, lifting your hips, shifting just far enough that you can reach between you. It’s easy to find him; you’ve already memorised the shape through cloth.
You line him up with one steady hand. “Is that mean enough?” you ask, and start to sink down on him, painfully, arduously slow.
Plethora of blood abandons all other posts. Whatever was left in Robert’s brain drops rank and flees south in a rout. For once you see white instead of brown as his eyes roll, lashes fluttering.
“Yes,” he breathes, mouth falling open before you’ve even taken him fully. The word cracks halfway. “Oh, God, yes.”
You keep going, inch by inch, taking every twitch and stutter of muscle as a personal victory. When your body finally seats itself around him, snug and complete, his hands are gripping your breasts like he needs something to hold onto.
“Fuck me,” Robert says, and only realises it was out loud when your mouth twitches.
Too late to take it back. Too late to take any of it back.
He’s lost this battle in every possible way. He told himself he wouldn’t end up here—on the med bed, half dressed, fully pathetic—but there you are, in his lap, and here he is, buried in you up to the hilt and hanging on by his fingernails.
It still feels like winning.
Nothing he did alone ever came close. His own hand is a bad cartoon compared to this: the heat of you around him, the steady clasp of muscle that says mine every time you move. It scrubs him clean from the inside out—worry, guilt, whatever thing he’s been clutching to his chest since breakfast all shaken loose and sliding towards the one place in his life that currently makes sense.
You.
You sit properly, spine straight, thighs braced either side of him, and he can feel every inch of you. The weight of you. The way you take him all the way in and hold, like you’re testing what his nervous system can take before it shorts out.
“Robert,” you say, hand smoothing down his chest, over the frantic rhythm drumming underneath. “Look at me.”
He obeys. Of course he does. Whatever ragged little instinct he calls self-preservation is curled up whimpering in the corner by now; the dog is running the show.
Your eyes are dark and careful. He realises, distantly, that you’re watching for signs he’s hit his limit. He wants to tell you he passed his limit three kisses ago and is somewhere entirely new now, but speech is… not a strong option.
You roll your hips instead of asking. Deep, then forward, then back again. It drags his full length along you, thick, thick pressure that makes his breath fail and his fingers dig past your tits, into your ribs.
He makes a sound that has no business coming out of a grown man with a mortgage and a dog. “Please,” he gasps.
You go still. Tilt your head, interested. Then, your mouth curves, part fond, part wolfish. Your thumbs find his temples, stroke gently, grounded in a way that threatens to undo him more than the sex.
“How good you are,” you say, bewildered. It sounds like you didn’t mean to let it out.
He almost laughs. If only you knew. He’s never been good a day in his life; he’s just tired and malleable and so relieved to have someone else managing the disaster that is him for five goddamn minutes.
“Say it again,” you tell him.
He should be ashamed of how fast it comes. “Please.”
You rock down on him, slow, purpose and all, and the word turns into something broken halfway through.
“Again.”
“Please,” he repeats. “Please.”
The rhythm you find is ruinous. When you lean forward, the angle punches him deep; when you pull back your hips snap against his, tight and filthy and loud in the small room. Deep, then hard. Deep again. His brain keeps trying to process, to file, to make sure he’s not doing anything wrong, and you keep riding those thoughts right out of his head.
“More,” you say quietly.
He doesn’t know if you mean words or feeling. He gives you both.
“Please,” he whispers. “God, please—don’t stop, don’t—”
Your hand slides from his temple into his hair, back to tugging, just enough to tilt his head back, to open his throat under your mouth. Your other braces on his shoulder, keeping him exactly where you want him.
It’s not rough, not really. Just… anchored. Controlled. You move on him like you know exactly what he can take and exactly how close to the edge you want him.
“The way you’re taking this,” you murmur against his jaw, voice low, warmer than the words indicate. “Letting me—” you punctuate it with a hard slam of your pelvis that knocks the breath out of him “—do all the work.”
He shudders. “Happy to… delegate,” he manages, fingers flexing. “You’re… highly qualified.”
You laugh, short and surprised, and he feels stupidly proud of that too.
He clings. That’s the truth of it. His hands travel, to ribs and back, seeking the slide of your muscles under skin as you move. He lets you set the pace, take what you want, use him as leverage. Just use him. Every time his palms try to guide, your fingers close over his and push them back where you like them—here, on your ass; here, at your ribs; here, flat against the mattress so you can ride him without interference.
“Please,” he says again, because you haven’t told him to stop, and because begging feels less like humiliation and more like offering you something he’s never given anyone else. “Please, please…”
“Look at you,” you murmur. Your thumbs come back to his temples, like you’re soothing a fever. “So good.”
That shouldn’t go straight through him like that, but it does. He feels it hit, low and sharp, tangled up between need and relief. “Yeah?” he asks, dazed.
“Yeah,” you say, and there’s no edge to it. Just honest astonishment. “You’re being very good for me.”
He swallows hard. That’s all he’s ever wanted: to be told he’s doing it right, that he’s not making everything worse by existing in the room. If the price of that is his dignity, he’ll pay in full and tip generously.
You change the rhythm again, chasing something in yourself now; he can feel it in the way your thighs tighten around him, the way your breath gains weight on the upstroke. You ride him in a rougher pattern—no prettiness, just grit and need.
He meets you as best he can, hips jerking up into yours, but it’s still you doing most of the work, using his body like a solid thing you can trust. He lets you. He will let you do whatever you want to him, as long as you keep that look in your eyes, that intent, focused thing that says stay instead of go away.
“Robert,” you say, and his name in that voice is a command. He drags his gaze back from where you’re joined, from the slick slide of you on him, and up to your face. “Stay with me.”
“I’m here,” he says quickly. “I’m—I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good.” You slow for a few strokes, roll your hips in a way that has his vision greying out at the edges. “If you need to stop, you tell me.”
He huffs a laugh, half-strangled. “Not… a risk.”
“I mean it.” Your fingers tighten in his hair, just enough to get his full attention. “You say stop, I get off. Understand?”
He nods, throat thick. “Yeah. I—understand.”
It hits him then, properly: the line you’re walking. The fact that he’s not just being swept along; he’s choosing this, handing you the reins and trusting you not to jerk them hard enough to break his neck. His chest squeezes. Something in his spine unwinds.
“I trust you,” he blurts, before he can talk himself out of it.
You falter, just for a moment. Your eyes search his face, and for a terrifying second he thinks he’s ruined it, said the one thing too heavy for this space.
Then your expression goes soft in a way he’s never seen. You lean in, kiss him once—slow, almost chaste compared to the rest of it.
“Good,” you whisper against his mouth. “Now, beg again.”
He laughs, choked and delighted, and does exactly that.
“Please,” he says, the word decomposing as you start to move in earnest. “Please, please—fuck, you feel so good—please don’t stop—”
Your breath stutters on a shaky laugh. “God, you really are,” you say, half to yourself. “Better than anything your charts say about you.”
He doesn’t know what that means, but he files it under positive results and lets go of whatever scraps of composure he was still clinging to. He gives you every please you ask for and then some, sheds his worries into your skin, the rhythm you set, the praise you’re stingy with and therefore priceless.
He can feel it building, low and huge, like a wave with his name stamped on it. If you tell him to hold it, he will. If you tell him to let go, he will do that too, without question.
For once in his life, Robert Robertson is not steering the disaster. And it feels—against all his instincts—like safety.
You change again—less showy now, more focused. Shorter strokes, tight and vulgar, grinding down at the end so he can feel the drag of you around him, the wet heat that is absolutely going to break his spine if you keep this up.
“Robert,” you breathe, and he’s so far gone he almost comes just from that. “You close?”
He lets out an undignified sound that could be yes, could be help. “Yeah,” he manages. “Yeah, I’m—I’m really—”
“Hold it,” you say.
Just that. Calm, but fond. His whole body spasms. “You’re kidding.”
“Do I sound like I’m kidding?” Your hands tighten on his shoulders. Your hips keep moving, slow and deep, rolling down in a way that wants to wring him out. “Stay right there. For me.”
He was going to be obedient anyway; you didn’t need to weaponise it. “I—okay. Okay,” he says, because that’s all he’s ever had to offer anyone. Try. “God, I’ll—”
You change angle, and whatever he was about to promise burns up on re-entry.
It hurts, in a good way. Like holding a heavy weight just past the point where his muscles want to give in. Sweat beads on his brow, trickles down his spine. He clamps his teeth together, fists curling in the meat of your ass, and breathes like a man doing fire suppression on his own arousal.
“Good,” you murmur when he doesn’t immediately explode. Your forehead presses briefly to his, your breath hot and uneven. “So good. Just like that.”
He clings to the words like they’re a harness. Good. Just like that. He can do that. He can hold the line if that’s what you want. If you tell him to stay, he’ll stay. Even if it kills him.
Your rhythm starts to fray. He feels it before he hears it—the way your hips stutter, less precise, more desperate. Your hand, which had been steady on his shoulder, slips, fingers digging in for purchase.
He looks up. Your eyes are unfocused, lashes wet, mouth parted around breaths that keep catching on invisible edges.
“That’s it,” he pants, half encouragement, half prayer. “Come on, I’ve got you. I’m not—I’m not going anywhere.”
You let out a laugh that’s about three parts wrecked. “Thank you.”
You bear down on him, again, again, chasing something only you can see. Every squeeze, every clench around him is both agony and reward. His balls are screaming; his pulse is a shrill alarm in his ears; every cell in him is screaming now, and still he holds, because you haven’t said he can let go.
“Please,” he rasps, not even sure what he’s asking for any more.
“Hold,” you say again, voice thin and high. “Just—just a bit longer. I’m—”
The sentence dissolves into a broken noise as it hits you.
He feels it. Every shudder of muscle, every tight, frantic clench around him as your body locks down and rides the wave. Your head tips back; a string of sounds spills out of you, not words, just grunts and whimpers and a raw little oh that sounds like it’s been punched out of your lungs.
It’s the prettiest thing he’s ever heard.
He has to hold you, then, because you’re shaking and clinging and he’s the only solid thing within reach. His arms wrap around your back, crushing you to his chest as if he could hold you together by force. Your nails bite into his shoulders. Your whole body shivers through the aftershocks, bearing down on him in involuntary pulses that push him right up against his limit and balance there.
“Okay,” you breathe, eventually, forehead dropping to his. “Okay, you can—”
You don’t finish the sentence. You don’t have to. He’s already nodding frantically.
Before he can tip over inside you, you shift. With a quick, efficient twist of your hips, you lift yourself off him. The sudden loss of pressure makes him groan, low and guttural. His cock slips free, wet and slick and flushed dark, twitching helplessly in the cool air.
He’s so close it hurts. His hands scrabble for something to hold onto that isn’t you dragging yourself out of reach.
You don’t go far.
One hand comes up to the back of his neck, fingers slotting into damp hair, tugging him forward until his mouth is a breath away from yours. The other wraps around him, sure and slick and merciful, stroking from base to tip with a grip that makes his hips jerk without his permission.
“Oh—fuck,” he gasps, forehead thunking against yours. “Oh, that’s—”
“Shh,” you murmur, thumb circling the flushed head, spreading what’s already there into something obscene. “I’ve got you. Just like this.”
You kiss him then, properly—no angle, no wrestling for control, just a long, open-mouthed drag of lips and tongue that he feels all the way down his spine. Your hand works him in steady, firm pulls, squeezing just a little at the top, twisting on the way down. It’s too much, too perfect, like you’ve taken a lifetime of fumbling and rewired it in thirty seconds flat.
“Come for me,” you hum into his mouth.
There’s nowhere for the command to go but straight through him. He breaks.
It rips out of him in a rush, the tension snapping all at once. “Yes, yes, yes—God—thank you,” he cries out into your mouth, the sound mangled by the kiss, hips jerking up into your fist. Hot, ridiculous relief floods him as he comes in thick, helpless spurts—half across his own stomach, the rest striping your abdomen and the inside of your thighs. “Thank you, thank you.”
He has no idea what he’s thanking you for. Existing. Making a spectacular mess of your very sterile med bay. All viable options.
Before you can issue any commentary on said mess, he folds around you, arms wrapping tight, dragging you in against his heaving chest. His whole body is trembling, post-adrenaline, post-orgasm, everything. He tucks his face into the curve of your neck like that’s where it’s always meant to go.
“Hey,” you say softly, one hand coming up to his cheek. You thumb the sweat from his forehead in small, absent strokes. “You okay?”
He laughs once, breathless. “More than,” he manages. “Kind of… illegally more than.”
“Hm.” You lean back enough to see him, properly, and he hates how much he already misses the contact. Your expression is dazed but wry. “I guess it’s you who should buy me a drink now, so this isn’t doomed under professional malpractice forever.”
“Oh, I can do that.” His voice is still wrecked, but a bit of his usual rhythm sneaks back in. “I know just the place for a lady like you.” He swallows, nerves pricking under the afterglow. “Have you ever been to The Sardine?”
You snort. Actual fondness, all teeth bared, honest and bright, flashes across your face. It hits him harder than anything else tonight.
“Even The Sardine will work today,” you say.
You press your face to his again, cheek to cheek, natural and sweet. Your hand comes up in a light smack to his face—not a slap, not really. More of a pat. A gentle thing right on the border between reprimand and affection.
He thinks, absurdly, that he might like to find out what it feels like pushed a notch further. He puts that away for after the drink.
For now, he lets himself breathe. Lets himself feel the way all the old tensions—the clench, the hunched shoulders, the constantly buzzing nerves—have loosened, dissolving somewhere between your hands and your mouth and the way you told him he’s good without laughing.
Lockjaw, at least, is gone. So are a few other things he dragged in here.
He feels… held. And if he gets to keep even a fraction of this once you’ve both put your clothes back on and pretended to be normal people in a terrible bar, he’ll count himself obscenely lucky.