In the wake of the 2016 Salem Supervirus, everybody’s fine, but J&M are stuck in the hospital for twenty-four more hours. And judging from her reaction to that kiss, Marlena’s not gonna last that long…
All but the weakest of the virus patients had been transferred out of the ER to allow the staff to start getting some much-needed rest, and John was still grumbling about the twenty-four hour rule when Marlena finally managed to herd him into his new room.
“This is ridiculous. I feel fine. There’s no reason–”
That was as far as he got before Marlena hooked her left arm around the back of his neck, fell back against the door, and pulled him down into a kiss that made the one he’d laid on her out by the nurse’s station earlier look like a peck on the cheek.
He was breathless by the time she finally let him go. Breathless, and a little dazed. “Doc?”
“The doctor said you needed to be in bed.” She reached down and flipped the lock, never taking her eyes off his. “He didn’t say you needed to be there alone.”
John stared at her in amazement. “Are you serious?”
“Have you met me?”
“Well, yeah, but this is a side of you I haven’t seen in a while.”
“You haven’t grabbed me by the head and kissed me like that in a while, either.”
“Oh, like this?” He demonstrated again. Very thoroughly.
“Like that,” she agreed breathlessly when they broke apart again. Her hands found the tie on the back of his hospital gown and released it, tugging impatiently at the thin material.
“Uh-uh,” John said, and did the same to the lapel of her jacket. “I’m not the one who’s overdressed.”
“Then do something about it,” she challenged.
John took a half-step back, putting enough space between them to peel off his gown and toss it aside, then got to work on her various buttons and fastenings. His progress was somewhat hampered by her wandering hands, until finally he caught her wrists and pushed them back against the door on either side of her head.
“Stay,” he growled.
“Make me,” she shot back, mischief sparkling in her eyes.
He stepped into her, slotting his thigh between hers and pinning her to the door with the full weight of his body. She twisted her hips and pulled at his hands, putting up a pretty good playful struggle.
“Stop,” he said sharply.
Marlena froze, and her eyes went wide. It might have been a long time, but she clearly still recognized an order when she heard one.
John shifted to warm her ear with his breath, keeping her pinned. “Good girl. Now, are you gonna fight me, or are you gonna behave yourself and let me take care of you?”
A moment passed in perfect silence and stillness, and then all at once her body relaxed against his.
“That’s what I thought,” he murmured, and rewarded her with an open-mouthed kiss just below her ear, working his tongue against the tender skin there until she let out a breathy little sound of surrender that made his cock twitch inside the scrub pants he was still wearing.
“Stay,” he said again, trusting that this time the command would be obeyed, and released her wrists to finish opening her shirt. Her bra turned out to have one of those wonderfully convenient front clasps, so he dispensed with that, too, and filled his hands with the warm weight of her breasts.
Marlena dropped her head back against the door and closed her eyes, and John took a moment just to look at her, still amazed by her willingness to let him do this here. If anybody knocks on this door, he thought, I’ll kill them.
Then he lowered his mouth to her breasts and thought nothing more about it. Nothing more about anything, really, save Marlena’s reactions to his ministrations. Twice she started to bring her hands down, but both times she corrected herself before he had to, putting her wrists back against the door again without needing to be told. She was being very good…which clearly meant he wasn’t trying hard enough.
He lowered himself to his knees in front of her and opened her slacks, drawing them down over her hips and prompting her to lift one foot at a time, dispensing with slacks and shoes at once, then sat back on his heels to look up at her and found her looking back. She looked almost drugged, her pupils so blown that only the thinnest band of passion-dark green showed around them. John swallowed hard, glad that the scrub pants were roomy.
“You have to be quiet,” he reminded her.
She nodded slowly.
“Bring your hands down here,” he said, touching the door on either side of her hips. She’d been standing with her arms up over her head like that for quite a while now.
She obediently brought them down, laying her hands flat against the door where he had indicated.
“Better?”
Another slow nod.
John wrapped his own hands around her hips and pressed a soft kiss to her lower belly, just above the band of the sexy scrap of black silk that was the last remaining barrier between her and his touch. It wasn’t in his way–yet–and he liked the way it looked against her pale skin. She trembled, and he kissed her again, working his way down until he was mouthing her through the damp fabric, the familiar flavor of her arousal teasing his tongue.
She was obviously trying to keep still, but he could feel the tiny movements of her hips, instinctive little thrusts she couldn’t entirely stifle. She hadn’t moved her hands, but her fingers were twitching.
The time for appreciating her lingerie had passed, he decided, and hooked his fingers through the elastic to slowly stroke his hands down her legs, taking the soft silk with him. She stepped out, and he tapped the inside of her leg, prompting her to spread out and give him room to work.
He ran his hands up the inside of her thighs, bringing them together at the top to part her folds with his thumbs–
–and voices spoke in the hallway, rounding the corner not ten feet from their door.
Marlena froze. “John–”
“I know. I can hear them,” he murmured, and lowered his mouth to her anyway.
Her body jerked sharply, and he palmed her hipbones and held her in place, not letting up. She had started this, and he’d be damned if a couple of passing nurses were going to stop him from finishing it, not even when they stopped twenty feet down the hall to finish their conversation. Marlena could be either very quiet or very embarrassed, and which she chose was up to her.
Quiet won, but not by much.
Not screaming must have taken every bit of willpower she had, because her hands came off the door and clutched hard at his shoulders as her body began to shake. John stayed with her and kept right on doing what he was doing until finally she pushed at him weakly, her trembling fingers coming to rest in his hair as he stopped to let her recover.
At long last their unwitting audience moved on, their voices fading around the corner at the far end of the hall.
Marlena dropped her head back against the door with a thump. “I’m going to kill you for that,” she announced shakily. “Just as soon as I can move again.”
John laughed and levered himself to his feet, bracing his hands against the door on either side of her. “You okay?”
“Mmmm, I’m a lot better than just okay,” she answered, finally opening her eyes again to look at him. “Although I seemed to have failed spectacularly at getting you back into bed.”
“I was kinda hoping that was still part of your plan.”
She glanced down. “Yes, I can see that.” Scrub pants didn’t do much to hide an erection like the one John was currently sporting. “Now which of us is overdressed?”
“I thought you might want to do something about that.”
“Oh, am I allowed to use my hands now?”
“Well, if you’d rather do it with your teeth…”
She laughed and gave him a shove toward the bed. “Less talking, more undressing.”
“What happened here?” he demanded. “Three minutes ago I was in charge.”
“Three minutes ago my brain had liquefied and leaked out my ears,” she answered, finally shrugging out of her open jacket, shirt, and bra and tossing them over a chair.
Then she laced her fingers together behind her back and arched to stretch her shoulders, and John felt his own brain go a little melty around the edges.
Marlena straightened up and stalked toward him, a predatory look on her face. There was absolutely nothing submissive about her now. Her fingers found the drawstring of his pants, and thirty seconds later he was seated on the bed stark naked with no clear memory of how he’d gotten that way.
“Lie back,” she ordered, pressing the heel of her hand against his sternum for good measure.
“Are you this hands-on with all your patients?”
“Only the ones who don’t follow my instructions the first time.”
He took the hint and settled back against the raised head of the bed, reaching automatically to steady Marlena when she climbed up beside him.
She threw her leg over his hips and knelt up, eyeing the arrangement critically. “Somehow I don’t remember hospital beds being quite this narrow.”
John’s brows rose. “Exactly how wild are you planning on getting here, lady? Some of us are still recuperating.”
“Oh, really? Because certain parts of you seem pretty fully recovered.” She reached down to give the part in question a slow base-to-tip stroke.
He sucked in a sharp breath and arched involuntarily into the touch.
“Enough teasing?” she asked, looking him in the eye.
“Yeah,” John managed. “Yeah, I–”
She shifted forward and rocked back, and whatever else he might have said was swallowed up in a moan as she slid slowly downward, enveloping him in slick, welcoming heat.
He reached for her, but she caught his hands, pressing them back over his head and lacing their fingers together.
“How about letting me do the work this time, hmmm? Doctor’s orders.”
“Only if–” His breathing caught as she rolled her hips. “Only if you’ll kiss me again.”
She obliged, and they spent the next several minutes trading control of the kiss back and forth, letting their bodies find and settle into an easy rhythm without much conscious input from their minds. The boundaries between them fell away, and they sank into each other until nothing existed for either of them but their connection and the pleasure pulsing through it.
“Oh,” Marlena murmured when the kiss finally broke, looking at him through heavy-lidded eyes. “Oh, this is…”
John hummed in wordless agreement, understanding exactly what she meant.
They had been lovers again for eight months, and they’d made some pretty damn good love in that time, but this felt different. Better. Stronger. More real. Like some small missing piece whose absence they hadn’t even been fully aware of had finally locked back into place.
We’re us again, he thought, and saw the same certainty reflected in her eyes.
She rested her forehead against his, and they stayed just like that–eye to eye, body to body, joined in every possible way, rocking together slowly, until the wave finally broke over them, taking them down as one into a place of warmth and love and perfect peace.
When John trusted himself to speak again, the first words out of his mouth were, “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Marlena answered, and finally released his hands to gently touch his face instead.
It took him a moment to realize she was wiping away tears–twins to the ones he reached up to wipe from her cheeks.
“Wasn’t expecting that,” he admitted.
“Neither was I. That was…extraordinary. Even for us.”
“Felt like home.”
She blinked, and a few more tears escaped. “Yeah, it did.”
They kissed again, soft and gentle, then drew back to just look into one other’s eyes.
They were still gazing at each other like that a minute or so later, blissfully unaware of their surroundings, when the door handle suddenly rattled.
“John?” It was Kayla, sounding none too happy about being locked out.
“I’m all right,” he called back, fighting a laugh at Marlena’s wide-eyed expression.
There was a lengthy pause, during which Kayla apparently put two and two together.
“Marlena?”
John lost the battle and laughed helplessly.
Marlena swatted him on the chest. “Yes?”
“I think I’ll just transfer John to your care.” Kayla’s tone was wry.
“That’ll be fine,” Marlena answered, and tipped forward to bury her face in John’s neck, her shoulders shaking.
“Do try to let him get some rest, okay?”
John answered, since Marlena apparently couldn’t. “We’ll behave ourselves.”
Even through the door, Kayla’s snort was clearly audible.
“Shouldn’t you be resting, too?” he asked pointedly.
“Believe me, I’m headed that way. Just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
John couldn’t resist. “Oh, I’m in good hands.”
“I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear that. Good night, you two.”
Marlena was still laughing when Kayla’s footsteps faded away. “I guess we should be grateful her timing wasn’t worse.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“She’s right about you getting some rest, though.”
“Will you stay with me?” he asked. She wasn’t under observation, so she was technically free to go home, but John wanted her here, and he wanted her to know that.
“I’d like to clean up a little,” she answered, sitting up to rake her hands through her hair, “but yes, of course I’m going to stay. Wild horses couldn’t drag me away.”
“Good to know.”
She smiled. “Would you like me to go check on Paul? Assuming I can make myself presentable again, that is?”
“I’d appreciate that, yeah.” Now that the endorphin rush was wearing off, he was suddenly exhausted.
“I imagine he’s asleep, but I’ll look in on him and then come back here.” She clambered off the bed and kissed him softly, giving his chest a little pat. “You go ahead and go to sleep.”
“Don’t think I’m gonna have much choice,” he admitted, and yawned spectacularly. “Wow, sorry.”
“I’ll take it as a compliment,” she answered, pulling the covers up over him. “Close your eyes.”
John did, and his very last conscious awareness was of her lips touching his forehead and her voice whispering, “Sleep, my love.”
Chapter End Notes:
With apologies to Robert Palmer for the borrowed title. In my head-canon, that song is John’s ringtone for Marlena.
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Black Magic
John and Marlena FanFiction
Bad Case of Loving You By: susan_m
[Reviews – 2] Chapter or Story Table of Contents
– Text Size +
Author’s Chapter Notes:
Sorry, no #NumNums here. Just a little Evans-Black-Narita-Brady family slice of life. 😉
Paul was picking uncertainly at the hospital’s idea of breakfast, his mind still reeling from the unexpected invitation Marlena and his Dad had extended a short while ago, when another knock sounded at his door.
“Yes?” he called curiously. The doctors just knocked and came on in, and John and Marlena had gone to visit Ari, so who in the world could this be?
The door opened to reveal Brady and Belle, both of them carrying large paper bags.
“Can we come in?” Brady asked. “We come bearing breakfast, if that matters.”
“Of course you can come in,” Paul said, sitting up straighter. “I’d like some company. And I’d definitely like some real food.”
He watched in bemusement as his half-sibs pirated chairs from the waiting room, made his hospital tray disappear (good riddance), and produced breakfast sandwiches, hashbrowns, and coffee for five that they had somehow managed to smuggle past the nurse’s station.
“Do you know Dad’s room number?” Brady asked, checking wrappers to figure out which of the sandwiches were meant for Marlena and John.
“They should be back here any minute, actually,” Paul said. “They just went to check on Ari.”
“Problem solved, then” Brady said, and cheerfully handed the sandwiches to Belle. “Here, Tink, you figure this out. I’ll grab two more chairs.”
By the time Marlena and John returned, the impromptu breakfast picnic was in full swing. They walked in to find Paul and Belle laughing around mouthfuls of hashbrowns as Brady regaled them with Tate’s latest antics. He and Belle were seated on one side of Paul’s bed, opposite two empty chairs on the other side.
“Hey, no family reunions without us,” John said, grinning from ear to ear at the sight of them. “When did you two get here?”
“About five minutes ago,” Belle said. “And we brought breakfast for everybody.”
They did the full round of hugs, and then Marlena and John sat down, automatically pushing their chairs closer together before reaching for their sandwiches. They initially ended up with the wrong cups of coffee, and John’s expression after he took a sip prompted such a gale of laughter from the kids that it was a thousand wonders one of the nurses didn’t come to see what in the world was going on.
“Pretty sure this one’s yours,” John said, grimacing dramatically as he held the cup out to Marlena.
She looked from it to him, obviously fighting a laugh of her own. “Maybe I don’t want it now. It has your cooties on it.”
John affected a wounded expression. “I was declared cootie-free over an hour ago, just in case you’ve forgotten. I have the paperwork to prove it.”
The laugh won, and Marlena accepted her coffee. “Yes, well, I don’t know whether you noticed this the past few days, but your cooties don’t actually scare me.”
“I noticed,” he said, and leaned over to kiss her soundly before sitting back to drink from his own cup.
The five of them ate and talked and laughed, and it warmed John’s heart to see Brady and Belle treating Paul like a brother. Which was to say, of course, that they teased him mercilessly. Paul gave as good as he got, though, clearly enjoying his newfound family.
Marlena and John contributed to the conversation here and there, but mostly they sat back and watched, exchanging happy glances over their sandwiches as the kids cut up. John finished eating pretty quickly and shifted to loop his arm around Marlena’s shoulders, smiling as she cuddled against his side without missing a single beat of the boisterous cross-talk.
“What about Ari?” Paul suddenly asked. “I can’t believe I forgot to ask.”
“She’s doing great,” John answered. “Fully recovered. And not just Ari–”
“–but Gabi, too,” Marlena picked up seamlessly. “Which means they get to go home today as well.”
“That’s great news,” Belle said, speaking for all of them. She smiled at John. “I’ll bet she made you tell her a story.”
“She didn’t have to make me. I volunteered.”
“John does voices,” Marlena explained for Paul’s benefit. “Ari goes absolutely crazy over them. Today he was the Big Bad Wolf.”
“And Little Red Riding Hood,” John added in a reedy falsetto that made all of them laugh hysterically.
“Oh, my gosh, John, you can’t do that to me when I have a mouthful of coffee,” Marlena said, swatting at him playfully.
He caught her hand, and she just snuggled closer to him and let him hold it, lacing their fingers together and leaning into him with a happy little sigh.
The de facto family reunion lasted considerably longer than the actual breakfast-eating, and it was with obvious reluctance that Marlena eventually announced that she needed to spend some time in her office “before I have to go home and try to keep these two in line,” as she put it, indicating Paul and John.
She and John said their goodbyes to the kids and took their leave, still hand-in-hand, unaware of the total silence that fell over the room as the door closed behind them.
Brady recovered first. “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. and Mrs. John Black.”
Belle turned to face him. “So that really did just happen?”
“It’s not just me, then?” Paul asked tentatively. “They really do seem different this morning?”
“They seem normal,” Belle answered, still looking at Brady. “Right? Normal?”
“Totally normal,” Brady agreed, and turned his attention to Paul. “The two people who just walked out that door? Those were our parents.” He gestured between himself and Belle. “Our actual parents, not just people who sort of look like them.”
“They used to be like that all the time,” Belle explained. “With the kissing and the hand-holding and the finishing each other’s sentences.”
“Wow,” Paul said. “So that’s good, right? I mean, they’re really happy.”
“It’s better than good,” Belle answered. “It’s wonderful.”
“It sure is,” Brady agreed. “Man, I honestly never thought I’d see them like that again. I am so relieved right now.”
“Me, too. We should have arranged to have them quarantined a long time ago!” She caught herself and winced, looking at Paul. “Sorry. I’m not trying to make light of what happened.”
“It’s okay. I understood what you meant. And at least it looks like some good came of it, right?”
“A whole lot of good,” Brady said. “And I’m really glad you’re gonna get a chance to know the real them.”
Paul hesitated, then plunged ahead. “Yeah, it looks like I will. They, uhm…they actually want me to stay with them while I’m recovering.” He looked from Brady to Belle and back. “Seems like that might be a little awkward, but Dad swears it was Marlena’s idea.”
“That I do not doubt,” Brady said easily. “And I wouldn’t worry about it–they don’t really do the yours-mine-or-ours thing with their kids. They never have. I will warn you, though, that you do not want to cross Marlena when she’s in Mama Bear mode.”
Belle laughed. “He’s not kidding. Seriously, just let them look after you. They really want to, or they wouldn’t have offered.”
“Thanks,” Paul said, smiling at each of them in turn. “You know, I always wondered what it would be like to have siblings. Turns out it’s pretty great.”
“Oh, don’t be fooled–we’re only going easy on you because you’re recuperating,” Brady answered. “You’ll change your tune once we start really picking on you.”
“Absolutely,” Belle said, trying to keep a straight face. “We’re awful. Really.”
“I think I can handle it,” Paul answered.
They talked for a few minutes more, until the doctor returned to check on Paul, whereupon Brady and Belle headed out, promising to see him again soon.
The doctor examined Paul, checked his vitals, and pronounced him well enough to be released from the hospital–but not well enough to go home alone. “You got somebody who can stay with you?”
“Yeah, I’ve got family here,” Paul said, and paused to savor the truth in that simple statement. “Lots of family.”
“Lucky you.”
“You have no idea.”
The Jarlena Journal 