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They used to call Frank the Golden Boy.
On his very first rotation he made a pretty impressive save. It violated a few laws and he had to sign a document in an office upstairs before we went home for the day, but the patient lived, thanks to him. He watched the admiration glow in the eyes of his new peers. Then, he watched their eyes turn to Robby like a beacon. Like a guide.
Frank’s eyes followed and he watched Robby smile too. It was almost reluctant. He made shy eye contact with Frank for just a split second, grin deepening before he rubbed at the back of his neck and continued his work. It was private and warm and it glowed behind Frank’s sternum like an ember. Like a shot of something dark and strong.
He spends a lot of time watching Robby’s face after that, constantly searching for a way to make that moment happen again. That smooth hit of fatherly affection. Frank joneses for it. Something underneath his skin, animal and pacing around in front of the bars of its cage, just waiting for Robby to notice.
It takes one shift. Not even. Half a shift. A number of hours Frank can count on his hands—for him to see Robby give that look to someone else.
And okay, it made him a little sloppy. Robby slow-clapped for him. Frank watched, heart twisting around something evil as Robby gave Whitaker his look. The fatherly look. The private smile. Then he fucking started applauding. So Frank fucked up. He took a calculated risk with the Lorazepam vial and math was never his strong suit. He didn’t count on the watchful fucking eyes of Trinity fucking Santos and her stupid, running mouth.
So really she’s the reason why he’s sitting at the bar across from PTMC with his shoulders hunched, half way through his fourth or so Crown on the rocks instead of being there propped up on a careful cocktail of uppers and saving lives. It’s not his fault at all, actually.
He can see the ambulance bay from the front door of the place each time a patron swings it open to step inside. Every time a chirp from a rig slips through the door and he feels it like a shock, he takes another sip.
Eventually, he’ll be numb enough to go home.
Where Abby will pretend to be fast asleep even though it can’t be any later than nine PM. He won’t know. He’s had his phone turned off all day.
She’ll lay on her side of the bed, facing away from the door. He’ll call out to her and she won’t stir. He’ll take the puppy out. He’ll kiss the kids. He’ll brush his teeth and wash the smoke of the bar from his hair, climb into bed and he won’t think about the pillow that stays perpendicular, a barrier between their indents on either side of the California King they got as a wedding gift from her parents.
It’s all fake. It’s all pretend. The only real thing is Frank and the liquor and the handful of pills he’d lifted off the shady fourth floor pharmacy tech that he’d stashed away weeks ago burning a hole in his inside coat pocket.
God, he can’t believe his fucking life. Golden Boy his left fucking nut.
He’s just about to neck back the rest of his drink and take the long route home when one corner of the bar erupts into chaos. He doesn’t see what happens. There’s just a sudden blur of motion and a roar of shouting, and then someone smaller is being pulled off someone much larger by the bouncer that spends the majority of his time perched on a stool by the entrance scrolling on his phone.
Frank catches a glimpse of the smaller one’s face as he’s dragged to the front of the bar by his neck. Dennis Whitaker. His nose is trickling a thin line of blood. It pools in the hollow of his sneer, dripping onto the white of his teeth before he snaps like a rabid dog, shouting something Frank is too fucked up to quite catch.
The bouncer huffs, almost laughs like Whitaker is nothing more than an angry kitten before he throws him out on his ass.
Frank takes that as a cue. He has a feeling his night may be turning around.
He finds him in an alley nearby. He’s pacing, muttering under his breath and throwing his arms up angrily as he silently finishes the fight Frank has a feeling he never started in the first place. The blood is dripping down his jaw now, trailing a sickly line of scarlet that blooms as a stain on the thin white cotton of the undershirt peeking out from behind his scrubs. That’s all he’s wearing. Scrubs and an oversized parka only half zipped.
“You tell ‘em,” Frank jeers encouragingly. Whitaker whirls around and stumbles, obviously drunk. Frank sniggers. Lightweight.
“Oh my God. Not you,” Dennis whines. Like Frank is the exact last person on Earth he’d ever want to see.
It’d hurt a lot more if Frank were sober.
“Wow. I never did shit to you,” Frank scoffs. And he hadn’t. He’d hardly spoken more than twenty words to the kid. Fifty tops. He knows how much he can run his mouth when he’s pressed and that day Frank had been pretty fucking pressed. But still. They had nothing to do with each other except for the shared fucking trauma of one shift. That, and the way Robby looks at them. Frank feels that look like the end of a fish hook, the both of them swimming as fast as they can after the promise of a meal.
“It’s not—” Whitaker backtracks immediately, shaking his head like he’s trying to shuffle his thoughts back into order. His already tired eyes are red rimmed and bleary and he’ll have a hell of a shiner in the morning. “Nevermind,” he settles on, instead of whatever he means.
“Did you deserve it?” Frank indicates to his eye, hands still in his pockets. “I think I should take a look.”
Damn him being a doctor. Damn him giving a shit about this kid at all, actually.
“Fuck. Is it bad?” One of Whitaker's hands comes up to probe at the bridge of his nose. He sucks in through his teeth, his whole body flinching backwards. He stumbles and catches himself on the alley wall, fingers grasping at the grit of it. Frank rolls his eyes. He can’t just leave him out here like this.
“C’mere.” Frank closes into his space, hands coming up turn him around by the shoulders. He tilts Whitaker’s face with one hand , angling the bruise into the dim light of the yellowed streetlight at the end of the alley. “Nah,” he lies. It looks pretty fucking bad.
It’s probably not the booze and pills coursing through his veins. It’s probably not because Abby hasn’t touched him for two years. It’s more likely that he’s simply so fucked up in the head that he should be studied. But when their eyes meet in the dimness of the night, there’s something there, something that Frank realizes sharply is an ever-present, achingly familiar need to fucking feel. Anxiously, Langdon licks at a patch of dry skin on his lips and he watches Whitaker's eyes snap to the movement. Then he knows. Then, carefully, he allows himself to walk his hand up Whitaker's face and digs his thumb into the tender apple of the bruised cheekbone.
Whitaker’s entire face creases in what looks like pure, mind-blanking agony. He makes this sharp, gasping, enticing little noise. His entire body shudders, but somehow, he doesn’t wince away. He stays right where he is and he takes it. Pale, ice blue, midwest-indie-band-album-cover-sad eyes slide open and there’s something new. Something dark and terrifying and something that plays a chord, a perfect melodic progression of the same malevolent tune that hums through Frank’s bones.
The kid folds like paper. Frank doesn’t even have to push.
The blood on his mouth tastes like wealth. Old pennies. Generational wealth. Power. Frank doesn’t even have to use his hands, he just bends at the waist and crowds into Whitaker’s space and then the kid’s climbing him like a tree, licking into his mouth like he’s starving. It’s skin on skin and puffs of steaming, hot breath evaporating fast in the freezing night air. They surge together like attack dogs at the end of their chains, biting and snapping.
Past the blood, Frank can taste his poison of choice. The sweet-corn backwash of bottom-shelf whiskey paints the back of Frank’s teeth. He sweeps his tongue along the roof of Whitaker’s mouth, chasing that last swallow of booze. The way their faces come together must press against Whitaker’s sensitive nose because he groans.
And Frank can kind of understand it now, he guesses. The way everyone looks at this kid like they used to look at him. He’s a promise. A present under the tree with a big shiny red ribbon. He’s just got to be unwrapped. Frank was always the first kid down the stairs on Christmas morning.
His left hand comes to the column of Whitaker’s throat, just to be there, just to feel as he swallows. He ignores the body-warmed weight of the ring on his third finger. So does Whitaker, as Frank thumbs at his jaw, directing him into a new angle that draws a new noise past the kid’s lips. One that he would bottle if he could. Chop up into little lines and snort from the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. He settles for making him make that noise again as he bites into the plush pillow of his bottom lip.
He lets his hands wander further, dragging down the front of Whitaker’s poor excuse of a winter coat to shove underneath it, pawing at the space between his legs. He expects to be able to press against the straining heat there. A cock, smaller than his, framed in golden boy blond curls, ready to be touched, stroked. Eager, just underneath the thin material of Whitaker’s scrub pants. But his hand closes around—nothing. Nothing but round flatness.
Suddenly, a lot of things make sense about Whitaker at once.
Frank’s blood rushes to his dick so fast it makes him nauseous.
He knows it’s fucked up. There are multiple levels of internet subculture, left of center political issues, modern “woke” culture types of fucked up that he can feel like eyes on the back of his neck. He’s not even gay. He just—he couldn’t help himself. He’s drunk. You can make out with guys when you’re drunk and still be straight; that's just how being straight works. If that wasn’t how it worked then fucking everyone would be gay.
That’s not really the issue. The issue is that sickening, familiar feeling curling up in his guts like a parasite. The second he gets that feeling about something, he knows that's when he should stop. Throw his hands up and take two steps back about it. Take a moment to think. He felt this way the first time he snuck a cigarette from a teacher’s purse. He felt this way the first time he’d raided a medicine cabinet at a friend's house for their parent’s post-surgery pain meds. His first sip of gin. The one time he tried meth. It’s an ugly monster. An old friend.
He doesn’t stop like he knows he should. Instead, he cups a hand around the mound between Whitaker’s spread legs and he imagines not slipping on the condom in his wallet. He imagines burying himself so deep in the kid and coming so hard he has fucking twins. Two pairs of big, sad, blue eyes. A matching set of cut jawlines. Very expensive therapy bills to tack on to the ones he’s saving up for for his very real, current children.
“Y’know,” he says, growling into Whitaker’s ear. He feels the hair raise on the back of his neck and it makes Frank grin like a fucking supervillain. “If I had a pussy, I’d let guys hit it for free.”
“Fuck you,” Dennis spits.
“Yeah? You offering?” Frank’s mouth tilts into a grin. He shakes the hair out of his eyes to look at Whitaker straight on.
“No,” he says.
It’s a one syllable word and Frank heard it just fine, but he’s pretty drunk so he figures he’ll check, just to be sure. “No?”
“Not no.” It almost stumbles out of Whitaker’s mouth. He’s not looking at Frank anymore. He’s looking behind them at the opposite wall. This whole time, he’s kept his hands to himself. He’s got them splayed on the wall behind him like he’s holding on for dear life. “I just—I don’t like you.”
That’s pretty fucking funny considering the position they’re in, so Frank barks a laugh, his hot breath washing over Whitaker’s flushed face. “But not no?”
“Not no,” Whitaker repeats.
What a fucking brat.
His hips kick up, bucking into the pressure of Frank’s hand, or trying to get out of his grip, either way he grinds against the heel of Frank's palm and it sends a shiver down his spine that they both feel.
Frank takes that as his cue. In one swift motion he shoves his hand underneath the waistband of Whitaker’s scrub bottoms and cotton briefs, sliding two fingers over an already soaking wet slit. A blissed out, whining noise trumpets past Whitaker’s lips and Frank’s head darts up to look around.
Still an alley. Still dark and dingy and empty of everything but the litter and rats and the two of them. Once he knows the coast is clear, a giggle jumps jerky and surprised out of his throat.
“Shhh,” he warns (both himself and Whitaker), his free hand pressing a finger against his own lips as he sniggers. He moves his other hand in small circles, rolling his wrist in a way that has Whitaker melting against the masonry. He presses in, spreading two fingers against his quivering entrance, gathering the slickness drooling there to spread it to his sensitive, fever hot little prick.
“Fuck.” Whitaker moves his hips in this circular motion, rotating on an axis to grind into Frank’s hand, dragging himself along the overwashed, dry skin like it’s the best thing he’s ever felt. And maybe it is. Maybe Frank’s blowing his fucking mind. With the way the kid’s leaking over his fingers, almost gushing with how much he’s enjoying himself, it sure seems like that’s the case.
“Yeah?” Frank asks again.
Whitaker doesn’t answer. A dare catches across his face, subtle and quick. His pupils are blown wide, gaze dark and hungry.
“Gonna need an enthusiastic and clear ‘yes’ before I fuck you into this wall, Whitaker.”
“Ngh,” he says, ever eloquent. His head falls back against the bricks. Frank crowds into his space, pressing his forehead to Whitaker’s. He smells the blood and the whiskey and he can feel the way their sweaty skin sticks together despite the frigid air. He centers where his dick is tenting the front of his jeans against the back of his hand and fucks forward, jerking his hips, plunging two fingers past the slippery, tight entrance.
Finally, one of Whitaker’s hands moves from the wall. He grips onto Frank’s shoulder, pulling him, dragging him closer fist over fist, like he’d crawl inside him if he could. His legs fall open and it’s nothing but friction and Frank holding him steady as Frank opens him up, swirling his fingers at the end of each stabbing stroke just to see him squirm.
“C’mon, kid. I don’t have all night,” he grumbles against the shell of Whitaker’s ear, nosing along the lobe where there’s a hole for a piercing.
“Fuck. Fuck.” Whitaker grits his teeth. It takes a moment. Just a beat of elongated time of Frank working him open, giving him just a taste before finally, victoriously, the word slides off his tongue: “Yes.”
Frank's cock jumps so hard in his jeans he’s almost certain, for a moment, that he’s ruined his chances of actually fucking someone tonight by coming right then and there. There’s a sudden ringing in his ears. Then he’s pulling, pushing, tugging, shoving until Whitaker turns, pushing his chest against the wall hard enough to make him huff. His pale hands splay against the pattern of the bricks. Frank kicks his legs open, shoves the elastic of his scrubs down the meat of his thighs, exposing creamy, smooth skin that almost glows in the dim night air.
“I don’t—” He stumbles, adrenaline making it hard for him to find his words now. He keeps his hands from shaking by shoving them underneath Whitaker’s shirt, groping at his sides. “I don’t have a condom. I didn’t think—” He’s lying. He’s lost on it, cut adrift by it, fucking drowning in the fact that the kid doesn’t know it isn’t true. Nobody knows but him. He wants to swallow the feeling whole. He wants to feel the sharpness of it as he swallows it, pulling him down with it.
Which is why it’s so fucking hot when Whitaker turns back, eyes glittering with something unnatural as he says, “So, don’t use one.”
“Holy fuck,” Frank groans like he’s been punched in the gut.
“No. Just—” The kid turns back to the wall, repositioning his thighs closer together. His back arches into an impressive, tight, letter c, presenting a perfect space for Frank’s cock to slot right into. “Fuck my thighs.”
Now that sounds like a great fucking idea.
It only hits him just then that his dick is still in his pants. Frantically, he rips open the buckle of his belt and pops the button. He doesn’t get the zipper all the way down before he lifts himself free, leaving behind a smear of precome on the inside of his boxers. Just out of habit, he gives himself a few strokes but he knows he doesn’t need it. He’s hard enough to cut fucking steel.
He crowds against Whitaker, completely covering him with his body, shielding him from view as he hunches over, positioning himself before pushing in. The heat and slickness of Whitaker’s thighs feels like slipping into a warm bath at the end of a long day. He lets out a sigh, making sure to drag every inch of himself along the line of Whitaker’s slit as he pumps his hips slowly.
“Yeah,” Whitaker says approvingly. He flexes, tightening his glutes, and Frank responds, groaning at the welcome pressure. He hooks his hands around Whitaker’s hips as an anchor point, driving in, in, in.
And it’s good—it’s so fucking good. But it’s just not enough, not when there’s a wet, hot cunt right there.
“Come on.” He licks his teeth, tucking the words into the crook of Whitaker’s neck along with little, sucking bites. “Just let me in for a second. It’d feel so good. I just want to feel you. I won’t—I’ll be careful. We’re fucking doctors. You can trust me. ” He chants the words like a spell. Like little chocolate promises tucked onto neat pillowcases.
He could just—slip out as fast as he slips in. Whitaker may not even know the difference. And he’s not saying no. He’s whining, low and deep from his chest, eyebrows creasing as Frank sweet talks, walking his hands up and down Whitaker’s body. He wants this. He said yes.
Fuck it, Frank decides. He’s not nearly as drunk as he was before and he really just wants to come. He can feel it, coiling in his groin like a springtrap. It won’t take much, he just needs to—
On his next thrust, he positions his hips just so, pushing up, past the unsuspecting rim of Whitaker’s hole. The blood-hot vicegrip makes Frank’s eyes roll back in his head.
Whitaker yelps, tensing against the wall.
“Shh.” Frank shushes him again, moving a hand to Whitaker’s mouth. He pushes two fingers past the seam of his lips, hooking them around teeth and tongue and tendon. The kid could bite him. Crunch into those fingers like nothing but carrot sticks if he didn’t want this just as fucking bad as Frank does. “That’s it, baby. Take it. Take my cock. Good—good boy.”
He’s never had the opportunity to say that before. It bubbles through him like an uncorked bottle of champagne, buzzing and fizzing. Very quickly, he files that away for further examination. He’s kind of fucking busy right now.
“Oh. My. God.” Whitaker grunts. One of his hands disappears between his legs, fingers jerking desperately at his cock.
“Fuck. Fuck, yes. Come for me. I want to feel you get off on my big cock. Come on.” Frank pistons his hips, biting his lip in concentration. Whitaker’s pulsing, hot and impossibly tight around him, grinding with each of his thrusts, meeting him halfway.
“Oh. Shit. Jesus—I’m—” Whitaker’s words catch on his throat, torn and ragged by the time they’re fully spoken. A whine cuts through the end of it and he jerks shakily on Frank’s dick.
Frank’s hips stutter into a quicker pace and he’s all but forgotten he’s not supposed to be racing towards his own orgasm when Whitaker speaks, voice raw and desperate, “Don’t—you can’t. Not inside.”
The concern in his voice ignites the wick behind Frank’s sternum. The panic. He won’t. Frank’s a man of his word and he made a promise and he knows that about himself, but Whitaker doesn’t. Whitaker doesn’t trust him. He’s afraid, trapped under Frank’s weight. Frank could. He has all the leverage in the world right now to come wherever he fucking wants.
He may be an addict and a fucking liar, but he’s not a sadist. Or at least he didn’t think he was before tonight. Still, he uses Whitaker’s cunt to work himself up to the very edge, frantic heart racing, blood boiling.
When he’s right about to trip into his orgasm, he flings himself back, missing the delicious heat of Whitaker’s body for just a moment before he jerks a fist over the head of his cock, coming with a quick shout. Spurts of white paint over his fingers, dribbling onto their clothes.
He props himself against the wall, the grit of it chafing against his fingers. Whitaker moves, turning to lean back, head thunking against the bricks. He’s already pulled his pants up, a smear of Frank left behind on the navy blue front of them.
“You can’t tell anyone,” Frank says, once he catches his breath. It’s just the first thing he can think of to say. Every other thought has been knocked out of his head, scattered among the trash on the pavement. The world settles over his shoulders way too fast. He tucks himself back into his jeans, sticky and uncomfortable.
Whitaker gives him a look. Disappointed. Not surprised. He rolls those eyes skyward and then back to Frank again. “Whatever,” he says.
“What?” Frank prickles. “No one would even believe you anyway.”
“Okay, dude.” Whitaker lifts his palms in surrender and steps away from the wall. He seems a lot more steady on his feet than he’d been when Frank found him here in the first place. “Whatever. You don’t work there anymore anyway.”
“Who told you that?” Frank’s voice raises.
Whitaker ignores him. He hunches his shoulders and wanders towards the road.
“Wait! What have you heard? What—what are people saying about me?”
The kid turns, facing with him a cool expression. The words that fill the cold air between them are meaner than a slap to the face: “No one talks about you at all.”
As he leaves, his head is held high. Because of course it is. He’s the new fucking Golden Boy.