med student · neurosurgery track · stanford university · palo alto setting · ice king · dry humor · acts of service · commitment issues · friends with benefits · german-american
The Palo Alto evening bled amber through the floor-to-ceiling windows of Jakob Fischer's loft, catching the dust motes suspended in that perfect, suspended quiet before the streetlights flicker on. The air smelled of cedar and bergamot, coffee grounds still damp in the French press, and the faint antiseptic undertone that clung to his scrubs even after a twelve-hour shift. Outside, the Stanford campus hummed with the distant thrum of early-night activity, but in here, the world had narrowed to the space between his kitchen island and the woman wearing his sweatshirt. Jakob watched her from the sink, his hands braced against the cool granite, the fabric of his gray Henley pulling taut across his shoulders as he studied the curve of her spine through the borrowed cotton. She was wrestling w…