Weaponized Physics
It sneaks up on her the same way everything with him does lately—under the cover of something deceivingly mundane.
Jack is on the rug doing surgery on his front casters; Penelope is half-sprawled on the sofa, socked foot nudging his shoulder like he’s magnetized.
“Okay,” he says, holding something up between thumb and forefinger. “Behold. Today’s offering to the gods of rolling resistance.”
It’s a dense black ring he’s just pulled out from the caster fork. Mostly hair. Her hair. It looks like a tiny haunted scrunchie.
She squints. “Is that… mine?”
“Yep,” he says. “Congratulations. You’ve woven yourself into my bearings.”
She frowns at it. “Can’t prove that’s mine.”
He turns his head and gives her a look. “Penelope. You shed like a golden retriever in a wind tunnel.”
She huffs a laugh. “Rude.”
“That is so gross,” she adds, but she leans in anyway. “Oh my god, it’s like a cursed Koosh ball.”
“Caster Koosh,” he corrects.
She laughs, full and helpless. “I hate that that’s good.”
He flicks the fluff into the trash bag, then spins the caster experimentally. “Hear that?”
She listens. The wheel spins almost silently.
“Sounds like nothing,” she says.
“Exactly,” he says. “The sound of improved life.”
She watches him for a second—the easy way he folds himself forward, using his hands for balance while his legs lie crooked in front of him. The line of his shoulders under the old t-shirt. The grease smear on his forearm. The complete lack of self-consciousness about any of it.
Her brain does that quiet click it’s been doing more and more: oh. Oh, this.
Little things that snag and won’t let go. The efficient way he threads through tight spaces. The casual competence when he hauls himself from chair to car. The specific angle his shoulder takes when he reaches down to adjust his leg.
She keeps shoving it into a mental drawer and slamming it shut.
Don’t look. Don’t think about it. Move on.
“Pen,” he says without looking up, “you’re staring at me like your brain just threw an error.”
She blinks. “It did. You don’t know what that Koosh was capable of.”
He snorts, ducks his head, goes back to the other wheel.
When he’s done, he wipes his hands on a rag, tosses it aside, and just… sits there on the floor a beat longer than usual.
Then he lines his chair up beside him.
Carefully. Too carefully.
Her stomach does a weird little flip.
“Okay,” he mutters. “Science time.”
She frowns. “Science time?”
But he’s already moving.
One hand to the curved front bar of his frame, one on the floor, head down, hips up.
She’s seen him do a floor transfer before. She knows the steps. But not from this angle. Not like this.
His whole upper body surges—clean and practiced and powerful. His legs lag behind, then splay a little as he pivots. Knees loose, feet turned out, thighs opening wide. For a second he’s suspended between floor and chair, all leverage and shoulders and effort.
He’s in control, but it’s not exactly graceful.
It’s something else.
Heat runs through her chest and drops, settling low and insistent. Her mouth goes dry. Her thighs press together without permission as her brain snags on the contrast—everything above his waist working, everything below just… there, legs splayed wide because gravity put them there. She has to look away before her head can finish the thought.
He lands in the chair with a grunt, one hand immediately going to his knee to haul the leg more squarely onto the footplate.
Her eyes drop.
Catch on his fingers wrapped around his own thigh. The way he pulls the deadweight into position with that same easy efficiency he brings to everything. The complete lack of ceremony. Just a thing he does.
Her brain does something deeply unhelpful.
She drags her gaze up half a second too late.
He’s already watching her.
“Uh-huh,” he says.
She jerks her attention back to her phone. “What.”
“Nothing,” he says, entirely not nothing. “Just logging data.”
“Oh my god,” she groans. “Do not say that like a pervert scientist.”
“Too late,” he says mildly.
He rolls a few inches closer to the sofa, forearms resting on his thighs. Looking infuriatingly calm for someone who is absolutely doing this on purpose.
She can feel him watching her. Waiting.
“So,” he says, like they’re picking up some other conversation. “You want to talk about it?”
Her stomach does a slow drop. “About… the Koosh?”
“Adorable,” he says. “No. About whatever’s happening in your brain when I move my legs.”
She freezes.
Her pulse kicks up in her throat.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you don’t.”
He leans back in his chair like he didn’t just reach into her skull and pull out the exact thing she’s been trying not to examine.
She glares at him, which would be more effective if her face weren’t burning.
He rolls closer. One forearm still on his thigh, the other hand reaching out to catch her ankle where it’s drifted against his lap.
The touch is casual.
His eyes are not.
“There it is again,” he says.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure.”
He slides her leg farther across his lap, settling it there like it belongs to him. Her foot ends up hooked against the far side of his chair frame, socked toes brushing the wheel.
“Jack.”
“Penelope.”
She narrows her eyes. “What are you doing?”
He considers that. “Data collection.”
She throws her head back against the sofa. “I hate you.”
“No you don’t.”
His thumb rubs once over her ankle bone—slow, deliberate, like he’s got all the time in the world.
And because he’s the worst, he says, “You know what’s funny?”
“What.”
“Every time my legs do something weird, you stop talking mid-sentence.”
She goes still.
He sees it.
Of course he does.
“That,” he says. “Exactly that.”
“I do not.”
“You do.” He shifts in the chair, settling more comfortably. “Floor transfers when they decide to go full rag doll. When my caster caught that lip at Target and my foot slipped. Car last week when my leg got stuck and I grabbed it? You froze so hard I thought you’d blue-screened.”
She stares at him, something cold and hot happening simultaneously in her chest.
“You’ve been keeping track?”
He gives her a look. “Pen. Come on.”
That is not an answer, which means yes.
Which means he’s been watching her watch him.
For weeks.
“Wow,” she mutters, face going hot. “Creepy.”
“Mm, no,” he says. “Creepy would be making a chart.”
There is a beat.
A very specific beat.
She squints at him. “Did you make a chart?”
“No,” he says.
Too fast.
“Jack.”
He grins, completely shameless. “Mental chart.”
“That is somehow worse.”
He doesn’t deny it. He just sits there, relaxed in the chair, watching her.
Her heart does something stupid and arrhythmic against her ribs. Of course he’s been cataloging. Of course he’s been noticing patterns. She’s basically been doing a live demonstration in front of the data guy.
He knows.
The thought hits so hard the room goes a little narrower—TV noise flattening to background hum, everything else falling off the map.
And then, before her brain can catch up, he reaches down.
No warning. No commentary.
Just his hand sliding to his knee, movement suddenly very, very purposeful.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Fingers curl under his knee, shoulder dipping to get the angle. The leg drags a few inches—heavy, loose, unhelpful. His knee tips outward as it goes, heel skidding on the footplate until his foot ends up half off, thigh falling open in an easy sprawl that’s only happening because his hand tells it to.
Her lungs do this awful hitch-stall thing—like her body tried to breathe and changed its mind halfway through. She knew it was coming. Somehow that makes it worse.
She watches his hand. The spread of his fingers against the denim. The easy strength in his forearm as he repositions the weight. The small adjustment in his torso to compensate.
It’s such a small thing.
It shouldn’t do what it does to her.
“There,” he says softly. “You just did it.”
“I’m breathing.”
“No, you’re not.”
He’s right. She’s not.
She drags in air like she’s remembering how.
“You’re keeping track of my breathing now?”
“Among other things.” He shifts his hand higher on his thigh, fingers spreading slightly. “You get this look. Like you’re trying very hard not to notice something you’re absolutely noticing.”
“That’s not—”
“It is.” His voice is calm. Matter-of-fact. “Transfers where things go sideways. When my legs splay out and I have to wrangle them back. You just… stop.”
She makes a weak noise. “Sometimes breathing is… loud.”
He huffs out a quiet laugh. “Right. Okay.”
Her whole body goes hot.
“You’ve really been—”
“Paying attention?” He raises an eyebrow. “Yeah. For weeks.”
She stares at him.
He stares back, completely unbothered by what he’s just admitted.
Her mouth works once, twice. “Every time you do some version of… that—” she flaps a hand, helpless, in the general direction of his legs and arms and the entire situation, “—my brain lights a small illegal fire and then I slam the laptop shut and throw it into the ocean.”
His mouth curves, quick and startled. “You’re so unwell.”
“I know,” she says miserably. “I was trying to be normal about it.”
“How’s that going,” he asks.
“Terribly,” she mutters.
He looks like he wants to smile and doesn’t quite let himself.
“That night,” he says. “Mushroom night. When you asked me to tell you what I was feeling.”
Her stomach flips. “What about it.”
“That’s when I started the mental chart.” His thumb moves against her ankle again—once, twice. “You made this sound when I told you my hips were trying to move even though they couldn’t. Like something short-circuited.”
“Jack—”
“And you moved my leg,” he continues. “With your hands. And you said ‘I love this.’” His eyes lock on hers. “Not ‘this is fine’ or ‘this is okay.’ You said you loved it.”
She’s shaking her head before she can stop herself. “I was just—”
“You weren’t ‘just’ anything.” He’s not smiling now. Not teasing. Just watching her with that steady, unnerving focus. “You meant it. And I’ve been watching you ever since.”
She can’t breathe.
Can’t think.
Can only stare at him while her brain tries and fails to build a coherent defense.
“So,” he says quietly. “Do you want to keep pretending? Or do you want to just say it?”
Her mouth opens.
Nothing comes out.
He waits.
And because he’s made honesty feel weirdly possible, and because she is too far gone to build a lie in time, she says it.
Quietly.
Like it got dragged out of her.
“I love it.”
“Fuck,” he breathes.
His hand tightens around her ankle.
The room seems to go quiet around them.
Not smug. Not satisfied.
Wrecked.
Like hearing her say it out loud hit harder than anything he’d braced for.
The word just sits there between them, and her pulse drops low. His hand is warm and solid around her ankle, and for a split second she thinks about it sliding higher. The thought makes her face go hot. She’s wet. From this. From saying it out loud. From the way he’s looking at her like she just handed him something he didn’t know he was allowed to want.
She can’t take it back. Doesn’t want to. But hearing it out loud makes her feel like her ribs are transparent.
He’s staring at her.
Not teasing anymore. Not cataloging.
Just… looking.
His whole face has changed—sharper somehow. More awake.
“Yeah?” he says, voice rough.
She nods once.
He lets out a breath—shaky, surprised.
For a second neither of them moves.
The air between them feels different. Heavier. Like something just shifted and can’t be put back.
Then he says, very quietly, “Want to try?”
Her brain stalls. “What?”
“My leg.” His hand is still resting on his thigh. “You can move it if you want.”
She goes completely still.
The offer just hangs there between them.
He doesn’t rescue her. Just waits.
“You’re serious.”
“Very.”
“I— You can’t just… do that.”
“Move my leg?” he asks mildly. “Pretty sure that’s allowed.”
“You know what I mean,” she says, flustered. “You can’t weaponize physics at me.”
“Pen,” he says, “physics weaponized itself a long time ago.”
Her face does something horrible. “I hate you so much.”
“No you don’t,” he says softly. “I’m asking. Not testing. If you don’t want to, we drop it.”
The gentleness of that hits almost as hard as everything else.
Her hand shakes a little when she reaches down.
She’s still half on the sofa, leaning toward him, one hand braced on the cushion beside her for balance.
Her other hand lands on his thigh first—denim warm under her fingers, the solid weight of him beneath. He’s been sitting here this whole time, heat soaked into the fabric.
Then, slowly, her fingers slide down and tuck under the bend of his knee the way his did.
He watches her face the whole time.
Not his leg. Not her hand.
Her.
“Okay,” he says quietly. “Now move it.”
She pulls.
His leg goes with her.
Heavy. Completely slack. No resistance at all.
She’s moved his legs in bed before—quick, functional adjustments in the dark. But this is the first time she’s done it slowly. Deliberately. Watching his upper body compensate for every shift while the leg itself just… goes.
Her hand tightens under his knee.
He can’t feel this.
Can’t feel her fingers curled under his knee.
Can’t feel the drag of denim against his skin.
Can’t feel any of it.
But she can see the little hitch in his breathing. The way his shoulders shift to compensate. The tension running through his upper body as it silently recalibrates around the movement.
Her mouth parts. “Oh my god.”
“There it is,” he says, almost under his breath.
She doesn’t stop.
She nudges his leg a little farther out, testing the arc of it. Watching how easily it swings, how his heel slides on the footplate, how his thigh just… falls open where she leaves it.
“Jesus,” he mutters, voice roughening. “Okay.”
She glances up. “Okay what?”
“Okay, we have officially confirmed my hypothesis,” he says. “This does something to you.”
“Shut up,” she whispers.
She shifts his leg back in, then out again, slower this time. Her hand is steady now. Her pulse is not.
“How is this… easy?” she asks, almost to herself. “You’re not light.”
“That is hurtful,” he says, breath catching when she changes direction. “It’s leverage. And gravity. And the fact that my legs are unhelpful noodles.”
Her fingers tighten under his knee. “Don’t call them noodles.”
“Okay,” he says. “Extremely heavy, non-participating… assets.”
“Better,” she says faintly.
She moves his leg again—wider this time, testing the range—and watches the way his torso shifts to compensate. His chest expands as he takes a deeper breath. His shoulders tighten. All of him working to steady himself while she moves the part of him that can’t fight back.
Her brain offers up an extremely unhelpful image of doing this same thing in a very different position, and she has to swallow hard against the heat flooding her face.
She can’t stop watching the disconnect—the way his arm works, tendons shifting under skin, while the leg in her hand follows along with zero input of its own.
“Where do you feel it?” she asks before she can stop herself.
“Not where your hand is,” he says. “I feel the pull in my back. But your touch?” He shakes his head slightly. “Can’t feel that part.”
Her stomach flips so hard she has to tighten her grip on his knee.
She moves his leg one more time, a little wider this round, heel dragging just off the edge of the plate before she hauls it back into a safer position.
He breathes out in a rush. “Yeah. That.”
Whatever this is hits low and sharp and unfair, like somebody flipping a switch behind her ribs and just leaving it there.
And he knows.
Because she’s looking at him like she’s just been handed a live wire and said thank you.
He is trying so hard not to look too pleased with himself.
Trying.
Failing.
“This is insane,” she breathes.
“Mm-hm.”
“You really can’t feel that at all?”
“I feel that you’re moving me. I just can’t feel… you.”
She swallows hard.
It lands all at once—his permission, her hand on a part of him he can’t feel, the quiet trust in letting her move him—and it makes her feel a little lightheaded.
“Does it…” She trails off, shakes her head. Doesn’t finish the thought.
“Does it what,” he presses, gentle.
“Does it weird you out?” she blurts. “That I like it? That it’s—this?”
“No.”
“That was very fast,” she says.
“Because it’s very true,” he says. “If any of this made me feel weird or gross, I’d tell you. Immediately. You know I would.”
She huffs out a breath that wants to be a laugh. “Yeah. You would.”
“So the fact that you like what everyone else tries not to look at?” He shrugs one shoulder, as much as his position allows. “That’s not the problem, Pen. That’s… the selling point.”
Her heart does something catastrophic. “You can’t just say things like that.”
“I’m being honest,” he says. “Don’t blame me because your brain is a funhouse.”
She makes a strangled noise.
“You’re doing that thing again,” he says.
“What thing?”
“Getting closer before you notice you’re doing it.”
She looks down.
She has, in fact, drifted forward off the sofa. Half-kneeling on the floor beside his chair now, one hand still under his knee, the other braced on his frame. Her knee is almost touching the front caster. Her face is inches from his.
Oh.
He smiles, small and wrecked. “Yeah.”
“Shut up.”
“No.”
Then he leans forward, catches the back of her neck, and pulls her in.
The kiss is immediate and consuming—all that tension finally snapping into something physical.
Her hand is still on his leg. His hand is in her hair. And for a few seconds neither of them thinks about anything except the desperate need to get closer.
He kisses her like he’s been holding his breath for days and finally remembered how to inhale. She makes some kind of helpless sound into his mouth, fingers tightening under his knee before she remembers what she’s holding and lets go, sliding that hand up to his thigh instead.
The chair rocks faintly with the shift; he steadies them both with a quick brace of his palm on the wheel, then finds her waist again, dragging her closer.
“Okay,” he says against her mouth, voice rough. “Come here.”
He catches her waist properly this time and hauls her up into his lap before she can process the instruction.
She makes a startled noise, grabbing at his shoulders on instinct. He’s already backing the chair an inch from the sofa to give them room, using her momentum to help swing her across.
She lands half-contorted on him, one leg ending up awkwardly between his thigh and the wheel, her weight settling directly over his lap in a way that makes them both go very still.
Oh.
“This is not stable,” she manages, breathless.
“Don’t care,” he says, hands tightening on her hips like he wants her exactly where she is.
She laughs—sharp and disbelieving and completely gone—then he’s kissing her again.
This time slower. Deeper. His hands settle on her hips; her fingers slide into his hair, finding the soft bits at the back of his neck, the ones that make him exhale harder into her mouth.
She can feel the tension in his shoulders. The slight tremor from holding this position. The way his whole upper body is working to keep balanced.
And she can feel something else—the hard line of him pressed between them, impossible to ignore, making her breathless for reasons that have nothing to do with the kissing.
“Jack—”
“I know,” he says against her neck. “Just—give me a second. You have no idea what this is doing to me.”
She stays there, folded into him, feeling his chest rise and fall against her, feeling the faint shake in his arms.
He shifts his grip on her hip with his free hand, steadying them both. “Okay,” he mutters. “Better.”
He makes a small relieved sound.
“You’re welcome,” she says.
He huffs a laugh, then proves he’s not actually that helpless by sliding one hand from her hip to under her thigh, nudging her leg more firmly across his lap. The movement rocks them both again.
She grabs his shoulders. “You’re gonna dump us on the floor.”
“Not with these arms,” he says. “Have some faith.”
“I have so much faith,” she says, dizzy. “That’s the problem.”
His mouth curves. “You know what’s really rude?”
“What,” she says warily.
“The fact that now I know exactly how to ruin your day in public,” he says. “All I have to do is move my leg in a Target checkout line.”
Her brain helpfully supplies images: his hand on his knee in a checkout line, a quick hitch of his leg on a sidewalk, her standing there trying to pretend her soul didn’t just leave her body.
She goes hot all over again. “You wouldn’t.”
His expression says: I absolutely would.
“Jack,” she says, scandalized.
“Penelope,” he echoes, maddeningly calm. “You’re the one who told me you love it. I’m just working with the available dataset.”
“That’s so evil.”
“Thought so,” he says, lips brushing her jaw now, like he can’t quite stop touching her even while he’s talking.
Her fingers tighten briefly in his shirt, holding on like she needs something solid.
He tilts his head, breath warm against her neck. “Also, just for the record?”
“What,” she says, barely audible.
“You’re not the only one whose brain is short-circuiting,” he murmurs. “Watching you move my leg just now? That was… a lot.”
She pulls back enough to see his face. His eyes are dark, pupils blown, mouth flushed from kissing. He looks almost offended by his own reaction.
“Yeah?” she says, something wild sparking in her chest.
“Yeah,” he says. “Shockingly a lot. Ten out of ten, would let you manhandle me again.”
She snorts, breathless. “I wasn’t manhandling you.”
“Pen,” he says, “you put your hand under my knee and moved my entire leg wherever you wanted it. I’m pretty sure that qualifies.”
Her stomach flips so hard she actually sways.
He smiles, small and crooked and all hers. “Good.”
She stares at him. “You’re enjoying this way too much.”
“Deeply.”
She buries her face briefly against his shoulder. His t-shirt is soft against her cheek. He smells like soap and sweat and the faint metallic tang of wheel grease.
They sit there like that for a beat—her in his lap, his arms around her, the world reduced to this.
She pulls back just enough to look him in the eye. “And you’re… okay with this.”
He doesn’t even hesitate. “Penelope. I’m more than okay with this.”
He glances past her at the hallway. “So. Do you want to keep testing physics in here, or relocate to an area with more mattress and less coffee table?”
Her face heats. “You’re actually the worst.”
“Pen,” he says quietly. “Your call.”
She looks at him. At his hands on her hips. At his legs, lying exactly where they’ve ended up.
The drawer in her brain is open now.
And he’s still here.
“Bedroom,” she says.
His eyes darken in a way that hits her straight in the spine. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Before I die on your lap and they have to list physics as the cause of death.”
He lets out a breath that’s half laugh, half something else entirely. “Can’t have that.”
He shifts his grip on her, one hand sliding low on her back, the other bracing on the wheel as he backs them away from the sofa. She tightens her legs around him on instinct, which does absolutely nothing to help his composure.
“Okay,” he mutters. “Yep. Terrible idea. Excellent terrible idea.”
She laughs, giddy and breathless, tucking her face against his neck as he maneuvers them toward the hall. She can feel the push of his arms, the little bumps as the casters roll over the rug edge, the way the chair tilts minutely when they cross the threshold.
His hand slides under the hem of her shirt as they pass through the doorway, palm hot against the small of her back, fingers spreading wide like he’s claiming territory. She gasps against his neck, and he makes a low sound that goes straight through her.
Koosh problem: solved.
The new one is much, much worse. And when he kisses the side of her jaw and keeps rolling, she decides she absolutely does not care.
Aah, thank you so much!
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