premise: when pope comes home from prison to find you with a 2 year old little girl on your hip that looks an awful lot like him, he is determined to figure out if she is his. she has to be, right?
warnings: little angst & fluff, smut | 18+, more lore than smut oops, fresh outta prison pope [definitely ooc], ex gf!reader but they weren’t exactly ‘official’ , reader has a unnamed kid, nicknames [little dove, angel], unprotected sex + pope cums fast, not proofread!
requested! | 3.5k wc
You are Andrew's very first thought when he's no longer trapped between those 4 cold gray walls and bars. You were his every thought when he was in as well if he's being honest — He so desperately wants his first stop now that he's out to be your house. However he's not as sure as he used to be that you'll even open your door to him.
Wearing a polo with his shitty grown out prison buzz cut is not the way by far he wants you to see him after 3 years away either. He wants to look more a bit more presentable and bring a peace offering of flowers or something if you even do let him in. So he settles on heading 'home' first. Not his apartment that he has no idea what his family even did with while he was away but Smurfs.
The Cody house is full of more surprises when he expected to be met with even with the years away.
For one you're here but also, he learns that the only other person besides you who wholeheartedly genuinely loved him and let him be himself, his twin sister…is dead. Not that he expected Julia to magically be there to greet him home with his brothers but instead he finds her kid. Who is not only living at Smurf's but sleeping in his old room. J is not a lone new addition nor the only adolescent one, you have a child.
A 2 year old beautiful little girl that is staring up at him wide eyed and confused with a small wrinkle in her brow as she clings to your leg when he joins the rest of his family in the living room.
You were frozen place half way to the kitchen to get her food or a drink he presumes when you finally speak up. "An- Pope you're home" you state the obvious in a half surprised yet half blank tone he can't quite read. He can't tell if that's what irritates him or the way you stopped yourself from calling him Andy in that sweet tone he missed so much. Before he can reply he is bombarded by his brothers, getting short hugs or a ruffle of his shorten hair with a barrage of "Welcome home" 's. His eyes are still stuck flicking between looking at your kid and your shocked face.
"Got out on good behavior" his answer is aimed half for you and half for the questions he is expecting from his family. "You, good behavior?" Craig chuckled lightly hearted-ly, Pope watches as you grimace a bit at the comment. Smacking his brother on the shoulder lightly Deran butts in, "Just glad to have you home brother"
"Yeah, happy you're home…I-" you cough softly cutting yourself off, causing your daughter to briefly look up back towards you. "We all missed you" you speak up once again, hoping the slip up wasn't too obvious. With the way Andrew raises his eyebrows slightly in response you know it didn't pass him by. Really what did you expect from the man who learned to read every twitch, awkward shuffle and micro expression of your body language when you were 'together'. The two of you never exactly labeled it, and before you could give it that permanent tangible title Pope desperately wanted, he was locked up. But as he is readjusting he's noticing all the same ticks and small signs of your body that mean you are nervous.
"Yeah? And who all is we?" He prompts, finally addressing the little elephant in the room that is tracking his movements in the same way he used to do with new people as a kid. Her bright eyes watch as he squats infront of her to get on her level like he typically would do with Lena when he tried to reason with her to eat vegetables before ice cream. As you are telling Pope her name, he finally fully takes in her face now that he is eye to eye with her. She hardened her eyes a bit, clearly weary of this strange man infront of her and he can't help but smile a bit, she clearly has your personality. At first look her face mirrors yours and it makes his heart twist…almost all of her scrunched up face expect…her eyes.
He still has the number of your eyelashes mesmerized, the shape of your lids, the color of your iris…all of it. She certainly has your eye color but the shape more resemble his and maybe even so does her little nose? Maybe his lack of sleep locked up is getting to him…there's no way you were pregnant with his kid when he went away. The math is there but you would've told him. Right? With the way she so clearly resembles a mini you, only solidified to him that she really is your child and Pope doesn't exactly know what to do with that. He went away and you started a family seemingly without him.
"Well I'm Andrew" he greets the little girl, putting his hand out albeit awkwardly as he tried to ignore the stares he feels from his family as if he's grown a second head. "I'm-"
"He's Lena's uncle" you fill for him, and he doesn't know what he'd prefer you to say but for some reason it isn't that. Having confirmation on who he is she finally greets him, shyly grabbing his pointer finger in her little hand and shaking it. "Hi Andew" she smiles softly at him, missing the r sound when she says his name and it takes a way a bit of the sting of your label for him.
Pope is slowly adapting to being back home, sleeping on Smurfs couch instead of his apartment since his family decided it made more sense to get rid of it. He still doesn't understand that one…But as he is adapting he is watching, watching you and your daughter mostly. You, your daughter and his youngest brother…Deran. Who according to his mother is the father.
He tried his hardest to school his expression when he asked that afternoon in the kitchen while you played in the pool with the little ones. Your daughter clinging to you with floaties on as she tried her hardest to splash Lena but she could only make small splashes. Her wet hair under the summer sun giving off an auburn hue that only further confuses him when his eyes flick that way briefly. The girls little squeals as well as your own flood inside from the backyard and his chest only aches more. He didn't want it to show how it made him feel to Smurf when she told him that, especially when he could feel her studying his face for a crack in the surface. His throat is dry and he's not confident his voice wont come out broken so all he could manage to get out was a head nod, and she seemed to accept that as enough because she went back to making everyone lunch. She must chalk it up to him being tired and he's grateful.
Deran…Deran…Deran…
Andrew isn't mad, you deserve to be happy so does his brother but he doesn't know exactly what he feels. He can't stop himself from staring at the three of you, trying to spot Derans features on the girl and he can't. All he sees in her is you and him. He watches that afternoon waiting on his youngest brother to kiss your head or your lips, put a hand to your back, brush the wet hair sticking to your cheek off. Hold your little girl, pet her head, kiss her cheek, something…and he doesn't. Beyond the basic level of affection and touch the two of you have shared long before Pope went away — a soft nudge to Derans shoulder, his hand to your shoulder, or at most a short hand hold when you drag him inside or a hug when you leave. Deran hardly touched you that day. Besides your daughter getting a hug goodbye as well, he doesn't give her much affection. He doesn't act as if he is the father of your child.
Maybe he's projecting and thinking of how he would act when he had you. He could hardly keep his hands to himself you often had to pry them off you when you needed to get up or move. He might just be thinking about how he would never let go of you nor your daughter if she is…was his. His brother must just be more reserved with his affections is what he tells himself. But when he doesn't sleep that night. Pope can't help but think there's more chemistry between half the damn animals in the documentary he watches then between you and his brother.
He also can't help thinking there's still more chemistry between you and him then you and his brother. The way you lock eyes with him as he protectively watches over you and your daughter and give him a little smile. He's determined to get to the bottom of it so that at least it will stop bothering him. He's given the perfect opportunity when as usual his rowdy brothers throw a party and you attend.
Andrew's been watching you float around the house and when you waltz down the hall towards the bathroom, he seizes his opportunity. Pushing off from his spot on the couch surrounded by people he doesn't know high and drunk off their ass he follows you. With his large stride he catches up quickly, just before you can shut the door behind you his large palm stops it. "And-" you are cut off by the loud sound of him slamming the door shut behind him when once the two of you are inside. "Pope what the hell are you doing?" You exclaim as he invades your space.
"Is she really fucking Deran's?" He demanded as he walks closer and closer til your back hits the wall. His voice isn't loud enough nor the bathroom door thick enough to silence the sounds of the party flooding down the hall. You fane stupid, "Who?" As you put a hand up to stop him getting any closer. "Who-" he groans and tries to ignore the heat your touch send through his body, you hadn't touched him since he got home. He didn't realize how bad he missed it, he hopes you don't notice you haven't taken your hand away.
"Your daughter. Is she really Deran's?" His voice not any calmer but quieter this time around he asks. "Who else's would she be?" You continue to beat around the bush, head down as you start to fidget with the hem of your dress. Your dress that Pope didn't fail to notice either even if he was trying not to with the way it perfectly hugged your body. He's also certain if you even leaned forward an inch the bottom of your ass would peak out. "Mine…" he whispers finally making you meet his eyes as he continues on "Is she mine?" He pleaded, more desperation lacing his voice then he intended. With the wet puppy eyes he is giving you as he waits on your answer you concede "Yes, she's yours" you sigh. He lets out a small broken sound in either relief or pain, you don't know.
"Why…why?" Is all he can get out but you seem to understand his question. "I knew you'd leave everything behind to be with us, and Smurf would just about kill you before letting that happen" your head hangs low again, eyes glued to your hand still pressed to the top of his chest, you let it fall a little. Pope's hand itches to grab your wrist and stop you from pulling it off but then you grab hold of his hand and run your thumb across the back of his hand as your fingers intertwine. "Then you went away before i could even tell you" you whisper lowly.
Using his free hand he softly pushes your head up so you look at him by grabbing your chin with his pointer finger and thumb. "Why let her think she was Deran's?" It's the last question weighing on his mind, he's fairly certain you aren't dating his brother so he's a bit confused. "Smurf let me still come around when you got locked up" you start to explain, eyes watering a bit as you recall the memories of the lonely feeling that ate you alive. Pregnant and alone without the one person you wanted around. "Let me hang around and even sleep in your room for whatever reason, think she liked seeing me so miserable" you laugh softly but the idea of that only makes Pope grimace. "And well i couldn't bring myself to let go of the last piece of you i had so as i got more noticeably pregnant, Deran and I came up with the plan to say the baby was is" He nods, his face soften once again as he resisters that it was his brothers own way of protecting you from their mother and he's grateful. "It was a little easier way of explaining why she came out looking like a Cody, then to tell her about me and you"
"You know she looks more like you than me, little dove" he chuckles softly in attempt not noticing his slip up of using his old nickname for you. Your breath hitches in your throat, "Missed you so much, promise I'm gonna give you two the world alright? I can deal with Smurf alright?" He is leaning forward as he babbles on, his eyes hardened not in anger or caution but in determination. "I'm here now and im not going anywhere" his thumb holding your chin mindlessly reaches up to brush over your bottom lip out of habit. "Not gonna let anything happen to either of my girls"
You can't help the shakey huff you let out in response to hearing him claim you finally. "Pope" you moan softly when he leans even closer and his breath fans over your parted lips. "Andy" he whispers in correction as he inches closer, "What?" You sputter out, eyes darting between his and his lips that hovered over yours. "Andy" he growls lowly making heat shoot down your spine, your hands grabbing at the loose fabric of his shirt by his stomach, not knowing yet if you are trying to pull him closer to stop him. "Call me Andy again please" he begs, voice low. The chatter and chaos of the party outside the bathroom drowning out as you breathe out in time with his breathes in. "Please…angel" he pleads one last time, mouth now lightly pressed to yours. With a sickly sweet whine you comply "Andy…" your breathing picking up as the sound of it finally leaves your lips. Pope has never really cared to be called Andrew by anyone but his sister once he became Pope. When she left no one else did until you and somewhere along the way it morphed into that little endearing nickname that made his chest hurt. It rattles around and replays in his head as his lips finally smash against yours for the first time in years.
"Andy" you repeat this time through a moan muffled in his mouth as you kiss back with just as much unrestrained yearning and love that he pours into it. Kissing you so hard he might as well be trying to bruise your lips, tongue slipping in to lick into your mouth. The warm muscle sliding around your own and winning the fight of dominance in an instant with the way your body melts against him. Your hands pawing at his chest and arms trying to tug him closer as the kiss intensifies. "Missed you 's much little dove fuck" he repeats his previous sentiment through a grunt as his own hands land on your waist before sliding behind you down to your ass, using that as leverage to tug your body against his.
"Fuck…missed to you too Andy" you purr into his mouth, body heating up with the feeling of his poorly contained bulge pressed to your front. "Show me how bad you missed me sweet boy" you tease when you finally pull away a bit from the make out, saliva still connecting your lips. Pope whines a bit at the loss but recovers quickly when your hands trail under his shirt and scratch at his stomach. He slips his knee between your legs to part them, pressing his knee up against the growing wet patch in your panties.
Your hips having a mind of their own grind down on his thigh, making a small cocky smirk form on his face. "As bad as i want to make you cum on my thigh angel…" he huffs out like it's painful for him to stop you, "I also haven't been inside you In threeyears" he pants out as his hands drift down to the bottom of your dress to hike it up, moving his leg so he can pull your soaked panties down til they hit your knees. Helping him along with frantic hands you unbuckle his belt, unbutton his jean and yank them with his boxers half way down his thighs. When his cock springs free and lightly smacks his stomach you let out a small whine at the sight. Tip reddened and leaking pre-cum, the vein you used to trace with your tongue and make Pope finish in minutes running down the shaft. Grabbing your waist he effortlessly spins you around and presses his large hand between your shoulder blades. Pushing your body to press your chest to the bathroom wall, your back forming an arch as his other hand grabs at your hip to keep your ass in place as he kicks your feet to spread your legs further apart. "Just as obedient as I remember" he coos softly under his breathe as if the words weren't meant for you.
Gripping himself at the base he parts your slick soaked folds with his tip, collecting and coating his cock in the wetness to act as lube. "Please" you pant out when he catches on your clit, turning your head to look back over your shoulder at him and fluttering your lashes as he peels his gaze away from your lower half to meet your lust filled glazed over eyes. "And just as impatient" he adds on to his earlier statement with a short chuckle, before thrusting forward to push all the way inside to the bottom inch by inch. Little pants and whines slip past your lips the further your sex stretches around him to accommodate his thick cock.
His head falling back in a choked gasp once completely buried inside when your pussy clamps down around him. "Oh fuck" he hisses out, slowly pulling his hips back to pull out, thrusting back inside fast and hard. "Feel as fucking good i remember too Angel holy shit" he cries out as his hands tighten their grip on your body. Using that as leverage he pulls your body away before slamming your back down on his cock as he pushes forward. "Andy!" You cry out in a loud wanton moan that bounces off the tile of the bathroom walls. As he is shushing you Pope presses you further against the wall, forcing your ass poke out more and push against his hips.
His large hand comes around to cup over your mouth, "As good as you sound little dove" he begins, his pace not flattering and only speeding up as his tip practically hits your g-spot on every thrust up. "And trust me you sound soooo fucking gooood angel" he coos, dragging his vowels near the end as he leans down to kiss at your shoulder softly. His hips slowing their pace and flattering a bit. "Don't want some nosy party goer to come knockin' cause they hear you screaming for me"
He lets out a shaky breathe at the way your ass pushes back against him, eyes falling down to watch as you start fucking your self back on his cock. "Fuck- wait wait" he sputters out, strings of curse words whispered under his breath as that thread in the pit of his stomach snaps fast. Grabbing onto you to stop you before your cunt can milk him even more.
"Already Andy?" You giggle softly as he presses his forehead to your back, panting softly "Fuck 'm sorry angel, it's been awhile alright…" he grumbled, rubbing at your hip as he regains a bit of his composure. "we'll get your stamina back up it's okay Andy" you tease, wiggling your ass against him causing another whine and whispered curses to fill your ears.
! didn’t name the child bc I didn’t wanna run the risk of picking a name and it being the name of someone reading yk? so y’all can chose whatever name you want. also somehow i like everything i wrote for this expect the smut idk my brain couldn't do it and i hate that part so idk how i feel about this.
☆ Andrew "Pope" Cody x f!Reader ☆
(part two) (part three)
summary: Andrew has survived his whole life by wanting nothing. Until Craig introduces one of his friends, and suddenly, Andrew wants everything and more.
word count: 20.7k (yeah kinda lost my mind there)
c.w: age gap implied but not explicit; short suicidal ideation; crying; mentions of blood; light physical injuries; angst to fluff; smut - piv sex, oral sex; praising kink; breeding kink if you squint
a/n: sooooo...took me two weeks. had a breakdown. bon appetit! (and thank you to my wife for proofreading it) I really hope you'll like reading it like i enjoyed writing it.
❤︎ Thank you so much for reading!
Andrew Cody has never been able to sleep properly.
Nights spent pacing the garden of Smurf’s house, bare feet on the cold ground, counting his steps to keep his mind occupied. It never did. He tried to outrun the memories of his actions, to drown his pain at the bottom of the pool. But on those nights, his torment wore the faces of his ghosts.
First there was Julia, then Cath, quickly followed by Baz. And Smurf. Always Smurf. A cycle of misery that makes his ribcage feel as though it might collapse under the violent pounding of his heart.
Some days, seated at a table with his family, Andrew had felt he could scream until his throat gave out, and no one would have heard. He imagined falling into the pool, slipping under the surface, water closing over his head and staying there, lungs burning just long enough for the noise to finally fucking stop, no one coming to pull him out because nobody would have noticed he disappeared.
There were moments when the thought settled heavy in his bones: he would not survive another day in his family, he didn’t want to. He kept straining toward a bond that no longer reached his end…if it ever did.
Over the years, Andrew had grown accustomed to his role. Weird Pope, Creepy Pope, the family’s guard dog: asking for nothing, obeying to the beatings, the killings and never, never, mentioning the ghosts hunting the corner of his eyes each night.
He remembered Smurf’s voice, years ago. “Pop him a few pills and he’ll follow your commands, baby.” She said it to Baz like it was nothing, like he was nothing. This was before prison, before Andrew felt deep in his bones that the other half of his soul left this merciless Earth without him.
Sometimes he let himself think about Julia, since no one else did. He hoped that at least one of them had finally found peace.
Then, you happened.
And Andrew can’t make sense of it, no matter how much he turns it over in his head, how a girl like you ends up being friends with Craig and therefore, near the Cody brothers: you are sweet, kind, nothing but soft edges, and innocent. Almost like the world has spared you the knowledge of what men like him are capable of.
Whenever you are in the house, his gaze follows you from room to room. He tells himself that it’s vigilance and habit that pushes him to act like that. Except he doesn’t need to memorize the way you tuck your hair behind your ear, or how he can recognize the distinct sound of your footsteps in a heartbeat.
He learns and catalogues each of your reactions: the faint frown of your nose at the smell of a particular brand of coffee (gone from the house and replaced before sunset), the soft curl of your lips whenever you are kindly refusing his offer to make you a sandwich.
(He wouldn’t be bothered if you took a bite of his.)
To see you is a special kind of hell and an indescribable heaven, like pressing on a bruise just to make sure it still hurts.
Lately, you shift the air of the house by simply existing in it. Your laugh, in the rooms where Smurf had once lived, seems to almost cleanse the walls of her memory. And Andrew knows. He knows that’s why Craig is friends with you. Because each day, the sun seems to finally be able to reach the house, even his own room.
It frightens him.
His body instinctively adjusts around your presence, his mind reassessing new rules (the glasses on the bottom shelf so you can have access to them, checking how many drinks you have at Deran’s bar). He memorizes your schedule, notes which books you are bringing with you in your bag, times how long it takes you to get home, parks far enough that you can’t notice his truck but close enough that he can reach you if something goes wrong.
All his life, Andrew had survived by wanting nothing. By hollowing himself out until the obedience Smurf wanted from him fitted neatly inside his ribs, because wanting had always been a liability, a weakness someone could press a knife into.
But now…now that life seems finally good and breathable, that he has the skatepark and his siblings and an almost regular life (if one exists for men like him) without Smurf’s claws on his throat, Andrew finds himself cornered by a simple, terrifying truth: he wants you.
He swallows it. Buries it deep inside, trying to drown it with numbness and even more repetitive actions when you are near: chopping, tidying the house, scrubbing counters that are already clean, fixing hinges that doesn’t squeak… Anything to keep his hands busy so they don’t reach for you.
No, Andrew Cody has never been able to sleep properly.
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You remember telling yourself that the house felt wrong before you ever understood why.
Craig had asked you to come meet his brothers and from his tone alone, you knew it was a big deal. That something was at stake.
You showed up at four sharp, even if he hadn’t given you a specific time (something you would soon realize was typical of Craig), a paper bag pressed to your chest, palms already sweaty. You stood outside for a full minute before knocking, taking a few deep breaths, and stepping over the threshold with a smile as he wrapped you in a hug with his tall frame before dragging you straight into the kitchen.
That’s when you saw him.
Broad shoulders, dark curls on a face held tight, back straight and hands braced on his thighs, his posture so still you almost thought he was a mannequin.
“My brother Pope,” Craig said. “Don’t mind him, he almost doesn’t bite.”
His gaze was already on you, unblinking, steady in a quiet unnerving way, like he was committing every detail to memory, a look so intense it coaxed words out of you before you could stop them.
“H-Hi,” you stuttered, giving your name as you tried to stay composed. You extended your hand toward him, and he stared at it for a moment. The pause stretched long enough for doubt to creep up your spine (maybe he didn’t shake hands? maybe you had already broken some invisible rule?).
You swallowed, blood rising to your cheeks, drawing your hand back to clutch the paper bag as you tried not to stammer on your words. “I brought pastries. I didn’t know what you all would like so…I kind of…guessed,” you hated how small your voice sounded.
He stayed silent, brows faintly furrowed, as if he was processing what you had just said. Then he nodded. “Thank you.”
His tone was quiet, almost a hum, pulled from the depth of his chest, the sound settling low in your stomach, warm and heavy, and your first thought (unwelcome and strange) was how that vibration would feel beneath your palm.
Craig sighed with desperation at the conversation with a quiet “Stop being weird, bro!” while his other younger brother, unbothered, simply ignored the awkwardness, nodded as an introduction and handed beers around.
It was a welcome distraction, the cold liquid sliding down your throat, and buying you time to think on what to say next, but the youngest, Deran, beat you to it, asking you about your job and how good a surfer you were.
“You fuckin’ with me? You live in Oceanside and can’t stand on a board?” he laughed and couldn’t stop the slight condescending tone from his voice. “No worry, me or mister El Craigo here will introduce you to it. You’ll only swallow, like…a gallon of water before you get it.”
“Oh, um…I don’t think…” you tried to say, though it was mostly ignored.
Pope hadn’t looked away once, hand gripping tightly enough on the beer that you could see his knuckles whitening. There was something careful about the way he held himself: still, contained.
Your eyes met his again and you smiled tentatively.
“Um…Pope,” you started, uncertain, the name tasting strange on your tongue. “Can I ask you…”
“Andrew.” He interrupted, the tone firm enough to stop you mid-breath.
You suddenly became aware of your heartbeat, your chest lifting as it rattled against your ribs. Your gaze dropped at the intensity. Had you done something wrong? You suddenly felt foolish for the pastries, for the outstretched hand, for trying so hard, and an absurd urge to apologize rose in your throat, even if you didn’t know what for.
When you looked up, he was already halfway out of the kitchen.
You never finished your question.
Later that night, when you slipped into your bed, the sheets cold but familiar in their welcoming loneliness, you turned from one side to the other, eyes pinched shut without any release to exhaustion, realizing that you couldn’t remember what you had meant to ask.
Only that you wanted to hear his voice, just one more time.
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The house is too loud. It always is when there are people over.
It reminds him of being a kid, hiding with Julia, hands intertwined, avoiding the drunk and high grown-ups. Whispering that everything would be alright. That no one would find them. Not even Smu-
(Bad thought. One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the dents on the kitchen counter.)
The volume of the music is pushed too high for his comfort, a constant buzz under the conversations in the house and near the pool while Andrew stands in the kitchen, hands deep in soapy water, scrubbing a glass that is already clean.
He finished the dishes ten minutes ago, but he is still washing, still drying, rearranging things that don’t need rearranging because it gives him somewhere to put his hands, to put his eyes. Because the alternative is the living room. And you.
(You, in that white dress. He has the stupid thought that you look like an angel and immediately hates himself for it. One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the droplets dripping from his fingertips.)
He tells himself that he is staying in the kitchen because it lets him see everything in the house, because parties mean unlocked doors, strangers who could wander into rooms they shouldn’t be in. And there are the habits he can’t shake off: watching the exits, the unfamiliar faces, counting heads (Deran, Craig, you), noting who is drinking too much, who is getting loud, who might break something.
He dries the same plate twice in a row before setting it down on the kitchen counter and looking up without meaning to.
You are by the couch, perched on the armrest while Craig, bare chest and shameless about it, tells you the story about the time he smuggled a burrito full of drugs across the Mexico border, story he knew you heard a dozen times these past three months. But still, you are laughing, head tipped back, hair falling down your spine (he wonders what they would feel like underneath his fingertips), one hand wrapped around a bottle you haven’t drunk from in a while, like it has more to do with keeping your hands busy while you are listening.
Andrew noticed it the first week he met you.
But the moment your lips wrap around the drink, he looks away and goes back to washing clean and dried plates, hands in the ice water, soap stinging the small cut on his knuckle.
(Good. Something sharp. Something real. Better than counting for now.)
“I bought you a new pair of gloves.”
Your voice is closer than he expected and his head snaps towards you before he can stop it. You are standing at the edge of the counter, smiling, so close that he can smell your shampoo despite the soap and the lingering smell of weed (it’s so clean, so soft, he wants to drown himself in it).
“Why?” He asks, his nostrils flaring at his own bluntness.
You shrug, small. “I know Craig threw your pair away yesterday. And, um… I know you like wearing them when you clean.”
“Why?” his voice repeats, breaking at the word.
Of course, you ignore his question, and he can’t help but spiral (why did you do that? do you realize how much the gesture is affecting him? no one ever cared about his gloves. One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the freckles on your nose.).
“I got the good ones,” you add, beaming. “So the soap doesn’t mess up your hands.”
While your eyes drop to his hands, his are still enraptured on your face, studying every single feature (you really do look like an angel. and you act like one too. maybe you are his salvation. stop, he needs to fucking stop but he no longer knows what to count.).
Andrew swallows what feels like an anchor in his throat because you look like you worry about him (you have done that for a while now, which still baffles him). Nobody worries about him: they worry about what he might do, not whether he is hurt.
“’m fine.” He mutters, not convincingly enough, judging by the look on your face.
You are still looking at his bruised hands and your fingers twitch on the counter like you had the sudden urge to reach for him, like you might take his hand to look at it.
(He has the overwhelming need to know what you would do with his hands in yours. Hold them? Kiss them better? One. Two. Three- would you let his hands run along your hair? He knows what it’s like to touch you when you need help, but he feels that this would be very different.)
“They are under the sink,” you say above the music and Andrew can’t do anything else but stare, not trusting his own voice.
You linger for a moment at the counter and Andrew wants to ask you to stay (in the kitchen, in his life, doesn’t matter), but Craig shouts your name from the living room and suddenly he has some homicidal thoughts. You glance over your shoulder, then back at Andrew, and you look…reluctant.
“I’ll…”
“Yeah.”
You don’t move. Neither does he.
“Thanks.” He finally says, his gaze still tracking every shift of your expressions, trying to burn your smile in his retina, hoping one blink would not be enough to erase it.
“Of course, Andrew.”
Andrew. For you, he is Andrew and that’s all that matters because you are the only one calling him by this name and you make it sound like it belongs to you ever since you first said it by the pool.
With one last little smile, you walk away and his eyes follow you until he knows you have reached Craig but even then, he doesn’t look away, afraid you might disappear, just like every good thing always did.
And Andrew learned, a long time ago, that if you wanted something to stay alive and safe, you watched it. Guarded it. Didn’t blink.
Andrew didn’t blink.
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You stepped outside because the house had started to feel too small, suffocating all at once, Craig and Deran’s voices stacking over each other in the open kitchen, arguing about a job - a part of the Cody brothers’ lives you knew existed but mostly chose not to look at too closely.
You told yourself you only needed a second of quiet, just enough space to breathe properly again after a long day at work full of aggravating customers, meager tips and a coffee spilt by a coworker on your bare legs.
The noise softened once the door closed, letting you draw in a deep breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding.
“Fucking hell.” You muttered, exhausted by the shouting.
You hadn’t noticed him at first, too busy staring at the pool and ignoring your inner voice telling you to jump straight in the pool fully clothed, a thought that you were soon pulled out of when you heard a sound that didn’t belong to the wind or the trees.
That’s when you saw him, seated at the edge of a lounge chair, head bowed, a skateboard turned upside down across his thighs, one hand spinning a wheel while the other oiled it with slow, precise movements.
“Not a fan of the shouting matches?” you asked, trying not to startle him.
He glanced up, shook his head before going back to the board. “No.”
“So…not keen on loud noises either?”
“No.”
For a moment, you simply watched him, struck by how different he looked when he was doing something he seemed to…enjoy. Less folded into himself, the usual tightness of his posture easing (was it because of the board? the sound of the pool? the absence of his brothers? whatever it is, the view looked precious enough for you to want to capture it).
You lowered yourself onto the warm concrete next to him, your back resting against the lounge chair, knees pulled to your chest, neither of you speaking for a while.
That’s when you noticed his hands: knuckles swollen and red, the skin split near the thumb, a faint line of blood reopening every time the skin stretched.
“They look like they hurt. Y-Your hands, I mean.”
He shrugged without looking at you. “They’re fine.”
Your eyes drifted from them to his profile: from his hazel eyes fully focused on the board to the tight set of his mouth and you caught yourself distracted by his lips for a second too long before forcing your eyes back to the floor, warmth creeping up your neck (don’t think about that, don’t think about that).
“Andrew?”
The wheel immediately stopped spinning. Not gradually, just…stopped.
The entire yard suddenly became too quiet as his face snapped towards you, something unreadable flickering across his face and vanishing just as quickly, and you felt the realization settle in slowly that you had finally said his name after almost a month of avoiding it.
“Do you think I could learn how to skateboard? I…” the words got stuck between your throat and your lips while you searched for the courage to finish your sentence without tripping over yourself. “I mean…I wanted to know if you could help me. Learn it, I mean. If you wanted to. You don’t have to, I just…” (fuck. why? why were you so weird?)
Your fingers picked at the hem of your skirt and pulled on a thread to busy your hands, and from the corner of your vision you caught his brief smile, and the warmth that spread was so shamefully immediate that you bit your tongue until you tasted metal just to keep from blurting out something along the lines of ‘i really, really, fucking love your smile, please do it again so my day goes from moderately shitty to embarrassingly close to perfection.’
“Give me your phone.” he said, and you didn’t hesitate, fishing it out from your pocket, and placing it in his palm.
“There’s no password on your phone.”
“Yeah…I know.”
“It’s dangerous.” His thumb hovered over the screen, nose flaring. “Anyone could get into it. Your photos. Your messages. Your address. Everything is in there.”
You barely heard the end of it, too focused on the pull in your chest as his words kept coming, just for you.
“I haven’t thought about that.” You murmured, feeling foolish while he muttered to himself something that definitely sounded like ‘I did.’
He tapped his number in before going through the settings while you were still struck by his intensity and that he was doing this for you without being asked.
“Six digits. Not birthdates and not something simple like six zeros.” He handed your phone back, his fingers lingering for a second too long before pulling away. “Put one.”
This time you knew it was an order and you didn’t hesitate a second as you followed it, typing something in, suddenly hyperaware of how close he was standing, your shoulder almost brushing his calf, your pulse loud in your ears and a slow, humiliating heat pooling low in your stomach that you refused to think about at the moment.
“Good.” He said after you saved the password. “Text me your work hours.”
“So, it’s a yes? Really?”
He grunted and whether the dusting of crimson over his freckles was real or something you imagined, you couldn’t tell, you were too busy feeling as light as a leaf.
“Yes. And…”
His words were cut off by the screen door banging open, leaning back abruptly just as Craig made his way toward you both with a grin that meant whatever the fight with Deran had been about, he had won.
“Deran agrees for Friday night. And you,” he tapped your forehead. “didn’t hear shit.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s my girl. Now get your ass in the pool.”
Craig was already running to the pool before you could respond, clothes coming off mid-step.
“I can’t believe this man has a kid. Has you brother always been a shameless nudist?”
“Unfortunately…yes.”
You snorted before murmuring. “Thanks, by the way. For the password thing. And for agreeing to teach me. I promise I’ll only be like…average terrible.”
“You’ll be fine,” he shrugged. Then, quieter, “I’ll make sure.”
His gaze dipped briefly to your mouth when he said it, before snapping back up, and something in your stomach turned warm and gooey, a reckless part of you hoping he might add something else. Or step closer again. But he didn’t, just nodded once, before muttering. “Go.”
“Okay, I’ll leave you to your board, Andrew.”
You made it halfway to the pool before you glanced back. He was still watching, not even pretending not to, looking like a leopard ready to jump. Like if you slipped, he would already be moving.
And lying awake that night, window cracked open and the ocean humming somewhere in the dark, you muffled his name into your pillow, trying to quiet yourself, imagining his hands instead of yours. Andrew, Andrew, Andrew.
──────────
Andrew is used to ending his nights alone because wanting people to stay never goes well for him.
So, when the party finally ends at four in the morning, he does what he knows best: throwing the bottles into the trash, making sure no one is passed out in the backyard or asleep in one of the bedrooms and…cleaning.
First the diving board, even if Craig is still making out on one of the lounge chairs with a girl whose name Andrew can’t remember and doesn’t try to (he knows best). Next, the counter, twice in a row for good measure. Then the sink, while Deran claps a hand on his shoulder with a “Don’t stay up too late, okay?” before heading out.
(One. Two. Three. Four. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. He counts the second you spend in the bathroom.)
He stands in the kitchen for a moment before realizing it might look strange and make you uncomfortable. That’s the last thing he wants.
He rushes back to his room (he wouldn’t exactly call it ‘sprinting’. sprinting would mean he is trying to avoid you. which he is not. not at all.).
He doesn’t bother turning on the light when he decides to lie on top of the covers, fully dressed, staring at the ceiling because he knows that sleep won’t come. It never does.
(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the cracks.)
Every time he closes his eyes, something crawls up from beneath his ribs and he is once again plagued by his ghost: Julia’s voice, Cath’s smile, Baz’s forgiveness. Smurf’s words cutting straight through him.
He thinks about the pool and how easy it would be to let the water close over his head. How all the voices would finally be silent forever, his own included.
(Bad thoughts. One. Two. Three. Four. He recites the number of cameras in the bank for the incoming job.)
He forces himself to think of something else.
Of you, earlier, laughing at Craig’s story (and the immediate, unwelcome ache in his chest as he wonders if there’s something between the two of you, if this will end the way things always seem to, if you’ll be another Cath: close to him before preferring his brother).
Then he thinks about the way he made you laugh on your first skateboard lesson, all because he wanted to make you feel safe and seen, how the simple feel of your waist had nearly made him press his forehead to your shoulder and beg for you to stay and keep looking at him like that.
He thinks about that night when you called him for help, and how he didn’t hesitate for even a second when reaching for his keys, truck already running before you even finished explaining because the simple thought of you alone somewhere in the dark, waiting and frightened, had felt like acid running through his veins, the kind of fear that made him beg to the sky “Not here, not her, not again. I won’t fail her”.
He presses his palms against his eyes until he sees bursts of purple light.
(Breathe. One. Tw-)
A faint knock against the door makes him freeze.
Nobody knocks in this house, his brothers just…barge in.
He is already on his feet before he realizes it, his hand finding the handle before he opens to find you there.
Barefoot, hair loose and messy, the mascara smudged at the corners of your eyes and the dress wrinkled. Earlier, Andrew thought you looked like an ethereal angel, something untouchable and holy.
But now…now you just look human, real and warm, which is worse because real things like you can stay as well as leave.
“Hey.” You murmur, leaning against the doorframe.
He grips the handle tightly to steady himself.
“Something wrong?”
“I was supposed to sleep on the couch,” you begin, talking with your hands the way you always do when you try to explain a situation, “but signor El Craigo has decided that it’s now his new make out spot with Sam and I really don’t need that image burned into my brain. And of course, I thought about taking his room in retaliation, but I don’t trust his conception of hygiene,”
That makes him huff.
“So…” you add, rubbing your arm, almost shy which doesn’t make sense in his mind because you haven’t been shy with him in a long time with the skatepark lessons or with the ‘hallway accident’ you both had together, “Can I stay here tonight?”
You don’t say ‘with you’ nor ‘in your bed’, but Andrew understands and he is pretty sure his brain short circuits for a second or two.
You didn’t text Deran or try to Uber home. You just came to him. Because you trusted him.
“Yes.” He replies too fast, stepping back from the door.
“You sure?”
He nods to avoid confessing that he would give you the bed. The room. The house. The air in his lungs.
You slip past him into the room, sitting on the edge of the bed before looking back at him and asking gently, “You’re not sleeping, right?”.
“No. Not…not really.”
“Yeah, figured.”
You lie down beneath the covers first, curling onto the side of the bed closest to the wall, leaving him space.
“Don’t think about staying on top of the covers, Andrew.”
The warning in your tone almost makes him laugh so he complies, lying down beside you, fully clothed and aware of every inch separating the two of you.
He stares at the ceiling again.
(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts your breathing.)
The mattress shifts while you slowly roll onto your back before turning fully toward him, your shoulder brushing his arm.
“Sorry,” you mumble sleepily. “’m cold.”
“It’s fine.” He says it like the ghost of your breathing over his collarbone didn’t just set every of his nerves on fire, like he was not terrified to shift even an inch.
After a few minutes, you drift closer in your sleep, chasing warmth without thinking, your knee pressing against his thigh, your hand sliding across the sheets until your fingers come to rest on the fabric of his shirt, right over his heartbeat and for a moment he genuinely forgets how to breathe.
Your palm is so warm, and he is painfully aware that you can probably feel how hard his heart is pounding.
Nobody has ever touched him like this, like he is something safe and out of everything that has happened to him: the underground fights, the prison, the jobs…none of that ever made him feel this defenseless.
His eyes suddenly burn because he wants to turn so much to see your peaceful face, tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, pull you closer to know just once in his life what it’s like to hold something good without destroying it, to press his face into your hair and breathe until the ghosts quiet down, but he doesn’t.
He stays exactly as he is, lying in the dark, eyes wide open, staring at nothing.
(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts your breaths again. Then the seconds between them. He thinks about the fact that you’re here and the miracle of it.)
Sleep doesn’t come, but for the first time in years, the night doesn’t feel empty.
Because you’re here. Warm. Alive. Trusting him.
So, Andrew stays awake until morning, guarding the only good thing that ever chose him.
──────────
You were so, so late.
You had told Andrew on the phone that you would be at his skatepark at 5:15 sharp after work, and it was now 5:42 and you were sprinting the half mile that separated the coffee shop from there, bag smacking against your hip, your lungs burning, already sweaty before you even reached the entrance, trying to slow your breathing with a few useless deep inhales, hands braced on your knees, pretending that you were not seconds away from passing out.
(First lesson and you were already late and a disaster. Great. Very impressive.)
You straightened, wiped your forehead, and stepped inside, scanning the park before finding Andrew, board tucked under one arm, sleeves riding up his biceps, curls messy from the wind and sweat and you were now positively sure that you had some drool at the corner of your mouth (the universe had decided to sabotage you and that was fucking unfair.)
You watched the tiny smile he had as a girl showed him her board, proud and beaming at him like he had personally hung the sun in the sky (no, you didn’t need to think about him being good with kids. you didn’t need to picture him with kids, him gentle, him…stop. shut up.).
The second his head lifted and locked eyes with you, you were pretty much done for. It was ridiculous, really, how one look from him could short-circuit every coherent thought in your brain, how your feet just…moved, carrying you toward him instinctively, dropping your bag by the fence without breaking your stride as he met you halfway.
His gaze dragged over you once: your face, your hair, your chest.
“You ran here?”
“Yes. And I’m sweating…a lot. Please don’t judge me.”
He took a few seconds, a storm passing through his eyes before he added.
“You’re late.”
“I know,” you rushed, your hands quickly moving and your words tumbling over each other like they always did when you got flustered around him. “but a guy ordered for his whole ‘cheaper by the dozen’ family like three minutes before we closed. I’m probably sure he sensed my despair and fed on it.”
A small huff escaped him. “You didn’t have to run.”
You shrugged, eyes to the ground. “Didn’t want you to think I bailed on you.”
You felt it, his head tilting down just enough to catch your gaze again, stubborn about it.
“I wouldn’t. Now you ready?”
“Born ready.” You lied through your teeth.
“You look terrified.”
“I can do both, you know,” you shot back quickly. “I am large, I contain multitudes.”
There was the tiniest twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Okay, Whitman.”
“Y-You know Whitman?”
A pause.
“I mean…not that I don’t believe you or think you can’t read poetry or anything…that’s actually super hot, so good job!” you gave him a thumbs-up, aware you had just lost every ounce of dignity you had ever possessed. “It’s just that last week Craig asked me if ‘Pride and Peace’ was a good book to impress a girl, so…my bar was very low.”
Andrew stared at you for a moment. “Pride and Peace.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not…”
“I know, I know. But don’t worry, I did a good deed for society and told him not to mention any book ever. You and Deran are safe from now on. You’re welcome.”
And there it was again: that quiet amusement on his lips, the roll of his eyes like he couldn’t help himself, making you feel the stupid and dangerous need to continue to jest (keep talking, say anything, make him do it again).
He shook his head once. “C’mon Whitman. Let’s see what you got.”
You trailed after him without thinking and the first few attempts were…humiliating to say the least: your balance was nonexistent, your feet refused to cooperate, your arms stood uselessly at your sides, and you had absolutely no idea where you were supposed to look while Andrew hovered nearby like he was ready to intervene at any moment.
“I look stupid!” you complained.
“You’re fine.”
“I’m not fine! This is deeply humiliating. I can barely stay upright and there are twelve-year-olds doing tricks behind me! Tricks, Andrew!”
“You’re doing good.”
“I almost died.”
“You didn’t.”
“Socially, I assure you I did.”
Your heart did a stupid little skip when a tiny, amused sound escaped him.
(You could bottle that sound and live off it. You were now pretty sure you would commit crimes for it.)
“Makes sense you’re friends with Craig,” he muttered. “Dramatic.”
You gasped, unable to contain your grin. “Excuse you mister Cody, but I am layered! I am complex!”
He looked unimpressed and repeated “Dramatic.”
You opened your mouth to argue before your foot slipped, the board shooting forward, and for one horrible second you thought that worse than falling off in front of children was falling off in front of the guy you had a crush on.
But you never got to know the feeling before his hands were suddenly there, at your waist, catching you fast and steadying you while you became acutely aware of every nerve under his palms, of his thumbs grazing your hipbones, of his breath brushing your cheek as heat pooled between your legs.
He moved behind your back, still holding your waist before murmuring “Don’t lean and bend your knees.”
(You were starting to suspect he was fucking with you on purpose.)
But still, he adjusted you gently, palms rotating your hips and guiding your stance before kneeling to help place your legs on the board and you couldn’t stop yourself from blurting:
“I haven’t shaved my legs. Sorry.”
“Me neither.” He huffed, his breath warm on your calf and the faintest hint of amusement threading through his voice.
(Was that…a joke? Was he joking? Since when was he doing that? You liked that. You wanted that.)
Andrew pushed himself back on his feet, stepping away just enough for you to feel the sudden absence of his body, leaving you oddly cold, like you had stepped out of the sunlight.
“Try again.”
You nodded, realizing that his joke had somehow shaken the worst of your nerves away, before pushing off, your knees bent like he had shown you, your weight centered and the board rolled.
“Oh my God, I’m doing it! Andrew, I’m really doing it!” you exclaimed happily.
“You are.”
You risked a glance over your shoulder, and he was watching you with his usual careful intensity, hands half-raised and prepared to catch you, like protecting you was the only thing on his list right now.
So (naturally), you did the dumbest thing possible and tested him. Just a little bit. Just to know.
You leaned and let your weight tip forward just enough to know if…
His hands immediately caught you, his hands on your ribs, scanning up and down if you had been hurt, “You okay?”
You swallowed, realizing that you had never doubted a second he would be there. And that settled something warm and terrifying in your chest.
It was not a silly crush, not your friend’s brother that you thought was hot and interesting, no. It was falling. Headfirst, no parachute.
And judging by the way his hands hadn’t moved from your waist yet, you weren’t entirely sure he wasn’t falling a little too.
──────────
You are screaming and he is too late.
He is always too late.
Your voice breaks into something small and terrified, the kind of sound that doesn’t even feel human anymore, and he is running but his legs don’t cooperate, move in slow-motion, the floor stretching longer and longer beneath him and the house smells like chlorine, metal and something sour he recognizes too fast.
You’re in the pool, face down and the water is red. And you are so, so still. He tries to move, to drag you out, but he can’t.
You turn toward him, eyes open and your mouth spilling blood.
“You were supposed to be there, Andrew. Why weren’t you there?”
He jerks awake, his whole body snapping upright while air refuses to enter his lungs, a pain in his ribcage so intense he thinks it might split him open from the inside out.
He doesn’t understand why at first: why his pillow feels cold and damp to the touch, why his throat burns, until he drags a shaky hand across his face and touches something wet, the realization feeling nauseating.
He has been crying in his sleep for God knows how long.
He presses his palms hard into his eyes like maybe the pain will help him, like maybe if he suffers enough the images will disappear. That you won’t be floating face down in the pool, covered in blood, your blood, your voice joining all the others, the same disappointed tone he’s memorized over the years with his ghosts.
(One. Two. Three. Four. He tries to count but it doesn’t work.)
The house is quiet for once, too quiet, and Andrew has this awful, crawling sensation lodged under his sternum, something cold and irrational that he can’t help but spiral into.
(What if…No.)
He is already moving, because lying back down would mean closing his eyes again and he can’t, he fucking can’t risk seeing you like that again, can’t hear the sound of your voice pleading and begging for him to save you when you are already gone, can’t add you to the long list of ghosts that wait for him every night.
Halfway down the hall, he gets as quiet as he can manage, moving through the house like he is on a job, because it feels the same: this sick, urgent need to verify something, to be sure that you are here, that you are safe.
The living room is glowing faintly blue before he even steps in, the light spilling on the floor and he hears it: a narrator speaking about sharks and the distant sound of recorded waves.
You always pick sea life documentaries when you stay over.
He doesn’t know when you figured out he liked them.
He stops at the threshold and sees you: curled on the couch, hidden beneath a blanket and alive.
(Your chest rises. Then falls. Rises. Falls. You’re not floating. You’re not gone.)
His lungs finally unlock and he breathes sharply, the sound loud enough that you look up immediately, like you sensed him there, like you are now tuned to him in a way he doesn’t understand, and your expression softens the second you see his face.
“Hey,” you say, voice thick with sleep. “Everything okay?”
He nods automatically but knows that he can’t bullshit you.
“You don’t look okay.”
“I’m fine,” he manages, but the words come out wrecked and dragged through his throat.
Your eyes examine him slowly and it clicks behind them. “Nightmare?”
(Oh, he hates this word. Hates how small it makes him feel. Hates how childish it sounds. Hates how accurate it is.)
His jaw locks so hard it aches and he can’t force out anything more than a stiff, miserable nod, his nails digging crescent moons in his palms as he braces himself for questions, for having to justify why he is standing there at three in the morning, shaking over a bad dream. But you don’t push.
You just scrub a hand over your tired face before moving your legs and lifting the blanket, creating space beside you.
“Come here.” You mumble, looking at him, patient.
He crosses the room slowly, the couch dipping under his weight as he lowers himself beside you, hyperaware of every inch of distance, of your arm brushing his, of the warmth bleeding through the thin fabric of your shirt, of how close your knee is to his thigh and how easy it would be to accidentally touch.
Your hand bumps his and even if he should pull away, he doesn’t. The contact is small, just skin against skin but for Andrew, it’s the closest to heaven he’s ever been.
Your fingers linger, uncertain, like you’re giving him time to decide, like he is allowed to decide. His thumb moves before he can stop it, brushing lightly over your knuckles, slowly, reverently, like he needs to make sure you are solid and not a trick of his mind. You feel warmer than him.
(Alive warm. Not water cold. Not bloody and floating. Not like in the pool.)
The memory hits so hard it hurts.
He jerks his hand back abruptly, his breathing going wrong again, shame creeping hot and fast because for a moment he wanted something and asked for it, letting the walls go down.
But you don’t comment, don’t tease and don’t pull away in response to his neediness and instead, you shift closer and you help settling the blanket over both of you, your arm following, tugging him in gently, like there has never been a version of this world where he wasn’t permitted to be here.
He stiffens when your hand finds the back of his neck and he wants to reassure you that it’s not because he wants it to stop but because he wants it too much, and he doesn’t deserve it. But your fingers brush his scalp, and suddenly he is nothing but starving for it, leaning toward it instinctively.
You guide him down gently, so gently and he can’t win this fight tonight, his ear pressing against your chest.
The documentary keeps whispering about tides and sharks, but he barely hears it now because all he can focus on is the rhythm under his cheek and the way your fingers keep caressing his curls in slow strokes like you were calming a frightened wild animal.
He wants to move. To slide his arm around your waist. To press his face into your shirt and breathe you. To hold you tight enough so nothing could ever take you away.
But he stays still, terrified of ruining it and breaking something with the weight of his want.
Your fingers drift lower to cradle the back of his head while your other arm tightens around him and pull him fully into you, closing the remaining space between your two bodies. His relief is immediate and overwhelming, pulling a whimper out of him, emptying him of his thoughts.
His chest caves inward on a shaky exhale, his hand finally moving hesitantly until it rests lightly on your waist, barely touching and giving you room to pull away if you want to, but you don’t. You tuck him closer, your chin brushing his hair.
“I’ve got you. You’re okay, Andrew, I promise. I’m here.”
The words land deep and it takes him a moment to realize he is sobbing in your arms, the tears soaking your shirt while he presses his forehead closer to your chest, just to confirm that the heartbeat under him is real.
(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts your heart now.)
“Shh…It’s going to be okay, Andrew.”
The storm in his head – the ghosts, the pool, your voice – slowly quiets for the first time all night, dissolving under the simple, undeniable fact that you are here and breathing under his cheek, speaking to him, comforting him.
And somewhere, between one beat and the next, his body finally gives up the fight, his sobs stop, exhaustion dragging him under gently this time, no drowning, no screaming, just the steady rhythm of you and your quiet voice drifting above him.
“I’m not leaving Andrew.”
He knows that for tonight at least, no nightmare will come at him.
You promised.
──────────
“Fuck, Fuck, Fuck.”
Craig was the worst and you were absolutely going to kill him. Not even metaphorically, but in the sense where you would pick up the nearest heavy object and aim for his head the next time you saw him, if only you were able to find him right now instead of wandering through a house you didn’t know that smelled aggressively of weed and alcohol.
Deran and Andrew would forgive you, you were sure of it, if you murdered their brother under these circumstances. Hell, they might even help you bury the body. Because you could have had a regular evening at home, watching for the hundredth time Shawshank Redemption but no, you had to be alone in a stranger’s kitchen, trying not to panic.
The party had shifted, you felt it about twenty minutes ago.
It had stopped being loud fun and started being loud wrong when little bags started to be passed around, people disappearing in rooms and coming back with pupils blown wide and white powder on their nostrils.
You had looked for Craig. Texted him. Called. Nothing.
You had found someone who vaguely resembled one of the friends he introduced you to earlier, and when you asked if they had seen him, they laughed and replied something about “upstairs with Renn so it might take a while, Sweetheart,” and you stood there for a second, scared. Really scared.
Because you didn’t know anyone there, not really. And you were now surrounded by idiots who were snorting cocaine.
(Okay. Calm down. Breathe. Don’t cry. It doesn’t help your situation at all.)
A guy you didn’t recognize slid a drink toward you with a grin that lingered too long, and the fact that your very first thought was ‘I wonder if he put something in that’ made your decision for you: you were leaving. Immediately. Whatever Craig was doing upstairs with Renn was officially no longer your problem.
The night air hit your face, making you regret for the lack of jacket.
You stood on a sidewalk for a moment, trying to calculate the distance back to your apartment. You were too far, with no car and a phone at nine percent.
“Craig is dead. He is fucking dead. I will kill him myself,” you muttered under your breath as you started walking anyway, heels dangling in your hand, bare feet against the cold concrete, just to put some distance between you and the house.
But the further you got, the louder your heartbeat became, pounding in your ears, the fear crawling up your spine.
Still, you kept walking, arms wrapped tightly around yourself, repeating ‘You’ll be fine,’ over and over to your brain.
(You were not fine. You were alone. In the middle of the night. Walking barefoot down a street you didn’t know. Why were you like this? Why didn’t you just stay? Why didn’t you drag Craig out by his stupid hair to drive you back home?)
You didn’t want to try to call Craig again and waste your last percentage of battery on someone who would not answer.
And before you could talk yourself out of it, before you could rationalize or be embarrassed…your thumb was already pressing Andrew’s name.
(If you called him, he would come. He wouldn’t hesitate. You knew it.)
The phone only rang once before he picked up.
“Yes?”
That was all it took for you: the sound of his steady and low voice to make something inside your chest collapse, the fragile composure you had been clinging to dissolving instantly as you let out a shaky exhale, thanking all the Gods above for Andrew Cody’s existence.
“Andrew,” you said, your voice betraying you immediately with a crack right through the middle of his name. “I-I’m sorry. It’s late, I know. I just…”
“What happened.”
You swallowed, trying to force the tears to back down. “I’m at this party and…and Craig left. I mean…he is upstairs with Renn doing I don’t know what and he won’t answer me. I left the house because it got weird there and I’m trying to walk home but I think that was a stupid idea and I just…”
(You hated how your voice wobbled. How small it sounded. You should have bought pepper spray.)
“I’m so scared.”
In the background, you could hear keys jangling, a door closing and his truck starting.
“Where are you?”
No ‘why’, no ‘what were you thinking’. Just that.
You gave him the street name and the closest intersection you could see, wiping your face with the back of your hand and trying to steady your breathing so you didn’t sound like you were seconds away from a breakdown.
“I’ll be there in five.”
You let out a weak, disbelieving laugh. “It’s at least ten.”
“Five.”
The line went dead before you could argue, the call cutting off abruptly as your screen went black. Dead battery.
You stared at your reflection for half a second on the dark screen, heart hammering while you counted the seconds in your head, hoping that somehow it would summon him faster.
It took less than three hundred for you to see headlights cut around the corner of the street faster than the required speed limit, relief crashing into you. He didn’t even fully stop before the driver’s door was already swinging open, crossing the distance to you in three long strides, eyes sweeping over you from head to toe then past you to the houses.
“You okay?”
You nodded too quickly and he stared at you, jaw locked so hard you could see the muscles twitching. He looked furious.
“Get in,” he said, opening the passenger door, one hand braced on the roof as he helped you climb up into the seat, taking your shoes to put them in the back seat.
You stayed silent, not wanting to know to whom his anger was directed at. It was only once you were down the street that he finally spoke again, eyes flicking between the road and you.
“Did anyone hurt you?”
You blinked at him. “No.”
“Touch you?”
“No.”
“Follow you?”
You shook your head, watching his knuckles tightening around the steering wheel.
“Say anything to you?”
“Just…offered me stuff,” you admitted quietly, wrapping your arms around yourself again. “But I said no. I would never do that. You know I would not.”
You weren’t sure why you felt the need to add that, why you wanted him to understand that you hadn’t been reckless. That hanging out with Craig didn’t mean being like him. That you wouldn’t caught yourself in drugs. You knew better.
The streetlight caught the side of his face and for a split second you saw something raw there before it slipped behind his mask of control. The silence continued to stretch, heavy.
“Are you angry at me?”
The truck slowed to a stop at a red light, allowing him to turn his head toward you fully, eyes dark and intense in a way that made your whole body pulse in response, not from fear but from the weight of being seen.
“I’m not angry at you,” he said, holding your gaze. “I’m angry you were there alone. Angry that my stupid brother left you. Angry that I wasn’t there sooner. But not at you.”
The light shifted to green, but he didn’t move right away. His eyes remained locked on yours, unblinking, making sure you understood the distinction.
“You call me,” he added quietly. “The second you have a problem, you always call me. Okay?”
You nodded, fingers twisting in the fabric of your dress. “I didn’t want to bother you.”
“You don’t.”
And there was something in the way he said it, like he was wounded at the idea you thought you might ever be an inconvenience to him, that made you blush.
The truck finally rolled forward, but the air between you felt different, heavier in a way that you’ll only be to shake off with a cold shower.
You watched the way his shoulders remained tense all the way to your home and understood then that he had come because he had been frightened, that the thought of you alone in the dark had unsettled something in him, and that he had needed to fix it.
And the scariest part was that something warm and traitorous inside your chest responded to that.
You liked that he had been scared.
You liked that he came in less than three hundred seconds.
That he didn’t even hesitate when you admitted you were frightened, he simply moved.
And you liked the way he refused to let you walk barefoot to your apartment, carrying you, as if the idea of your skin touching the cold pavement was something he would not allow.
He didn’t put you down immediately. No, he held you all the way from his truck to your doorway, one arm firm beneath your legs and the other steady at your back, your shoes dangling loosely from his fingers, your body tucked close enough to feel his breathing through his shirt, making you aware of how easily you fit there.
When he finally set you down at your threshold, his hands lingered at your waist a second longer than necessary.
“You’ll be good?” he asked quietly, handing you your shoes, your fingers brushing his in the exchange.
You nodded, incapable of trusting your own voice, because if you opened your mouth, you were fairly certain that something reckless would fall out, something dangerously close to ‘stay’ and you were overwhelmed enough by the urge to step over, to reach for him and press your forehead against his chest just to see if his heart was still beating as fast as yours.
He was still staring at you, something unspoken passing like electricity.
“Good night,” he whispered, the softness of it almost undoing you.
“Good night, Andrew.”
You closed your door slowly, pressing your back against it, listening to his boots on the pavement, realizing that he hadn’t moved until he heard the lock click.
Only then did he walk back to his truck.
You would maybe not murder Craig after all.
──────────
Andrew spends the entire day watching for the moment you are going to change your mind and run from him.
And you don’t act differently when you wake up: you drink coffee while humming along to the songs on the radio, trying to coax a laugh out of him, but he keeps waiting for it anyway: the flicker in your eyes that says you’ve seen too much of him now, that holding him while he sobbed was enough to scare you off for good.
He replays the night while you are in the shower. How he cried in your arms. How your fingers combed through his curls. How you held him pressed against your chest. How he let himself need you.
He wonders if he should apologize, or explain, or at least even just…acknowledge that you saw him at his weakest and that he was thankful it was you.
Instead, he washes the dishes twice in a row to calm his brain, avoiding looking directly at your body when you step back into the kitchen in your coffee shop uniform, hair damp.
(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the dents on his mug.)
You ask him if he is still taking you to the skatepark after your shift, and he wants to say no. The word sits right there on his tongue, ready to spill, because the park means proximity and proximity means touch and desire which always ends with something being taken away from him.
But you smile at him in such an open and easy way, and if it was something you really wanted to do, far be it from him to deny you after last night when you held him like he was something that could be saved, that was worth saving.
So, he nods and the way your whole face lights up makes him think, not for the first time, that he would probably give you anything you asked for.
That is the part of himself that scares him.
And now that he is finally at the skatepark with you on this late afternoon, he knows that he should be tracking your stance and foot placement the way he always does, but today he notices different things about you instead: how you are not pulling away from him, not avoiding him, how you stand close when you talk, lean into his space without hesitation.
And somehow that unsettles him more than distance would have. Because, if you are not afraid of him, if you are not stepping back after seeing what he is like during his worst nights, then what does that mean?
You sway on the board.
He sees it, but his brain is still half-caught in the memory of your heartbeat under his ear, still waiting for the recoil that doesn’t come and by the time his body reacts, you’re already too far from his reach.
You hit the concrete hands first, palms slamming down on instinct before your knees follow, the skin scraping on the ground with a sound that makes his stomach drop. The impact steals the air from your lungs and for a fraction of a second you manage to hold yourself up before your face strikes the ground with a sickening thud.
Andrew is already moving before you even understand what happened, the board rolling behind you while he drops to his knees so fast, he doesn’t register the sting tearing through his own skin, doesn’t feel the way his jeans split at the knee or how his knuckles scratch raw when he catches himself, because none of it matters to him. He is scanning, assessing and cataloguing the damage, forcing his mind to clear before he dares to touch you.
Your palms and knees are damaged through the torn denim, but it’s the blood beginning to run from your eyebrow that makes him feel abruptly cold. It gathers at the edge of your lashes and runs along the curve of your nose, bright red against your skin, and for a second, the world tilts.
(Blood. So much blood. He knows blood. Knows how to stop it. How to clean it. How to stitch it close. Pope is good with blood.)
The thought lands with cold precision, and even if he hates the name, even if it sounds wrong in his own head, he can’t afford to hate the part of himself that steps forward first right now - efficient Pope, steady Pope, the one who does not panic.
“I’ve got you,” he says, and his voice is low, measured, trying to reassure you the way you reassured him last night while he broke apart against your chest, even though his heart is hammering through his ribs.
Your eyes flutter, dazed, before you try to sit up, but he is already there, placing one hand at the back of your neck and the other on your shoulder to help you.
“It’s okay sweetheart, I’ve got you. You’re gonna be okay,” he murmurs, and there is something almost pleading behind his words that has less to do with your eyebrow and more to do with the memory of the pool and your voice accusing him of being too late.
He swipes his thumb gently beneath the cut to assess its depth, his other hand moving to brace your jaw so you don’t move, and when fresh blood coats the pad of his finger, he feels the familiar switch inside him flips into place.
(His breathing slows. His hands stop shaking. This he understands. This he can control.)
“It’s not deep,” he says after his inspection, even though he knows you’ll need stitches. “You still with me?”
Your hand lifts and finds his wrist, fingers curling around it, and the contact sends something through him that is not adrenaline and not fear but softer that frightens him more because it makes him aware of how much he needs you to be okay.
“I’m fine,” you whisper, though your voice is small.
He shakes his head once, tearing a strip from the hem of his shirt. “Let’s get you home so I can clean this properly, okay? Keep pressure there,” he instructs, guiding your hand back to your eyebrow and pressing it into place.
You nod, and that’s enough for him.
He slides one arm behind your back, his broad palm spanning the length of your shoulder blades, the other slipping beneath your knees to lift you, ignoring the sting of his knees and the sticky blood drying across his knuckles because none of it is important compared to the steady rhythm of your breath brushing his collarbone.
He carries you toward the truck, opening the door and lowering you carefully into the passenger seat, one hand coming up to your jaw, his thumb resting lightly on your cheekbone to make sure your eyes focus on him.
“Stay with me,” he says softly.
Your lips twitch despite the pain. “Bossy.”
He goes to buckle your seatbelt, adjusting the strap and closing the door gently before circling the truck, wiping his bloody hand against his jeans.
While driving back to your apartment, his eyes keep darting to you every few seconds.
“Talk to me,” he says after a moment.
“About what?”
“Anything.”
You take a moment before starting to talk about your day at the coffee shop, just mindless little moments. He doesn’t interrupt, he listens and nods at the right moments. You are grounding him on purpose, he realizes, dragging his thoughts back to something ordinary, something alive.
(You are not in the pool. You are breathing. You are not telling him he failed you. He counts your breaths.)
Inside your place, he works methodically, like he always does when someone comes back from a job hurt and bleeding – controlled, shutting everything else out. He lays out all your medical supplies on your desk with a precise spacing: first gauze then antiseptic, needle, sewing thread…The order is important. Order means control.
You sit on the edge of your bed, looking at him and continuing the pressure of the piece of his shirt against your eyebrow.
“Alright,” he says quietly, stepping between your knees so he can reach your face properly. “Hold still.”
He cleans your palms first, his concentration absolute because his entire world has narrowed down to the square inch of skin beneath his fingers.
“I should have caught you.”
“It’s not your fault, Andrew. Don’t punish yourself for it, okay? I’m fine, I promise I’m fine.”
He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t trust himself to.
Instead, he goes silent and returns to the work in front of him, bandaging thoroughly your hands before taking off your pants and doing the same with your knees, making sure everything stays in place.
Finally, he allows himself to look fully at your face again, examining the cut on your eyebrow and tilting your chin upward with two fingers, feeling your breath ghosting on his lips in the small space between you.
“You’re going to need stitches,” he murmurs.
You study him for a second. “You’re very serious about this.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not dying, Andrew.”
“I know.”
“You look at me like I am.”
His jaw tightens and for a moment, he almost says it. Almost tells you that in his head, he’s already seen that version of you, floating and gone, but he swallows it back.
“Hold still,” he says instead.
He cleans the wound carefully by dabbing away the dried blood, and when you flinch, his free hand comes up automatically to steady the side of your head, thumb resting near your temple, not commenting on the way you lean into that touch.
The first puncture makes you inhale sharply.
“Breathe,” he says low, “Just breathe slow for me.”
You obey, focusing on him rather than the pull of the thread, your eyes locking on his face. He works carefully, tying each stitch with precision, trying not to falter at your gaze and even less at the reckless, intrusive thought about pressing his mouth to your brow to undo the wound.
When he finishes, he doesn’t move right away. He studies the line of the sutures, checks for tension, checks for bleeding or anything he might have missed before studying you.
“You’re okay,” he says, trying to convince himself.
You give him a small, tired smile. “I told you. I’m tougher than I look,” you say before your gaze drops, narrowing as you notice what he has been deliberately ignoring. “Andrew.”
“What?”
“You’re bleeding.”
He shrugs, dismissive, trying to pull his hand back so you can’t look too closely. “It’s nothing.”
“No, it’s not nothing,” you murmur, reaching for him before he can retreat, your fingers tracing carefully over his knuckles, making him go still. “You can’t patch me up and ignore yourself.”
He swallows, and before he can argue, you’re already reaching for the antiseptic with your bandaged hand, fumbling slightly. He catches the bottle before you drop it, his other hand covering your instinctively.
“You shouldn’t…”
“None of that,” you interrupt, and there is a flicker of stubbornness there that makes his mouth twitch despite himself.
You tug his hand toward you, and this time he lets you clean the scrape on his hands. He doesn’t look at the wound. He looks at you.
At the crease between your brows as you concentrate. At the way your lips press together. At the way you treat his injuries as if they matter. No one ever does.
Your fingers tie the bandage clumsily but securely, and when you finish, you don’t let go right away. Your thumb lingers, stroking slowly over the back of his hand. He is not sure how to breathe. The room feels so much smaller now. Quieter?
You lift your eyes up to him and whisper. “Can you stay? Just for a bit. So…we can check on each other.”
He could tell you it’s starting to get late and he was supposed to meet Deran and Craig for their next job.
He could tell you he’ll call you tonight to see how you feel.
But there is nothing in him that wants to leave this room.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I can stay.”
He helps you shift properly onto the bed, careful of your knees. When you lie back against the pillows, you reach for him, fingers curling into the front of his shirt.
It takes him a second of hesitation before lying down beside you, stiff at first, but you roll toward him, your bandaged hands pressing against his chest as you settle close, your head finding the space beneath his chin.
He exhales through his nose before lifting his arms and resting them around you.
After a few minutes of silence, when he thinks you might already be drifting, you murmur. “I like it when you called me sweetheart.”
He presses his mouth lightly into your hair.
“Go to sleep now.”
You nod, your body going slack after a few minutes while he stays wide awake, his hands moving slowly along your spine.
“You scared me,” he whispers into the quiet, once he is sure you’re gone.
His fingers move to brush lightly just above the stitches of your brow.
“I can’t lose you,” he breathes, pressing his forehead gently against yours.
(He counts your breathing. One. Two. Three. Four. Not because he is afraid. But because he simply likes knowing the rhythm.)
When sleep finally comes at him, he knows there won’t be any nightmare.
Because you’re there.
──────────
You did not mean to end up alone with Deran.
In fact, if you were being completely honest with yourself, you had carefully avoided being alone with him since you met, not because he had been hostile to you, but because he seemed to have this unnerving habit of seeing through people and you were not a fan of subjecting yourself to that.
Craig had dragged you to the bar “just for a bit,” (which in Craig language meant ‘indefinitely’) before promptly disappearing with a girl, leaving you at the counter, nursing a soda because you had work in the morning.
Deran was wiping down the bar in front of you.
“El Craigo has already left?” he asked without looking up.
“’Flee’ would be a better word to describe what happened.”
“And so now you’re just…” he gestured vaguely toward you with the cloth, “…miserably contemplating on drowning yourself in your drink?”
“It’s a soda.”
“You know what? That’s so much sadder.”
You exhaled, dragging a hand over your face before saying, “Can I ask you something without you telling Craig?”
That caught his attention immediately, making him glance up.
“Depends how embarrassing it is.”
“It’s not embarrassing,” you protested automatically, then faltered. “Fine. It’s…a little embarrassing.”
“A little?”
“A lot,” you admitted.
He huffed once, almost amused, tossing the cloth over his shoulder. “Fine. What?”
You took a breath, suddenly aware of how absurd this was and how you were feeling like you were sixteen instead of twenty-nine. “It’s…” you cleared your throat. “It’s about Andrew.”
(Fuck. This was so deeply humiliating. But Craig was not an option. He would weaponize the information and never let you live it down.)
Deran blinked once before leaning his forearms on the counter, a smirk spreading on his lips. “Oh, I see.”
You groaned immediately. “Oh, please, can you not react like that? You’re making this worse.”
“I haven’t reacted! I’m just…not quite surprised about this discussion. Come on.” he waved a hand. “What’s your question?”
“It’s just…” you stopped. “I don’t know how to tell if he…”
(Oh my God. You had faced worst things than this. You could finish a sentence.)
Deran tilted his face slightly, with a shit-eating grin that you absolutely hated. “If he…what?”
“If he likes me,” you blurted out in one breath.
The silence fell for exactly two seconds before he let out a short, incredulous laugh.
“You’re fucking with me. Right?”
Your face burned instantly. “Okay, great. Never mind, I’m just gonna dig my gra-”
“Easy tiger. Don’t get your panties in a twist. He’s obsessed with you.”
You stopped, your stomach flipping violently.
“That’s not true.”
“It is deeply true,” Deran replied flatly. “He reorganized the shelves in the kitchen.”
You blinked. “Well…I thought he just liked order.”
“Oh yeah, he does. Trust me, he fucking does. But…not that much.”
You opened your mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
“Surely that doesn’t mean…”
“He drove across town at three in the morning to get you out of a party,” Deran continued, counting off on his fingers now. “He cancels family meetings to go to the skatepark with you. He did his ‘scary stare’ to me the last time I drank in your mug.”
Heat crept up your cheeks as you stammered, throat dry. “B-But he doesn’t…He doesn’t say anything.”
Deran snorted. “Yeah, that’s Andrew.”
“It’s just...sometimes I don’t even know what he’s thinking.”
“Neither do we,” he deadpanned. “Welcome to the family.”
You exhaled, frustration spilling over. “So, what am I supposed to do now?”
Deran considered you for a moment. “Just…let him try to go at his own pace here. He is not good at the whole…relationship thing.” he said, his voice stripped of its usual sarcasm before adding. “And for the record, the way you look at him? Not subtle. Like, at all.”
You nearly choked on your own spit. “I am subtle!”
“I mean, yes,” he conceded dryly. “You are subtle…for Andrew and Craig. So don’t be proud about it. That’s the lowest level of subtility possible.”
“I hate you, Deran.”
“Yeah?” he replied with an amused smile. “Well, get in line.”
There was a pause before he said quietly. “You’re good for him. Just…don’t screw it up. You’re in the tribe now. Which means I have to tell you this…”
You straightened slightly.
“…if you’re not sure about this, about yourself, you go now. Not in a few months. Not after he lets himself think this might be real. You don’t get to backpedal if it gets complicated. He wouldn’t recover from it.”
You shook your head immediately. “I swear, I won’t hurt him. He’s…he’s-”
You stopped, because the word felt too large to say aloud. But Deran looked at you intensely enough for you to finish.
“He’s important. To me. I don’t want to fix him, because I don’t think he’s broken. I like him the way he is. I...I think I wouldn’t recover from losing him too.”
Deran held your gaze for a long moment. “Alright.”
You tilted your head. “Alright?”
“Alright,” he repeated. “You pass.”
“Was-Was it an interview? Are you serious?”
“Yep. And congrats, you got the job.”
You rolled your eyes, but your chest felt lighter than it had in quite some time while Deran smiled, a real full grin, almost boyish, making it easier to see the younger brother under his usual cryptic attitude.
“I forgot what it was like,” he said after a beat.
“What?” you asked.
“Having a sister you can annoy.”
“That’s…extremely sweet of you.”
“Don’t ruin it,” he warned, pointing the towel at you. “I will absolutely deny this conversation ever happened if you mention it to my brothers.”
You laughed despite yourself, shaking your head.
Then, he leaned forward and whispered to you. “And if you hurt him, I’m stealing your car and slashing your tires.”
“O-Okay.”
He had a little smile before straightening up. “Welcome into the family.”
──────────
He has not told you.
No one has told you about the job.
Craig said it wasn’t necessary, that you would make a big deal out of it. Deran said it was cleaner that way, the less people know, the less risk and Andrew didn’t argue, telling himself it was better if you didn’t know the details, better if you didn’t have to sit there, waiting for them to come back and spiraling about what could be happening to them.
He told himself that ignorance would keep you safe.
The screen door slams and your voice, sharper than he has ever heard it is rising against Craig, who’s following you in the backyard like a kicked puppy.
Andrew doesn’t turn immediately from his spot, staring at the water of the pool. He closes his eyes, preparing himself for the loud noises.
(One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the tiles of the pool.)
“You asked me to babysit Nick,” you’re saying, your voice shaking like you are about to start crying, “and you made it sound like it was for a date or something stupid! You didn’t say it was because you were going to fucking rob a jewelry store!”
“Jesus, lower your voice.”
“Lower my voice? How about you shut your mouth you liar!”
It isn’t only outrage in your voice, Andrew feels it. It’s fear. A raw, unfiltered fear for them. For him. And he doesn’t know what to do with that because no one has ever been afraid of losing him. When he went to prison years ago, his family moved on, sold his place and went on with their lives. For them, it was an inconvenience, for him, it was three years in Folsom.
Andrew turns then.
You’re standing a few feet from Craig, hands still bandaged, the thin line of stitches above your eyebrow visible, pointing a finger at Craig angrily while he tries to stay calm, running a hand through his hair.
“It’s not a big deal.”
“You’re breaking into a jewelry store, Craig. That’s not exactly Disneyland.”
“We’ve done jobs for years,” he snaps. “We’re good at it.”
Andrew watches the way your shoulders rise and fall too fast with your breath, the way your fingers flex like you’re resisting the urge to grab something and throw it at Craig.
“You know what happens if you get caught, right? You know what that would do to Nick?”
Craig’s jaw tightens. “We don’t get caught.”
You let out a bitter sound that is half a laugh, half a sob.
“Repeat this in the eyes of your brother, I fucking dare you. That’s not how life works, and you know it. You can get caught.”
Andrew feels the words hit him in the chest and rip something out of him. He doesn’t know when you learn about it. Doesn’t know who told you or the extent of your knowledge about those three years of fights and isolation.
If you know – truly know - why aren’t you running away? Why are you still here?
(He doesn’t understand. He can’t understand. It’s too much. It’s too little. One. Two. Three. Four. He counts the cracks on the floor.)
“We’re not idiots, just trust us, okay?” Craig argues, rolling his eyes.
“You left me alone at a party in a house full of people doing coke,” you fire back, your finger jabbing hard against his chest. “You are the exact definition of an idiot, Craig.”
Craig winces. “We don’t have to do this right now, okay? I already told you I was sorry about it. Pope, back me up.”
Both of you turn toward him at once, the weight of the fight landing on his shoulders. He doesn’t move immediately. Doesn’t speak either. Andrew has never been good at splitting himself in two, at giving his opinion. He was raised to follow orders.
Craig gestures toward you. “She’s acting like we’re amateurs.”
You slap his arm, wincing, forgetting for a moment about your bandage. “Fuck.”
Andrew walks up to you, checking your hand while you keep repeating him. “I’m okay, Andrew. I promise.”
He lifts his eyes to yours, angling his head to catch them, and when your gaze finally locks with his, he holds it, stubborn and unblinking. Your eyes shine brighter tonight than they usually do, so he doesn’t give himself permission to look away.
(You’re about to cry. It’s his fault. It must be his fault. He should have been better. But the voices are too loud. He doesn’t like when it’s too loud. One. Two. Three. Four. He remembers your breaths when you sleep.)
“I just…I thought you all trusted me,” you say, your voice breaking halfway through, fighting back tears of frustration.
Craig’s shoulders drop while Andrew’s thumb strokes over the back of your hand, grounding himself.
“We do,” Craig says, less combative now. “That’s why I asked you to watch Nick.”
“That’s not making me feel like you trust me. It’s making me feel like I’m a convenience.”
The word hangs there, making Andrew feel like he failed something. He has never wanted you to feel like this. He wanted you to be protected.
His gaze doesn’t waver as he keeps your hand in his, stroking over the bandage.
Craig looks between the two of you, seeing the hand, the closeness and mutters, “Jesus, bro, this is the worst time,” under his breath.
“Okay,” he exhales finally, turning fully toward you. “I fucked up. Massively. About the party. About not telling you. About…probably a million other things. I didn’t mean for you to feel unsafe.”
You don’t look convinced.
“Trust me,” Craig adds quickly, throwing Andrew a sideways glance, “I got my ass kicked enough by Pope to regret this party for the rest of my life.”
Your lips twitch a little, trying to keep it contain.
“Now, if you could hand me back my brother, I would be very grateful because we have a job to do, and you have a kid to entertain,” Craig says, rolling his eyes and retreating inside the house.
Andrew doesn’t let go of your hand, refusing to blink and terrified of losing a moment of you. He has the irrational feeling that if he does, something will waver on your face, the moment when you realize what this life looks like and he won’t be able to see his failure in time.
“We’ve planned it,” he murmurs finally.
You hold his gaze. “And if something goes wrong?”
He doesn’t answer right away because he knows the answer to this, and he is certain you don’t want to hear it.
(If something goes wrong, he goes down first. He makes sure Deran and Craig are safe. He doesn’t come home because he won’t ever go back to prison. He prefers to die trying to escape than go back in a cell. One. Two. Three. Four. He counts your eyelashes.)
You are still waiting, searching his face.
“Then I handle it,” he says quietly.
You shake your head, your jaw working as if you’re trying to physically hold yourself together. “Promise me to come back safe.”
His hand lifts before he can stop himself to settle against the side of your face, his thumb resting just beneath your eye, making you go very still, waiting for what he will do next.
His thumb caresses your cheekbone once, just enough to fill his mind with the memory of your skin.
“I won’t let anything happen to me,” he whispers, and he doesn’t know if it’s meant as a vow or a lie he’s trying to force into becoming true. “I promise,” and before he allows himself to overthink it, he presses a careful kiss to your forehead, his lips brushing just above the line of stitches.
He can hear you catch your breath and it makes him pull back, his lips tingling at the contact. He knows it now: if he stays longer, if he lets himself feel the warmth of you, he might not leave at all.
He memorizes the sight of you like this: looking like losing him would break you and it does something unfamiliar to his chest. No one has ever been scared at the thought of him disappearing. No one has ever demanded that he come back.
He turns quickly, putting distance between the two of you before he changes his mind, the promise he made echoing in his head.
He hears it when Deran cuts the alarms. Promise me to come back safe. When he cuts through the back entrance. Promise me. And when Craig tries to improvise. Promise. He is not one to do reckless things but tonight, he is particularly unyielding each time the job almost goes sideways.
He knows you are in the house with Nick, probably pacing the kitchen and waiting to see the outcome of his word. So, when he finally reaches the main display room, he is quick to reach for the highest value pieces that will be cut down and reshaped. No traces or evidence will be left, they have done this long enough to know how to make everything disappear completely.
Andrew’s hand hovers for half a second over a particular velvet cushion before picking up the thin gold chain, a small heart-shaped pendant set in the center. It’s delicate and quiet, reminding him how it feels to bask in your light. He turns it between his fingers once, twice, imagining it resting just below the hollow of your throat, his thumb brushing over it absentmindedly while you are both sitting on the couch and watching a documentary.
He slips it securely into the inner pocket of his jacket, pressing it flat against his chest for a brief second before stepping back into motion and leaving with his brothers without any alarms or police sirens cutting through the night.
And when they get at the warehouse to stash the duffel bags, Andrew doesn’t stay like he usually would to make sure about getting his fair cut of the job. He nods once, quiet, ignoring their snickers and comments about him being ‘down bad’ all the way to his truck.
The house is dim when he enters, a soft glow coming from Craig’s bedroom and before he sees you, he hears your voice. It’s so soft.
“And baby whale swam all the way across the ocean to find mama whale,” you murmur.
He quietly walks up to the threshold to see you sitting on the bed with Nick lying, his eyes dropping with sleep, his thumb in his mouth and clutching to his monkey plushie. You slowly close the illustrated book before pressing a kiss onto the his hair and something expands in Andrew’s.
(You would be good at this. At building something steady. He can picture you pregnant, swelling with a child. His curls and your smile on a being that would never know the kind of hurt he had to go through.)
You stand up from the bed and see him, the relief crossing your face so achingly tender it nearly knocks the breath from his lungs.
“Andrew.”
He nods once, trying to convey his feelings, “I came back.”
You smile, closing the bedroom door behind you and stepping close to him, scanning for injuries the way he did for you at the skatepark. He lifts his hands, showing you his palms.
“I’m fine. I promised you I would.”
Your shoulders drop in a way that tells him you’ve been holding yourself rigid for hours, managing a barely audible, “Thank God.”
His lips tilt upward before reaching into his jacket’s pocket, “Turn around,” before adding a quiet, “Please.”
“Bossy,” you reply, amused, before turning your back to him.
He closes the one last step between you, pulling out the necklace from his pocket, careful not to let his hands shake as he lifts your hair to expose the back on your neck. He fastens the chain, the clasp clicking softly into place and for a second he doesn’t step away, the pad of his thumb grazing at the nape of your neck.
“Andrew,” you whisper, turning back toward him, your fingers lifting to trace it. “It’s…It’s beautiful. Thank you.”
He keeps staring at the pendant who rests exactly where he imagined it would be, then at your mouth before quickly going back to your eyes. You are close enough that he can feel your breath on his face, the world narrowing to the space between you.
He wants to close the distance, to press his mouth to yours.
Instead, he rests his forehead gently against yours, grounding himself with your scent, refusing to close his eyes.
“You should sleep,” he murmurs.
You smile softly and suddenly, Andrew wonders how he can extract a memory and preserve it forever in resin.
Because this moment feels like the dawn of his existence.
──────────
When Andrew was seven years old, the house was already too loud.
Somewhere down the hall a door slammed hard enough to be heard from the bedroom he shared with Julia, who was sitting on the floor with a deck of cards spread between them while he lined them into exact rows instead of playing War.
He liked the rows and the symmetry of it. It calmed him each time the edges were precisely following the pattern of the carpet. With this, he didn’t need to count.
In the backyard, someone shouted about money, making the twins flinch in fear. Julia reached for his hand, and they sat like that for a long time: her fingers curled tightly around his, his eyes fixed on the the cards. (Hearts. Diamonds. Clubs. Spades. Everything will be all right.)
Smurf emerged in the doorway with her bright smile, eight months pregnant with their little brother, tilting her head, “My baby is a strange one,” she whispers to his new stepfather, “But useful.”
Andrew heard it. He didn’t know what strange meant exactly, but he knew it was something you said when you didn’t want to say wrong.
At school, boys kept snatching his skateboard, tossing it across the asphalt because he rode the same loop over and over during recess, memorizing how many pushes it took to reach the fence.
(Fourteen. Fourteen every time. An even number. He liked them. That’s why he always counted till four.)
The first time a boy shoved him and called him a freak, Andrew didn’t respond. Just took back the board and kept doing his loops. The second time, when the board got kicked away and Julia was not there to held his hand, Andrew swung without warning. He couldn’t remember deciding to, just the sound of the impact and how the noise inside him went blissfully silent.
After that, teachers called him difficult, the kids stopped approaching him and Smurf congratulated him with a kiss on his mouth.
At night, when Julia was asleep beside him, Andrew kept staring at the ceiling, wondering something he couldn’t say out loud to his mother or his sister: would anyone ever see that he was trying? Trying to keep himself together so he didn’t explode? Trying to be good? Trying to stop the noises in his head?
-
When you were seven years old, the house smelled like warm cookies.
You were sitting on the couch, your small arms cradling your cousin, afraid to drop her. You didn’t know how to act with a baby. Your parents had sat you down a few months ago at the kitchen table and told you that you were their little miracle, that Santa sometimes forgot things and that maybe it would always just be the three of you – which sounded a little sad until your father had squeezed your hand and told you that three was already perfect.
But it was alright, because now, you had your cousin’s fingers clutching onto your hair, “She’s holding me!” you squealed, delighted and in awe because here, in this house, you were allowed to be amazed and to grow at your own pace.
The day you scraped your knee on the sidewalk, trying to teach yourself how to roller skate, you cried for less than a minute before your mother knelt in front of you, cleaning the wound and kissing the sting away. “You’re gonna be okay,” she said, and you believed her.
At school, you had a best friend who whispered to you how babies were made, and that made you giggle all day, the teacher shaking his head and calling you incorrigible, even though you had no idea what that meant and decided it must be something wonderful if it made you laugh that hard.
And the day you asked what you could be when you grew up, no one laughed. “You can be anything my little monkey,” your father had told you, and you thought about it for the whole day. Because anything was a lot for your brain: a teacher, a vet, a marine biologist. You always circled back to the same answer: something to help people.
And at night, as you looked at your glow-in-the-dark stars on your ceiling, you wondered about other things: would someone look at you the way your father looked at your mother when she was singing in the kitchen, with that love that said I am home?
──────────
Deran’s bar is louder than usual tonight, crowded by sports fans watching a game between Los Angeles and Atlanta. Craig has tried to tell him why it was so important to win at least five times since their arrival, but Andrew’s attention remains elsewhere entirely, watching you from across the room the way he has been watching you for four months now: trying to read something in your posture or in the tilt of your head that could give him an answer.
Because the truth is…he doesn’t know what you are after last night and if what happened in the hallway, or every night you’ve spent wrapped together, mean the same thing to you that they mean to him. He wants to ask, to spill the question out before it eats him alive: what are we?
Andrew hates not knowing. On a job, he knows every camera, every blind spot, every possible way things can go wrong but with you, there’s no map. And he hates that he can’t predict your next move.
You are standing at the bar, ordering a drink, your back half-turned to him and wearing a dress that shouldn’t be allowed to exist in public. It makes his pants grow tighter and has him readjusting on the stool, trying to pretend he isn’t affected while his brother sits three feet away and would never let him live it down if he knew.
And he knows he shouldn’t be staring, but you keep touching absentmindedly the necklace, your fingers tracing the pendant as it moves with your breathing, and before he can stop himself, he’s counting it.
(One. Two. Three. Four.)
You had said thank you last night in a way that felt like you meant something more, had let him secure the necklace around your neck and had met his eyes when you called it beautiful as if you were promising you would always wear it.
Always.
(Oh, how he doesn’t trust that word. Doesn’t trust anything that implies staying. He knows better. He should know better.)
And yet, there you are, wearing it for everyone to see, which does nothing to steady his accelerated pulse, and leaning across the counter to collect your cocktail from Deran. The movement doesn’t reveal much more of your skin, but it still sets ablaze Andrew’s brain, his lips going dry as he tries to resist the urge to walk up to you and beg for you to tell him that he isn’t the only one picturing rings, and a cradle in a quiet house and your head on his chest until he is old and grey.
“You’re not being subtle, you know that?” Craig says, cutting through the haze of his thoughts.
“Don’t start.”
Craig raises his hands innocently. “Jesus, relax.” He immediately reaches for the bowl of peanuts on the table, and Andrew feels his jaw tighten at the thought of how many unwashed hands have touched that bowl already. “Seriously, what’s wrong with you tonight?”
What’s wrong is that he just stole diamonds worth more than all of the jobs he did last year and it doesn’t compete to the way you look with the chain resting against your collarbone.
What’s wrong is that he would give back every dollar from last night if it meant waking up beside you for the next fifty years.
What’s wrong is that he is one second away from walking across that bar and lowering himself at your feet for your hands to baptize him clean, as if loving you were the only absolution worth asking for because whatever heaven exists for a man like him begins and ends with you.
And what’s wrong right now is that a man slides into the empty space beside you, leaning too close and touching your arm to get your attention. You turn toward him politely, your lips curving into the small smile you once called your ‘customer smile’. You had explained it to his brothers and him: that you always kept the worst-case scenario in the back of your mind and that a smile felt safer than a hard no since it could mean the difference between walking away or not.
(Andrew doesn’t know the names or the faces of those who made you feel like that but he wants to find them. He wants to press them on the ground and feel their pulse panic under his thumbs. He wants them to understand what fear tastes like when it turns metallic into the mouth. He wants the air stolen from their lungs the way it must have been stolen from yours when you felt scared. He no longer wants to count. He wants to hurt. To see this man’s blood on the bar.)
Andrew starts walking towards you before he even formulates the thought, shoulders squared, already calculating how much force it would require to grab the stranger by the collar and steer him outside of the bar.
His vision narrows as he sees the stranger laughing, his hand lifting to linger near your elbow as if he was testing whether he can push for more and that makes Andrew’s vision blur at the edges. He is three steps away. Two.
Your eyes find his instantly, and something shifts in your expression. Your hand leaves the cocktail and you smile at him. It’s not the customer smile. No, it’s the real one that unravels him each time.
“Hey, honey,” you say brightly as your arm wraps around his neck and you press a kiss to his cheek, your hand traveling down his side before sliding into the back pocket of his pants, settling against him.
Andrew is almost sure he died at some point on the way there because he is pressed against you and now, he is no longer Andrew or Pope. For a brief moment, he gets to just be honey, and the word makes him happier than any name ever has.
The stranger glances between you. “Oh. I didn’t realize…”
“My boyfriend,” you cut him off with a smile, looking up at Andrew’s face.
His eyes were already on yours, searching for the smallest flicker of fear. Because if the man has dared put some in them, Andrew would dig an unmarked grave without blinking. When he finds none, his hand comes to your waist, his thumb strolling along your hip as he dips his head and presses his mouth above the faint line of stitches on your forehead.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he murmurs, low enough that the word belongs only to you.
He feels your breath hitch against his skin before turning to the man and saying lightly. “No worries, he always gets a little intense about men crowding me,” you tilt your head, thoughtful. “Not sure if it’s the boxing or the prison time. But don’t mind him…he almost doesn’t bite.”
The stranger’s smile falters just enough to satisfy something dark in Andrew’s chest. “Oh, um…yeah. Sorry man, I didn’t know she was taken.”
Andrew doesn’t raise his voice or move, he just stands there with your hand in his pocket, letting the silence stretch until it feels suffocating. “She is.”
“Right. I’ll go back to…the match.”
Andrew doesn’t blink and keeps track of the man’s back until he is laughing again at his friends’ table like nothing happened and only then does he let his focus shift back to you. You, who’s still close and warm, holding onto him like you have no intention of letting go.
His hand remains at your waist as he turns toward you, the movement bringing your faces close enough that your noses almost brush and your breaths mix between you. He lowers his head slightly, almost enough to kiss you.
“You okay?” he murmurs while his thumb keeps its slow movement on your hip.
You nod, your mouth curving up in that smile he loves. The real one. The one that you have at the skatepark each time you manage to stay upright a little longer than the day before: proud, bright and stubbornly pleased of yourself. And he can’t help but think about those lips and the way they said ‘honey’.
(He wants to hear it again. Wants to hear it softly. Wants to hear it moaned in the dark and against his mouth. He wants to kiss them every day for the rest of his life. To learn them. To know how they would part as he pounds into you. Stop. He has to stop.)
He blinks twice, grounding himself in the feel of your waist.
“Andrew. I’m good, I promise,” you murmur, sliding your hand out of his pocket and lace your fingers with his instead, interlocking them. “Let’s get out of here, please. It’s too loud.”
He doesn’t say it out loud, but relief settles at your suggestion. The bar feels too loud, too crowded and the idea of how many unwashed hands like Craig’s have been over the counters keeps coming back at him. So, when you tug gently at his hand and turn toward the door, he follows without hesitation, grateful that you were the one saying it.
The door swings shut behind you and the noise from the bar dulls instantly, reduced to a muted thud. The air is cooler than inside, smelling like the salt of the ocean mixed with your shampoo and he doesn’t understand how he gets to still have your hand in his and your thumb moving across his knuckles.
It’s only when you stop beside the truck and turn toward him that his eyes drop to the thin gold chain resting around your neck. His free hand lifts carefully to brush the chain first, following it down until the pad of his thumb rests over the pendant itself, flattening it against your skin.
“Still got it on,” he murmurs, tracing the outline of the pendant.
(He imagines doing this, years from now. In the kitchen. In bed. In the shower. Adjusting it before you leave the house. Brushing it aside before he kisses the curve of your throat. Seeing it against your skin when you are carrying his child.)
“Looks better on you than it did in the store,” he adds.
Your fingers slide slowly between his, guiding his hand so it settles flat over your heartbeat. He can feel it beating loud and fast under his palm, matching his own.
You tilt your face enough to find his eyes back. “Thank you for what happened in there, Andrew. You were good.”
His eyes slip shut for half a second because he doesn’t trust himself to survive the way you are looking at him, smiling at him with such warmth he shivers of pleasure.
(Good. You think he is good. If that’s what you want, he can be good. He can kneel. He can find how to rebuild himself from the bones if it means you keep calling him good.)
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” he says under his breath.
“Why?”
“Because I’d do anything if you asked.”
Your fingers start to caress the back of his hand. “Anything?”
He nods, his gaze unwaveringly focused on your eyes. “If you told me to walk away from the jobs, I would.”
Your hand pauses against his.
“Andrew…” you murmur, but there’s no panic in it, no immediate rejection. “You know why I wanted to reject him, right?”
He doesn’t answer, too scared of startling the moment with another word.
“You know why I’d reject any other guy in that bar and why I wanted him to know?”
“Know what?”
“That I’m not available.”
“You’re not?” he asks, as his mind races.
“I don’t know,” you say softly. “Are you?”
The question hangs there, in the small space between your bodies, his mind fumbling with a thousand overlapping questions.
(Are you with him? Calling him yours? Defining what this was? Finally answering the question that has been rattling his brain for weeks?)
“Are you available Andrew?” you repeat gently, your hand lifting up to cup his face.
He exhales slowly, trying not to whimper at the contact, shaking his head.
You lean closer, your nose brushing his and your voice dropping lower. “No?”
“No.”
Your thumb traces patterns along his cheekbone and it takes him a few moments to realize that you were mapping his freckles. “How long?” you whisper.
He feels too weak to reply, overwhelmed by the tenderness of your touch. If his heart had not been already yours, he would lay it at your feet right there, so long as you promise to treat him with this gentleness and care for the rest of his life.
“Before the party? When I called you to help me?” he nods. “Before our night on the couch?” another nod. “Before our first skateboard le-?”
“When we met. And you brought pastries,” he replies, on the verge of a sob, shameful to confess that he keeps thinking about you on top of him, under him, any way you want it as long as he could disappear into your light and be drown whole by your grace to wipe out every horror he has ever seen or done for the sake of others.
“Andrew. Honey. Please, look at me.”
He keeps his gaze darted to the ground, like looking anywhere but you might prevent him from saying anything more revealing about the depth of his feelings, before his eyes close on their own instinctively, only realizing a heartbeat later that it’s because your lips found his.
And for the first time in Andrew’s life, that deep pit of misery in his heart goes completely silent, frozen for a flash before kissing you back.
Your lips are warm and a little reckless, tasting like mint and something entirely yours that he knows he will crave for the rest of his life. Your fingers thread into his curls, pulling a groan he can’t control out of him. He moves closer without thinking, his hand sliding along your waist until your back meets the metal of the truck door.
The second he registers the force of it, he pulls back just enough to search your face, to scan for any sign that he has gone too far, but the pause barely lasts a breath before your fingers tighten in his hair, guiding him back down as your body arched into his, slipping his tongue past your parted lips.
You are an oasis and he is nothing but a thirsty man wandering in the dark who gets to finally know what it’s like to drink every drop of it. You taste dizzy and intoxicating and he knows that he has been feeding on scraps of affection all his life and now…now he understands what it means to be full.
He is about to tell you how much sweeter you taste than in his fantasies before you bite down on his lower lip, drawing another sound of his throat.
You tilt your head, your arms wrapping fully around his neck as his drop to your hips, steady and sure, to raise you higher against the door, a gasp spilling out of you that he swallows eagerly and your dress hiking up as your legs wrap around him, denying any space between your bodies.
He feels you pull away for air by an inch or two, making him whine at the loss of contact, but he quickly recovers as he sees the flushed smile on your kiss-swollen lips. “Show off.”
“Yeah?” he asks while one of his arms tightens under you, anchoring your body to the door while the other frees itself to trail up your body and adding a smug, “Yeah,” skimming your inner thigh and marveling at how many sounds he can coax out of you, wondering how much more he’d pull if he could trace his thumb along your heat. But instead, he cups again your cheek, tracing slowly the bow of your lips.
“Dimples,” you murmur.
“What?”
“Dimples, Andrew,” you repeat, delighted, like you’ve just discovered something rare. “I didn’t know you had them.”
(Oh. Of course. You can see them because he is smiling. For real. A real one. Not the tight, guarded version. Not the twitchy one. A full unguarded smile. When was the last time he did that?)
“I do,” he says, trying and failing to smooth it away. “So do you.”
Your eyebrows lift. “I do not.”
“You do,” he insists quietly, shifting his hold slightly to keep his arm secure around you, his thumb pressing gently at the corner of your mouth. “Right there…”
Inside the bar, the crowd erupts in a wave of shouting, making you glance at the door before erupting in laughter, eyes wide.
“Oh, fuck,” you whisper, incapable of stopping your giggles. “I forgot.”
Andrew exhales through his nose, trying to calm the blood pumping hard all the way down his length. He knows that you’ve been feeling him against you the whole time, your hips still rubbing together, and for once in his life, he doesn’t want to excuse himself or feel ashamed of his desires, of how much he wants. He has spent too many nights thinking about how you’d taste, how you’d moan. Too many cold showers to try get rid of his hard-on whenever he was picturing you.
“Maybe…” you murmur against his mouth, pecking soft kisses along his jaw. “Maybe we should relocate.”
He looks at you, at the way your lips are still swollen and glistening from kissing, at your panting and the tremors of your legs.
He nods, lowering you carefully back onto your feet, his hands still trailing along your sides to still have some ways of being connected to you before reaching for the door handle of the passenger seat and helping you in.
He feels, walking around to the driver’s side, that he is still smiling. Dimples and all.
──────────
“Maybe…” you sigh, struggling to keep your composure and pressing kisses along the freckles dusting his jaw. “Maybe we should relocate.”
The intensity of his eyes on you, trailing along your body and taking in your rampant arousal, feels like he is on the verge of taking you against the door. You are pretty sure that if he’d ask you for permission, you’d grant it promptly. You want him. You want to know how long it would take for his unwavering hazel eyes to become pleading wet just by your lips telling how good he is to you.
But he just nods, jaw tight before lowering you carefully back onto your feet, making you bite down a protest at the loss of contact, like even the air feels like too much distance, until you feel his fingertips dragging over your waist.
He opens the door for you and not so long ago, you would have described his current behavior as controlled and cold, but now that you know him…you recognize a man who’s trying to contain himself, like a wild animal finally freed.
(Devour. You want him to devour you. To ruin you. Four months of trying – miserably – to have a date with him and it took only a gross man and a ‘honey’ to get him to kiss you like that and tell you he would quit everything? Fuck. Focus.)
He starts the engine, snapping you out of your thoughts, before pulling out of the parking lot, still smiling. You stare at his profile: the line of his jaw that has now faint traces of your lipstick, the way his tongue briefly drags across his lower lips like he can still taste you and his hand on the gear shift that slowly drifts to your thigh.
Your breath stutters the moment his palm settles just above your knee, the pads of his fingers tracing patterns over it while he keeps his eyes on the road. That definitely doesn’t help your craving for more.
(How much can be a fine for having sex in a car anyway? Andrew has money. Plenty from what you understand so…that would just be a drop in a bucket, right?)
You slide your fingers over his, intertwining them on your lap and stilling his slow, absent movements. He glances at you immediately, probably to understand why you stopped him. But the look you give him is enough to answer his question.
His eyes trail your face a fraction too long before looking back to the road, purposefully, the streetlights passing by a little faster.
“We’ll be there in five,” he declares without looking at you.
“Andrew, it’s at least ten minutes away,” you say, with a barely contained smile.
“Five.”
“I’m timing you, you know,” you smirked, pointing at the car clock.
The truck moves through an intersection just as the light turns yellow - once, then again at the next block – while Andrew doesn’t do so much as blink.
“See?” he says, the hint of a smug smile on his face when the car finally parks home.
You check the dashboard clock. Four minutes.
You shake your head, laughing as you both unbuckle your seatbelts. “Show off.”
Of course, you should know better now, he is not a man to stop there. So, when he opens the door for you before you even reach for the handle, and offers his hand, you should see it coming.
He helps you down carefully and for half a breath you think that maybe this time he’s not going to do it. No, you definitely should know better cause the moment your feet hit the ground, his arm slides behind your knees, sweeping you off while the other moves behind your back.
A breathless gasp escapes your mouth. “Andrew!”
(God you are so fucking gone for him. Is this what it would feel like? Crossing a threshold with him as a young bride? Completely besotted in a white dress? No. Not would. Will.)
He shuts the door with his hip, adjusting you against his chest as your arms loop around his neck automatically, your body relishing his touch as the thought slips out before you can stop it: “I feel like your bride right now.”
His steps slow on his way to the door, just enough for you to notice and wonder if you should just tell him to brush off your stupid words. That you are just drunk (you barely had the time to drink a sip of your cocktail earlier) and tired (you just spent two nights in a row sleeping like a baby in his arms).
The garage light flickers as he reaches the front door. “You are.”
He carries you inside like he’s done it in a million other lifetimes while you are still gaping, mouth wide open at his words. You shake your head a bit wobbly before moving your hand from the nape of his neck to the place on his cheek where you know a dimple is hiding.
“Careful,” you murmur, smiling softly. “Keep talking like that and I might start looking for a dress rea-”
Your words are being cut off by his mouth, kissing you like he is trying to drown in the sensation, tilting his head to fit you better, to take more of you, and you can’t stop the moan passing your lips. It feels like stepping into the fire and realizing you don’t ever want to be pulled out.
Your feet carefully find back the ground as his hands slide along your backbone, fingers spreading between your shoulder blades. His lips part yours with the same confidence he has when he catches you at the skatepark. You feel him everywhere and you still want more.
(Is it ever going to stop? This feeling? This whole tremor that dances under your skin every time he touches you? Every time he kisses you like he means forever?)
He pulls away just enough, heavy breath mingling with yours, hazel eyes half-lidded in pleasure and his nose brushing yours softly with your foreheads pressed together, “We can just kiss. If that’s what you want. I don’t need more. Just you,” he murmured in a broken voice.
The words settle deep in your chest, heavy and large as if they have roots. It makes you want to answer him with your mouth, to kiss him until his doubts leave his bones entirely. You bring your fingers to the bow of his lips and he kisses them gently, one after the other, the softness of it making you tremble.
“Andrew,” you say quietly, smiling despite your racing pulse. “Take me to bed.”
He regards you for a long moment, his eyes moving slowly over your face as though he is searching for hesitation and when he finds none, a smile begins at the corner of his mouth, enough to carve that rare, gorgeous dimple into his cheek. “Bossy,” he smirks before lifting you back by the waist so your legs can wrap up around his waist, walking around the house guided only by his memory since his lips are too busy coaxing moans out of you.
You are almost blacking out from the lack of oxygen when the kiss suddenly breaks. In the soft lighting of his bedroom, you distinguish most of his expression: lustful and bewildered that this is finally happening.
“I want to taste you. Please,” he breaths and you nod, not trusting yourself to reply.
The look that passes through his hazel eyes is hazy, fingers finding the hem of your dress and carefully pulling it up.
“Don’t want to mess it,” he says, folding it neatly on his chair. “You look pretty in that.”
You sit on the edge of the bed, trying not to feel too self-conscious about being only in your underwear, braless as he kneels down to the floor, still fully clothed and face a few inches lower than yours, prying your legs apart.
“Andrew,”
He doesn’t respond, pressing his lips to the inner corner of your thigh and moving further up between your legs.
“You don’t have to Andrew.”
He only lifts his gaze up to yours, unwavering as he continues his kisses, “You don’t want it?”
“I…I’m not saying that. I just…I don’t want you to feel obligated to it. I know it’s not…what men like the most,” you gasp, your hand finding his curls and twisting them around your fingers, making him grunt.
“It’s what I want to do the most, right now,” he says with a sinful gaze. “Can I?”
“Yes. Okay. Sure,” you choke, closing your eyes and lying down as he continues his torturous path, his hands slowly tugging the last piece between him and your pussy.
You don’t think you have ever been this wet with a man. Or a woman. Or anyone at all. Normally, you feel a bit uncomfortable with men going down on you cause they never seem to know what they are doing or are too impatient of having ‘real sex’ to let you finish. But here with Andrew, you are nothing but pleasure, his lips fiddling with you like you are an instrument that he is tuning to his own harmony.
You gasp as his tongue finally probes your folds stopping just underneath your clit, earning from him a low whimper.
“You taste delicious,” he goes, coming up for air by an inch. “Just like how I dreamt,” he adds, making you feel close to delirious.
He lowers his face again, tongue working its way up your pussy again, finally reaching for your clit and rolling over it, making you shudder and writhe on the bed, incapable of keeping your moans down and your hands running through his scalp.
“Andrew, please. Just like that. It’s perfect,” you praise him, feeling how it makes him pick up the pace.
Your last straw is the sight of his face between your legs, eyes burning with nothing but want, his hands used to stealing and hurting now holding onto your legs to keep them open and making you come with a hoarse cry. If there’s a heaven on Earth, you know now that it must only exist in this man. In his hands, his chest, his mouth, his eyes. He is nothing but your sanctuary, your promised land and your altar.
When your orgasm subsides, you feel Andrew crawling over you and pressing his lips against you, making you taste yourself on his mouth as you slip your tongue in it. The small noise of pleasure from the back of his throat is the most delicious sound you’ve ever heard.
“You,” you breathe against him, your lips brushing his, pupils probably wide. “I want you. Like right now. So please…take off those clothes. I love them. Really. But take them off.”
His lips twitches again to the side, “Anything.” as he starts to undress, folding them before going above you, his hard cock pressing against your heat.
His eyes keep searching your face, looking for an ounce of backtrack in your eyes before slowly entering you. That’s when you realize how grateful you are for the previous climax because in any other situation, you would have probably wince at his thickness. Thankfully, he seems to catch on with it - probably due to his gaze not leaving your face and refusing to blink – and takes his time to be fully inside you.
For a couple of minutes, the two of you don’t move, give you the time to marvel at how good he feels inside of you. You know now that you’ll have other days and nights to ask him to stay like this for hours, just to be one.
Andrew presses his forehead against yours, lips brushing yours as he whispers. “I love you.”
The word hums through your body. Love. Love. Love. Andrew loves someone and it’s you. From your scalp to your toes, you can feel it resonating through you. Love. Love. Love.
“I love you, Andrew. My Andrew,” you murmur happily, moving a drenched curl from his forehead. “So good to me.”
His face ends up in your neck, trying to cover his reaction to your words. “You really think I’m good?”
“Of course you are. Look at me, honey,” you say, holding onto his chin to bring back his face close to yours as your legs wrap around his waist. “You are good. You are kind. You keep making me feel safe. And…I’m so lucky to have you,” you add, rolling your hips and making him shiver.
You drink in the sight of him: his sweaty hair sticking to his head, curls messy from where your fingers had run through, the freckles dusting his chest and the traces of old wounds that you’ll ask about one day. But the most important of all is the way he is looking at you – as if he loves you. Because he does. He said it. I love you. I love you. I love you.
You keep whispering sweet nothings into his ear, just to see the flush spreading on his cheeks, his ears, his chest and encouraging his thrusts to go harder, deeper. Soon enough, you are quivering around him, your nails digging in his skin as you bite on his lower lip in retaliation for making you wait so long for this moment.
He lets out a desperate moan. “I won’t…last long. ‘m sorry. You feel so…”
“It’s okay,” you encourage him. “I want you to come.”
He slams his cock one more time and goes. “Wh-Where?”
“In me,” you beg, and you know you have hit the right nerve from the way his whole body trembles.
“Really?” he breathes.
“Please.”
The sight of his body, eyes fighting to not shut tight from the pleasure, mouth pursuing yours, mixed with how good he is making you feel, is too much. Your back arches as you reach your second climax tonight, quickly followed by Andrew, clinging to you as his warm load fills you up. Both of you are gasping for one another, time almost freezing as your eyes are sharing the same thought. I love you. I love you. I love you.
After a couple of minutes, Andrew slips out of you and lays most of his body against your side, putting his head above your breasts, on your heartbeat, intertwining your hands together.
“Tomorrow,” he says.
You brush a kiss on top of his head. “What?”
“Tomorrow, we’re picking out your dress.”
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Summary: Steve Rogers spent three years becoming the safest place in your world. He never told you he was in love with you. He never told you he was quietly, patiently shaping every path so that when you finally said yes, there would be no one else left in the room.
Wordcount: 20.9k (fml)
Pairing: Steve Rogers x Female Reader (no use of y/n)
Warnings: MDNI, mutual pining, slow burn, best friends to lovers, unresolved sexual tension, emotional constipation, Steve Rogers is bad at feelings, soft dom! Steve Rogers, possessive Steve Rogers, protective Steve Rogers, jealous Steve Rogers, emotional / soft manipulation, consent is explicit but the path was carefully engineered, first time, virgin! Reader, loss of virginity, gentle sex, intense sex, prolonged sex edging, orgasm denial (brief), mutliple orgasms, fingering, oral sex is teased, p in v, cockwarming (brief), use of sex toys, vibrator Captain America rubber duck, mirror sex, hand on throat (non-choking), praise kink, possessiveness, aftercare morning, yearning, little plot and lot of smut, happy ending
A/N: someone begged me to make this post happen with Steve, and I had already been thinking about it so I wrote it. It went through 2 versions, one was less smutty (but still) and then I went and shot myself in the foot and added 2k of pure smut. You're welcome.
Masterlist
You were the one who taught him how to be alive in the wrong century.
Steve remembered it in pieces, the early days – the way you remember an illness once you're well. The apartment they'd put him in, all clean lines and hostile silence. The list of things he was supposed to catch up on, as if a man could read his way back into belonging. The way the world had gone loud and bright and merciless while he'd slept, and everyone he spoke to treated him like an artifact, careful, reverent, a little afraid.
Everyone but you.
You'd been assigned to him, more or less. Some liaison arrangement, a name on a form. You were supposed to help him with the practical things – the phone, the money, the hundred small humiliations of a world that assumed he already knew. And on the first day you'd taken one look at the list they'd given you, the tidy little curriculum for reassembling Captain America, and you'd folded it in half and dropped it in the trash and said, “Okay. Forget all that. What do you actually want to know?”
He'd stared at you.
Nobody had asked him that.
Not once.
Not what do you need to be able to do but what do you want.
He hadn't had an answer ready. So you'd made him one. You'd started small – coffee, the good kind, from the place on the corner that you swore by and he came to swear by too. Music, but not the important music, not the canon they kept trying to hand him; you played him ridiculous things, songs about nothing, and laughed when he frowned, and slowly, slowly, the frown had learned to be a smile again.
You were the one who made the century small enough to hold.
And here was the thing Steve knew about himself, the thing he did not say out loud, the thing that lived underneath his gratitude like rebar under concrete: he had studied you.
He didn't think of it that way, not usually. But it was what he'd done. In those first raw months, when the whole world was noise, you had been the one clear signal, and he had turned the full force of his attention on you the way he'd once turned it on a map before a drop. He'd learned you. Your moods, your tells, the particular quality your silence took on when you were happy versus when you were hiding something. The way you took your coffee. The two friends you'd cut out of your life and the reasons. The exact register of your laugh when it was real and the slightly higher one you used when you were being polite.
He told himself it was love. Attention like that – surely that was love.
He didn't examine, too closely, the part of him that had always been most at peace when he knew a thing well enough to move it.
Two years. Then three. Somewhere in there the assignment had quietly dissolved and left behind the realest thing in his life. You were his best friend. That word was true and he leaned on it. Best friend. He said it to himself like a boundary. Like a wall he was keeping up.
He was very good at keeping up walls right until the moment he decided to take one down.
Here was the thing Steve did not know, in all his careful study, for all his reconnaissance.
You were in love with him.
You had been for longer than you'd admit to yourself, and much longer than you'd ever admit to him. It had come on the way these things do – not a lightning strike but a slow tide, a rising, until one day you'd looked at him laughing in your kitchen over some song you'd played to torment him and realized the water was already at your throat.
You never told him. Of course you never told him.
You had your reasons, and they were the mirror image of his, though neither of you would ever know it. You were his best friend. You were the person who'd caught him when he fell out of the sky and into the wrong life, and you were not going to be the one who made it weird, who wanted more, who looked at Captain America – at Steve, your Steve, who left his socks on your radiator and argued with you about films – and dared to think mine.
So you held it.
You got good at holding it.
You dated other people, sometimes, in a distracted half-hearted way, and none of it took, and you told yourself that was just how it was for you, that you were picky, that you'd never met the right anyone.
You had. That was the joke of it. You'd met him and made his coffee for three years and never told him and never would.
Steve missed all of it.
He missed it because he wasn't looking for it – because in his model of you, the one he'd built so carefully, you were the sun and he was the man grateful for the warmth, and the sun didn't want, the sun just shone. He had never once let himself imagine that the way you touched his arm when you laughed might be the same thing that lived in him, held just as still, just as hidden.
But here was where the missing got complicated. Here was where a decent man's blindness started to shade into something else.
Because Steve, not knowing you loved him, still could not stand the men who tried to love you.
There'd been a few, over the years. A colleague of yours who'd asked you to dinner. A man from your building. Someone you'd met at a wedding and lit up about for a week. And every single time, without ever once raising his voice, without ever doing a single thing you could point to, Steve had found himself in the middle of it.
Nothing so crude as forbidding. He'd never. He was your friend; he only wanted you happy – he told himself this constantly, and the telling had the slightly overworked quality of a man reinforcing a floor he suspects won't hold weight.
But he'd ask questions. Gentle ones.
The colleague – did he seem like he really listened to you, or did he just wait for his turn to talk? The man from the building – didn't it seem a little convenient, how fast he was moving? The wedding one – and here Steve had been at his best, his most careful – Steve had simply been around, more than usual, that whole week. Present. Attentive. Making your apartment the warmest place you could be, so that the pull of somewhere colder and newer never quite caught.
He'd tell himself he was protecting you. Looking out for you. That was what a friend did.
He never let himself finish the other sentence. The one that went: and if I keep you close enough, keep the warmth turned up high enough, no one else ever gets a real hold on you.
He never finished it. But he ran the strategy all the same, the way a body breathes without being told. A man who had spent a war learning that you don't win by attacking – you win by controlling the ground, by patience, by making sure that when the moment comes, it comes on terrain you've already shaped.
He was playing a long game. He'd have been horrified to hear it called that. He'd have believed, sincerely, hand on heart, that he was just being a good friend.
That was what made it work. On you. On himself.
It came out on a night that was like a hundred other nights, which was why it caught you both off guard.
Rain. Your apartment. The second bottle of wine, opened with the specific recklessness of two people who have nowhere to be in the morning. Some film playing that neither of you was watching. You were sprawled on the couch with your feet tucked under his thigh, the way you'd been sitting for years, a closeness so worn-in that neither of you flinched at it anymore.
He was watching your profile in the blue light of the screen. He did that more than you knew.
You'd been talking about a man. A recent one – a date, two dates, a third that had ended at your door with a question you'd answered by saying goodnight and stepping inside alone. You were telling it as a funny story. You were good at that, turning the ache of your own life into something you could laugh at from a safe distance.
“–and I could tell he thought that was it, you know,” you were saying.
“Like, third date, obviously. He had the whole face on. And I just–”
You made a small helpless gesture with your wine glass.
"I couldn't.”
“Because you didn't want to,” Steve said. Carefully. Reading you.
“Because I never do.”
You said it lightly, but something had shifted under it, some floor giving way, and you'd had exactly enough wine to keep walking out onto it.
“That's the– okay. Don't make it a thing.”
“I won't make it a thing.”
“I mean it, Steve.”
“I know you mean it.”
You looked at him for a long moment, and he held very still, the way he'd learned to, and then you laughed – the higher laugh, the covering one – and said it.
“I've never actually had sex. With anyone. Full stop.”
You waved the glass again, a whole life dismissed in a gesture.
“There. The world's oldest– whatever. It just never happened. And now it's this whole–”
“You're not old,” he said, automatically, and it came out rougher than he meant.
“–thing in my head,” you finished, ignoring him, because you needed to get to the end of it now that you'd started. “And I don't want you to think it's because I'm– God, some blushing innocent girl. I'm not. I know what I like. I've had a lot of time to figure out what I like.”
You said it with a flash of something almost defiant, and he watched your mouth make the words and felt the room tilt.
“I just never let anyone– that far. That's all. It stopped being about the thing and started being about who gets to–”
You stopped.
You looked into your wine.
“Who gets to be the one,” you finished, quiet now. “And nobody ever was.”
Steve did not move.
Outside, the rain kept on. The film murmured to itself, unwatched. Your feet were still tucked warm under his thigh and he was aware of every point of contact between you like a man aware of a live wire.
He should have said something kind and friendly and safe. He had a whole vocabulary for that. That's nothing to be embarrassed about. The right person will come along. You deserve someone who understands what a gift that is.
He didn't say any of it.
Because something had happened in him in the space of your last three sentences, something fast and total and quiet as a door closing, and it had rearranged him from the inside, and when he opened his mouth he honestly did not know what was going to come out.
Who gets to be the one.
And nobody ever was.
Here was what happened inside Steve Rogers in that moment, and this was the truth of him, the part he'd spend a long time not admitting even after he'd admitted everything else.
His first feeling was not tenderness.
Tenderness came. It came a half-second later and it was real, an ache at the thought of you carrying this, at the flash of defiance you'd needed to defend yourself against a hurt no one had even landed yet.
But the first thing – the very first thing, the thing that arrived before he could dress it in anything better – was mine.
Not a word.
Faster than a word.
A kind of heat that went through his whole body and closed a fist around something at the base of him.
The knowledge, sudden and absolute, that there was a first, still, out there in your future – a man, some man, some faceless deserving man who'd get to be the one – and that Steve wanted, with a violence that frightened him, for that man not to exist.
He didn't want you to have a first who wasn't him.
He examined the thought, in the fractional silence, the way you'd turn a strange coin in your fingers. He was good at examining his own thoughts; the war had made him honest, at least in the privacy of his skull.
And what he found, under the tenderness, under the years of best-friend and the sun doesn't want, was this: he didn't just want to be your first.
He wanted to be your last.
That was the shape of it.
Not a night.
Not a favor.
Not some noble one-time kindness to spare you a lesser man.
He wanted to be the one and stay the one, wanted to close the door behind him and have there be no more afters, wanted – the word came to him plainly, and he didn't flinch from it the way he should have – to keep you.
A quieter man might have been ashamed.
Steve was ashamed, distantly, the way you register weather through a window.
But mostly, God help him, mostly he was clear. Clearer than he'd been in three years. All that careful holding-still, all those walls, all the times he'd told himself the sun didn't want – it fell away, and what was left was appetite with a strategy attached, and the strategy came to him already half-built, because some part of him had been building it for a long, long time.
He couldn't just tell you. He knew that in the same breath. If he told you now – best friend, wine, rain, your feet warm under his thigh – you'd panic. You'd rebuild the wall between you before he finished the sentence. He knew you. He knew you the way he knew the load of a shield in his hand, and he knew that the direct assault would lose.
So he wouldn't make the direct assault.
He'd do what he was good at. He'd shape the ground.
He looked at you, and he let none of it show – not the heat, not the mine, not the plan already assembling itself behind his steady friendly eyes – and when he spoke his voice was gentle, and warm, and exactly, precisely the voice of a man who wanted nothing for himself.
“Hey,” he said softly. “Look at me.”
You did.
“You didn't do anything wrong,” he told you. “Waiting for someone who's the one. That's not a thing that's wrong with you.”
He let a beat pass.
Let it land.
Then, easy, almost offhand, planting the first seed so lightly you'd never feel the soil move, “Honestly? I think it says you've got better sense than everyone I know. You held out for it to matter. Most people would kill to have done that.”
Something eased in your face. He watched it ease. He'd known it would.
“You think?” you said.
“I know,” he said.
And he smiled at you – the good smile, the one you'd rebuilt out of a broken century, the one you trusted absolutely – and he tucked the blanket a little more snugly over your feet where they rested against him, a small warm gesture of a man taking care of his friend, and inside the calm cathedral of himself Steve Rogers began, quietly and without any hurry at all, to plan how he was going to become the one.
He had time.
That was the beauty of it.
He was patient; the war had taught him patience, and love had taught him more.
He'd move slow. He'd move so slow you'd never see it as moving. He'd make himself the warmest place in your whole cold new world, warmer than any man who ever asked you to dinner, so that when the moment came – and he'd know the moment, he'd make the moment – it would feel to you like the most natural thing in the world.
Like your own idea.
Like coming home.
He'd give you a first you didn't have to be brave for.
And once he was your first – once you'd let him that far, further than you'd ever let anyone – well…
He didn't let himself finish that one either. But the shape of it sat warm and certain in his chest as the rain came down, and your feet were tucked against him, and the film played on, unwatched, telling its little story to no one.
First, he thought, watching your profile in the blue light.
And last.
You had no idea. You leaned your head back against the arm of the couch and let his kindness settle over you like the blanket, grateful, unguarded, feeling – for the first time all night – completely safe.
You were, of course, exactly the opposite of safe.
You'd never been more thoroughly in someone's sights in your life.
But it felt like being loved. It felt, from the inside, precisely like being loved.
That was the whole trouble with Steve Rogers.
It always did.
He didn't move for three weeks.
That was the part no one would have believed of him, if anyone had been watching – and no one was, that was rather the point.
Three weeks of nothing.
Three weeks of being, in every visible particular, exactly the friend he'd always been.
But underneath, he was watering what he'd planted.
He did it so gently you'd never have called it anything. He simply returned to the thing, now and then, from oblique angles.
A film you watched together where a couple waited years for each other, and Steve, offhand, eyes on the screen, “See, that's the thing people don't get. Waiting for the right one isn't weakness. It's the opposite.”
He didn't look at you when he said it.
He didn't have to.
He felt you go still beside him, felt the words go in and find the soil he'd already turned.
A week later, a friend of yours got engaged, and you were happy for her and a little raw underneath, and Steve was there for that too – present, warm, and somewhere in the evening he said, easy as anything,
“You know what I've always thought about you? You're not waiting because you're scared. You're waiting because you know what it should feel like. That's rare. Most people just settle.”
You know what it should feel like.
He watched the sentence do its work over the following days.
He was patient.
He'd learned in a war that the ground does most of the fighting for you, if you shape it right and wait.
And you – you didn't know you were being shaped.
You only knew that lately, when the old ache came, the one about being the last of your friends to have never, Steve's voice was there in your head to meet it. Not making you feel broken. Making you feel chosen by your own restraint.
Turning the wound into something almost like pride.
You didn't notice that the voice comforting you and the ache it comforted had started coming from the same place.
That was the craft of it. He didn't just want to be your first. He wanted you to arrive at him feeling like it was the wisest thing you'd ever done.
He chose the night the way he'd once chosen drop zones.
He didn't force it.
He waited for the conditions and let them assemble, and when they did – a Friday, rain again because the rain was on his side, a week where you'd been tired and worn thin and had said, twice, that you just wanted to be somewhere that felt safe – he simply made sure the somewhere was him.
He cooked.
He didn't usually cook; he made a point of it now, and made a point of it looking effortless, so that you'd arrive at his door and be met with warmth and food and low light and the particular gravity of a room that has been made ready for you without ever announcing that it has.
You didn't notice the candle.
You noticed you felt better the second you were through the door, and you didn't ask why, because that was what his apartment always did to you, and you'd never once wondered whether that was an accident.
It was not an accident. It had never been an accident.
You ate. You drank a little – not much; he watched that too, careful, because he did not want a version of this you could tell yourself later hadn't been real.
He wanted you clear.
He wanted you to choose it. The choosing was the whole prize.
And he let the evening soften into the shape it always took, you curled into the corner of his couch, him near, the rain, the low light, the safety he'd built for you brick by brick over three years and you'd never once seen the trowel.
He waited until you brought it up yourself.
He'd known you would. He'd shaped the whole night so you would. And you did – sideways, the way you always came at the tender things, some joke about the engaged friend, about being the last one standing, and the laugh you used to armor it.
He didn't laugh with you this time.
He let a silence open instead. And into the silence, gently, like setting something down that he'd been carrying a long way, Steve said:
“Can I tell you something I've been thinking?”
He'd rehearsed it.
Of course he'd rehearsed it.
He'd rehearsed it in the shower and on his runs and lying awake, editing, the way he'd rehearsed the last one, except this time he'd learned from watching you for three weeks exactly which words would land and which would spook you, and he'd built the speech to your specifications without you ever knowing you'd given them.
But he delivered it like a man thinking out loud.
That was the art.
Nothing rehearsed.
Just a friend, arriving in real time at a hard, honest thing.
He started with you. Always start with them; make it about them.
He said he hated that you carried this like a weight. That someone had made it a wound. That you were the least broken person he knew and it killed him a little that you didn't see it.
He watched your face soften and open.
Then he moved – one careful step, so smooth it didn't feel like a step at all.
He said the thing he was about to say, he was only saying because he was your friend. That he needed you to hear it that way. No expectations. Nothing owed. Nothing changed. He needed to say that part first, he said, because otherwise he'd lose his nerve.
Nothing changed.
The oldest lie in his arsenal, and he laid it down first, deliberately, because a lie told up front lowers the guard against everything after it.
And then – gentle, reluctant, a man dragging the words up against his own modesty, a performance so good he half-believed it himself – he offered.
He said he didn't want your first to be someone who'd be careless with it. Someone who'd take a thing that mattered and not understand that it mattered.
He said the word he'd built the whole campaign on, the one he'd planted in you three weeks ago and watered ever since – someone who makes it matter – and he watched it land in the exact soil he'd prepared, watched you recognize your own comfort in his mouth, watched it feel to you like being understood.
He said, if you ever wanted – if it would take the weight off – it could be him.
Because he was your friend.
Because he'd be gentle.
Because he'd take care of you, and make it good, and never once make you feel like the thing that man had made you feel.
He ran the whole thing so warm, so selfless, so entirely about you, that the want underneath it never showed – the mine, the first and last, the fist that had closed at the base of him three weeks ago and never once let go.
He kept all of that behind his steady friendly eyes, where he kept everything, and he let you see only the kindness.
And then he stopped.
And he let the silence do the last of the work.
He'd learned, in a war, that you don't take the ground. You make the ground so untenable that the other side walks into your arms believing it was their idea.
He watched your face. He read every flicker of it. He'd been reading it for three years.
He saw the moment you decided.
He saw it before you knew it yourself.
“Okay,” you said.
Quiet. Barely more than breath.
But he heard it land in the room like a struck bell, and something in his chest surged so hard he had to hold his face still against it.
“Yeah?” he said.
Soft.
Careful.
Give it back to them gently, let them feel it was freely given.
“Yeah.”
You laughed a little, shaky, and it wasn't the armored laugh, it was a real one, undefended, and it went through him like sunlight through the wrong century.
“God. Yeah. I– with you. It should be– of course it should be you. Who else would I–”
Who else.
He'd built that, too.
The whole architecture of who else. Three years of being the warmest place in your world so that when the question came there'd be no other answer in the room.
It had worked. It had all worked. He should have felt like a man who'd won.
He did feel that. He felt it low and hot and certain.
But he felt, too – and this surprised him, this he hadn't planned for – a swell of something enormous and unbearably tender, because you'd said of course it should be you with your whole open face, and for one vertiginous second he forgot the campaign entirely and was just a man in love who'd been told yes.
That was the strange thing about Steve Rogers.
Even the manipulation ran on something real.
Especially the manipulation.
He reached over.
He took your hand – didn't pull you, didn't move toward the bedroom, didn't do a single thing to break the spell by making it suddenly, crudely, about the act.
He'd thought about this part, too.
He was not going to rush you. Rushing you was for lesser men, the careless ones, the ones he'd spent three years defining himself against.
He was going to hold you right here, on this threshold, in the warm ruin of your yes, and he was going to let it be enormous.
Because if the first thing after your yes was a scramble toward a bedroom, some part of you might flinch, might feel it become transactional, might wake up.
He wasn't going to let you wake up.
So he just held your hand.
And looked at you.
And let the moment stretch until it was almost too much to bear, until the whole air of the room had changed, gone thick and slow and charged, until you could feel your own heartbeat in your throat.
“We don't have to do anything right now,” he said, low.
And you'd have sworn – you did swear, to yourself, in that moment – that it was the kindest thing anyone had ever said to you.
You didn't hear the other thing in it.
The patience of a man who'd waited three weeks and could wait one more hour, because he knew that making you wait now, holding you here trembling on the edge of it, was going to make everything after so much more completely his.
“I know,” you said. “I just– can we just–”
“Yeah,” he said. “We can.”
And he settled back, and drew you in against his side, and you let yourself be drawn, your yes still ringing in the air between you like the note after a bell, unspent, everything still ahead of you, nothing crossed yet.
His heart was slamming.
Yours was too.
Neither of you moved toward the door that both of you were now, unmistakably, going to walk through.
He looked down at the top of your head, tucked against him, trusting, chosen, caught.
First, he thought, and this time he let himself finish it, slow, savoring it, the whole long game folding shut around you like a hand.
And last.
The rain came down. The candle he was sure you hadn't noticed burned lower. And Steve Rogers held you on the threshold he'd spent three weeks building you toward, and did not, for one more perfect suspended minute, move.
It wasn't that night. That was the first thing that surprised you.
You'd said yes on his couch, in the warm ruin of the rain, and some part of you had braced for the rest of it to happen then and there – for him to lead you to his bed while the yes was still ringing.
He didn't.
He held you on the threshold and let it be enormous and then, when the candle had burned low and the hour had gone soft, he'd walked you to the door and kissed your forehead and said goodnight.
You'd lain awake most of that night not knowing whether to be relieved or bereft.
What you didn't understand – what you wouldn't understand for a long time – was that the waiting was also his.
That a man who has spent three weeks and one careful evening bringing you exactly here does not squander it on a single unplanned night.
He wanted it chosen.
He wanted you to walk toward it in daylight, awake, sober, with days to change your mind and no wine to blame – because a yes you could take back and didn't was worth infinitely more to him than a yes he'd caught you in.
So the days passed.
Four of them.
And they were strange, luminous, unbearable days.
Because now it was between you.
He'd hand you a coffee and your fingers would brush and you'd both go quiet a half-second too long.
He'd text you something stupid and you'd read it eleven times.
The whole architecture of your friendship, three years of it, had been picked up and set down one degree to the left, and everything looked the same and nothing was.
Now it lived in every ordinary thing.
He'd hand you a coffee and your fingers would brush and you'd both go quiet a half-second too long. He'd text you something stupid and you'd read it eleven times. The whole architecture of your friendship, three years of it, had been picked up and set down one degree to the left, and everything looked the same and nothing was.
And this was the part that undid you – he talked to you about it. Like it was ordinary. Like it was allowed.
“I don't want it to be weird,” he said, on the phone, on the second night, his voice low in your ear in the dark.
“I want you to actually think about it. What you want. How you want it. If you change your mind at any point, even walking in the door, even after– you tell me and it stops. I mean that.”
“I know you mean it” you said, and you did, and that was somehow the most dangerous part of all.
“And if you don't change your mind,” he went on, careful, “then– Friday? Your place?”
Your place.
He'd chosen that too, though you didn't clock it.
Your bed.
Your room.
Somewhere you'd feel safe, somewhere that was yours – so that when he took it, it would feel like being kept rather than taken.
“Friday,” you said. “My place.”
You heard him breathe out, slow, on the other end of the line. You thought it was nerves.
It was a man watching the last piece of a very long game slide quietly into place.
“Friday,” he agreed. “I'll bring dinner. We don't have to rush anything. We've got all the time in the world.”
He said that a lot, that week. All the time in the world. You thought it was reassurance.
It was a promise.
You just didn't know yet what he was promising.
On Thursday, you were off all evening, and he clocked it inside four minutes.
That was the trouble with being known by Steve Rogers. Three years of a man studying your face the way other people study scripture, and there was nowhere left in you to hide a mood. You'd arrived at his door on the third day with takeout and a smile that didn't reach anywhere, and you'd been fine, determinedly fine, aggressively fine, all through dinner.
He let you be fine for an hour and a half. He was patient like that.
Then he put down his fork and said, “Okay. What is it.”
“What's what?”
“You've laughed at three things tonight and you didn't mean any of them.”
You looked at him. He looked back, unmoving, with that terrible mild patience of his, the one that had gotten more out of you over three years than any interrogation ever could.
“It's nothing.”
“It's not nothing. You've been chewing on something since you got here.” He tilted his head. “Is it Friday?”
And there it was, said out loud, in his kitchen, over cold noodles. Friday. The word had been sitting between you for three days like a lit fuse and neither of you had touched it.
“No,” you said.
Then, “Sort of.”
Then, because his eyebrows had gone up a quarter inch and that was somehow worse than any question, “It's stupid. Steve, it's genuinely stupid, can we not–”
“You're allowed to change your mind.” He said it fast, and something in his voice had gone very slightly wrong at the edges. “I meant that. Any point. You don't have to have a reason, you just say the word and it's–”
“That's not it either.”
He waited.
God, he was good at waiting.
He'd sit there all night.
He'd sit there for a week.
And the silence he made was never cold or expectant, it was warm and patient and completely unbearable, and it pulled things out of you the way heat pulls water.
You cracked in about nine seconds.
“How many people have you slept with?”
Steve blinked.
Whatever he'd been braced for, it hadn't been that. You watched him actually recalibrate – watched the careful machine of him stop, reverse, and start again in an entirely different direction.
“...Why?”
“Forget it–”
“No. Hey.” He leaned forward. “No, I'm not– I'm not dodging. I'm asking why, because I want to answer the actual question and I don't know what it is yet.”
You put your hands over your face.
“Because you've done this,” you said, into your palms. “That's the– okay, look. You've had women. Obviously you've had women, you're–” a helpless gesture at all of him, “–that, and it's been three years, and you're not a monk, and I never asked because it wasn't my business, and now it's Friday and it is my business, sort of, and I keep–”
You stopped.
“You keep what,” he said quietly.
“I keep thinking about them.” Your voice had gone small. “Whoever they were. That they knew what they were doing. That they were– that you have something to compare me to and I've got nothing, I've got nothing, I don't know how to do a single part of this and you're going to be so–”
“Don't say bored.”
“I was going to say disappointed.”
Something crossed his face that you couldn't read.
He got up. Came around the table. Crouched down beside your chair so that he was lower than you, looking up, which was a thing he did sometimes and which you'd never once been able to withstand.
“Okay,” he said. “Ask me properly. I'll answer anything. Straight.”
So you did, because you'd already humiliated yourself and there was nothing left to protect.
“How many?”
“Few.” He said it without flinching. “Since the ice– three. One that lasted about eight months, back at the start. Two that didn't last at all.” A pause. “Before the ice, none. For the record. I was a hundred and ten pounds and nobody was interested, and then there was a war on.”
“Eight months.”
“Eight months.”
“Did you love her?”
He considered it. He didn't rush to say no, which somehow you respected and hated in equal measure.
“I wanted to,” he said finally.
“I tried pretty hard. She was kind, and she deserved better than a man who was – ” He stopped. Restarted. “I wasn't really there. She said that, actually. At the end. She said it was like living with someone who was waiting for a phone call.”
You didn't understand, then, what he was telling you.
You would, later. On a grey morning, in the clear light, with all the pieces laid out. You'd count backwards and realize that the eight months had ended about two years ago, right about the time a man had looked up in this kitchen and noticed the shape of your hands, and you'd understand exactly what phone call he'd been waiting for.
But that was later. Right then you just sat there feeling worse.
“Great,” you said. “So there's an eight-month person. Who presumably knew how to–”
“Hey.”
“–and I'm going to be lying there like a–”
“Hey.” His hands closed over yours in your lap. “Look at me. You want the straight answer? Here's the straight answer. I can't remember her face without trying.”
You went quiet.
“That's not me being cruel about her,” he said. “She was a good person and she didn't do anything wrong. It's just true. I've had three, and I couldn't tell you one specific thing about a single one of those nights, and I've been sitting in this apartment for three days now unable to think about anything except–”
He stopped.
Very suddenly. Like a man who has walked to the exact edge of a cliff at speed and put his heel down just in time.
The kitchen was very quiet.
“Except what?” you asked.
Here was what was happening inside Steve Rogers at that moment, and it was not what you thought.
He was cornered. Genuinely cornered, for the first time in three years of careful navigation – and by his own hand, which was the galling part.
Because he'd built this whole thing on a lie of omission.
I'm doing this for you. No expectations. Nothing changes.
He'd told you it was a kindness, and the trouble with telling someone it's a kindness is that it makes them the charity case, and now you were sitting in his kitchen with your hands shaking under his, believing you were a favor he was doing, believing there were better women in his past that you'd be measured against.
And he could fix it.
Instantly.
One sentence would fix it, and the sentence was I have wanted you for two years and there has never been anyone else in the room, not once, not ever, they were all just places I was standing while I waited for you.
He couldn't say it.
Not yet.
Not three days out, not with the whole thing balanced this delicately, not when saying it now might spook you into calling Friday off – because he knew you, he knew what you did when something got too big, you ran, you laughed it off and rebuilt the wall and he'd have to spend another year getting back to here.
So he did the thing he was best at.
He told you the truth – as much of it as he could afford, and not one word more. He gave you the edge of it and let you believe the edge was the whole.
“Except you,” he said.
Your breath caught.
“That's– Steve–”
“Three days,” he said, low. “I haven't slept much. I keep–”
He shook his head, and the frustration in it was completely real, which was what made it work.
“You think you've got nothing to offer. You think you're gonna disappoint me. I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to tell you that I've been half out of my mind since Friday got put on the table and it's got nothing to do with being helpful.”
“But you said–”
“I know what I said.”
You stared at him.
He held your gaze and let you look, and he let just enough of it show – not all of it, never all of it, but enough. Enough that something in your chest turned over hard.
“I don't understand,” you said.
“I know.” He squeezed your hands. “You don't have to yet.”
And then he moved you off it – deftly, warmly, the way he moved you off everything.
“Here's the part I do want you to hear,” he said, “because it's the part that's actually true and I need you to stop carrying it. Ready?”
You nodded.
“There's nothing to be good at.”
“That's not–”
“There isn't.” He said it with total conviction.
“That's a thing people made up to sell you something. Nobody's grading it. There's no technique that matters more than–” he searched for it, “– than the person actually wanting to be there. That's it. That's the whole thing. And the idea that you'd need to perform for me, that you'd be lying there worried you're not–”
He broke off, and something flashed across his face that you'd never seen before, something with a great deal of heat in it.
“That's not going to be a problem,” he said. “I promise you that's not going to be a problem.”
“You can't know that.”
“I can,” he said. “I do.”
And there was such flat, absolute, unarguable certainty in it – the certainty of a man who has run this scenario in his head several hundred times and knows precisely how it goes – that you felt the ground shift under you.
“Okay,” you said faintly.
“And for what it's worth.” He got up, sat back down in his own chair, and reached over to steal a piece of your food, so casual, so ordinary, so completely deliberate. “The comparison thing works both ways.”
“What does that mean?”
He shrugged, eyes on his plate.
“Means they're not the ones who spent three years learning what your face does,” he said. “So I'd say I'm at something of an advantage.”
You laughed. It surprised you, coming out.
He smiled at his plate, and let you laugh, and did not look up – because if you'd seen his face in that moment, all the careful work would have been for nothing.
Three years learning what your face does.
He'd told you the truth. He kept doing that, all week, in small unbearable increments – offering you the actual shape of it in pieces you weren't yet able to assemble, so that later, when you finally could, you would understand that he had never once lied.
Only ever waited for you to catch up.
“Friday,” you said.
“Friday,” he agreed.
And he thought, watching you go back to your food with your shoulders finally loose and every day after that, if I've done this right.
Friday came the way you'd been half-dreading and half-dying for it to come.
He arrived with food and you barely ate it. You both knew you wouldn't, really; the dinner was a courtesy, a soft place to land the first hour, a way to let your nerves burn down to embers before anything else.
He was good at that.
He was good at making you feel like there was no clock, even as he watched the evening move exactly where he'd meant it to.
He kissed you standing, in the middle of your living room, with the rain going on the windows and the dinner neither of you had eaten gone cold behind you.
He took your face in both hands to do it.
That was the thing that undid you first – not the kiss, the hands.
The way he framed your jaw between them, thumbs along your cheekbones, tilting you up like something he'd been given permission to hold at last.
Careful.
Almost formal.
As if after three years of not being allowed, he intended to do this properly.
The kiss was soft.
Softer than you'd expected from a man that size. He kissed you like he had all night – because he did, because he'd made sure of it – slow closed-mouth presses that asked and asked and never once pushed. His breath was warm on your upper lip. His thumb moved once against your cheek.
You'd waited three years for this. Three years of standing in kitchens and doorways and not letting yourself, and now it was happening and it was gentle, and something in you went molten and impatient all at once.
So you bit him.
Not hard. Just caught his lower lip between your teeth and pulled, a small deliberate provocation, more instinct than plan.
Steve made a sound like he'd been struck.
And the careful thing broke.
It happened fast. His hands left your face and found you properly – one at your waist, one at the small of your back – and he moved you, three steps, no effort at all, until your shoulders met the wall.
Not hard.
He'd never put you into a wall hard. But the ease of it, the sheer thoughtless strength of being relocated by a man who could do it without straining, punched a moan straight out of you before you'd decided to make one.
Because you felt him then. All of him, all at once. The whole solid front of him pressed flush against you from chest to hip, and it was so much – so much more real than anything you’d ever conjured alone in the dark – that your knees genuinely went. You could feel the thick, heavy line of his cock already hard against your stomach, straining against his jeans, and the heat of it made your mouth go dry.
“Fuck,” he breathed against your mouth, voice rough. “‘M sorry. Been waiting three years to feel you like this. Sorry, too much?”
“Don't you dare apologize.”
He laughed, wrecked, and kissed you again, and this time it wasn't soft at all.
It went hot in the space of a breath.
His mouth opened over yours and yours opened under his and it stopped being careful entirely – teeth catching, tongues sliding, the graceless wet urgency of two people who have waited far too long for a thing and have suddenly stopped being polite about it
He kissed you like he was trying to get through you. You kissed him back like you'd been drowning.
His hands didn’t stay still. One kept its grip at your waist, fingers spanning half your ribcage, holding you exactly where he wanted you against the wall. The other went into your hair and held – cradling your skull, tilting your head where he needed it, giving him the angle he wanted so he could fuck his tongue into your mouth deeper.
You couldn't breathe properly.
Neither could he.
Between kisses there were these ragged half-seconds where you both just gasped into each other's mouths, foreheads pressed, and then one of you would go back in like it hurt not to.
And then he slid his thigh between yours.
You didn’t even register it happening. One second there was space and the next there was the hard, thick muscle of his leg pressed up tight between your thighs, taking your weight, holding you up when your legs had stopped bothering. The seam of your jeans dragged right against your clit with every tiny shift, and you were already so wet the fabric felt soaked through.
You made a sound into his mouth. He swallowed it.
“There it is,” he murmured, rough, dragging his mouth along your jaw. “There’s that sound. God, you have no idea– three years I’ve wondered what you’d sound like when you finally stopped holding back. Three years I’ve thought about getting my hands on you and finding out.”
He didn't finish it. He bit the side of your throat instead, open-mouthed and greedy, and you keened.
He’d meant it to be slower.
That was the thing. He’d planned this – of course he’d planned this, he’d been planning it for months, every careful conversation, every soft offer to “make sure it was someone who actually gave a damn” – and in the plan this part was fifteen minutes of taking the edge off your nerves before he moved you toward the bedroom and began, slowly, methodically, the careful hours of work he’d mapped out in his head.
He was managing it. Just about. His control was fraying but it was holding.
And then he felt you move.
He went absolutely still.
Not stopped-kissing still.
Something deeper.
A stillness that started somewhere behind his sternum and spread outward, because his body had just registered a piece of information his mind was three full seconds behind on.
You were rocking against his thigh.
Small. Slow. An unhurried little roll of your hips, back and forward, grinding your cunt against the hard muscle of his leg, seeking the pressure of him, entirely without instruction – and when he made himself pull back an inch to look at you, he understood in one glance that you had no idea you were doing it.
None. Not a shred of awareness.
Your eyes were half open and gone somewhere far away. Your mouth was red and swollen and slack from him, still parted, still chasing. Both your hands were buried in his hair, fisted tight enough to sting. And your hips just kept going, small helpless movements, riding the muscle of his thigh with the unthinking single-mindedness of a body that had stopped consulting anybody about what it wanted.
You weren't performing. You weren't trying to be anything. You weren't even present enough to be embarrassed.
Steve stared at you.
Something enormous turned over in his chest.
Because here was the thing he had never allowed himself to properly imagine, not in three years, not in a single one of the shameful careful fantasies he'd built and dismantled in the dark: that you might want him like this.
Not sweetly. Not gratefully. Not as a favor accepted from a good friend.
Like an appetite. Like a woman with a body that knew exactly what it was after and had gotten tired of waiting.
She's not innocent, he thought, dazed. God help me. She’s just never been touched. And she wants it. She wants me.
And he almost let it happen.
He came so close. Every animal part of him wanted to press his thigh up harder and hold you there and watch you come apart against him in your own hallway – and for one long second his hand actually moved to your hip to help, fingers digging in, guiding the roll of your body so the seam of your jeans dragged tighter over your clit.
Then he stopped.
Because he'd promised himself something four days ago, lying awake, rehearsing.
Not against a wall. Not in a hallway with her shoes still on.
Not the first time.
He had spent three years getting here and he was not going to spend the first thing you ever felt from another person on a rushed ten minutes in a corridor. He wanted you on a bed. He wanted hours. He wanted to watch your face when he finally pushed inside you.
So he took his thigh away.
The sound you made was awful.
A high, thin, wrecked little whine, muffled against his throat, so entirely undone and so completely unlike anything you’d ever let him hear that it nearly finished him where he stood. Your hips kept moving anyway, chasing the pressure that was no longer there, cunt clenching around nothing.
“I know,” he breathed. “I know. I know, sweetheart– you were right there, weren’t you? I felt it. You were gonna come on my leg like that.”
“Steve–” You were shaking. Your hips were still moving, mindless. “Please, I was– I was almost–”
“I know you were.” His voice was barely holding together. His hands slid down, gripped the backs of your thighs hard enough to leave marks. “That’s exactly why I’m not letting you. Not here. Not like this. I’ve waited too fucking long to take you against a wall for the first time.”
And he picked you up.
Just lifted you, straight off the floor, as effortlessly as picking up a coat – and your legs went around him on pure instinct and your arms went around his neck and the sound you made this time was different, because the position had put you flush against him, directly against the thick, hard length of his cock, nothing between you now but two layers of ruined clothing.
You ground down on him without deciding to. Hard. The ridge of him dragged right against your clit through the fabric and a broken sound punched out of both of you at the same time.
He staggered half a step.
“Baby.”
“I can't– I can't stop–”
“Then don’t.” He got his mouth back on yours, kissing you as he walked, taking the whole weight of you on one forearm so the other hand could hold your face. “Don’t stop. Rub yourself on me all you want. Just don’t come. Not yet. Give me one more minute, that’s all I’m asking–”
You whimpered into his mouth and rolled your hips anyway, shameless, grinding your soaked cunt against the hard line of him with every step, and he laughed, breathless and ruined, and kept walking.
The hallway was three metres long. It took a while.
Your shirt went first – he’d got it halfway off you against the wall and you finished it, dragging it over your head, throwing it somewhere that turned out to be the kitchen. His went next, and it was you who did that too, both hands under the hem and shoving, desperate for skin. He had to set you down for two seconds to get it over his head and you both made frustrated noises about the two seconds of separation.
One of your shoes came off in the corridor. The other one you kicked at the bedroom door and it hit the frame and bounced.
He got you up again. You got your legs back around him. He walked you the last few feet with your mouth on his throat and his hands full of your ass and his belt half undone by fingers that had no business being that clumsy. You could feel how hard he was, the thick shape of him trapped against your stomach, and every step made you grind harder against it.
By the time you made it to the bed, most of it was gone. The rest went in a graceless heap somewhere between the door and the mattress – jeans, underwear, the last of your clothes – neither of you looking, neither of you caring, both of you making sounds into each other’s mouths that would have mortified you in daylight.
And then there was nothing left, and he was carrying you bare against him, skin on skin down the whole length of you. You felt the heavy, hot weight of his cock trapped between your bodies, the head of it already slick against your stomach, and you both stopped dead at the shock of it.
He held you there. Breathing hard. Forehead against yours. His hands were shaking where they gripped the backs of your thighs.
“Okay,” he managed, voice wrecked. “Okay. Look at me.”
“Okay,” you agreed. Neither of you moved. You could feel how wet you were against him, the slick heat of your cunt pressed right against the underside of his cock.
He turned to lay you down on the bed.
And stopped.
You felt it happen – felt the whole enormous frame of him go rigid, felt the change in his breathing – and you lifted your head from his shoulder to see what he was looking at.
Oh, God.
The nightstand. Half-tucked behind the lamp, where you'd meant it to live out of sight and had entirely, catastrophically forgotten it would be visible from this angle, held in these arms, naked, tonight of all nights.
Small. Yellow. Absurd.
A little rubber duck, except for the shield painted on its chest, and the tiny painted mask, and the unmistakable, ridiculous, unmissable A on its forehead.
“Oh my God.” You said it into his shoulder. “Oh my God. Steve. That's not– okay, that is not–”
“Whose is that.” Quiet. Not cold. Quiet.
“A friend gave it to me.” The words came out in a rush, muffled, desperate. “As a joke, it was a birthday thing, everyone laughed, she thought it was hilarious– because of you, obviously, because I never shut up about–”
You stopped.
You’d said too much and not nearly enough, and you were naked, wrapped around him, held off the ground by a man whose bare skin was pressed to every inch of yours – the thick, hot length of his cock trapped between your bodies, the head of it already slick against your stomach – and the horror of it and the heat of it hit you at the exact same moment and came out of you as a sound that was not a word at all.
Because you were still at the very edge. He’d taken you to the brink in your own hallway and left you there, and your whole body was still humming and furious about it, cunt still throbbing and empty, and now this – his arms, his chest, the shameful little yellow thing on the nightstand, the sheer overload of it…
You moaned. Right against his throat. Helpless. Your hips rolled once, involuntary, dragging your wetness along the underside of his cock.
He felt it. Every part of him felt it.
“A joke,” he said.
“Steve–”
“And you used it?”
The question dropped into the dark and stopped everything.
You could have lied. He felt you decide not to. He felt the truth come up through you, hot and honest, and you lifted your chin the smallest fraction – that flash of defiance that told him you were not, whatever else, some blushing innocent – and you said it.
“Yes.”
One word.
It went through him like a struck match through paper.
Because there it was – the thing he’d told himself he was too decent to feel. You’d taken him – this ridiculous painted duck-version of him, this joke, this stand-in – and in the privacy of this room, alone, in the dark, you’d spread your legs and pressed that little yellow body between them and come with his face in your head. Every other man who’d ever asked you to dinner had been turned away at the door, and the only version of anyone you had ever let into this bed had been him.
Even as a joke. Even in rubber. It had been him.
The possessiveness that took him then wasn’t a thought. It was tidal. It closed over the last of his careful decency and pulled it under without a sound.
He didn’t touch the duck. He’d get to it. He’d get to it in his own time, and the knowledge of that sat in him warm and patient and certain.
“Okay,” he said, very softly, and you heard the change in him – the way his voice dropped into something darker, rougher, almost hungry – and your breath caught. “Okay, baby. So you’ve been using me to get yourself off. For how long?”
You didn’t answer. You couldn’t.
He laid you down.
And then he stopped, and looked at you, and didn't touch you at all.
You’d have squirmed under it if you’d had the coordination left. He was kneeling over you, braced on one arm, completely naked, cock heavy and flushed against his stomach, and he was just… looking. Taking his time about it. His eyes moving over you slowly, thoroughly, from your face down the length of your body and back up again, lingering on your breasts, the soft curve of your stomach, the wet shine between your thighs, like a man reading something he’d been told about for years and had never been allowed to see.
“Steve–”
“Give me a second.” His voice was unrecognisable – low, rough, almost reverent. “Three years I’ve imagined what you’d look like under me. Give me one second to actually see it.”
So you lay there and let him look, and watched what it did to his face, and it was almost worse than being touched. His cock twitched visibly against his stomach. A bead of precome welled at the tip and slid down the underside.
Then he took his time – which, after the hallway, after being carried, after being left shaking on the very edge of it, was almost cruel.
He touched you like a man with nowhere else in the world to be. Slow palms up the outsides of your thighs, spreading them wider. Along your ribs, thumbs spread wide so they brushed the undersides of your breasts. His mouth at your throat, your collarbone, the soft give beneath – unhurried, methodical, learning you by hand and by inches while you writhed underneath him and made sounds you’d have been mortified by in daylight. Every time his fingers drifted close to where you needed them most he pulled them away again, stroking the crease of your thigh instead, feeling how wet you’d already gotten just from being looked at.
You told him, at least three times, that you were going to lose your mind.
“I know,” he murmured, into your skin, entirely unmoved. “I know. Almost. I’ve waited three years to get my hands on you. I’m not rushing the first time I get to touch you like this.”
“You left me–”
“I did.” Not sorry. Not remotely sorry. His mouth moved lower, open and wet against the soft skin just above your navel. “I wanted the first time you came for me to be right here. In this bed. With my fingers inside you and my mouth on you so I could watch every second of it.”
“That’s–” You had to stop and breathe when his tongue dipped into your navel. “That’s a horrible thing to do to someone.”
You felt it more than heard it – the warm huff of air, the curve of his mouth.
“Probably,” he agreed. “But I’ve been hard for you since the second I walked through your door, and I’ve been thinking about this exact moment for months. You’re going to have to live with it.”
And you understood, dimly, through the fog – the way you understand a thing you won't be able to name until much later – that he was enjoying this. Not the way a man enjoys being generous. The way a man enjoys having something exactly where he wants it, after a very long wait.
And then he touched you properly, and you stopped being able to form sentences.
The first thing was the shock of how different it was.
That was what nobody had ever told you. You knew your own body – you’d had years alone in this room with nothing but time and a joke made of rubber, you weren’t some blank page – but you had never once considered that another person’s hand would feel like an entirely different category of thing.
You couldn’t predict it. That was the difference. You didn’t know what was coming next, or how long it would last, or when it would change, and your body couldn’t brace for any of it – so every single thing he did landed unguarded, straight through, nothing between you and the sensation at all.
His fingers slid through the soaking folds of you, parting them, and the sound was obscenely wet. You made a noise like you’d been hurt. His head came up instantly.
“Okay?”
“Don't stop. Don't you dare stop–”
“Not stopping.” His mouth came back to your jaw, voice rough against your skin. “Not stopping, sweetheart. Just checking. Fuck, you’re soaked. Is this all for me? Or is some of it left over from thinking about that little yellow duck while you touched yourself?”
It didn't take long. It couldn't have.
You’d been strung tight since the hallway, since before the hallway, since a Tuesday in his kitchen four days ago – and he knew it, and he used it. He read every twitch of you, every hitch of your breath, adjusting to each one, cataloguing in that ruthless observant way of his exactly what made you shake and exactly what made you sob.
Three years of watching your face for the smallest tells, put to this.
Two thick fingers circled your entrance, gathering slick, then pressed inside you in one slow, steady push. The stretch made your back arch off the bed. He curled them immediately, searching, and when he found the spot that made your whole body jolt he made a low, satisfied sound against your throat that you would think about for weeks afterward.
“There,” he said, voice dark with triumph. “There it is. That’s the place you’ve been rubbing that little duck against, isn’t it? Right here.”
“Steve–”
“I know. I’ve got it now.” Something had come into his voice that hadn’t been there before. Something certain. Something almost proprietary. “I’ve got you. I’m not going to lose it again.”
He didn’t. He held that exact angle, merciless, and worked his fingers inside you in slow, deep strokes while his thumb found your clit and rubbed firm, steady circles. It built in you fast and hot and impossible, and you had a moment of genuine panic – of I can’t, it’s too much, this is too much with someone watching – and he felt even that, because of course he did.
“Yes you can.” His forehead against your temple. His breath ragged now too; he wasn’t unaffected at all, he was breathing like he’d been running, hips shifting restlessly against the mattress so his cock dragged against your thigh. “Yes, you can. You’re going to come on my fingers exactly like this. Let me see it. Please– sweetheart, let me see what you look like when you finally let go for me–”
Then he kissed you.
And that was what finished you: his mouth over yours, swallowing every sound you made, taking them straight out of you as they came – as if he’d decided that if he couldn’t have the rest of you yet, he’d have those.
You broke apart underneath him.
He watched every second of it.
Your cunt clenched hard around his fingers in rhythmic pulses, so tight he groaned into your mouth. Slick flooded his hand. Your thighs shook violently on either side of his wrist. He kept working you through it, slower now but relentless, dragging every last tremor out of you while he watched.
He’d kept his face inches from yours the whole time for exactly that reason. He wanted the front-row seat and he took it, and he watched you come apart under his hand with an expression you had never seen on him in three years and would not be able to describe afterward – something between reverence and hunger and a kind of naked disbelief.
Three years, he was thinking. Three years and it looks like that.
It was better than the fantasy. It was so much better than the fantasy that the fantasy seemed insulting in hindsight – thin, polite, invented by a man who hadn't known anything.
When it finally released you, you were boneless. Shaking. Your hand had fisted so hard in the sheet that it took a moment to unclench. You could feel how wet his fingers still were inside you, the slow, filthy slide of them as he gently eased the intensity.
He pressed his mouth to your temple and held you through the aftershocks, murmuring things against your skin.
“There,” he said. There was wonder in it. And something much darker underneath. “There you are. That’s what you look like when you come for me. Fuck, baby. I’ve been imagining that for so long and it still wasn’t enough.”
You couldn’t speak. You couldn’t do anything but breathe.
“Okay?” he asked, voice softer now, though his fingers were still buried inside you, still moving in the slowest, laziest strokes, like he couldn’t bring himself to pull them out yet.
You managed a nod.
He kissed you again – softly this time, almost sweetly, at odds with everything – and when he drew back his eyes had gone very dark. He slowly withdrew his fingers, watched the way your body tried to clench around the emptiness, then brought them up between you so you could both see how they glistened.
“That’s one,” he murmured, and licked them clean without looking away from your face.
Something in the way he said it made your stomach drop.
He moved to shift you – hands at your hips, turning you, guiding you up onto your knees to face the mirror in the corner, beginning the thing he'd been building toward for three years–
And you caught his wrist.
He stopped instantly. Every part of him stopped. His eyes came to yours in the dark, alert, already scanning your face for the thing he'd promised he'd watch for. “Hey. Hey– we can stop, if you want to stop–”
“No.” Your fingers stayed closed around his wrist. You could barely get all the way around it. “No, I just–”
You were steadier now. That was the thing. The edge had come off; the desperate humming urgency that had run you since the hallway had finally, mercifully quieted, and in its place was something calmer and far more dangerous: you could think again. You could look at him.
And you had been wanting to touch him for three years.
You had to make yourself say it. It came out smaller than you'd meant.
“Can I touch you first?”
Steve went completely still.
And here was what you did not know, and could not have known, and would not understand until much later.
That question was not in the plan.
He'd planned everything. Every hour of the last four days, every word of the three weeks before them, three years of shaped ground and patient warmth and doors quietly closed on other men. He had run this night in his head so many times he could have recited it. He knew what he'd do, and how slowly, and in what order, and what he'd say when you got frightened, and how he'd make it painless, and exactly how he intended to ruin you for anyone who ever came after.
In none of it – not once, not in a single version – had it occurred to him that you might want to touch him.
He'd never imagined being on the receiving end. That wasn't a thing that happened to him. He was the one who gave; that was the whole architecture of him, the shield, the plan, the man who takes care of it. Nobody took care of Steve Rogers. Nobody had reached for him in seventy years and meant it.
“You–” His voice came out strange. “You want to?”
“Is that okay?”
He made a sound. It wasn't a word. He nodded, once, jerkily, like a man agreeing to something whose terms he hadn't understood.
So you touched him.
You weren’t an expert. You had no idea what you were doing and you didn’t pretend otherwise – you just put your hands on him, at last, after three years of not, after three years of that constant low ache of proximity, and you let yourself learn him.
His chest first. Flat palms, spread wide, the ridiculous solidity of him under your hands. The heat of his skin. The way the muscle jumped the second you made contact. You felt his breath go wrong immediately – a sharp, broken inhale that he tried and failed to hide.
Then slower. The line of his collarbone. The old pale seam of a scar under his ribs that you’d never seen and had no story for. The heavy shift of muscle in his shoulder when he swallowed. You mapped him the way you’d wanted to for years and never once let yourself, and every place you touched, something in him jumped. His cock, still hard and heavy between you, twitched against your stomach when your thumbs brushed over his nipples.
“Okay,” he breathed. “Okay– fuck–”
He was trembling. This enormous man, trembling under your hands like it hurt.
You put your mouth on him – his sternum, the hollow at the base of his throat, the place where his pulse was going wild – and he made a low broken sound and his hand came up to the back of your head. Not guiding. Just holding on, the way you hold onto something in weather. His fingers flexed in your hair every time your tongue dragged over his skin.
“You’re allowed,” you murmured against his throat, because you could feel how still he was making himself, how hard he was working to simply let this happen. “Steve. You’re allowed to want it. You’re allowed to feel it.”
“I don’t–” He stopped. Started again, wrecked. “I’m not used to– nobody’s– it’s been so fucking long since anyone–”
“I know.”
You didn’t, entirely.
But you felt it: the way a man goes rigid when someone is kind to him in a way he has no defense against. You’d spent three years watching him take care of everyone in his orbit. It had never once occurred to you either, until this moment, how long it had been since anyone had touched Steve Rogers just because they wanted to.
You went lower.
Your mouth traced the center line of his chest, then the hard ridges of his stomach. Your hands followed, sliding down the deep V of muscle that led straight to where he was thick and flushed and leaking against his own skin. When your fingers finally wrapped around him – tentative, learning the weight and the heat and the way he pulsed in your grip – he made a sound that was almost a sob.
He let you. For a while, he let you – and he was so unguarded about it, so vocal, so entirely undone by having hands on him after seventy years of nobody, that it went to your head like wine. Every sound he made was involuntary. Every one of them was because of you. His hips gave tiny, aborted thrusts into your fist, like he couldn’t stop them. Precome slicked your fingers. His thighs were shaking.
For now you weren’t the one being managed. He was in your hands, and he was coming apart, and you were the one doing it.
Then his hand closed around your wrist, hard.
“Stop.” Ragged. Urgent. “Stop, you have to– sweetheart, stop.”
You froze. “Did I–”
“No. God, no.” He was breathing like he’d run somewhere. His eyes were shut, his jaw locked, his whole body strung tight as a wire. His cock throbbed hot and heavy in your grip, so hard it looked almost painful. “You didn’t do anything wrong. That’s the– that’s exactly the problem. You keep going and I’m going to come in your hand like a fucking teenager and that is not how tonight is supposed to go.”
It took him a moment to get himself back. You watched him do it: the long haul of a man dragging his own control into place by main force, one breath at a time. His hand was still locked around your wrist, keeping you from stroking him again.
When he opened his eyes they were black.
“Not like that,” he said, low. “Not tonight. Tonight you get all of it. Every inch. I’m not finishing anywhere except inside you.”
“Steve–”
“Do you have any idea,” he said, and his voice had gone rough and strange, almost shaking, “how many times I’ve thought about this? How many times I’ve jerked off thinking about finally getting to push inside you and feel you take me? How many times I’ve had to stop myself from just showing up at your door and begging?”
He stopped himself. Visibly. The end of that sentence sat between you, enormous, unsaid – but the damage was already done. You could see it in his face: the raw, hungry truth he hadn’t meant to let out.
He exhaled hard through his nose, then reached up and cupped your face with both hands, thumbs stroking your cheekbones like he needed the contact to stay grounded.
“Later,” he said, quieter, but no less intense. “You can touch me as much as you want later. You can take me apart if that’s what you need. But not tonight. Tonight I need to be the one who does it. I need to be the one who takes care of you. Can you give me that?”
Later.
You'd think about it a great deal, afterward – about how many things that man had put in the box marked later, and how long the box had been full, and what it must have cost him to carry it around for three years, smiling at you over coffee.
He kissed you then, hard, and turned you.
Gentle hands on your hips, guiding, until you were kneeling up on the bed facing the tall mirror in the corner – the full-length one, the one you saw yourself in every ordinary morning, that had never once seen anything like this.
You saw yourself in it. Bare, kneeling, undone. Cheeks flushed, mouth swollen, thighs already shiny with how wet you still were.
And then you saw him rise up behind you, broad and solid, and settle in close, chest to your back, and meet your eyes in the glass.
His breath was still short. You could hear it – could feel it uneven against your shoulder, not yet recovered from what your hands had done to him – and there was something enormously satisfying about that. About having put it there. His cock, still hard and heavy, rested against the small of your back, leaving a wet smear of precome on your skin every time either of you shifted.
“I want you to see,” he murmured, low, against your ear. “I want you watching. I want you to see who’s finally touching you. Who’s going to be the first one inside you.”
He didn’t finish the thought out loud. He didn’t have to. It was already the truest thing in the room.
Then he reached over to the nightstand.
You knew what he was doing before his hand closed on it. You’d known since the way he’d looked at the little yellow duck and set it down and made you wait – and knowing didn’t help at all.
“Steve.” Your voice came out thin. “Steve, no, that’s– that’s not–”
“Mmmh-hmm.”
He picked it up.
It sat in his palm, small and yellow and absolutely ridiculous, and he turned it over once with his thumb the way he had the first time, and the sound you made was half a laugh and half a sob and entirely disbelief.
He pressed a slow, open-mouthed kiss to the side of your throat.
“No,” he said, warm and wrecked and almost amused. “No, we’re not wasting this. You used me. You put this little thing between your legs in the dark and thought about my hands, my mouth, my cock. Now I get to use it on you while you watch.”
“That’s not– it’s not the same thing–”
“It’s exactly the same thing.” His mouth moved to the shell of your ear, voice dropping even lower. “You were in this bed, in this room, in the dark, with this. Thinking about me. Coming with my name in your head.”
A pause, deliberate, cruel.
“Weren’t you?”
You didn’t answer. Your reflection in the mirror looked wrecked already – eyes wide, lips parted, chest rising too fast.
“Sweetheart.” Softer. Absolutely relentless. “Were you thinking about me when you used it?”
“…Yes.”
“Yeah,” he breathed, and there was something in it that was not amusement at all – something dark and hungry and deeply satisfied. “Yeah. Well. Now you don’t have to pretend. Now it’s actually me.”
“Steve, I can’t– I just– I just came, I can’t–”
“You can.”
Total certainty. No room in it anywhere. He was already settling the little yellow duck into place, low and sure, pressing the curved head of it right against your still-swollen clit, exactly where you’d set it yourself all those nights – and the sheer indignity of that, of him knowing precisely where, of him being right, burned through you hot and shameful and somehow made everything tighter.
“You will,” he said against your ear. “Trust me.”
And he thumbed it to life.
The sound was absurd. A small ridiculous hum in the dark, comic, the sort of noise that should have made you both laugh – and for exactly half a second it did, you felt the laugh start in your chest–
And then it landed.
On nerves still raw and singing from what he’d done to you ten minutes ago. Everything oversensitised, everything already wrung out, and your whole body went rigid and then bowed backward against his chest with a sound that had nothing funny in it at all. The vibration was sharp, focused, merciless against your clit. Your thighs jerked. A fresh rush of wetness slicked the insides of them.
The comedy burned clean out of the room.
“Steve–”
“I know.” Rough, against your nape. “Too much?”
“I don’t– I don’t know–”
“Then we’ll find out.”
His other hand came up to your throat.
Not squeezing. Never that – he’d have died first. Just there: a warm broad span across the front of your neck, no real pressure at all, only enough to keep your head level and your chin up and your eyes forward.
Only enough to keep you facing the glass.
That was the whole purpose of it, and you understood the purpose about a second after it was too late to object. You couldn’t look away. You couldn’t drop your head, couldn’t turn into his shoulder, couldn’t hide your face the way every instinct in you was screaming to – because that hand was there, patient and immovable, and it held you exactly where he wanted you.
“Watch,” he said against your nape, voice low and rough. “Look at yourself. Look at what you look like when I’ve got you like this.”
“I can’t–”
“You can.” His mouth moved down: the curve of your neck, the point of your shoulder, unhurried, worshipful, taking his time about it while the little yellow vibrator kept humming steadily against your clit. “You can, and you’re going to. That’s the whole point of tonight. I want you to see every second of it. I want you to watch yourself come apart for me.”
So you watched.
And that was the thing that undid you – not the hum, not his hands, not even the shameful little object he was holding against you. It was the mirror.
You saw your own face, flushed and open-mouthed. You saw the way your breasts moved with every shaky breath. You saw his big hand spanning your throat, his other hand working the vibrator in slow, deliberate circles that made your hips twitch helplessly. You saw how wet you were, the shine of it on your inner thighs, the way your body kept trying to rock into the vibration even though it was already too much.
You watched yourself.
Kneeling up, bare, held. Flushed all the way down to your chest. Your mouth open, your eyes glassy, your whole face wearing an expression you had never once seen on it – not in all the years of getting ready in front of this exact mirror, not ever.
You didn’t recognise her. That was the vertigo of it. There was a woman in your bedroom mirror who wanted things and was getting them, and you’d never met her.
Then you looked past her, at him.
Steve, over your shoulder. Eyes half-shut, jaw tight, the muscle in it working hard. And on his face – plain as anything in the low grey light – years of discipline coming apart in real time.
You had never seen him without it. Not once. Not in three years of coffee and films and rain on the windows. He was the most controlled human being you’d ever met and you were watching the control fail, live, in your own bedroom, because of you.
He caught you looking. His eyes came up and met yours in the glass and held.
“There,” he said quietly, voice rough. “Now you see.”
“Steve–”
“That’s what you do to me.” His hand shifted at your throat, the barest adjustment, keeping your chin up so you couldn’t look away. “Three years of that. Every time you laughed at me. Every time you sat on my couch with your feet under my leg. Every time you leaned in too close and I had to pretend I wasn’t hard. You want to know what it looked like underneath?” His mouth found your shoulder, open and hot. “That’s what it looked like. That’s what I’ve been holding back.”
You made a sound you couldn’t control – high, broken, helpless.
“There she is,” he murmured, watching it happen in the mirror with dark, hungry eyes. “Look. Look at her. Look at what you look like when I’ve got a vibrator on your clit and my cock against your ass.”
And you watched him hold you like something he’d won and couldn’t quite believe he’d won.
That was the other thing in his face – under the hunger, under the fraying discipline – a kind of stunned disbelief, as though some part of him were still standing in a kitchen three years ago watching your hands around a mug, certain this would never in a hundred lifetimes be his.
It made your chest hurt. It made everything worse. It made you want to give him absolutely anything.
Time did something strange after that.
You lost the thread of it entirely. There was only the relentless little hum of the duck against your oversensitive clit, and the rain on the windows, and his mouth moving over your shoulder, and the two of you in the glass – and every so often his voice at your ear, low and steady and coming apart at the edges, telling you exactly what he could see.
“You’re dripping. Look at that. You’re making a mess of my cock and I haven’t even been inside you yet.”
Your moans were small and helpless and you couldn’t stop them and he drank each one like it was owed to him.
Then he moved.
Not into you. Not yet. He shifted his hips and settled the thick, heavy length of himself against you instead – flush, close, unbearably present – sliding the whole of him between your slick folds without pushing in. The sound that came out of both of you at the contact was the same sound, torn from two throats at once.
He’d meant it to be a moment. Just a moment, just a taste, just enough to take the edge off the pressure that had been building in him for three weeks and three years.
It was not a moment. It went on and on.
Because the first slow drag of him against you told him something he hadn’t been prepared for, and it undid what was left of his composure in one clean stroke.
You were soaked.
Wet through, slick and hot and ready, everything he’d done to you gathered there waiting for him – and he felt it coat him as he moved, felt himself glide through the thick evidence of exactly how much you wanted this. His forehead dropped hard to your shoulder and he made a sound like he’d been punched in the gut.
“Oh– fuck, sweetheart.”
Wrecked. Barely a voice at all.
“You feel that?” He rocked again, slow, deliberate, dragging the entire thick length of his cock through the heat of you, the head of him catching on your clit with every pass, the underside of him sliding through your folds until he was shiny with you. “You feel what you’re doing to me? God. God, you’re so wet. I didn’t know you’d be this wet. I didn’t know you’d feel like this.”
He couldn’t finish the thought. His breath had gone to pieces.
He’d imagined this. That was the thing that was killing him. He had imagined this, in the dark, for years, in a shame he’d never confessed to anyone – and every single version he’d built had been a pale, polite, dishonest little thing next to the reality of you slick and shaking and arching back into him.
Because you were. That was the other thing. You weren’t just letting it happen.
You were meeting him.
He felt it the second time he moved – your hips tilting back, chasing the thick drag of him, your body seeking the friction on its own without any instruction from the wreck of your mind. Small greedy movements. Rolling up into him so that every slow thrust of his hips dragged the head of his cock right over your clit and the vibrator at the same time.
“There you go,” he breathed, and there was something dangerously close to awe in it. “There you go. Look at you. You’re– fuck, you’re riding it. You’re actually fucking yourself on my cock and you haven’t even taken me yet.”
“Steve–”
“Say it.” His voice cracked. “Say it while you watch yourself do it.”
“I want–” Your voice broke on it. The hum was still going, still relentless against your clit, and the thick slide of him through your folds was making everything tighten again already, and you could barely get the words out. “I want it. Please. Please, I want you inside me–”
The sound he made then was not a word.
And you felt him.
That was what none of your quiet nights alone had ever, ever come close to – the fact of another body, alive and undone, reacting to you.
You felt him shiver.
You felt the great controlled bulk of him – this man built to withstand things that killed other men – actually shudder against your back when you rolled your hips a certain way. You felt his arms tighten convulsively around you. You felt the tremor run the whole length of him like something coming loose.
You felt his breath, hot and broken and far too fast at your ear, catching every time you moved.
You felt his heart going like a hammer against your shoulder blade.
And you felt him twitch against you — an involuntary jerk of his cock, hard and hot and slick where he was pressed to you, a thing his body did entirely without his permission — and that was the moment it stopped being something being done to you and became something you were doing to him.
The power of it went through you like a drug.
“Oh,” you breathed, stunned, watching his face in the mirror as another full-body shiver ran through him. “Oh, you–”
“Don’t.” His voice was barely holding. “Don’t say it. If you say it I’m gonna come all over your back before I even get inside you–”
You said it anyway. You leaned back into him and turned your face and said it right against his jaw, eyes still locked on his reflection.
“You’re shaking.”
He swore.
Actually swore, a low ruined syllable against your throat, and his hips snapped forward once, hard, uncontrolled – dragging the entire thick length of his cock through your soaked folds, right over the exact place the little humming duck was working your clit – and you both cried out.
He caught himself instantly. Went still. Breathed hard against your neck.
“Fuck– sorry, I didn’t mean–”
“Do it again.”
He froze.
“Do it again,” you said, voice shaking but clear.
And the sound he made – half a groan, half a broken laugh, entirely destroyed – was the sound of the last strut going out of a structure that had held for three years.
He did it again.
He moved against you slow and deep and endless, the thick, heavy length of him gliding through the slick heat of you, the head of his cock catching on your clit with every pass, the underside of him coated in how wet you were. Neither of you could keep quiet anymore. His breath came ragged and open-mouthed against your neck, punctuated by low, helpless grunts he wasn’t managing to swallow – small sounds of effort, of restraint, of a man holding back something that badly wanted to be let go. Your own noises had stopped being anything you could control: high and broken and continuous, rising every time the thick drag of him lined up just right with the vibrator.
The slide of it had gone effortless. Slick and hot and perfect. Every pass of him gathered more of your wetness until the sound of it was unmistakable under the hum – the wet, filthy noise of his cock sliding through you – and it made you burn scarlet and it made you want it more.
“Listen to that,” he said hoarsely against your ear. “Listen. That’s you. That’s how fucking wet you are for me.”
“I know–”
“That’s how much you want me.” His arms had gone tight, all of him strung, the muscle standing out in his forearm where it braced across your chest. “Three years and I never– I didn’t know. I didn’t know you’d feel this good. I didn’t know you’d be this ready.”
He broke off. Rocked into you again, harder, the thick head of him catching deliberately on your entrance this time without pushing in.
“Steve.” You were shaking. “Steve, I can’t– you have to–”
“I know.”
“Please– inside me, please–”
“I know, baby.” He was panting now, openly, past hiding it. “I know. Me too. Look at me– look at me in the glass– Christ, look at us–”
You looked.
And what you saw in the mirror finished you: the two of you moving together in the low grey light, his eyes wild and blown and locked on yours in the reflection, his jaw clenched, his whole enormous frame trembling with the effort of holding at the edge for you – and you understood, with a lurch, that he was as far gone as you were. That the patient man, the careful man, the man who had planned every second of this, was hanging on by a thread thinner than yours.
“Steve,” you whispered. “Now.”
His breath stopped.
“You’re sure–”
“Now. I want you inside me. Now.”
And then–
Both of you gasped at once. The same breath, torn out of two throats. That first give, that first fraction, that first impossible inch of him finding you – the blunt, thick head of his cock pressing against your entrance and then slowly, carefully, beginning to stretch you open. The surprise of it, the sheer overwhelming fact of it after all this waiting, after three years, after four days, after a joke made of rubber that had somehow led here–
You froze. He felt you freeze.
He went utterly still behind you, buried his groan in your shoulder, and got his mouth to your ear.
“Just the tip, baby.” Rough. Ragged. Barely holding. The words slurred as if he were drunk. “'S just the tip. 'S okay. 'S okay, I've got you, look– look at us– 's just the tip, we've got all the time in the world.”
He kept you there a long time.
That was the thing you’d remember, after – not the ache, because there was almost no ache, only a deep, stretching fullness that bordered on too much – but the patience. The way he held the two of you suspended at that first impossible fraction and refused, absolutely refused, to hurry through it. A lesser man would have taken the yes and pushed deeper. Steve held it in his hands like something that might break if he breathed wrong, and he breathed carefully, and he waited.
Every time your body tensed around the newness of him – that instinctive clench, the ancient bracing of a self that had guarded this for years – he stilled. Completely. Went to stone behind you, his whole enormous frame locked around the effort of not moving another millimetre, and got his mouth to your ear, and gave you something else to feel instead.
The hum, low and shameless, where his hand held the little yellow duck tight against your clit.
The mirror, and the two of you inside it, lit silver-grey by the rain-light: your face flushed and open, his face wrecked and focused, the place where his body disappeared into yours.
His other hand at your throat – no pressure, never pressure, only warmth, only the wordless instruction of it: watch. Turning your face gently back to the glass whenever your head tried to fall, whenever your eyes threatened to close and hide from how much you were feeling.
He had redirected everything. That was the craft of it and the tenderness of it, and by now the two were the same thing. He had taken every scrap of your attention and moved it somewhere else – to the absurd little song of the toy, to the sight of yourselves, to the slow worshipful drag of his mouth along the top of your shoulder – so that when he pressed a fraction deeper, the smallest rock of his hips, the barest give of another thick inch, there was no room left anywhere in you for fear. Only more.
You never felt the stretch as anything but more.
He worked you open by inches and the inches took forever and forever was the whole point, the whole gift. Tiny movements. A rock forward, a pause held so long you thought you’d die of it, his groan buried hot in your nape, another fraction of him sinking into the tight heat of you, another pause, another. He read your breath the way he’d once read a battlefield – every catch of it, every shiver, every place your body softened or resisted – and he answered each one, adjusting, coaxing, never taking more than you’d give and always, somehow, making you want to give more.
“There you are,” he breathed once, when a long slow press drew a sound out of you that you’d never made before – high, broken, almost disbelieving. “There. Just like that. Feel how you’re taking me. I’ve got you.”
And he did. That was the thing. However this had begun – however carefully he’d shaped the ground beneath your feet for three years to bring you exactly here – right now, in the dark, with the rain on the glass, you had never in your life felt so completely, so unbearably held.
Somewhere in that endless slow undoing you felt it start to build.
You felt it gather at the base of you, low and hot and coiling – the relentless hum against your clit and the thick, stretching fullness of him and the sight of his face behind you in the mirror all winding tighter and tighter, a tension with nowhere to go, climbing past anything you’d ever managed alone in this room with a joke made of rubber. Because it had never been like this alone. Alone there had been sensation. This was him. This was three years of wanting given a body and a weight and a mouth at your ear, and it was too much, and it was not enough, and it kept climbing.
“That’s it.” His voice had gone thick, watching your face come apart in the mirror, drinking the sight of it. “That’s it– look at you– look at us– don’t look away, stay with me, let it happen–”
You came like that.
Held on the very threshold of him, the little humming thing pressed hard against your clit and only the first thick inches of his cock inside you, and it broke – it broke over you in a long bright wave that took the room with it. Your body clenched sweet and helpless and rhythmic around him, and the tight, pulsing heat of your orgasm dragged him the rest of the way home while you were still shaking, still gone, still lost in it.
So that by the time you surfaced, gasping, boneless, blinking at the two of you in the glass, he was fully seated. All of him. Buried to the hilt, his hips flush against your ass, exactly where an hour ago you’d have sworn you couldn’t take him – and you hadn’t felt a single second of the final stretch as anything but coming apart.
He held still inside you then. Every thick inch. Both of you trembling, his chest heaving against your back, his heart slamming so hard you could feel it through your own spine. You could feel the heavy pulse of him deep inside you, the way your body kept fluttering and clenching around the new fullness.
“There,” he said, wrecked, against your ear. His arms had come around you, holding you upright, holding you together. “There. All of me. See? Told you.” A rough, reverent kiss pressed to your temple, your cheekbone, the corner of your jaw. “Didn’t hurt at all. Not for a second. I wouldn’t let it. You’re perfect. You’re taking me so fucking perfectly.”
It hadn’t hurt. He’d made certain of that. He’d redirected every ounce of you so thoroughly, so deliberately, that the thing you’d carried for years as a kind of wound had passed while you were looking somewhere else entirely – and now it was simply done, gone, dissolved, replaced by the impossible fullness of him and the singing wreck of your own body, and you understood dimly that he had planned even this, this mercy, this sleight of hand, and could not for the life of you find it in yourself to mind.
Then he drew back – slow, so slow, dragging every nerve in you awake as the thick length of him slid almost all the way out – and gave you the first real stroke.
And the world went white at the edges.
Because this was different. This wasn’t the careful inching-open, the patient claiming of ground. This was him – the whole heavy length and deliberate drag and deep certainty of him filling you completely – and the sound you made didn’t even sound like your own voice, some low broken thing torn up from a part of you that had never spoken before.
He did it again. Still slow, but full now, complete, unhurried and total, burying himself to the hilt with every stroke. His forehead dropped hard to your shoulder at the feel of it, his breath shuddering out of him in broken bursts. You felt his control fraying with every deep unhurried pull, felt the discipline of three years coming loose thread by thread, and it was the single most intoxicating thing you’d ever witnessed – this vast, contained, careful man beginning, at last, to lose himself inside you.
And then, with a low rough sound of decision, he threw the duck away.
You barely registered the small absurd clatter of it hitting the floor somewhere across the room – because his hand, the one that had held it, came straight back to you, bare now, his own thick fingers finding exactly where the toy had been. And it was so much better. So much warmer, so much surer, so much more him. He rubbed firm, knowing circles over your swollen clit while he fucked you in long, deep strokes, and the dual sensation made you sob aloud and sag back against his chest.
“Don’t need it,” he muttered, half to you and half to himself, hips rolling, fingers working you with a knowledge of your body he had no right to and had somehow earned anyway. “Don’t need the fucking toy. It’s me. It’s just me now. Just us. Only ever gonna be me inside you after this–”
And you shattered again.
Just from that. Just from him – his hand and his mouth and the deep, slow, relentless certainty of his cock filling you over and over – a third orgasm, harder than the two firsts, folding you forward over the strong braced line of his arm while he held you up through all of it and worked you through every wave. He watched every last second of it in the glass with dark, greedy, disbelieving eyes, like a man who could not quite believe the thing he was seeing was real and was his.
And in the middle of it – past the roar of your own blood, past the last shred of anything guarding you, barely conscious of your own mouth moving…
“I love you,” you whispered.
It just fell out of you. You weren’t even certain you’d said it aloud. It slipped free the way breath slips free, involuntary, unbidden, the truest thing in you rising to the surface in the one moment every wall you owned was down at once.
Steve went absolutely still.
You felt it – the whole of him, stopping. His fingers on your clit. His hips. His breath. For one endless suspended second the only sound in the entire world was the rain against the glass and the ragged double-time of your own heart, and the thick pulse of him buried deep inside you.
And then something broke in him that had never broken before.
Not the strategist – that was already gone, dissolved somewhere back at the nightstand the moment you’d said yes. This was deeper. This was the last thing, the thing underneath all the other things, the belief he had quietly built his entire careful campaign on top of and never once examined in the light: the sun does not want. The sun simply shines. I am the man who gets to stand in the warmth, and I will ask for nothing, and reach for nothing, because reaching was never something I was allowed.
And you had just whispered, half-gone, not even meaning to, that the sun wanted him back.
Three years of holding still. Three years of a man convinced that the very best he could ever hope for was to live near your light and never dare to touch it. Three years of loving you in a silence so complete he’d nearly mistaken it for peace. And you’d said I love you into the dark with your whole body wrapped around his – without deciding to, without performing it, without any reason to say it but that it was simply, helplessly true – which meant it was real. Which meant it had been real for longer than tonight. Which meant that all this time, in some room of your own, behind some wall of your own, you had been holding your breath exactly the way he’d been holding his.
He lost it.
Every last thread of the control he’d carried into this room like armor – gone.
His hand left your throat – gently, gently, always gently, even now – and cupped your jaw instead, and turned you, up and back over your shoulder, until your mouth found his. And he kissed you like a man surfacing from under ice. Deep and desperate and endless. All of it at once, everything, nothing held back. He kissed you like he was trying to breathe you in, like the three years had all been leading to precisely this and he could not bear to have waited even one second longer. His hips started moving again while he kissed you, deeper, less careful, the thick length of him sliding in and out of your still-fluttering cunt with a wet, rhythmic sound that filled the room.
“Say it again,” he breathed against your mouth when he broke for air. Ragged. Wrecked. Not commanding – begging. This man who had strategized his way to your bed, reduced now to a plea. “Please. Say it again. I need– please, sweetheart, say it again.”
Your eyes came open. Wide. You heard it land in the air a full beat too late – heard your own voice replaying I love you into the quiet – and felt the panic surge up hot in your chest, the instinct to snatch it back, to laugh it off, to rebuild in a single second the wall it had taken you three years to hold…
He didn’t let you.
“No,” he murmured, and kissed it away, kissed the fear right off your open face, his hips moving harder now, deeper, the last of his restraint gone and something helpless and overflowing rising in its place. “No, no. Don’t. Don’t take it back. Don’t you dare take it back, I’ve got you–”
“Steve–” your voice cracked, “–I didn’t mean to–”
“Love.” The word broke out of him like it had been waiting three years for permission to exist. “Sweetheart. Look at me– no, not the mirror, not the glass– me. Look at me.” And he turned your face fully to his and held it there, forehead pressed to forehead, both of you coming apart in the dark, his eyes so close they were the only thing in the world. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. You hear me?”
His voice cracked clean down the middle.
“I’m never letting you go. Not ever. Not after this. You don’t get away from me now– I won’t let you. I’m keeping you.”
And it wasn’t a cage, the way he said it. It wasn’t the possession that had roared through him an hour ago at the sight of a painted rubber duck. That was gone too – burned off, transfigured, remade into something rawer and simpler and completely undefended. It was a man who had lost everything once – every friend, every anchor, an entire world, a whole century swallowed by the ice – waking one more time into a life that finally, impossibly fit, and finding you at the center of it, and refusing, this time, with everything left in him, to let the cold take the thing he loved.
Keeping. Not caging. Not owning. Keeping – the way you keep the one thing you’d walk back into the freezing dark to save. The way you hold on to the single warm thing in a life that has taught you, over and over, how easily warmth is lost.
“Okay,” you gasped, past tears you didn’t fully understand, past the very last of your own unraveling, your hands scrabbling back to find his and lacing tight through his fingers, holding on like the whole world had tilted and he was the only fixed point left. “Okay. I love you. I do– I said it, I meant it, I’ve meant it for so long, I love–”
He kissed the rest of the words out of your mouth.
And the two of you went over the edge together – finally, completely, no threshold left to hold at, no careful inch left to preserve, nothing between you anymore. Not the years. Not the silence. Not the strategy or the shaped ground or the walls you’d each built so high and held so long. All of it gone at once, and only this left standing: him, and you, and the rain on the glass, and the two of you in the mirror moving like a single thing breathing.
He came with a broken, helpless sound against your mouth, burying himself as deep as he could go, pulsing hot and thick inside you while your body clenched around him in long, rhythmic waves. Your fingers stayed locked. Your foreheads stayed pressed together. Both your hearts hammered the same impossible rhythm.
And a ridiculous little yellow duck lay forgotten on the floor across the room, having done, in the end, exactly what it was always secretly for.
Afterward he held you against his chest and would not loosen his arms, and you let him – boneless, wrung clean through, wearing the heavy steady slam of his heart under your cheek like something you had been given and meant to keep.
For a long while neither of you spoke. There was only the rain, and your breathing slowly finding each other's rhythm, and the warmth of him around you like a wall built to keep out cold instead of to keep you in.
“I meant it,” he said at last, into your hair. Quiet now. Sure. No campaign left in his voice, no strategy – just the plain flat truth of a man who has stopped, finally, being careful. “All of it. Every word. The keeping part especially.”
“I know,” you murmured.
You didn't, yet. Not the whole of it – not the three years and the three weeks and the four days, not the film chosen on purpose, not the seeds planted and quietly watered, not the drop zones and the shaped terrain and the long patient war he had waged to bring you to this exact bed. That would come later. Some of it. As much of it as he would ever bring himself to tell you.
But you knew the part that mattered. You had felt it break wide open in him in the precise instant you stopped guarding your own heart – felt the whole vast careful machine of him come apart the second you said three words he'd never once let himself believe he might hear – and you knew, with the certainty of a thing felt rather than reasoned, that whatever else was true about how you'd arrived here, you had not been the only one holding your breath for three long years.
“Stay,” he said. Not a question.
“I live here,” you pointed out, muffled, smiling helplessly against his skin.
You felt his laugh move through his whole chest – low and startled and completely undone, the laugh of a man who has spent so long braced for loss that joy still catches him off guard.
“Then I'm staying,” he said, and pulled the blanket up over the both of you, and drew you in closer against him, and did not, for the rest of that long rain-soft night, let go of you even once.
The rain came down. The duck lay where it had fallen.
And Steve Rogers – who had planned everything, shaped everything, won everything he'd set out to win, and been utterly, helplessly undone anyway by the one thing he had never dared to plan for – fell asleep at last with your heartbeat beneath his hand. Kept, and keeping. And, for the first time since the ice closed over him a lifetime ago, entirely, dangerously, finally home.
You woke before he did, which never happened.
In three years you had never once beaten Steve Rogers awake – he ran at dawn, he'd been built to need less sleep than the rest of the species, he was always up and moving and quietly making coffee by the time you surfaced. But this morning you swam up out of sleep into grey light and rain-washed quiet and found him still under you, still around you, his arm heavy across your waist, his face slack and open and years younger in sleep than you'd ever seen it awake.
You lay very still and looked at him.
And in the clear unhurried light of morning, with your body pleasantly wrecked and your head finally quiet, you started – slowly, the way you turn something over that's been sitting in your hand all along – to think.
About last night. About the four days before it. About the phone call where he'd been so careful, so patient, so ready. About the candle at his place you were fairly sure you hadn't imagined. About the film, weeks ago, and the thing he'd said about waiting not being weakness. About the engaged friend and you know what it should feel like. About how, every single time you'd tried to fall for someone else in three years, you'd somehow ended up back on his couch instead, warm, safe, home, the pull of anywhere colder never quite catching.
About how the only version of anyone you'd ever let into this bed had been a joke made of rubber wearing his face.
The pieces sat there in the morning light. You looked at them.
And here is the thing you understood about yourself, in that moment, that you would maybe never say out loud: you weren't afraid.
You should have been. Some sensible part of you noted, distantly, that a wiser woman might feel a chill right now – might look at the sheer duration of it, the patience, the shaped ground, and feel like something had been done to her rather than with her. That part of you spoke up, dutifully, and then fell silent, because the rest of you had already gone somewhere else entirely.
The rest of you was on fire.
Because three years. Because he'd wanted you for three years and said nothing and built a whole quiet world to keep you in and you'd never seen it, never once, and the not-seeing didn't feel like violation this morning – it felt like being wanted on a scale you had never in your life been wanted. Steve Rogers, who did everything deliberately, who had planned wars, who never in three years did a careless thing – had spent all of it, patiently, deliberately, on you.
The thought went through you low and hot and you had to press your face into his chest to hide what it did to you.
He woke to that. To your mouth against his sternum and your heart going too fast.
“Hey,” he murmured, rough with sleep, his arm tightening. “You're up first. That's new.”
“Steve.” You didn't lift your head. You weren't sure your face could be trusted. “Can I ask you something?”
You felt him go still. Not tense, exactly – alert. The particular stillness of a man who has just registered a change in the weather.
“Yeah,” he said. Carefully.
You lifted your head then and looked at him. And you asked it plainly, watching his eyes, because you already half-knew and you wanted to see him not be able to lie to you.
“Last night. And the four days. And– all of it.” You held his gaze. “How long?”
He didn't pretend not to understand. That was the thing about him; he could shape the ground under you for three years, but he couldn't, when you looked at him straight, actually lie to your face. It was the one thing his whole careful arsenal had no answer for.
Something moved behind his eyes. A long, complicated something.
“...A while,” he said finally.
"Steve."
“A long while.” He looked away, then made himself look back, jaw tight. “Longer than I should've– longer than was fair to you, probably.”
“How long,” you said again. Softer.
And he gave you the truth, but only at the edges, the way a man confesses when confessing fully would cost more than he can pay. “Since about the second year,” he said. “Maybe before. I stopped keeping track on purpose, because keeping track felt like–” He stopped. His hand moved on your hip, absent, restless. “I told myself I didn't want anything. I got real good at telling myself that.”
“And the candle,” you said. “At your place. The other night.”
A pause.
“Yeah,” he admitted, low.
“And the film. The one about the couple who waited.”
His eyes came back to yours, and there was something almost helpless in them now, something caught. “...Yeah.”
“And you told me waiting made me smarter than everyone you knew. Right after my friend got engaged and I was – right when I was feeling it most.” You watched his face. “You knew exactly when to say that.”
He didn't answer. He didn't have to. The not-answering was its own answer, and he let it be, and he watched you take it in with an expression you'd never seen on him before – braced, unguarded, ready for the exact moment your face would change into something that would end this.
Because he thought you were going to be afraid.
He'd shown you the shape of it – half of it, the demandable half – and now he was waiting, the way a man waits under fire, for you to understand what had been done and pull away from him and be right to.
Your face did change.
Just not the way he'd braced for.
“Steve,” you breathed – and he heard it, the thing in your voice, and his eyes sharpened, because it wasn't fear at all, it was the opposite, it was low and warm and stunned and it went straight through him. “You wanted me for two years and never said anything.”
“I–”
“You planned all of it.” You'd come up onto your elbow now, over him, and there was color high in your face and your voice had dropped somewhere new. “Every part. The candle. The film. Last night. You've been – God, you've been steering me, this whole time, for years, and I never–”
“Hey.” He caught your face in his hand, alarmed now, his careful control scrambling back into place, mistaking your voice for the beginning of hurt. “Hey, listen to me, I never– I'd never make you do anything you didn't– you always could've said no, every single time, I'd have stopped, I swear to God I'd have–”
“I know,” you said.
And then you told him the truth, the one that undid him more thoroughly than any of his own confessions, the one that turned the whole morning over on its head.
“That's not– Steve. I'm not upset.”
He went still.
“I should be.” You said it wonderingly, half to yourself, watching your own reaction like it surprised you too. “I know I should be. Some part of me is standing way back there being very sensible about it.” Your hand flattened on his chest, over the hard fast slam of his heart. “But the rest of me just found out that the man I was in love with for three years spent two years quietly rearranging his entire life around keeping me, and never asked me for one single thing, and–”
Your voice caught.
“–and it doesn't scare me,” you said. “It does the opposite. It does completely the opposite.”
You watched it land in him. You watched him understand.
You watched Steve Rogers realize that the thing he'd been most afraid of – that you'd see the whole careful machine of his wanting and be repelled by it – was not going to happen. That you'd seen it, or enough of it, and that it hadn't cooled you at all. That it had lit you up.
His breath went ragged. His hand slid from your jaw into your hair.
“Say that again,” he said – the same words as last night, the same helpless plea, except now there was something dangerous waking under the wonder in his voice, something that had spent three years leashed and had just been told it never needed the leash at all.
“It doesn't scare me,” you whispered, leaning into him, your mouth almost on his. “Knowing you did all that. Knowing how long. Knowing you'd– Steve, knowing you're not going to stop–” You felt the shiver go through you at your own words. “It should. And it doesn't. It just makes me–”
He kissed you before you could finish. Hard, this time. No careful patience in it now, no ground being shaped, no strategy – just a man who had been handed permission for the one thing he'd never let himself have, which was to want you out loud, in daylight, without dressing it as kindness.
“You don't know what you're saying,” he murmured against your mouth, and it was half a warning and half a prayer, his hands already moving, already sure. “Sweetheart. You don't– if I stop pretending it was ever about being good–”
“Then stop pretending,” you said.
And felt the last of the careful, decent, three-years-holding-still Steve Rogers come apart in your hands – not into cruelty, never that, but into something honest and hungry and finally, completely unhidden – and understood, with a thrill that curled all the way down your spine, that you had just told the most patient man alive that he never had to be patient with you again.
Outside, the rain had stopped.
Somewhere on the floor, a small painted duck lay on its side, watching the ceiling, entirely redundant now.
summary: a bad shift doesn't allow you the right to give jack attitude. someone has to teach you a lesson.
tags/desc: 18+ MDNI, afab!reader, fem!reader, R2!reader, minor medical inaccuracies but who gaf, rude!reader as a plot device, mom and dad are fighting, established relationship, implied age gap, maybe mean!jack, brat taming/angry sex (it lowkey got away from me LOL), unprotected piv (no hat no cat!!), hair pulling, fingering, dry humping, spanking, name calling/pet names (baby, sweetheart, brat, etc), slightly proofread
wordcount: 5.8k
part 2 - coming soon
a/n: finally posting a regular jack one shot its been MONTHS HELLO!! this one lowkey made me blush and run laps around my room and also my first time at writing full on brat taming LMK IF ITS BUNS!!!!! 💚 requests are open—!! reblogs are a writers best friend
“Donnie, what the fuck is this?”
“Toxicology test.”
“Yeah, without any heavy metals tested…”
“Yep… your student must have miswrote the order and it got tested wrong. You have to write another.” Donnie pursed his lips and handed you a new, fresh lab order sheet. Already knowing of the massive fuse you were bound to blow at any second.
Fucking med students, slipped under your breath as a war path led you to a frazzled med student. The crease between your eyebrows grew deeper and the heat in your neck rose to your cheeks. Nails digging into the skin of your palms as your only form of decompression to keep you from screaming profanities in their direction. Something about the lab today caused a massive delay, so you were already waiting two hours for a simple heavy metals test.
“You.” Tone seething as you grab the thin fabric of black scrubs. A rough tug, yanking a startled med student from the counter of the hub.
Not giving them a moment to process what is happening, a soft jab of your finger into their chest. As if your touch has enough power to make them cave in on themselves. The twitch in your eye is enough to tell them they are in deep. It’s either all that frustration pent up inside of you, or the less than optimal four hours of sleep that you were running on.
“What did you do with the order for Rebecca Washington’s lab?”
They stutter, you cut them off before they can explain themselves further.
“Because all I have in my hand is a toxicology test— Last time I checked, we did not test for blood alcohol and opioids in a god damn heavy metals test.” Volume rising louder than acceptable and venom dripped from your lips as you waved the paper in their face. It was long gone from neat, crinkled in your grip. Giving it one last shove into their chest, before stepping away.
“Redo it or stay out of my face for the rest of your fucking med school career.” Your eyes finish your thoughts with a sneer, turning yourself away. “And fix your fucking handwritting, my four year old niece has better hand writing than you.” You had a particularly heavy sailor mouth today.
The air is thick as you march away, turning your breathing ragged. Your trail could have left burn marks on the slippery linoleum. A few nurses and CNAs eye each other at the fresh eruption that occurred in front of them. By the next shift, everyone is sure to know how you blew up at a med student.
You thought getting the chance to teach med students would be fun, fulfilling even. You loved being taught and having a mentor. You anticipated it being a bit stressful, but this— it was a different kind of stressful. No one warns you of the strain that forms in the back of your head when you have to focus on patients and babysit a small group of 26 year olds for twelve hours. The day had been piling up on you. Mistakes from med students, entitled patients, losing a patient, lack of a full meal. You were at your wits end. The only way you were able to properly emote your frustrations was onto other people.
Your charged stomps slowed down as you leaned against the counter of the nurses station. Catching your exhausted body on the edge, closing your eyes and taking a deep breath. Two more hours, and then you can go home, is your mantra of choice to get through the rest shift.
“Maybe wanna lighten up on the interns? Before you scare them away into a different department. Or profession.” Robby’s sudden interjection pulled you back into reality, he leaned against the counter with you. Arms hugged around his chest and glasses hanging low on his nose bridge. A pitiful smile curled onto his face. He was just as tired as you were, but in comparison, you are winning the crash out olympics today.
“Want to tell me what happened? Because I’m not quite sure what constitutes cursing out someone in front of their colleagues.” He asked, tilting his head to try and meet your gaze.
A deep huff left your chest, straightening your posture for your attending. Fingers running through your hair and giving your scalp a brief massage to ease the headache. His eyes had that look— one that said: chill the fuck out. Or, that’s the only way your mind could interpret it. Your brain is stuck in fight or flight mode; everything feels like a constant jab at your competence. The tight thread holding you together can’t take an infamous Doctor Michael Robinvitch lecture.
“They fucked up the order! I mean it’s med school 101 to know how to properly write a lab order and send it away.”
“True, but it’s their first week. Things happen. That’s the ups and downs of teaching. Can’t teach well if you’re always blowing up over the small things. It’s important to remember—”
“Oh blow me Robinavitch.” Turning away from him with a scoff. He really was one to talk; you could have sworn of the countless times he had to give you a stern talking to.
Never in your time working at PTMC have you ever had that kind of bite. Especially with Robby, on a normal day you were obedient under his words. Robby turned to look at Dana, who shook her head and never broke her focus on the ipad in her hands.
“Well she’s got quite the potty mouth today.”
Robby sighed, watching as you walked into another trauma room. Picking up your next case, terrorizing your next med student. His hand reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. Swiping through the screen to bring up Jack’s messages.
Robby: Your girlfriend is on a rampage today.
Jack: What the fuck? What happened?
Robby: Well, she told me to blow her after she verbally abused a med student.
Robby: And you know I like to be wined and dined before going to the bedroom.
Jack: Jesus. I’m picking her up, I’ll be there tonight.
The last hours had flown through the emergency department. Night shift staff steadily trickled in to relieve the day shift of their duties. It is a rare night off for Jack. He posted himself up at the nurses station, chatting up with Lena and Dana as he waited for you to emerge from the locker room. Jack kept his eye on the locker room door, just so he can be the first to see for himself how to day put you through the ringer.
“You’re kidding?” He asked, keeping his voice low to avoid the chance of you walking into their conversation.
“Mhm— told them to fix their hand writing and everything. I caught the poor kid writing their ABCs in the breakroom.” Dana recanted the events of the day to Jack with a small, amused smirk on her lips.
“That’s not really like her…” Jack pressed his lips in a straight line, already thinking of the lecture he was to throw at you about respect. He tries not to be that guy in your relationship, knowing you want a partner not a father. But at a time like this, it gets away from him and he feels the need to remind you of the importance of respect and humility within the profession.
“Go easy on her, it was a rough day for her.” Dana’s eyes and eyebrows jutted to point in the opposing direction behind Jack.
He’s quick to turn around and face you, crossing meaty arms over his chest and putting on a happy smile for you. He’s not surprised you were not returning his smile. The corner of your lips drooping down and your eyes had lost most of their glimmer. Trudging to Jack with your backpack hung over your shoulder lazily, he could see how tense you were.
“Hey baby, how was your—”
First stopping at Jack, shoving the bag into his arms, and beelining for the ambulance bay doors. Dismissing his presence as if he was any other person on the side of the street. Blazing a path of wrath. His eyebrows knit together, surprised you had to gall to ignore him like that. Poor Jack, he is no exception to your attitude today.
“Good luck with that.”
The beginning of the car ride is quiet, only the hum of the engine and click of the blinker filling the void of silence. Jack wanted to make an attempt to talk to you again. Ask what he can do to make it better, offer an olive branch to spare him from your claws. But he knew how you were, you need to decompress. He let the silence stay, opting for silent forms of his affection by opening the door for you and taking your bag. As he let the door close behind him, you already disappeared into your apartment. Left alone in the living room, dimly lit by the floor lamp. Slipping his boots off, discarded neatly by the door compared to your sneakers, as if you had thrown them away when you walked in. Jack thought this was how the rest of the night would go, even though you knew he wasn’t keen on ending the day with silence or bitterness. He was very clear in every argument you had, neither of you is going to bed without talking it out.
Jack placed your bag on the bench by the door, sitting to massage the area around his prosthesis. You emerged from the lit bedroom, scrubs removed and changed into your normal house clothes. One of Jack’s old shirts and cotton shorts. He figured now is better than never to talk about how you’ve been acting all day. Pulling himself up, he moved to the kitchen counter, the one that overlooked the sink. He leaned onto it, watching as you floated around the kitchen. You were trying to avoid as little eye contact as possible, but he is searching intently for your eyes. He took a deep breath to talk first, in hopes your mind was clear enough to have a proper conversation.
“So, I heard you had a little run in with a med student. And Robby.”
You stop what you’re doing, grabbing on to the edge of the counter. You lull your head back and take a long, irritated breath.
“Why? Did your boyfriend tattle on me?” You quip.
Obviously, you didn’t clear your head enough, or at all. His head hung low, developing a headache. Taking a long, deep breath to engage with your temper.
“No— he didn’t tattle,” yes he did. “He expressed… some concern about your performance today.”
Shaking your head, refusing to answer as you fill up a glass of water. The little angel in your head agreed, you were rude to that med student. You’re sure you made the same mistake before. And you knew you didn’t have enough tenure in the ED to be given a pass of the ‘bitchy’ teacher, you were only an R2. But this isn’t about you, it’s about how everything around you chose today as the day to be inconvenient. Is it too much to ask for one day of the year to go in your favor? It’s the principle, although you were most likely using that justification loosely.
“You can’t talk to an attending like that. If it was anyone else, you could have gotten written up. HR meetings aren’t all that fun you know?” Jack ducked his head to try and meet your eyes. Keeping your stare down at the very interesting cup of water.
“Boohoo, it’s not like I cursed him out.”
“You told him to blow you.”
“Exactly. Not a swear word said.”
Before Jack could try to get another word in, you turn yourself away and shuffle into the bedroom. Closing the door behind you with a louder thud than necessary. He puffed, frustrated that you weren’t giving him the time to actually talk things out with you. It’s not to say he’s caught off guard by your behavior. You’ve had your off days, you weren’t always sunshine and rainbows. And you especially aren’t so mouthy with him. Something about today was getting on his nerves quicker than he should let it. He wasn’t the one that messed up your lab order or tried to lecture you during a heavy shift, so why can’t you spare him?
Jack follows you into the bedroom, closing the door behind him. It also let out a loud thud, his irritation coming out in little pieces. That strain formed in his head, handling the door with unnecessary power, grinding his teeth with his clenched jaw. Jack did not want the first interaction of the day with you to be brewing into an argument.
“Honey, you can’t walk away from me when I’m trying to have a conversation with you.”
“Really? Because I did right now.” Your voice comes out steady, that little hint of bitterness hot on your tongue. It becomes a stand off in the middle of the bedroom. Hands on your hips and narrowing your eyes at him as he steps a little bit closer to you. “And from what I remember, you used to be just as bad too, so I don’t know why you’re coming at me on such a high horse!”
Jack tensed his jaw, any more he was going to need to go to the dentist for teeth grinding. That stung a little bit, maybe a lot. Jack isn’t proud of how he used to be, pre-therapy and post-the loss of his wife. But he grew from that, and you saw how that growth turned him into the man he is today. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his lips thin, holding back from letting your words get to him.
“I’m not lecturing you. You have to understand— yelling at med students and your attending. That’s not something we do.”
“Not what we do? Last time I checked Jack, you aren't my attending! I don’t have to listen to this or you.”
“It doesn’t matter if I’m your attending or not, it’s my obligation as an attending to help you learn that throwing a tantrum—” His voice gets rougher, less collected than he typically is. Jack attempts to put a caring hand on your shoulder, but you swat his hand away.
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child Jack!”
“I have to because you’re acting like one! But what else should I expect from my immature girlfriend, hm?”
You took the highest offense being called immature, especially when Jack knew that was a sore spot in your relationship, being immature compared to him. The anger bubbles over, the heat of the work day follows you into your own home, unwelcomed. Without thinking, you raise a hand to the air. Quickly, just want to give him a taste of how his words make you feel. Before it can even come close to his face, Jack’s hand catches your wrist and puts it into a tight hold. The pads of his fingertips press down deep enough to feel your racing heartbeat. He yanks you towards him, chest on chest, closing the gap that has existed between you for hours.
As you try to get the next words out from your lips, a rough hand catches the back of your head and pulls you in for a deep, sloppy kiss. Teeth hitting and drool starting to leak from the corner of your lips as Jack carries out an attack on your lips. Tongue forcing your lips apart and invading the wet cavern. It erupts a moan from your throat that you wanted to keep secret. Jack knew exactly how to render you speechless. The hand on the back of your neck tangles into your hair, keeping a tight grip. Your hand that started out balled into a fist relaxes and rests on his chest, slowly running up to hook around his neck. When he pulls away, panting for air, his gaze is heavy on you. It turned dark and vicious. Those barbed-wire lined walls you had up all day were crashing down around you. And Jack had a sledgehammer.
“Jack…” Melting into putty in his arms as you whimper as he pulls away.
“What happened? A little kiss made you all soft?” He flips you around his hold, pinning the held wrist behind your back. He guided you to the bed, shoving you to bend over the soft mattress. That rough grip in your hair pushes the side of your face into the mattress, only able to see just over your shoulder.
You whine when he presses his crotch into your cotton covered ass. The tent in his pants prodding at the curve of your ass and rutting up. You are sure Jack could feel that drip in your panties forming a little wet spot. He continues to rub his bulge up and down your ass, catching it occasionally on your increasingly wet mound. Taking his hand away from your hair and moving it next to your head, keeping himself up as he leans over you.
“Who do you think you are… trying to slap me— fuck. After all I do for you…” His hot breath floods the back of your neck, panting like a dog. You want to respond, tell him he’s wrong, but you choke on moans.
You try to move your hips up, feel more of him on your aching cunt. But his hips and hold on your wrist keeps you still. When he pulls himself away, the grip on your wrist is free, feeling the ache slowly blur into your body. You want to move, whip yourself around and give him a piece of mind for being so forward with you. But the raw, agitated energy emanating from Jack was enough to keep you down, growing compliant. Jack grabs the hem of your shorts, tugging them down your legs. A large hand kneads the skin, pinching and watching the heat manifest as color from his touch. Humming, you lean yourself into his touch. A finger loops around the fabric of your panties that bars him from seeing your leaking pussy. Coating his knuckle as he pulls the fabric down and away from you. You close your eyes in hopes of getting a blissful night to alleviate the stress of the day. One sudden strike at your ass brings you back down from the clouds. Crying out Jack’s name as he rings another slap on to burning skin.
“I pick you up from work, pay your rent, make you cum whenever you ask— ‘n you can’t even give me the decency of respect when I talk to you?” Another harsh, personal, spank to your abused flesh.
You bury your face into the sheets, muffling the painful gasps that mix with needy moans. Soaking up the little tears that prick the corner of your eyes. You twitch in response to his hands on your body, your nervous system preparing to feel swipes at your bare ass. He pauses, must be taking in the sight of your skin littered with the faint outline of his hand. The result of your moody spirit. You lift your head away from the bed, sniffling a little as you bite your lip to wish away the pain.
“Jack… please..” Ground your elbows into the bed and try to bring yourself up. You couldn’t bear to not be able to look him in the face. Even though you struggled to confidently make eye contact.
“Now you want to be nice? ‘S too late for that honey…” Jack clicks his tongue disapprovingly. One hand now holding your hip while two fingers swipe up the slick on the folds of your pussy. You gasp, relaxing your body back into the mattress.
He doesn’t wait for you to catch up with him, plugging his fingers into your cunt. Your walls immediately flutter around him, wanting to suck him in deeper. He holds off, wanting to go at his own pace. Only reaching to the second knuckle, and pumping thick fingers shallowly inside you. You hum with this pace, it was just enough to scratch that growing itch in your core.
“Look at you… all happy I’m playing with your pussy. Could have had this way earlier if you cooperated, brat.” His hand on your hip left to swat at your ass again. Eliciting a cry of his name with a moan as the pain mixed with the pleasure brewing inside you.
“There she is— my good girl. God, you’re so easy.” He loves the sounds you make for him. The words brewed inside your head, because you haven’t been good at all. You were being a pain all day to anyone within the vicinity. And it got you to this position, bent over the bed at Jack’s mercy.
His fingers slide deeper past your lips, the palm of his hand flush with your skin when he reaches as deep as he can. Shaking beneath him when his pace grows faster, the sinful sound of your wetness squishing on his fingers. It really is punishment, pay back, the way the tip of his fingers brush over that sensitive spot inside you. But he doesn’t bother to stay there, saying hello and quickly leaving. You groan, frustrated that he’s toying with you and not giving in to what you want. Not that you’re asking, more so expecting it. Pushing your hips back to deepen his pace, he quickly slips his fingers away from you. Shaking his head in disapproval.
“You just can’t be patient, can you?” You can hear his belt collide with the hard wood floor, and the sound of heavy fabric falling.
A tingle goes up your spine, like a spidey sense. Because you have been in this kind of position before; where he picks you up by the thighs and fucks into you while you hang over the edge of the bed. Your feet once flat on the floor, press up on to tippy toes, waiting for him to use his strength on you. A few seconds go by, and he hasn’t moved. Your eyebrows knit together, looking over your shoulder and seeing him standing behind you. Arms crossed, looking down at you with an expectant expression, his cock so casually stiff in the air.
“Jack, what are you waiting for?” you ask with a frown.
He leans over you, arms caging you in as the brace onto the bed. His lips dip close to you, giving you words for only you to hear.
“You’re going to come at me with an attitude— when I did nothing to you by the way— and expect me to do all the work?” humming into your ear, expecting one of your smart ass responses. He looks down to your glistening slit, he wants to dive in so bad and show you a good time. But there is a lesson to be taught here.
You stutter over yourself. You never had to ask Jack to do anything to you; he knew how to treat you and what you liked, what made you feel good. You felt silly having to plead to him to fuck you properly.
“You can reach baby, I’m not doing any of the work for you— since you think you know better than me.”
I never said that… is all you can mumble. Jack thought you would put up a fight, but so easily compliant in this state, he watches as you push yourself up by the toes more. Your slit that had been weeping from the lack of attention, glistened in the bedroom light. It brushes the tip of his cock ever so slightly, making you hiss at the small amount of friction. You struggle to even catch him between your folds, constantly bouncing on your toes. Jack bites through his smirk, enjoying the sight of you. Helpless and impatient, willing to do as much as it takes just to feel him inside of you. It’s pitiful, the comparison from earlier in the night to now. Defiant of Jack, ready to slap him when he threw it back at you. Now you’re a dripping, whimpering mess, so eager to feel the slightest touch of his cock against your pussy.
“I— I can’t do it Jack… I can’t reach…” You deflate into the bed, sad whining muffled in the sheets.
It is pathetic, you are a doctor for christ's sake. You should be demanding him in this instance to fuck you right now. But Jack loves to watch. The way your ass jiggles with the bounce of your toes, trying to rock back to try and catch his cock between your folds. He let this go on for what felt like 30 minutes (it was only 3 minutes). Jack let out a deep sigh, a once stern hand turned comforting on your hip. Brushing his thumb against the skin and cooing to you. He moves his hips forward just a little pit, the tiniest tough of his tip against your cunt. It was nothing but everything at the same time. It sent that buzz of anticipation up and down your spine. As you start to rock yourself again, both of Jack’s hands press down your hips pressing you into the bed again. He is still in control here, he’ll go in when he’s ready. In a tortuous pace, his cock slips in between the folds. He holds in a deep groan from finally feeling your warmth enveloped around his cock. You cry out a soft whimper from the slow stretch of your pussy. Even with how slow Jack was going, his girth is like retribution. A brutal size you thought you have gotten used to by now. He reaches the halfway point and stops, prompting another frustrated groan from you. Clearly have not learned about the stakes of your predicament yet.
“How bad do you want it, sweetheart?” He asks. You mumble into the mattress.
He pulls out just a little bit. “Ah-ah, I said— How bad do you want it?”
Lifting your head away from the sheets, your head slumps over. Jack can see you weren’t in the mood to be good still. But he doesn’t have to act anymore, he knows the more you wait, the more time spent not getting pounded.
“I want it really bad, Jack...” you whine.
“Yeah? What do you have to say then?”
“God, not this now, Jack. Just fucking—” cut off by that same swat on your ass. It shuts you right up.
“Wanna try that one more time?” you nod. “What do you have to say to me?” from the tone of his voice, you can tell Jack does not want to ask again.
Shamefully keeping your eyes down, “I’m sorry that I tried to slap you and argue with you, Jack. I won’t do it again…”
Jack hums but doesn’t answer. Making a show of him considering your apology. He should really make you work for it; force you on to your knees and show how sorry you are with his mouth. But he can’t deny, Jack is growing just as impatient as you were. This night should have ended with sex without all the fighting and huffing. His hand glides down to your thigh, brushing the skin.
“You gonna apologize to Robby and the med students too?” giving you a warning squeeze. If you answer correctly, everyone will be happy.
Nodding your head, you peak over your shoulder. Eyes damp from tears and hopeful to get the proper kind of release. It is enough to make Jack crumble for you all over again. At last, Jack hums with approval. A happy tap on your skin as he scoops his hands under your thigh and hoists your legs up. He grips right under your hips for the best leverage. Jack is really testing how much strength and stamina he has left at this age. You yelp as the sudden pull moves your hips up, meeting Jack at a better, and deeper, angle. Pushing himself so deep it punches up into that sensitive spot. He finally gives in to that satisfying rock of his hips, letting out a deep groan.This is all both of you wanted. Impaling you with such a force you felt like Jack was going to split you in half. Sweet moans spur him on more, releasing all of the night's irritation on to your helpless cunt.
Jack revels in the feeling of your velvety walls dragging along the veins of his cock. Squeezing down and taking the shape of his girth, like you were made to be filled by him. The whole predicament— arguing, him mandling you, and fucking you with such punishing force, it made your pussy drool and tighten for him. He can tell exactly what you’re feeling just by the way your walls clench around him.
“Such a good girl, you love getting your pussy filled by my cock, huh?” He says through gritted teeth and low groans.
You can’t give a coherent response, too caught up in the motions all you can do is offer him slutty moans. The tips of his fingers dig into your plush skin, an iron grip dragging your body like a toy on his cock. Jack musters enough strength to lift every so slightly. The new angle makes all the difference as the top of his cock bullies up on your soft spot. The impact forces you to see fireworks in your hazy eyes.
“Shit— Jack!” Your body lurches forward from the force of his hips.
“Fuuck, sweetheart. Feel so good around me, need you to cum f’me.” Jack occasionally had to adjust his grip on your hips, trying so hard to not get lost in the pleasure that he drops your legs on accident. “I know you’re close— rub that pretty little clit for me.”
Your hand snakes under your body, delicate fingers shakily running small, fast circles are the bud. Eyes pressed shut and moans pouring from your lips. That knot deep down came rushing to the surface with each thrust of his hips. Your release is slowly coaxed from deep within you, your thighs and knees pressing against Jack’s, locking him in place. It feels like a wave rushes over your body, your orgasm crashing through you in ripples. Body shaking while your hands grip on to wrinkled bedsheets.
“Ooooh god, Jack!”
“That’s it baby, make a mess on me.”
Jack’s hands slowly let go of your hips and help in letting your feet meet the floor. As soon as you limp in bliss, he lets his pace become self-indulgent. Cock pistoning in and out of your pussy while your walls still clench around him in post-orgasm glory. Pushing himself deep, right to the hilt, he lets his seed slip inside you. Flooding your silky walls with hot, white cum. It leaves a satisfying warmth with you. Jack moans and crones through his release, a thrust or two to push all of his load deep within you. He tries not to fall on top of you when the fog clears from his head. A little drips of cum leaking from you as he pulls out, half-limp cock slick with a mixture of your desire and his cum.
“Jesus, Jack.”
“I should be saying that to you. All that huffing, puffing, and yelling. If you wanted it so badly baby all you had to do is ask.” He teased, a lazy smirk on his lips.
Crawling up the bed a bit, you manage to turn yourself over for the first time supporting your weight on your elbows. Panting heavily as you take in the sight of a sweaty, fucked out Jack. It is an insatiable sight; little beads of sweat dripping from his neck to his chest, the tuft of hair above his cock damp with body fluids. Jack eyes the scheming smirk on your face. Lifting your foot to poke at his stomach.
“I don’t know if I learned my lesson yet. You weren’t the most… convincing.” Pursing your lips and trailing your eyes from his firm stomach, all the way up to his lingering eyes.
“Yeah? I guess I have some more gas in the tank to teach you, brat.”
Jack grabs your ankle and yanks your body back towards him, a high and excited squeal coming from you.
“Hi.”
The med students whips around, eyes widened and already shaking. A trauma response from the incident a couple of days ago. You had a basket in your hand, filled with muffins, fruit, and a random energy drink you picked up from the story. Holding it out from them, you try to come off with a gracious expression rather than guilt.
“I’m sorry for how I spoke— treated— you earlier this week. I was out of line and you’re still getting the hang of things around here. I was stressed and I should not have taken it out on you. ‘Sorry for yelling at you’ basket?” Giving them a crooked smile and handing the basket to them.
It follows with a short conversation, exchanging necessary apologies and coming to an agreement it was an off day for everyone that day. You felt embarrassed having to apologize for behavior that could have been completely avoidable if you remembered what emotional regulation skills are. In the end, you are glad no bridges were burned. An ease settled over your body as the med student walked away with a softer smiler than before.
“And where’s my basket?” Robby pipped in.
“Jack said you would rather have an eight pack over a basket. And I think I would be in more trouble if I brought beer into the workplace.”
Robby didn’t care to cover up the deep huff of laughter. Bringing a pat to your shoulder as he shook his head.
“I need to know what Jack did to get you to come to your senses. Could use it on you if you ever feel like shooting at me again.” Robby said contently.
You scrunch your face, “No you don’t, Robby.”
“Why not?” he asks, les confused more intrigued.
“You’d have to ask Jack for permission. I know you guys are close, but I don’t know if you’re close enough to share.”
You turn on your heels and walk away quickly, trying to stifle the little giggle inside your throat. Robby runs his hand over his mouth and beard, slowly catching up with what you were putting down. He scrunches his own face, shaking his head to clear away the dirty thoughts.
⭐︎ warnings: pre-brand new day canon compliant, fluff, huge idiots in love, hurt/comfort, typical depictions of violence (fighting, blood, guns, injury), near death experience, angst, light banter, suggestive themes, abandonment issues, touch-starvation
⭐︎ word count: 9.6k
⭐︎ a/n: there are no major spoilers for bnd in this fic !! i've only mentioned/alluded to things that were already shown in the trailers, so you do not need to watch the movie to understand.
synopsis:
You have been Spiderman’s communicator—his eyes for crime and the voice on the other end of a staticky little radio that took him less than an hour to build. He doesn’t know your name, or what you look like. And you don’t know a single thing about him. Peter tells himself it’s better this way, that keeping you at arm’s length is the only way he can keep you safe. But that promise slowly frays the longer he speaks to you.
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“Alright, Spiderman. There’s a bank robbery going on at 30th Avenue. Suspect is—uh, hello? Is this thing on?”
Peter laughs, already swinging through the tall buildings of New York City, zipping and flying through them faster than you can even say ‘Spiderman.’ While one arm is busy slinging out webs from building to building, his other arm holds onto a thick communications radio that looks like an amateur concoction of a walkie-talkie accompanied with old thick wires he found in a junkyard.
“Yep, I hear you loud and clear,” Peter says from his end. “I’m already a few blocks away. What does the suspect look like—”
“Spiderman? Hellooo?” Your voice cuts him off in a burst of static that makes his ears ring. “Ugh—is this radio even working? Are you still there?”
He needs to make a mental note to figure out a way for your voice to come through clearer—and preferably not through a brick of what feels like a tenth-century sad excuse for a cellphone that he has to clutch every time he wants to talk to you.
“I’m here!” Peter shouts through the mic, swinging around a corner.
“Ah! There you are!” you say, sounding like you’re smiling, if only Peter could picture what you looked like. “Missed your voice for a second.”
Peter’s face flushes under his mask.
“Detecting a sudden increase in body heat—specifically around the facial region—and a spike in heart rate despite no intense physical activity being performed—”
“Shut up, Evie,” Peter mumbles, hoping you didn’t hear him from the other end of the line.
He hadn’t gotten around to fixing the background noise integration yet, so the shitty microphone attached to the radio picks up almost everything. He hears you laugh on the other end, and he has to force down the rapid thumping of his heart before Evie calls him out on it again.
“Are you blushing, Spiderman?”
“What—no!” Peter immediately interjects, landing on top of a tall building on 30th Avenue. His eyes scan the windows of the bank directly across the street. “Just tell me what the suspect looks like, alright?”
You chuckle again. “Okay, the suspect is tall, wearing dark clothing, and probably handsome—if it weren’t for the ski mask covering his face.”
Peter rolls his eyes underneath his goggles.
“Now’s not the time to play around,” he says, already swinging through the entrance as innocent bystanders and employees run out in a panic.
He swings above the crowd in a perfectly prone position mid-air until he lands on his feet in the center of the bank. He doesn’t need your comms in here—he can handle whatever gets thrown at him at this point. His ears tingle with a warning that tells him the enemy is to his left. He turns his head to that direction, and…
“Spiderman!” A tall man in dark clothing and a ski mask holds up a rifle, pointing it directly at Peter. “You’re dead, kid!”
“Oh, jeez,” Peter says, slowly raising his hands in surrender.
“Oh, and I forgot to mention,” your voice statics through. “He’s heavily armed.”
“Yeah, good comms,” Peter scoffs sarcastically.
“Who the hell are you talking to?” the man shouts, pointing at the radio in Peter's hand. “Is that a bomb? Drop it!”
Peter furrows his brows, glancing at the object in his hand. A bomb? Seriously? The radio really looks that bad?
The man’s grip on the gun tightens, holding it in a way that lets Peter know he has clearly never held a gun before in his life. The panic among the people remaining in the building surges at the sight of the weapon, everyone shoving past each other toward the entrance.
“Come on, man. Don’t shoot—there are innocent people in here!” he tries to interject.
“Innocent dead people soon, if you don’t put that weapon away!” the man barks back.
“The police are on their way,” you explain, serious this time, through the radio. “Take care of that gun now, or he’ll start shooting like a madman once he sees the sirens. You have less than two minutes.”
“Okay,” Peter says. “Time me.”
“Starting now?”
“Starting now,” he confirms before switching off the radio’s microphone input.
The man takes the loud clicking sound as a threat, his finger hovering over the trigger with every intention to shoot—but Peter moves faster.
Extending his left hand, a thick layer of web covers the muzzle, trapping any potential bullet in the barrel. The poor man doesn’t even have time to react before Peter webs the gun, yanked it out of his hands, and tosses it aside. Just as the man turns to make a run for it, Peter pins his ankles together with a thick strip of webbing, sending him face first onto the floor before securing his wrists behind his back with another band of webs.
From where he still stands in the center of the room, Peter unclicks the microphone. “You got it, Static?”
He can practically feel you rolling your eyes at the stupid nickname. “That was fifteen seconds. Good job,” you applaud. “And are you seriously still sticking with Static? I hate that nickname.”
Peter chuckles, scanning the area for any signs of injuries, but finds none. The police finally arrive, pulling up with sirens blaring as they assess the crowd and begin scouting the area with weapons drawn. Seeing the suspect already bound by webs on the floor, they immediately move in with handcuffs.
Knowing the police will take it from here, Peter zips out of the building as if the entire fight—if you would even call it that—was just a quick pit stop.
“Well, that’s just what I’m gonna have to keep calling you, because your voice always comes through staticky,” he says, the wind picking up through the microphone and making it harder for you to hear him. “Unless… you wanna give me your actual name. Then maybe I can call you that instead.”
You pause at the other end of the radio, the silence between you filled only by the harsh wind and the snap of spiderwebs on his end.
As Peter swings his way back to his apartment, his heart pounds wildly in his chest with anticipation.
This isn’t the first time he’s teased you to get you to give up your name, and you’ve asked for his name more times than he can count on his fingers.
“Very funny,” you muse from the other end, your voice drawing out with a teasing tilt. “I could say the same thing to you.”
Peter smiles, landing on his apartment rooftop with a huff. “I don’t know—I think I like the way Spiderman rolls off your tongue.”
For the very first time since you two found each other through a stroke of pure luck—when Peter spent a night building a radio to hijack police comms and accidentally connected to you, a woman doing the exact same thing—you find yourself completely at a loss for words.
He doesn’t even know where the sudden boost of confidence came from to blurt out a flirtatious comment like that. Maybe it’s the suit, or maybe it’s that flutter of excitement he gets every single time he talks to you.
But that confidence slowly teeters away the longer you stay quiet. He grimaces, feeling like he overshot his mark big time.
Finally, he hears a slow draw of breath from the other end.
“That’s a shame,” you tease. “I would’ve loved to hear the sound of my name in your voice.”
Peter sucks in a sharp breath, his body tensing as your words travel down his spine and straight to his heart. It was the way you said it—that sultry little rasp that even the static couldn’t mask. An awkward silence takes over the both of you, and for once, Peter is grateful for how poorly he configured this radio, since he can use it as an excuse for a faulty mic.
“Dramatic increase in heart rate detected. Body heat has increased an additional two degrees, and your suit—specifically around the groin region—appears to be tighter. I am also detecting a heightened state of arousal—”
“Evie!” Peter barks suddenly. He hears your laugh come through the other end, and the sound definitely doesn’t help his situation at all.
“Got you to blush twice today.” You taunt. “I think that’s a record, Spidey.”
“I wasn’t blushing,” Peter lies. “Anyway—enough of that. Are you seeing any other criminal activity in the area?”
You hum, and he hears a faint clicking noise on your end. “Nothing,” you say. “But what’s the rush? You’re given the opportunity to relax. You should take it, considering how hard you’ve been pushing yourself.”
Peter hops onto the ledge of his building and starts idly pacing back and forth, smiling under his mask as he holds the radio close to his ear. “Aw, you don’t have to worry about me. I have Evie for that.”
You blow a raspberry, and Peter’s smile widens.
“Yeah—well, Evie is an artificial intelligence. She can only care so much. Plus, she can’t make as many good jokes as I can.”
Peter’s tongue pokes the inside of his cheek as he kicks a tiny stray pebble off the ledge, watching it fall ten stories to the ground. “Are you getting jealous of my assistant now?”
A garbled noise leaves your lips, and he chuckles as you stammer over your own words.
“God—you’re so full of yourself, aren't you?” you huff. “I’m your partner—so it’s only natural for me to look out for you.”
“We’re partners?”
“Haven’t we been this entire time?”
Peter pauses, glancing up at the sky, where the orange sun is starting to set behind several towers of buildings.
Partners. He hasn’t had anyone he could call a partner since everything happened—since he made the whole world forget who he was. He hasn’t had a real, caring partner since… them. Ned and MJ.
And now, after all that time spent in solitude, he’s finally found someone to call his partner again. Someone he’s never even seen, whose name he doesn’t even know. All he knows about you is that you’re smart—smart enough to build a radio and link up to his frequency—and that you live in New York. He could’ve passed you on his way to buy groceries, or seen you on the subway. Hell, you might even live in his building. Maybe you’re even that girl he accidentally swapped laundry with the other night.
“Spiderman? You still there?” you ask, snapping him out of his daze.
Despite your usual spunky attitude, in that moment, you sound so… small. Like you don’t want to hang up, even if there aren’t any crimes to report.
“I’m here,” he breathes, his voice coming out softer than he expected. “I’m not going anywhere.”
You smile at that. He can hear it. “Okay. Good.”
The microphone picks up shuffling noises on your end—judging by the sound, he pictures you rolling over in bed and getting comfortable.
“How about we play a game?” you ask before the radio falls into silence again.
Peter raises a brow under his mask. “A game?”
“Yeah—every time you complete a successful mission, we trade a fun fact about each other.”
He hums, taking a seat on the ledge and letting his feet dangle over the edge. “Okay, sure. And since I just finished one—does that mean the game starts now?”
You chuckle softly at his enthusiasm to play along. “Sure. Want to go first?”
Peter cranes his neck back to look at the sky. Although neither of you has ever brought it up, he has a feeling you’re both on the exact same page when it comes to secrecy. Neither of you wants to give away too much and blow your identity, but you share just enough to keep things interesting.
And by letting him go first, it feels like you’re giving him the chance to set the tone.
“Hm. Let me think.” He rubs his chin through his mask. “Okay—I’m ready. My favorite coffee is a hot Americano.”
You snort. “The first fun fact you want to share is your coffee order?”
“Hey—coffee can be fun!” Peter interjects. “Now tell me yours.”
A little laugh escapes you, and he can hear you shaking your head. “Fine. I get an extra-hot almond milk latte, with one pump of sugar-free vanilla, one pump of regular hazelnut, and two scoops of vanilla bean powder.”
The white lenses of Peter’s goggles widen, and he lets out a brief, disbelieving laugh. “Oh—so you’re pulling my leg because I started us off with a lame fun fact? Is that it?”
“What?” You giggle along. “I’m not! That’s my actual order—especially on chilly days. You should try it sometime.”
Peter imagines it: a girl—a pretty one, judging by your voice and personality—ordering that ridiculous concoction at a coffee shop while the barista rolls their eyes at how long it takes to recite. For some reason, the visual warms his chest.
“Sure. And I’d tell you to try a hot Americano—but based on the order you just gave me, I don’t think you’d like it very much,” he jokes.
You chuckle. “No, probably not.”
Silence fills the space again, and Peter kicks his legs over the edge of the ledge, trying to think of something to say before he loses you.
He clears his throat. “So, uh—”
“Can I ask you something?”
You both talk over each other, and his face warms with embarrassment. “Sorry. Go ahead.”
“Okay,” you continue. You let out a shaky breath, and he instinctively braces himself for whatever you’re about to ask. “I’ve noticed that your receiver is always on. Do you forget to turn it off?”
Peter pauses, confused by the question. “No. It’s on twenty-four seven—just in case something happens, you know?”
You hum softly. “I get that. But I guess what I’m trying to ask is… don’t you have other things in your life to worry about, instead of fighting crime behind a mask?”
Peter stays quiet for a moment.
In truth, there’s a bigger reason he keeps the radio on besides his duties as Spiderman. He could easily listen in on reported crimes just fine without your help, but he keeps it on twenty-four seven in the hopes of hearing your voice ring through—just in case you might… need him.
There have been several nights since meeting you where he tosses and turns in bed, reaching for the radio to see if your receiver is on. It usually isn’t during consistent parts of the day—meaning you’re either at work or in class. It’s usually off at night, but sometimes around three in the morning, he’ll see your receiver light up and you’ll call in, your voice completely wide awake, proving you can be a real night owl.
Ever since meeting you, it feels like he finally has a friend to talk to. The worst part of it all is that he doesn’t even know your name. And he can never meet you, no matter how badly he wants to.
Peter finally found someone he cares about—and he isn’t going to risk losing you.
“I… I guess I do,” Peter says, trying his best to tread carefully. “I always keep an earpiece in, just in case something happens. You can never be too careful.”
You hum again, and Peter knows that answer wasn’t enough to buy it.
“And I guess I also keep it on… just in case you ever want to talk.”
Shit, Peter curses to himself. If his half-assed answer just now wasn’t enough to make you switch off the line, this one definitely takes the cake. You’re quiet on the other end, and each passing second makes him want to do you both a favor and turn it off himself.
“In that case,” you speak softly, “I’ll keep my receiver on in case you want to talk to me.”
His heart stutters in his chest, feeling as though all the air has been sucked straight out of his lungs.
Peter hasn’t felt this way since high school. He’s grinning ear to ear—a smile so wide it hurts the muscles in his cheeks. He lets out a chuckle, a raspy, disbelieving sound at the realization that there’s a chance you might feel the exact same way about him.
“Don’t say that,” he says before he can stop himself, trying to inject some humor to cover up his flustered state. “You’re gonna get annoyed with me.”
“Who’s to say I’m not already?” you joke back.
And for the first time in a long time, Peter feels like the happiest man on Earth.
He looks up at the sky, watching birds fly across the orange hues as he kicks his feet like a high schooler who just scored a date with the prettiest girl in class. His heart is racing so fast in his chest and he feels so giddy that he’s actually surprised Evie hasn’t called him out on it yet.
He wants to make this last—to say something, anything, to keep this moment from ending.
Suddenly, a series of sharp beeps emits from your end of the radio. It's a sound he knows all too well, a reminder that duty calls before anything else.
“Oh, God,” you mutter quietly.
Every hair on Peter’s arms stands on end. He leaps to his feet, ready to launch himself toward whatever is happening. “What is it, Static?”
“There’s an alarm triggered at Grand Central Terminal,” you explain. “NYPD comms just flagged it—there are a bunch of hostages. It looks bad, Spiderman. Multiple armed men have barricaded the main concourse.”
Peter wastes no time, shooting a thick web line toward the nearest building and flinging himself into the sky. “How many hostages are we talking?”
“At least fifty. Commuters, staff—they were trapped during rush hour,” you answer, the clack of your keyboard clattering over the staticky connection. “I’m tapping into the security feed right now. They’re holding guns, and… it looks like there’s a heavy grade explosive right in the center, attached to the information booth.”
The wind roars through Peter’s mic as he accelerates through the air. “How much time is on the clock?”
“I’m trying to zoom in—eight minutes,” you say. “They’ve blocked all the major exits with deadbolts and wired the perimeter. It looks pretty half-assed, Spidey. If SWAT breaches the doors, or if even a piece of rubble hits that rig, the whole thing will blow.”
“Alright, no breaches,” Peter takes a mental note, his mind racing through entry points as the massive arched roof of Grand Central comes into view. “You’re my eyes in there, Static. Find me an entry point that skips the doors.”
“The skylight above the west balcony has an old grate,” you reply instantly. “It leads directly into the ventilations—high enough to keep you out of sight, but close enough to drop in.”
“Got it,” Peter replies, landing silently on the glass roof. He peers through the skylight, his eyes adjusting to the interior where dozens of terrified people are huddling on the floor, held at gunpoint by masked men with automatic rifles.
Right in the center, duct-taped to the information booth and blinking with a harsh red timer, sits the bomb.
“Okay, I’m in position,” Peter breathes through the radio. “Time me?”
He hears a soft click on your end, signaling that your timer is already running.
“Be careful, Spiderman.”
He tucks the radio against his thigh, securing it with a thick band of web.
Peter moves exactly in the direction you tell him to—he wedges his body into the dusty vents, moving with the practiced speed of an arachnid that takes him from point A to point B in the blink of an eye. He slowly lifts the grate, the poor thing held up by only a flimsy screw, and sets it down softly beside him to avoid any loud noises.
He lands gently right in the center of the terminal—but his plans for discretion don’t last when a hostage looks up and yells, “We’re saved, everyone! It’s Spiderman!”
Immediately, all the armed threats spin around, several barrels abandoning the hostages to point straight at the man in the red-and-blue suit.
“Oh,” Peter smiles. “Making my job a lot easier. Thanks.”
Before giving them the chance to shoot, Peter fires off thick strings of web into every single barrel, clogging up the firearms. With every weapon bound, he tangles the web lines together into one big knot and yanks them all out of their hands.
The guns crash into each other in a tangled mass of spiderwebs and steel. With the firearms rendered completely useless, he tosses the mess aside to focus on the men—who are now charging at him with combat knives and sidearms.
Peter quickly makes short work of the pistols, disarming the men with his webs before a stray bullet can even graze the bomb. One by one, he takes them down, firing webs with every intention of keeping them bound and completely immovable.
When Peter gets down to the last guy, slinging a thick web to pin him flat against the wall, your voice rings out from where the radio sits tucked against his thigh.
“SWAT is moving in—mind the doors and tripwires!”
“Shit,” Peter curses, whipping his head toward the exits—but it’s already too late.
The SWAT team breaches fast, shouting and gesturing for the hostages to run. Panic surges through the crowd, and every frantic step from the civilians echoes like thunder in Peter’s ears. One misstep, even one piece of falling debris, could set this entire place off. Peter snaps his head back to the bomb. Four minutes remain on the digital clock, but suddenly the numbers freeze—and a sharp high pitched frequency fills the room.
It’s quiet to everyone else, but to Peter's heightened senses, it might as well be an air siren.
“Wait!” Peter shouts, turning to vault himself away before the bomb sets off.
But it’s too late.
“Spiderman! Get out of there!” you cry out through the radio—right before a brilliant flash of red and white blinds the entire building.
Pressure and heat slam right into Peter’s chest, throwing him backward through the air and showering him in flying stone like a ragdoll. Glass shatters overhead, raining down thousands of sparkling fragments as the information booth detonates into a massive cloud of fire and smoke.
Peter crashes hard against the far wall, the impact knocking every last drop of air from his lungs. He coughs up blood, staining the inside of his mask, before sliding down a broken slab of marble. He wheezes violently as dense gray smoke fills the room. His ears ring loudly, drowning out the shouting SWAT officers, the screaming crowd, and the creaking support beams above.
Evie’s voice sings in his ear like a taunt.
“Detecting bone fractures near the lower hip. Internal bleeding. Labored breathing—”
Then, your voice comes cutting through the static.
“Spiderman! Answer me!” Your voice cuts in and out, and despite being crushed under rubble with smoke filling his lungs, he reaches for the radio at his thigh.
He lifts it with a trembling hand, and his heart stops. It’s broken, snapped open with electricity sparking near the wires.
“Please—are you there? Spiderman! Check in!”
“Time, Static,” he manages to croak out.
Even through the static, the sheer panic in your voice is unmistakable. “The ambulances are on their way. Just hold on for a little longer—”
“What’s the time, Static?” he repeats with a wet cough.
You suck in a sharp breath. “Four minutes and twenty-three seconds. Now save your breath and stop talking!”
“Peter,” he croaks, coughing up more blood.
“W-what?” you stammer through tears. The sound makes his chest hurt more than the slab of concrete resting heavy on his ribs. “You’re breaking out.”
“Our little game—remember? Every successful mission, we exchange a fun fact,” he wheezes, fighting for air. “My name is Peter Parker.”
A broken, sobbing gasp escapes you. He glances down at the radio, watching the little light that indicates his microphone is working flicker in and out.
“Static? Are you still there?”
“I can’t hear you, Spiderman.”
The blue glow of your television screen is the only source of light in your dim apartment. Outside your window, New York City keeps moving, but inside, time feels like it has been frozen for seven agonizing days.
On the screen, a news anchor stands outside Queens Hospital Center, her face grave under the studio-lit broadcast.
“…we return to our top story tonight regarding Spiderman,” the reporter’s voice echoes through your quiet room. “It has been one week since the explosive incident at Grand Central Terminal that left the vigilante in critical condition. Authorities and medical staff at Queens Hospital Center have kept tight-lipped about his recovery.”
You pull your knees tighter into your chest, your fingers trembling as they wrap around a lukewarm mug of tea you haven’t touched.
“In a shocking turn of events earlier this morning, hospital administrators confirmed that Spiderman is no longer in their care,” the reporter continues. “According to sources, when attending nurses entered his private room to adjust his IVs and monitor his severe injuries, they found the hospital bed empty. There is no security footage explaining how or when the injured hero managed to slip past guards, leaving NYPD officials baffled—and deeply concerned given the extent of his internal trauma.”
Your eyes widen, and you press a hand over your mouth as a shaky exhale spills past your lips.
He woke up.
He survived.
You keep watching, waiting to see if the reporter will expose his identity. A part of you is already annoyed that these attention-hungry journalists would stoop so low now that he’s been admitted to a hospital. But another part of you desperately wants to know—because you felt like that might’ve been what he was trying to tell you over the radio right before the line cut out.
A heavy breath escapes you when the reporter doesn’t mention a name, and the broadcast switches to a story about local stray animals. You’re not even sure if the sigh you let out is one of relief or frustration.
You glance over at the radio resting on the couch beside you.
Your receiver light blinks green—it has been on this entire time.
For the past seven days, you’ve been sleeping with the radio clutched in your hands in hopes that you’ll hear his voice one more time. Even as you walk through the hallways of your university, moving from lecture to lecture, you keep an earpiece tucked in your ear so you won’t miss him if he calls.
A few more days pass, and you’re sitting at your desk with heavy eyes. A lamp at the corner of your desk emits a warm glow over the pages of your notebook. You feel like you’ve been awake for days, running on far too little sleep and not nearly enough caffeine to keep you going.
Your head rests heavily in your palm. A quick glance at the clock tells you it’s 3:41 in the morning.
With a tired sigh, you start to push your chair back—but the sudden sound of familiar static stops you in your tracks.
A sound that is usually so grating to your ears suddenly sounds like heaven.
You quickly scramble back to your desk, your hand swiping up the radio and lifting it to your ear.
“Hello?” you say, your heart racing. “Hello? Is someone there?”
The static cuts out for a second, and you pull the radio back to check the lights. Both indicator lights are glowing green, showing that you—and whoever is on the other line—are connected. The static crackles through again, and you press the receiver tight against your ear, holding your breath as you wait for them to speak first.
“—atic?”
That voice—so familiar, so gentle—rings out. You feel your heart leap straight into your throat. You’ve been waiting for days to hear him again, but you aren't prepared for what to say now that he's actually here.
“Sta—t—ic,” Peter’s voice cuts in and out before suddenly coming through crystal clear—clearer than the very first time you ever connected with him. “This is Spiderman. Are you there?”
Your heart swells with a profound wave of relief. Tears prick at your eyes, spilling down your cheeks before you can even stop them.
“Oh my God,” you breathe, your hand trembling as you press the radio against your forehead. “You’re okay. You’re here. Thank God. I—I thought I lost you. I was keeping up with the news, and when they said you fled the hospital—I hoped you were okay. I’ve been waiting for your call all week. I—”
“Hey, hey,” Peter coos softly on the other end. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’ve been here the whole time. I’m not going anywhere.”
You hear him rustling around on the other line, the soft friction of sheets sounding like he’s lying in bed. The thought of him resting comfortably in his own room rather than trapped in a sterile hospital bed makes your heart melt.
“Where have you been?” you ask, your voice cracking as you wipe a stray tear from your cheek. “Why didn’t you call sooner?”
“I know, I know… I’m sorry,” Peter says softly, his breath catching in a faint, painful wince that he tries to cover up with a dry laugh. “My suit was pretty much trashed, and the radio got crushed in the blast. It took everything in me just to crawl over to my workbench, and a few more days to rebuild the transmitter from scratch.”
A shaky breath leaves his lips. “With the radio broken, I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to find you again. I spent all this time rebuilding it—I even fixed the signal integration so both our voices would come through clearer.”
You let out a wet, teary laugh. “So that’s why you sound like that.”
You can picture him grinning on the other end. “A lot better, huh?”
That familiar, teasing tilt in his voice sends a wave of butterflies straight to your stomach. A soft laugh escapes you, and he chuckles in return. Then, as if savoring the sound of your joy, he breathes out softly.
“I missed hearing your voice.”
Your feet carry you over to the comfort of your mattress, and before you even realize it, you’re collapsing onto your bed, kicking your feet like a giddy, hopeless romantic.
“I missed hearing you, too. You’d better not let that happen again. If I can barely handle losing you for a week, I definitely can’t bear losing you forever,” you say, trying to pass it off as a joke, but the tremble in your voice betrays you.
Peter’s grin widens where he lies in bed, staring up at the ceiling. “I’ll make sure to be extra careful from here on out, just so you don’t lose me.”
You smile into your pillow. “Good.”
A comfortable silence settles between you two—not the awkward kind from when you first met, but a warm one, wrapping around you both like a blanket despite the distance. You set the radio down on the empty space beside your pillow, and he does the same. With the microphone improvements, you can hear his steady breathing on your end, and he can hear yours.
“Were you able to hear anything I said... the last time we spoke?” Peter asks softly.
You shake your head, the friction against your pillow rustling over the mic. “You were cutting out too much.”
He pauses, the soft sound of sheets shifting as he pulls his blanket up over his shoulders.
“It was about our game—the fun facts one,” he says, his voice careful, like he’s walking on eggshells.
You couldn’t catch much before the line broke down completely. Pet... That was all you had managed to hear. But a deep feeling in your gut tells you that whatever he said was a precious piece of himself—a piece he wanted you to have in case he didn’t make it.
You hold your breath, waiting to see if he’ll offer it up again.
“And since I completed a successful mission,” he continues, swallowing hard. “I thought I’d continue with that trade.”
You brace yourself, your heart clawing in your chest as you wait for the confession—for him to finally drop his guard and lay his identity on the line, just like you plan to do with yours.
Peter draws a slow, quiet breath.
“Do you… have a boyfriend?”
You blink.
The silence stretches for a long second, the sudden change in direction catching you so off guard that your mind does a hard reset. Of all the things you expected him to say—a big secret, a superhero revelation, a tender confession about his life—that was not on your bingo card.
“What?” you squeeze out, your voice squeaking slightly.
Over the line, Peter clears his throat awkwardly, a sudden rustle of sheets betraying how fast he just sat up to bury his face in his hands.
“O-or girlfriend! Sorry—I shouldn’t have assumed! I mean, you don’t have to answer! It’s just—it’s a fun fact! A personal fact! That’s how the game works, right? You tell me something, I tell you something… or—”
A helpless, snickering laugh bubbles up from your chest, breaking off his ramble.
“Spiderman,” you giggle, burying your blushing face deeper into your mattress.
“Yeah?” he yelps, sounding like a man standing on trial.
“No,” you answer, a wide grin spreading across your face. “No boyfriend. No girlfriend.”
A long, almost dramatic exhale breezes through the speaker, followed by the soft thud of Peter flopping back down onto his mattress.
“Oh, thank God,” he mutters, trying to keep it quiet enough so the microphone doesn’t catch it—but you hear it anyway. “I mean… cool. That’s cool.”
You snort. “Okay. You know how the game goes. Now it’s my turn to ask.”
“Do I have a girlfriend?” he prompts.
You shrug, taking the opportunity to tease him. “Or boyfriend. I don’t judge.”
A playful scoff leaves his lips, and you can already imagine him rolling his eyes. He’s quiet for a few seconds, making you think he’s just too flustered to answer. But when his voice comes through shaky, almost hesitant, you feel an unfamiliar tug at your heart.
“I—um… I used to have this girl,” he murmurs. “We were dating for a while—but it didn’t work out.”
The tone of his voice sends a shiver down your spine. He speaks like a man who’s been broken again and again, carrying a profound heartache you couldn’t even begin to measure. A small, selfish twinge of jealousy tugs at you, but you know it’s not your place.
“What happened?” The words spill out before you can stop them.
Peter sucks in a sharp breath, and you wince with regret for pushing too far.
“Well, that’s something you’re gonna have to ask the next time I complete a successful mission,” he says, trying to ease the tension with a playful tone, and you’re more than happy to fall right back into it.
You roll onto your back, looking up at your bedroom ceiling. Across the city, Peter does the exact same thing.
“Deal. But let’s not jump back into all that too soon, okay? Whatever crime happens out there, let the police handle it,” you say, pulling your blanket up to your chin. “I just want to keep you all to myself tonight.”
You want to slap yourself for how ridiculous you sound. He just opened up about a painful past relationship, and you immediately turn around and sound like a clingy girlfriend.
But Peter laughs—a full, rich sound that doesn't sound at all like he just survived a traumatic experience a week ago. It’s a laugh that never fails to make you smile.
“Usually, I’d oppose the idea of ignoring crime,” he says softly. “But for you? I’ll stay. For as long as you want me to.”
You smile, nuzzling your nose into the soft fabric of your blanket. “Good. Goodnight, Spiderman.”
“Goodnight, Static.”
And for the remainder of the night, neither of you switches the radio off, letting the quiet and comforting sound of each other’s breathing lull you to sleep.
It’s a brand new day, and Peter is running around New York getting his errands done. Laundry run, check. Grocery run, check. The last thing on his list is to pick up some flowers for Aunt May.
Right next to the small bodega where he always buys his flowers sits a busy coffee shop.
The front window is large enough to see everything and everyone inside—which is exactly why he has to do a double take at the person standing near the cashier.
He stops dead in his tracks, causing a hurried pedestrian to bump into his shoulder.
“Sorry,” Peter mumbles, but the man just shoots him a dirty look and keeps walking.
Standing inside the coffee shop is a face that’s all too familiar—someone he hasn’t seen in a long, long time.
Ned.
Peter’s feet are moving before he even realizes it. He hovers near the entrance, stepping aside for a few exiting customers before pushing the door open. Slipping into an empty seat near the front, he watches Ned chat with the barista. But Ned isn’t alone.
He’s standing next to a girl—a pretty girl, at that. And one he doesn’t recognize.
Peter smiles to himself, a swell of pride washing over him seeing his best friend doing well, and scoring a pretty girlfriend to date.
“And for the missus?” The barista holds up a paper cup, pen hovering over the cardboard as she waits.
You glance up at the menu board, though you don’t really need to. You know your order like the back of your hand.
“Can I get an extra-hot almond milk latte with one pump of sugar-free vanilla—”
Peter’s heart stops.
“—one pump of regular hazelnut…”
That voice. That familiar, sing-song cadence he hears every night through a staticky radio. The last voice he listened to when he nearly died just a few weeks ago.
“And two scoops of vanilla bean powder,” Peter mumbles to himself like a mantra.
“…and two scoops of vanilla bean powder?” you finish, flashing the barista a harmless, innocent smile.
The barista gives you a disbelieving look, and you chuckle awkwardly, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. The movement gives Peter a clear view of a small earpiece nestled right inside. Everything playing out before his eyes matches the picture he’d built in his head—except for you. You being this stunning was far beyond anything he could have imagined.
The barista finally finishes jotting your order down, and you and Ned turn to search for an open table. Peter holds his breath, watching your easy smile and the natural way you interact with his once best friend.
The pang in his chest is a feeling he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy. Two people he cares about more than anything... so close, yet entirely out of reach.
His heightened spider-sense gives him the ability to hear almost anything, even from across the room. Yet right now, the ringing in his ears and the heavy thumping of his heart drown out every other sound. You and Ned approach an empty table with only a single chair, but you glance around and spot the unused chair across from Peter.
“Hey,” you smile politely—a soft, courteous tone reserved strictly for strangers, not your partner in crime. “Are you using this chair?”
This is it.
Finally, for the first time, he can introduce himself to you properly. He could bring both you and Ned back into his life with a single, simple greeting.
Hi, I’m Peter. Peter Parker. The guy you’ve been talking to over a flimsy radio these past few months.
Peter looks up at you, completely frozen where he sits. Your smile fades into a faint frown when he hesitates. Then, your eyes flicker briefly to the earpiece resting in his ear—identical to yours, worn for the exact same reason.
Just in case either of you calls in.
Before he loses you, Peter clears his throat. His hand subtly moves up to scratch his ear, hiding the earpiece with his knuckles before slipping it into his palm. When he finally speaks, he deliberately drops his voice a few pitches deeper—adding a slight rasp for good measure.
“No, go ahead.”
That polite smile returns, and you pull the chair away from his table. “Cool, thanks.”
You slide the chair up to the table you’re sharing with Ned, and just like that—unaware that you’ve completely flipped his world upside down and inside out—you fall right back into conversation with him.
The barista calls out your order with your name, and the sound of it is like music to his ears.
He repeats it quietly under his breath. It sounds natural, like a name that was always meant to be spoken in his voice.
Peter squeezes his eyes shut. He can’t reveal his identity to you. Telling you his real name that night—when he was trapped under rubble and bleeding out—was just a lapse in judgment brought on by desperation. But now that he’s here, looking at you and his best friend in broad daylight, he knows he can’t risk letting you into his world.
Anyone who knows Peter Parker is Spiderman is a person bound to be lost. And Peter can’t afford to lose you.
Yet as he watches you sit across from him, tossing your head back with a laugh that is painfully familiar, it feels like he’s already lost you anyway.
“So, tell me more about this party.”
“Well, it’s a housewarming party,” you explain, tucking your hands into your pockets as you walk through the night streets of Queens. “Two of my friends moved into an apartment recently—so we’re celebrating tonight.”
Peter hums, leaning back in his chair and staring mindlessly at his screens. He folds a piece of paper, fiddling with it as his mind wanders to who those friends could be. Ned? And if so, he wonders who else he could be moving in with—if not him.
“That’s… cool,” he finally answers in an indifferent tone.
You round the corner, the sounds of the bustling city nightlife picking up on your microphone. “Yeah. And since I’ll be busy socializing tonight, I won’t have my receiver on all night. But I’ll try my best to check in with you.”
Peter huffs a laugh through his nose. “I’m a big boy. You don’t need to check up on me.” He glances at the window. “I’m more worried about you, though.”
You step aside for a pedestrian who’s rushing past. “What for?”
Peter pushes himself out of his chair with a grunt, stepping up to the small window and looking down at the city street below. “Well, you’re a woman walking all by yourself at night. I hope your friends at least know where you’re at.”
You chuckle, pulling open the door of the small corner grocery store and being welcomed by a soft bell jingle.
“Don’t worry your head, Spiderman. If I constantly worry about my well-being just because I’m a woman, then I’ll never get anything done in this city.”
You’re greeted by a frail, older lady behind the counter, and you offer her a polite smile as you walk past. Making your way to the coolers in the back, you weigh your options between beer and seltzers.
“Do you think two cases of Budweiser is enough?” You ask Peter.
The bell chimes again, and a large man with a dark hoodie pulled over his face enters. You glance at him, and he holds your stare. You look back down.
Peter’s cackle draws you back in. “And you’re drinking?”
You can’t help but grin at the worry in his voice. Grabbing two cases—one in each hand—and shutting the refrigerator door, you head to the front counter. “Yes, because I’m an adult and should be enjoying myself. And you should be, too, Spiderman. It’s Friday night.”
A bitter smile dances on his lips. He should be enjoying himself—a night out with you, instead of being cooped up in his apartment, worrying about you getting wasted at a house party surrounded by men your age with grimy hands and bad intentions.
You set the cases on the counter, and the lady begins to ring you up. The man in the dark hoodie falls in line right behind you, holding just a pack of gum in his hand.
“Okay, I gotta head out. I’ll check in with you later tonight—”
The lady at the front counter has her attention locked on the man behind you, and she sharply gasps, ducking down immediately. Your head whips around, and you find yourself face to face with the black metal of a handgun.
“You know Spiderman?” the man before you asks in a deep gravelly voice, finger poised right above the trigger.
A pathetic, broken sound escapes you. You still have Peter on the line, and you hear the sudden panic in his voice the minute your microphone picks up your heavy breathing and whimper.
“Static? Who is that? What’s happening?”
“You must be mistaken,” you raise your hands in surrender, shoulders timid, as a bead of sweat rolls down your temple. “I—I don’t know Spiderman—”
“Bullshit!” the man shouts, backhanding you with the grip of the gun.
You cry out in pain, your body collapsing hard onto the floor as your hand flies to your cheek. Your earpiece falls out, Peter’s voice ringing out loudly in sheer panic. The man huffs an incredulous laugh as he crouches down to pick it up and lift it to his ear.
“Tell me your location—where are you? I’m coming—!”
“103rd Street,” the man answers with a grin. “That’s where your little lady is at—on the floor, bleeding outta her lip.”
The wind whips loudly through the earpiece, audible even from where you’re prone on the ground.
“Don’t lay a fucking hand on her,” Peter’s voice crackles through the wind and speaker. “What do you want from me?”
The man only chuckles, turning the small earpiece in his fingers, unfazed by the threat of a friendly neighborhood superhero.
“That’s the thing with people like you who try to play hero,” the man says, his tone dripping with bitter resentment. “You stop guys like us, but what you fail to realize is that we aren’t the bad guys at all, Spiderman. While you sit in your fancy little apartment, the rest of us are out here fighting for scraps just to survive—and it’s people like you who keep stopping us.”
He looks down at you, lying on the cold floor with a trembling hand pressed against your bleeding lip.
“We’re just trying to eat,” the man spits into the receiver. “So if a guy like me has to take a little collateral to get your attention, or to get a quick payday—that’s not evil. That’s just survival. There’s a lot of money on your head, Spiderman. Money that can help an average person like me tremendously.”
The sharp thwip of a web fires through the speaker, followed by the harsh gust of the open night sky.
If it were anyone else being held hostage, maybe Peter would extend the courtesy of hearing him out. But he’s not holding just any person. He’s holding you—the only person Peter has opened his heart to in years. The only voice he looks forward to, the one that gives him hope to push through to a brand-new day. Right now, there isn’t a single shred of restraint left in Peter’s mind—not when your life is on the line because of him.
“I don’t give a shit about your excuse,” Peter spits, whipping around a sharp corner as he flies onto 103rd Street. “If you hurt her again before I get there, I swear to God—”
“It’s too late, Spiderman.”
From high above, Peter spots the grocery store below. The white lenses of his mask widen as he peers through the large front windows, catching sight of you scrambling backward in fear, hands raised in surrender.
The man above you stands straight and lifts the gun. Peter’s eyes lock onto the finger resting against the trigger. With one launch off the side of a building, he catapults himself straight through the glass windows.
The explosion of glass shatters in time with the gunshot. As the bullet travels through the barrel of the gun, Peter collides into the man, sending him flying sideways and the gun tilting upwards. The bullet hits the ceiling, the fluorescent lights exploding with electricity as the roof panel falls. You quickly scramble away so it doesn’t hit you.
Peter sends the man flying from one window to another, rolling around on the pavement outside until he lands on top. There is no amount of webs he can use to convey his anger—so he settles with his fists.
One punch after another, one hit after brutal hit. Blood flies out of the man’s face, tainting Peter’s suit with red. It splatters across his knuckles, and he delivers a hit so violent that it sprays right over the white lenses of his mask.
“Spiderman, stop!”
You shout, but the ringing in his ears is louder.
Tears prick at his eyes behind the mask as he continues raining down punches. The man lost consciousness long ago, but Peter isn’t done. He can’t rest knowing anyone who threatens to hurt you is free to walk these streets.
He can’t rest until he knows, for certain, that you’re safe from danger.
He cocks his fist back one last time, with every intention of putting this guy down for good—until your body crashes into his, your arms wrapping tightly around his shoulders. His arm freezes mid-air, suddenly weighing a ton.
“Stop! It’s over—it’s done,” you try to reassure him but your voice comes in a panicked and rushed tone. Sirens sound in the distance. “The police are coming.”
Peter looks around, his chest heaving.
Several bystanders have stopped to stare, hands covering their mouths after witnessing such a brutal act by a man who was supposed to be a savior to all.
He curses under his breath, one arm wrapping tightly around your body.
“Hold on,” he says, before slinging a web to the highest point of the building next to you and launching you both into the night sky.
You bury your face in his chest, legs wrapped tightly around his waist as you hold on to him for dear life. You’re too terrified to look down. So instead, you glance up at the man holding you—the very man you’ve dedicated your life to assisting these past few months.
He doesn’t look like the friendly Spiderman you see on television or in the newspapers.
Blood lays over his mask like a veil, and you can feel his heart racing against yours from how tightly you’re holding him.
He doesn’t say a word until he finds a discreet alleyway. Then, finally, he sets you down gently.
Your eyes don’t leave his face even as you release your grip on him. You stand in front of him, eyes wide and lips parted as you stare at the man you’ve been dying to meet for what feels like years. But while this is your first time seeing him, it isn’t his first time seeing you.
There are so many things you wanted to say, but none of them come out. You never expected your first meeting to be like this—under circumstances where he tarnishes his reputation and your face bloodied and bruised.
“I…” your voice wavers, desperate to say anything, terrified he might swing away at any second.
Peter swipes his bloodied hand against his thigh to clean it before stepping forward, gently cupping your face in both hands. The lenses of his mask are so expressive, shifting with every furrow of his brow. Even behind it, his expression is wrecked.
“Look at what he did to you,” his voice cracks, sounding so broken, like it’s all his fault.
You huff a soft laugh, resting your palm over his knuckles as you lean into his touch. “If I’d known I was going to see you tonight, I probably would’ve worn more makeup.”
You try to joke, but he doesn’t laugh. His thumb gently brushes over the torn skin at your cheekbone, then down to your busted lip.
“I can’t believe you’re right here,” he breathes. “And I’m holding you.”
Peter should get your injuries fixed up, take you somewhere safe, or even take you home, but doing that means he’ll have to say goodbye—and he doesn’t know when he’ll give himself the chance to be this selfish again.
For the first time in years, it feels like he’s found salvation. After everything, he tries to convince himself he deserves this—even if it's just for a few minutes.
“You know what I look like,” you smile painfully. “Yet, I still don’t know a single thing about you.”
Peter bites the inside of his cheek to keep from breaking down. “I’m sorry.”
You step closer, your hands slowly finding the hem of his mask resting around his neck. With trembling fingers, you slowly lift it up—giving him every opportunity to pull away if he wants to—holding your breath as you raise it over his nose. Brown curly hair decorates the nape of his neck.
As you try to tug it up higher, his hands find your wrists, gently stopping you. “I can’t.”
With a quiet nod, your hands fall back down to his cheeks, cupping them softly. Your thumb traces the curve of his cheekbone, his jawline, and the plump of his bottom lip.
The press of your thumb against his lower lip makes his breath hitch. He closes his eyes, leaning into your touch—the first grace of warmth he’s felt in forever.
His white lenses open again, and his gaze drops to your lips—bruised, bleeding, and parting softly. The tension between you two suffocates him, and without waiting another impatient second, Peter tilts his head down and kisses you.
His lips press against yours, gentle and soft. And when you return the kiss, he feels like he’s in heaven. He takes his time with you, his lips exploring yours and savoring the quiet sweetness of the moment. Your hands are warm against his cheeks, and his hand finds your waist, respectfully holding you close as his heart beats as one with yours.
You kiss until you both run out of breath, finally pulling away to rest your foreheads against each other.
Peter shuts his eyes, breathing in your scent. “I wanted to do that from the moment I first laid eyes on you.”
“I am detecting a sudden increase in heart-rate and body warmth—”
“Shut up, Evie.”
You chuckle, your teeth catching your bottom lip while heart beats wildly in your chest.
“A successful mission,” you smile up at him. “You know what that means.”
He chuckles at that, the sound sending butterflies to your stomach now that you’re hearing it up close for the first time.
“You’re right. You go first.” He prompts.
You tell him your name, but he doesn’t react the way you thought he would after hearing it for the first time. He smiles—almost boyish, with kiss-swollen lips. It feels as though he’s known your name all along.
Peter repeats it softly. “It’s beautiful,” he says.
Warmth fills you from head to toe. You were right. You loved hearing the sound of your name in his voice.
You tilt your head, leaning in until your nose grazes against his. “What’s yours—”
Frantic footsteps echo just outside the alleyway.
Peter’s senses tingle and reverberate through his entire frame. Everything in his body is screaming at him to do one thing: run.
Two people turn the corner, and he freezes at the sight.
“Oh my god, there you are!” Ned shouts frantically, catching his breath. “We were wondering why you weren’t answering our calls—then someone at the party said there was an accident happening on 103rd Street—which is where you were going—and wait, is that Spiderman?”
Standing right behind him is MJ.
“You scared us!” she yelps, running to you with a hug. You turn around with a weary smile and a relieved sigh.
“I’m okay, you guys shouldn’t have left to come find me. It was dangerous back there, and yes,” you motion behind you, “this is—”
Peter doesn’t even let you finish. He pulls his mask down and, without another word, zips up and out, moving through the dark like a ghost in the night. All the warmth vanishes like the gust of wind he leaves behind as he disappears into the air.
“God,” Ned breathes, the three of you standing dumbfounded in the alleyway as you watch him disappear around the corner. “See! It’s like I told you, MJ! He’s like Peter Pan—if you really believe in him, he’ll show up!”
“Okay—you know, your fanboying really freaks me out,” MJ says, making a face. She looks back at you. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re okay—”
A shudder passes through your body.
My name is Peter Parker.
“Peter,” you whisper with a sudden realization.
📝 first time writing for peter parker kinda nervous !! "all these things that i've done" by the killers was on repeat while writing this. for the first time in a while, i've had a lot of fun and passion writing a marvel fic again, and i hope you can feel it when you read this fic.
if you've made it this far, as always thank you so much for taking the time to read my work. interactions are always appreciated, I love reading every bit of them!
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꒰ wc ꒱ 23k words (guys i am so srry)
꒰ summary꒱ being Lord Ormund Hightower’s wife has afforded you many luxuries. his handsome cousin is the only one you have yet to acquire.
.ᐟ contents |
18+ (MDNI), smut, seduction, religious guilt, sexual tension, mutual lust, emotional manipulation, shameless!reader, conflicted!gwayne, gwayne’s crisis of faith, obsessive attraction, mean!reader, vain!reader, family rivalry, reader and ormund lowkey in a lavender marriage, dysfunctional marriage, forbidden relationship, ormund being ormund, reader has a child, unprotected piv, cheating sex, oral sex (f!receiving), mating press, cheating/infidelity, creampie, praise, degradation, rough sex, overstimulation, period-typical sexism
.ᐟ lizzy’s note |
back to my asoiaf writing roots. gwayne genuinely got me back to watching hotd, so all thx to him. im actuallly so sick of this fic, but i'm free now. also might anyone want a sequel with ormund x wife!reader mayhaps? enjoy .ᐟ
likes comments and reblogs are much appreciated ✨
divider by @omi-resources
Supper in the Hightower might have been the worst part of your day.
Not the petitions, with their endless parades of merchants and smallfolk, each weaving their troubles into tapestries of breathless appeal.
Not the household accounts, those dry ledgers where every copper was a stone upon your chest. Not even the ceaseless procession of men who seemed to believe that speaking slowly to you would make their concerns sound more urgent, as though your sex rendered you incapable of understanding plain Common Tongue.
No. It was supper.
The one ritual your husband insisted upon every evening, without fail.
A small table in his solar, always laid for the family. It might have been intimate, had your husband been a different sort of man.
Had he been the sort who reached for your hand beneath the cloth, or who paused to ask after your day with genuine curiosity, or who smiled at his son as though the boy were something more than an heir-in-training.
Instead, it was merely another chamber in which Lord Hightower could hear himself speak. Mostly, you suspected, it pleased him to look upon the arrangement; his wife, his son, his young ward, his table, his tower.
His life. Neatly arranged around him.
At present, Ormund was speaking at length about some new philosophical revelation that had apparently seized him during the afternoon. Something about the necessary refinement of taste, the vulgarity of spectacle, and the slow degradation of noble discernment among lesser houses.
You had ceased properly listening somewhere between the second and third mention of “cultural decay.”
Daeron, sweet boy that he was, was making a valiant effort to appear attentive. He sat very straight, hands properly placed, eyes politely fixed upon Ormund whenever your husband’s gaze passed over him.
But you noticed the way his shoulders had drawn in, the slight hunch he could not quite suppress. He always grew smaller under Ormund’s attention.
Olyvar, mercifully, was too occupied with his supper to care.
You drew his plate a little closer and began cutting his meat and vegetables into smaller pieces, careful and automatic, the way you had done since he was old enough to chew solid foods.
Ormund’s voice stopped.
The silence was so abrupt that even Daeron glanced up, his blue eyes widening like a startled deer.
“Do not help him, wife.”
You stilled. The knife hovered above the last piece of carrot, frozen mid-stroke. For a brief moment, only the fire spoke, crackling softly in the hearth behind you.
Then you lifted your eyes to your husband with great care, forcing your expression into something that might, from a charitable distance, resemble patience.
“Ormund,” you said evenly, “he is five.”
“And yet you insist on keeping him helpless.” Ormund leaned back in his chair, the wood groaning beneath his weight. His expression was one of mild disapproval, as though you were not his wife but a poorly argued treatise placed before him for correction. “Let the boy do it himself.”
Olyvar looked between you both, his little mouth parting, the spoon forgotten in his grip.
“He is learning,” you replied. The words came out softer than you intended, but there was a blade hidden beneath the velvet.
“Then permit him to learn.” Ormund reached for his wine, his fingers curling around the stem of the goblet with practiced ease. “You cannot expect him to become capable while forever placing your hands over his.”
Your fingers tightened around the knife. The handle bit into your palm.
For one small, ugly moment, you wanted very badly to ask him whether he had formed that opinion before or after spending all of ten minutes a day in his son’s presence.
Whether he had ever watched the boy wake from a nightmare, or taught him to hold a quill, or kissed the crown of his head when he was too tired to speak.
Then Daeron shifted slightly in his chair, eyes lowering to his own plate. And your son’s brows began to pull together in the way they did when he sensed discord but could not yet name it.
So instead, you inhaled through your nose and set the knife down. “Very well,” you murmured.
Olyvar’s lower lip wobbled with concentration as you placed the cutlery into his small hands. You adjusted his grip carefully, turning the knife so he would not nick himself, then brushed your thumb once over his knuckles.
“There,” you said softly. “Slowly, sweetling. No need to rush.”
Ormund gave a faint sound of approval which irritated you more than an outright insult might have done. And then, having successfully corrected the household to his satisfaction, he resumed speaking as though nothing had occurred.
“As I was saying, the issue is not merely taste, but the absence of discipline required to cultivate taste. Any merchant with coin may commission a fresco. That does not make him a patron. It makes him a purchaser with delusions of refinement.”
Daeron nodded because he was kind. Because he had been raised to nod. Because he was a prince far from his mother’s court, and he had learned that it was easier to agree than to not.
You lowered your eyes to your plate because you were not. A good example, you reminded yourself. For your son. For poor Daeron.
Your gaze drifted across the room, seeking any surface less tedious than the sight of Ormund’s mouth shaping another sermon. And snagged on a pair of blue eyes already fixed upon you.
Ser Gwayne sat near the far end of the table, newly returned to Oldtown after several months in King’s Landing. He had arrived that morning, travel-worn, but smiling.
He was your husband’s cousin. A familiar figure in the household whenever duty dragged him home. Handsome, yes, but handsome men were hardly rare among noble families.
The Hightower’s bred for it, it seemed. Generations of careful marriages filtering their blood until only the finest thread remained. You had never been a woman easily made foolish by a pretty face.
And yet he was looking at you now. His expression held some faint, mistaken softness that took you a moment to place.
Sympathy.
You scowled before you could stop yourself. Sympathy. From him. What in the seven hells had you done to earn pity from your husband’s cousin?
Gwayne seemed to recognise his error at once. The soft line of his mouth flattened, and he lowered his gaze in retreat. Then he reached for his cup with unhurried care, letting the movement shield whatever might have lingered in his face.
You turned deliberately to Olyvar, who had managed a crooked little piece of meat and was staring at it with triumph.
“Well done, sweetling,” you whispered.
He beamed.
Across the table, Ormund continued speaking as though the air had never been disturbed. “The tragedy, of course, is that most men mistake abundance for beauty.”
You nearly laughed aloud. From a man whose entire household was a monument to excess, the observation was either profound hypocrisy or staggering self-unawareness.
You let your eyes drift back to Ser Gwayne as though pulled by an invisible thread.
He had lifted his wine cup and was listening to Ormund with the practiced patience of a man who had spent his youth in this very hall. There was nothing remarkable in that. All men of Ormund’s blood learned eventually how to sit through him.
Yet now, under the softening candlelight, you found your attention catching on details you had never bothered to catalogue.
The leather jerkin he still wore, unbuttoned at the collar. The breadth of his shoulders, which seemed more pronounced than when you had last seen him.
Perhaps it was the riding leathers. Perhaps it was the way he had broadened through the chest. Perhaps it was only that you were desperate for a distraction.
Then Gwayne looked back.
A brief flicker. Questioning. His eyes met yours across your husband’s table, and after a breath of hesitation, he offered a small smile. Tentative. Cautious.
You did not return it. You merely watched him, as though he were a puzzle placed before you without warning.
The smile faltered. His fingers shifted once against the stem of his cup.
“You are very quiet,” Ormund said.
You turned your head slowly, feeling the weight of every gaze at the table now that his attention had shifted to you. “Would you prefer I interrupt?”
“No,” he said, his mouth curving with something that was not quite warmth. “I merely find the novelty... distracting.”
“I was listening.”
“Were you?” He tilted his head, a gesture of delicate disbelief. “To which part, precisely?”
“To the grand thesis on cultural decay,” you replied, letting a pleasant smile settle over your features. “I am saving my objections for the inevitable conclusion.”
A beat of silence. Ormund’s smile sharpened with genuine pleasure. He did enjoy this, the cut and thrust of a wife who refused to bend entirely. “How wise of you.”
“I’m aware.”
For a heartbeat, the table held itself very still. Daeron’s eyes flickered between you and Ormund before dropping to his plate.
You looked away first. Your gaze slid back towards the far end of the table, almost of its own accord. Ser Gwayne had not looked away. Your eyes met. He dropped his gaze at once, a trained movement, but not quickly enough.
There had been something in his face. Curiosity, stripped of its careful neutrality. The faintest glimmer of admiration before he remembered himself.
And for the first time that evening, supper became tolerable.
You had no clear notion of where your sudden interest in your husband’s cousin had seeded itself.
Desire, perhaps. Boredom, more likely.
The inevitable consequence of a life measured out in quiet afternoons and colder nights, spent beside a man who possessed the rare talent of making even fine Dornish red taste flat, simply by talking over it long enough.
Perhaps you ought to have felt guilt. There were, after all, several forms of guilt readily available to a woman of your station. The heavy, familiar drape of religious shame, if you had been feeling devout.
The colder weight of marital duty, if you had wished to pretend your union had ever been built on anything warmer than alliance and accommodation.
The quiet voice of conscience, urging you to remember your vows and the solemn weight of your name. No such voice came. And if it had, you suspected you would have silenced it without ceremony.
Instead, you had chosen to pursue the matter.
No… pursue implied a peasant greed, a grasping hunger unbecoming of your station.
You had always been a woman of refined taste, one who savoured rather than devoured. You had chosen to investigate. You sought only to determine whether the pious, honourable Ser Gwayne Hightower desired his cousin’s wife.
Which was how, two days later, you found yourself taking luncheon in the training yard. You had expressed a wish for fresh air, and the household had obliged.
Beneath the shaded arcade that overlooked the yard, a small table had appeared, dressed in linen and laden with the afternoon’s bounty. Your ladies had lingered only long enough to exchange pleasantries before you dismissed them with a soft word, granting yourself solitude.
Olyvar alone remained, settled on a cushion near your feet, his painted wooden knights drawn up in opposing armies across the stone. The fate of a dozen imaginary houses rested on his small hands.
The yard below was alive with the familiar music of men at practice, the crisp ring of blunted steel, the scuff of boots on packed earth, and the occasional burst of low laughter when some young squire overreached and paid for his ambition with a mouthful of dust.
Ser Gwayne was not difficult to find among the men. He stood out as a flame stands out among dying embers. You told yourself this was mere practical observation.
He was paired with a knight of your husband’s household guard, a seasoned man who was beginning to look profoundly dissatisfied with the shape of the lesson.
Gwayne fought with a clean grace that bordered on maddening. No wasted theatrics, no brute display of strength simply to intimidate.
He was quick when speed was demanded, firm when force was required, his sword flashing in the high sun before turning aside another blow with that maddening elegance.
You leaned back, your head tilting as you considered him. It was not simply that he was handsome. Many men were handsome from a suitable distance, and considerably less so once they opened their mouths. Gwayne was something altogether rarer.
He was pretty.
The word felt almost improper for a knight wearing spurs, a man of proven steel and honourable name. Yet it was the truth of him. The fine structure of his face. The blue of his eyes like a shard of summer sky, vivid even from this distance. The colour that exertion had painted high on his cheekbones.
The damp strands of fair hair that had pulled loose near his temple, clinging to the skin there. A knight, yes. Unmistakably a man, broad-shouldered and lean-hipped and capable.
But a pretty one, all the same.
“Mother?”
Olyvar’s voice cut cleanly through your reverie. You looked down. He was holding up a wooden knight, its red paint chipped from a hundred imagined battles.
“Ser Redwyne has fallen,” he announced.
“A tragedy,” you said, your voice softening. “Was he taken honourably?”
“In the head,” Olyvar said, frowning at the knight’s fate. “He did not see the blow.”
“Then he ought to have worn a better helm,” you replied, a faint smile touching your mouth. “A commander must learn from his defeats.”
Olyvar considered this with the grave deliberation, then nodded once, satisfied with your counsel, before returning to his campaign.
Below, Gwayne turned to receive some remark from a man at the edge of the yard. And then, with the casual lift of a man stretching his neck, his gaze swept the arcade.
He found you. You marked the instant awareness passed through him, a micro-shift in his posture, a pause barely long enough to measure. His eyes traced the table, the wine, the figs. Olyvar at your feet. Then you. After a beat, Gwayne inclined his head with the precise measure of courtesy owed to his cousin’s lady.
“My lady,” he called, his voice carrying cleanly across the stones, polite and proper for all the yard to witness.
“Ser Gwayne,” you returned.
And from that moment onward, his composure became a thinner thing.
He continued to fight well, beautifully even, but his attention had frayed at the edges. Every few passes, his eyes flickered up towards the arcade. Fleeting glances, brief enough that he must have believed them subtle.
They were not subtle.
You watched, unhurried, savouring the small triumph of observation. You reached for a fig, and brought it to your lips. The skin split beneath your teeth, the flesh yielding sweet and crimson. A small, private indulgence.
Olyvar made a small sound of triumph as one wooden knight toppled another.
“Was that Ser Redwyne avenged?” you asked, though your eyes remained on the yard.
“No,” Olyvar said. “That was Lord Costayne. He is dead now too.”
“How grim.”
Below, Gwayne’s gaze lifted again. His eyes met yours across the dust and sunlight, and this time you allowed yourself a smile. A small curve of your lips, intended for him alone.
A promise held out like a flower, waiting to see if he would reach for it.
The effect was immediate. His gaze dropped as though the weight of your attention had physically pressed him down. His jaw tightened. He faltered, just slightly, and the other knight pressed his advantage, almost landing a blow along his ribs.
Gwayne turned it aside at the last breath, an elegant recovery.
Then he answered. A counter-strike that rang through the yard, a perfect connection that forced his partner back several steps. The watching squires let out a low murmur of approval.
A few minutes later, the bout drew to its close. Gwayne stepped back, breathing a little harder, and clasped forearms with his opponent A servant appeared with water. Gwayne took the cup, raised it, and drank. Then, in a gesture so casual it felt almost on purpose, he tipped the remainder over the back of his neck.
You watched the water trace a silver path along his skin, disappear into the dark collar of his tunic, darken the fabric where it clung. Gwayne looked up once more, his gaze finding the arcade as though drawn there by a thread you had already begun to wind.
To your surprise, he passed his practice sword to one of the waiting squires and began walking towards the shaded arcade.
You watched him approach, your brow lifting a fraction.
He looked good like this, you thought with some irritation.
Flushed from exertion. His fair hair damp at the temples, darkened to auburn. The open collar of his tunic showing the hollow of his throat, the skin there still gleaming from the water he had poured.
He reached the shade of the arcade and bowed his head with dutiful courtesy.
“My lady,” he said. His voice was perfectly polite, though the breathlessness still clung to it, “I confess, I had not thought to find you watching over the yard.”
“Have I no right to observe the men of my own household?”
“You have every right. It is simply a pleasure I had not anticipated.”
That was well said. You let the words settle, then smiled. “I thought it would be good for Olyvar to observe the training yard. The discipline. The instruction. The camaraderie of men.”
You lied easily enough.
Gwayne’s eyes shifted past you. Olyvar, at your feet, had not looked up once throughout the entire exchange. His wooden knights lay in a violent little heap, and he was currently engaged in the solemn work of making one dead man stab another dead man.
Gwayne was quiet for half a second. Then his gaze returned to you.
“Ah,” he said.
You felt your mouth curve. “You seem unconvinced, Ser.”
“I should never presume to question a mother’s judgement.”
“A wise answer.”
“I try to give those when I can.”
That made you smile properly, a genuine warmth that you could not quite suppress.
Gwayne noticed it. You saw the flicker of his attention, the way his gaze touched your lips, fleeting as a blink, then returned at once to your eyes.
You leaned back slightly in your chair, considering him.
“You fight well,” you said.
His expression settled into modest courtesy at once. “You are kind to say so.”
“I did not say it to be kind.”
His eyes held yours a moment too long before he inclined his head again. “Then I thank you for your honesty.”
“How formal you are.”
“I am speaking with my lord cousin’s wife.”
“Yes,” you said mildly. “I am well aware of the relation.”
The air between you shifted. Gwayne seemed to feel it too, because whatever brief warmth had touched his face retreated behind the careful architecture of his courtesy.
He bowed once more. “I shall leave you to your luncheon, my lady.”
“So soon?”
His eyes caught yours. The question had been plain enough to be heard, innocent enough to be denied.
“The men will be waiting,” he said.
“Of course.”
Another pause.
Then he gave you a small, dutiful smile, the sort of smile a man offers when he wishes to close a door without seeming to slam it. “Enjoy the rest of your day, my lady. I shall see you at supper.”
And then he left.
You watched him descend the shallow steps, noting the deliberate length of his stride. He did not glance back. Did not slow. He returned to the training yard as though the shade beneath the arcade had held no temptation at all.
You frowned. Was that all?
How vexing. Perhaps Ser Gwayne Hightower was too pious for implication. Or perhaps he simply needed a sharper provocation.
Very well, then.
You would need to be plainer.
“May I speak plainly, my lady?”
Daeron’s voice came from beside you, pitched low enough that the question might have been lost beneath the murmur of the fountain.
Your arm was hooked through his as the two of you walked slowly through the Hightower gardens, the gravel crunching beneath your slippers.
You turned your head towards him, noting the slight furrow between his brows, the way his gaze remained fixed on the path ahead rather than meeting yours. “With me, sweet prince? Always.”
He smiled faintly at that, though it did not quite reach his eyes.
You let your gaze drift ahead again, momentarily distracted by the peonies along the eastern walk. They were not blooming as they ought. Too sparse near the roots, too heavy in some places, and the colour had come in weaker than you had requested. A small irritation, perhaps, but one nonetheless.
You made a silent note to speak with the gardeners before the week’s end. Such neglect was unbecoming of a household of Oldtown’s standing.
Daeron walked quietly beside you for another few paces.
“I have missed our talks,” he admitted at last.
There was something almost shamefaced in the confession, as though he had failed at some duty by desiring a little ordinary companionship.
You looked at him more fully then, taking in the slight hunch of his shoulders, the way his hands clasped together behind his back as though he were still a boy being chastised by a maester.
He was no longer the shy ten-year-old you had met when you first came to Oldtown as Ormund’s bride. That boy had been all wide eyes and careful manners, quick to blush and quicker to apologise.
Daeron glanced down at the gravel path, his jaw working for a moment before he spoke again.
“The maesters have kept me very occupied,” he continued, his voice taking on a rehearsed quality. “Lord Ormund wished my lessons expanded. Histories of the Reach, the foundations of the Hightower, the genealogies of its principal bannermen, matters of law and patronage…”
His mouth twisted slightly before he corrected it. “It is a great honour, of course.”
“Of course,” you said, the words dry as dust.
“And important,” Daeron added quickly, as though fearing you might mistake him for ungrateful. “It is important to venerate the history of House Hightower. Lord Ormund says a prince fostered here ought not leave Oldtown ignorant of the house that shaped him.”
You hummed softly. “That sounds very much like something Lord Ormund would say.”
Daeron looked at you, uncertain whether he was permitted to laugh.
You saved him the trouble by squeezing his arm lightly. “You need not perform gratitude for me, sweet prince.”
His shoulders eased a fraction, the tension draining from his frame as though a knot had been loosened. “I am grateful,” he said, but more honestly this time. “Only… tired.”
“Those two things are allowed to exist in the same body.”
He breathed out, a long, slow exhale, and there it was, the quiet relief of a boy who had been granted permission to be less than perfectly composed. The breeze stirred the auburn hair at his temples, and for a moment, he looked younger than his years.
“I know the lessons matter,” Daeron murmured, his gaze fixed on the path ahead. “But sometimes it feels as though every hour must improve me somehow. If I read, it must be the correct book. If I ride, my seat must be assessed. If I speak, I must consider whether my thought is worth saying aloud.”
“Ah,” you hummed. “A particular cruelty. Being made to weigh every word before speaking.”
He gave you a small, knowing look, a flicker of something wry in his eyes. “You do not seem to suffer from it.”
“No,” you replied pleasantly. “Marriage cured me of that.”
Daeron’s lips parted in surprised amusement, and then he looked quickly ahead, as though worried someone might have heard him almost laugh.
Your gaze drifted past Daeron’s shoulder then, moving idly over the garden path, the sunlit hedges, the distant figures gathered near the cypress walk.
And caught on one figure in particular.
Ser Gwayne stood a little way off, conversing with some lord whose name you could not immediately recall and had no great desire to.
He was dressed for court rather than the yard today, a tunic of deep green, the Hightower sigil embroidered at the breast in silver thread, his hair neatly combed, his posture impeccable.
One hand rested at his belt as he listened with a look of courteous endurance, the expression of a man who had heard this particular speech before and was merely waiting for it to conclude.
Before good sense could advise you otherwise you lifted your voice.
“Ser Gwayne.”
The name carried cleanly through the garden air, clear as a bell tolling in still weather. You did not raise it unduly, but there was a specific clarity to it, a refusal to be ignored.
His head turned almost at once.
The very instant your voice crossed the gravel and the hedges and the soft murmur of the fountain, his attention came to you, direct and unguarded.
You noticed. You tucked the knowledge away like a coin slipped into a pocket.
So did Daeron, judging by the quick, sideways glance he gave you.
“Perhaps you might come and soothe your favourite nephew’s spirits,” you continued, letting amusement thread through your voice, “The maesters have made a martyr of him.”
Daeron straightened beside you, a flush rising to his cheeks. “My lady—”
“Oh, hush. I said martyr, not rebel. There is dignity in martyrdom. Surely they have taught you that much.”
He closed his mouth, half-protesting and half-pleased.
Gwayne said something brief and polite to the lord before him and bowed his head in farewell with the easy grace of a man accustomed to extricating himself from tedious conversations.
You watched him approach with an expression of mild innocence, as though you had merely done him a kindness by providing an excuse to withdraw. He stopped at a perfectly respectable distance. Far enough to satisfy propriety.
He inclined his head.
“My lady. My prince.”
Perhaps it was inconsequential. Perhaps it meant nothing at all. Still, you noted that he addressed you first.
Daeron brightened at once, some of the earlier tension easing from his face. “Uncle.”
“Have your lessons grown so unbearable already?” Gwayne asked, his mouth curving faintly. His expression was warm, genuinely fond, “I had thought you more resilient than that.”
“I did not say unbearable,” Daeron protested.
“No,” you said, before he could gather a proper defence. “He merely looked as though he might fling himself into the Honeywine.”
Daeron turned to you in open horror. “I did not.”
“You did a little.”
Gwayne’s eyes flicked to you then. There was caution there now. A guardedness that had not been present before supper, before the training yard, before he had learned that your attention was not always accidental.
“I am certain the prince suffers nobly,” Gwayne said, his voice even.
“Thank you, uncle,” Daeron replied, gathering what dignity he could manage.
“And if your tutors become too terrible,” Gwayne added, “you may always inform them that your uncle has recommended idleness as an essential part of princely education.”
Daeron blinked, then smiled. “Would you truly?”
“No,” Gwayne said. “But you may imagine it with comfort.”
You laughed softly despite yourself.
Gwayne looked at you again.
“You see?” you said, glancing between them, “Ser Gwayne understands you. He has spent a lifetime surviving Lord Ormund’s instruction.”
The change in Gwayne was slight. Almost nothing. A tightening around the eyes. A subtle stillness in his shoulders, as though he had braced himself against something unexpected.
But you saw it.
Daeron, sweet enough to miss the sharper thing beneath your words, only looked between you and his uncle with polite interest.
“My cousin has always been generous with his wisdom,” Gwayne said carefully.
“How delicately put.”
“It is a delicate subject.”
“Is it?”
“With you, my lady, I suspect most subjects may become so.”
There was no impropriety in the words. None that could be named. You smiled at him, slow and without hurry.
Daeron glanced between you both again, visibly uncertain whether he had missed some small jest. “You are both speaking strangely,” he said slowly.
“Are we?” you asked, still smiling.
“Yes.”
Gwayne’s mouth softened. “Then it must be your lessons, nephew. They have made you too perceptive.”
Daeron accepted that with a faintly pleased look, though he tried not to show it. The boy’s hunger for approval was a tender thing, easily assuaged by a scrap of recognition.
You let your hand rest lightly over the prince’s arm, “Come,” you said. “Walk with us, Ser Gwayne. Unless the nameless lord we stole you from was saying something terribly important.”
Gwayne glanced back once towards the man he had abandoned, still standing alone near the cypress walk, looking vaguely confused.
“He was explaining the superiority of his family’s kennels.”
“Then we have rescued you.”
“So it would seem.”
He fell into step on Daeron’s other side, close enough that the three of you moved together like a single, unhurried current beneath the long shade of the garden walk.
Daeron began asking him some earnest question about training yard drills and Gwayne answered with patient attention, his tone easing as he spoke to the boy, the guarded edges softening into something simpler.
You listened in silence for a few moments, allowing the rhythm of their voices to wash over you, the low murmur of his explanations blending with the fountain and the bees.
Then, without turning your head, you let your gaze drift towards Ser Gwayne from the corner of your eye.
He was already looking at you.
This time, he did not look away quickly enough.
You allowed yourself to notice it with only the faintest turn of your mouth, careful not to give him the satisfaction of being caught too plainly.
Gwayne, for his part, seemed to realise his mistake a breath too late. His attention shifted towards the hedges, then towards Daeron, as though the garden had suddenly become full of urgent things to observe.
Fortunately, the fates proved generous. Only a few minutes later, one of Ormund’s guards appeared at the end of the walk.
“My prince. Lord Ormund requests your attendance. The maester is waiting.”
The small measure of ease Daeron had gathered vanished at once, dissolving like frost touched by sun. He did not complain. He was too well-bred for that, too accustomed to obedience. But the look he gave you was helpless enough to make your heart pinch.
You squeezed his hand where it rested against your arm. “Courage,” you murmured.
Daeron attempted a smile. It was a brave attempt, if not entirely convincing.
Gwayne’s expression softened as he looked at him. “Farewell, nephew. I shall see you after, should you survive.”
It was a small jest, dryly delivered, but it did what it was meant to do. Daeron’s mouth curved, and some of the dread left his face before he inclined his head to you both and followed the guard back along the path.
You watched him go until the turn of the hedge took him from sight.
Then there was only Gwayne. Perfect. For a long, suspended moment, neither of you moved. The garden seemed to hold its breath without Daeron between you, the air growing heavier, warmer, as though the afternoon had drawn closer to listen.
You turned to him with a slow, playful smile, letting it unfurl across your lips like a secret shared too late to recall.
“So,” you said, your voice carrying the lightness of discovery, “you can be amusing.”
Gwayne’s eyes dropped for the briefest fraction of a heartbeat to your mouth before returning to meet yours. The movement was subtle, almost imperceptible, but you caught it.
“Does that surprise you, my lady?” he asked.
His voice remained courteous, polished to a fine, untouchable sheen. But something in it had changed. Only slightly. Enough.
“Indeed it does,” you said, and began to walk again.
You did not ask him to follow. He did anyway. Gwayne kept to your side, not too close, not distant enough to be rude. Every inch of him arranged according to propriety, every muscle held in careful alignment.
How tiresome. How interesting.
“You are always so formal with me,” you said, looking ahead rather than at him, “One begins to wonder whether you have any other manner at all.”
There was a pause before he answered, as though he was choosing each word with care. “You are my cousin’s wife,” Gwayne said. “And Lady Hightower of Oldtown.”
You gave a quiet sigh. “Yes. You do enjoy reminding me.”
“I would not presume you had forgotten.”
“No?” You glanced at him then, turning your head just enough to catch his profile. “How generous. For a moment, I feared you thought I required instruction in the shape of my own life.”
Gwayne’s jaw shifted, a muscle tensing along its edge, but he said nothing.
“I am aware I am Lord Ormund’s wife,” you continued, your voice mild, unhurried, as though you were discussing the weather. “I have borne the man a son. I sit at his table. I listen to his thoughts on taste and virtue and the failings of lesser men, night after night, until the candles gutter and the wine runs dry. Believe me, Ser Gwayne, I have not misplaced the fact of my marriage.”
His steps slowed by the smallest measure, a falter in the rhythm of his stride. You did not slow with him. After a moment, he caught up, his boots crunching against the gravel as he fell back into step beside you.
“That was not my meaning,” he said.
“Was it not?”
“No.”
You looked at him again, long enough to make him feel the full weight of your attention. There was discipline in him, certainly. Faith too, perhaps. Honour arranged about him so tightly that you wondered how often it chafed against his skin, how often he wished to loosen the bindings.
“Then what was your meaning?” you asked.
Gwayne’s eyes moved once across your face, and again they paused too near your mouth. The moment stretched, before he pulled his gaze away.
“My meaning,” he said at last, “is that respect is owed to you.”
Respect. A pretty word. A useless one, in that moment. You smiled as though pleased by the answer, and turned your attention back to the path ahead. “How very dutiful of you, Ser Gwayne.”
He did not answer immediately. But beside you, his hand flexed once, the fingers tightening briefly before releasing.
You allowed him the mercy of another subject, though not entirely out of kindness. The game required patience, and you had learned long ago that too much pressure would cause a man like Gwayne to retreat entirely.
“Was King’s Landing much changed?” you asked, your tone light, conversational. “You have been away long enough that we nearly began to forget you.”
“Nearly?”
“You must not ask for too much flattery. It becomes unbecoming.”
The corner of his mouth moved, a ghost of a smile that seemed determined not to fully form. “King’s Landing is as it ever was. Loud. Crowded. Restless.”
“Vile, then.”
That drew his attention more cleanly. He turned his head to look at you, a flicker of surprise in his eyes. “You dislike the city?”
“I dislike most cities that mistake stench for importance.” You brushed your fingertips along the head of a rose as you passed, careful not to catch your fingers on the thorns hidden beneath the leaves. “My father thought the Red Keep a wretched place. A painted skull upon a hill, I believe he once called it.”
“A severe judgement.”
“He had a gift for those.”
“And do you share it?”
“For severity? Frequently.” You glanced at him, your eyes meeting his. “For judgement? I suppose that depends on the object.”
Gwayne’s eyes narrowed faintly, not in displeasure but in caution, as though he had heard the soft shift beneath your words and did not yet know whether he was meant to step over it or step around it.
You continued before he could decide.
“I have always thought the Red Keep must be suffocating,” you said, your voice thoughtful. “All those ambitious men pressed together in one place, each certain his own desires are better hidden than they are, each watching the others for signs of weakness. A city built on whispers and half-truths.”
Gwayne looked ahead, his gaze fixed on the path before you. “Men at court are not known for modest ambition.”
The garden path narrowed, forcing him closer beside you as you moved beneath the arbour. The space did the work for you, his sleeve brushing near yours, the warmth of him briefly more present than it had any right to be.
“Did you enjoy it?” you asked.
Gwayne inhaled quietly. You had the impression of a man choosing between several safe answers and finding all of them insufficient. He settled, eventually, on honesty trimmed to an acceptable shape.
“There are moments of honour to be found there,” he said. “And many more moments of inconvenience.”
“How diplomatic.”
“It is often safer than truth.”
You looked at him then, and this time he did not immediately look away. The sunlight shifted through the leaves overhead, breaking across his face in brief gold fragments.
He really was irritatingly pretty. The kind of beauty that seemed almost unfair, a face that belonged in a tapestry or a song.
“Do you prefer safety, Ser Gwayne?”
His gaze held yours.
For a moment, the garden seemed to contract around you, the air thickening with the scent of lavender and heated stone.
Then his jaw tightened, just slightly. “When it is wise.”
You did not let the silence sit for too long. You paused near a low wall where the roses climbed thickly over pale stone, their blossoms heavy and overripe in the afternoon heat.
One had drooped beneath its own weight, petals dark at the edges, bruised almost purple where the sun had touched it too long.
“This one has spent itself,” you murmured, touching the bloom with the pad of your thumb. The petal was soft, the velvet surface dimpling beneath your pressure. “It has given everything to the sun without thought for the consequence. Now it hangs there, open and past its prime, waiting for someone to notice it before it falls.”
Gwayne’s eyes followed your hand.
“Do you know much of roses, Ser Gwayne?”
His expression had gone very still.
“No, my lady.”
“No?” You let your thumb trace the edge of the petal, dragging slow and idle across the bruised flesh. “A pity. They are not unlike women in that regard. They require a firm hand, not rough, but certain. They must be guided, or they climb wild, tangling with whatever brushes against them. And if handled carelessly…”
You pressed until the petal dimpled deeper beneath your thumb, the bruise spreading like an ink stain in water. “They bruise so easily.”
You looked up at him then, your lashes low. “The secret is knowing exactly how much strength a stem can bear before it breaks.”
Gwayne’s throat moved as he swallowed.
“Perhaps I should ask the gardeners instead,” you said, letting your hand fall from the rose. “They seem to understand the practical application of pressure.”
“That would be wise.”
His answer was controlled, but thinner than before, as though the words had to press past something tight to reach the air. He looked at you as though you had at last said something plainly enough to leave him no comfortable place to stand.
You waited. His hand flexed once at his side.
“You should take more care with your words,” he said. The voice was stripped bare, scraped of all the courtly veneer he had worn so carefully all afternoon.
You felt your smile soften into something far less polite. “Should I, Ser? How considerate of you to advise me.”
“This is not advice.”
“No?” You tilted your head, letting your gaze trail down his form with slow, appreciative leisure, then back to his eyes. “What is it, then? A plea? A prayer?”
Gwayne’s mouth parted, then closed again. You watched the truth he wanted to speak rise to his tongue, watched him force it back down. At last, he managed, “You know very well what you are doing.”
For one brief, clean moment, satisfaction moved through you like honey.
“I know many things, Ser Gwayne.” Your voice lowered, soft as a touch against his skin. “You will have to be plainer with me.”
The muscle in his jaw jumped. A vein pulsed at his temple beneath the pale auburn of his hair.
A distant laugh rose from somewhere beyond the hedge, bright and careless, a sharp reminder of the world that existed outside this charged pocket of air.
Gwayne blinked once, as if waking from a fever dream. He stepped back with the abrupt control of a man yanking his hand from an open flame. “I should return.”
“To what?”
“To anything else.”
You laughed then, the sound escaping before you could temper it. It was absolute delight. His eyes snapped to yours. For the first time, you saw irritation there. Not the measured discomfort of a man offended for honour’s sake. It was irritation at you.
It suited him. It made him human.
“Of course,” you said, smoothing one hand over your sleeve. “I would not keep you from your many duties.”
Gwayne bowed his head, but the gesture was stiff, a jerk of the chin rather than a fluid courtesy.
“My lady.”
“Ser Gwayne.”
He turned to leave. Then stopped. You watched his spine stiffen as he fought with himself. When he looked back, his face had recovered its composure.
“You should not seek to provoke what you would not wish answered.”
The warning slid through you like a blade wrapped in silk.
“Then perhaps you should take care with your answers.”
You were irritated. Unbelievably, utterly, exhaustingly so.
Ser Gwayne Hightower had taken to avoiding you now. Not merely keeping a respectful distance, no, that would have been proper, expected, even comfortable.
He had begun avoiding you with the single-minded dedication of a man preserving himself from a plague he had already seen ravage whole cities.
His gaze would slide over you, past you, around you, as if your presence were a piece of light too bright to be borne. It would have been a rich jest, a game to be savoured, if the sting of it had not run so deep.
In the last several days, you had seen him only at supper, and even then it took Ormund’s rigid insistence upon family ritual to trap him in the same room as you.
He kept his gaze fixed on his plate, the fine silver catching the candlelight, or on Daeron, or on Ormund whenever your husband felt compelled to expound on whatever subject had presently devoured his interest.
Never you. Not a single glance. The first night, you had nearly laughed at the absurdity of it.
By the third, you had found your fingers tight around the stem of your wine cup, an image of the dark red liquid arcing across the table to splatter against his chest blooming so vividly in your mind that you had to set the cup down entirely to resist the urge.
He would converse with Daeron gently enough, turning towards the boy with a soft curve to his mouth, asking after his lessons in a voice that held none of the clipped edge he reserved for the world.
He would answer Ormund with his usual, weary patience, enduring long-winded correction, tedious commentary, and the occasional thinly disguised insult without so much as a flicker of his composure.
But you might as well have been an empty chair at the far end of a long, abandoned hall.
At one point, during the fourth course, you had reached for the salt at the same moment he had. Your fingers had not touched. They had only approached the same small silver dish, drawn by the same need.
Gwayne had seen your hand coming and had withdrawn his own as though the metal had glowed red-hot.
Across the table, Daeron’s eyes flickered between you both, swift and confused, before dropping to his plate.
Ormund, naturally, had observed nothing.
When the meal finally, blessedly ended, Gwayne rose from his chair with a controlled haste that it became a spectacle in itself. His bow to Ormund was a little too stiff.
He murmured some careful excuse about the early hour required of him in the training yard, and was gone before you had even finished setting your cup down upon the linen.
You said nothing. You pressed your tongue against the inside of your cheek, tasting the faint, and decided that Ser Gwayne Hightower had become far, far too pleased with his own suffering.
He was preening in his little cage of honour. It was time to rattle the bars.
The following afternoon, the insult remained with you, a stone lodged beneath your ribs. You stood in the watery light of your solar while you fastened a narrow chain of delicate silver around your throat. Letters laid open on your desk went unread; the words blurred and swam before your eyes.
The Hightower moved around you as it always did, breathing and turning and obeying the immutable currents of its own existence.
Servants passed through the corridors with soft footsteps. A steward waited just beyond the solar door, his ledger tucked under his arm, patient for your attention. Somewhere below, Olyvar’s septa was drilling him in his letters. The whole of Oldtown lay at your fingertips, a stone-and-wood body waiting for your will.
Your Hightower. And Ser Gwayne thought he could hide from you inside it.
Did the man truly not understand who you were? Did he imagine that blood alone made a fortress? Yes, he was a Hightower by birth, carried the name like a shield. Yes, his position in this house was not insignificant, second-in-line after your son.
But you, at present, were Lady of Oldtown. Wife to its lord. Mother to its heir. Mistress of its pantries, its keys, its schedules, its gardens, its chambers, its wine cellars, its very breath.
There were very few doors in this tower that would dare remain closed to you. There were even fewer people inside it willing to deny you anything you might ask of them.
If Ser Gwayne wished to truly and irrevocably escape you, he would need to leave Oldtown entirely. Better still, the Reach altogether. He would need to put the whole of the realm between his conscience and your smile, if he wanted any real and lasting certainty.
You took your seat behind the desk, arranging your skirts with a practised hand, and waited. The knock came a short while later, two crisp raps against the oak door.
You let the silence stretch, counting the seconds, letting the weight of it settle into the space between you. Only when the pause had grown long enough to become a small, pointed statement did you speak.
“Enter.”
The door swung open. Ser Gwayne Hightower stepped inside, and the quality of the light in the room seemed to shift.
He looked, unfortunately, as handsome as ever. More so, perhaps, because irritation sharpened your appreciation rather than dulled it.
His eyes found you. For a heartbeat, they rested on your face, on the length of your throat where the silver chain lay.
Then, with an effort you could almost feel in your own chest, he moved his gaze to some respectful, neutral point near your shoulder, fixing it there as though the stone of the wall behind you held absorbing interest.
“My lady,” he said, his voice low and even. He bowed his head. “You sent for me.”
“So you do remember how to come when called.” Your words came out silken, touched with just enough of a serrated edge to catch.
You sat behind your desk, one hand resting lightly over the stack of unread letters, the other lying palm-down on the polished wood. You did not invite him to sit. You did not gesture towards the chair that stood opposite.
The door, you noted, had been left ajar behind him, wide enough to preserve propriety, narrow enough to feel like a cage. You had already ensured that your maid had departed on some errand that would keep her away for the better part of the hour.
“I was not aware I had given offence,” he said carefully, each word chosen with care.
“No?”
His mouth tightened
You leaned back in your chair, the wood creaking softly beneath you, as you studied him. If he wished to behave as though you were invisible then you would make a generous, thorough effort to correct that misapprehension.
You traced the line of his brow, the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw that suggested he had not shaved as closely that morning as he usually did.
“For several days now,” you said, letting the words fall slowly, “you have looked at everyone in this household except me.”
Gwayne grew very still. The stillness of a man who has been caught in a trap and is calculating whether there is any graceful way to extricate himself. He lowered his eyes, in a retreat from the challenge of your gaze. “I meant no disrespect,” he said, his voice quieter now.
“Of course not. Men rarely do when they are being insulting.”
His jaw shifted once. A quick, involuntary clench, quickly released.
You smiled faintly, letting the expression touch only your lips, not your eyes. “Tell me, Ser Gwayne. Have I become difficult to look upon, or have you merely developed some sudden, consuming fear of my face?”
“My lady—”
“You may answer plainly. I assure you, I will survive the blow.”
For a long moment, he said nothing. His hand rested at his side, the fingers perfectly still, but you had begun to recognise the effort it cost him to keep them so. At last, he looked at you properly.
“My conduct has been improper,” he said.
You lifted your brows, letting the silence draw the words out of him.
“My attention,” he said, and the word came out halting, “has been improper.”
Ah.
You let the words settle between you, turning them over, tasting them. When you looked up again, his expression was taut.
“How pious,” you said softly.
You rose from your chair. The wood of the desk was warm beneath your fingertips as you pushed yourself upright, and you saw the change in him at once.
Gwayne’s posture shifted. Almost imperceptibly, a knight bracing himself for movement, for danger. His gaze tracked you, as you came around the corner of the desk.
You moved slowly, your steps unhurried. You stopped at a proper distance. Close enough to feel the warmth radiating from his body, to catch the faint, clean scent of him.
“You are in my husband’s house,” you said, your voice pitched low. “At my husband’s table. Beneath my husband’s roof. If you are determined to behave as though that makes me impossible to see, then I must warn you, Ser Gwayne, you have chosen a very poor place in which to be blind.”
His eyes snapped to yours.
And there, beneath all that honour, all that careful, excruciating virtue, you saw it. Irritation. It warmed his face, brought a flush to his cheekbones, made his eyes glitter with something that was not quite anger and not quite desire.
Beautiful, you thought, with a flicker of cruel delight.
“You should not have sent for me,” he said. The words were ground out through clenched teeth.
You smiled. “And yet you came.”
His mouth pressed into a hard, flat line. “You must cease this.”
Your hand stilled over the correspondence. Slowly, you turned your head back towards him. “Cease what, Ser Gwayne?” Your voice was soft, almost curious.
His eyes sharpened. The green in them caught the light, flinty and hot. You watched the calculation flicker behind them, the risk of naming what he dared not name.
You let your face arrange itself into mild confusion. A little concern, even. It cost you nearly nothing, and the effect on him was immediate. His nostrils flared once. “You know very well.”
“I assure you, I do not.”
Gwayne looked towards the open door, then back to you.
The gesture was brief, but you caught it. He was measuring propriety, servants, the thin safety of appearances. He could not raise his voice. He could not accuse you too plainly. Not with the door open.
And most of all, he could not bring himself to say it. Stop looking at me. Stop calling me to you. Stop standing too close. Stop trying to make me want you.
You almost pitied him. “If I have offended you,” you said softly, “I would prefer to understand how.”
Gwayne’s gaze dropped to your mouth.
You could see the war in him, the desire to look away, to retreat, to salvage what remained of his composure. But his eyes lingered on the curve of your lips, on the slight, inviting part of them, before he wrenched his gaze back to yours with an effort that was almost violent.
The fury in his restraint was far more gratifying than any confession might have been.
“You are making sport of me,” he said.
There. As close as he could come.
You tilted your head, letting your hair slide across your shoulder. “Am I?”
He wanted to rebuke you. He wanted to leave. He wanted, perhaps most of all, for you to have enough mercy to stop forcing him to name the thing neither of you were supposed to know.
But mercy had never been among your favourite virtues.
“I had thought,” you said, letting the words drift, “that I merely summoned my husband’s cousin to ask why he has begun treating me as though I carry some illness. As though proximity to me might stain his honour.”
“You should not summon me at all.” His voice was low, threaded with something that might have been desperation.
“Because you dislike my company?”
He did not answer. He could not say yes. It would be false. He could not say no. It would be ruinous. Poor, pretty Ser Gwayne.
At last, he said, “Because it is unwise.”
Unwise. Not wrong. Not forbidden. Only unwise, as though the sin lay in the risk of discovery rather than in the act itself.
Then, very slowly, you smiled. “Then I shall try to be wiser,” you said. The softness of your voice made the lie almost beautiful.
Gwayne stared at you. He stood there, caught between the door and the desk, between duty and longing, and you could see the precise moment when he understood that you would not relent.
You turned away first, breaking the spell. You returned to your desk, the wood smooth and cool beneath your palms, and picked up the folded letter as though the matter had reached its natural conclusion.
Only then, having taken what you wanted from him did you permit him the dignity of escape. “You may go now, Ser Gwayne.”
He remained there for another moment. You did not look back, but you felt him. His anger. His restraint.
Then he bowed. “My lady.”
The words were courteous. His voice was not. You listened to his steps recede. Then the quiet pull of the door as he closed it behind him. Only once he was gone did you allow yourself to smile properly.
So.
He could be made to beg.
Gwayne had come to the conclusion several days ago that the Lady of Oldtown might be the wickedest woman alive.
It was a monstrous thought to have about his cousin’s wife.
It was also becoming increasingly difficult to disprove.
He had known you for years in the vague, ordinary manner of family by marriage. Lord Ormund’s wife. Lady Hightower. The mother of the heir. A woman of excellent birth and composed manners who inhabited the Hightower as naturally as the old stone itself.
You had been beautiful, certainly. He had never been blind. But your beauty had belonged to the room in the same manner as polished silver, carved marble, costly tapestries, and all the other fine things arranged around Ormund’s life.
A pleasant, distant ornament, admired without being touched.
Months ago, before he left for King’s Landing, you had treated him as little more than another ornament in your husband’s household. A kinsman to greet. A knight to thank. A man to whom courtesy was owed and nothing more.
Now, when you looked at him, the world tilted.
It vexed him. You vexed him.
Worse still, he could not escape you.
You were everywhere.
In the training yard, seated beneath the arcade with wine and fruit at your side, watching him as though he had been placed there for your private amusement.
In the gardens, walking slowly beneath the cypress shade. The way you said his name, Gwayne, drew out the syllables like honey, letting them rest on your tongue a moment longer than necessary. The way you touched your own throat when you spoke to him, fingers trailing along the column of your neck as though you were showing him where you wanted his mouth.
At supper, beside Ormund, where you did not need to speak to him at all.
That was perhaps the worst of it.
By day, he could at least remove himself. By night, he was made to sit across from you at his cousin’s table and endure the unbearable intimacy of being observed in plain sight.
Ormund would speak. Daeron would listen with patient attention. Olyvar would lean sleepily against his mother’s side, his small hand resting on your breast without any of the meaning that haunted Gwayne’s own thoughts.
And you would look at Gwayne.
You looked rarely enough that each glance struck him cleanly. A slow lift of your eyes while reaching for your cup. The deliberate arch of your back as you leaned forward to set down your glass, the fabric of your gown tightening over the curve of your breasts.
Except he always felt it.
He began drinking less at supper. Wine softened resolve. Wine made men slow and foolish. Wine allowed thoughts to loosen from the places where discipline had bound them.
So he watered his cup more heavily, ignored Ormund’s amused remarks about moderation, and kept his hands folded or occupied with his knife whenever you were near.
It did not help. Sobriety only made him more aware. He noticed everything with painful clarity, the colour of your mouth, red and full and slightly parted, as though you were always about to speak, or to kiss.
The measured grace of your hands as you fed some small piece of fruit to Olyvar, and he could not stop imagining what they might feel like wrapped around something else. The faint perfume that followed when you passed behind his chair, a blend of jasmine and something warmer, something that made his mouth water and his groin tighten.
There were evenings when he left the table feeling as though he had survived a battle no one else had seen.
His cock would be half-hard, aching against the seam of his breeches, and he would have to walk carefully, slowly, to keep his body from betraying him.
He would retreat to his chambers and pour cold water from the basin, splashing it over his face, his neck, the burning length of his arousal, praying for relief that never came.
And sleep, which should have offered mercy, became another place where you found him.
In dreams, you were less careful. In dreams, your lips brushed his ear as you whispered things no honourable woman would ever say aloud.
I want you inside me, Gwayne. I want to feel you stretch me, fill me, ruin me.
Your hand rested over his bare chest, palm warm against the hard, uneven beat of his heart, and then slid lower, down the plane of his stomach, past the trail of auburn hair, until your fingers curled around the rigid length of his cock.
In dreams, you stroked him slowly, your thumb circling the slick head, your breath hot against his throat while you whispered that you had thought of this, of him, every night since he returned.
Sometimes he saw only fragments, the red tint of your mouth, which left marks all over his body like a brand. The dark sweep of your lashes as you looked up at him on your knees, your lips parted, your tongue tracing the tip of him before you took him into the wet heat of your mouth.
A place no man had any right to imagine you.
And yet he did. He imagined you swallowing him, your cheeks hollowed, your eyes glazed with want, your hands gripping his thighs as you took him deeper, deeper, until he spilled down your throat with a groan that tore from his chest.
He would wake before dawn with his breath unsteady and his body burning with the evidence of thoughts he had not permitted himself while conscious.
The sheets would be tangled around his legs, damp with sweat, and his cock would be painfully hard, slick with the evidence of his shame. He would lie there, staring at the dark ceiling, and feel the phantom warmth of your mouth still lingering on his skin.
Desire had made a traitor of his flesh, and no amount of cold water splashed across his face, no amount of silent, bitter prayers muttered into the dark, seemed able to make it loyal again.
So he went to the Sept.
He went more often than duty required.
In the grey hush before morning, when the candles had burned low and the air smelled of wax, Gwayne knelt before the Seven and forced discipline into himself one prayer at a time.
The chill of the floor seeped through the wool of his breeches, a grim penance against the warmth still lingering from his dreams.
To the Warrior, he prayed for strength, the strength to wrestle his own nature into submission, to look at you without hardening. To the Father, for just judgment, though he knew any fair verdict would condemn him. To the Mother, for mercy, though he did not think he deserved any measure of it.
And to the Maiden, he found himself unable to pray without shame curdling thick and bitter in his throat.
The statue regarded him with downcast stone eyes, her hands folded in a gesture of perfect innocence, and every image of purity she offered turned, wickedly, inexorably, back towards you. The fall of her marble gown became the drape of your silk. The modest curve of her mouth became the full, parted softness of your lips, red and wet and waiting.
The purity of her form dissolved into the memory of your body moving beneath candlelight, the shadow of your nipples against the fabric, the sway of your hips as you walked past his chair.
That was when he knew he was in danger.
Not when you smiled at him across the training yard. Not when he woke hard and aching from dreams of your mouth on his cock. Not even when he began avoiding the very corridors of his own kin’s house like some green boy frightened of the cook’s daughter.
No. He knew he was truly lost when sacred things began to bend around the shape of his temptation.
When the flicker of candle flames recalled the heat in your gaze. When the scent of frankincense mingled too closely with the memory of your perfume.
When the word sin no longer frightened him quickly enough, because it had become inseparable from the thought of you.
He confessed in fragments. Not to a septon. He did not trust his own mouth to form the truth where another man might hear it. Instead, he knelt with his head bowed, and spoke only inside himself, where the gods could see what he was too cowardly to name aloud.
I have entertained impure thoughts. I have looked too long. I have wanted what is not mine.
Even that was not honest enough. Because the whole truth was uglier, heavier, more damning.
He did not merely want a woman who belonged to another man. He wanted you. And some part of him, some shameful, resentful, deeply buried part he had spent years mastering, knew exactly whose wife you were and wanted you more because of it.
Ormund’s ring on your finger. Ormund’s name on your tongue. Ormund’s bed you shared, the sheets where you lay bare and willing for a man who did not deserve the half of what he possessed.
That was where guilt turned into something heavier.
Ormund, who was arrogant, impossible, vain in the way only highly cultivated men managed to be. Ormund, who had corrected him since boyhood, bested him when he could, raged when he could not, and carried every triumph as though it had been written into the order of the world.
Gwayne had learned early how to yield.
A boy could only endure so many games ruined by Ormund’s wounded pride before he understood that victory was not always worth the cost. Let him win. Let him speak. Let him stand taller if standing taller kept the peace.
Cousin. Lord. Blood.
And yet at supper, Ormund sat beside you and spoke as though everything in the room existed by his possession of it. His tower. His table. His wife.
And you looked at Gwayne over the rim of your cup.
That was the thought that made him feel most wretched. Not merely that he wanted you.
That he reveled in being wanted by you. That when Ormund’s attention was elsewhere and your gaze found Gwayne’s across the table, something low and disgraceful in him answered with a surge of savage, possessive triumph.
Not yours, cousin. Mine.
He closed his eyes, and the taste of the communion wine on his tongue was not enough to wash away the imagined sweetness of your mouth.
Gwayne bowed his head and swallowed hard, his hands clasped so tightly before him that the knuckles ached.
He prayed for deliverance, knowing he would not recognise it if it came. He prayed for punishment, knowing he deserved nothing less than the fire of seven hells.
He prayed, most of all, for the strength to stop wanting the very thing he feared, with every desperate, traitorous beat of his heart, he would not refuse if it ever came close enough.
He prayed for a grace he knew he did not possess, while his body, his treacherous, aching, unredeemed body, prayed silently for you.
Supper, again.
There was nothing unusual in that. And yet Ormund, for reasons known only to himself and whatever dark humour had taken root in him that evening, had chosen his cousin as his entertainment tonight.
It had begun lightly enough. A remark about Gwayne’s return from King’s Landing. Some comment on how the capital seemed to drain the vigour from men who were not careful of it.
Gwayne had accepted it with a faint smile and a lowered gaze, giving the answer expected of him.
Then Ormund had continued. That was always the danger with him. A single barb was never enough if the first found flesh.
“I only say it out of concern,” Ormund said, turning his cup slowly between his long fingers. “There is a certain manner men bring back from the Red Keep. A taste for ceremony over substance. They stand straighter, speak less, and begin to mistake silence for depth. Or emptiness for self-control.”
Gwayne’s expression did not change. He sat with one hand resting near his knife, the other pressed flat against his thigh, as if grounding himself in the solid weight of his own bones.
Only the faint colour along his cheekbones, deepening towards his jaw, suggested the words had landed anywhere at all.
“You find me changed, then?” he asked mildly.
“I find you quieter,” Ormund replied. “Though perhaps that is mercy. A man who speaks less reveals less of his want. It is a useful discipline.”
Daeron glanced down at his plate. You remained silent, your hand stroking Olyvar’s back in slow, absent circles.
There were many things your husband enjoyed, but few so much as the sound of a room carefully adjusting itself around his temper. He had a talent for creating discomfort without ever raising his voice.
Ormund looked to Daeron then, drawing the boy in with the careless confidence of a man who knew refusal would feel like disrespect. “You noticed it as well, surely. Ser Gwayne has returned to us a model of piety.”
Daeron’s fingers tightened around his cup. “I had thought my uncle much the same as he was,” he said carefully.
“A loyal answer,” Ormund said, smiling faintly. “Not a perceptive one. But a boy cannot be expected to read the hunger a man hides behind his prayers.”
Daeron’s face warmed.
Gwayne looked at him then, not at Ormund. The look was brief, steadying, almost protective. It seemed to say that none of this mattered, that the boy need not trouble himself trying to answer well.
Ormund leaned back, pleased with himself. “Come now, my Prince. You have spent enough time under my roof to know that affection does not require blindness. Even kin may be assessed honestly.”
Daeron swallowed. “Ser Gwayne is an honourable knight.”
“Honourable, yes,” Ormund allowed, the words falling like a judgement from a high bench. “But honour is a beginning, not an accomplishment. Many dull men are honourable because they lack the imagination to be otherwise. Or the appetite for the pleasures that require a bolder nature.”
Daeron persisted. His voice was quiet, but it cut through the table’s hush like a stone through still water. “I do not think Ser Gwayne dull.”
Ormund’s eyes slid back to him. The boy seemed to regret speaking the moment the words left him, but he did not take them back. You saw the effort it cost him to remain seated properly, to meet Ormund’s attention and not shrink from it.
Gwayne saw it too.
“My prince is kind,” he said, before Ormund could answer. His voice was calm. “But your lord is not wrong to say I am not made for the games of court and chamber. I have always been a simpler instrument.”
Ormund smiled. The smile of a man who had seen his opponent lay down his sword.
“No,” your husband said. “You were always more suited to sword and saddle. There is use in that, of course. Every house requires bodies that can be aimed. Strong hands and a willing back. A sword has no need of pride, only a hand to wield it.”
The servants continued moving as though nothing had happened. A dish was replaced. Wine was poured. Somewhere beyond the windows, the evening wind moved faintly against the stone.
Gwayne gave a small inclination of his head. “As you say, cousin.”
The words were old. Worn smooth from years of use. You looked at Gwayne and wondered how many times he had said them as a boy. How many times he had decided that yielding was simpler.
How many little contests Ormund had been allowed to win so the household might be spared his wounded pride.
Your husband turned to you then.
There was a glimmer in his eyes, subtle but unmistakable, the satisfied gleam of a man who had performed precisely as he wished and now sought the most particular witness.
His wife. Beautiful, silent, seated beside him in green silk that caught the candlelight in slow, liquid shifts, watching with an expression he had not yet managed to read.
“What say you, my love?” Ormund asked. “Am I too severe?”
He wanted you to admire him.
He had taken a man apart in small, polished pieces and now expected you to praise the elegance of the blade. You looked at him for a long moment. Long enough for the silence to grow heavy with the weight of what he was not hearing.
Ormund waited, his mouth faintly curved, ready to be indulged.
Across the table, Gwayne did not move. He stared down at his cup as though your answer had nothing to do with him.
Daeron’s gaze remained fixed on his plate, a flush creeping up from his collar.
You stroked Olyvar’s hair once, the soft strands slipping through your fingers like silk, then lifted your wine.
“I think,” you said at last, “that you always know precisely how much severity a room will tolerate.”
Ormund’s smile sharpened, pleased before he understood you fully. Then something in his expression cooled by a fraction, a tightening at the corners of his mouth, a flicker of recognition that he had not been praised but measured.
You took a slow drink. The wine was warm on your tongue.
Gwayne’s eyes lifted.
They met yours across the table, and for a breathless instant, the room fell away. There was only that look, before he lowered his gaze once more.
Ormund studied you over the rim of his own cup, some private irritation passing like shadow behind his face. But there were servants in the room, and Daeron at the table, and his sleeping son tucked against your side. So he did not press you.
Instead, he gave a soft, dismissive hum.
“A wife’s answer,” he said.
You lowered your cup, the ceramic clicking softly against the wood. “Naturally. I am told I am very accomplished at being one.”
Daeron did not dare look at you.
Gwayne did. This time, he failed to hide it.
You held his gaze across the table, your face calm, your pulse strangely awake beneath your skin. There was no smile this time. Only the plain, silent acknowledgement that you had seen what Ormund had done to him. And that you had not partook.
Ormund resumed speaking before the quiet could thicken beyond his control, turning the conversation towards the rebuilding of some minor sept outside the city.
And supper ended without further incident.
That was to say, no one raised their voice, no cup was overturned, no servant was sent scurrying from the room with instructions to summon anyone of consequence.
Ormund rose from the table satisfied with himself, as he so often did, and excused himself to attend to some letters that apparently required the grave intervention of his intellect.
Daeron slipped away soon after, his shoulders dropping as he crossed the threshold. Olyvar had long since been carried to his bed, heavy-eyed and half-asleep against your shoulder before his nurse came to collect him.
You remained a little while longer.
Only when the servants began clearing the last of the cups, did you finally rise and leave the solar. The halls of the Hightower were cooler at night, the old stone holding the memory of the sea wind even when the windows were shuttered.
You had nearly reached the turn towards your personal chambers when you saw him.
Ser Gwayne stood near one of the tall arched windows, half in shadow, his hand braced lightly against the stone ledge as he looked out over the city below. Beyond the glass, the lights of Oldtown glittered like scattered embers, and the distant spire of the Starry Sept rose against the dark sky.
For a moment, neither of you spoke.
Then he straightened.
“My lady.”
You looked at him carefully in the dim torchlight. The humiliation from supper had not left him. His face was composed, but there was a tiredness around his eyes, a thinness to his mouth. A man who had endured insult after insult without allowing any of them the dignity of visible injury.
“You do that often,” you said.
Gwayne’s gaze moved to yours. “My lady?”
“Allow him to make sport of you... to bully you.”
Gwayne went still, the last of his polite greeting draining from his face like water through sand. “My cousin does not bully me,” Gwayne said.
You nearly smiled at the choice of denial. The way he said it, the lie worn smooth by repetition.
“No. Of course not. Lord Ormund is far too cultivated for anything so plain.” You let your eyes drift towards the dark window. “He merely cuts, and waits to see who is polite enough to bleed quietly.”
Gwayne’s mouth tightened. The muscle in his jaw jumped once, a small betrayal of control. “You need not defend me.”
“I did not.”
His eyes narrowed, exhaustion and something sharper. “Then why—?”
“My husband asked me a question,” you said, your voice soft and even. “I answered.”
Gwayne looked away first.
In profile, the resemblance between him and Ormund was clearer, the same noble blood shaped differently, Ormund severe and ornamental, Gwayne cleaner, warmer, made dangerous by the very effort he took to be good.
After a moment, he gave a quiet, humourless breath.
“Why do you care?”
There it was. Not accusation at first. Weariness. Frustration. Something close to embarrassment that you had seen too much.
You took a step nearer, unhurried. “Because I prefer you.”
Gwayne’s head turned back to you. For one suspended moment, the words seemed to pass through him without finding a place to settle. And you watched the slow process of their meaning sinking into his skin like water into thirsty ground.
Then weariness hardened into anger so quickly you almost felt the air shift with it.
“You should not say such things.”
“Why?”
“You know why.” His voice was low, rough at the edges. “You are married.”
“I am aware.”
“This is not some idle game.”
“No?” You let the word linger, arching your brow just enough to catch the torchlight.
“No.” He stepped closer then, not enough to threaten, but enough that you felt the heat of his temper more keenly than before. “Whatever amusement you find in this, whatever pleasure you take in provoking me, it is sin. It is dishonour. It is adultery.”
You watched him, unmoved. The word hung in the air like a bell that had been struck and was still trembling.
“We have committed no adultery,” you said softly, your voice dropping to a murmur that seemed to brush against his skin. “Not yet.”
Gwayne stared at you.
The silence after that was almost violent. His breath came shallow, his chest rising and falling beneath the fine wool of his doublet.
His throat moved once, and you had the sudden impression that every prayer he had ever spoken had risen in him at once and found no answer strong enough to silence the want curling in his gut.
He looked appalled by you. By himself. By the fact that you had taken the ugliest word he possessed and handled it as though it were merely a door neither of you had opened.
“Do not,” he said, but his voice cracked on the second word.
He was angry. Humiliated. Aroused. You could see each one warring through him, as they bled into each other, staining his composure, making his breath come faster.
“You should return to your chambers,” he said, but the words were barely audible now.
“You should stop telling me what I ought to do.”
His breath left him through his nose, a sharp, frustrated sound that was almost a groan. Anyone might turn the corner. A servant, a guard, Ormund himself. Gwayne was surely thinking the same thing. Still, he did not move.
You lifted your hand and touched his chest. Your palm settled over the front of his doublet, light enough to be refused, deliberate enough that refusal would require movement.
The fabric was warm from his body, fine and smooth beneath your fingers. Beneath it, you felt the solid wall of his chest, the hard muscle tensing at your touch.
His breath caught.
Beneath the fine cloth, his body went rigid. You felt the hard shape of him, the held breath, the living warmth beneath all that piety. The heat of his skin seemed to seep through the layers, reaching for yours.
His eyes dropped to your hand. Then, suddenly, his fingers closed around your wrist.
It was the first time Gwayne had touched you as a man rather than a courtier offering courtesy. His grip was firm and warm, the calluses of his palm rough against the soft skin of your inner wrist.
You looked up at him.
His face had changed. The anger was still there, but it had been overtaken by something more dangerous. Want, stripped of all its polite disguises.
His pupils had dilated, the torchlight catching the dark gleam of his eyes. His lips parted slightly, and you saw the quick movement of his tongue wetting them.
He was looking at you now as he had fought not to look for days, with his restraint pulled so taut that one more breath might snap it entirely.
Your wrist remained caught in his hand. Neither of you moved.
Then his gaze fell to your mouth. This time, he did not pretend otherwise. His eyes traced the curve of your lips, the slight parting of them, the shine of moisture where your tongue had touched.
You felt the smallest shift in him before it happened. His grip tightened, his fingers pressing into your pulse point.
His body leaned nearer by a fraction, the space between you shrinking until you could feel the warmth of his breath on your skin. His eyes lifted once to yours, as though searching for some last warning, some final scrap of sense.
You gave him none.
For one wild, breathless instant, you thought he would kiss you.
He would kiss you as the man who had sat across from you at supper and endured your husband’s insults while your gaze rested on the bruise of his pride. He would kiss you as the man who had prayed against wanting you and failed.
His mouth came close enough that you felt the warmth of his breath, the faint brush of air across your lips. His chest pressed against your hand, the rapid beat of his heart hammering against your palm.
Then he stopped.
A muscle jumped in his jaw, tight and hard as a bowstring. His eyes closed briefly and when they opened again, something cold and brutal had returned to them. The hunger was locked away, and in its place stood a fortress.
He released your wrist as though it had burned him.
You remained very still, your hand falling slowly back to your side, the memory of his calloused palm scorched into your skin.
Gwayne stepped away, putting cold stone between you.
“You shame yourself,” he said, his voice low and rough, “And you would have me drown in that shame with you.”
The words struck cleanly, a blade drawn across the softest part of your pride. For a second, there was no sound but the faint hiss of the nearest torch and the ragged sound of his breathing, quick and shallow as a hunted thing.
Then heat rose beneath your skin, not the sweet warmth of desire, but the bitter burn of humiliation. You had offered him the victory of your nearness, the scent of your skin, the softness of your mouth beneath his.
And then he had chosen to rebuke you as though he had not been one breath from proving himself no better than the rest… as though his own cock had not been stiff with the very sin he now condemned.
“Do not flatter yourself, Ser Gwayne.” Your voice emerged smooth and cold. “Do not mistake a moment’s curiosity for a need I am desperate to repeat.”
His expression flickered. Shock. Shame. Something raw and wounded beneath.
“You must not speak to me so again,” he said, but the authority had drained from it, leaving only a plea and a warning tangled together.
Your smile vanished.
Something in Gwayne’s face shifted when he saw it, some belated understanding that he had passed from guilt into insult.
And that you, unlike the gods he prayed to every night, were not inclined towards mercy. You stepped back. This time, he was the one who looked unsettled, his hand lifting an inch as though to reach for you before he caught himself.
“Then you shall be relieved to know I have no reason to remain here.” Your voice had gone cool enough to frost the stone between you, to freeze the very heat you had stoked between his thighs. “I ought to return to my husband. He will not turn from what I offer.”
Gwayne flinched. The mention of Ormund, a lash across his conscience.
You gathered your skirts and turned from him, anger carrying you before pride could be made to limp behind it. You did not look back. Not once.
Let him stand there with his honour. Let him pray over the taste of almost. You had offered him the edge of something exquisite, and he had chosen to bleed himself on restraint rather than fall into the sweetness of your body.
Very well, you would return to Ormund.
And Ser Gwayne Hightower could choke on whatever holy comfort he found in that.
For the first three days, Gwayne told himself he had been granted mercy
He woke each morning with the ghost of your scent still tangled in the linen and the shameful, persistent stiffness of his cock beneath the sheets. The remnant of dreams so vivid they left him breathless and aching. Dreams of your mouth. The weight of your thigh over his hip.
He punished his body to quiet his mind.
He rode until his thighs burned and the saddle rubbed him raw, forcing exhaustion into his bones so that sleep might come without your face behind his eyelids.
He sparred until sweat darkened his tunic and the ache in his shoulders became something pure, something that had nothing to do with the memory of your skin beneath his hand.
He prayed in the sept until his knees bruised on the cold stone, begging the Mother and the Maiden to scour your image from his thoughts.
It did not work.
By the fourth day, the truth cracked through his ribs like a splintered lance. Your silence was not mercy. It was the most exquisite punishment you could have devised against him.
Because he had spent every hour organising himself around the task of resisting you. The war had given his days shape.
Do not look at her mouth. Do not imagine the weight of her breast in your palm. Do not let your voice soften when you speak her name. Do not think of her cunt… warm, wet, waiting for a husband who does not deserve it.
Every moment had possessed its own private battle. Then, suddenly, the siege was lifted. The enemy had withdrawn behind her walls. And he was left standing on the empty field with his sword drawn, looking like the greatest fool in the Seven Kingdoms.
He became a hound scenting the air for a master who had locked him out.
At supper, you starved him. When courtesy compelled a greeting, your voice emerged smooth and cool as river-stone.
“Ser Gwayne.” No honeyed edge. No secret sliding of your gaze down the length of his body.
“My lady,” he answered, and the effort of keeping his voice level made his jaw ache.
It made his throat tight with the effort of pretending he did not want to drag you from that chair and take you against the nearest wall.
Then you turned away.
You looked at Ormund. You laid your hand on Ormund’s arm. You smiled at him. It should have relieved him, this withdrawal. Seven above, he had begged for it.
Had he not gone to the sept with his hands clasped too tightly, praying for the strength to remove you from his thoughts? Had he not rebuked you in the corridor with every scrap of honour left to him?
You were doing exactly what decency demanded.
And it was ruining him.
By the third supper, he felt the absence of your gaze like a physical deprivation. He had condemned that gaze so fiercely when he possessed it. He had called it temptation. He had called it wickedness.
Now, without it, he felt like some poor living thing dragged from the sun, withering in the cold. That thought shamed him nearly as much as the dreams.
You were cruel, Gwayne decided. No woman could do what you had done by accident.
No woman could spend weeks drawing a man’s desire out from beneath his armour, teaching his body to answer yours like a well-strung lute, and then step back into the safety of cold courtesy as if she had merely been practicing a dance.
As if his prayers, his shame, his despair had been nothing more than an entertainment that had briefly failed to please you.
But the true poison in the cup was Ormund.
Gwayne had endured his cousin all his life. Ormund’s pride. His theatrical displeasures. The exquisite little humiliations dressed as wit. That was familiar territory. Irritating, yes. Often humiliating. But known.
Now, however, he found himself aware of Ormund in ways he had never permitted himself before.
Aware of how often Ormund addressed you, seeking your ear. Aware of the way your husband’s hand rested at the back of your chair. Aware of how Ormund sought your approval with a subtle, wheedling persistence that should have been laughable.
It was not laughable.
Because Gwayne watched you lean into that touch. Watched you offer Ormund the attention that he was dying for. He imagined Ormund in your chambers. He imagined your husband’s hands on your skin, his mouth on your throat, his body moving over yours in the dark.
One evening, Ormund spoke at length about some carved screen he had commissioned for the lower hall. He described the quality of the wood, the way the artisan had coaxed the figures from the surface like peeling back a lover’s gown.
He praised the cleverness of the design, the interlacing vines and hidden beasts, and then, with that familiar curl of his lip, dismissed the inferior works of other houses. He performed. He always performed.
And though half the room might have been spared by a merciful collapse of the ceiling, you listened. Not with affection, Gwayne could see that plainly enough. You did not adore Ormund. But you indulged him.
You tilted your head at the correct moment. You gave him a faint smile over your wine, lips parting just enough to wet the rim of the cup. You offered, in that smooth voice, exactly enough admiration to satisfy him.
“It is finely chosen,” you said. “You have always had a good eye for ornament.”
Ormund’s face warmed with pleasure, his chest puffing slightly as he reached for your hand where it rested near his plate. He lifted it to his lips, a slow kiss to your knuckles.
Gwayne wanted to be the one holding your hand. He wanted to feel your pulse beneath his thumb, wanted to taste the salt of your skin on his tongue. He looked down at his plate instead. He hated himself for that too. Hated, most of all, the vile little thought that came again before he could stop it, curling through his mind like smoke from a censer,
She does not want him.
It brought him no peace. Only more shame. Because you might not want Ormund, but you sat beside him. You wore his house colours. You bore his name. You had borne his son, had given that smug, undeserving man a child from your own womb.
When the household looked at you, they saw Lady Hightower, Lord Ormund’s wife. And still, when you laughed softly at something Ormund said, a throaty sound that made Gwayne’s sack ache, he felt betrayed.
By the next supper, he was no better.
You arrived late, though not so late as to be remarked upon. Ormund looked up first, displeasure prepared and then softened, as it often did, by the sight of you. His eyes trailed over your gown, the low cut of the bodice, the way the fabric clung to the swell of your breasts.
Olyvar brightened at once and reached for you when you passed behind his chair, and you bent to kiss your son’s head.
Gwayne looked at his cup. He told himself not to look again.
Then Ormund said your name.
Not sharply. Merely summoning your attention to some matter beside him. You leaned closer to your husband, one hand resting lightly against the table, close enough that your fingers brushed his. Gwayne saw the way his cousin’s hand turned, palm up, inviting yours to rest within it. He saw you place your hand in Ormund’s.
He felt the movement like a hand closing around his throat.
He looked up despite himself. Then, as though feeling Gwayne’s gaze across the table, your eyes lifted. At last.
For one breath, you looked at him. Only a cool acknowledgement, as one might grant a man whose presence was expected and uninteresting. Then you returned your attention to your husband.
The pain of it was so precise it almost steadied him. A clean, sharp blade slipped between his ribs. Yes, he thought, staring down at his untouched wine, his jaw tight, his throat dry.
Wickedest woman alive.
Your existence must have driven him to madness. There was no other sensible explanation. No other defence for why, after a week of praying against you, he had written a note with his own hand and left it in your solar.
He had not trusted a servant with it. The thought alone had sickened him. No. If disgrace was to be invited, he had at least possessed the miserable dignity of delivering the invitation himself.
The note had been brief. Painfully so.
My lady,
If you would grant me a private word after supper, I shall await you in my chambers.
Ser Gwayne Hightower
A private word. What a cowardly phrase. What a polished little lie. What he wanted was not words.
He did not know what he wanted from you. Explanation, perhaps. Some answer for why you had made a ruin of his thoughts and then withdrawn as though he had ceased to amuse you. Or comfort, though the shame of desiring comfort from you nearly made him crush the parchment in his hand.
Perhaps he wanted you to look at him. That was the worst possibility. That he had summoned his cousin’s wife to his chambers after supper because he could no longer bear being deprived of her gaze.
By the time the meal ended, Gwayne was certain he had made a catastrophic mistake. By the time he reached his chambers, he was certain of very little.
He paced like a condemned man. The room was orderly, as it always was. Nothing in the chamber suggested sin. Nothing in it looked capable of holding you. And yet the air felt altered because he was waiting for you inside it.
Gwayne stopped before the small polished mirror and immediately despised himself for doing so. Still, he adjusted his collar. Then smoothed his hair. Then did it again. The ridiculousness of it struck him with almost physical force. He was a grown man. Years your senior, no less.
He turned away from the mirror. Then turned back once more, his fingers brushing the front of his breeches where the fabric had begun to tent, pressing himself flat in a futile attempt at composure.
“Seven preserve me,” he muttered.
A knock came at the door.
His heart stilled. For one absurd moment, he thought of not answering, of letting the note remain unanswered and the shame remain private. But his body moved before cowardice could complete the thought. His hand found the latch.
He opened the door. And for a moment, Gwayne forgot every carefully prepared word.
You stood in the corridor, dressed for the night, or near enough to it to undo him utterly. A pristine pale nightgown showed beneath a robe fastened at your waist, the fabric modest in shape and devastating in implication.
The thin linen clung to the swell of your breasts, and he could see the dark shadow of your nipples beneath, the way the cloth dipped to follow the curve of your ribs.
Your hair was loose over your shoulders, freed from the pins and ornaments that usually made you Lady Hightower before the court. In the softer glow, you looked less like an apparition than something far more tempting.
Your brow lifted slightly. The movement drew his eyes to the arch of it, the line of your jaw, the soft parting of your lips. “You summoned me, Ser Gwayne.”
The coolness in your voice bit deeper than accusation might have done.
He stepped aside without trusting himself to speak.
You entered with a calm that felt obscene given the hour. Your eyes moved once around his chambers, taking in the bed, the devotional candle burning low near the window. A slow, faint smile touched your mouth, and he watched the way your lips curved. “How improper.”
The words were quiet. Almost idle.
Gwayne closed the door. The sound seemed too loud, a thud that echoed, sealing the two of you inside.
“You came,” he said. His voice was rougher than he intended.
You turned towards him, the loose spill of your hair shifting over your robe. “You called.”
His hands closed briefly at his sides before he forced them open. He could see the outline of your thighs through the linen, the shadow between your legs where the fabric fell in a soft V.
“I did.”
Gwayne could feel his restraint fraying in real time. The fabric of his breeches grew damp at the tip as a bead of precum leaked out.
You looked at him for a moment, then allowed your gaze to drift once more to the devotional candle. “Did I interrupt your prayers?”
That was when something in him finally broke. “You should not mock prayer.” His voice came out harsh, the words bitten off.
Your eyes returned to him, mild as ever. “I merely asked a question.”
“You know what you asked.” He took a step closer, then stopped himself, his fists clenching at his sides.
“And you know why you sent for me,” you replied.
Gwayne stared at you, and all at once the week rose inside him… every sleepless night, every wet dream, every prayer he had tried to drown you in. It surged up from his gut, and hardened his voice into something ragged.
“You are cruel,” he said.
Your expression barely changed, but something sharpened, a glint of satisfaction. “Am I?”
“Yes.” The word left him too quickly, too raw, and with it came the rest. “You have made a sport of me from the moment I returned. You looked at me over the supper table, and every look was a promise you never meant to keep. You smiled, knowing exactly how it tightened my breeches. You whispered your little meanings beneath every harmless word, and when I would not give you what you wanted, you withdrew as though I were nothing.”
You watched him with a stillness that made him angrier. The quiet composure of a cat watching its prey exhaust itself.
“You do not get to look surprised,” he said, his voice trembling now with the effort of restraint. “Not with me. You know exactly what you have done to me.”
“I have done very little, Ser Gwayne.”
The title, in that voice made something in him snap.
“Little?” He stepped away from the door, unable to remain still, his boots heavy on the stone. “You have bewitched my mind. You have tainted every prayer I offer until the words turn to ash on my tongue. You have brought shame into the sept with me. I kneel before the Mother and the Maiden and find your face, your body, beneath the robes of every goddess.”
Your lips parted faintly. The smile on your face brightened. Your nipples pressed visibly against the thin fabric of your gown. In interest.
Gwayne saw it, and it unsteadied him worse than outrage could have. “You are pleased,” he said, the words hollow. “Gods help me, you are pleased to hear this.”
You lowered your lashes for a moment, but not quickly enough to hide the triumphant glimmer there. “I am listening.”
“No. You enjoy tormenting me.”
You took one slow step closer. Gwayne went still. His whole body locked, every muscle taut.
“My poor Ser Gwayne,” you said, so gently it felt like mockery wearing silk. “Have I truly made you suffer so?”
Your gaze dropped deliberately to the front of his breeches, where the straining fabric left nothing to the imagination. A slow, knowing smile touched your lips. “It seems you are suffering even now.”
His jaw tightened hard enough to ache. “Do not.”
Your face softened into innocence. “Do not what?”
He looked at you then and hated how beautiful you were. Hated that his fury had brought a glow to your face and pleasure to your eyes. “You know.”
“I am afraid you must be plainer.”
He could hear the provocation in it, the demand for more.
“You want me to say it?” His voice rose before he could stop it. “You want me to stand here and confess that I have thought of your mouth wrapped around my cock for nights on end? That I have woken with your name caught behind my teeth and my seed hot on my belly? That I cannot hear Ormund speak of you as his wife without wanting to silence him with my fist and and bend you over the nearest surface?”
He took another step, then stopped himself, fists clenched so hard the tendons stood out. “You have made me faithless. You have made me resent my own blood. You have made me want sin, and worse, you made me miss it when you took it away..”
For the first time, you did not immediately answer. The quiet pleased him and terrified him in equal measure. You stood close enough now that the heat of your body reached his. Then you smiled.
Triumphant.
“You missed me.”
Gwayne stared at you. That was all you had taken from it. Not his guilt. Not his horror. Not the vile, glorious wreckage he had laid at your feet. You missed me. His anger returned so swiftly it nearly steadied him. “You are impossible.”
You came nearer. Slowly, as though approaching something wounded enough to bite. “You hate that you want this,” you murmured.
Gwayne’s breath altered. He felt it betray him, the way his chest rose and fell too quickly.
“Say I am wrong,” you whispered, your lips so close now that he could almost taste the words.
He said nothing. The denial died in his throat, strangled by the sight of your lips. You lifted your hand. It trembled, a tiny flaw in your perfect composure that sent a thrill through him.
Gwayne caught your wrist before you could touch him.
His fingers closed around the delicate bones, the soft skin. Your pulse hammered wildly against his thumb. He felt it. You looked down at his hand around you, then back up at him. The satisfaction simmering in your face became unmistakable.
He had meant to stop you. Instead, he was holding you.
Your voice came low, a velvet knife against his raw nerves. “There you are.”
Gwayne released you as though waking from a fever. He stepped back, and the cold air that rushed between you was a cruelty he had not deserved but accepted like penance. You remained where you were, unmoved, unashamed. Your eyes were bright with victory.
He hated you then. The hatred was a hot, venomous thing in his chest.
“You should leave,” he said.
For a moment, you only stared at him.
Then the pleasure left your face. Like a curtain drawn back from a colder room. Your mouth settled into a hard, disdainful line. Whatever warmth had gathered between you curdled instantly into something proud and wounded, and Gwayne knew that he had struck not your conscience but your vanity.
“How tedious you are,” you said, the words dipped in vitriol.
His breath remained uneven, ragged.
“You summon me to your chambers like a man half-mad with rut,” you continued, voice low and cutting, your gaze dropping deliberately to the hard outline straining against his breeches. “Accuse me of bewitching you, speak of sin and ruin as though I held a knife to your cock, and now I am to leave because your courage—”
You let out a soft, cruel laugh.
“—has failed you again.”
His jaw clenched so hard it ached. “You should never have come. I made a mistake.”
You laughed softly then, but there was no amusement in it.
“Yes,” you said. “you made a mistake. You thought you could look upon the fire and not be burned.”
Then you turned.
You let your hair spill across your back, let the silk of your robe drape over the curve of your hip. At the door, your hand touched the frame. You paused. Without looking back, you delivered the killing stroke.
“My husband awaits me in our bed, Ser Gwayne. He does not pray for permission. He does not tremble. If you do not want me, Ormund surely will.”
The words hit him like a blade sliding between his ribs. Then something in him snapped. It was the last thin thread of his obedience. His piety. His honour. His fear of the Seven. All of it fell away in a single, hot rush.
Gwayne crossed the room before sense could catch him. His hand closed around your arm and he wrenched you back towards him with such force that you stumbled against his chest.
Then he was kissing you.
There was no gentleness in the first collision. None. Only the brutal, devouring hunger he had been choking down since the first night you looked at him across Ormund’s table.
For half a heartbeat, you went still. Testing him. Then you yielded. A soft, satisfied sound, a hum of pure approval, escaped your throat and went through him like a razor dipped in honey.
Your mouth opened beneath his, warm and eager, and Gwayne felt the last of his restraint shudder out of him in a ragged groan against your lips. Your arms rose around his neck, drawing him closer with such shameless welcome that he actually did groan, a broken sound of pure, animal relief.
You did not resist. Your tongue swept against his, you let him plunder your mouth and then answered it as though you had been waiting for him to stop pretending he was anything better than this.
A sinner and a thief of another man’s wife.
His hands found your waist. The silk of your robe was smooth beneath his palms, but the body beneath it was no dream at all. He slid one hand lower, gripping the curve of your hip, then the full swell of your ass, pulling you hard against the aching length of him.
You gasped into his mouth and pressed closer, your fingers tangling in his hair, nails scraping against his scalp, your thighs pressing together against his.
Gwayne lost the ability to think in anything but fragments of pure, burning sensation, the wet heat of your mouth, the taste of wine, the soft, pleased catch in your throat when he kissed you harder, when his teeth grazed your tongue, when his hips pressed forward in an involuntary thrust, grinding himself against the soft cradle of your thighs.
He had imagined this too many times and not once had imagination been merciful enough to prepare him for this. Reality was a thousand times worse.
He could not stop. Even when some distant, horrified remnant of himself commanded him to pull away, his body refused. His mouth moved over yours again and again, harder, wetter, more desperate, as though if he devoured you thoroughly enough, he might pass the torment back into you and be free of it.
But you only held him closer. You moaned against his mouth, your nails digging into his shoulders, your body arching into his. You accepted his ruin like tribute.
He kissed you until he seemed to remember, all at once, that breathing was required of mortal men.
Only then did he break away. Barely.
His forehead came to rest against yours, the bridge of his nose brushing the tip of your own, his breath hot and uneven against your damp, parted lips.
For several moments, neither of you spoke. The only sounds were the ragged pull of his breathing, the soft rustle of silk as your body shifted against his.
Your lips were flushed from him. The sight of them, of his work upon your mouth, nearly undid him all over again. “Why?” he asked.
The word came out rougher than he intended. He closed his eyes briefly, his forehead still pressed to yours, his hands still gripping your waist.
“Out of every man who would fall over himself for one smile from you. Every knight, every lord, every fool at court who would crawl if you asked it of him.” His voice roughened further. “Why me?”
You lifted one hand from his neck and touched the side of his face, your thumb resting lightly near the sharp line of his cheekbone, tracing the faint stubble there with a slowness that made his breath catch.
He held utterly still beneath it, a hawk frozen by the weight of a gaze.
It was almost tender. Almost.
“Just to see if I could.”
Gwayne opened his eyes. For a moment, the words cut so cleanly he could not feel the wound. To see if I could.
Not because you had suffered with wanting him. Not because you had prayed against him, dreamed of him, hated yourself for the shape of him in your thoughts. Not because you had lain awake at night, hand between your thighs, imagining the weight of his body on yours. Not because he was good. Not because he was loved.
Because you had looked at him and wondered whether he could be made to break. And he had.
The pain of it should have steadied him. It should have returned his anger, his dignity, some sharp fragment of self-preservation.
Instead, he looked at you and thought, with a despair so complete it nearly became peace, that he would cut his own heart from his chest and lay it in your hands if you asked him sweetly enough.
How cruel you were. How plainly, exquisitely cruel. And still, beneath your gaze, he felt chosen. Blessed, almost. The blasphemy of that thought should have driven him to his knees before the Seven. Instead it kept him standing there with you in his arms.
“I knew it,” you whispered, your voice a low, velvet purr. A faint smile touched your swollen lips. “I knew you wanted me.”
Gwayne’s grip tightened at your waist, his fingers digging into the silk of your robe. “You are wicked.”
“Yes.”
“You are vain.”
“Yes.”
“You are faithless.”
Your smile softened, but only at the edges, a flicker of something almost tender. “And yet.”
And yet. And yet he wanted you. And yet his cousin’s wife stood in his chambers with her arms around his neck, looking at him as though all his honour had only made the conquest sweeter.
Gwayne closed his eyes for one brief, agonised moment.
He despised you. He loved you.
The two truths struck together inside him until he could no longer tell which was meant to save him and which was meant to damn him.
His mouth crashed against yours with a force that drove you back a step, his hand sliding from your waist to the small of your back, pressing you hard against him so that you could feel the full, aching length of him, pressed against the soft cradle of your belly.
His hand rose to your jaw, fingers splaying along the delicate bone, thumb pressing against the hinge as he angled your head and kissed you with everything he had tried to bury.
He felt your smile against his lips, the way it softened the kiss even as his tongue plunged deeper. And yet somehow that seemed to upset him more.
His hands slid down your sides, over the curve of your hips, then lower still, palms flattening against the backs of your soft thighs. Without a second thought, he gripped the soft flesh and hauled you up against him, lifting you clean off the floor.
A delighted squeal escaped your throat, quickly swallowed as you wrapped your legs around his waist, your ankles locking behind him.
The shift of your weight pressed the damp, heated core of you directly against his stomach, and he groanedd as the sensation shot a jolt straight to his cock.
The laugh you let out against his lips was breathless, almost musical, “How wild you are with your lady, Ser Gwayne.”
In response, he kissed you rougher. His tongue tangled with yours, wet and demanding, as he walked backwards, one hand gripping the curve of your ass, the other flattened against your spine.
He broke the kiss only to mutter against your mouth, “I wished for respite. And you have granted me none.”
You broke out in an evil smile, your fingers threading through the hair at the nape of his neck, tugging gently. And yet how domestic the two of you must have looked, you cradled in his arms, your thighs locked around his hips. He held you as though you were precious, even as he carried you with long strides toward his bed.
“You cannot blame me for every wicked thought in your head.”
“I can blame you for putting them there,” Gwayne murmured.
Despite his rough handling, he sat you down on the edge of his bed with surprising gentleness. The mattress dipped beneath your weight. He stood over you, chest heaving, hands flexing at his sides as though he was restraining himself from simply tearing the clothes from your body.
You shrugged out of your robe, letting the silk fall from your shoulders in a whisper of fabric. Beneath it, your nightgown clung to every curve, the thin material barely concealing the peaks of your breasts, the sweet swell of your hips.
You looked up at him through your lashes, lips still slick and swollen from his kisses, and he had to resist the urge to drool over you.
“You flatter me,” you hummed.
“I condemn you,” he said.
And yet despite his words, his hands moved to the laces of his vest, pulling them loose with rough, impatient tugs. His chest was bare now, the muscles tensing and relaxing with each ragged breath.
His eyes roamed over you as though this would be the only time he ever saw you like this, as though he was memorising every curve, every inch of skin the candlelight touched.
“With your hands on me?”
Your wit was beyond him. You seemed to take great pleasure in angering him, in mocking him, in watching the war wage behind his eyes. All he could do was lean toward you, his hands finding the soft warmth of your thighs, fingers sinking into flesh as though he meant to anchor himself.
You leaned up to meet him, close enough to feel the heat of his breath.
He murmured, almost hypnotised by your lips once more, his gaze tracing the curve of your mouth, “I have prayed against this.”
“And have the Seven answered?” you whispered, mockingly sweet, your voice a velvet taunt.
Gwayne’s brows furrowed. A muscle twitched in his jaw. The prayer had gone unanswered, of course. And now, with your thighs warm beneath his palms, he knew there was no salvation left for him.
Then, suddenly, he moved.
His hands hooked behind your knees, dragging your legs to the edge of the bed with a rough, decisive pull. You let out a surprised noise as your back hit the mattress, your hair spilling across the pillows. You bent your knees instinctively, parting them slightly, and without prompt, Gwayne’s fingers found the hem of your nightgown.
He began to slide it up your beautiful bare legs.
The silk whispered against your skin, inch by inch, revealing the soft swell of your calves, the tender flesh of your inner thighs. The more skin exposed, the more excited and nervous he became. His eyes moved to lock with yours, pools of warmth, and he wanted to drown in them.
He dragged the nightgown higher, baring your hips, the dip of your belly, the shadowed apex of your thighs. And then he dropped his eyes. Oh gods above. You were bare there as well.
No shift, no smallclothes, no linen between him and the glistening, mouth-watering sight of your cunt. The folds were slick and swollen, and wet, the lips parted as though they had been waiting for him. The candlelight caught the sheen of your arousal, a dewy trail that glistened in the nest of dark curls above.
His throat went dry. His tongue felt thick and useless. What could he say now? He stared, utterly transfixed, his hands frozen on the bunched silk at your waist.
“Say something, Gwayne,” you breathed, your voice a husky murmur, your hips shifting slightly, an invitation, a taunt. “The Seven have struck you dumb?”
He swallowed hard, his eyes never leaving the sight of you. When he finally spoke, his voice was a hoarse rasp, “I have no prayers left for this.”
His thumb moved, almost of its own accord, tracing a featherlight line up the inside of your thigh, stopping just short of where you ached for him. He closed his eyes, a low, tortured groan escaping his lips. Is this what his cousin got to smell every day?
The thought fanned a flame of dark jealousy in his chest. Ormund was spoiled beyond measure, and he never even knew the treasure he had, the altar he neglected.
He opened his eyes, lifting his gaze to you. You were watching him, bated breath, lips parted, eyes heavy with a hunger that matched his own. You gave him a subtle nod, a silent command that brooked no argument. Your fingers threaded through his hair, a gentle but firm pressure urging him forward.
And who was he to deny his lady?
He dipped his head, and the first stroke of his tongue was a revelation. A slow, flat stripe from the slick, fluttering entrance of your cunt, all the way up to the tight, swollen pearl hidden in its hood. The taste of you flooded his senses, he groaned against you, the vibration making you gasp and arch into his mouth.
“Do you taste it?” you taunted weakly, your voice a broken whisper, pleasure bleeding through the mockery. “The sin on your tongue?”
He pulled back just enough to answer, his lips brushing against your slick inner thigh. “I taste nothing but you. Only you. I have tasted nothing so divine in all my life. This is the only altar I will ever kneel at again.”
He went back in, ravenous now. He licked and sucked, his tongue circling your pearl before flicking it sharply, before flattening and pressing broad, wet kisses against your entire cunt.
He learned you quickly; what made you cry out, what made your hips buck, what made your fingers tighten painfully in his hair. He drove his tongue into you, fucking you with it, lapping at your opening like a man dying of thirst.
Your taste coated his lips, his chin, his cheeks. He was utterly lost, a drowning man who had finally found the ocean he was meant to perish in. He needed more of you. He needed to be inside you in every way possible.
His thumb found your pearl, pressing and circling in time with his tongue, while his other hand fumbled down his own body, his cock aching and hard beneath his breeches, but he denied himself for now.
He needed to taste your peak. He needed to feel it on his tongue. He slid one thick finger into you.
“Oh, fuck…” you moaned, your head thrown back against the pillows.
The heat of you wrapped around his finger, clenching tight, gripping him as if begging him not to leave. He gasped against your cunt, his eyes rolling back.
“Gods, you are so tight, my lady. How will I ever…” He pushed a second finger in, stretching you carefully, feeling your walls flutter and grip. “How will I ever fit my cock inside you when you squeeze my fingers so sweetly?”
“You will make yourself fit, Gwayne,” you insisted, your nails raking his scalp. “You will fill me until I cannot remember my own name. You will stretch me until I forget the feel of my husband’s cock.”
He groaned, a sound torn from the depths of his chest, and curled his fingers inside you, finding that rough, secret spot that made you scream.
“That’s it, my sweet knight,” you purred, your voice a velvet whip. “Drink from me. This is what you starved for while you knelt in the sept and begged for deliverance. There is no deliverance here. Only me.”
He pulled his mouth away just long enough to answer, his lips slick. “I have never wanted anything the way I want to be buried inside you. To feel you clench around me. To hear you scream my name until your voice breaks.”
He returned to his feast with a desperation that bordered on madness. His fingers pumped steadily, while his tongue was a relentless, flickering fire on your pearl. He was utterly consumed. The world had narrowed to the space between your thighs.
“Gwayne…” you gasped, your inner walls beginning to flutter and clamp around his fingers. “I am so close… I am going to… oh, gods, I am going to—”
But he did not stop. He could not stop. He was drunk on you, starving for you, and the thought of your release flooding his tongue was the only thing that existed in the universe.
Your first peak crashed over you like a wave of fire and lightning. Your body locked up, a sharp, keening cry tearing from your throat as your release gushed over his fingers and into his waiting mouth.
He drank it greedily, his tongue lapping at your pearl, swallowing every drop of your pleasure as though it were the holiest of sacraments.
But he did not relent.
The pleasure was blinding, a sharp, sweet agony, but his tongue kept moving, laving at your oversensitive pearl, his fingers still thrusting inside you, milking you for every last shuddering wave.
“Gwayne!” you gasped, your hands clawing at his hair, trying to pull him away. “Too much… it is too much…!”
He was deaf to it. He was drowning. The overstimulation was unbearable, a fire that burned too brightly, and yet his mouth was relentless, chasing more of your taste.
You had to shove him, your body arching away on the bed, your thighs snapping shut around his head to block him.
“Stop! Please, stop, I cannot—!”
He lifted his head, finally, lips slick and swollen, cheeks flushed, chin glistening with your wetness. His eyes were wild and dark, pupils blown wide with a hunger that was far from sated.
“Did… did I hurt you?” His voice was hoarse, confused, as if he was just waking from a fever dream.
“No…” you panted, your chest heaving, your thighs still trembling from the force of your release. “No, just too much…”
He blinked, realisation dawning slowly. A slow, sinful, utterly satisfied smile spread across his glistening lips.
“Forgive me, my lady. I was lost in you. I could not bear to let you go. I did not know you had crested until you pushed me away.”
He crawled up your body, his hard length pressing against your slick thigh, leaving a trail of your own wetness on your skin as he moved. The rough wool of his breeches scratched against your oversensitive flesh.
“But now…” He lowered his mouth to yours, letting you taste yourself on his tongue. “I fear I must taste that relief for myself. Inside you.”
He pulled back just enough to meet your eyes, his forehead resting against yours, his breath mingling with your ragged pants.
“Tell me you want it. Say the words, my lady. Give me the sin I have prayed against, and I will worship you until the sun rises.”
Once again, that feline smile formed on your lips, slow and wicked, as you drank him in. His flushed state was a masterpiece… sweat beading at his temples, his lips still slick and swollen from his feast, your wetness glistening on his chin like a sacred anointing.
His pure blue eyes stared at you with such naked devotion, that it made your cunt clench around nothing, hungry for the fullness only he could provide.
“I shall never deny you, my love.”
The words slipped from your tongue like honeyed poison, and you watched the effect take hold. His breath hitched. His pupils, already blown wide, seemed to shatter and reform. That single endearment struck him deeper than any blade.
His pretty blue eyes welled with sudden, unshed tears, glistening in the candlelight. He was trying to master himself, throat working as he swallowed down the emotion that threatened to break him.
You almost pitied the man.
Your hands moved while his heart was still reeling, fingers finding the laces of his breeches. He was so lost in the storm of your words that he did not even notice until your warm palm wrapped around his cock.
The sound he made, a surprised and strangled grunt, was muffled against your mouth as you claimed his lips briefly.
His hips jerked forward, thrusting instinctively into your grip, his breath coming in ragged, desperate gasps. You slid your hand slowly down his length, feeling every ridge, every throb of his pulse against your palm. He was thick, heavy, slick with need already.
Your thumb traced the weeping slit at the tip, spreading the bead of pre-cum across his crown, and he let out a low, guttural groan that vibrated through his entire body.
“Tell me,” you purred, hand still stroking him, “how often have you dreamt of me?”
Your finger slid over his slit again, pressing just enough to make him shudder. His words came out rushed, tumbling over each other like a confession torn from a dying man.
“Every night.” His voice cracked. “Every night you have haunted my dreams. I wake hard and aching, my sheets soaked with the memory of you, my hand wrapped around myself. I have fucked my own palm more times than I can count, imagining it was your cunt, your mouth, your hand…”
“Every night?” you mocked gently, your grip tightening just enough to make him gasp. “And what did you do in these dreams, my sweet knight? Did you worship me properly? Or did you take me like the hungry beast you pretend not to be?”
“Both,” he admitted, his voice raw, his hips twitching as he fought the urge to fuck your fist. “I have been gentle. I have been rough. I have kissed every inch of your skin and I have bent you over every surface I could imagine. But always, always, I end with my cock buried inside you, spilling my seed where it does not belong.”
You laughed, and began to guide him. Your hand left his cock, and you reached down, spreading your slick folds, positioning the flushed head of his length at your entrance.
“My poor, sinful knight. So full of honour, and yet here you are, ready to defile your cousin’s wife. Tell me, Gwayne, does this make you a traitor? Or a true believer?”
“I am whatever you want me to be,” he breathed, his voice pleading. “Just let me in. Please. I beg you.”
“Beg me,” you whispered. “Beg me to let you fill me.”
“Please, my lady, my love, let me inside you. Let me feel you. Let me—”
But you did not let him finish. You pressed the head of his cock against your entrance, just barely breaching the first ring of muscle, and you held him there, torturing him.
Your words dripped with mockery, each one a sharp barb, “You are so eager to defile me, aren’t you? To spill your seed where your lord has planted his. To claim what is not yours. You are nothing but a common thief, stealing pleasures that were never meant for you.”
He flinched. The words hit their mark, striking something. His eyes, those beautiful, tear-filled blue eyes, flickered with a flash of pain,and then something darker snapped.
He did not intend to be rough. He had sworn to himself he would be gentle, would worship you, would make love to you with the love you deserved. But your mockery clawed at the raw, bleeding edges of his guilt and his desire, and before he could stop himself, he drove forward.
There was no gentleness to be found.
He slammed into you in one brutal, desperate thrust, burying himself to the hilt in a single, shuddering motion.
The air left your lungs in a sharp, shocked moan, your body arching beneath him, your nails digging into his shoulders as you were stretched and filled beyond anything you had anticipated.
He was thick, and he was deep, and the sudden fullness of him made stars burst behind your eyes.
He froze immediately, horror dawning on his face. His eyes were wide, his breath coming in ragged pants, his body trembling as he realised what he had done.
“I—I am sorry—I did not mean to—” His voice was a wrecked whisper, his hands gripping your hips, holding himself still, afraid to move. “Forgive me, I swore I would—”
But you were already clenching around him, your walls rippling and gripping his length, and the sound you made was not a cry of pain.
“Don’t you dare stop,” you gasped, your legs wrapping around his waist, pulling him deeper. “Don’t you dare be gentle now, Gwayne. You wanted to claim me? Then claim me. Fuck me like the thief you are.”
He blinked, confusion and relief warring on his face. “But I—”
“I said fuck me,” you snarled, your hips grinding against his, your nails raking down his back. “Do not temper yourself. I want to feel you in my bones tomorrow. I want to limp when I walk past my husband.”
A low, guttural groan rumbled from his chest.
The last shred of restraint crumbled, and he pulled out almost entirely, only to slam back into you with a force that made the bed frame groan.
You cried out, a sound of pure, unadulterated pleasure, and he drove into you again, harder, faster, his hips finding a brutal rhythm.
“Is this what you wanted?” he rasped, “To be taken like a common whore?”
“Yes,” you moaned, your head thrown back, your body bucking against his. “Yes, yes, yes… give me more, Gwayne. Give me all of it.”
His hand found your throat, pressing just enough to make your vision swim, and he leaned down, his lips brushing your ear, his breath hot and ragged.
“I will ruin you for any other man. I will brand myself so deep inside you that you will feel me for the rest of your life. And when you lie beside your husband, you will think of me. You will clench around him, dreaming of my cock. You will be mine, even if only in these stolen moments.”
“Yes,” you breathed, your voice breaking on the word. “Make me yours. Make me forget his name.”
And he did. He drove into you with a fervour that bordered on madness, his hips slamming against yours as he chased the oblivion of your combined release. He was in absolute heaven, lost to the world, lost to everything but the feel of your cunt gripping his cock.
“I cannot get enough of you,” he gasped against your mouth, his voice ragged. “I need—I need to be closer—”
His hands slid down your flanks, gripping your thighs, pushing them up and back until your knees pressed against your own chest.
The new angle opened you completely, and you gasped at the devastating stretch, the length of him reaching depths you had never felt before, the ridge of his cock scraping against every sensitive inch inside you.
“Seven Hells—Gwayne—” Your voice broke on a moan as he drove deeper, his hips meeting the backs of your thighs with a wet, obscene slap.
“I know,” he groaned, his forehead dropping to yours. “I know. I cannot help it. I need to be inside you. I need to fill you.” His pace quickened, became animalistic. “I need to breed you. I need to leave my seed so deep inside you that you will feel me for days. That he will know what I have done.”
The words sent a thrill through you, “Yes,” you breathed, your nails raking down his back. “Yes… breed me. Fill me. Make me yours.”
He was absolutely lost.
The pious knight, he was nothing now but a creature of pure, ravenous instinct. He fucked you as if he were trying to imprint the shape of his cock into your very flesh. The bed groaned beneath you, the headboard knocking against the stone wall in a frantic rhythm.
And through it all, he could not stop kissing you.
Every thrust was punctuated by a kiss. He kissed your lips, your chin, the corner of your mouth, returning always to your lips as if he was drawing breath from you.
His tongue swept into your mouth, tangling with yours, the kiss deepening as his hips drove harder. He kissed your throat, your collarbone, the swell of your breasts, always returning to your mouth, unable to stay away.
You felt the peak approaching for a second time, the familiar coil tightening low in your belly. “Gwayne,” you gasped against his mouth. “I am going to—I cannot hold—”
His eyes flew open, and the panic in them was raw, “Neither can I,” he grunted, his rhythm stuttering. “I must—I should not—”
He tried to slow, to pull out, his muscles tensing against the instinct to bury himself deeper. The thought of spilling inside you, of leaving the physical proof of his sin, terrified him even as it drove him wild.
But you would not let him. Your legs tightened around his waist, your heels pressing into the small of his back, locking him inside you.
“Do not dare pull out,” you insisted, “I want your seed. I want it deep inside me. Give it to me, Gwayne. Give me everything.”
A broken sound escaped his throat, “You will carry my bastard. Ormund will know. The whole world will know what I have done.”
“They won't,” you whined, your hips grinding against his. “Let Ormund look at the child in my belly and think it his. Let him see me swell with your sin. I want it. I want your child. I want to carry you inside me.”
His control shattered completely. The last frayed thread of restraint snapped. “You will be mine, then. In every way that matters.”
He drove into you one last time, burying himself to the hilt, and you felt his release.
It flooded you, pulsing deep inside your womb, and the sensation of him spilling inside you pushed you over the edge with him. You cried out against his mouth, your body arching, your inner walls clenching around him, milking him.
It felt like an eternity, the two of you locked together, trembling, whispering each other's names into the dark. When it was done, he collapsed against you, his full weight pressing you into the mattress.
His breath was ragged, his body trembling. He felt emptied, exorcised of every demon that had haunted him since the moment he first laid eyes on you.
The silence stretched, broken only by the sound of your mingled breathing. After a long moment, he stirred, lifting his head to look at you. His beautiful blue eyes were wet, his cheeks flushed, his lips swollen from your kisses. He looked utterly undone.
“I did not mean to be so rough,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.
You smiled, tracing the sharp line of his jaw with your fingertip. “I did not want gentle. I wanted you. The beast you hide behind your prayers and your honour.”
“I have no honour left,” he said, but there was no regret in his voice. Only wonder. “I have damned us both.”
“Then let us burn together,” you murmured, and leaned in to press a soft, lingering kiss to his brow.
summary: your cute upstairs neighbour holds many secrets. you're willing to close one eye to his secrecy or the way he looks at you as if you hung the stars, till you accidentally uncover letters upon letters nedpeter’s kept in his apartment—all addressed to you.
pairing: peter parker x reader
content: slight angst, flufff, comfort, no major movie spoilers!!, yes peter fumbled by using ned as his fake name, yearner peter parker!!
Hey! It’s Peter, your Peter.
Peter—clearly, Ned wasn't even his real name. Ned, the friendly neighbour from 28B who was a secretive, genius oddball—whom you suspect to be some sort of undercover agent after catching a glimpse of the ridiculously high-end tech flooding his apartment.
Overly sweet Ned, who never failed to offer a hand with your laundry basket or delivery packages, or dropping off your exact coffee order at the front door before your morning shifts, just because he could. Ned, who snaps his neck up half the time looking around with a widened, hopeful gaze when you do address him in the laundry room—as if looking for some other Ned that meant a greater deal to him than himself.
You had suspected he was likely involved in illegal activities, but when the temptation of finding his laundry basket unattended remained, you finally took the chance to return those little favours. Maybe he was the kindest stranger you've ever known, or maybe he just looked like he could use a helping hand—with how his shoulders drooped low whenever he thought no one was looking in the dingy hallways. He seemed—lonely.
Not like you were one to judge. You had always felt like a piece of you was missing, and that gaping hole behind your ribs didn't magically stitch itself closed when you grabbed your degree with crippling student loans biting at your heels, and a lousy job in the nearest soul-sucking company you could find within train distance to your apartment.
So, maybe Ned's smile that crinkled the corners of his hazel eyes flashed more than once in your thoughts, and you decided it was time to get to know the man who lived one floor above you. You expected his smile to greet you when you climbed up the rickety stairs to his apartment, not his door left ajar with webs sticking out the hinges—or letters all addressed to you scattered across the floorboards.
You didn't know what you had expected when you walked into his mess of an apartment. More so than usual, enough for you to sense the abnormality of webs upon webs coating his furniture. Stepping into what seems to be a genuine crime scene, it's as if the culprit was one massive spider that decided to make its hive in Ned's apartment.
"Ned?" You call out, worry raised in your tone as you look around—catching no sight of him through the thick layers of webbing. His large monitor screens are all left online, files left unclosed on the window tab, with no sign of their user.
You're one step away from the monitor, tempted to call the cops when you catch sight of crumpled papers upon papers scattered on the wooden floors beneath the desk. Brows furrowed, you crouch down, brushing away the loosened cobwebs coating the papers. They are— letters.
Your first instinct as your fingers trace over his handwriting, paper crumpled at the edges, is to leave it alone as it's most definitely personal—before your eyes catch sight of your name. No—you weren't imagining it. The letters were most definitely, addressed to you.
Hey! It’s Peter, your Peter.
Earlier was bad. Like, really bad. I can't believe I said 'Oh no!' to your face, like what kind of idiot does that as their first impression? Well, technically that wouldn't be our first meeting, though I doubt you'll remember me. I was anything but smooth on all the other occurences either.
Just talking with you in the hallway and carrying your boxes—I nearly forgot myself. I still can't decide if it's a curse or some cruel joke of a blessing that you moved into my apartment complex of all places. It's like the world's trying to tell me to just say the truth.
I should be going out there and telling you this instead of writing this stupid note or letter, but a letter should come in one of those fancy envelopes, so I guess I should call this a note? Anyways, I'm getting off track.
I miss being with you, and I’m so scared I’m starting to forget how it iswas between us, and talking to you again like everything was normal just—I had the urge to sit down and write to you, before I did anything stupid. So I could talk to you, in some way, without hiding behind 'Ned'. How stupid can I be, using Ned's name, like was that seriously all I could think of? I don’t know if this note will be worth anything by the end, but I think it’ll hurt worse if I just let what happened simmer in my brain.
I miss you so, so much. It feels like it's killing me sometimes, and I don't know what to do with myself now that you're here, so close to me, for what could be a really long time. I don't know what hurts worse, being apart from you or this, and I don't know what I'm going to do. You'd know what to say, and I wish you could tell me. I miss you ordering me around. I just miss you.
Love,
Your Peter.
Your heart thumps painfully against your ribcage, fingers tightening over the crinkled edges, digging deeper into the forming lines. What kind of sick joke was this? Had he known you for longer—since before you moved into this apartment?
His strange reaction when he had bumped into you in the hallway for the first time reformed in your memory, the intensity of a stranger that came off as more than usual awkwardness.
"Sorry for bumping into you—" You huff, a cramped smile peeking through the many boxes you're carrying. "Not my best line of sight right now."
Past the boxes, is possibly the cutest potential neighbour you've ever seen. With wettened curls drooping over his forehead, a towel draped around his neck, in his grey sweats and baggy hoodie—this stranger looks like a dream. Or maybe you're just in desperate help to ease the load on your arms that carries your entire future life in this new apartment complex.
"What are you doing here?"
You blink, stunned by his sudden interrogation. That was—not what you expected. You run faces through your mind, anyone you may have accidentally pissed off in the last four years of your university life, but his doesn't come to mind at all. You would remember that face.
Especially if he's staring at you like the existence of you in this cramped hallway was a signal that the world was collapsing on him and his perfect curls.
"Uhm, I live here?" You answer, shuffling the boxes awkwardly between your two palms. "Well, starting today—I do."
Your words register slowly for him, and you feel it in the strain of your arms under the boxes, as the fact that you're his actual neighbour slowly kicks in to his senses.
"Oh." His lips part in genuine anguish. "Oh no."
"Yikes." You wince. "That's a warm welcome."
He's panicking. The cute stranger looks like he's one miscalculated breath away from passing out in the hallway, and you're in no position to assist him when you're clearly winded yourself.
"No—I didn't mean—" His voice stutters, catching at the tail-ends and running out of breath. "Oh, this is not how it's supposed to go."
"No, I don't think I've ever caused genuine pain to a neighbour just from my mere existence." You snort, offering a lighter tone. "Though Margeret may disagree."
His lips quirk up slightly, involuntary even if he has no idea who Margeret—your old neighbour, is supposed to be. "No, I'm sorry. That was rude of me." He tries again, voice sincerely apologetic. "Can I please help you with the boxes to make up for it?"
You open your mouth to brush off his request, but the boxes tilt right as you make another forward step. "Fine." You oblige. "Just don't start spreading rumours about me taking advantage of your kindness. I really need a new start here."
"Had personal experience with that?" He raises a brow, almost teasing—softer than he had been earlier in his initial shock. His hands come up under your boxes, brushing over your fingers almost tentatively.
The warmth of his touch lingers for a second longer than it should, but you're too focused on the relief of the heavy weight being lifted off your palms as he carries it into his own arms, clearly handling the boxes with more ease than you had.
"Ask Margeret." You shrug, rolling your shoulders to ease the cramping. "Thanks..."
His lips part and close, realising he's supposed to introduce himself. It takes him awhile to gather the syllables of his name, before he offers it. "..Ned."
"Thanks, Ned." Your smile deepens, and he stares at you long enough, gaze tracing over the curve of your lips for it to teeter towards awkward.
He keeps doing that, registering your presence as something otherworldly, as if it was the last thing he expected in his path. Maybe the complex has few new tenants to explain his abnormal reaction.
"Oh, my door's 13B."
"What—oh, right!" He blinks, still looking stunned and turning with such an abrupt motion towards the direction of your new studio—and somehow, you're fond of it immediately.
Fond of Ned, even if your arrival seems to have jumbled his senses into a frenzy, and you have only known him for approximately four minutes.
Hey, it's Peter again!
It's two in the morning, my ribs are aching from Scorpion, and talking with you in the laundry room was easily the best ten minutes of my life since everything changed. My smile refuses to be wiped and it's been nearly an hour, and I can't sleep cause I'm thinking about you. You genuinely work better than painkillers, and I love you. I love you so much that I have never wished so desperately...
I wish I wasn't Peter Parker. That I wasn't the person who took your love for granted, who reassured you that I'd always make it back to you and that I'd help you remember. I can't even protect the people I love, not without ruining their lives just by letting them in. Being able to keep you safe from me, is the only reason that's enough to keep me from barging in and fulfilling my promise. From reminding you of what I used to mean to you, and what we used to be. I am a coward, but I can only hope that I won't be a selfish one. I've created enough reasons for why I can't stand being me, but I refuse to list another which involves hurting you.
That's enough for tonight. I just wish that if the universe ever gives me the chance to make things right, without making everything else much much worse, I just want you to know that I would never take anything for granted ever again. Over anything. Over pineapple on pizza, or the supremacy of rock bands, or the Lego pieces I stuffed under my bed, or me being Spiderman. I miss you so much, and I hope you're having a better night that I am.
Love,
Your Peter.
“Ned, are you okay?” You ask, watching as he limped forward towards the washing machine, one hand gripped right at his ribcage.
Your own batch is tumbling along, and you're seated cross-legged across your machine as he slumps forward to sit right next to you, hand going towards the cover of the conjoined machine beside yours.
“Peachy.” The crinkles of his eyes deepen, tossing you a wayward smile with a barely concealed wince. “Tripped and slammed into the washing machine yesterday.”
“That’s like the third time this month.” You raise a brow, expression contorting in concern.
“Is it?” He chuckles self-deprecatingly. “Must be really off my game.”
“Of making amends with the washing machine?” You tease.
“Yeah, I suppose.” His smile softens, gazing up at you.
He does that a lot, go soft at the edges, as if he’s peeling back something fuzzy over his expression—and revealing something honest.
"My advice is to make an offer." You whisper conspiratorially. "Throw in your most favourite shirt or something, and the laundry gods will be kinder on you."
He snorts, and it feels strangely familiar to talk to him this way, under the dim lighting of the flickering lamp, surrounded by the scent of detergent. You barely get to see Ned as is, not like you're expecting a practical stranger to make up much of your socialising hours, aside from the quick friendly nods and occasional 'how's your day's' when brushing past each other in the hallway.
He's a busy guy, and the laundry mat has become a sacred space where the two of you existed in each other's worlds for just a few minutes, till the timer runs out.
"I don't really have anything of mine that'll please the gods." He whispers back.
"I could give you something." You shrug non-comittally.
His gaze widens, staring at you as you dig around in your inner pocket, before tugging something out. One of your favourite scrunchies in hand, you offer it to him.
"Here." You gesture. "Just toss it in with the pile, I guarantee you that the gods will leave you alone."
His gaze flickers between the scrunchie in your hand to you. He's about to say something, brows furrowing together in brief conflict, but chooses not to divulge as his hand reaches for the scrunchie. You note the bruises forming along his knuckles as his fingers loop around the silk, and your lips press together further in concern.
By the time your gaze meets his, he's already turned his head and placed the scrunchie gently on top of his pile of clothes. When he sets the settings and presses the button, the machine runs smoothly, beeping along with yours as his clothes begin to turn and tumble without fault.
"Wow, you really do make everything better." He mutters to himself.
Your smile softens. "It's just a scrunchie."
He shakes his head loosely, his curls falling to his forehead before he turns back to face you. His gaze pours over your features, the crinkles in the corner of his hazel eyes so soft in the dimmed lighting. "No, I think it’s you."
Peter here!
I just wanted to say happy birthday to the smartest, beautiful, kindest, most awesome human to ever exist! I ran out of other big words, but you make up the whole dictionary of synonyms for amazing in every language possible. I’m really sorry I couldn’t be there, you have no idea how sorry. I have many other things to be sorry for, but this week, that’s definitely going top of the list. I should really stop with these letters, but I really wanted to give you a proper wish just this once.
It kills me that I can’t celebrate with you, and I know you’d end me yourself if you remembered my promise with the camera. You always did like the grain. You still look absolutely beautiful even without it. I’m so proud of you—for being you, and existing, and just killing it out there in the world. I did something a little sad, and not even close to what you deserve, but I bought a cupcake from Delmar's earlier, and I even have the candle right in front of me.
I wish for you to live the most happiest, fulfilling life, and that danger will never come close to you. I wish that you will achieve everything you've ever dreamed of, and that you'll have people who will look after you and love you just as much as I do. I wish—that you'll live a life worth remembering.
I love you, and I think this will be my last letter. I think it'll be nearly impossible for me to let you go, but I think it's time I accepted that for you to live the life I wished for, I have to try.
I love you,
Your Peter.
P.S. Sorry, just had to add this in one last time. You're always beautiful, and I'm not saying this because I only get to see you from a distance, but because I don't think I ever got to tell you that enough.
"Ned?" Your voice croaked out. "Is that you?"
You hear shuffling, before his left shoulder peeks out from the doorframe, slowly entering into view as he takes the lower step into the laundry room. He's staring down at you as if you've handed him an atomic bomb, and you're a sure mess, nose stuffy and eyebags swollen from crying.
"Hey." His soft call is close to making you lose it. "I didn't know if you wanted me intruding on your—"
"Date with the washing machine?" You huff, amusement dry as you turn back to look at your tumbling laundry. "By all means, join in. This current option isn't really doing it for me."
You spot the turn of his lips into a smile in your peripheral vision, before he eventually drops his weight beside you. His knee brushes against yours, and that contact registers like lightning to your senses, before he pulls back to that appropriate distance he always sets between the two of you.
You have no idea why it frustrates you so, even if you have nothing you should expect from him. Your gaze drops to his hand resting over his knee, bouncing slightly with a restless energy—and you spot your scrunchie over his wrist.
Your breath shortens, pulling your attention to his face only to find him already looking at you with unbridled concern.
"You okay?" He asks gently.
Your lip trembles, and you steady yourself as much as you are able. "Fine, just a real shit week."
"I'm so sorry to hear that." He's honest, you can hear it even without really looking him in the eye. "If you want, you can rant to me. I'm a real good listening ear. No mouthing off, just a still statue for your needs."
Your lips quirk up slightly at his attempt at minimising his presence, without even knowing how much it mattered to you that he came in here—or that he stood by the door for a solid ten minutes before you called him out. That he didn't leave, even if any normal stranger would.
"It's my birthday." You shrug, wiping at the tearstain at your cheeks. "And I just lost my job."
His lips part, brows pulling together—but he doesn't interrupt you.
"I was supposed to have a party today, and my college friends cancelled last minute." You mutter weakly. "Not that we were super close, but close enough that it mattered, y'know? I wasn't their first pick, or anyone's for the matter, so it really shouldn't have come as a surprise."
"No, you're—" His voice raises almost in frustration, and you meet his gaze. His Adam's apple bobs up and down, and his tone softens into an admission. "You're definitely my first pick."
Your laugh bubbles out of you, finding his statement absurd. "For what? You barely know me."
"I know you're extremely kind." He starts. "That you'd offer your favourite scrunchie to a stranger just to please the laundry gods. That you're funny, and beautiful—and my first pick for who I'd always want to run into."
You stare at him, unable to suppress your shock. He just called you kind, and funny, and beautiful—things people who've known you for longer hasn't thought to mention in years.
"That's—the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me in awhile." You confess, licking at your lips. "Thank you, Ned."
"It's only the truth." He presses. "I shouldn't be the only person to see that, and I know I'm not the only one who does."
"I don't know." You shrug uselessly. "My birthday hasn't even ended, and I feel completely unseen in my own life. I know it's a stupid thing, but I wish I had someone to take my picture, at least to comemorate that I've completed another spin around the Earth or something."
"You could use my camera." He offers almost instinctively.
"You have a camera?" You blink, before a slow smile spreads across your lips. "Of course you do. Do I need to be a tech-savvy to use those too, secret hacker?"
You're no stranger to the many monitors that crowd his apartment, courtesy to the many curious glances past the few times he's left his door ajar, into the premises of his own studio of what looked to be a completely different realm.
His smile deepens. "No, you just need to press two buttons. I could teach you how to work it out."
"You're into photography?" You ask.
His expression stiffens, thoughts trailing off. "Yeah, something like that. My aunt used to love taking physical photos, and I sorta inherited that trait. There was someone—who used to love using my film camera too. So, yeah—I guess I have some experience."
"You could teach me photography." You offer, almost tentatively. "Not just for the sad, lone birthday picture, I mean."
"Oh." He stares at you, and you see it then. Conflict—a pure, unmasked internal battle. "I—I don't know if I'm the right person."
You shrink slightly, less confident than you had been a few seconds ago. This really wasn't your day. "Right, sorry. I know you're a really busy person."
"No, I—" He winces, jaw clenching tight. "I would really love to. It's just that I'm—"
He pauses, staring at you with a nearly broken expression. Your brows furrow together, waiting for his answer—heart thumping in what could only be anticipation. Rejection is close at hand, and you hate that you find yourself waiting still, for something different. For him to fulfill something even you couldn't quite understand.
"Busy." He eventually settles on, voice trailing off in defeat.
You can't take it to heart. You don't allow yourself to, because disappointment is the last thing you wanted a taste of on a day like this. Ned was still nice enough to sit down here with you while you moped, and you shouldn't expect anything more. Even if you liked him, and the crinkles in the corners of his warm, brown eyes, and the sweet sound of his voice—more than you'd ever admit to yourself.
"That's not very creative." You mumble, presenting him with a weakened attempt of a smile. "I gave you that excuse, thief."
His own softened smile rises to meet yours, equally shattered. "I'm sorry. I promise I'll make it up to you."
You know he means it, you just don't know why your heart churns so painfully when you hear those words coming out of his mouth. You don't know if you have faith in promises lately. You haven't believed in those for a really long time.
You don't know how many letters you've gone through, flipping through confessions scribbled in secrecy, of mind-spells, and magic, and vigilantes—a life you don't even remember to be a fraction of your world.
A loud crash resounds behind you and you instinctively rise, tripping over your feet—almost frightened, lashes wet at the corner of your eyes when you turn and see Ned. No, Peter—dressed in a black tank-top much too short for his defined torso and… Juicy Couture pants?
He’s clearly disoriented, and you’re not sure if it’s the chronic migraines he usually gets—or something heavier he keeps hidden past the pile of letters that’s just spilled everything. You can barely look at him without feeling like you’re going to burst at the seams, and he hasn’t even noticed your presence in his apartment.
“What is this?” Your voice eventually breaks through.
His head snaps up, expression scrunched in tension—and he freezes. That same tentative smile he always tossed to you, always sweet and somehow all-too-knowing, locks in place as his lips part—assuming you’re talking about his outfit. Or the state of his apartment, there’s just too much about him that you could never quite put a finger on.
“Wrong laundry basket.” He huffs, churning out an attempt of a laugh to play it off. “Fell asleep in the laundry room, and I didn't even think to take a look at what's inside. I promise I'm not a thief.”
“Stop.” Your stern expression is caught by him immediately, and his attempt of a smile falters. Slowly, your hand raises the letters to his line of vision. "Peter."
His gaze snaps to the letters creased between your shaking fingers. You can't remember what breathing looks like, especially not when his own chest stutters visibly beneath the tank top, as if all the oxygen's been sucked out of him.
He knows, that you know.
"Oh—no." He whispers weakly, because that is the only appropriate thing to say. You’re struck with déjà vu, back to the first time you ever crossed paths with him in the hallway, when he had looked you with so much pain—one you couldn’t decipher.
He takes a step forward towards you, both hands raised with his lips parting to come up with an explanation. You instinctively take a step back, not on purpose, but the distance you've created lands all the same.
He flinches as if you've struck him, his expression shattered to pieces of that raw agony you've felt slip up from him once or twice. That same gaping sadness beneath his gaze, that he always covered up with a bandaged smile meant more for show.
"I'm sorry." His voice breaks weakly, hands clenching into a fist before dragging back down to his sides. "I didn't mean to scare you. Oh god, this was not how this was supposed to go."
"How was this supposed to go?" You echo back to him. "From your letters, it didn't seem like you were ever going to tell me."
It didn't mean to sound accusatory, but you're high on the precipice of a reality broken to pieces, and you're unsure if you're left alone in apartment with an actual lunatic, or with a truth you weren't suppose to discover.
"No, I—" He sucks in a breath, desperation seeping into his tone. "I swear I was going to, but then I found you and you looked so—"
His hands that have begun to brush through his curls fall flatly to the sides, defeated. "So peaceful—and safe. I felt so selfish to take that away from you. To drag you back into my world, knowing that all you'd face was danger or worse."
"And the truth is that hurt the people I love." He admits, his eyes squinting together as something wet flickers over his lashes, and you can tell he believes it. This so-called truth he tells himself. "Nothing good comes out of being close to me, and I couldn't lose you."
"I had to be okay with it." His gaze meets yours, broken. "Not being in your life will always be better than a world without you in it. I had to protect you, somehow—even if it meant leaving you alone."
"It was easier before you came." He huffs out, pained. "To keep a distance before I saw you everyday, just out of reach. I can't count the amount of times I nearly told you. I was just afraid, that if you didn't remember me, I don't think I can—live with hearing it. I'm a coward, and I took the only path I knew, which was to pretend. Like everything was fine, and that seeing you from a distance was enough."
You see it, the way his brain registers his actions as protection, but you don't feel protected. You feel isolated, locked out of your own memories and faced with a man you're supposed to know, someone your body is pleading for you to recognise past the fog in your brain.
“Listen—whatever worked worked, and I can’t remember.” You breathe out, exhale shaky from your lips. “I can’t remember what we had, but I know myself. I don't let people make promises to me, not unless I trust them so much that I—If you promised you’d find me, that you’d help me remember.” Your fist clenches tighter around the letters. "You should've known that I'd never be okay with leaving you alone to deal with this—"
"How could you know that?" He snaps.
You blink, stunned.
"I mean—you never had a normal life from the moment you met me." He goes on. "You never experienced a life without hoping I'd make it back home safe, without looking over your shoulder when I became the world's public enemy, or having to deal with stitches and blood and worrying about survival—instead of school!"
"You don't see the difference but I do." He confesses. "You're living a good life now, and I already screwed it up by entering it again."
"Peter." You cut him off, nearly pleading. "Stop it."
His jaw locks, lips clamping shut before he lets out a huff, one closer to a panic attack than frustration. "I'm sorry." He mutters, clenching his jaw. Something wet pries behind his lashes, and he runs his palms over them, covering his face. "I don't want to fight."
Your heart cracks a little, because there's something so heartbreakingly earnest in the way he says it, as if he's beating himself up over a million thoughts you can't uncover. Your steps inch closer, almost instinctively your body knowing the rhythm at the sight of a distraught Peter before you even have the chance to piece together the 'why'.
"We're not fighting, Peter." You reassure him, your hands tentatively lifting to rest atop his palm.
He freezes, unable to comprehend your touch. You peer through the gaps of his fingers, and find his gaze staring back at you, fractured and pained.
"I knew something wasn't right." You sigh. "I felt it this whole time. Like there was an absence of something—someone important. It gnawed at me, that emptiness, and it nearly drives me insane some nights."
He recognises the feeling, you know he does with the way his expression draws tighter—in understanding, in regret.
"I wish you came to me." You whisper. "I wish you told me, so you wouldn't have to go through this alone."
His lip trembles, as if he never expected you to hear the truth and stay. As if you'd pick the exit over him, when he clearly needs you now.
"If I had promised I'd be there for you, you should've let me keep that promise." You scold gently. "Even if it meant starting over. You’re not meant to deal with life alone, much less one as heavy as yours.”
His gaze is shaken, staring at you with his pupils blown wide. Waiting for reality to hit, or for you to take back your words—but you remain. You stand there, close enough for him to feel you. You don't falter.
Something in Peter gives—shatters completely, and it’s a mere blink before his arms are completely wrapped around you, squashing you into his chest. His fingers are shaking, trembling—a relieved exhale pressed against your shoulder blade before he buries himself deep into the crook above your collarbone.
“I missed you.” Wet tears pool at your skin. “So, so much. It felt like I was dying a little inside every single day, knowing I wasn't keeping your promise. I couldn't—I really tried letting go and it didn't work, not when you mean everything to me."
"I know you don't remember me or what happened between us but—" His voice shakes, muffled from his tight hold. "I love you and I’m sorry—I’m so sorry for everything.”
You can't answer him, not with the words he wants or deserves to hear with full honesty backing it, not without the memories you used to share. Yet, the hold of him is familiar, the way you run your fingers through his curls like memory work. His entire body caves in deeper to your touch, as if he’d been waiting this whole time since your arrival to let himself fall into you.
"From the first day I saw you." You admit. "I felt like I was meant to know you, Peter. I wouldn't have given you my scrunchie if it didn't mean something, if I didn't want to tie myself to you in some way."
Pulling back slightly so he meets your gaze, you find yourself mesmerised by the familiarity of him, the way his gaze pours over you automatically as if memorising you is all he wishes to do.
"I want to get to know you, Peter." You confess. "And I want to do it without you pushing me away, pretending like my life is happier without you when laundry nights are what I look forward to the most, because of you."
His breath halts, short-circuiting with your words. Something bright and warm bleeds into his face, and you recognise it to be happiness. Genuine, unconditional relief—before his forehead presses against yours, his lashes fluttering to a close as he embraces you.
"I can do that." He mutters softly. "I'll do anything you ask me to."
It's nice, to be held so tightly and finally feel whole. To have that gap in your chest you've never truly stitched up fade into something mind-numbingly warm and fuzzy, in the arms of the one person your body still commits to memory, past even some stupid mind spell.
“Also.." You murmur, still wrapped in his embrace. "Seriously, what is this outfit?"
A surprised chuckle escapes his lips, a little wet-sounding as he clears his throat. "I wasn't lying about the laundry mishap. I swear I don't dress like this normally."
You hum. "I don't know, I kind of like it."
The silence stretches for a brief second. "I'll buy more if you want me to."
a/n: this movie was everything i needed. much more peter parker fics to come!
likes, reblogs, and comments are appreciated! <3333
peter parker is the type of bf that fucks you dumb when he notices you’re super stressed from all your college assignments. he’ll whisper sweet nothings into your ear as he’s deep inside of you, murmuring how pretty you look like this.
a how do you like your eggs in the morning? spinoff oneshot | ao3 link
Summary: Once upon a time, you asked Ryland Grace to help you not go off to college a virgin. The two of you spent the summer working up to it. You went to college a virgin anyway. A year and a half later, you run into each other in a frat basement at a school neither of you attends. He’s definitely not jealous. He’s definitely not about to make it your problem.
(or: the one where your grown-up childhood crush spits in your mouth.)
Tags: f!reader, childhood friends to lovers, pining, smut, drunk sex, oral sex (f!receiving), fingering, piv sex, dirty talk, praise, degradation, slut shaming, period-typical misogyny (it's the early 2000s), implied loss of virginity, angst, mild hurt/comfort, college setting, jealous!Ry, Coltland twins, Marissa mention, more angst
A/N: 18+ only! This is a standalone piece, but it's also technically an AU of the other fic in this series. That fic is NOT required reading for this—but if you like these two characters together, and want to see more of them, then you might enjoy the main fic. if you have read the main fic, know that this oneshot lives in what I am calling the “Prom Night AU,” where everything in their lives is exactly the same up until the very end of prom (which, of course, means most everything that follows is completely different) (mainly: he's meaner in this). Special s/o to @bringmeabagel for helping me figure out how mean to make the ending (tee hee)
Ryland's first thought, when he sees you, is that he must be hallucinating, because you don't go to school in San Diego.
Neither does he, which is half the reason he's so miserable; standing in a crowded frat basement, surrounded by mostly strangers, nursing a beer he doesn't really want (but definitely needs, if he's going to maintain his current buzz long enough to get him through the rest of the night).
He's only here because his roommate convinced him to go on a road trip to visit a friend. A friend of a friend. One of the two. He (roommate) was going through a breakup, and learned that he (Ryland) was also going through a breakup, and, assuming they were the same amount of broken up over said breakups (they're not), tried to convince Ryland that the best solution was to venture off-campus and find a couple of UC girls to hook up with.
Ryland is still not fully convinced of the virtues of this plan. The only thing that semi-convinced him was Marissa, fed up after hearing him bitch and moan about the whole thing for all of an hour. "Look," she'd said. "You should definitely go. You could use the fresh air."
"There's plenty of fresh air in Pasadena."
“Well, maybe I could use some fresh air. Some Ryland-free air. How about that? I'm sick of seeing your morose little face."
"I'm—I'm not morose." He has been, perhaps, a little bit morose (a word which he had never before heard out loud. That's what you get for befriending humanities majors). His lab advisor is an old-school, closed-minded nightmare. His mom, living alone now that both twins are out of the house, fainted at work, and apparently all their GP did was prescribe her an extra-strength iron supplement and send her on her way. Colt is on location across an ocean somewhere, which is cool in theory, but now means he's unreachable half the time. The breakup, amicable and for reasons entirely out of his control, is far and away the least of his problems.
"You're not happy," she'd pointed out. "Plus, you deserve to make out with someone who isn't, like, allergic to dicks. And I can't in good conscience pawn you off on any of my friends here. They've heard too much." She'd clapped. Once, sharply. A habit of hers, when she's figured something out. He's begun to catch himself doing the same thing. "I've decided for you. You're going."
"If you really wanted to order me around, maybe you shouldn't have dumped me."
"Go on, get packing. I'm serious. I have a girl coming over at six, and I think she's already worried about me being secret straight, so I really don't need an ex hanging around." She'd tilted her head, making a rectangle with forefingers and thumbs and squinting through, as though sizing him up for a picture frame. "Though I guess with the hoodie, and, like—if you shaved, you could probably just pass as butch. Huh. Maybe that's why—"
He'd put his hands up. "I'm leaving."
"Don't get anyone pregnant!" she'd called out, and then the door had shut behind him.
And then he'd gone straight to his room to pack. Because Marissa has never been wrong about anything in her life (except, evidently, for dating him).
And now he's here.
It's only a two hour drive from CalTech to UCSD. Not too bad. But Berkeley is halfway across the state, which just reconfirms that he is imagining you on the other side of the basement. He shakes his head. He forgets about it. Josh would have mentioned, if you'd transferred schools. Ryland isn't as close to your brother as he was in high school, obviously, but they still get together sometimes to smoke over school breaks.
A few times a year. That's the bar for maintaining hometown friendships. At any rate, it's more often than he sees you.
Your doppelgänger is in a short black skirt, and a tight denim top (thin straps, zipper down the front), and heels that you'd never be able to walk in. More proof of his insanity. Someone must have spiked his bottle. Or maybe he's just drinking a bad batch. He abandons his beer on the side of the stairs, and crosses to the drink table for a fresh one. The cooler's empty; he groans, squatting down to check under the table. He sees a promising box, rips it open, pulls out a bottle. And then—a nudge. Someone knocks into him, from the side, and he startles hard enough to bump his head.
"Sorry!" someone says from above.
"Shit," he mutters, rubbing the top of his head as he ducks lower, and frees his head safely from underneath the table. Great. Now he's drunk and/or possibly drugged and/or possibly concussed. "Whoever built these tables—great material work. That's sturdy, that's really fucking—"
"God, I'm so sorry. Are you okay?"
Definitely concussed. Definitely. Because that's the only thing that can possibly explain the fact that, when he stands and turns around, he sees that the person who bumped into him is you.
Not a doppelgänger. Not someone who looks kind of you like you from across a dark and crowded room. You, with your hair curled, and your lashes long and dark, and your chest squeezed into a denim top with a zipper down the front. You, three inches taller than he's used to, as you stand in heels that, a year and a half ago, you would have twisted your ankles just looking at. You, with that familiar little line between your brows, staring up at him with all of the same confusion and surprise and (mild) horror that's currently washing through his chest.
"You," he says out loud.
Shit. Maybe he really is concussed.
"Ryland?"
Your voice, wrapped around his name. Proof that you're real—but, then again, he has enough memories of you to be able to recreate that with accuracy even in a hallucination. He's probably heard that sound, his name on your tongue, hundreds of different ways over the years. Laughing while you chased him and Colt and Josh across the yard as kids. Apologetic, that time you'd spilled lemonade over one of his library books. Grateful, whenever he gave you something you'd asked for (candy, or help with homework, or—it didn't matter, really. It never mattered what you'd asked for. He'd always said yes, up until the one time he didn't). Serious. Teasing. Shy. Pleading, breathless, against his mouth with his fingers buried in you. Thick with tears, when he saw you last.
And here, now, a new tone: cautious surprise.
He makes another attempt at speech. "What are you doing here?"
"Mock trial conference." You blink, and you swallow, and he can see you reset to neutral in real time. "The actual thing happened yesterday. This is just the victory lap."
"You won?"
You lift your cup. "Obviously."
"Congrats," he says, tipping his bottle against it. You stay perfectly still.
"Thanks," you say dryly. He can picture the exact smile you would have responded with two years ago. Back when his approval still meant something to you. "You?"
"Visiting a friend," he says, which is technically true, but he hears the pulling-teeth way the words come out, and it makes it sound like he's lying. Badly.
"A friend, huh?"
"Friend of a friend," he says. "Or something." He catches a glimpse of the inside of your cup. It's shockingly red. "What on Earth is that?"
You follow his gaze. Something passes over your face. Quickly. Just a hint, but he knows you well enough to clock it—embarrassment. "Vodka. Sprite. Grenadine."
He feels the corners of his mouth pull up. "No maraschino cherries?" He remembers a wedding, when he was thirteen and you were twelve, where you'd managed to find the bar's stash, and gorged yourself until you were sick. Your mom's third wedding (she's on husband four, now, he thinks. Maybe).
He'd danced with you at that wedding. Half of a slow dance. He'd seen Colt dancing with you, and gotten jealous. In a way, that wedding was the beginning of the end, because that's when he'd promised to take you to prom, and then prom was where he'd kissed you, and then had panicked about kissing you, and maybe he still could have averted the impending disaster if only you hadn't asked him to—
"Do me a favor?" You take a sip of your drink, scrunching your nose. His stomach flips. "Never mention maraschino cherries to me again."
He relaxes, without even realizing he's relaxing, because there's a teasing note in your voice. He hasn't heard you sound amused in years. "Why not? One of your best moments."
"Shut up," you say with a smile. A small smile, but a smile. And it's normal to look at someone's mouth when they smile, he tells himself, so it's normal that he sees your lip gloss and wonders what it would taste like. "Guess I had good taste in some things, back then. Hard to fuck up a Shirley Temple."
"Even with vodka?"
You shrug. "It's not too bad. I like a little kick." You lift your cup again. For one second, he thinks you might be offering a sip—but then someone calls your name from across the room. One of your mock trial friends. You wave at her, then turn back to Ryland. "Good to see you," you say, clinking your cup against his bottle. "I'll, um, I'll tell Josh you said hi."
You walk away, which means he gets to watch you walk away. Not that he's staring. But it's hard to look away from, the way you cross the floor in those shoes without so much as a stumble.
His not-staring is broken by an arm, slung quick and heavy around his neck, followed by the full weight of someone against his side. "Gracie!"
Matt. Frat Matt, the friend of a friend of a friend who's hosting them both. Ryland isn't a fan of the guy—even less so now, with beer breath hot in his face—but he upgraded them all from couches to bedrooms when it turned out a few of the other fraternity brothers would be gone for the weekend, so Ryland smooths out his grimace to something more friendly-neutral. "Hey."
"Hey, man." He gestures forward, in the direction you just headed. "I'm gonna level with you. Kind of a dick move, going for the only new girl at the party."
Ryland feels his brows knit together. "I wasn't—"
"I don't blame you," says Frat Pat (Frat Matt's younger frat brother—and yes, they do insist on being called by the rhyming nicknames every time). "Imagine sticking a finger in that slutty little zipper and pulling allll the way down."
Something stiffens in Ryland's chest. "Shut up," he says.
"Five bucks says she's a moaner."
Another guy smacks him on the arm. "Ten says she likes getting choked, you can always tell —"
"Don't fucking talk about her like that," he says. It comes out sharper than he means, which is still calmer than he feels. He brings the beer bottle to his mouth in an attempt to recover. "I know her, all right? We grew up together."
A pause. "Girl next door," Frat Pat says, nodding solemnly. "Hot."
Ryland rolls his eyes. "Very funny."
"I'm serious."
"So am I. She's off limits."
"Does she know that?" Frat Matt slaps him on the back, then points at you, across the room, talking to your friend, tipping your head back to finish the last of your dirty Shirley Temple. One strap is slipping off your shoulder. The bust is tight enough that it doesn't really matter, but his pulse kicks up anyway. "Come on. You don't wear a top like that unless you're looking for someone to take it off. And, by the way, you're a guest here, too, remember? I'm not going around telling the whole fucking house that half the fresh meat in here is off limits just because you called dibs."
"I'm not calling dibs. I'm not going to—it's not about that."
"So you've never?" Frat Matt and Frat Pat's nameless friend, sounding genuinely a bit awed. "You're telling me you live next to that, and you didn't fuck her even once?"
"No," he says, which is true. The beer is sour on his tongue, and he's probably chugged half the bottle trying to tune out the frat-guy sleaze, and he needs this conversation to be over. "No, okay? She's not like that."
"Fucking waste, man," Frat Matt says, with a disappointed shake of his head. Then he slaps Ryland on the back, harder this time. "If you change your mind, better move quick. Looks like Dawson's already got eyes on her."
His eyes flick back over to see yes, you're talking to someone. Another frat bro. Tall. Taller than Ryland, which shouldn't rankle him. He feels distinctly rankled.
Frat Matt continues, oblivious to all of the rankling going on. "And, you know, her, whoever—your room door locks. Condoms and lube in the bottom drawer. Just don't get anything on the sheets that won't come out in a quick cycle, yeah? Stop the drought!" He punctuates this last with a fist in the air, and then he and Pat and No-Name fuck off, presumably to go torment someone else. Ryland watches them go with another sip of his beer. Two sips. Three.
He looks back at you.
Dawson is standing closer to you, definitely closer, crouching down to let you say something into his ear. When he touches your arm, you don't pull back. He picks up a bottle of something from the table next to you, and starts filling two shot glasses.
Ryland tips back the last of his beer, grabs another off the table, and crosses the basement.
"Hey," he says. He can't step between the two of you, because you're standing too close together for that, but he does his best. "What's up?"
You look up. Dawson looks down a medium amount. "Uh," you say. "Ryland. Hi. Again."
"Hey, man." Dawson looks between you and Ryland. "You know this guy?"
"Mm-hm," you say, nodding, slow, your eyes doing something that he assumes is supposed to be a signal for get out of here. He cheerfully ignores it. "Ryland and I went to high school together."
"Freshman when I was a senior," Ryland adds. "You're getting your SAT results back soon, right?"
The little divot between your brows returns, deeper than before, as you do an honest-to-God double take. "What?"
Dawson straightens up to full height. This would be a little intimidating, if his face weren't so perfectly screwed up in confusion and alarm. "Hang on. You're in high school?"
"N—"
"My best tutoring student. Precocious." Ryland ruffles your hair. He looking up at Dawson, now, not at you, but he can practically hear the cartoon steam coming out of your ears. "Skipped two grades. Or was it three?"
Dawson takes a large and decisive step back. "Nah, dude," he says, shaking his head. "Fuck that shit. I'm not messing around with that."
He's gone. Ryland lets out a relieved breath, and takes a sip of his new beer.
You turn on him. "What the fuck was that?" you demand. "I don't look thirteen. I haven't looked thirteen in seven years."
"Five, maybe," he says, which makes you fume even harder. "And, FYI, twenty is still technically under the legal drinking age."
You laugh. It's not a pleasant laugh. "What's next, a lecture on the dangers of premarital sex? Little late for that. FYI." You give that a beat to land. It lands, in some inflamed back corner of his mind, right next to five bucks says she's a moaner and ten says she likes getting choked. "Also, I'm supposed to believe you'd never touched a drop of alcohol in your life until last week? Happy belated, by the way." You pick up one of the shot glasses, full to the brim, and offer it to him. "Here. Celebratory shot."
He shakes his head. "No." No way in hell is he going to drink something some other guy poured for you.
You squint up at him. "Okay, so you came over here to cockblock me and then—what? Just stand here in miserable silence? Don't you have friends somewhere around here? A friend of a friend?"
"I thought we were friends," he says. It comes out all wrong, a miserable combination of too jokey and too serious. "Or. You know. We used to be."
You hesitate. For a moment, he expects—sincerity, maybe. Sincere anger, which he knows is the least he deserves.
Instead, you just sigh. Like he's a nuisance. Something easily swatted away. "Can we not do this right now?" You wiggle the shot glass at him. "Come on. It's a party. Lighten up." He doesn't move. "Or don't. All right. Guess I'll go find someone else to take this, since you're too much of a pussy to—"
He plucks the shot glass out of your hand and empties it into his mouth. Then he pulls you in with one hand on your hip, winds his other arm far enough around your neck that he can get his other hand on your jaw, and lets the vodka pour from his mouth into yours. He closes the distance just in time to feel the end of the surprised little moan you let out.
Your hand is fisted in his shirt when he pulls back. He reaches for the other shot glass. Down in one. You watch him, a little slack-jawed.
"Happy?" he asks.
In lieu of words, you pull him back in for another kiss.
There's none of the hesitancy he remembers. Not that you were ever a bad kisser—awkward at first, like anyone, but a quick study. You were just always a little shy. Nervous, maybe. It was sweet. You're all confidence now: sucking his tongue into your mouth, your hands decisive, your teeth grazing his lower lip. Liquid courage. Or maybe just more experience. Obviously you wouldn't have had any trouble finding people to kiss in college. To kiss, and more; and now his brain is spinning all sorts of images of other hands on you, on you and in you, other mouths, other—
He tries to get his brain to shut up. He can't get his brain to shut up. He kisses you harder instead.
It's loud enough in here, music and talking and bad acoustics, that he feels the sounds you make more than he actually hears them. That's okay. He lets his memory fill in the blanks. A little pleased hum when he does something with his mouth that you like. A whimper when he presses you flush against him with a hand on the small of your back. A gasp when the hand on your waist runs further up your torso and—
"Ryland." You break the kiss. "Ryland. We're, this is, there's people here. We're in public."
"Right," he says, as though he can be expected to focus on anything other than the fact that your lip gloss tastes like Skittles. "Sure."
"And, look, I'm supposed to be crashing on someone's couch tonight, so I don't—"
"I have a room," he says, and for a moment he genuinely considers getting on his knees to say a prayer of gratitude for Frat Matt and Frat Pat and Dawson and everyone else who pays dues so that this house can exist. "I have a room. Here. With a bed. And a lock on the door. And condoms. Apparently."
You've gone very still in his arms. Your eyes dart between his, back and forth, like you're thinking. Like you're deciding something. "Okay," you finally say.
He huffs out a quiet little laugh. "Okay?"
"Okay," you repeat, except you don't even manage to get the full word out before leaning back up to press your mouth back to his. You pull back. “I want another shot first.”
-
He kisses you up two flights of stairs, down a hallway, through a door. The lock clicks. The clothes come off piecemeal. His shirt. Your skirt. He's first on the bed, and you kick off your heels before you follow, climbing into his lap to kiss him deep and hungry. The Skittles flavor is more or less gone, at this point, leaving just you behind. You and vodka and grenadine.
"Lean back," he says, and you do, just enough for him to get a hand between the two of you. "Need to get this stupid fucking top off."
"What's wrong with my top?" you ask. There's a laugh in your voice, and genuine confusion behind it. "It was a birthday gift. It's nice."
"Off," is all he can manage.
He finds the zipper. He pulls it all the way down.
All at once, he is warm all over. There's the heat of anger, to know that this is what Matt and his dickhead friends were imagining; and there's the heat of relief that he's here, not them, like he's protecting you somehow; and, most importantly, there's the heat of you, your chest bare against his chest, your mouth open against his mouth. You, moaning when he drags his thumb across your nipple. You, meeting his hips in a urgent, desperate grind, even as you break the kiss to say, “Just so you know. Sometimes when I'm drunk, it's. Um."
"What?" he says between kisses.
"It's harder for me to finish. Like, I can't focus enough, or it takes too long, so—"
He gets his mouth on one of your tits, and your sentence cuts off into a moan. "You're the one who insisted on doing shots."
"I wanted to piss you off," you say, winding one hand into his hair. The bluntness, the sweet, unfiltered honesty—it's so you, so like the old you, that he can't help but smile against your skin. "I didn't know that you'd—I wasn't expecting—I don't need any more favors from you. For the record." Something in his head flinches. He keeps kissing his way back up to your throat, your jaw. "I was supposed to meet someone, before, so if you're just here because you feel like you have some weird unpaid debt or something you should just go and I can—"
He reaches the corner of your mouth, and then the whole of your mouth, and he kisses you quiet. "Stop that," he says. "Stop threatening to go find someone else. You're here. With me. Be here with me."
Your brows furrow, but you nod. You lean back in.
The kissing is slower. Gentler. He slows his hands accordingly, tracing little paths across your waist, your back. He can feel how it affects you, every little touch. Squirming in his lap. Little breathy moans against his mouth. You were always responsive, but he's never seen you drunk, your inhibitions somewhere on the floor with your top, and it's making him a little dizzy with want. When he runs a hand back down over your hair, over your neck, you shudder.
He laughs. He can't help it. Your lips curve against his. "What?"
"You," he says, pulling back for a second. "You were on my ass about cockblocking you, when you were the one trying so hard to get drunk, even though—"
"It's not funny," you say, even though he can feel you smiling against his shoulder.
"I'm not complaining," he says, pressing a kiss to your temple. "It's cute." You bring your head back up to kiss him again, at the same time he gets one of your nipples between his forefinger and thumb and pinches, and the sound you make into his mouth is pleased and surprised and maybe louder than any he's heard you make before. "Can't come, but you're even more sensitive than usual, huh? Poor baby."
"Shut up," you say, entirely unconvincingly to begin with, and even less convincing when he kisses your neck at the same time he pinches your nipple again and you cry out even louder without anything to muffle the sound. Five bucks says she's a moaner. "I just. I know guys get butthurt sometimes, when they can't get a girl off. And you always. When we." The unsaid words settle warm in his chest. He doesn't even try to hold back a grin. "So I just wanted you to know, if I don't—it's not something wrong with you. It's something wrong with me."
He stops. "Nothing's wrong with you." He leans back to look up at you. "Jesus. Who told you that?"
You hesitate. "No one," you say, in a tone that makes it clear you have a very specific person in mind.
"Okay." Part of him wants to press. He wants to know, wants to find this guy, wants to—no, nope. Even if he was capable of beating someone up (he's not, and Colt is in a different time zone), that wouldn't be useful. That train of thought is just a distraction from the rare and precious reality of you, here, in front of him. "Well, that's normal," he settles for saying, because you're straddling him, and you're looking down at him with a little bit of genuine distress in your eyes, and he wants so badly to make it better. "Alcohol is a, it's a depressant, so it—anyway, you, the whole thing, normal. Super normal. Whiskey dick, for guys, there's a name for it and everything."
You relax a little bit, much to his relief, angling your hips back against his. "You don't seem to be having any problems with that."
"Well, yeah." He kisses your sternum. "There's a hot naked girl in my bed."
"Technically it's not your bed."
He chuckles. "Right."
"And technically I'm not naked."
"We can fix that." He tips you down onto the bed, settling above you, and hooks a thumb into either side of your underwear. Black lace. He thinks about the cotton ones you used to wear, the ones he ran fingers over and reached under and pulled off you so many times, and he wonders who you might have bought this pair for, as he leans down and kisses your stomach just above the scalloped hem.
You giggle.
"What's so funny?" he asks, distracted again. He missed getting to make you laugh. The laugh erases any thought of jealousy and reseats him firmly back in this moment, here, the two of you the only people in the room.
When he looks up, your hands are pressed against your face. "You think I'm hot," you say through your fingers.
"You say that like you're surprised."
"I." Your hands move, but you're still looking up at the ceiling. Away from him. "You called me cute, a lot. That's different than hot."
"Come on," he scoffs. "You know you're hot. Walking around the party with your tits out like that, you don't think every asshole guy in there was looking at you?"
You pause. You finally meet his gaze, with a look in your eyes like you're trying to figure something out. When you speak again, it's quieter. "I didn't think you were."
"You're smarter than that." He works the underwear down over your hips, pressing another kiss to your hipbone as he goes, one side and then the other. "You're pretty, too. I told you that, right? I had to have told you that."
"A few times."
"Yeah." He tugs the underwear free of one ankle, then the other, and drops it on the bed next to him as he looks at you. "Always so fucking pretty."
You shift your legs a little bit, like the looking is making you embarrassed. Like he didn't spend an entire summer seeing you like this.
Then again, maybe that isn't fair, because you hadn't been naked right off the bat. Not for the first few weeks, at least. That had been the deal. You'd kissed at prom, and you'd made your request, and he'd given his caveats; and then there were the last few weeks when he'd gone back to CalTech for finals, and when he went home and saw you again it was back to kissing. Slow, soft kissing. Fully-clothed kissing. A few days of that before he'd gotten you to grind yourself to a quiet, shaky orgasm on his thigh, with your face buried in his neck, and his hands splayed over your hips to steady you.
A couple of days after that, you'd gotten topless for the first time. And he'd made sure to make you finish like that, again, clothed from the waist down, before moving on to the next thing.
And the next thing. And the next.
Days into weeks. Fingers. Tongue. Weeks into months. All of you naked, shy and trusting, and the only reason he'd been able to keep his hands from shaking was because he knew he needed to keep his cool for you.
He doesn't worry so much about keeping his cool now. He's a few beers and two shots too far in to care if his hands are shaking or not. The shaking is irrelevant. The relevant factor is that they're on you, running up from ankle to calf to pull your legs a little further apart as he settles between them.
"So pretty," he says again. "Or, no, hot. You wanted me to call you hot, right?"
"Not if you don't mean it," you say, covering your face again. "You can call me whatever you want."
"I mean all of it. All of them, you're all of the things.” He kisses your thigh, the hollow of it. “God. You know how much I thought about this? Missed seeing you like this.” Another kiss, above your clit. “Tasting you like this.” He licks into you, all of you, messy and complete, and the sound you make is a perfect echo of the one you made when he did that for the first time a year and a half ago. Muffled into your hands and everything. “Missed getting my mouth on this cute, wet little pussy."
"Ryland," you say, still into your hands.
He laughs. “Oh, now you're shy? You had no problem calling me a pussy when you were trying to piss me off."
"I'm just not used to hearing you talk like that."
"Do you like it?”
You nod.
"Okay,” he says, between little licks to your clit. “Good to know.” He drags his thumb down, through your slit, and he groans. “Fuck. Can't believe you're this wet just from me spitting in your mouth."
"Not just from—from that. I didn't know I'd like that, either."
"But you did?”
"I did,” you admit. He licks up against you, letting his tongue dip into your entrance, and your hands fly to his head. “I like that, too. That, what you just did."
"This?" He repeats it, going deeper this time, and then deeper, and maybe dating Marissa was worth it after all, because she was nothing if not thorough with her instructions, and now he gets to use all of that hard-won knowledge on you.
He keeps fucking you on his tongue like that, letting you guide him with your hands on his head; moaning into you when you tug at his hair. He goes until he notices the tell-tale signs that you’re getting close, and then he stops, pulling away with his mouth still wet and your chest still heaving.
"You know, maybe it's better like this,” he says, pressing two fingers into you. You’re relaxed enough from his tongue that they slide in with ease. “You can't get off but you're still so—so—I mean, I can just keep you on the edge for as long as I want. That was always my favorite part, anyway, the sounds you make right before.” He curls his fingers, and you demonstrate on cue. “That's it, that's the one—and your face. Like that. Just like that?” He fucks his fingers into you a little faster. “Right there?” You’re on the edge, he can hear you’re on the edge, and he can hear the frustration in your voice at the fact that it’s not tipping over, and it’s so cute he has to fight back a laugh. “It's not enough, huh? God, it's like you were made for this. Perfect fucking toy. Press a button, make a fun noise, right?"
Your moan breaks off into a laugh. “You're making me sound like—” You laugh again, harder. “Like I'm a Bop It, or something."
He snorts. He can’t help it. A few seconds pass like that—the two of you, giggling, like you hadn’t been squirming on his tongue less than a minute before.
“Sure,” he says, once he recovers. “It's kind of the same. If you tell me what to do. You just have to tell me what feels good, and then I can just do that, right?"
"If you. With your fingers.” It comes out quickly. Like you’re afraid you’ll chicken out and stop if you speak slowly enough to consciously process the words coming out of your mouth. “And then suck on, on my clit, at the same time. That’s. That will.”
He does both of those things, and you almost immediately stop forming coherent sentences.
He does that for a while. Working you up. Stopping. Taking little breaks to suck marks into your thighs, your hipbone (a fun little surprise, for whoever you hook up with next), his fingers still pumping lazily in and out, or else leaving you empty to rub circles into your clit. His other hand on your hip, or your stomach, or your tits, tweaking a nipple for the pleasure of hearing your voice break. And then, when he feels like it, he brings you back to the edge and keeps you there.
And keeps you there.
And keeps you there.
Your breath is catching again, in that specific way—and it keeps going, but there’s a new edge to it. To your voice. To the way you’re clenching down on his fingers. Like you’re closer than before. Closer closer. Close enough that—if he just keeps on like that, but more—and if he doesn’t stop—
Your hand tightens in his hair. The other reaches down, and he takes it in his, and you squeeze his hand as your thighs squeeze around his head and your pussy squeezes around his fingers, long and hard and desperate, your voice cracking in surprise as you come.
He keeps his mouth on you one second longer, two, until the hand in his hair pushes him off.
“Aw.” He doesn’t even try a little bit to hide the smugness in his voice. Your hand twitches in his. He rubs his thumb in little circles over your wrist. “Look at that. So you can come when you're drunk. Guess those other guys weren't trying very hard, were they?”
“Fuck,” is all you manage.
“Or maybe they just didn't know you.” He kisses your stomach. You’re still going, throbbing around his fingers as he works you through the aftershocks. “Maybe I just have a leg up. Maybe I shouldn't be jealous of, of whoever—it doesn't matter, because I'll always be the first person who saw you like this, right? I'm always going to be the first person who got to taste you. The first person who made you come. God. I want another one.” He gets his thumb back on your clit, and your hips buck. “I want another one out of you. You can do that for me, right?” You shake your head. “Come on, you can, I know you can."
"Not right away,” you say, and your hand comes to his wrist, and he relents.
“Okay,” he says, making his way back up the bed. “I can wait. I waited a year and a half already, I can wait. Just—here.” He kisses you. “See how good you taste?"
You nod, making an mmhm sound against him. You kiss him, and kiss him, and then break the kiss to sit up.
He pulls you back with a sound of protest. "Where are you going?"
"To return the favor,” you say against his mouth.
He shakes his head. “Stay here. Just a little longer." He needs a second. He needs more than a second, actually, because he just made you come, and his fingers are still wet with you, and his ego is like a balloon about to pop, and any blowjob you try to give him now would last a humiliatingly short amount of time.
"You don't want—you don't want my mouth on your cock?" you ask. He blinks up at you. You keep going. “You don't want to fuck my mouth?"
You trip over the words a little bit, like they're unfamiliar, which he knows is just the alcohol, but it's still adorable. He'd tell you as much, but apparently you don't want him to call you cute. So he keeps it to himself.
"I mean, I'd rather actually fuck you," he says instead, because it's true, and also to tune out the little voice that’s wondering where you learned to talk like that.
"Now?" you ask. Your leg is still hooked over his hip. He pulls you in closer with a hand on your ass, the whole length of him up against the whole length of you, and you melt into the next kiss. "Okay. Yes. Yes, I would like that, very much."
"One sec." He rolls over. As promised, there's a box of condoms in the nightstand drawer.
As he tears one off the strip, he hears you, behind him. "We can go slow, though, right?"
"Yeah, of course."
"Okay." You exhale, shaky. “Good."
He turns to you. "Hey," he says, abandoning the condom for a second to reach up to cup your face. "We don't have to, if you don't want to. We can keep doing other stuff."
"No, I want to. I just haven't." Your eyes leave his. He watches them travel to to the condom, on the bed, and then lower, to his hips, and then back up—not to meet his eyes, again. Somewhere lower. His chin. His chest. "You're bigger than I remember," you admit. "Than, um, than I'm. Used to." He gets his fingers back into your hair, tipping your head up, and now you do look at him again, directly. “I still want to, though.” He tightens his fingers a little, and he sees your eyes go a little hazy. "Please."
He kisses you—deeply, then just a peck. "Okay," he says, reaching back for the condom. "Nice and slow. Works for me. Do you want to be on top? On your back? We can change later, I just. I want to see you." There's a warmth in his chest, a flush going upward. He hopes you can't see it painted across his cheeks. "Want to see your face."
You lie back as he rolls on the condom. "Is there lube?"
"Yeah, somewhere in here, I think. You want?"
"Just in case."
You're wet enough, he doubts you'll need it, but he puts some on the condom. Just in case. He squirts a little more out onto his fingers, and presses them into you, over your clit, dipping inside you. "Good?"
"Yeah. Yeah. Do we need—is there anything else? Like, a pillow, under the hips—I know that's supposed to be good—"
"I think that's supposed to help get deeper, so. Maybe not the move here."
"Okay. That makes sense," you say, as he settles between your hips. He doesn't line himself up yet, just leans down, pressing his whole body against the soft heat of yours. Your hands find his arms, running up and down. "Hi," you say.
"Hi." He kisses you, and moves his hips a little. You meet the movement. For a few moments he lets it be this, just this—your mouth under his, and your hands on his shoulders, and the length of him rubbing back and forth against you. Teasing. He lets it go on long enough that your little whimpers turn to whines, and the tilting up of your hips becomes impatient. He presses his forehead to yours. "Ready?"
Your hands tighten on his arms. You nod. "Ready."
He reaches down. He lines himself up.
He presses in.
He goes slow. Torturously slow. Slower than he thought himself capable of, especially here, right now, with you. But it's worth it to feel every tight, wet inch of you opening up around him. It's worth it to pull back, slightly, just enough that he can see your face, the flutter of your lashes, the slight parting of your lips
He goes as far as he can, and stops. Your hands are a little looser on his arms. Your chest is rising and falling against his, heavier than before.
"There," he says, pressing his lips briefly to yours. "That's it." This is sort of a lie, because the whole length of him isn't inside you, but he's bottomed out, so he's as far inside you as he's going to be able to get. "Not so scary, right?"
"Right. Right. Can you—" You reach up with one hand, fingers in his hair as you pull him back down to kiss you, and as he kisses you he moves a little, out and in, and you flutter around him, and you're making little rhythmic sounds against his mouth, and he's fucking you. Properly. For the first time.
It shuts off his brain a little bit. For the first time all night, he's at a loss for words. He's inside you. Not that he hasn't been inside you before, with his fingers, or his tongue, but this—now—and you're hot and you're wet and you're squeezing down on his cock, and he lets out a moan that would probably embarrass him if he were sober. But also it's hard to be embarrassed, because he's inside you. If there's anything to be embarrassed about, it's the fact that he had the chance to do this with you a year and a half ago, he had the chance to be the first person you ever did this with, and he threw that chance away with both hands.
That thought brings his speech system back online. "Who were you meeting? Before."
"What?"
"You said you were supposed to meet someone, before. Who?"
Your words are a little messy, a little unsteady as you try to speak between moans. "Not anyone in particular, just—like, generally—it's a party—"
"Whoever gave you the time of day, huh?" He picks up the pace a little. "You just like the attention? Is that what you thought about, when you picked out that slutty little outfit—all of those eyes on you, wanting you, thinking about. God. You should have heard what they were saying about you, fucking killed me."
Your arms are wrapped more completely around him, now, one around his back and the other around his neck. He keeps himself braced above you on one forearm, hand up around your head to keep you from bumping against the headboard; and with the other, he catches one of your hands, pressing it into the mattress beside your head.
“One guy bet me five bucks that you're loud in bed, and I thought he was wrong, because you were always so shy with me, but I guess he was right, huh? Should I go back and tell him he was right?" You make a muffled noise, shaking your head into his shoulders, tightening around him with your arms and your legs both. "No. No, okay. I'm not going anywhere. Don't worry, I'm staying right here."
You've relaxed enough that he can get into you a little deeper than before, hitching one of your legs up over his arm, and you bury your face in his neck with a surprised little cry. “There,” you say. “There, there, right there.”
“God,” he mutters, mouth on your temple. “I should have fucked you like this the first night you asked. All that time we wasted because I didn't want to, I don't know. I wanted to make it nice for you."
"You did.” You say it into his pulse, against his throat. "You did, you were—it was good, Ryland, it was so fucking good."
"Yeah. It was a good summer." He thinks about something you said before, something someone said, about choking, and he separates his fingers from yours in order to get his hand around your throat. Light. Barely a squeeze. You reach down between you, and the thought of you touching yourself while he fucks you—it does something unfair to his head. "Kind of a wasted effort, though, huh?"
More moans. Different, somehow. “What do you mean?” It comes out more or less as one continuous word.
“Never thought you’d be like this. Rubbing yourself off while I’m inside you. Getting yourself off with my cock inside you and my hand around your throat. All those months I spent being soft with you, so worried I wasn’t being gentle enough—maybe I wouldn't have been so careful if I'd known you'd turn out to be such a slut.”
“Wait.” Your hand presses against his chest. “Wait.”
He slows down. When he pulls back to look at you, the little crease in your forehead is back. "What? Should we stop?"
You hesitate, then shake your head. “Just. Just, can you kiss me again? Please.” Even with your hand on your clit, and his hand wrapped around your neck, you are still so polite in this request, so polite and so desperate all at once, that he can't say no to you. He never could.
He crushes his mouth against yours. He tightens the hand on your throat, and finds the angle again, the spot you’d liked, and you're making that sound again. His favorite one. The one that means you're close.
“Are you going to come for me again?” You’re having trouble kissing him back. He takes that as a sign to keep going. “Come on. I told you I wanted another one out of you, right? Thought about it so much—want to know what you feel like—like this—come on—”
Your lips are parted. He can see your tongue behind them, pink and wet, and you’re looking at him like you want something.
He brings the hand on your neck up to your jaw. He presses gently, and your lips part further. He spits in your mouth, and kisses you again, just before you clench down hard around him.
He follows immediately after, letting a low moan in perfect time with yours.
-
The condom’s been disposed of. His glasses are on the nightstand. The house is as quiet as any frat house on a Saturday is capable of. You’re in the bed next to him, still naked, on your side, facing away, his arm loosely slung across your waist.
If this was two years ago, he would have held you. Properly held you. Kissed your forehead, your eyelids, your nose. Told you how good you were, what a good job you’d done. You probably don’t need that now, he figures, turning over to lie on his back. Even if part of him wishes you did.
And besides, all of that only ever led to you getting more hurt in the long run.
He got hurt, too, if he lets himself think too much about it (which he never does, except maybe for when he is drunk). He shouldn’t have gotten hurt. The facts of the situation: you, asking him sleep with you. So that you wouldn’t go off to college a virgin. So that your first time wouldn’t have to be with a stranger.
He should have said no.
Technically, he did say no. As in: no, not tonight. As in: not all at once. As in: if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this right.
Days spent getting snow cones along the boardwalk, watching movies in the basement. Holding hands whenever there was nobody around to see. And then nights spent—the way nights get spent, sometimes. Kissing. More than kissing. Sneaking in and out of each other’s houses. Slow. A little bit at a time.
It had been a really good summer.
More facts of the situation: you, his best friend’s little sister. Him, liking you more than he should have. Thinking about you in the middle of lab. Thinking about you on dates with CalTech girls. Calling your landline number with some bullshit reason or another, on the hopes that you’d pick up. Coming back from college for the weekend just to keep a promise he’d made to you at thirteen. And then, of course, all of the evidence in his head as to why he shouldn’t, why he couldn’t like you that way. Statistics and anecdotes alike. All of the guys you’d meet in college. All of his friends who’d broken up with their hometown girlfriends. All of the misery he’d seen from long-distance couples.
The conclusion: as long as you didn’t date date, you’d be safe. Both of you would be safe.
It had made sense in his head at the time.
He was doing you a favor. You’d asked him to do you a favor. Feelings were outside the boundaries of the favor. So when you were lying in your childhood bed, one night, the two of you giggling over the fact that he’d bought condoms and forgotten to bring them; when you’d looked up at him, and opened your mouth, and said—
“Ryland?”
His name, on your tongue, here. In the present. You’re still turned away from him. “Yeah?” he says.
“I’m not. I mean.” He can’t quite read your tone. “You don't really think I'm."
"What?"
You pause. You’re breathing oddly. Unevenly. “It doesn't matter,” you say. Your voice is quiet. Too quiet. The last time he heard that tone from you, he didn’t talk to you for a year and a half.
He reaches out to touch you. “It sounds like it matters a lot." Your shoulder starts shaking a little beneath his hand, and his stomach flips. "Hey," he says. "Hey, what's wrong?"
Your face is already shiny when he turns you to face him. "I'm not a slut," you say.
“Oh,” he says. He pulls you in closer, pressing your face into his neck, because you're crying and it's making his chest hurt to look at you and it's all he can think to do. “Okay.”
"I don't know if—if it was just dirty talk, or if you really meant it. And I know I said you could call me whatever you wanted, I just didn't think. I didn't think that would be. And I know it shouldn't matter, I just. Fuck.” You hiccup. “Sorry."
"It's all right. You're all right. I'm sorry, okay? I was just being stupid. Drunk and stupid. I don't think that about you. I wasn't thinking about anything, it was just, like, the heat of the moment."
"I feel like you wouldn't have said it in the heat of the moment if it weren't a little bit true," you say into his neck. "Like, if it wasn't something you believed at least a little bit."
“No, I don't. Even if I did, a lot of time has passed since we. Since everything. And, you know, things change in college, it's normal to sleep around in college—"
"I don't." You let out another sob, heavier, distraught. "I didn't."
“Okay,” he says. “I know, okay? I believe you. I promise.”
You don't stop crying. You don't stop talking, either, but it's all coming out as rambles, fragments of thoughts, and he wishes you were sober and he really wishes he were sober. "I mean, I've done other. I wanted to, you know, with someone who, or in, like—and then you were here, and I didn't think, but then you—and I just figured. Because it was you, and I—Please don't be mad."
He almost laughs at that last part. "Why would I be mad?" He tugs you a little closer, fumbling to get the blanket up over you, and runs a hand back over your head. "I'm not mad, and I don't think you're a slut, and it's fine, all right? Everything's going to be fine. I'm sorry." He kisses the top of your head, and repeats, "I'm sorry."
Your breathing is still hitched, unsteady—but slower, now. Softer than before. Your voice is softer, too, when you say, “Okay."
There's a pause. "Are you mad?"
"A little."
“Hm,” he says, with a joking calm he does not feel. “What would make you feel better? Do you want to slap me? I can put my glasses back on, for maximum impact." You shake a little against him, which he thinks might be a laugh—but then he hears another sob. "Or I can go downstairs and get you a drink to throw in my face. That could be fun, yeah?"
You let out a little sniffle. "I want a redo."
"A redo? Of what?"
"Everything."
“Okay. I get that." There's a moment of silence. His hand stroking your hair. Your face, wet against his throat. "Maybe some sleep? Sleep is like a redo. Kinda."
Your breathing does something funny. Like you're trying harder to get it under control. "Right," you say. Your voice still isn't steady, exactly, but he can hear the effort as you continue, "Yeah, just. Give me a second." You shift a little. He keeps his arms tight around you. "Ryland."
"Yeah?"
"You need to let go. I can't get up, I can't get my clothes if you don't let go."
"Okay." He lets you go, just so that he can find his shirt. You're already off the bed, standing, looking around the room on shaky legs, as he holds it out in your direction. "Hang on, just—you can just have this. More comfortable, probably."
You pick something up off the floor. Your shirt. You pull it on, look at the zipper, and immediately give up, letting it hang open as you look for the rest of your clothes. "No, it's okay, you're going to need that, and I don't know if I'll see you in the morning to give it back."
He blinks. "What's happening?"
"Sleep," you say, picking up something else. A shoe. You don't look at him. "You wanted to sleep."
"Yeah. What." You don't stop looking for your clothes. "Hey. It's, like, four in the morning. You're not walking across campus wearing that."
You laugh. You don’t sound amused. "My slutty little outfit. Right."
"Come on. That's not. Come back to bed? Please?"
You hesitate. For a long moment, he wonders if he's going to have to stand up and somehow physically convince you not to leave. But then you sigh, and you drop the shoe, and you do come back to bed. You tug on his shirt, and you curl up with your back to him, a little bit of space between you. “I just feel so stupid.”
“You’re not stupid.” He's more tentative, this time, in reaching out, but you don’t resist at all when he presses up against you, getting the blanket back up over you both. He gets his arms around your waist. His chin atop your head. Your body perfectly nestled into his. “You won that fancy mock trial and everything.”
“I mean, when we were kids, I—you were so nice, you know? So was Colt, he still is, but you. And you were smart, and funny, and I just. I thought you were really cool. But everything’s so different now.” A pause. “I didn’t think it would be like this.”
“Like what?” He forces a laugh. “What, I’m not cool or funny or smart anymore?”
“You are,” you say. “You’re just also kind of mean.”
“Oh.”
You sit for a while in the frat house silence. The distant thrum of basement music. Creaking floors. The buzz of an AC unit down the hall.
“I wasn’t trying to be mean,” he finally says.
“Okay,” you say. “I believe you.”
Enough time passes that he assumes you’ve fallen asleep, when you turn, getting your leg back over his, your face against his chest, into which you say, quiet, groggy: “I just miss when you were nice to me."
He presses another kiss into your hair. “I can be nice to you,” he murmurs. Your hair smells like your lip gloss, like candy. Like cherries. Like you. “I’ll be so nice, okay?"
You don’t answer. Your breathing is steady. Your head is heavy on his chest.
He tightens his arms around you. He kisses the top of your head again. He can fix this, somehow. He has to. He doesn’t know how, yet, he’s too drunk and too tired and still trying to piece together half of what you were saying, but—he will. He’s smart. He’s stubborn. He’ll find a way to make it up to you in the morning.
-
You’re gone in the morning.
You’re gone, along with your clothes, and your shoes. His shirt is crumpled on the edge of the bed. His borrowed pillow still smells like you.
He pulls his pants on inside-out twice, and talks to three frat bros, and stumbles in and out of four separate dining halls before he finds the one where the mock trial stragglers have set up for Sunday brunch. You’re at the end of a long table, laughing blearily at a comment from the girl sitting opposite you, when you look up to see him.
“Hey,” he says.
You put down the pancake-laden fork you were holding, back into a plate swimming with syrup. You always did have a sweet tooth. “Hey."
"Can we talk?"
"Sure,” you say. You push out your chair to stand, gesturing one minute to your friends, and he follows you over to a corner of the dining hall. You lean against the wall, arms crossed. Your hair is in a bun. Your face is bare, save for a few specks of mascara under the eyes, and the lip gloss that he now knows the taste of. “What's up?"
"Last night,” he begins. He didn’t have a lot of time to work on this particular monologue, what with all of the tugging his clothes on and running across campus, but he was able to plan a little something. “I said a lot of things—"
You cut him off immediately. “People say things in bed. You were drunk. It happens."
Okay. Scratch the monologue. He cuts to the important bit. “I just wanted to say I'm sorry."
“Great, I forgive you." You don’t give him anything else.
“You sure? You seemed pretty upset."
"Yeah. I was drunk. It's fine."
"I made you cry, I don't know that I'd call that fine—"
"Wouldn't be the first time, right?” You give him the unhappiest smile he’s ever seen. “Look, I have a flight to catch, and I'd really love to get some non-airport food before I go—" You push off the wall, and he stops you with a hand on your arm.
"Well, I mean, can we talk about it later? I can call you, when you get back to school."
You gently pull your arm away from his hand. “I don't think that's a good idea."
"Why not?"
"It's not like we talked a lot before, Ryland,” you say, and whatever patience you had at the start of this conversation is gone. “And maybe I don't feel like sitting on the phone waiting for you to make me cry again.”
He doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t say anything at all.
You sigh. “You apologized for whatever you wanted to apologize for, right? So you don't owe me anything. Last night was just, like, closing a loop. Fun. Casual. Favor complete.” Before he can protest, you continue, “And, you know, if it helps, I'm seeing someone. Back at Berkeley. We're not exclusive, or anything, so, like, you don't have to worry about—it wasn't cheating. But probably soon. So whatever you said, whatever I said, don't worry about it, okay? It's fine."
It’s not fine. It’s not fine, and there’s nothing in the monologue that will make it fine, and you’re already five steps in the direction of your table. “Okay."
“Get home safe,” you call back over your shoulder.
“Right,” he says to nobody in particular. “You too.”
-
His first thought, looking across a frat basement at CalTech (which, if he’s being honest, is identical to the frat basements of UCSD, and every other frat basement in California), is that lightning has struck twice.
The top. The shoes. The skirt. The cup in your hand. He walks before he thinks, before his brain has a chance to do anything but stall, which means he is two feet away from you before he realizes that it isn’t you at all. Your doppelgänger turns. Not a doppelgänger at all, actually. Different hair color, different eyes, different everything. He knows that top, though. The straps. The zipper.
Of course it isn’t you. You don’t go to school in Pasadena. And if you were ever in Pasadena, it wouldn’t be to visit him.
She smiles, as though he isn’t a complete stranger. “Ryland, right? We were in orgo together. Freshman year.”
“I remember,” he lies.
“Great! That’s great.” She holds up two little glasses in one hand, and a bottle in the other. “What do you think? Happy end-of-midterms?”
He accepts the shot. He swallows it all the way down.
Later, when they’re lying in his bed, with his arm over her waist and her top somewhere on the floor, he thinks about how her mouth tasted: vodka, and nothing else.
SUMMARY. after a long time of being forgotten, peter parker shockingly meets someone who remembers him: a girl he used to see in high school. but their relationship doesn't start off with sunshine and rainbows; they will have to learn to choose each other, even when it's the harder thing to do.
WORD COUNT. 17.4k
CONTENT. post no way home. female reader. dual pov. hurt / comfort (emotional & physical). angst with hopeful ending (blame the trailer for having angsty vibes). both peter and reader are sad. peter needs a hug. peter carries reader while swinging. loneliness and finding the one person who understands. a lot of crying. canon-typical violence. reader gets a gunshot wound. blood. explosion. death (of no one named). crime organization. reader has to fight at some point (i tried). not beta read. home-related title yay.
NOTES. i really hope you like this. let me know your thoughts in the comments / reblogs / my inbox! also let me know if i'm missing any tags. english isn't my first language, and i've never been to new york. if there are any inaccuracies, consider it the mcu version of the city. the gif is by @manny-jacinto
it was a rainy morning, dark clouds had covered the sky, and the atmosphere was melancholic. you had just stepped out of the book cafe you usually went to study or read in, it was a hidden gem in the ever-crowded streets of new york city, usually quiet and peaceful. this time, you’d just paid a visit to buy a drink with some pastries.
today’s gloomy weather felt right to you, somehow, it spoke to your soul and fit your mood. you’d stuffed the pastries you’d bought into your bag, and you were going to walk around a little bit, holding your drink in one hand, your umbrella in the other. you thought you might sit somewhere, maybe go to a park after walking for twenty or so minutes, you enjoyed the smell of rain mixing with earth to bring life to the world.
and that’s when you saw him.
he was standing at the other side of the road, wearing a simple hoodie, getting wet from the rain. an expression on his face as gloomy as the weather. he’d grown, his face had taken a sharper shape, his hair had curled on the tips from meeting with water.
peter parker, the boy from your ap chemistry class, from days long forgotten, and much less destructive.
you froze, your gaze set on his face, which had been painted in subtle and few scars, and bent downward from either the rain getting into his eyes, or life. the regular noise of the city was reduced to background buzzing in your ears, all the pedestrians walking past you, and the people waiting to cross roads around peter had turned blurry and faceless, the cars passing by had become trails of colors. the boy, or perhaps now man, you had just noticed, was someone you’d never thought you’d see again.
peter parker had been the smartest student in the class you took together, you used to keep notes and read ahead before every lesson, and he’d come sleep-deprived, busy himself with unrelated trinkets, and answer every unexpected question coming his way correctly. later, when you learned that he was spiderman, you realised he must’ve been so tired and out-of-it every day for saving lives and fighting crime.
you had learned of his superhero activities, like everyone else in the world. you didn’t use to see him outside of your shared lecture hours, not because you were actively avoiding him, fate just hadn’t coincided a conversation between you two. after you’d passed the course and stopped seeing peter entirely, you hadn’t busied your mind with thoughts of him, until that incident with mysterio. learning that he’d been trying to help people every step of the way, back when you used to see him, had changed your view of him.
and then, suddenly, no one remembered anymore. you saw it all happen. you saw the sky shatter and shadows watch the earth through its cracks. you saw what you could only describe as hundreds of aliens preying on your planet. you knew spiderman fought to save the world from their clutches. yet when it was all over, no one remembered the hell-torn skies. or peter parker.
no one remembered he was spiderman. no one remembered he was peter parker. no one remembered peter parker was. no one from your old high school, not even his best friend, not even his girlfriend. they all looked at you as if you spoke of a ghost, he was a painted over memory, he’d escaped from the weak grasps of the growing brains of the youth and the ever-tired minds of the grown.
he’d even escaped from records and photos, like how short-lived cherry blossoms disappeared in a week, as if trees had never been pink. like how spring never lasted. you’d questioned whether you’d made him up, if something was wrong with you. but how could you make up a whole person, that you simply never had a relationship with? he wasn’t an imaginary friend, he had never been a friend.
trying to catch a glimpse of his existence had been like trying to catch smoke with bare hands. and yet, now, he was standing right in front of you, waiting to cross roads. waiting to come towards you.
the lights turned green for pedestrians, and peter snapped out of his stillness, he gained motion, he slowly came closer. people around you made noises indicating they were annoyed at your inaction, but you could barely hear any of them. you were focused completely on one person only.
he crossed the road, and started walking the opposite way from where you had been nailed to the ground, unable to take your eyes off him.
no, don’t go. i must know. i must talk.
you ran after him, forcefully making yourself a way amongst bodies covered in layers of clothing. you closed your umbrella, so it wouldn’t get tangled in others’. you caught up to peter, and grabbed his arm.
he turned instantly, gripping your arm in return, a shocked expression on his face, ready to take you down, had you posed a threat. he looked into your eyes; questioning, confused, hesitant… sorrowful? how had he grown so solemn? how had he lived forgotten?
“peter?” you asked, “peter parker? is that you?”
his eyes widened, grip loosened, lips parted. he looked completely dumbfounded, drops of water dripping down strands of his hair, and the tip of his nose. he searched for something in your eyes, just silently thinking. trying to process, you assumed.
he opened his mouth to talk, and his breath hitched.
“you…” he started, seemingly talking feeling like labor to him, “you know who i am?”
you couldn’t help giving him a sincere smile, he really was peter parker. the boy from your class who was remembered by no one. he was real.
“i was in the same ap chemistry class as you in high school,” you explained, he might not have remembered you, as you’d never interacted outside of topics regarding course materials, “if you don’t remember.”
“no, no,” said peter, his voice still laced with shock, and a tune that dropped a tiny piece of despair into your chest, “i remember. you were the smartest student in class.”
“that’s… debatable,” you said, your surprise clearly read from your face.
“it wasn’t,” he said, defensive, “everyone borrowed your notes, and you always had the correct answers.”
“so did you,” you said softly, the bitter taste of nostalgia repainted with a blue hue catching up to you, tightening your chest, placing a lump in your throat. “what happened, peter?” you asked, “why have you disappeared?”
peter closed his mouth, and his grip slightly hardened, he hadn’t let your arm go. you hadn’t let his go, either.
he lowered his head, and fixed his gaze on the grey stone ground. you couldn’t quite name the emotions you saw in his eyes, but they made you tear up. what must it have been like to suddenly cease existing? what must he have been through? what must he have thought, watching his chosen family from afar, like a vampire looking at a mirror, erased from his own reflection?
the cloudy weather truly felt fit for the day, maybe peter had been feeling it too, today. raindrops fell on earth like shattered glass pieces, you thought you might’ve been bleeding with your umbrella down, but peter wasn’t, was his skin thicker?
“would you like to sit down somewhere, peter?” the tale must have been long, how else could a person, and a rift in the atmosphere, be erased from the minds of billions? “like a bench at the park, or maybe my place?”
he looked deep into your eyes, thinking.
“okay,” he said at last, determination adorning his words now, “we can. we can,” he said while nodding.
“okay,” you repeated after him, and finally let his arm go.
────── 𓆩˚.⋆🕸⋆.˚𓆪 ──────
peter had been on his way to his small apartment, by himself, as always, after another long, sleepless night, that rainy morning. clouds had covered the sky, obscuring the sun, as if to match the weather inside his ribcage. the sun hadn’t shone on him since it had seen space ripped apart because of him, for his mistakes.
it was a day the same as any other; he was walking in the crowd, unseen without a mask, faceless. then, someone he hadn't sensed had touched him, must have been because no harm was intended, yet he'd felt alarmed.
a girl, he'd realized, a familiar face. that wasn't strange, he was used to seeing people he used to know, what was strange was... the look you had in your eyes, almost like you recognized him. a kind of tiny beam of light in your irises, aimed at him.
and then you called out his name.
the world tilted. he felt as if hit by a shockwave, rolling backwards, losing the tightness of his grip on reality, on you. he’d been completely dumbfounded, he could barely process what was happening. someone remembered him. you remembered him. you knew.
he looked you over again, he remembered, too. he remembered how you sat at the front seat, carefully trailing the teacher with your eyes, focus unbreakable. you didn’t use to look his way unless he was asking or answering a question related to the course, he wouldn’t think you would recognize him under normal circumstances, without happenings made foggy through magic, let alone when the whole world has left him behind. the whole multiverse.
he couldn’t get out of the shock he’d been thrown into, not even enough to wonder the why, the how, or think of the implications of the possibility that someone(s) might not have forgotten. he had been erased even from stone and paper, ink had evaporated, computers had lost their binary numbers. human memories couldn’t even be held, they must’ve been so easily broken apart and mended without wholeness again, didn’t people always forget things, anyway?
that had been hard to accept, of course. the fact that the feelings people reserved for him were fragile and unresistant, that they could be so fully erased, that they could be erased at all. but you remembered, was your mind stronger, or was it the impression he’d left on you? was it you, or him?
he hadn’t even been able to ponder if this was a good thing at all, if he should be worried, if he should accept this, how he should react. the past year had been so soul-crushing, so lonely, that after slightly getting over the initial shock that had hit him, holding back his tears had been all he could manage to do. you were wet from the rain, a drink forgotten and an umbrella folded in one of your hands, the other one holding him, looking at him expectantly, worried. you had come after him. you were holding onto him. he tightened his grip again.
you’d even wanted to talk more, to learn of his story, to listen. so he’d agreed, he suspected he would chase you on that road if you’d walked away. his chest had been closing in on his veins and heart, increasing the pressure and twisting his organs, breathing had become harder every day for the past year, he was suffocating. you’d held his arm like a tree branch offered to a drowning kid, an olive branch offered to a warring people, a willow… willows were hunched and weary, weren’t they? he was like a willow, layers of leaves covering his face, unseen.
he didn’t have anywhere to go, or anyone waiting for him. he hadn’t wanted to let you go, now that someone had finally, truly seen the shape of his face. so he had just followed you, let you draw a destination for two.
you had brought him to a small apartment, similar to his own, in an austere street lined with buildings that were short compared to the signature buildings of new york city. you’d told him you were staying there for the time being. your place, as you’d put it. the inside was much nicer than his living space, expectedly, and it contrasted with the grey view of the street from your windows and the pipe-filled outer layer of your apartment building. the floor was covered in soft carpets, the living room was filled with books, its walls covered in bookshelves, academic books left open and stationary scattered about on a table, notebooks filled with your handwriting, it was lived in.
you had taken him to the kitchen, said you’d just bought pastries and had some leftovers to reheat for him, he’d insisted it wasn’t necessary, but you’d shut him down. “how could i send my guest off on an empty stomach?” you’d asked, made him sit down at the kitchen table, and gotten to work on the countertop. the living room had smelled of a flowery incense he couldn’t name, the kitchen was now smelling of baked dough and vegetable soup, making him feel his hunger. he hadn’t eaten anything for breakfast, or during the night.
“i apologize for the mess,” you said, while putting two bowls of steamy soup on the table, “i wasn’t expecting a guest.”
“oh, no, no,” he quickly scrambled to apologize himself, “i don’t mind at all, i’m sorry for… for…” he gestured around himself, trying to find the right words. being a burden? interrupting?
“for accepting my invite? i’d say that was the polite response,” you said, finally sitting opposite to him, having brought the pastries you’d sliced and placed on plates nicely, and the fruit salad you’d quickly put together. “thank you for that, by the way.”
he didn’t know what to say, he looked down flustered, “i- of course- i mean, thank you for inviting me,” he said, gesturing towards you with his hand, a slight smile on his face. how long had it been since he last smiled? it sure didn’t feel like an every day occurrence.
you gave him back a smile that made him… feel warm. he was still on the verge of tears, he was barely holding it together, focusing on the moment, trying not to let all the overwhelming feelings leave his body.
“please, enjoy,” you said, as you slid the plates closer to him, and he nodded in gratitude. he was hungry, and looking at the warm vegetable bisque… he hadn’t eaten a homemade meal in a very, very long time, especially one that was delicious, one that was warm.
and it was delicious. it tasted like a hug, a hearthfire, a blanket. it tasted like something you would eat at your home, like something your mother would cook for you. “this is,” he started, in between spoonfuls, “this is great. you’re a good cook.”
“thank you,” you said, and then started explaining. “i roasted tomatoes, carrots, zucchini, potatoes, bell peppers, and an onion, and blended them with vegetable broth and cream, so probably the easiest way to make something like…” you trailed off as you realised peter was… crying. he was looking down on the bowl of soup in front of him, and tears were silently rolling down his cheeks, as he kept taking spoonfuls.
peter was mortified at his reaction, he quickly scrambled to wipe his face with the tissues you’d placed on the table, and apologize. you told him it was fine, and he could take however much time he needed or wanted. you let him eat and think in silence for as long as he needed, you gave him time and space as he filled his stomach with warm food and sweet fruits. he didn’t know why tears had won against his willpower this time around, considering how good he’d gotten at holding them in. he didn’t know why just eating in your kitchen, with you, had made him feel emotions overwhelming enough to rush out of him. he was embarassed, despite your reassurances. it was the first time he was meeting with you in years, the only person who still remembered him, and he had started crying over a soup. he wasn’t a teenage high schooler anymore, why was this happening?
after a silence long enough to make someone less patient uncomfortable, he finally felt he could talk, and decided to tell you everything that had happened. all of it. you were the only person who knew him now, was it wrong to want to be known fully? to be understood?
so he told you everything, from the start… from a time too early, one might’ve thought; from before he even became an avenger. there had been people in his life who knew of his journey, how he became a hero, how he became an avenger, who he fought against, who he fought with, what really happened with mysterio, and then… then aunt may’s death… then everyone else’s little deaths.
peter used to be talkative, he used to converse with even the people he was actively battling, yet telling you all he wanted made him realise it had been a long time since he’d spoken so much. so transparently, willingly. had life crushed him under a fallen bridge without him noticing? he had been feeling it, but couldn’t guess how dire his cuts and walls had been drawn.
you listened all of it, without looking away once, without looking at the time. and then, once he concluded his speech and drifted off to silence, you let it fester. it seemed as if you had a hard time proccessing everything peter had dumped on you, or maybe couldn’t find the right words to continue with. this time, peter left you in your own silence, his hands slightly shaking in nervousness. what was your reaction going to be? what were you thinking?
“i’m truly sorry,” you said at last, a rueful expression adorning your face, making you look older than you had when telling him of the soup recipe. you had grown older, peter had noticed, more beautiful. “i’m sorry about your aunt, too. i had no idea. i thought… i guess i assumed at least your family would remember you.”
“yeah,” said peter in defeat, “there is no one.”
you looked deep into his eyes, pain visible on your face, “i remember,” you said. “and now i know.”
peter sighed and put his face in between his hands, closing his eyes in despair. “there is nowhere i belong, now. i fight for this city, and… and no one cares.”
this was horrible. truly horrible. a weight had been lifted off his shoulders when you’d recognized him, listened to him, welcomed him into your home. but he also felt bothered by it, too. had being known always been so scary? he hadn’t meant to say the last bit, he hadn’t even thought that to himself before. he’d been on the verge of it, but hadn’t actually thought it. why did he say it out loud now? why did he tell you?
you took a deep breath, “a lot of people care, especially the ones you save. you’ve been making a huge difference, peter. yours can be a thankless job sometimes, but many are grateful.” you paused for a moment, “i’ve always been grateful. when i learned how you’d been fighting for people this whole time, my respect for you skyrocketed. i thought i would help you in any way i could if it ever came to that.”
peter pressed his hands harder on his eyes, he didn’t want to start crying again. he didn’t know if you realised how your words had fallen into the deepest part of his soul. it was strange, how only a few words could help people keep going, how humans could be built merely by caring, and how humans could be so worn-out that they could stop tasting without even realising.
his phone vibrated silently in his pocket, taking him out of spiraling. he sighed again, what was it now?
strong fire in a building, spreading speedily, authorities unable to protect the citizens despite doing their best. he stood up abruptly, “i should go,” he said.
“what is it? what happened?”
“fire in a tall building, i need to save those people,” he said while walking towards the door, you trailing behind him.
“okay- be careful, peter. and come back here after you’re done there, okay? even if it’s late, because i’ll wait for you, and if you don’t come back, i’ll wait until morning,” you said quickly as he was wearing his shoes, the door to your house open.
“okay,” he said, stuttering slightly, “thank you.” truly. you’ve made breathing possible for me again. thank you.
and he left you behind like that, because he never had a break. he didn’t know if he deserved a break. none of that mattered though, there were people suffering, and he couldn’t leave them behind, no matter what.
────── 𓆩˚.⋆🕸⋆.˚𓆪 ──────
you were leaning on the metal handrails of your small balcony, looking at the few people and cars that passed by the road in front of your apartment. it was desolate, compared to most of new york, but it was steadily never-ending, there never was a time when people stopped in this city. your view was made up of other grey apartments like yours, sharp corners and square shapes, nothing tasteful added to their designs. could this be good for the soul?
you looked up at the sky, to watch the stars, but as always, not many were visible. you counted four stars that could be clearly seen from your balcony. the same as yesterday. you sometimes wondered: if you could reach greater heights, would more of them shine on you? the city had offended the stars in an effort to be independent from them, brighten night time, they didn't show their faces anymore. even if they wanted to, they couldn't be seen.
peter had been shining since he was a kid; clever, kind, righteous, fair-faced in a way the cleanness of his heart had reflected on his features. how big of a loss was it for the world to be forsaken from his face? it was lucky that peter was good-hearted, for he kept showing up under a mask anyway, offering those who looked a glimpse into his light.
it was past midnight already, and peter was still nowhere to be seen. he'd left you a little past noon, the fire had been extinguished by now, and spiderman had left the premises after saving dozens of lives (that the firefighters would've been too late for, despite their best efforts), and yet, peter was nowhere to be seen. it worried you, you wished you had asked for his phone number; you'd considered asking, but decided against it, thinking he might be bothered by the request.
after you'd talked to michelle, his girlfriend, some time back, and she hadn't remembered the boy she’d been in love with, you'd been thinking of peter regularly. even if you had made him up in your mind, it had just flooded your chest with such profound sadness, that you had decided at least you would remember him, whether it would matter to him or not.
and, he was real, he was spiderman. and he’d been so lonely. graveyards had become his only sanctuary, teenage diaries and late night messages had been buried next to the corpses of anyone who'd ever taken care of him, and he did not know their hiding spots. he just wandered around graves, knowing they were somewhere under his feet, to stay there forever. if he tried to dig them out, he would be swallowed up by lava, dooming the rest of the world to a volcanic apocalypse.
it seemed like volcanos had already been erupting behind his eyes, in his lungs. the peter you remembered used to be a jolly kid.
your head perked up as you heard your doorbell ring, and quickly rushed to open the door. a smiling peter greeted you, clothing changed. he looked more put-together than he had in the morning; a clean shirt under a black jacket and denim pants, not the baggy sweats he had on before.
you welcomed him inside, and brought him to sit on your couch, in the living room.
“are you all right?” you asked, “does anywhere hurt? do you need anything?”
he hesitated for a moment, a little surprised. “no, no- it’s fine. i didn’t fight anyone, so didn’t really get injured… much. it’s fine. i took care of it.”
you looked at him in silence for a few seconds, thinking. “liar,” you said.
“what?” he said in low voice, sounding worried. did he think he’d messed up somehow?
“you gave me your word that you would come straight to me, instead you took your sweet time tending to your injuries and changing your outift? you showered too, didn’t you?”
“i… i-” he quickly started talking, and then stopped to think. that was fine, he didn’t need to rush a response, never with you. he would learn that you’d always wait for him patiently. with time, he’d become more comfortable. you assumed this must be… somewhat of an uncomfortable experience for him, after being alone for so long. “i thought-”
he didn’t know what to say, you supposed.
“did i sound mad? i’m sorry. i was just worried. i.. uh, i’d wanted to help you with your injuries and stuff, too,” you weren’t exactly used to these kinds of conversations either. “since you’re not alone anymore… and all.”
“oh…” was all he could say.
“i mean, i’m glad you’re okay, and you look great, and i don’t mind that you had some alone time before coming and all, but you could, uh, if you want to, just come straight to me as well. after a fight or whatever. and you can take care of… your stuff here,” you forced the words out, you had to take these kinds of initiatives, if you wanted to have a closer relationship with him. because he wouldn’t impose anything on you. “if you want to, of course,” you added.
“i… thank you, i would, uh, yeah,” he said. you supposed that was a positive answer.
“so, what happened?”
he recounted the fire and the struggles in detail, how he saved the people trapped, how he had to deal with the authorities after him, how he got injured (only a little, he emphasized), and then how he went home to wear something better to come back to you. he’d wanted to rid the smell of ash and soot off his skin.
“i got tired just listening to you,” you said.
he chuckled slightly, “ah, yeah, things like this happen sometimes.”
“would you like anything to eat or drink?”
“no, no. not necessary, thank you,” he said quickly, raising his hands.
“okay, just tell me if you need anything.”
“all right, thanks… again,” he had a beautiful smile, but it looked like guilt had mixed into his skin, stopping him from smiling fully, with his eyes, or eyebrows. you wanted to tell him that none of this was his fault, he wasn’t responsible for the cruelty of others, he wasn’t at fault for being a victim. his aunt hadn’t died because he’d shown mercy, he was just being humane, the fault lied solely with the… whichever supernatural freak had done that, it was getting harder to keep track of them now. and the spell hadn’t gone wrong because of him, couldn’t doctor strange tell that he obviously wouldn’t want his own family to forget him? why wouldn’t he automatically add that to the spell? and the second time? surely he could’ve just kept two people out of his spell. none of it was his fault.
but you couldn’t bring yourself to, you didn’t want to push too hard, or overstep your bounds. peter didn’t know you, not really. you assumed he must be happy that someone remembered him, but you wouldn’t be too surprised if he had forgotten you.
why had you remembered? you weren't magical, as far as you knew, so what had gone wrong? wasn't this... somewhat bad news? if you remembered, could it be possible that someone evil might, too? you didn't know, you supposed maybe you should try to ask doctor strange, somehow.
after a while of silence, you decided telling him how you feel, being straightforward, should be better than leaving thoughts to go back and forth in your head, bothering you. “peter,” you started, “i know what kind of a person you are for the most part. i know that you have a good heart, and you’re loyal, and honest. i… don’t doubt that you’ll be a good friend, that’s why i can be… this comfortable with you. i know, because i’ve been able observe you quite well until now.”
he was listening to you, eyes getting wider and smile dropping slowly, as you went on.
“i also know that you don’t really know me as well, so i’ll have to prove my character to you, in the way that you’ve already proven yours,” you quickly added, which was the point you’d wanted to make. “so, uh, i just wanted to say that… is the reason why i would like to be… good friends with you, even though we didn’t interact much back then. telling you just in case… you were wondering.”
he gave you a shy smile. "thank you," he said, occasionally glancing away.
then a small chuckle escaped his lip. “all i’ve been doing the whole day has been thanking you."
you giggled in return, "i thank you as well."
"for what? i haven't done anything."
"for saving this city and the world over and over again."
his expression turned serious, thoughtful. "i just do what i should. it’s my responsibility."
you leaned back on the couch, observing him. was it? did he really have to do what he did? he didn't have to, no one had to do anything. but it was right that he did. you supposed, being able to help people did mean you should, would it be wrong if he didn't interfere?
"what are you thinking?" he asked.
you hummed. "i think you are right, but then it's our responsibility to be grateful, and to help you in any way we can, even if that's just emotional support." you looked into his eyes carefully, "you've been doing your duty, but most others in the city haven't."
"that's all right," he said. "i don't expect anything. i don't do this to get anything in return."
"well," you started, "you can expect things from me, and feel free to let me know."
the shy smile returned to his face, "thank you again," he said. "you as well," he hastily added, raising his eyebrows while gesturing at you.
you were glad he seemed to be in a better mood now, compared to this morning. he was more put together, and somewhat more confident. you assumed having more time to process your situation must've helped.
the two of you talked for around another hour, peter got more talkative as you went on, and by the end, he was the only one talking. he'd started to tell you all about the various villains he'd been fighting, and you were very interested; you enjoyed listening to him.
but the time was getting closer to two in the morning, and you were having to fight your own eyelids to keep yourself from dropping to the floor right at that moment.
peter stopped abruptly mid-sentence, looking at you concerned. "oh," he started "i'm sorry, it's really late, i talked too much."
"no, no," you said, shaking your hand, "i really want to know about all of these things. let's continue tomorrow?"
"okay, sure," he said, smiling. "i'll get going now, and uh, see you tomorrow."
"get going? i could arrange my living room for you, if you'd like to stay the night? should you be alone when you're injured?"
"i don't want to bother you," he said as he stood up. “it’s fine, this isn't really all that bad, I've had much worse."
"okay, but call me if anything happens. i'll be more upset if you don't," you said as you followed him to the door.
"i will. you call me too," he said, having gotten out, wearing his shoes.
"deal."
“good night."
"good night."
and he was gone.
and you were so sleepy that you could fall asleep standing there. as you made your way to your bed, you decided to go over today's events tomorrow, when your braincells wouldn’t be forming a union to counter your abuse.
────── 𓆩˚.⋆🕸⋆.˚𓆪 ──────
peter opened his curtains to look outside, as soon as he managed to get out of his bed.
the sun was shining down on him, bathing his room and face in its light. he opened the window, and took a deep breath in. the air had the beautiful smell of rain, still lingering, left from yesterday.
he leaned on his window, and for the first time in forever, a smile graced his lips for the sun, for the day ahead of him.
he wanted to put on his spiderman suit and swing around in the city, not out of obligation or because he didn’t have anything else to do; he had an unfamiliar motivation in him to do something with his day.
so he did. he quickly got ready for the day, and all the steps felt less intimidating today. even brushing his teeth had become a tiring chore. he'd supposed it must've been because he was so tired all the time, but today, it had been easier, all of it. even breathing.
and it wasn't like he'd gotten more sleep than usual, either. sleeping was something out of routine for peter. sometimes he could only get a few hours at night, having to be spiderman. sometimes he would stare at the ceiling, unable to drift off to sleep. sometimes he would end up sleeping for more than ten hours, not wanting to get out of his bed, forcefully scraping his body off of it with a mental spatula, skin tearing apart from muscle, using every bit of his willpower. but, no matter which scenario happened to play out, peter would never feel rested.
he got mad at himself sometimes. for sleeping. or not sleeping. surely none of this was supposed to be this hard, everyone always did them just fine. so why was he like this? what was wrong with him?
he shook his head, getting out of his window as spiderman, and started wandering new york from the tops of buildings. not today, though. today he felt rested. and like something good could happen, strangely. and his chest could host the air he breathed in, unlike any day he could remember in months. he hadn't realised how air had been refusing to get into his lungs, until it finally did today.
he watched people walking towards their destinations without looking anywhere else. the streets of new york were always overfilled with motion and a million faces, and no one stopped to look at one another.
how had you seen him, yesterday? were you looking? were you always looking at people? were you searching for someone, something?
clouds had poured more rain on the city at night, and towards the morning. it was almost as if they had only stopped momentarily for the fire in the building to spread.
peter had gone to his apartment as soon as he was done rescuing civillians from the fire. he'd wanted to wear something nice, look cleaner for you. he was sort of embarrassed that your first meeting had been when he looked... less than ideal, let's say.
while showering, he'd spaced out, and ended up thinking for almost an hour. mostly about you.
he'd tried to remember everything about you, any kind of clue about your exceptional situation, but there was nothing. you used to mostly keep to yourself, peter hadn't even interacted with you all that much.
despite that, you'd been so accepting of him so quickly yesterday. he had wondered why, before you explained that you… knew him.
not only remembered, you knew him. not completely, but enough to trust. his heart fluttered in his chest, making a gentle movement for the first time since the last time he'd been called peter by anyone at all. thinking about your words excited him, energized him, made him move faster,
you wanted to get closer. you offered to patch up his wounds. you weren't afraid or displeased. you wanted to be close. his friend.
he would call you around noon, he'd decided. he'd kept you up quite late and didn't know when you would wake up. then maybe you could meet up this evening. outside, perhaps? he could take you to... he would come up with some ideas, by then.
he stopped and perched on top of a building, examining the back alleys. he knew the way to your house from where he was, he was really looking forward to seeing you again. was that why waking up had been easier today?
he shook his head and took a deep breath, preparing himself for the day, and the task in front of him. he needed to focus, do his job. he would get to see you when the time came for it. you would respect him more for his service, anyway... or at least he hoped so.
────── 𓆩˚.⋆🕸⋆.˚𓆪 ──────
the the sun had just started setting, the orange hue of dusk hadn't settled in the sky yet. you were sitting on the stairs at the entrance of your apartment building. the ground was still wet, but the upper part of the stairs had been protected from yesterday's rain thanks to the architecture of the building. you would just need to dust off its filth once you stood up.
peter was supposed to come any minute now, he'd called you around noon and asked if you'd like to meet up this evening, and he could take you to see some places. you had started preparing some hours ago. you hadn't known what to wear, or what he had in mind, and had been too nervous to feel completely good about an outfit. you didn’t want to mess this up. at last, you'd just decided to get out of your house and wait. sitting on cold stairs. you were beginning to regret your choices slowly.
“hi,” appeared a head suddenly in front of your nose, making you yelp in surprise and slide backwards on the stairs. you put your hand on your mouth, wide-eyed, and finally processed what the dangling head in red was: peter. he was hanging from your building, held by his web, upside down, in his spiderman suit. he wouldn’t be as instantly recognizable from afar, as he was wearing a jacket, pants, and sneakers on his suit. it looked good.
“sorry,” he said, landing next to you, but not moving towards you. “sorry,” he repeated quickly. “i didn’t mean to scare you.”
“my goodness, peter,” you said, exhaling a deep breath. “no, sorry, spiderman.”
he chuckled lightly. “did i make you wait too much? sorry about that, too.”
“no, no, you are…” you looked at your watch, “right on time, actually.”
“uh,” he started, then hesitated for a moment before taking out a piece of cloth… no, a mask from the pocket of his jacket. “this should be really comfortable, i brought it in case you wanted to, you know, keep your identity hidden.”
“oh, you will stay in your spiderman costume?” you asked, taking the mask, and putting your hand in it so see what it looked like.
“yeah,” he said, “i can’t do what i want to do with you without my suit.”
you looked at him questioningly, “what is it that you want to do with me, peter?” you asked with mock seriousness.
he made a low-volume laughing sound. “i was planning on carrying you in the sky with me. if that’s okay.” he raised his hands in hurry, “it’s okay if you don’t want to, of course. just… i just thought you might like it, is all.”
you looked at the mask, and swiftly wore it. fixing it on your face, you looked at peter. “how do i look?” you asked.
“wait, let me help,” he said as he came closer to you, and fixed the back of the mask.
“thank you.”
so peter took you to the skies.
you held onto him like your life depended on it (it did), arms wrapped around his shoulders. his movements in the air were fast and sharp, the wind felt like a slap to the face at points. yet, you didn’t feel an ounce of fear, if anything, excitement and joy would be descriptive of your feelings. peter had a strong grip on you, somehow, you trusted that without doubt, he would never drop you.
──────
he had taken and placed you on top of a skyscraper, with a view of busy streets and the decorated balconies of shorter buildings. having ascended on the city as rain yesterday, clouds in the sky had thinned, and the atmosphere was clear. the sun was half gone by now, and all your gaze rested upon was dusk-touched; bathed in the burning scarlett of the sun’s farewell.
you smiled, looking over at the city. the wind was caressing your face gently, and breathing had become easier since seeing peter. being where you stood now, it felt freeing.
“this is amazing.” you glanced at peter briefly, and saw he’d been looking at you.
“i’m glad you like it,” he said, then joined you in gazing towards the horizon.
──────
you’d been sitting where peter had caried you to, on top of the skyscraper, for a while now. topics chased each other with ease, built onto each other, and you ended up talking about things you’d never told anyone before. but peter listened, contributed, he seemed truly interested, and then he outclassed your yapping, so words ended up spilling out of your mouth naturally.
“my favorite tree is willow, actually. i love willows, they are so pretty, they have leaves like drapes. they look magical," you said, adding onto the conversation that you’d ended up talking about because… the city layout, then parks, then trees, then if many people have favorite kinds of trees, then his being olive trees…
he looked into your eyes carefully, like you'd said something that struck a cord, something he'd considered before.
"really?" he asked, then turned his gaze towards the city again, eyebrows laying heavier, eyes looking below. "willows look hunched," he said, "they look weary."
was he hunched? had he grown tired? was he trying to tell you that was how he saw the world now? hunched, instead of magical?
"hmm, " you thought for a moment, "do you know why willows are hunched?"
he looked at you questioningly. "no?"
"i've been told a story from someone who'd been told a story; there once was a willow next to a lake. you know how willows like wetlands. and there once was a child sweet as a sugar beet, yet did not know how to swim. choose one day from the countless days the old willow had seen, the sweet child fell into the lake right next to its roots, he couldn't stay on the surface, so he asked the willow for help. the willow bowed its leaves as fast as it could, to offer a branch to hold onto, but it was too slow, and the leaves touched the water too late. after that day, the willow's leaves never rose again. word spread to every willow with time, and they lowered their branches one by one, so if a child were ever drowning, they would never be too late."
he was still looking down, but his expression had changed lightly. his brows were slightly tented, his eyes seemed watery. you studied him, it looked like the story had touched him; he was quietly in thought.
was he a willow? had he failed to save a drowning child? had he been hunched?
had he realized being hunched didn't have to be ugly?
"stories are great," you said, not to fill the silence, but because you now felt comfortable enough to share your thoughts with him. "they can verbalize things you keep in your head, and make you realize; oh, someone else thought the same thing back when who knows how many years ago, and i’m not the only one."
he nodded after another moment of silence. "that was a beautiful story," he said, looking at you, "do you know many like it?"
"short tales like these? not many. i generally read novels."
"maybe i should start too."
you perked up. "you could!" you said, voice coming out too excited for your liking, "i'll lend you some."
"okay," he said, smiling in his usual, reserved way, "thank you."
poor, innocent peter. he had no idea what he'd just signed up for, basically accepting to be subjected to a reader's propaganda of their favorite books.
"i should be thanking you," you responded, "for bringing me here."
the sun had fully gone down, no traces of orange left in the sky, although it hadn't gotten fully dark yet. the moon could be seen, finally getting out of the sun's shadow. or more so, light. too bright for anything else to stay visible near it, yet nothing on earth would be visible without its light, including the moon.
you looked down at the ant-sized citizens of new york, ever-moving, flowing like a river. the wind was caressing your face, chilly, up here was colder than down below, yet it didn't feel as hostile.
"i used to really like it," he said while nodding, a half-smile left on his face from your previous conversation, and perhaps memories of years gone.
"sitting atop buildings?"
"yeah. sitting or swinging or... just height."
"it is kind of freeing."
"and just... you know, a different kind of perspective."
"yeah, i get it," you said, looking at your ant subjects, "why don't you like it anymore?"
he seemed to search for words for a moment, looking around. and then shrugged. "i guess i just... don't really like things anymore."
you sighed, nodding. "well, it's a miracle that you liked my below-average vegetable soup, then."
"it was very much above average!"
"as i said, a miracle."
"why am i having to defend my tastes in the middle of a date right now?"
he stopped abruptly, his smile fading, eyes widening. "i mean!" he quickly scrambled to fix his mistake, "not like- not a date like a date date, you know, i was just saying... just-"
was this a time for you to interrupt? he didn't seem like he wanted to finish that sentence.
"i know," you said, chuckling, "don't worry. i'm also really glad we're doing this. take me soaring the skies more often."
"i wouldn't necessarily call it soaring."
"well, whatever it was."
and then, once again, hours chased one another, carrying your long-winded conversation back and forth, and the deep black of night had fallen on the two of you like a blanket.
peter was sweet, it was like honey dripped from his lips; you hadn't found a conversation so enjoyable in years. you were glad he'd opened up more, back in high school, you had no idea he was so talkative.
you had brought a homemade meal with yourself, considering how much he'd appreciated that yesterday. and you’d shared it over the hours you’d spent together.
peter seemed to relax more and more around you, smile actually coming naturally to his face now, dangling his feet with comfortable, quiet joy.
“ah,” he said at some point, “this is… somewhat hard.”
“what is?”
he thought on it for a moment. “no, nothing. forget i said anything.”
“nooo,” you grabbed his arm and slightly shook him, “i’m curious now!”
he chuckled, “no, it’s embarrassing.”
“peter, listen to me,” you started with mock seriousness, “whatever it is, it cannot be as embarrassing as my cringeworthy memories, so i won’t even register it as embarrassing.”
“okay,” he said after a short silence, “i guess… i guess i got used to being alone too much, now i find it kind of hard to… be known, i guess. it leaves me with a kind of anxiety.”
“it wasn’t like that before?”
“no,” he turned his gaze to the city, “i don’t remember it being like this.”
you hummed, nodding your head. you were going to tell him that you understood, that you felt similarly occasionally, that it was normal, but he kept going before you could.
“at least, the bad parts.”
“what bad parts?”
“you know, my mistakes and flaws and other such things,” he took a deep breath before continuing. “i told you everything but… i wish you didn’t know some of it, now.”
you studied his face; he definitely looked more youthful, like the weight of the world wasn’t crushing him anymore. like he could put his burden down for a moment, take a break. peter didn’t seem like a person who would have a hard time being vulnarable, or being known, but pain did change people. was it just being alone, or being alone with what he thought were his mistakes, scenes repeating over and over in his head as he stared at empty walls, with no one to talk to?
“i like you as you are,” you said, “with your mistakes and flaws; that’s being human, and you’re not lesser for any of it. not objectively, and not in my eyes.”
he was looking into your eyes now, he’d become more comfortable resting his gaze upon yours; you found it comforting, you tried to make him feel the same.
“isn’t that the part of being known that matters?” you asked. “knowing the imperfect parts, the harder to accept parts, and accepting anyway, and loving anyway. doesn’t it make you feel better that i know you fully and like you even more for it?”
peter seemed truly lost for words, for the second time since you’d met. you’d wanted to make him feel welcome into your life, so you’d done your best to tell him things you’d wish to hear yourself, and they were the truth, but you really hoped it would come across right. he wasn’t the only one to overthink conversations.
he opened his mouth to give an answer, and then, suddenly, chaos erupted.
the thunder of a bomb going off shook the ground and the buildings around you. screams mixed into a deafening whistle of the wind that carried them as people ran away from the sound collectively, pushing each other.
peter stood up instinctively, looking towards the explosion. it had happened close enough that you’d felt the shockwave.
“what was that?” you yelled, trying to be heard over the sound, clumsily standing up next to peter, as you were quite high up. he held your arm to steady you.
“i’m not sure, but i think i know who’s responsible for it,” he said with a serious expression on his face, brows furrowed, thoughtful, voice lower than yours, but you could still hear him.
“are you going to go?”
“i have to, this is… these people are dangerous, you should go home.”
he grabbed you by your waist and brought you down to the ground in a hurry, gently placing you. “i’m sorry,” he said, “i’ll come back, uh, to your house, if that’s okay?”
“of course,” you responded, “i’ll be waiting. and don’t be sorry.”
and he dissapeared into the sky, swinging.
────── 𓆩˚.⋆🕸⋆.˚𓆪 ──────
peter hated villains, truly. criminals who committed heinous acts of terrorism, knew nothing but cruelty, unashamedly hurt people, kidnapped, wounded… there were so many of them, too. he kept defeating those hurting new york, and new ones kept popping up.
well, he thought he hated them, but he didn’t know how exactly he felt. he remembered a time when feelings so negative and irritating hadn’t ever been inside him, it was like they added onto each other. one would think it would get easier with time, that he would get used to repeated things. like losing… but not only had losing aunt may been harder than losing uncle ben, he was now more bitter, and more mournful over the past deaths he’d thought he’d gotten over, as well. or, how instead of growing numb to seeing horrible crimes unfold, every act of abuse and cruelty made him angrier, every time he hated… he hated more, although he wasn’t sure exactly what he was hating.
when he tried to track the target his hatred was pointing at, he saw blurry pictures. villains were a part of it, surely, but he didn’t feel a burning rage while fighting them, it was more so weariness, or disgust, mostly, he just wanted all of it to be over. he didn’t want to… ponder more on it, after that point. he had tried once, and then felt an untangible pain. he couldn’t admit it to himself, but he was afraid of what else he could find in that blur. himself? tony? aunt may? mj? new york? the world?
so the picture stayed anonymous, and he couldn’t fully direct his fury at anything, and he disliked all the villains, but could hardly muster up the energy to truly hate them. and perhaps it wasn’t in his nature, either. anger and hatred, he’d never been very good at those. was that why his heart was withering? because he couldn’t feel well? because those were all there was to feel in his life now, and he failed at it?
he felt so done with everything, currently. was he not going to be able to spend time with you uninterrupted? the conversation was going well, too. or at least he thought it was. he hoped you would agree.
back in high school, he knew you were smart, and funny, and would be a good friend if anyone could approach you, but you’d prefered to stay away from him, and he hadn’t had the courage to initiate a relationship with you, he’d found you intimidating. now getting to know you better, he wished he’d just done it, back then. but maybe not. maybe then he would lose you too.
would he lose you now, as well? he’d lost everyone, hadn’t he?
or he’d break your heart, maybe. he’d left liz, he’d left mj, he’d left ned. thrice taken, something was wrong with him.
he arrived at the site of the explosion, looking from above. the thick, suffocating hotness, the pain-filled wails of the survivors, the rubbles of the building crumbled down, his eyes searched for certain signs in between the horrors. he would first save those who couldn’t save themselves, then he would stop whoever was responsible.
as he started carrying survivors out of flames and rubble, he also started scanning everything around him carefully. a sign, a clue, a mistake on the culprit’s part… he knew who it was, he was almost sure the organization he’d been tailing down for the past few months was responsible for this. they were onto him, too, they knew.
he’d found out the position of their base was last week, a site with several factories and buildings in it, towards the border of the city, in a mostly desolate area, as it used to just be an industrialized site, but had now turned into an unpreferred place for bussiness. he’d wondered if they had something to do with that as well, but he supposed that didn’t matter much, in the grand scheme of things.
he would go there, and… and confront them. fight them. end them. something. somehow. the police were rendered useless for the most part, when it came to these underground syndicates, some were bought puppets, some were too powerless, peter knew better than to give away his knowledge now. he’d been burned enough. he would have to do it himself, and do it quick, before any other disasters struck his city.
────── 𓆩˚.⋆🕸⋆.˚𓆪 ──────
you hadn’t gone back home, you were waiting next to a shop near the place peter had left you, looking at the exploded building from afar. you were growing more worried by the second; peter had seemed serious, and talked about a criminal organization who would bomb a whole building like it was a normal thing. was he engaged in a fight, currently? how often did things of this magnitude happen to him?
your phone buzzed, you immediately looked at the screen, it could be important in these circumstances. peter. peter was calling. he’d gone to fight, said he’d come back to you, and now was calling-
“peter?” you answered before you made any assumptions.
quick gasps cut short responded to you, and peter’s voice had taken the shape of slow, low wailing, or wheezing, or… regardless, it was obvious he was in pain.
“i…” he started, clearly having a hard time speaking, “i’m stuck. it was a trap.” he was breathless, his voice kept cracking.
“you- where?” you asked, choosing your words carefully. he was stuck. trapped. time. time was important. ask only for the information that matters right now.
“the building- that- there were people, i wanted to save them,” he was crying, it was obvious. “but i couldn’t, they are stuck too, and unconscious, some are dead. i couldn’t-” he cut his sentence short, taking quick breaths, most likely trying to keep himself awake, or too pained to continue. you understood it anyway.
“where are you, peter?”
“the building crumbled down, and it’s all rubble- but, it’s a huge- a huge, i don’t know. i’m under a heavy part, big, i can’t move it. not safely. i can’t try anything too dangerous, or the- the others might get crushed,” he managed to say in between his gasps and pained groans.
your heart sank, an awful dread dropped into the pit of your stomach. what to do now?
“i’m sorry,” he said, “i just- i didn’t know what to do, and i’d told you i’d come back, i don’t know. there is no one else i could call, i’m not- i’m sorry.”
no one else.
“don’t apologize,” you said, voice firmer, having gotten slightly angry. you weren’t angry at peter, you were angry at… at the reason why peter was hurt. it had only been two days since you’d truly gotten to know him, and you wanted to scream into a void at the top of your lungs already.
you started walking towards the road, looking for a taxi, or you would call one. the initial chaos had subsided, but now people wanting to immediately go back home around you had taken its place, taxis were working, you just didn’t know how fast you could go to wherever peter was.
“send me your location or describe where you are,” you said.
you could only hear his gasps for a moment. “no,” he said, “no, no, i don’t want you to come, that’s not why i-” his breath hitched, he started coughing.
your eyes had gotten teary, you blinked harshly a few times to get rid of the blurriness. would a bicycle be faster? a… motorcycle, perhaps? you started looking around to see any unclaimed ones, you could maybe pay someone-
“i’ll come either way, i’ll help you,” you said, as you started walking towards the site of the explosion, you thought finding an abandoned vehicle might be easier there… maybe even one that no longer had an owner. maybe even a gun. “send your location or i will go into the flames and try to find a clue.”
another pause.
“okay,” he said, exhaling in pain, “but be careful, run away the moment you see anyone dangerous. okay?”
“all right.”
────── 𓆩˚.⋆🕸⋆.˚𓆪 ──────
it had been a long while since peter had been in such peril, had he underestimated his opponents? had he been too rash, reckless? it was highly unlikely that his street-level work would be as dangerous as the avengers-level threats, and he’d survived those, hadn’t he? so why was he crying now?
when he’d arrived at the site, and looked around a little, he’d found people, kidnapping victims, being sent to somewhere. he’d thought he’d needed to act fast to save them, but he’d fallen into a trap. not a trap specifically set for him; it more so looked like a last resort to cover up their traces while killing anyone at their tail, just destroying the building with evidence and their enemies in it. peter was just one person though, was that enough for them, or had they not bothered to check?
he didn’t know where exactly he was wounded under the rubble, everything was hurting. somewhere on his abdomen, he assumed, and legs, they were stinging like a thousand needles were sinking into his flesh at the same time.
he sighed, putting his forehead on the fallen stone in front of him.
he hated himself. that was it, yeah. that was the true target of his hatred. more than anything else. he realised so when he admitted it to himself; hating had suddenly gotten much easier, much deeper.
he’d just killed the last person on earth who knew him. why had he called you, anyway? he should’ve just… done as he always did before meeting you, deal with it himself. or die. the world wouldn’t lose much if he did, there was no one to mourn him. well, maybe you could get a little sad, but it wasn’t like you were particularly close to him, you’d never really been friends before. and you had a life, other people around you, you had no reason to hold onto him like he did you. so why were you even coming? why would you do this to him?
he killed everyone around himself. he would kill you. he would kill you. he would lose you.
no, no, stop. you could survive this, right? sinking into despair had never been helpful. he would need to stay sharp for you. he would… you could survive this much, right? and then he would never see you again. he would block your number, and… good thing he hadn’t brought you to his apartment.
he’d been so selfish, thinking only of himself, the happiness he felt at being remembered. what was he thinking? he should’ve never talked to you. he should’ve told you to raise your umbrella and go home without getting wet. he’d been erased from existence for a reason, hadn’t he? had he forgotten why he hadn’t gone back to mj and ned? how could he do this? how could he keep doing this? why did he never learn from his mistakes?
────── 𓆩˚.⋆🕸⋆.˚𓆪 ──────
you were breathless, having ridden a bicycle (that you really had managed to find abandoned next to the explosion) until a point where traffic wasn’t jammed, then taken a taxi to the point where the driver would be willing to drive to, then ran until you could see the eerie factory site peter had told you about. you’d stopped to catch your breath briefly, your throat was hurting, sweat was coming down on your face like rain had been on the morning you’d grabbed peter’s arm. you put your hand on the right of your abdomen, you had a bad case of side stitch pain. you were holding a metal pipe in your other hand, you hadn’t been lucky enough to stumble upon a gun lying around, unfortunately. you had wanted to find a shield of some sort, but the blown off car bits were mostly too heavy, and couldn’t be carried on a bicycle.
there it was, the area of a dangerous mafia organization. how many cameras were there? you wore the mask peter had given to you, even though you really didn’t want to when you needed so much air.
you could see the remnants of a big dust storm behind a few buildings, you would need to get closer to truly figure it out, but you assumed you could go towards that direction to find peter. your heart was drumming against your chest, your fingertips had suddenly gone cold. a tiny portion of it was because of your previous marathon, mostly your nervousness and… fear were the cause.
but you had to do this. there was simply no other choice. someone needed to save peter, and the authorities wouldn’t do it, and the heroes wouldn’t do it, and you were there already. so you got a move on.
you mostly walked behind walls and next to corners, nervous about being seen and shot dead on the spot before you could even get into the mafia’s base. you reached… a chain-link fence, surrounding the complex.
“NO TRESSPASSING” the sign on the fence read, “PRIVATE PROPERTY”.
well, you’d already stolen a bicycle.
you took a shaky breath, and put your foot into one of the chains. you’d never climbed over a chain-link fence before, but everything had a first time, right? so you gripped the chains for dear life, and although you probably looked ridiculous and unnatural doing it, managed to climb to the other side. you did scratch a few places on your legs and hands, but it was mostly a success.
now you needed to sneak deeper into the complex, somehow.
you walked half-crouched down, mostly next to walls, looking around yourself nervously, yet as fast as you could. as you got closer to the collapsed building, you started hearing screams, and gunshots. there was a commotion going on somewhere close to you, was it the kidnapped people? the ones peter had been able to save, the ones who’d gotten out? you stopped where you were and pressed your back to the building next to you, where did you go from here? where were the gun noises coming from? what did you need to do to avoid that, yet still reach peter?
your hands had started shaking, would it be possible to find an abandoned gun as you walked closer? it would be so easy for them to kill you.
you'd only managed to make a few turns from that point before you were caught. by a man with a gun in his hand.
"look at that," he said, as he pointed the gun at you. “it seems a little mouse sneaked in, in this chaos."
you stopped, completely frozen. your heart was beating in your throat, your hands were trembling, you'd forgotten how to breathe. you'd never been so fear-stricken in your life.
what could you do? one shot and you would be dead, what could you do with the metal pipe in your hand? you couldn't look away from the man to see what else you could use.
he started walking towards you slowly, saying things that would only distract you and make you more nervous if you focused on them, so you blocked them out.
he was clearly enjoying cornering you like a prey animal, that must have been why he was walking closer to you; to scare you. you fought against your urge to back away, to protect a distance between you two; you had a metal pipe. a gun was a long-range weapon, being closer might make it harder to run away, but would make it easier to fight back, and running away in this situation would do you no good. if he missed the first time, he would get you in the second. so you forcefully nailed your feet to the ground, ignored the alarms setting off in your mind, and tried to prepare yourself for a confrontation. your legs were trembling; you hoped the man would just think you'd frozen in fear.
he came close enough to put the gun to your head, just an arm's length of a distance between you. “you can't run even when the gun is in your face?” he asked mockingly.
would begging work? would it keep you alive long enough to catch an opening?
you would die. you would die.
you hadn't opened your mouth to form a single sentence since this man had found you, and you didn't think you could now. one wrong word and it would be over. you needed to act.
was there anyone else around? why was he alone? had you lucked out, somehow? they weren't going to take you into custody, you were a transgresser, they were going to kill you. you assumed this man had stumbled into you coincidentally in the ruckus, and hadn't felt the need to call for reinforcements. even if there were others in places you couldn't see, you had no choice but to act now.
the gun's tip was touching your forehead. seconds. i must act in seconds. by bending your knees, you ducked your head faster than he could process what happened and pull the trigger, and while ducking, swung the pipe in your hand as fast as you could, with as much force behind it as you could muster, and hit him in the groin.
you immediately made a move to get behind him while he buckled over; there was no running away from someone with a gun.
should you hold his hand with the gun, or hit it with your pipe? he was turning his face towards you, and would shoot you the moment he got a good view.
no, you’d taken too much time to think, and he’d already directed the gun at you, pulling the trigger. you immediately hit his hand with your pipe. the shot wasn't completely wasted, however, and grazed your leg.
you screamed in pain.
he reached for you with his other hand, grabbing your hair.
no time.
you gripped your pipe with all your strength, and hit his hand again while he was yanking your hair. and then kept hitting his hand, lest he direct the gun at you again. one, two, three, four, five— he kicked your leg. you buckled over in pain as he put your head to the ground, your hair still entangled in his hand. he was saying something, eyes bulging, looking very mad, but you weren’t proccessing any of it. your ears were still ringing because of the gunshot, and the pain in your leg was so powerful that you couldn't focus on anything. it was as if endless knives were constantly stabbing you. it was unbearable.
his hands were occupied with your head and the gun, you were nowhere near strong enough to set free from his grip, but he'd forgotten you were still holding onto the pipe. or maybe he'd just thought you'd be in too much pain to use it now. or maybe he just hadn't had the time to do something about that yet, everything was happering in seconds.
you swung it again in one last, reckless effort to fight back, and hit his head. the momentum tossed him to the side while taking you with him as he hadn't let go of your hair. before he could turn to face you back, you hit his head again, with all your might. he let go of your hair while balancing himself with his other hand, and hit you across the face before you could land your third hit, but you planted yourself to the ground, and landed another hit anyway. his head was bleeding, and he was clearly distraught.
what now? a few seconds. this had given you a few seconds of decision time. what now? should you keep hitting him? take the gun, somehow? how could you get rid of him?
you tried to move reflexively, to get away. but your leg was done for, you couldn’t get up. no. no. you couldn't move.
your heart was going to burst out of your chest, your nerves were completely wrecked; you couldn’t get up.
what, then? did you have to… kill? you were going to throw up. your hands started trembling even more violently. you couldn't. you just couldn't.
you wished you could yell for help. but you were supposed to be the help. it was as it had always been before, pick yourself up and dust yourself off.
no time to think.
you hit his head again, and when he flailed, this time you put his head to the ground, climbing on top of him, twisting his gun-holding arm under his body. now… now you could... how could you stop him? if you managed to take the gun, and told him to stay put until you could run away... you couldn't move, though. you couldn't even properly restrain him because you were having to drag one leg. the concussion he had was doing most of the heavy lifting.
an idea did come up in your mind. you supposed you had no other choice.
──────
you were lying on the floor, your back towards the sky. you’d left your unconscious attacker where he was lying, and managed to drag yourself for a few centimeters before you’d stopped, and leaned your forehead against the ground. you needed to get away, you knew. at least near a wall, somewhere you wouldn’t be seen so clearly, but your leg was hurting too much to use.
you couldn’t raise your head, and just started sobbing openly. you’d already been crying, but trying to hold back, keep quiet. you needed to sit up, and look at how bad the wound was, and how much blood you’d lost. the pain was all you could think about, your head was hurting from stress and forcing yourself to think through the pain, your eyes and throat were hurting from crying (and maybe also sleep-deprivation, as time was diving deeper into the night), your face was hurting from the hit you’d taken, and yet, nothing could be compared to the pain you felt in your leg. you wanted to take off your mask, it was suffocating enough even without it, but any cameras catching your face would be more of a disaster long term.
you took a deep breath, and put your hands on the ground. you pushed yourself up while shaking, and turned around. you looked at your leg, and immediately regretted it. it was bleeding a lot, and your flesh had been ripped apart. you didn’t know what to do, there was no one you could call.
you took out your phone from your pocket, and found peter’s number. you really didn’t want to, but you had no other choice.
peter answered by calling out your name questioningly, his voice came across better than last time; it still did sound like he was in pain, but he was calmer.
“peter,” you said, failing to sound like you weren’t crying. “a guy shot me. my leg is hurt.”
“a- what? where are you?”
“i’m near the collapsed building you should be in.”
“i- i-”
you took a second to breathe. “no, no, i… i just don’t know what to do,” you said, sniffling and gasping, “i can’t get up. i, uh, should i wrap something around my leg?”
“yeah,” he said, “a piece of cloth until you can get out, how close are you to the exit? you should call an ambulance or a taxi or—” he also had to stop to take a breath in pain, “i don’t know— i’m sorry. i’m really sorry.”
“what are you sorry for? it’s the fault of this piece of— well, garbage. at least i have a gun now.”
“who was it? is he still there?”
“i don’t know, some random guy. he’s unconscious.”
“… how?”
“well, i… kind of strangled him? he was,” you huffed, “he fainted because he couldn’t breathe, he’s alive though. i did hit his head a few times, i don’t know how that bodes for him.”
“probably not well,” he said, now with a hint of surprise and amusement in his voice, “you, uh, you did well. very well.”
“huh, thank you.”
good, this was good, hearing peter’s voice had been good for you. you pushed yourself up somehow, and sat up straight.
“what happened?” he asked, “why is the pain worsening?” probably because of your increasing groans.
“i was trying to sit up. i need to find a piece of cloth.”
you looked around, and decided to take anything you could from the man who attacked you. you went through his pockets, and sure enough, found a knife. you cut a piece off of his shirt, and used it as bandage.
“how tight should it be?”
“you should be able to slide a finger under it.”
next, you needed to drag yourself away from the middle of the road, to somewhere you could hide—
no.
no, that wasn’t why you were here.
“how are you doing, peter?” you asked, but couldn’t add that you would be there soon.
“i’m…” he started, but drifted off. and then you heard silent sobbing. “i’m sorry,” he said.
“you have nothing to apologize for.”
“no, it’s all my fault. i never should’ve dragged you into this mess.”
“you didn’t drag me into anything, i stole a bike and ran a marathon to get to you,” you’d sounded firmer now, although still couldn’t stop your crying; the pain just wasn’t getting any better.
“i let you down along with everyone else,” he wasn’t listening to you, “and i don’t know what to do, i can’t come to you, i don’t know how to get you out,” his voice had gotten frantic again.
you sighed, trying to get your sobbing under control, and think of a reply. was it his fault? no, you were certain it wasn’t. had he let you down? no, the thought hadn’t even crossed your mind. should he stay away from you? were you afraid of pain or death? would you rather live a more stress-free life than stay with peter?
you closed your eyes to let the tears roll down your cheeks as the realisation that you couldn’t immediately say “no” set in, you felt betrayed by yourself. you’d thought about this, yesterday… or two days ago, you supposed, as it was past midnight. he’d told you everything, so you knew the risks, and you’d thought about it. you’d decided it would be fine; worrying for his safety or being at risk yourself. and if you got injured, then you could handle some pain. and if you died, well… there was no getting ahead of death. if you died, that would mean your time had come.
so where had your conviction gone to? had the pain been too much, after all? it was the pain, the stabbing sensation was making your brain foggy, demanding all the attention be on it. you hated it, you hated everything. you were mad at yourself; why couldn’t you just be better?
“peter,” you cut him off, “i know i can’t understand you fully, but i get it,” you’d decided to just ramble. you couldn’t come up with the perfect answer to make his worries disappear, so you would just… tell him whatever was going through your mind.
“i lay awake some nights, randomly afraid of the dark. then i curl up under my blanket, and try to comfort myself. because there is no one to lie next to me. i look out from my window and see grey walls. i look up at night and see no stars. i walk outside and hundreds of people just walk past me without even looking at my face, and i don’t remember any of theirs the next hour. all i hear all day are the honks of cars, and depressing news. abuse. crime. kid died. alone person went missing. don’t go out at night. don’t talk to anyone. there is no one anyway, who would i talk to?” you paused to sniffle again, and catch your breath.
“i come home and say ‘hello’ to emptiness and darkness, i turn on the lights myself, then think about what i’ll eat. and i don’t properly eat most days, because i just don’t want to prepare something only for myself. yesterday, i was so happy you liked the food i made, i wanted to cook something for the first time in months while waiting for you,” words were just coming out of your mouth without restraint now, was it the sleep deprivation?
“in high school, i used to watch you and your friends, and wish i could find someone who would be in sync with me too. i used to wish i had a reason or an excuse to join in when i saw you three laugh or talk. i go to university now, and i attend lectures, and i make small talk with a few people, and then i drown in my own thoughts the whole day. i tell myself that i’m fine by myself, but i feel like my soul is getting thinner by the day, looking at walls. is it just me, or is everyone just disconnected now, i don’t know.”
you finally stopped, and let silence stretch after your words. your crying had gotten worse as the suffocation of your life had built up enough to rush out of you; you didn’t cry much, not really. sure, you sometimes shed silent tears, sitting by yourself on your couch, but normally, you just kept going without thinking much about it. you had your exams, and job, and volunteer work, and projects to worry about, so pitying yourself was at the bottom of your to-do list. but now? you were crying waterfalls. was it because you’d finally found someone to tell what you were really thinking? no, it was probably because of the pain you were already in.
peter didn’t answer, for a long while, it was just silence.
“you were right,” you said, “being known with your negative sides sucks.”
“no,” he said, “you were right. i’m glad to know you as you are.”
he didn’t sound good. he didn’t sound good at all. you sighed in resignation, closing your eyes tightly shut to clear your view of tears. “i’m closing now, peter, wait for me,” you said, and closed the call before he could reply.
you looked at the ground, and furrowed your brows in concentration. you would get up. you had to. you had no choice. peter had called you for help. he had no one. no one else to call. no one else to save him from making a choice between death and killing innocent victims under rubble. no one else to save him from death.
you gritted your teeth, your leg hurt as the deep cut touched the bad guy’s shirt, and in some parts, the cold air of the night. the wound kept bleeding, and hurting more by the second. but you gritted your teeth anyway, through your tears and gasps for air that you had an abundance of, but your lungs refused to take in. you put your hands on the ground, and pushed yourself up, using all the strength you had.
you whimpered and groaned in many attempts to stifle your screams before they could come out, and alert whoever was close enough to hear, and managed to set your back straight. it was unbearable, the pain was holding you from the collar, trying to drag you down, making your vision red, exploding in your brain.
it’s just pain, you kept repeating to yourself, it was just a feeling, you could move through it. so you would walk now. towards peter. as quickly as possible. you needed to reach him, that was why you’d come this far, how could you let pain make you forget? it was simply unacceptable, the thought of peter dying under that rubble.
so you put one foot in front of the other, and made your way to peter through every force working against you.
──────
"peter?" you asked, trying to walk through the rubble, and then heard your name back.
"i'm here!"
you tried to reach him at least enough to see his face, as fast as you could, but it was still taking too long with your injured leg. too long for your impatience currently, anyway.
"i'll remove the victims so you can get out of there," you said as you stretched your head enough to see his face, not being able to get closer. he was... he'd taken off his mask, and he looked horrible; his eyes had become red from tears and most likely his injuries, his face was covered in dust and some drops of blood. looking at him stung your chest. "tell me where they are."
──────
peter was strong. he truly was. not only mentally; you were currently watching him lift what was essentially an entire ceiling with other pieces of rubble on it off himself, with most likely many crushing injuries. insane. he was insane. no wonder he couldn’t move with all with those unconscious people around.
you had somehow managed to move them out of his way, seven people in total, much more than you’d anticipated. how could you get them out of here now? you were injured, peter was probably in worse condition… although he did seem to be able to carry significant weight. maybe you could carry them until the exit and call an ambulance, for yourselves, too.
──────
peter walked towards you until he was a breath away, his face was covered in sweat on top of everything else, and he was gasping for air, as were you. he looked at your leg.
“i’ll carry you,” was all he said. he seemed so tired.
“we need to carry these people first.”
“no, i’ll carry you first. until you’re out of this complex.”
──────
you were sitting on the sidewalk, waiting for the ambulance you had called. well, ambulances, as they’d be carrying nine people. you had, also, finally taken off the mask you’d come to despise at this point, associating it with very negative feelings.
you saw peter swing down with the last one of the survivors. he landed, placed the unconscious man on the sidewalk, and sat right next to you.
you sat together in silence for a while, until you took a deep breath, and chuckled lightly. it was over. you’d done it. everyone was alive.
peter looked at you questioningly, although it was hard to read his face; he’d turned mostly expressionless. because of how much effort it must have been taking to even stay awake for him, you assumed.
“it’s over,” you said, “we did it.”
he looked away again, to the desolate road in front of you. “you did it,” he said, “i messed up.”
“how so?”
“i acted rashly. i should’ve been more careful. now they’ll find a new base, and i have to start from nothing to track them down again. and they know i’m after them. and i couldn’t change anything in the end, i just made things worse. all of this was for nothing, it could have been completely avoided. it started with the collapse of one building and then it ended with the collapse of another for no reason.”
you were watching him carefully. lines of exhaustion had formed on his face, the sorrow and… and whatever it was that dropped a boulder of burning despair into the pit of your stomach from when you first met had come back; you’d thought the youth had somehow returned to his face this evening.
“so,” you started, taking another deep breath, “you came here after they exploded a building to stop them, like, end them in general, or at least weaken them, do something. that makes sense to me. then you acted rashly here? why?”
“i saw… the kidnapped victims, and they were suffering, so i wanted to save them.”
“then you didn’t mess up, right? you saved them.”
“not all of them, and i wouldn’t have without you.”
“well, a big majority of them, you did save. all of them would die without you. and what else could you have done but to directly interfere? you did the only thing you could.”
he just stayed silent, was he not convinced?
“i don’t think this was a failure, peter. i think you did well and saved many people, and i think it was worth it.”
his eyes were teary, but he didn’t look at you again, he turned his gaze to the ground, and just stayed silent.
──────
you had decided on what to tell the authorities before the paramedics had arrived, and then you’d been separated, put into different ambulances.
then… well, the rest was as you imagined it would go. still a lot of pain, and a lot of hasty doctors as they asked questions and barked orders. it was horrible, really, with the way your head had been aching, but at least they were numbing your leg. and you would most likely be allowed to drift off to sleep at some point, right?
──────
you lied on the hospital bed, staring at the ceiling. it was almost noon, and you’d waken up not so long ago. you just kept playing what happened again and again in your head, trying to make sense of every detail.
it was a miracle you were alive. you’d faced off a gun. an actual gun.
it was good that all you could do by yourself in this hospital bed was think; you’d been asking yourself the same questions for a while now. did you still want to be involved with peter? you’d known him only for two days, and you’d ended up in a hospital already.
you’d considered every outcome and every reason, every choice you could make. in the end, it boiled down to a few core options. would you rather live a less risky life by yourself, or risk getting hurt like this to be with someone? someone who can meet you as deeply as you crave?
not just that, human bonds were too important to be disregarded because of what external threats might arise. the reality now was that you loved peter, he was a good person, he didn’t deserve to be abandoned because of what evil people did. your choice didn’t come out of loneliness; even if you had a dozen bonds like this, you would still choose to stay with peter, because you’d formed a relationship with him now. and that was that.
out of every outcome you considered, the worst one was definitely living your life without peter, and then getting news that spiderman just died somewhere, by himself. even the thought of it was nausiating. then again, the thought of just him getting hurt like this, and having no one to go to was just as horrible. so you needed to choose the opposite of what would cause that outcome to happen.
it hadn’t been that hard a decision to make; staying involved with peter. you’d already been tangled, it wasn’t much of a possibility to untangle yourself now, a part of you would be left behind.
besides, you somehow remembered him, didn’t you? that had to mean something. there had to be a reason for it.
──────
after finally being discharged, the first thing you did was look for peter, but he’d somehow gotten out before you. not because his wounds were less severe, quite the opposite, the nurses had said he’d been restless to get out, and they couldn’t keep someone against their will.
the orange of dusk had faded away, although it wasn’t fully dark yet. you were on your way to your apartment while you kept ringing peter’s phone, he was stubbornly refusing to answer.
you huffed as another attempt turned out to be in vain. you looked at the taxi driver, who did not acknowledge your existence, and then turned back to your phone.
“peter, are you okay? is everything all right?”
you messaged him. then waited for him to see. aaand waited. still waiting.
you huffed again, three minutes of staring at your screen impatiently and he wasn’t responding.
although you’d asked him if he were okay, you knew the truth. it wasn’t that he couldn’t answer, it was that he’d decided to go through with his stupid “i’ll never see you again because i’m ruining your life” nonsense. in your heart of hearts, you knew. so you sent another message.
“if you’re thinking about cutting ties with me, then do it properly. come and talk to me about it.”
and then looked out the taxi’s window for the rest of your journey.
────── 𓆩˚.⋆🕸⋆.˚𓆪 ──────
you were right, peter knew. after everything that happened, opening up to you and accepting you into his life, if he wanted to step away now, he needed to respect you, and tell you about it properly. so he was standing in front of your door now, trying to gather up the courage to ring your bell, and tell you he’d never see you again. this door had seemed so inviting one night ago, and it had tricked peter. he was not supposed to be invited into any house, didn’t your house know that?
he took a deep breath, and rang the bell. when you opened the door, you looked tired. not your expression, but the lines on your face and the look in your eyes gave it away. that was his fault, wasn’t it?
you stepped aside to welcome him, and he followed you into the living room, the couch he’d sat on the night he’d told you everything.
bidding you farewell was going to be hard, he didn’t know if he could be brave enough, or selfless enough. he’d been so when he had been wiped from the memories of every living being, and that was much harder a task, wasn’t it? so couldn’t he do it a second time?
but he hated waking up every day, and hated… well, he couldn’t even properly hate. getting up, putting one foot in front of the other was becoming harder every day, he didn’t want to do anything, anymore. so circumstances had changed since then, but he still kept fighting every day, and he still kept doing what he thought was right. so he could do this too.
or you would die. he’d lost enough people. to love was to lose. to love was the possibility of loss eventually.
he shouldn’t even have sat on this couch, actually, why had he done so? he should’ve just told you he was leaving, and then leave. he made a move to get up again, you grabbed his arm to stop him.
“you should stay seated,” you said, “i’ll bring something to eat for dinner.”
“please don’t, i’ll be on my way shortly anyway.”
“no,” you said as a statement, firmly, and left him alone in the living room.
peter never should’ve come. you deserved to have one last conversation, but how could peter move on from you? he supposed it would’ve been impossible even if he hadn’t come to your place today, even if he’d told you to turn back without getting wet the day you first recognized him. he would just have to live missing you forever, and that wasn’t unrealistic. it’s what he was doing now, missing everybody he’d ever known. and he was living, wasn’t he? well, he was alive.
you brought pasta with chicken, obviously freshly made, and put down two plates on the couch.
“we could eat in the kitchen,” he said.
“couch is comfier.”
he sighed, looking at his plate. he really didn’t want to eat anything made by you again, he didn’t need more things to miss. you’d said you didn’t feel like preparing a meal just for yourself, that he made you want to cook something… he remembered everything you said, of course. that you’d apparently wanted to get closer to him in high school too, why had he been so nervous? afraid?
it was for the best, though. otherwise, you might’ve died years ago. no matter what you felt, he couldn’t be selfish enough to assume he could be there for you, or good for you.
“so,” you started, “you decided to go forward with your plan of ignoring my existence for the rest of your life?”
“it’s not ignoring,” he had a defensive tone, “i was wrong to even confirm i’m peter at the start, i’ll fix my mistake.”
“it wasn’t a mistake, how can you say that? would you prefer i believed i’d lost my mind?”
you had a hard time walking now, limping although you tried to hide it, and several wounds were visible on your face. you’d beat up a man with a metal pipe, what kind of damage did that leave on your psyche? peter didn’t know, he’d been warring since he was fifteen.
“you wouldn’t be in pain, at least.”
“you’re unbelievable,” you sounded exasparated, and seemed offended, but peter didn’t know what else to say. it was the truth. “i’d rather know the bitter truth, or suffer from its consequences than believe a lie any time. besides, you couldn’t have known this would happen, it’s not on you.”
“you can’t tell me you would still get a gunshot wound yesterday if we hadn’t met two days ago.”
“maybe not, but i don’t blame you for it and i don’t care.”
“you don’t care?!” peter was getting angry, was it because you were getting angry? he was angry at himself, was it dripping out of his chest into his tongue as poison?
“no,” you backtracked, “i mean, i’m fine with it. i can live with it. and i don’t hold it against you, i don’t have any resentment for you. i don’t know how else to explain this.”
he took a deep breath to hold back his tears. he couldn’t let your words get to him, make him feel better about what had occurred. he needed to protect you, he kept reminding himself.
“i can’t put you in harm’s way,” he said.
you paused for a moment.
“do you take care of your wounds by yourself? you did so after the fire the other day, and you basically ran away from the hospital this time around.”
peter was taken aback. “uh, yeah?” he answered.
you grabbed a bag that was positioned right next to the couch on the floor, and took a… first aid kit out of it. and then a salve, and bandages, and… what was going on?
“i bought these today after being discharged, figured you might need some.”
“i’m… fine?”
your expression was very unimpressed when you looked at him.
“so you think i don’t see your arm, or the way you have a hard time eating or breathing, or even just your hands?”
ah, right. his hands were bruised, not enough to warrant bandaging though, this happened regularly. and his arm did hurt, but the pain would go away in a few days or so. his abdomen… that was taken care of, too, the dressing they did at the hospital would be enough.
“it’s all taken care of,” he said.
“we need to put salve on your hands, and then wrap-”
“we don’t, this happens all the time.”
you looked at him in surprise for a moment. “this happens all the time and we don’t need to treat it?” you repeated with your eyes wide, tone something between offended and shocked.
he didn’t know what to say, so you just started doing whatever you’d set your mind to even before he came to your house. you gently held his hand, and started applying the salve. he sighed, and closed his eyes, leaning his head to rest on the couch. he shouldn’t have, but you didn’t give him much choice.
“i’ll learn how to suture,” you said, “and anything else that’s necessary.”
peter spoke your name, “i’m sorry,” he said, “i am so, so sorry. i don’t want to leave you either, but you saw what happened. mj and ned have forgotten me, and they are happier for it. this is what i need to do.”
“peter,” you said, as you started wrapping the bandage around his hand, “i haven’t forgotten you, and if you leave now, i still won’t forget. i don’t know how mj and ned are doing, having forgotten, but you can’t compare me to them. and even if i had forgotten, i still would want to know. how else can i put this?” you searched for the words, “i care about you more than i care about happiness. i’d choose you over happiness, i’d rather be in pain with you than be painless by myself.”
peter had straightened his back, his gaze fixated on your eyes, as you spoke. a lump in his throat, tears threatening to roll down his cheeks in his eyes, his hand in your hands… a warmth in his chest, how he hadn’t felt in so long. your words did soften his edges, but he couldn’t accept it. he still held back his tears, and still wanted to escape. run away. was that why he wanted to leave you? was his true reason to protect you, or his fear? he wanted to run, he wanted to run as fast as he could and hide, from anyone who could see him.
it was too much, but he couldn’t exactly tell what was too much. he was afraid of hurting you, but that wasn’t all he was afraid of, yet he couldn’t recognize what else scared him so.
“but,” you continued, “being with you will make me happy anyway, do you understand? i’ll be happier with you than alone, even if my life is at risk, and even if guns chase my back.”
you had teared up too, peter realised, but were wiping your tears away, to keep your vision clear while working on his now other hand, he assumed.
and that was it, the last drop of water to make his glass overflow. silent tears started finding their way to his chin, his gaze lowered in embarrassment. he’d already cried a dozen times in front of you, and he wished he hadn’t, he wished he could be stronger, firmer, he wished he could aspire confidence instead of silently crying. he hadn’t been able to cry for a while, before meeting you. even when it hurt deep inside his bones, his tears had dried up. were they all spilling out now?
he wanted you to stay, too, he was tired of being alone. he was tired of imagining “what if”s. he was tired of walking directionless with his hoodie covering his face, face a blur in crowds, never known by anyone. if you could bandage his hands every time after a fight, or have your textbooks scattered around in his room, then-
he didn’t want to imagine it. he just couldn’t accept it.
you were done with his hands, even though peter didn’t want you to let go. “how about this,” you started, “why don’t we give it some more time? i mean, how many times did mj or ned get wounded while knowing you?”
“… never, really.”
“yeah, so, either i’m also cursed, or this was a rare occurrence. either way, me staying with you won’t change anything. so, instead of making a rash decision like this, why don’t we try to be friends first? and if it doesn’t work out, then you can put some distance?”
that was… peter thought on it. and then his silent tears turned into straight-up sobbing. because that could work. he could accept that, it made sense to him.
he leaned down and buried his face in his hands. you started caressing his hair, which made it impossible for his tears to stop.
when everyone had forgotten, you'd remembered him. when faced with a gun, you'd survived. when injured, you'd walked. maybe he really was cursed, considering what had happened to you after you just met, but you seemed determined to break it.
and it might not be perfect, but it would be.
it must’ve been hard for you to make such a decision, you must’ve thought about it; staying with peter. you’d chosen him anyway. he could do the same, too. despite his fears, his horrible instinct to shrink and escape, he could stand his ground, and choose to stay, as you had. and maybe with time, it could get easier.
he stopped his sobbing, calmed down enough to face you, and raised his head.
“i don’t know what tomorrow will bring,” he said with a hint of nervousness in his voice.
“right,” you smiled, “exciting, isn’t it?”
ghost towns (youtube music) by radical face... as we part ways for now.
୨ৎ summary .ᐟ.ᐟ dr. brendon park had earned the notorious title ‘park the shark’ for reasons besides his chiseled facial structure and razor sharp eye contact. his bites aimed to make his victims bleed without warning or apology. everyone awaited his retribution to come. the last person he expected to humble him was his do-good third-year resident.
୨ৎ tags/warnings .ᐟ.ᐟ female reader, no use of y/n, no physical descriptions, grumpy x sunshine trope, hurt/comfort, slowburn, work-place tension, park being a bully & ass (but he's hot), park being territorial/possesive (if you squint hard enough), night shift (because I love them!!), competence kink, blood/gore & other reoccurring medical topics in 'the pitt', medical inaccuracies (i've only graduated from google med school),
୨ৎ authors note .ᐟ.ᐟ y’all i genuinely foam at the mouth every time a shark fic on this app. there’s nothing that brings me more joy than fantasizing about dr. brendon park, so here’s my interpretation of this sexy man. also this is inspired by the song 'kill me' by hayley williams !! (i love that woman soooo much y'all)
୨ৎ word count .ᐟ.ᐟ 13.6 K
If you were in the comfort of your own apartment and bed, wrapped in the sheets you had personally endeavored yourself to splurge on, you would probably be in a better mood. Even though you had racked up enough student loan debt to achieve the satisfaction of ‘following your dreams’ to the point of living scraping by, you’d consider your bed a prized possession.
If they had warned you about the lack of commodities as a resident while working an overnight shift, you may have reconsidered your career choices.
While this wasn’t your first night shift, it was definitely the roughest one yet. Lack of energy, constant back pain, and absolute discomfort in the resident on-call room did nothing to satiate your grumpiness.
You no longer could count the times you had tossed and turned on the bed. At the end, you had resorted to sitting on the office chair, with your head thrown back. It did nothing for your back, but it was less annoying than attempting to lay on the sad excuse of a bed. You caught a couple of hours of sleep, with your sweatshirt providing some comfort, but not enough to pass as high functioning.
Right as you had fluttered your eyes close; there was a ping from a phone. You shook awake, flustered and alarmed from the noise.
Shit. You stared down at the watch. 7:23 AM.
You immediately jumped from the chair, tripping over your own feet to your backpack placed by the corner of the bed. Your hands fished for the phone in the side pocket, and when the screen illuminated your face, your blood pressure dropped.
SULLY 1 min ag0
The shark is looking for his next meal.
Where the fuck are you?
There was no hesitation. Your hands moved like lightning. Backpack, water bottle, random protein bar you scavenged from the resident lounge. Slipping out of the on-call room, everyone saw you jogging down the hallways, towards the resident lounge where no doubt, Dr. Park was expecting you to hand-off the night shift.
Your futile attempt to reverse the dark spot under your eyes landed you right in the middle of the ocean. The ‘Jaws’ theme song played in your mind, and you knew he could smell your blood pumping from across the hospital. It was a sixth sense of his, able to detect a puny resident from a mile away.
The thumping of your heart rose to your throat, like a boulder you couldn't swallow down. Your breathing was caught each time you tried to pull it down to your lungs. You were a dead man walking. That much was certain when you saw the wide eye stare from Sully, your senior resident. The two of you had bonded from being your attending’s personal meals.
‘Park the Shark’ was how you all had met him when onboarding the PTMC’s orthopedic surgery program. It didn’t make sense to you how the simple mention of a name could make everyone’s back shiver, until you tried to introduce yourself, hand out a stretched and wide smile to the hunk of muscle of your attending.
“This isn’t kindergarten. Don’t waste your breath on first impressions. To be clear, there’s nothing you can do to impress me.” Park deadpanned, staring down at you as he brushed past, leaving your hand floating.
The same frown must have crossed your face as you halted, fixing your badge into the waistband of your plum scrub pants. Holding your breath, you tossed your backpack to the nearest available chair, dragging your hands down your face. Time to face the music.
Your senior resident sat at one of the workstations, eyebrows raised as recognized the unease of your shortcomings. Sully leaned forward, arms crossed as he stared at you. “Where the hell were you?”
“Trying to catch some sleep so I don’t snore my way through the rest of my shift.” You gritted back, tucking your stray hairs away. There wasn’t time to doll yourself up in a mirror and you were praying that you didn't appear as restless as you were.
This was the second double shift you were pulling, and your third year had just started. If you were being honest, you didn’t understand why you were the one doing it.
Park had come up to you during one of your lunch breaks a couple of weeks ago, and dropped a physical copy of the newly printed schedule. In the colored blocks, you found your name under two of the 12-hour blocks. You had stopped chewing the sandwich in your mouth, looking up at your attending with wide eyes.
“There’s been some changes. Your cooperation is assumed, so memorize the changes.”
You barely uttered a word until he stalked off as if this was scutwork he was dreading to get done. Safe to say, you weren’t pleased with the sudden change of schedule for the month.
Right now, you are suffering the repercussions of it.
“You should be glad Dr. Park got distracted by Walsh’s morning jabs.” Sully scoffed, standing up with a smug slump. “He’s feeling particularly hungry this morning and Walsh is only going to make it worse for the rest of us.”
You shrugged menially, rushing over to the fridge in the room, digging for the collective energy drink collection. The crack of the seal echoed in the room. “It’s about time Park dishes what he eats.”
Earnestly, you got along with Walsh—and most of the other surgical attendings and residents. You had worked around enough of them to garner a likable reputation, but working under Dr. Park worked against your favor socially.
It was different in the night shift without Park. There wasn’t a certain tension when answering consultations or in the operating rooms. Albeit, everyone was a bit looser during the nights, but it opened a space where you could take charge more freely without worry of consequence or doubt in your decisions.
“And you think Walsh is the one to do that?”
The bass in the voice was unique to one person only in which everyone in the surgical department recognized from the other end of a call or down the hallways. Unamused in his tone that never changed while his lips remained stiff and straight.
You almost choked on the acidic liquid you had started gulping down. Whipping your head to the point of stabbing into your muscles from the speed, Dr. Park stood at the doorway with his arms crossed. If you were a bigger idiot than you were now, you would’ve pretended he didn’t hear what you said.
To try to spare yourself, you quickly shook your head. “Dr. Park—“
“Save it, pipsqueak.” Park dismissed, barely paying you any mind as he stared down at his watch. With his head bowed the reflection of the gel-cast over his light brown hair shined right in your eye. Perfectly combed back, chiseling his piercing bone structure. “You missed pass over. I had to hear from a second year resident.”
Glancing at Sully, he shrugged his shoulders, eyebrows down turned. Quickly recovering, your hand gripped onto the can tighter. “Jones? He’s a bit overzealous—“
“Which in your case, wouldn’t hurt.” Park dryly interrupted, staring at you with hooded eyes. The ‘clean shaven’ look he typically had pronounced every twitch in his mandible and the other parts of his jaw. It was a good way of telling when Dr. Park had lost his patience.
You blubbered, your fingers numbing from the cold can as you refused to let it go. “I don’t want to see you dragging your feet.”
“Of course not—“
“Don’t tell me.” Park dismissed, stalking passed you over to the fridge. He occasionally stole from the resident stock; everyone assumed it was a test to see who would stop him.
No one dared.
He didn’t have to finish the saying for you to get the message. He needs to see it. As of now, you weren’t helping your case as you tried coming up with deflections of your mistake. If there was something Park hated more than mere incompetence, it was weaponizing it with the false hope it worked on someone as sharp as him. Acting a fool and being a fool were two different things, and regardless of what angle you chose to play, it was always a lose-lose situation for yourself.
And you still needed to survive another 12 hours around him.
You should’ve known you weren’t going to last the day. If accidentally sleeping through your alarms and missing hand off told you anything, it should’ve been a sign things were going to go astray.
While pushing through a pair of double doors, having scrubbed out of an open tibia-fibula fracture surgery, a yawn escaped you. Shaking your head and rubbing your eyes, you hardly noticed what was coming ahead. Head bowed and senses incoherent, you only lifted your head once you ran into a form of mass, sending you tripping backwards.
When you looked up, the heavy stare of Park shadowing over your entire body, you shrank into yourself more than you already had earlier. It was a miracle that Sully roped you into the surgery, long enough to endure half your shift and to avoid Park the Sharks current disfavor of you.
Sully did not intend to stay once his residency was up. He knew he didn't have the courage to battle up against Park over executive decisions, even if Park carried the ‘Chief’ title. He had other goals to look forward to that didn't include staying at PTMC.
You, on the other hand, were yearning for an attending spot. Upon matching into Orthopedic Surgery, especially at a trauma-1 hospital like PTMC, you knew you would fight vigorously to outperform the others. What you didn't expect was to be soul-crushed by an attending like Dr. Brendon Park.
In the three years you had worked under him, you had seen enough residents fizzle out with time. Half of them moved across the country for fellowships and attending positions, while the other stayed just far enough to refrain from having to mutually work with him again. No one dared curse his name, but he was the type of person you only wanted to meet once in your life.
Your plans of moving into a lively city like Pittsburgh and settling into the comfortable life of an orthopedic surgeon no longer felt like an achievable dream, and you were falling into the conveyor-like cycle as the rest of his former residents.
When you finally closed your slack mouth, you registered something clattered against the linoleum floor. Your eyes darted to the ground noticing his phone had fallen from his grasp. Immediately, your body bent down, examining the phone with anxious precision before holding it out again.
“I am so sorry, Dr–”
“ER needs an ortho consult.”
His words clipped your sentence again, the apology ignored. He brushed past you, and the cold brush of his arm brought shivers to your exposed skin. You stood dumbfounded, unsure how to interpret his stoic statement. Spinning in your heels, you watched his taunt, muscular back walk further from you.
He pushed the double doors with his back, sticking his phone in his pocket. The subtle sigh he let out didn’t go amiss. “What did I say about dragging your feet?”
You dashed over in his direction, pushing the door back as Park let it fall toward you.
The elevator ride down was nothing short of awkward. Park was never one for small talk. He found it a waste of air, especially when he considered most pleasantries as disingenuous. While standing behind him, your hands fiddled in front of you; grasping and releasing your fingers with easy rhythm, you chewed the inside of your cheek. You weren’t a talkative person necessarily, but you were now silently reminding yourself to request for some elevator music for ambiance later.
As soon as the elevator halted, Park wasted no time, briskly exiting the elevator once the sleek doors split open. You followed in his suit to Trauma 1 in the ED, slipping in behind Park.
When you first walked in, you saw the small bustling group of nurses and ED staff surround a gray-haired African-American woman. You could make out that much from the corner of the room as you stood back and watched. Although you had been in this room many times, you didn't always make yourself known while Park was around. Why would anyone trust a thing to slip out your mouth with someone like Dr. Park present?
With the fogginess of the lack of sleep and the last surgery you barely made out of, you hardly noticed the debrief occurring anyways. Words about the patient's vitals and chief complaints were being tossed from a resident off to the side. You were internally imploring Park to not dismiss him as he had you practically the entire morning.
Your hands fell in their customary position in front of you, folding into a ball as a form of self-soothing. Briefly closing your eyes, taking in a deep breath, you tried to call upon some energy to hit you like a wave. You still had the second half of your morning shift to go, and you barely got through half the energy drink you cracked open to sustain you. Don’t get in his way, and maybe he won’t sink his teeth into you–
“I see you dragged one of your pups, Park.” A deep voice ribbed from the opposite end of the room.
Dr. Robby stood with his arms crossed at the foot of the gurney, staring back at you with no shame. He cocked his head to one side, glazing at you with amusement, hiding in the corner like some meek fish. Some of the other doctors had finally noticed you, sparing you a smile that came off more like a grimace.
Your attention drifted to your attending, who glanced over his shoulder, back at you. So much for not being noticed. Your entire body tensed up, and the bored expression from Park secured another stamp of his disapproval.
“What does the X-ray show?” Park questioned, his tone even and bass-y while echoing in the sterile room.
Eyebrows lifted with a quick hum coming from you was the only sound that came from anyone breathing in the room. His piercing blue eyes didn't move from you, and you weren't sure whether to keep looking or to turn to somebody else he might have referred to.
Someone called your name in the distance. As if on a swivel, your head moved toward the direction of the call. Dr. Langdon scratched the side of his head, subtly nodding his head to the X-ray machine.
Suddenly aware the question was directed to you, a cold chill ran down your spine. Embarrassment and fear of reprimand for acting like an idiot while being a third-year resident clouded your mind as your feet shuffled to the machine. Peering down at the screen, your eyes distinctly measure every inch of the image.
Lifting your head, you looked to the side. A front-view of the patient, an older patient dressed in khaki capri pants and a blue, flowery blouse. She sat uncomfortable, and you noticed her left leg, shortened and externally rotated. Based on the current needles poked in her, she was sedated from feeling most of the pain she should be experiencing.
“What’s your name ma’am?” You asked politely, with a soft smile.
She let out a shaky breath, mustering up a quivering smile. “Mrs. Perry.”
“It’s lovely to meet you, Mrs. Perry.” You mused, straightening your posture and walking over to Dr. Park’s side, leaving enough space to not brush against one another. From up close, you could see Park pressing the hip area on the left side of her body, arms flexing with the movement. She’d visibly flinch, but withheld from yelping. “How did this happen?”
“I tripped over my living room carpet.” She scoffed, annoyed from the incident while shaking her head. Park removed his hands, reaching down to hyper-extend her leg. The reaction then was a hiss. “I should’ve listened to my daughter when she told me that old things might kill me.”
There was a slight grumble released beside you. When peering from the corner of your eye, Park was stretching his neck uncomfortably after finishing a physical examination he’d typically have his resident perform. His words ringed in your ear. Don’t tell me.
Turning your body to face him, you awkwardly avoided his pointed stare. “X-ray shows a displaced femoral neck fracture. Based on the pattern, a Hemiarthroplasty might be necessary.”
You saw the slight twitch in his face. Moving around you, he advanced towards the machine, needing to see the images himself. You filled the void he left as Mrs. Perry bedside. Smiling down at her shaken expression glued onto Dr. Park, you leaned forward to capture her attention. “The surgery is a very common one. Mostly recommended in cases like this. You’ll have a greater likelihood of being able to stand and move after 48-hours.”
“What is the healing process like?” She asked, the slight tremor in her voice resonating too deeply within you.
Carefully reaching over the gurney, you grabbed her cold frigid hand resting on the edge. She sucked in a breath, staring at your eyes as if they held in some precious jewel for her to find. “You’ll probably need physical therapy afterward, possibly at an inpatient rehab facility. Mrs. Perry, many patients before have recovered beautifully from this, with mobility returning to their standard before this injury.”
You noticed the brimming of tears in her eyes, nodding her head vigorously along with your words. Her frail hands found strength to squeeze yours, and you couldn't help but beam wider at her. You could hear Park speak with Robby and the other doctors, but you didn’t pay them much mind.
“Thank you.” She whispered, the air hitting your face. She lifted her other hand to grasp at her chest, as if you lifted a weight from her. “Bless your soul, sweet girl.”
“We will book the OR for the procedure.” Dr. Park spoke louder, stopping at the foot of the bed. When you turned your head in his direction, he nodded to Robby. “We’ll need blood work and an EKG done to plan accordingly.”
“Already on it.” Robby nodded, he glanced from Park to you. He tried to hide the subtle skeptical look in his eye after listening to you speak with Mrs. Perry with tenderness.
You certainly didn’t learn that from Park the Shark.
Park didn't utter anything more as he sauntered behind you. The snapping of his gloves as he pulled them off concluding your business in the ED. You spared Mrs. Perry one last look, before ushering yourself out of the trauma room. When the door sealed shut, Park had already pressed the up arrow for the elevator. You halted a couple of feet behind him, standing to the side like some kid in trouble.
Clearing your throat, you rocked on the balls of your feet. “Was I right about the Hemiarthroplasty?”
If you were Sully, or any other resident with much more confidence in their diagnosing skills, you’d assume you made the right observation. But you weren’t—especially with Park present—and with a patient's life on the line, you didn’t pretend to be either.
The elevator dinged, doors opening wide for the two of you. Park who settled himself in the center of the elevator box while you slipped around him. Once the button lit up for the surgical floor, the box rattled to move up, forcing you to grasp onto the railing.
“Do you really have to ask?” He asked, not concerned to see your reaction. His voice seemed almost annoyed by the need to ask.
You fumbled on words, mouth agape as you considered how to redeem yourself without sounding overtly desperate for his approval. He slightly shook his head, squaring his shoulders. “Next time I ask for you to do your job, I assume you won’t dally like you did now.”
You weren’t dallying.
If anything, you were trying to comprehend what injury Mrs. Perry had. Apart from the X-ray, there were still elements you could learn talking to the patient. Maybe your teachers in med-school were too ‘soft’ for Dr. Park's animalistic taste, but you found the traditional-method worked.
You furrowed your brows. “It’s all for the sake of patient-care.”
“Reacting promptly and avoiding delay is patient-care.” Park corrected, you saw the slight maneuver of his chisel jaw, now able to see your figure from over his shoulder. “I shouldn’t have to teach my third year residents this.”
If you were paid every time he threw that insult, you’d have your student debt paid two-times over. There weren't enough fingers on your hands to count the amount of times he directed those words to you. It was profoundly glued into every fold of your brain, haunting you even in your sleep. The utter lack of gratification you gave him as his resident didn’t need words with the way he’d dismiss you like a prey not worth the hunt.
It wasn’t like you didn’t try. You’d be wasting your time and his if you sat around lulling, but sometimes the insults bordered on cruel.
“It’s his teaching methods. Be glad he even addresses you by name.” Sully painfully attempted to remedy the slight heartache you had a couple of months ago—sulking over the fact Park had ripped you a new one.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, or whatever Nietzsche said.
Except, you weren’t sure that philosophy helped anyone who worked under the control of Dr. Park.
That much was assured once Mrs. Perry was moved into an OR after her necessary tests were conducted almost three hours later. You were half hoping you wouldn’t have to perform the surgery, finally running to your wits end after the double shift. There wasn’t anything to liven the zombie-like shuffle of your feet down the halls through consultations and pages. Your body was running on autopilot, and the connectivity with your brain no longer attached.
You hadn’t realized you fell asleep while supposedly “resting your eyes” from documenting patient charts. Without much thought, your brainpower fizzled and shut off at the first taste of silence and peace. You were only thankful there wasn't anyone else trying to cram in charting time.
With your body succumbing to the small grace, you hadn’t a clue of your surroundings and the last thing you expected to disrupt your REM cycle was the booming sound of a door slam shut. You shook awake, turning your head in either direction to find the source of the noise. When your eyes shot open in the direction of the door to the dictation room, you saw a grouchy Dr. Park standing at the doorway with his hands on his hips.
You tried to act like you hadn’t been sleeping, blinking reverently to shake off the drowsiness. Dr. Park wasn’t convinced. Humming you braced one hand on the desk, spinning the chair slightly. “Were you looking for me?”
“You’d know that if you’d answer your pages.” His stolid stare of your face was aware of exactly the position he caught you.
Your hands wandered to the pager on your belt. When you saw all the unanswered responses, you groaned, too aware of the fact you had managed to fail your attending, again. Refusing to lift your head, you shut your eyes in defeat. “I’ve been trying to catch up on—“
“Sleep?” Park interrupted, bracing his arms over his chest.
Blinking at him like a dog with its tail between its legs, you could see something beyond general annoyance over you sleeping on company time. You hadn’t exactly expected him to handle it nicely, but a pit was forming in your stomach. It felt like awaiting a death sentence.
Park ticked his head to the side, snarling like a shark tempted by insatiable fury. Too wild and ferocious to wait for his next meal to come. That didn’t make him forget his control, staring at you with the starching glare. “Mrs. Perry is ready for surgery.”
His hand gripped open the door, stalking out as quickly as he came in. You sat there frozen, unsure what to make out of the reaction. He wasn’t the type to yell. His icy demeanor and hooded stare said enough without an elevation in vocal volume. Yet, he didn’t elaborate more on the obvious inappropriate state he found you in.
Could it be a dream? Maybe your brain hasn't fully booted to life. There was no way Dr. Brendon Park would let your mishap slide, right?
After surgery, you walked around with less eagerness than you did before (if you had any). You downed half a pot of coffee you found in the break room before scrubbing in. It was no shocker Dr. Park had led the entire operation up until the end, where he left you alone to finish up the entire procedure after he removed the hip-ball to replace it with something durable,
When you left the surgical wing, you noticed you put in over an hour of overtime. Sully was more than likely settled at your shared apartment. When you glanced at the lock screen of your phone, you noted the missed message.
SULLY 1 hr ago
Bought thai and dessert. I know you’re going to need it after tonight.
The exhale that left you might’ve sounded like you had received the best news of your life. In hindsight, it was as luxurious as your life got.
You were mostly grateful you had managed to avoid Park since finishing the surgery. Some part of you dreaded that he’d be waiting out the double doors to hand you the list of all your faults within the one shift. When you found the halls empty, you thanked whatever higher authority there was that it wasn’t the case.
As you stood in the desolate, quiet elevator, your hands hovered over the buttons. You were desperate to run out of the hospital and forget the shift like a bad nightmare. Instead, your finger reached for the post-op floor.
Maybe it was in everyone’s nature to linger instead of pulling away without turning back.
You didn’t think the hospital could get any colder. You tugged your fleece jacket to wrap over your body as you walked over to where most of the patients were sedated and asleep. The nurse at the desk recognized you, waving her hand at you before turning back to the paperwork she was attending to.
Mrs. Perry's room was diagonal from the desk, even with her face turned away, you knew her from afar. Quietly pulling the door open, you slipped in, gauging her body for any sudden movements of her shifting awake. When you saw the soft fall and rise of her chest continued without lapse, you grabbed the marker on her patient-board.
She was a lovely lady overall, resembling a grandmother from childhood. You scribbled a small note to tell her surgery went well and wishing her a speedy recovery, finalizing with your name. When you slipped out, you made no more delay, hurrying to the directions of the elevators, typing away in response to Sully’s message.
You didn’t lift your head up when the door slid open, side stepping to the panel to click to the floor to the hospital parking garage. Too busy staring at your phone, awaiting a response from your roommate; you didn’t acknowledge the presence lingering behind you. Just another hospital staff trying to make it home.
The buzz of the elevator filled the silent atmosphere. You hummed lightly to a song you had stuck in your head, watching the three dots light up the opened message.
“How’s the patient?”
You jumped back, your head turning ninety degrees in an impossible speed that would leave a kink in your neck no doubt. The grip on your phone was ironclad as you stared wide-eyed at Park, leaning against the railing with one arm. Staring at him with a frightened look, no doubt the same look of surprise from earlier, your mouth clamped shut.
He raised his eyebrows at you, and with a careful step, back you nodded. “Mrs. Perry is resting in post-op. I’m sure she’ll make a nice recovery with some therapy.”
Park only gave you a firm nod. He didn’t need you to reaffirm that thought. He had looked at all the pre-op tests and results. She was an ideal patient for her age, low-risk of infections and complications. He knew everything about his patients. Therefore, his nonchalant and dispirited expression reminded you of that.
You peeled your eyes away, hoping the elevator would somehow move faster, so you didn’t die of shame. As the elevator continued to descend, you grimaced, choosing your next words carefully, “I’m sorry about missing the pages. There is no excusing my ignorance of my responsibilities. I just—“
Your words fell flat. How were you supposed to excuse the fact you fell asleep while charting, especially to an attending like Dr. Park? Anyone would have a better time wrestling an actual shark then to be forgiven by Dr. Park.
“All residents should be able to adapt to their schedules.” Park reminded you, like you were an intern who had yet to learn to struggle on a shift. You had worked double and overnight shifts before. Today just happened to be one of the tiring ones yet. “Do you think a patient wants you drooling over them while in surgery?”
He shook his head, which was the most you had seen him emote. After the face you had made some mistakes you should've grown out of. “I gave you one task today, and somehow you were incapable of managing that.”
You shrunk within yourself, hands clamming around your phone. The sharp inhale must have caught in your throat from the constricting chords. It was as if the air had thickened with the rising density of Park’s sudden reprimand. Of course, you couldn’t save yourself from drowning into the depths of the ocean, where most of the curious sharks lived. You were bound to be another fallen soldier in Park the Shark’s list of students who fell too short of the expectation.
“I need competent third-year residents on my staff. Ones who don’t need me to hold their hands and coddle them their entire way through this program.” He took one-step closer, and you wondered what was taking the elevator so long. “I won’t risk my patient’s life for your irresponsibility.”
The elevator dinged and the metal doors slid open. You held your breath the entire time Park stared down at you, like scum under his shoe. Without uttering another word, he walked out the doors, placid and unfazed by the confrontation, compared to you. Feet glued to your stationary position and blood running cold over your entire body.
Was that how Park saw you? Some liability he tried to tolerate, even when he preferred you separated from the patient with a ten-foot pole. The shaky breath you finally let out shook your core. Maybe all he saw you was the ‘pipsqueak’ of the group. Too mousy and self-deprecating unlike the rest.
God, you were a fool thinking you could impress anyone with your confident persona, impersonating a skilled ortho-surgeon instead of training to be one.
You stuck your hand through the sliver between the closing doors, activating the sensor once more. Stepping out into the fresh breeze, you caught the headlights of some luxury car flash in your direction. With one hand hovering over your eyes, you traveled to the side, remaining close to the edge away from the pathway. Right as the car passed by, you caught a glimpse of Park speeding away without turning back.
It sounded naïve to hope you could change his opinion of you. Didn’t mean you’d stop trying. He could stir the waters into a whirlpool, but you made your travel home planning to fight against it. If there was something you wanted Dr. Park to recognize most was you weren’t going to stand for the tyranny—even if he was the living impersonation of an apex predator in your habitat.
Some animals were made to be preyed on, and you’d climb the food-chain if you had too.
The animosity from Dr. Park had stopped in the shifts after. You made an effort to be assertive. Taking charge of consultations while instructing the interns. You weren’t doing it just to earn Park’s respect, but to also prove to yourself what you wanted to be capable of. If he happened to change what objective opinion he had settled on about you, then that was just a plus.
Thankfully, it had worked well enough to have Park only mutter the tame sarcastic remarks, which announced to everyone he wasn’t a fan of redundancy. He nodded at you when he ‘liked’ what you had to say about a patient and their diagnosis. Never cracking a smile, but whenever he'd examine you up and down once exiting a patients room, you knew he had no critiques.
It was nearing the end of the day shift. You had paid your farewells with most of your closest colleagues. Sifting through the fridge in the break room, you heard the door click open. Lifting and peeking around curiously, you assumed other residents were packing to leave.
Instead, Dr. Emmick, the night shift attending that relieves Park, greeted you with a casual smile. You had worked with her previously, enjoying her calm, playful nature. She had her black hair tied in a braid, framing her face. You always admired her youthful look, tanned color and clear skin.
She smiled at you while holding her packed lunch. The sweet ring of your name followed as she approached, “it’s nice seeing you around.”
“Likewise,” You mused, extending a hand out as you politely put the container into the fridge. She gratefully handed it to you, mouthing a small ‘thank you.’ Before closing the fridge, you grabbed the last of your energy drink, tapping the seal.
“I hope Dr. ‘Shark’ is treating you well.” She joked, and you caught the playful chaste in her words. She flashed a grin as she spun around towards the kitchenette.
You scoffed, shaking your head with a nervous smile. “As well as he treats all of his residents.”
She laughed at that, her cheeks swelling as her smile widened. She moved around, grabbing a mug from the cabinet. She rustled around the sweeteners and sugar for a minute. “I find it hard to believe you haven’t charmed your way into his cold heart.”
Squinting your eyes at her, you chuckled awkwardly, gripping the can tighter. “What do you mean?”
You froze as she poured the warm liquid in her mug. She moved around casually as if what she said hadn’t been news to you. While she shook her head, you continued to stare at her back with a crinkled nose. “I haven’t met a single person who didn’t have a single good thing to say about you.”
She shortly paused to take a brief sip of the coffee before she rustled with more of the sugar packets. “You have been monikered the most liked resident of the entire hospital.”
“That’s a lie.” You countered. When the tone came out more combative than intended, you retracted your head a bit, pressing your lips together.
“Don’t believe me?” she mused, glancing over her shoulder as she mixed the coffee with a stirrer. The grin on her face made you feel like you shouldn’t have doubted the observation.
‘Most liked’ must have been an exaggeration. Of the entire hospital? Impossible. Sure, you played nice with the surgical attendings and the doctors down in the Pitt, but they couldn’t have all thought that way. Not when Park found a way to rip up your efforts every shift. It is unbelievable that any of the attendings could like you if Park found flaws.
“Which begs the question as to why you stay on the day shift.”
When you lifted your eyes to level at her face, she was leaning back onto the counter cradling the mug. One foot crossed over the other and she smiled sincerely. “I know many here on the night shift who would appreciate you a little more. I know I would.”
“I could use a resident with your maturity.” She shrugged, pushing off the counter. You continued fiddling with the can, trying to ground yourself as she continued finding new ways to praise you. “Would take a lot off my plate.”
You hadn’t realized how silent you were until she raised her eyebrows at you expectantly. Shaking your head, you waved one hand in dismissal. “I’m sure you’re just saying that. I know most of my co-residents are moving once they finish residency and the hospital is in need of some positive turnover.”
She narrowed her eyes at you, like your observation was a point-of-view she hadn't been exposed to. With the slight shake of her head, she blew out a sigh, eyebrows raised. “Truth is it’s a lot harder to stay than it is to get in. It’s definitely not for lack of trying. But, I think if anyone has a solid chance, it's you.”
Before you could politely disagree, the sound of a phone ringing bounced off the wall. Reaching into her scrub pocket, Dr. Emmick pulled out her on-call phone, skimming the ID. She lifted her head, offering an apologetic smile. “Just consider it, at least.”
She swiftly answered the call, announcing her name. You waved her a small goodbye, which she returned, before you excused yourself out. Dr. Emmick was a good mentor from the times you had worked the night shift. She was swift with an edge of personality people felt Park lacked with all his glaring. She played music roulette while doing surgery, remaining the champion of the ongoing ‘guess that tune’ game.
It was hard to deny her forwardly when she charmed everyone with such ease.
You walked down the halls, towards the elevator where Sully stood by waiting, scrolling through his phone. He glanced up when he heard the footsteps, “What took you so long?”
“I was talking with Dr. Emmick,” You sighed out, leaning over to press the down arrow button. He stared at you skeptically, noticing the small shrug of your shoulders. “She tried to convince me to move to the night shift.”
He scoffed, stuffing his phone and hands in his pockets. He bounced on his feet, staring up at the ceiling. “Wouldn’t be the worst idea.”
Your head spun to stare at him with down turned eyebrows and pursed lips. He stared down at you with a puzzled expression, “What? You’re not a morning person, whatsoever, and you hate working with Park.”
“I don’t hate working with Dr. Park.” You neglected, offended by the insinuation. ‘Hate’ was a strong four-letter word you disliked using.
‘Hating’ Dr. Park insinuated the one thing you didn’t want to relent to: that he was under your skin. If he was able to obliterate the part of you that made up the person enduring his personality, then you’d have to resign. There was no way you could objectively work with him—or anyone similar—without it affecting patient care. It wasn’t a justifiable means to an end; it was a disservice to the patients.
Sully mockingly nodded his head, pretending to believe your words. You noted the small eye roll as he scoffed, “Either way, I won’t be here to cover for you next year, and you could use someone like Dr. Emmick in your corner.”
When the doors opened to the elevators, Sully slipped in first, holding the door open for you to follow. You bowed your head, still fiddling with the tab of your energy drink, no longer needing to satiate the craving. All you felt was the small shake of the elevator as it began its descent. Sully stood diagonally, watching you stare at your feet.
His small huff caught your distracted attention, “If you're so determined on staying here, you better learn to play offensive with Park. Don’t the big sharks always dominate the small ones?”
You refrained from laughing, dropping your gaze to hide the crack in your expression. Once Sully got over the shark-induced fear, he played around a lot more than he should’ve. The others thought it was like dropping his blood in a tank of sharks. Sully had read up on all the shark facts he could, and during every hand-off while Park was present, he’d share it with him.
He swore that Park patted him in the back once, hiding the small curve on the corner of his lip.
“Wouldn’t turning over to the night shift just confirm what he already thinks of me?” You questioned, rolling your head to the side as the words rang in your head again. All you were was incompetent and juvenile anyways.
“Maybe,” Sully shrugged, readjusting the singular strap of his backpack hanging off his shoulder. “Or maybe he won’t care at all. If he feels that strongly about you, then why should it matter to him?”
Sully was usually right, which was why they titled him chief resident. He had made the last three years with Park more than bearable. If you hadn’t gone to introduce yourself to him in the parking lot, he probably wouldn’t have chosen you to assist him throughout most of his cases. He always noted that you were smarter than the rest. When they’d all make performances of them kissing ass, you’d do it in silence, without the need of recognition.
You thought he was being nice when he offered his spare bedroom. In reality, you were the only one he could fathom spending time with outside the hospital.
When the elevator halted, Sully gave you a grin. “I hope I wasn’t wrong about you, pipsqueak.”
“Seriously?” You groaned, dragging your feet through the lobby as you two wandered out the doors as all the other day-shift staff.
Sully led the way with more energy than when he came in. You didn’t know how he wasn’t drained from the work, or the bustling of Park pushing him in every direction. He was meant to be the right-hand man, after all. When the two of you made your way out, the sun was close to gone.
There was a chilly breeze and you shivered as it kissed your cheeks. “What is that supposed to mean anyway?”
“I just hope that all the hints I’ve been dropping Park isn’t for nothing.” He shrugged, trotting up steps to the parking garage elevator.
“What do you mean?” You pushed, letting out a sigh once the two of you made it to the elevator. Your hands landed dramatically to your sides, head tilted as you stared expectantly.
He shrugged first. Once he caught wind of your raised eyebrows, he chuckled. “Look, I get we’re friends, roommates, and honestly, we work on more cases together than with Shark combined.”
“Get to the point.”
He raised his hands, as a form of retaliation, while you deadpanned him. “But, you are more than a decent resident.”
Scoffing with an offended and jarred gaped mouth, you prepared to fire equally backhanded remarks. Sully put his hands on your shoulders, guiding you into the elevator first, leaning into your ear. “I’m messing with you.”
He let go once inside, and clicked the fourth floor. He turned to you with a sincere smile, crooked and charming. You had lost track of the amount of times other residents asked if he was single or in a relationship with you. “But, I don’t think I’ve seen Park so interested in anyone as much as he is with you.”
Throwing your head back gently, it thumped the elevator wall, trembling as it glided upward. “People say the same about you.”
“My point is if I see it, so does Park.” Sully redirected with a casual smile. Professional and honest, in the same manner he talked to patients. “So give him reasons he needs to be wrong.”
“And If it doesn’t pan out, I’ll hold you a spot in Chicago.” He winked at you and as if on cue, the elevator dinged and the doors revealed the dark parking garage .Walking backward, he widened his smile, all teeth. “Then he’ll regret ever doubting you, shark pup.”
You tried to keep Dr. Emmick and Sully's words in mind. It had started to feel like an omen you meant to keep an eye on. It never occurred to you that some people had formed strong opinions about you. Dr. Emmick had asked subtle questions about your consideration of the last conversation the two of you had. Sully had noticed, and even began to inquire about your next steps.
It had never dawned on you that the invitation was serious.
Not until you worked the next night shift block on your schedule. You had walked into the dictation room, zipping on your fleece sweater when you ran into Dr. Emmick. She looked up from her watch, stating your name with a smile. “Didn’t realize you were scheduled tonight.”
You nodded politely, offering a closed mouth smile in return. “I switched with another resident. It was a last minute thing.”
“Well, happy to have you here.” She somehow smiled wider. You tried to hide the sudden tightness in your chest. It was weird to be openly invited and welcomed into your shift by an attending. Park would have barely looked in your direction if this were the day shift.
She stood with her hands in her pocket, examining you up and down. “Have you done the hand off yet?”
“Just got back from that,” You point your thumb behind you, motioning to the door you came in from seconds ago. “Seems like a manageable workload.”
“For now,” Dr. Emmick chuckled, readjusting the pager on the waistline of her scrub pants. “Give it a few hours to liven up. The next trauma is yours.”
You should’ve known by now to take her words seriously.
While assisting her in a surgery that was when the call came in from the charge nurse. Trauma via ambulance. Motorcycle accident. Left leg deformity with obvious bone exposure. Dr. Emmick only hummed as she glanced at you from across the surgical table.
That’s what landed you in the elevator, gloves and gown doffed while now only sporting your scrub cap. When you landed on the basement floor, walking straight off the elevator and looking into Trauma-2, you saw the chaos within the glass. Pumping hand sanitizer and pushing the door open with your back caught the attention of most in the vicinity.
Walsh lifted her gaze across the room, a small smirk on her face as she announced your name amusingly. “Dr. Park’s shark pup. You finally turned to the dark side?”
You shook your head, grabbing a pair of gloves from the wall. “Hello to you too, Dr. Walsh.”
Approaching the gurney, your eyes immediately went to the splint holding his left leg in place. That when you saw the exposed bone from an open wound on the anterolateral shin. An intern was sitting, irrigating the debris into a pan. You then looked up to see the young, male patient, sedated on the bed. He was scattered with other wounds in his face.
“Present, please.” You proposed, eyes darting to the staff wearing black scrubs.
“A please? Are you sure you're one of Park’s?” Jack hummed from beside you leaning over the patient as he and Walsh worked on putting a chest tube and alleviating some internal bleeding near the liver. When you looked at him, you scoffed, shaking your head.
“Motorcycle accident. Flew almost ten meters away from the crash per paramedics. No knee fracture or joint surface misalignment.” Nazely spoke up from your other side, continuing to irrigate gently, looking much smaller as she donned her gown.
“Jesus” You mumbled, hands behind you back as you leaned in to examine the open wound with precision. “Did he come in unconscious?”
“Morphine and fentanyl will do that for you.” Walsh mumbled as she began to stand up straight. She tossed the small strands of hair that fell around her face back looking in your direction.
She watched as your hand traveled along the bone in his knee, then lowered as you felt the tissue. Nazely had retracted her hands, looking around anxiously as you stared at the leg like some prey on the hunt. “Keep irrigating. It’s looking like a subtype B and we don’t want to risk infection.”
“Subtype B?” Nazely questioned softly, looking up at you with her widen sunken eyes. She glanced around to try to understand the silent understanding everyone else had.
You nodded at her, a soft smile as you made your way around to where she was, stopping close enough to brush against her arms. “Gustilo-Anderson Type III.”
“Good old Ramon and John.” Walsh joked, shaking her head with a small huff. Jack glanced at her, an amused smile on his face.
The movement continued as you examined the patient in silence. Nazely kept cautiously peeking at you from the corner of her eye. She was paranoid of whether she was doing it correctly, adjusting her arms rhythmically. Your mind and body acted on your training, sensations alarmed from the previous cases you can recall that imaged the patient’s current situation.
When you turned to Nazely, she tensed up a bit, suddenly alarmed. “Was his upper leg always this swollen?”
Her eyes followed where you were pointing nervously. She furrowed her eyes, a bit panicked while shaking her head. “It looks worse than when he came in.”
“Before the medication he was in severe pain, even with passive stretching.” Jack informed, now stoic as he followed what you and his intern were concerned. He moved around the nurses and techs to assist with other continuous care in his upper extremities. “Felt numbness in his toes and pain continued up to the ankle.”
“Can I see imaging?” You called out, retracting yourself to step over to the machine where the radiologist tech stood with the blue vest still on. Peering down, you drowned out the sudden rise of noises.
Voices followed with consistent reports of heart rate and pressure, moving into a position that was no longer safe for comfort. Even while focused on your area of expertise, you could recognize the plan of care Walsh and Jack were announcing. Ischemic. Stiffness, swelling, and pain in the left leg. Tibia fracture.
“Acute compartment syndrome.” You called out, turning your head over to Jack and Walsh.
The trauma surgeon tsked as she busied herself with Jack looking over her shoulder. She lightly jerked her shoulder, pushing Jack back to block space between them. Jack lifted his head over Walsh, looking at the small intern sitting on the stool, attempting to shrink impossibly smaller. “What are the four compartments, Nazely?”
She blinked rapidly, pausing with her mouth open as her attending addressed her. While shutting her eyes, she took a deep breath out. “Anterior, Lateral, Superficial, and Deep posterior.”
“500 to Dr. Toomarian.” You joked, walking back to her side. She gazed up at you offering a trembling smile as she gathered her bearings again, focusing on her one task. You sighed, shaking your head. “He’s going to need a fasciotomy and reconstruction if we can salvage all the compartments. Hope he doesn’t lose his leg.”
“Any attending’s available in ortho?” Walsh questioned, finally taking a step back to speak directly at you.
You ripped off the gloves you were wearing, tossing them in a bin before sanitizing. While rubbing your hands you sighed, “Dr. Emmick will be stuck in a spinal surgery for the next couple of hours. I will proceed as primary ortho after checking in with her.”
“Without supervision?” Walsh clarified, an eyebrow raised. You could tell she had reservations, not of the work, but the ethicality of the procedure.
You shrugged, before crossing your arms and holding her attention. “You’d rather the patient lose his leg, Dr. Walsh?”
Jack snickered from across the trauma room. He shook his head, “Now I see it.”
Walsh followed your previous actions, doffing the PPE attire. Once she ripped off the gloves, she clapped her bare hands, an amused smile on her face. “You’re up, shark pup.”
When you finally scrubbed out of the surgery, it was nearing sunrise. Before walking into the OR, you kept repeating the case in your head, going over the steps you had done previously before. You weren't exactly secure until stepping into the sterile environment. Standing at the surgical table, along with Walsh and the other surgical techs, it was coming to you as easy as breathing.
Taking control of the entire narrative in a different capacity felt strange. There wasn’t the lingering presence of Emmick or Park, who typically didn’t refrain from giving direction, guiding your hands like molding clay. There was steadiness in your hands you didn’t think would be present without either attending.
You could hear Park’s constant reminders not to get too conceited. Cockiness never suits a wide-eye resident still learning to stand; he huffed out after assisting in your first major reconstruction surgery. He had surprisingly relied mostly on your directive than his own, asking questions and staring at your work.
There was still a buzzing sensation throughout all your nerves, like an adrenaline rush you didn’t want to come down from. It didn’t help that when Dr. Emmick did step into the OR, to check in with how the operation was progressing, she gave no criticism. The nod and approving hum that escaped her while wearing the mask, listening intently to you break down the steps you’ve taken, made it hard to not be proud of yourself.
Instead of gloating though, you sat in the break room, nibbling on the lunch Sully had prepared for you two for the week. You leaned back in the plastic chair, scrolling through your phone. You heard the door click open, but made no effort to turn your head to the sound.
When you saw a figure move around from where you were sitting, you caught Walsh looking down at you, much cleaner from the last time you saw her. She grinned at you, stopping across the table, “The patient was moved to the ICU for monitoring. Good job back there.”
“Thank you.” You replied, putting your phone down gently. Sitting up straighter, your braced both hands on the seat, smiling coyly. “Is it bad to say I was afraid of messing it up?”
“Don’t let Brendon hear you say that.” Walsh snickered, turning her back to scavenge the fridge. She pulled out a gray can, immediately cracking the seal and gulping down the cold liquid. “He’d have a gall if he knew you did the operation with no attending supervision.”
“You were there.” Your chin motioned to where she stood, one hand now braced on the kitchenette counter.
“I’m not your attending.”
Her grin widened as you playfully rolled your eyes. There was a beat of silence as you finally sensed the temptation to steal another nibble of your food. Walsh stared at you, taking another swing of her drink. “I heard you’re bored with the day shift. Is Park not living up to the hype?”
With down turned brows and a shaky laugh, you tipped your head to one side. “What are you talking about?”
Walsh looked back at you as if she had shared a secret she wasn’t supposed to let slip. Readjusting her back, she pursed her lips. “Marla said you were moving to the night shift with the rest of us nocturnal mammals.”
Dr. Emmick. Ardent to assume one good half-shift was enough to have you turning your current schedule upside down. Although, you could say pretty confidently you had never been as validated as you had this shift than any day shift, you still were considering the proposition. It wasn't entirely a decision you could rationally make with this one experience. You had yet to find out what struggling with the night shift entailed.
“I’ve yet to decide on such a big change.” You corrected, earning a hooded look from Walsh. “I promised her I’d consider it.”
Walsh booed, rolling her neck to glare at you with amusement. The playful grimace on her face eased the small worry in your chest. Has it really been that big of a disappointment?
She pushed herself off the counter, sauntering in your direction. “Here I thought I’d be able to rub in his face how we stole his greatest protégé.”
There was that word. Along with the ‘shark pup’ nickname some of the residents had heard a handful of times answering consultations. They were meant to learn from the quiet, calculated Dr. Park, and find some way to honor him with their skill, but Park wasn’t the type to look at that. He didn't care much for individuality either, but he preferred neither of you to paint yourself in an image that only suited him.
“Why do you guys keep saying that?” You questioned genuinely. Walsh stopped in her tracks, raising her eyebrows at your question. “I’m nothing like him, and if anything, he probably has a scroll full of things I could work on.”
For a minute, you thought Walsh might actually pull you into the insider information that every surgical staff knew–except you. A part of you wondered whether Park was secretly feeding into the ongoing perception as well. Walsh scoffed, the corner of her lips curling upward, pronouncing her cupid's bow. “I’m not going to spell it out for you. Takes away the fun.”
“Besides, if it keeps you from coming over to nights, I don’t think I want to.” She admitted, leaning in closer to come off as mischievous. You only nodded, defeated that you were left out.
She sighed, “You’ve got potential. I’d hate for ‘Park the Shark’ to be the reason you don’t explore that.”
She rolled her eyes at the title Park had been known for since you joined. Now you understood why Park always seemed to have a scowl after talking with Walsh. If she jabbed at him in his face as much as she was right now, that would explain everything. She straightened herself, sparing you one last smile.
“See you around, daredevil.”
To say Dr. Park was a tough person to impress was an understatement. You didn’t expect him to sing your praises the following shift after Dr. Emmick had prematurely gloated on your behalf. The only reaction you got was a huff of some sort, his head tilting to the side as he saw you checking in on the patient and mutterings of ‘doing your job.’
By that point, you knew Park was grateful the patient had survived long enough to offer you his gratitude.
It did get him off your back a bit.
He still picked on you to accompany him on the major trauma surgeries, but he stopped hounding over you. Most consultations in the ER were yours to attend, with the junior residents to teach and guide. The word must have traveled, because even a hunk of a chief like Dr. Robby had respected your professional opinion.
They knew to trust your opinion when packed under the pressure of a MVA, including up to five vehicles and six pedestrians. Some of them were as young as 12, just riding their bike on the sidewalk by a park, blindsided by the speeding cars. It was chaos in the ED, and the trauma alarms up in surgery didn’t go missed by anyone.
Gowns and gloves flew on with quick ease and stained with the crimson blood of those involved just as quickly. Right as you were working on the hip fracture of a 72-year-old woman, a passenger to one of the affected vehicles, Park had immediately switched you out with Sully to stabilize a 32-year old man's leg.
You had done the same procedure alone. When you watched Park walk out to dictate another surgery, a sigh of relief escaped you. It was hours before the hospital found a steady rhythm. Most of your shift had passed by with the blink of an eye, and patients transferred in and out like a manufacturing company. Now, most of the interns and second-years were attending to follow calls about surgery while you sat in the dictation room to finish charting.
Sully sat across from you, speaking quietly as he recounted the steps of his pelvic stabilization of a 45-year-old patient, waiting to follow up with the acetabular reconstruction. You preferred to type your way through the chart, even if you could barely keep your eyes open enough to see the words.
What did liven you up was the sound of your pager beeping. You groaned lightly, earning a scowl from Sully who didn’t falter with his words. When you glanced down at your pager, you read the room number feeling some sort of dread following.
The last thing Sully heard was the scraping of the chair as you walked out the dictation room.
You wandered up to the post-surgery wing, wandering towards the room number with alerted ears. Right as you were approaching the sliding doors, you halted as nurses were pushing the patient bed out of the room. Pushing yourself aside by a wall, you watch with slight horror as Jones, the small blonde second-year resident, walks out like a wounded puppy, followed by an infuriated Park.
Despite being the least expressive person in the entire hospital, there was an eerie distinction between his typical crabbiness and his frenzied authoritative side. This was the latter.
When Park’s eyes landed on you, he scoffed. The disgust was evident when he brushed past you with little acknowledgment. You tried to ask a question that fell short when Dr. Park finally spoke up with his back turned to you. “Nice of you to finally act upon your responsibilities,”
With a huff, you followed closely behind him, eyeing at Jones who departed down a desolate hallway. “What happened?”
“Your lack of concern for patient care is what.” He retorted, and from the angle, you caught him in, it was as if he was snarling his teeth with a low grumble. “Mr. Stevenson was your patient, and your lack of consideration for him has resulted in compartment syndrome.”
You opened your mouth, but nothing came out. From the trauma interventions, the lack of fuel keeping you standing, and the endless work you still had yet to finish in the last two hours of your shift had all blurred together. The patients handed off from the night before had been lost in your memory, and when Park uttered his name with the sharp punctuation, it was like the thought was aimed straight for the center of your brain.
“Jones agreed to cover while we attended the incoming MVA patients.” You said breathlessly, now matching his pace. He still didn’t bother to look at you, which should’ve been the least of your concerns, but right now, it made you feel insignificant. Undeserving of a moment of his precious time.
“So I heard,” he reported sourly, shaking his head. The nurses lead the hospital bed in the direction of the elevator and if your body weren’t caught off guard, you would’ve realized exactly where they were heading in the first place. “I’ve already reprimanded him for his dismissal of the nurse's report of his increased pain after the intramedullary nailing and refusing to consult with a senior staff member.”
He paused, turning to stand right in your tracks. You stumbled back with a startled expression, craning your neck back to look at him. The bones in his jaw ticked as he clamped down. The shadow over his eyes made his crystallized stare sharper, like a pair of knives pointed straight at you. You finally had a moment to catch your breath, but hardly anything was traveling to your lungs.
“But with your seniority, it was your responsibility to supervise his actions and your patients, regardless of everything else going on.” He affirmed a finger point at your chest as he emphasized his point. “You learn to accept the workload. Do you think they care whether you’re tired or busy with their limb on the line?”
His voice was echoing now through the halls. The last thing the nurses saw was his muscles contracting under his plum scrubs before the elevator doors sealed shut. It left you in shallow waters, helpless under the unrestrained hunger of his wrath. You stood with both hands resting at your side, eyes fluttering with every stab of his words.
It was your responsibility, and you stupidly pushed it aside like scutwork.
“Now he might lose his leg.” Park pointed behind him, motioning to the elevator box the patient disappeared too. That reality was dawning on you with the emergency-surgery taking place.
Your body deflated; mouth agape as you attempted to reel in some courage to face him with dignity. The last thing you needed was for him to bully you over your lack of thick skin. That didn’t stop the wetness accumulating on your waterline. Accept the consequence of your inaction, god dammit.
“I can scrub in.” You pleaded, like a last attempt to beg for some form of life saving intervention. A boogie, life jacket, floating ring, something to pull you out of the depth of your despair.
With a flat palm right in your face, he snarled. “Don’t be an idiot. Don’t you think you’ve done enough?”
“I will fix your mistake for you, since you appear too absorbed by other duties.” His detached and swift examination of your diminished position tossed aside any ounce of consideration he had for you. The match he struck on you overturned all the micro-trivial actions you confused for tokens of his appreciation. Now, he was turning away as you burned and fizzled alone.
“Word of advice? Don’t waste my time if you don’t plan to take every challenge this program entails seriously.” The lash of his words didn’t need to be filled with profanities to make an impact, nor the heighten of volume like some may assume.
He was filled with quiet precision. A sniper with a scope and steady aim. “I’m not going to waste my time teaching a resident whose absurdity gets the best of them during dire moments. It’s not worth my effort and you’re not worth the aggravation.”
You were stunned, stapled into your position in front of him. It was like watching a bad accident unfold. Park was intact, emotionally stunted, but able to move on with his life without having to rerun the event. You were coming from the wreckage with all types of breaks and fractures. Your stability wiped from under you and recovery was a concept you were not sure could happen with due process.
Therefore, when Park turned around without so much of a glance in your direction as he stood alone in the elevator. You swore you saw the interaction slide off him, taking literally the last thing he muttered to you.
You’re not worth the aggravation. A third-year resident who needed to be coddled and instructed step-by-step on how to do their job properly, like you were a med student. Reprimanded and shunned all at once.
It was an embarrassment to yourself when you locked the door to the private bathroom, leaning against the door with a shaky hand covering your mouth. Truth was, you were frightened Mr. Stevenson would lose his leg after you incautiously neglected him. Not only would you have ruined an innocent man's life (along with yours), but Dr. Park might’ve used it for grounds of terminating your participation in the well-accredited program.
It wouldn’t have been unjustified, but you would never recover.
When you crawled back to the dictation room, night shift was making its way in. You looked around for Sully. Something familiar and safe to fall on to. As you were walking in, Dr. Emmick was walking out, alongside a night-shift resident. She smiled when she caught your eye. If she noticed the hesitation in your response, she didn’t mention it out loud, but she did furrow her brows in question.
Sully lifted his gaze, slight alarm when his eyes peeled from the desktop to the sudden sunken look in your face that was beyond the exhaustion of the shift.
“What happened?” He questioned, hands braced on the desk to push himself up.
You made your way over to him, sinking in the chair beside him. He turned to lean his body toward you, ear burning with anticipation. The subtle shake of your head and the wobble of your chin. He knew exactly what look that was.
Before he could ask a follow up, you sighed, “You’re right. I hate Dr. Park."
A week had passed. You let the dust settle for a week. You weren’t the idiot Dr. Park assumed you were. It didn’t settle because you were overly upset. Refusing to cry in your place of work, you saved the self-pity for your couch, a rom-com too sad to be comedic, and a tub of ice cream in the dark to self-indulge. It worked, because you came in for your next shift, coherent enough for Sully to understand you.
You let it settle to think clearly of the decision you conferred with your roommate about.
It only took you a week to decide with profound confidence because you didn’t want to cave into Dr. Park’s not-so-subtle mark of inferiority for you. Giving in to his brashness meant letting him win. If there was one thing you had decided against was losing the opportunity to prove yourself.
That’s what had you walking down the hall with the sheer determination of someone scorned. At least, you were pretending to be. Steadying your breathing and keeping your chin held high, you were confident enough to confront the current source of your uneasiness.
It was the end of your shift, hand-off concluded and Sully was currently waiting for you in his Prius. He had offered to stick around for moral support, but this was one challenge you had to endure alone.
As you rounded the corner, where most of the offices were, you felt the air thin too short to breath. You couldn’t turn back now—certainly not ten feet away from where Dr. Park was. So mumbling the affirmations, you spoke two feet from the mirror in the morning; you knocked on the door of the office.
“Come in.”
When you pushed open the door, Park sat in a comfortable office chair, desktop resting on a polished, and dark oak wood desk. His finger hovered over the keyboard, and when you met his eye, there was an unmistakable twitch from his nose.
Somehow, his gel combed hair shined brighter under the office light than that of the fluorescence in the OR and the ED. It was a visible recall of discipline and order. Nothing went unnoticed by him and he acted appropriately per his standard.
In the past week, he couldn’t ignore the fact you acted passive compared to your usual friendly demeanor. The very few consultations the two of you wounded up in, you were curt in your evaluations. You no longer sweet-talked conscious patients, and suddenly your reports were too concise. It was as if you were trying to wrap up any form of conversation with him as rapidly as possible.
He knew better than to assume the monologue he gave you hadn’t stung. That was the intention, after all.
You closed the door behind you, opting to respect him and your professional relationship to not blow this into departmental news to gossip about. Hands folded in front of you, it was like being in elementary school all over again. Addressing a teacher or principle with the dignity of an adult, that at the age of 12, was a foreign concept.
Clearing your throat, you offered a tight smile. “I wanted to tell you I have made the decision to transition to night-shift until the end of my residency.”
The glare he spared in return was still razor sharp, but once the words left your mouth, you instinctively searched for there to be something to deceive him. He peeled his arms away from the desk, folding them in his lap. “Admin will want a formal address as to why.”
“Dr. Emmick specializes in spinal and musculoskeletal orthopedics. She’s agreed to mentor me in those sub-specialties.” You explained with no hesitation. Once it landed, you noticed how rehearsed the statement sounded. You tried to seal it with a shaky smile, despite the stiffness in your posture betraying you.
Park examined you. His eyes narrowed and you silently pleaded he’d just accept the lame excuse, tell you to leave, and never have to face him again until the rare chance you’d have to work the dreaded day shift again. The last thing you expected was for him to stand, coming to stop on the other end of the desk. He sat on the edge, bicep muscles curling as he folded his arm over his chest.
If he weren’t so insufferable, you could see yourself drooling over them like some of the nurses did.
“You aren’t interested in spinal or musculoskeletal orthopedics.” He spoke directly. As if he had the faintest idea what you were interested in. You almost opened your mouth to derail his confident theory, before he shook his head. “You love pediatrics. You told Sullivan that in the first week.”
It was scarily true. The first pediatric case you worked on was a scared 7-year old girl who was going to need an amputation. She had strangely accepted the fact she would be missing part of her leg from above the knee and lower. That is what sold pediatric orthopedics for you. Except, Park hadn’t worked that case. He remembered that.
“Is this about last week?” Park sighed out, slight dismay in his tone.
You pursed your lips, hardening your stare. “If it was?”
“I’d tell you not to act so immature.” He remarked, like he was astonished by the fact you even asked the question. “You messed up. It will happen. I will chew you up about it. Grow up and just accept it.”
You dryly laughed at that. Grow up. What a concept?
Had you not matured in the three years from working under his supervision? He molded you under his guise, so much, so the other attendings only saw him in your image. Even with the tenderness you held on to. Meanwhile, he was stubbornly trying to beat it out of you, like a bad habit.
“What’s so funny?” He questioned, although he knew the laugh wasn't amusement. He wasn’t sure he had seen this reaction from the furrow in his brows. Somehow, his eyes were more hooded than before with that tick.
“Everyone seems to mistakenly think I’m your protégé or as they endearingly call me ‘shark pup’” You air quoted the last part, and the various voices utter that name brought upon a distaste in your mouth.
The name was a bag of weights resting on your shoulders. Without intending to, they constantly reminded you of who you were meant to be serving, as if patients weren’t the top priority. It had you running in circles, finding some way to remain impressive and shine enough to be memorable. Dehumanizing the charity of your work for the sake of appeasement.
“Like I want to follow in the footsteps of ‘Park the Shark.’”
Park scoffed. He had never approved the name per se, but he didn't discourage the usage. You saw pride in the shimmer of his eyes as people used it to praise him. All it did for you was remind yourself how negligible you were in his shadow.
You sighed with resignation, your body tired from the neglect on your own behalf. The backpack hanging on your shoulder weighed heavier. “I’m going to be frank Dr. Park; I want to be nothing like you.”
“Is that so?” He proposed, barely flinching from the implication.
“Yes.” Your breathy voice trembled, but you nodded with assurance. “All I want is to be someone honorable enough to treat the people who come in here during their worst moments.”
“I can’t do that with you disparaging me with every mistake or browbeating me around every corner.” Your hands motioned out to the very hospital Park reigned. With his designated office and cushy salary, he’d always terrorize your waters. “Especially when you don’t trust my skill as your resident.”
Maybe this was giving in. You were aspiring to have the same pride in yourself that Park did swimming into the ED or any surgery he led. If you were meant to fail to become great, why did it always feel like Park worked only in perfection?
“I happen to like to connect with my patients as much as I want to treat them and see them recover positively.” Your hand pointed to yourself, emphasizing the obvious difference between his bite and your heart.
The tiny sadness in your eye made Park shift uncomfortably. With his attitude, he must have made dozens of female residents cry. He probably went home satisfied if he crashed and burned the dreams of his students with the daunting reality that life could always get tougher.
“I don’t need you invalidating that method because you’d rather we operate in mechanical-like processes, like we are all just cogs in the machine.”
There was a beat of silence. You wholeheartedly awaited him to laugh in your face. Tell you this was ridiculous, you were too emotional, or even that you just weren’t cut out for the medical profession at all. That was everything you had heard in med-school and more. Yet, here you stood barring yourself clean, no life preserver to fish you out.
“Being emotional costs patients’ lives.” He stoically retorted, as if it had been obvious.
“I don’t see it that way.” You shook your head, lips forming a thin line. This was the final act of whatever the two of you had going on. Whether he appreciated you in silence at all or not, it couldn’t make up for the moments that ruined the illusion of his knowledge.
Too brilliant to apologize.
“Which is why I cannot have you as my attending,” You concluded, as if the argument was always clear.
He straightened his posture, shoulder falling back like a soldier hearing his command. He must have felt some way. Rejected by a resident must have been first, not that it was some record to feel proud of accomplishing. You had mixed feelings. It was all wrong, yet, there was comfort in knowing you had enough of a spine to say something.
Your hands brushed away the small hair tickling your face, “I’m afraid your judgment may hinder mine, and I need to trust in myself if I want to be good enough to be considered for the next attending position.”
That did it. You’d never outwardly said that you sought out an attending offer once your residency was up. If you had, maybe Park would’ve been much harsher than he already was. That certainly would’ve had you considering withdrawing all together.
Park's hands moved to the edge of the desk, gripping on to it as he pursed his lips slightly. Sourness or disbelief in a future where you were making the executive decision matched what you saw in his eye. “We will have to work together. Regardless if you leave the day-shift and especially if you apply for any attending position at PTMC.”
“Together. As colleagues.” You clarified, “Equals. Where I am not just some student you’re expecting to roll over at every word and waiting upon a treat blessed by you.”
There was something snarky in the comment. His nose flared lightly as he bit his tongue. For once, he was speechless, in a way that was aware, you had a score to settle, and he was at a disadvantage. Your hands fell to your side, lightly hitting your thighs. “I’ve already spoken with the program and staffing coordinator. This was mostly a courtesy.”
Then, one curt nod. No fondness of a goodbye, no devastation of your tender disappointment, or resentment for finding some unique way of disappointing him once more. It was bittersweet to terminate what you had come to know, even if it was your form of preservation. This would be your test on whether you could survive without the oh-so-wise knowledge only Park somehow had.
Maybe you could be a good surgeon without him yet.
With one hand on the door, you nodded, as if he spoke enough with his silence. Turning your body slightly, you paused with the door ajar. When you turned halfway, you offered him a tight smile, “I hope by then, you will have accepted I’m not like you, Dr. Park, nor will I ever be.”
When the conversation concluded with a click of the door, a relief shored into your chest. Your muscles released its iron-stiffness that weighed like stones in your pockets. You worried you’d regret the decision, but, how would you know who you are if you weren’t acting as you?
When you peeled your hand away from the handle, you finally noticed the small tremble gone. It was the calm after the storm, huddling in shelter as your world rattled around you. There was work needed to be done to find stability and normalcy again, but you started favoring the future more and more.
Sitting under your own tree and basking in the fruits of your own labor. Sighing in the idea of no longer standing under a man impersonating a territorial shark on dry land. And you’d finally outgrow the ‘pup’ term, once and for all.
summary: you hated jack, and you were positive he hated you too. two broken down cars and one blizzard bring the truth to the surface.
warnings: no age gap :(, med student!jack and med student!reader, I'm imagining they're both 26 and in the last year of med school, forced proximity, one sided e2l, there's only one bed! oh no!, cuddle or die, jack is kind of a dick , reader thinks jack is gonna kill her, don't worry he's just hopelessly in love, jack calls reader a bitch, love confessions, getting together, wearing jack's clothes, spooning, grinding, fingering, kissing, hickies, accidental somnophilia, dry humping, unprotected sex, big dick jack, belly bulge, creampie, mating press, sex in a strangers home
author's note: idfk what time period this is set in, im just here to sexualize this man
we're playing fast and loose with how both med school works and jack lore. I'm back to spreading my 'jacks legal first name is John' agenda. also, I barely know how undergrad works, since I am a drop out! suspend your disbelief, my more educated mutuals
There’s no way the universe should be this insistent on fucking you over.
Your shitbox of a car died a day before you were set to present your research at a conference in upstate New York in the middle of January. It was the biggest opportunity of your medical school career so far, and was going to secure your residency. But you couldn’t afford to fix it or buy plane tickets and there was no bus that could get you from Pittsburgh to Syracuse in time.
So when your program advisor called you into his office to say he found another student driving to the conference that would be willing to carpool, you nearly jumped for joy. Until the next words out of his mouth put a bullet in the brain of your newfound hope.
“-Jack Abbot! You’ve met him, right? You’re in the same year.”
Yes, you had met Jack Abbot. Several, miserable times.
Every interaction you’d had with Jack ended with you seething and him smirking. He seemed to be addicted to pushing your buttons every chance he could.
But you didn’t have a choice. And you’d definitely made sure to verify that Jack was your only option. You must have asked every other student you had classes with, but they were either flying or not going at all. So you were stuck with him.
Stuck in the confined space of the cab of his small truck, side by side on the bench seat, for five and a half hours.
Everything about him pissed you off. His perfect curls were irritating, especially since you were sure he used 15-in-1 soap to wash it, the woodsy scent of his aftershave made every breath feel agonizing, and the way his legs were spread wide was obscene. It was his car, you had no right to complain that he was taking up so much space. But god did you wish he was cowering against the door like you were. You wished he put more space between the two of you, but the small cab left about a foot between you, even with you folding your body into the farthest corner your seatbelt allowed. It was entirely too close for comfort.
You’d made it a point to avoid looking at him as much as possible since this disastrous ride had begun 2 hours ago. So far, you’ve managed to mostly succeed, focusing on the falling snow and the freezing scenery outside. But you felt his eyes on you every few miles. His gaze was hot whenever it landed on you. You could feel it, even through your thick sweatshirt and jeans.
But Jack didn’t say anything. He hadn’t said a single word since you’d met him in front of your apartment building at 1 pm and loaded up your bags into the covered bed. It was unusual for him. Normally, he liked to goad you into a reaction, sending barbs your way constantly. So the silence unnerved you. You didn’t know how to exist in a space with Jack Abbot when you weren’t on the defensive.
And then the universe decided to fuck you even harder.
The snow was falling even harder as Jack pulled off the freeway and onto a smaller back road. You wanted to question him, but you didn’t want to be the one to break the silence. Plus, you didn’t know where you were. For all you knew, Jack had driven through this area a thousand times before.
But the farther you got down the road, the heavier the snow was getting and the slower Jack was driving. You hadn’t seen another car or building for the past 30 minutes and the plows clearly weren’t running out here.
And then - truly the cherry on top- the engine started sputtering.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Jack braked hard, the tires slipping slightly as he pulled off the road onto the shoulder.
“What the fuck?” You looked over at him for the first time in an hour.
Jack threw the truck in park before he was grabbing his coat. “Stay here.”
Where the fuck did he think you were going to go? You were in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a snowstorm. The cab of the truck was pleasantly warm, and the burst of cold air when Jack opened his door convinced you even more that you were not going to get out.
You watched him round the front. He popped the hood of the truck, hiding him from view. What the hood didn’t hide, though, was the cloud of smoke that billowed out.
“Oh fuck me,” there was no way you were making it to the convention. You checked your phone. No service. Of course.
The hood slammed shut and you jumped, looking up to watch Jack walk back around to the drivers side. He slid back in, shutting the door hard behind him and scrubbing a hand over his face.
“We’re fucked.”
“What are we going to do?” You chewed on your bottom lip as you looked at the land around you. “I do not want to die of hypothermia in your shitty truck.”
“My truck isn’t shitty,” he sounded like a petulant child.
“It just fucking died on us,” you leveled a glare at him. “I’d say that makes it shitty.”
He grumbled something under his breath.
Both of you sat in silence for a moment.
“We need to find somewhere to shelter,” Jack was looking out the windows.
“There is nothing out - ”
“There,” he was pointing into the trees at something that you could not see. Everything blended together in the dim lighting and haze of falling snow.
“What?”
“There,” Jack started gathering a few things scattered around. His phone, his water bottle, and the keys made the cut, all being stuffed into the pocket of his heavy duty coat. “There’s a cabin.”
“Bullshit there's a cabin. I don’t see anything,” you really didn’t. All you could see was a mass of black and gray and green.
“There is,” he opened his door again. “Are you coming or are you going to freeze to death here?”
There wasn’t much of a choice. You could already feel the chill creeping in through the thin glass of the windows now that the engine was dead. You could follow Jack into the woods and either find shelter or freeze to death in the snow, or stay in the truck and freeze to death in the carcass of his shitbox.
No matter what, the threat of hypothermia was real and, even though you weren’t officially a doctor yet, you knew the risks. So you gave one last long suffering sigh, and opened your door.
You were immediately thankful you’d put leggings on beneath your jeans that morning. The temperature change slapped you in the face as soon as you stepped out into the ankle deep snow.
Jack was rifling through the bed of the truck, pulling out his duffel bag. You watched him hesitate for a minute, before abandoning the garment bag containing the suit he’d packed. You tried not to think about just how good he’d look in a formal get up.
“Grab your shit,” Jack was pulling on a pair of gloves. His cheeks were already rosy from the freezing wind. “We’ve gotta get there fast.”
You gathered your things, yanking your own gloves and coat out of your bag. You left your own garment bag containing the gown you’d thrifted for the final banquet in the bed alongside the covered poster board for your research. It was going to be ruined if you and Jack ever made it back to the truck alive, given that there was not a chance you’d be making it to the conference, you didn’t bother trying to save it.
“Lead the way,” you slung your bag over your shoulder, pulling the hood up over your head to try and shield you as much as possible from the chill.
Jack led you across the frozen road and down into the treeline. The snow came up to mid calf, soaking your feet through your boots. Very quickly, you started to shiver, trying to curl into yourself as you walked.
You were both grateful and pissed to see the shape of the cabin come into view. You needed to get warm, but you did not want to admit Jack was right.
It took about 20 minutes for you to reach the front porch. By now, the snow was falling so hard that you couldn’t see the road or the truck through the haze.
“C’mon, c’mon,” Jack tried the door handle, sighing with relief when it swung open.
The inside of the cabin was simple. About the same size as your studio apartment back in Pittsburgh. It was dark, but you could see a fireplace against one wall, across from a full sized bed. There was a small kitchenette and a small bathroom you could see through a half open door. The whole place was dusty and looked like it hadn’t been used since last summer, but it would have to do.
Both you and Jack tumbled in. It was cold, but at least the sturdy wooden walls kept the wind chill out.
“You got a lighter?” Jack was already moving towards the fireplace, inspecting a few of the logs piled next to it. He seemed to approve of a few of them, piling them up.
“Yeah, here,” you fished a lighter out of your jacket pocket, tossing it to him as you set your bag down on the bed.
You watched him for a moment. He shed his coat, pushing the sleeves of his sweatshirt up as he set a few scraps of newspaper alight. With a gentle few breaths, he grew the flame before placing it under the pile of logs he’d formed in the fireplace. It took a moment, but gradually the flames grew until there was a bright, flickering fire lighting up the small room.
You could feel the warmth it was putting off starting to seep into you, but it wasn’t enough. Your coat was still on, but you were shivering beneath it.
Jack noticed, doing a double take over his shoulder when he saw you still standing by the bed.
“Come over here.”
“I’m fine,” your voice was unsteady.
“You need to get warm,” Jack was untying his boots, digging through his bag for a new pair of socks as he discarded the damp pair he’d been wearing. “You’re gonna get frostbite.”
“No, I’m not,” but you were moving towards him, crossing the small room to stand beside him in front of the fireplace.
“Take off your clothes.”
You looked over at Jack like he’d grown a second head, ready to tell him off. But the words died in your throat when you saw he was stripping his shirt and hoodie off, leaving him bare from the waist up. You froze for a moment, eyes wide and brain buffering, until his hands grabbed for the zipper of his jeans.
“What the fuck?!” You spun around, trying to will your blush away.
“We need to get into dry clothes and get warm,” the shuffling sounds of his clothes hitting the floor was tempting you to turn around. You wanted just a little peak.
“I’ll be fine.”
“No, you won’t.”
And then Jack’s hands were at your waist, pulling up your sweatshirt.
“Woah!” You spun away from him, putting distance between you and begging your heart to slow down its rapid beating.
“I’m not letting you blame me when your toes fall off,” Jack crossed his arms over his chest. He’d changed into a plain black t-shirt, gray sweatpants, and thick wool socks. God damn it, he looked good. “I won’t look, but you need to change.”
“Fine,” you walked back towards your bag. “Don’t look.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Jack’s eyes raked over you once before he was turning back to face the fire.
You moved quickly, stripping out of your layers. You’d been planning on being in a nice, cosy hotel and convention center, tucked safely away from the cold, so you’d only brought jeans, slacks, and your comfortable sleep shorts. Tight, spandex shorts that left very little to the imagination. The leggings you wore under your jeans were soaked up to the thighs with melted snow and unwearable.
So you grabbed your most modest shorts, although ‘modest’ was a stretch. They were tight and short, covered completely by the oversized crewneck you pulled on after. You didn’t have too many options for socks, stuck with a relatively thin pair of white ankle length ones. Your nice, insulating ones were soaked from your trek through the snow.
“Is it safe yet?”
You glanced over at Jack, silhouetted against the fire. His shoulders looked a hell of a lot broader than you’d realized, the muscles of his arms standing out. God fucking damnit.
“Yeah, it’s safe,” you cleared your throat, looking away from him as you moved your bag away from the bed, setting it on the floor by the nightstand.
“That’s what you’re wearing to not freeze?”
His judgmental tone made you bristle, reminding your traitorous mind that you did, in fact, hate this man.
“I didn’t have a lot of options,” you unnecessarily straightened your duffel, looking anywhere but at him. “I didn’t plan for you to get us stranded in the fucking woods. I packed for a fancy hotel and a conference, which is where we would be if you didn’t try to kill us.”
“I didn’t try to kill us,” he scoffed. You risked a glance at him. He was digging through his own bag. “I took a shortcut to go around the traffic on the interstate. Here.”
He wadded up a pair of flannel pants and threw them at you. You caught them, trying not to take a deep breath. They smelled like detergent and that addicting smell of his cologne.
“These are fucking ugly,” the idea of wearing his clothes and being stuck in such a small space with him triggered your fight or flight instinct. Seeing as flight wasn’t a reasonable option with a blizzard outside, you decided to fight.
“By all means,” Jack rolled his eyes. “Freeze to death because my pants are ugly. I’d finally get some peace and quiet.”
“The fuck do you mean ‘peace and quiet’? I didn’t say a fucking thing the whole car ride!”
“Yeah, and it was fantastic.”
Grumbling to yourself about what a dick he was, you gave in. You were fully aware he was trying to get you to wear the stupid pants. You could sacrifice your pride to put them on and deny him the satisfaction of you going silent.
“Maybe if I’d said something, we wouldn’t be stuck here,” you tugged the god awful pants up over your shorts, having to double know the waistband to keep them up around your hips.
“Oh so you agree, this is your fault,” Jack looked smug. He sat down on the rug in front of the fireplace, his legs spread out before him. His feet were blisteringly close to the flames. You hoped his stupid socks caught on fire.
“How is this my fault? I didn’t tell you to drive off the main road in the middle of a snowstorm. This is your fault,” begrudgingly, you made your way towards him. You sat down 3 feet away from him, relishing the wave of heat that greeted you once you were close to the fire. The rest of the space was slowly warming up, but the cold still seeped in through the fogged over windows and wooden walls.
“Well I wouldn’t be stuck out here if I didn’t have to drive you to this stupid convention,” Jack leaned back on his palms. He looked calm and relaxed, and that made you even more irritated.
“Oh, so you only took this backroad because of me,” you stretched out your hands to warm your frigid fingers. “Glad you admitted this was attempted murder.”
“‘Attempted murder’ my ass,” he shook his head, narrowing his eyes. His gaze scanned you from head to toe. You told yourself the shiver that ran through your body was from the cold. “I would be nice and cosy in my apartment if it wasn’t for you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“I only agreed to go to the conference because you needed a ride.”
“Bullshit,” you scoffed. That didn’t make any sense. Why the hell would Jack do that? He’d been a massive dick since you met him. Every group project or hospital rotation you ended up on with him was hell. He pushed your buttons, poking and prodding at you with sharp little quips until you snapped.
Jack didn’t say anything. He turned his face back towards the fire, focusing on the flickering flames.
“Jack…?”
He stayed silent.
You didn’t know what to say. You were confused. He hates you, so why would he agree to be locked in a car with you for an extended amount of time. Maybe he truly did want to lure you out into the woods and kill you.
But why? Sure, you were classmates, both competing for residency spots in a technical sense, but that wasn’t strictly true. It pained you to admit it, but Jack was in a league of his own. He was smart. Annoyingly so. He was constantly at the top of your class, leading test scores by a mile. You weren’t stupid, not at all, but Jack was something else. You weren’t competition for him.
“Did you…” How do you ask a classmate if he planned to kill you? You swallowed hard, suddenly very nervous. “Did you bring me out here to - to get rid - ”
“Jesus Christ, [name],” he finally looked at you again, sitting up and resting his elbows on his outstretched legs. He looked horrified. “You think I agreed to drive you, took a shortcut, and sabotaged my truck to - to what? Kill you?”
“Then why did you agree to drive me?” You couldn’t wrap your head around it.
“Just drop it, ok?” He scrubbed a hand down his face, rubbing at his jaw and looking away.
“Just doesn’t make sense,” you were mumbling. You scanned him, reading the tension in his shoulders.
“Drop. It.” This was the most emotion you’d seen him exhibit in all four years you’d been in school together. His jaw was clenched.
In the flickering light, it was hard to tell if his cheeks were flushed from the rising heat of the fire or if he was actually blushing.
“No, I’m not going to drop it,” you finally had a chance to push his buttons, but you also wanted to know why he’d go out of his way to drive 12+ hours round trip if he wasn’t presenting or trying to network at the conference. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“I like you, alright?” He buried his face in his hands. “I’ve liked you for years. I wanted to do something nice for you. I wanted to spend time with you. I like being near you, I like talking to you when you’re not being a bitch - ”
“Don’t you fucking dare call me a bitch, Jack Abbot,” you were still trying to process his confession, the wheels in your brain turning at a snails pace.
“Fuck, fuck, you’re right. I’m so sorry, I’m fucking this up,” Jack took a deep breath, lifting his head to look at you. His expression was pained. “I like talking to you when you’re not trying to piss me off, and even when you are, I still enjoy it. You’re smart, you’re gorgeous - incredibly gorgeous. And we’re about to graduate soon, we’re both leaving for residency in a few months and I couldn’t - I couldn’t not say anything.”
You didn’t know how to respond. Jack paused for a moment at your silence, but then he carried on like he couldn’t stop.
“I practiced this whole little speech for the gala at the end of the weekend,” he laughed sardonically, running a hand through his curls. “I was gonna pull you to the side, somewhere pretty and romantic and tell you how amazing I thought you were, how beautiful you looked in whatever dress you brought. I was gonna ask you out on a date when we got back to Pittsburgh. And then I fucked it up. I swear, I didn’t know my truck was going to die.”
He was definitely blushing now. “And I didn’t take a shortcut. I went the long way around to get more time with you since I knew you’d ignore me as soon as we got to the hotel. But I really was trying to avoid traffic on the interstate! I just didn’t expect it to start snowing so hard.”
For a second, you were quiet. You still didn’t know how to respond, but words fell from your lips before you could stop them.
“The car ride back would have been awkward as fuck if I said no.”
Jack laughed, eyes crinkling as he shook his head.
“Yeah, it would have been,” he sobered up, hope sparking in his eyes. “But I was willing to risk the humiliation if there was a chance you’d give me a shot.”
Would you have given him a shot? You didn’t know. For years you’d been so insistent that you hated him, but you couldn’t deny that you’d been attracted to him since day 1. You’d noticed him immediately at orientation, but you hadn’t gotten a chance to speak to him until the first randomly assigned group project in your cadaver lab. He’d been a know-it-all, correcting your technique with a scalpel, raising one of those condescending eyebrows and judging every move you’d made. It rubbed you the wrong way, and clouded your perception of him.
You’d written him off after that, but the two of you kept being forced together. Same professor assigned group projects, similar friend circles, same hospital rotations. Every interaction just reinforced your view of him. It pissed you off every time you caught him staring at you, every time he sat next to you in lectures, asked to share your notes, when he poked and prodded and teased you.
But everything looked very different with the knowledge that he’d been into you since the beginning. Now, he looked less like a piece of shit that wanted to torment you and more like a lovesick puppy that wanted your attention. Either way, it wasn’t a flattering look for him, but the latter option was much more forgivable than the former.
“So?”
You jumped, ripped out of your thoughts to find Jack staring at you again.
“So…?”
“Do I get a chance?” He looked terrified of what your response would be.
“I - ” you didn’t know. Your mind was spinning, trying to parse out your feelings and figure out exactly how you were feeling about the situation.
“It’s ok if you don’t feel the same way,” his hand ran through his hair again, tugging at his curls as he went. “I get it, I’ve been a dick - ”
“No - I mean, yes you have been, but,” you took a deep breath. “I - I don’t know. I had no clue you felt this way. I’m just… trying to process this.”
“Ok, yeah, yeah that’s ok,” Jack was nodding, his eyes fixed on the floor. “Yeah, I mean, you don’t owe me an answer. And you can say no.”
He laughed again, but it was gruff and self deprecating.
“I swear I’m not going to kill you if you say no.”
“Gee, that makes me feel so much better.”
Both of you were quiet for a moment, and then you burst out laughing. A real laugh, not the sad imitation Jack had let out previously. You felt hysterical, the situation did not call for the intensity of the laughter spilling from you, but it did help to diffuse the tension that had been rising in the confined space.
When you were able to calm yourself, both of you gasping for breath and staring into the flames, your thoughts turned back to everything. You were hesitant to just accept, still struggling to reframe the last 3 ½ years now that you had more context. But you were curious.
“If we live,” you broke the silence that had fallen over the room. “If we make it out of this fucking murder cabin, I’ll give you a chance.”
Jack snorted, a smile tugging at his lips.
“Then we better survive.”
The two of you sat there in front of the fire for a few more hours, passing bags of chips and candies back and forth, trying to make the time go by and conserve the batteries of your phones. You drifted in and out of conversation and silence. Surprisingly, you found yourself enjoying talking to him. For the first time since you’d been introduced, you had a pleasant conversation. Neither of you brought up his confession or your tentative acceptance.
Instead, you asked about him. And you learned a lot, shockingly. You knew the basics; he was a few months older than you, he was too smart for his own good, and he’d sold his soul to the Army and would be doing his residency at a military hospital. You almost envied the fact that he got to skip the stress of match day. Almost. You would absolutely not trade that stress in exchange for the next 10 years of your life.
Jack was from Maryland, and he was getting to go back to do his residency at Walter Reed. You saw his eyes light up with hope when you told him your first choice for residency was John Hopkins, but he didn’t say anything. You’d be pretty damn close to each other if you got lucky, but you didn’t dwell on that.
His first name was actually John, and he looked disgusted by it, but his expression softened when you laughed after he revealed he was actually John Andrew Abbot III. You pretended not to notice that, too.
You shared information of your own, also. Jack smiled when you told him about your childhood pets. He laughed when you told him silly stories from undergrad. He stayed quiet, letting you speak when you shared about struggling to make ends meet while still in school.
It endeared you but also pissed you off that he knew just how to react. He was empathetic and sweet when he wasn’t pushing your buttons.
You liked talking to Jack, you realized. You liked getting to know him.
The two of you had started yawning about an hour ago, but neither of you were ready to stop talking. It was only when the conversation finally lulled and you found yourself fighting against your increasingly heavy eyelids.
“We should get some sleep,” Jack was pushing himself up from the floor, dusting off his hands and sweats as he went. He extended a hand to you, and you found yourself not hesitating to take it, allowing him to pull you to your feet. His hand was warm and steady, and you found yourself fighting off a twinge of disappointment when he let go. “You can take the bed.”
“What? No,” there was only one bed in the one room cabin. It was so small, there wasn’t even room for a couch. The only other furniture in the space was a small kitchen table and two chairs, and a beaten up armchair covered by a thin white sheet. “Where are you going to sleep?”
He shrugged, shifting his duffel closer and moving the clothes in it around until he seemed satisfied with the shape. “Here, in front of the fire. I can make sure it keeps going all night.”
“No,” you grabbed his arm, stopping him from moving towards a small linen closet neither of you had bothered to peek into so far. “No, you’re not sleeping on the floor. We…”
He raised an eyebrow, gaze flicking between your face and your hand still holding onto his bicep. You let go, taking a step back.
“We can share the bed,” you glanced over your shoulder. The bed was small, probably full sized. Just barely big enough to fit the two of you, although you’d have to scoot pretty close to the edge to avoid touching.
“I’m not complaining about sharing a bed with you,” Jack looked at the bed too. “I think I’ve made myself clear about that - ”
You swallowed hard. You hadn’t let yourself think about that aspect of his confession. In fact, you’d beaten it back into the shadowy corners of your mind as aggressively as you could. You wouldn’t survive however long your confinement was going to be if you let yourself think about the more physical implications of Jack being into you.
He looked down at you. The light from the fire was dancing across the planes of his face, knocking the breath out of your lungs with how ethereal he looked. He was handsome everyday, but he looked unreal in this lighting.
“ - but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. You haven’t told me how you feel, and you haven’t agreed to go out with me - not that that means you have to… y’know…” he seemed to be struggling to find the words. He was blushing again. “Be… be that close to me.”
“I - ” you paused, searching for the right words. You really were starting to be willing to give him a chance, especially with how well your conversations had gone. And yes, fine, maybe you’d been physically attracted to him from the beginning, but when you’d found yourself in moments of weakness before, you’d imagined any sort of physical or intimate encounter being… well, not nearly so emotionally charged. In those late night fantasies, it was rough, aggressive, something born out of hate and frustration. But now, he looked nervous, his eyes soft and apprehensive. You once again didn’t know how to handle this type of interaction with him.
So, you decided to be an adult about it. For fucks sake, you were 26. You could share a bed with a man who just confessed he’d been in love with you for years and who you’d been fantasizing about for just as long.
You cleared your throat, taking your hand off his arm. “We can share a bed without… without it being anything more.”
“Right, right, of course,” Jack let out a breath. “As long as you’re ok, then yeah.”
“Yeah,” you were a big fat liar. “It’ll be fine.”
So the two of you got ready for your doom. You gathered your toiletries as Jack threw a few more logs on the fire to hopefully keep it going all night.
The bathroom thankfully had running water, even if the rest of the cabin had no electricity, so you were able to take turns brushing your teeth. You went first, taking many deep breaths and giving yourself a silent pep talk in the small, dark room.
“All yours!” Your smile and chipper attitude felt forced when you let him have his turn. You sat on the side of the bed with your bag, digging through it, searching for nothing to give your anxious hands something to do.
“You ready for bed?”
Jack came out of the bathroom, crossing to the other side of the bed and starting to pull back the covers. You stook, giving him a nod and pulling back the ones on your side. Both of you slipped in silently.
“Good night,” Jack rolled over, his back to you, facing the front door.
You followed his lead, turning your back to him and trying to snuggle in underneath the thin blankets. “Good night.”
Jack’s pants and the residual warmth in your clothes from sitting in front of the fire for so long helped lull you to sleep, and quickly, you found yourself falling under.
When you woke, it was to a warm presence at your back and freezing air nipping at the exposed skin of your face. It was completely dark in the room, no light coming in through the windows or from the now extinguished fireplace.
You pushed back, chasing the heat behind you. That’s when you became aware of several things at once.
That warmth behind you was Jack. The entire length of his body was pressed against yours and his arms were wrapped tightly around your waist, one above and one below, keeping you firmly in place. Those arms were underneath your sweatshirt, one palm resting just below your breasts and the other right above the waistband of your borrowed pants. His face was nuzzled in the crook of your neck, breath hot against the sensitive skin.
You tried to shift, to move out of his hold and restart the fire so that you didn’t have to confront exactly how hot the skin on skin contact was making you deep inside.
Jack didn’t let you move, though. His arm tightened around you, tugging you back against him even more firmly. That was when you really felt him. The hard length of his cock was pressed against your ass.
He was still asleep, but that didn’t stop his hips from grinding forward. You gasped, clenching your thighs together. Involuntarily, you pressed back against him again. His hand shifted up, sliding over your breast and loosely squeezing the flesh.
“Jack,” your voice was quiet and broken around another gasp as he pushed his length against your ass again.
He mumbled something incoherent, before squeezing your breast again. The hand on your stomach dipped lower, his fingers just beginning to slide underneath your bottoms.
You were existing between sleep and waking, half convinced this was some sort of extremely vivid dream.Your pulse was racing, hips pushing back to meet his at every sleepy movement. Both of you were breathing harder, the cold seemingly beaten back by the rising heat between you.
“[Name],” you could just barely make out the slurred groan of your name breathed against your neck. It sparked even more heat in your core to hear him say your name.
“Jack?”
God, you sounded fucked out already. Jack’s hand was pushing even farther into your pants and under the shorts you wore beneath.
The first brush of his fingers over your folds had you whining, and that was when Jack finally woke up.
You felt him freeze behind you, his hands tightening on reflex, dragging his fingers through your folds and against your clit. It ripped an embarrassing moan out of you, your hips pushing back against his cock in response to the jolt of pleasure.
“[Name]?” Jack’s voice was sleepy and confused.
“Jack,” you whined in response.
“Oh fuck,” he pulled back, hands leaving you. “Fuck, I’m so sorry.”
“Wait - ” but Jack wasn’t listening
“Fuck, I told you I wouldn’t try anything, I’m so fucking sorry. That - I can’t believe I did that. Fuck.”
“Jack, stop,” he was sitting up, elbows on his knees and hands in his hair. The heat in you died when you saw him so upset. “Jack, look at me.”
“I’m sorry - ”
“Stop apologizing,” you pushed him flat onto his back, swinging a leg over his hips and leaning over him. Your hair created a curtain, closing the two of you into a little bubble.
“But I - ”
“Shut up!”
And then you kissed him. He froze for a moment, but he quickly melted into you, his hands coming up to grab your waist. He let you lead for a moment, his lips following the slow, languid rhythm you set.
Until your tongue swiped over the seam of his lips. Then, his hold on you tightened and with a firm buck of his hips, he was rolling you onto your back. He settled between your legs, grinding his length against you as his tongue stroked against yours, licking into your mouth and swallowing the noises that leaked out of you. Your hands tangled in his hair, holding him to you.
“Fuck,” Jack pulled back, gasping for air. His forehead rested against yours. “Are you sure - ”
“Yes, I’m fucking sure,” you bucked your hips up against his, tugging on his hair as you did. He groaned, meeting your thrust. “Wanted this for a long time.”
“I thought you hated me,” Jack’s hand was slipping back underneath your sweatshirt to push it up. His thumb dragged over your newly exposed pebbled nipple.
“Yeah, I did,” your back arched, pushing your chest even further into his hand. “Doesn’t mean you’re not hot, though.”
“Yeah?” He was smirking, his lips ghosting over yours. “I’m just that irresistible?”
“Shut the fuck up,” you pressed your lips against his, drawing him into a filthy kiss. You wrapped your legs around his waist, pulling him back down so you could chase your own pleasure with his body. One of your hands slipped under his shirt, dragging your nails down over his chest and abs.
He moaned, grabbing your hand on his chest and pinning it to the mattress beside your head. He broke the kiss, nipping at your lower lip as he went.
“Unless you want this to end way too soon, you better fucking stop that,” his voice was low and ragged, fingers flexing against your wrist.
“Stop what?” You wanted to both know exactly what was driving him crazy, and to play dumb and rile him up.
“Touching me,” he ducked his head, nipping and sucking at the skin of your neck. “Looking so fucking good underneath me, all of it.”
“See,” you bit back a whimper. “I don’t think you really want me to stop.”
Your back arched and your hips bucked up again as he sucked a dark mark into the skin below your jaw.
“I don’t, but I don’t want to cum in my pants, either,” he moved lower, to a new, unblemished patch of skin. “So either take your pants off or tell me to go take a cold shower.”
“Gotta let go of my hand first,” your teeth dug into your lower lip as he licked a stripe up your neck.
“Are you gonna keep it to yourself?” Jack pulled back to look down at you. You grinned back up at him and he rolled his eyes.
“No.”
He laughed, releasing you and sitting back on his knees between your spread thighs. His hands came down to the drawstring, undoing the bow at lightning speed, pushing the pants down your hips. Jack groaned as your shorts came back into view.
“These little fucking shorts,” he stripped the pants off you, lifting your legs into the air as he did. “Made me hard earlier.”
His hand trailed over your hip, brushing across the fabric until he was stroking a finger over your covered slit. Your teeth bit into your lip even harder to smother the whine that he was drawing out of you.
“You’re fucking soaked,” that little smile tugging at his lips was smug and self satisfied. He pressed into you a little harder, circling your covered clit through the spandex. “Is this all for me?”
“You’re an ass,” your teeth were gritted. Every circle he made had your hips twitching up, little sparks shooting from the light touch.
“I think you like that about me,” Jack’s hand left you for just a minute, long enough for it to slip beneath the waistband of your shorts. For the second time tonight, the first with both of you fully aware, his fingers dipped below your soaking folds.
Jack leaned forward, his unoccupied hand braced against the bed by your head. His eyes fixed on yours, chest heaving as he watched every shift of your face while his hand moved. He was exploring, teasing, fingers wandering through every soaked inch of you, the tips just barely dipping into your entrance and then moving back up to circle your clit.
“Fuck,” you were panting, trying to move your hips against his hand, guiding him to the right spot. But every time his fingers found where you needed him, he’d move them away, smiling as he worked you up.
“Jack, I swear to god, I’ll - ”
“You’ll what? Hmm?” He slowed to a stop, his index and middle finger sandwiching your clit between them, pressing down to keep you from rocking into them and chasing your pleasure. “C’mon, tell me what you’ll do.”
“If you don’t make me cum in the next 2 minutes,” his cocky demeanor made you want to simultaneously punch him and kiss him. You hated it, but it fueled the heat and desire curling low in your stomach. Judging from the hard length of him you can just barely make out through his sweats, he was enjoying it, too. “I’ll never let you touch me again.”
His face fell, hardening into determination. “Is that so?”
“Yes - ”
Jack’s fingers pressed directly against your clit, rapidly drawing tight circles around your clit. It was like an electric shock to your body after so much of his teasing. Your back arched, eyes falling shut as your moans filled the air.
“How’s that? Is that what you wanted?”
“Shut - fuck - shut up!”
You were impossibly close, already wound so tightly that you were dangerously close to snapping beneath him.
“I thought you liked it when I was a dick?” Jack leaned even farther over you, his lips closing around your nipple, flicking the bud with his tongue and scraping over it with his teeth.
“Stop fucking talking, Jack!” You felt him laugh against your skin, sending vibrations through your breast.
Your hand tangled in his hair, yanking at the strands. He groaned, switching to your other breast and sucking hard.
You cracked, thighs trying to snap closed around his hand and hips. He didn’t let you, pushing his body even farther into yours to keep them open as he worked you through it. Your legs shook and your hips jerked against his fingers that were still going, drawing even more tremors and cries out of your lips.
You writhed beneath him, forced to let each wave crash over you as Jack held you through it.
“Fuck - no more,” it was nearly impossible to get air into your lungs, but as the sensations died down and overstimulation, Jack backed off.
He pushed back up, easing his hand out of your shorts. He let you breath for a moment, his hands rubbing over your thighs until their trembling slowed to a stop.
“You good?”
“Yeah,” your voice was breathy.
“Can I fuck you now?”
You cracked your eyes open to look at Jack. There was a small wet patch on his sweats, right over the head of his cock. Fuck, he looked long and thick.
“Yes, please,” your hands found the waistband of your shorts, pushing them down.
Jack laughed, his hands joining yours to help remove the shorts from your legs.
“I should have made you cum 3 years ago,” he threw the shorts over his shoulder once he got them free from your ankles. “So nice and polite.”
“Shut up and get naked, asshole,” you sat up, reaching for his sweats, tugging them down his hips.
Suddenly, you were face to face with his cock. He was bigger than you though. The flushed length of his cock slapped against his stomach when it was freed, the leaking head smearing clear fluid against his abs.
You couldn’t help yourself. You leaned forward, licking a stripe up the length from base to tip. The skin was smooth and soft, his cock twitching beneath your touch.
“Fuck!” Jack’s hand grabbed your hair, pulled your head back and away from him as he hissed. “Don’t do that. You’re gonna make me cum.”
“Isn’t that the goal of sex?” You smiled up at him, straining against the hold he had on you to try and get your tongue back on him.
“Yeah, but I’m trying not to embarrass myself and end this way too soon,” Jack guided you by your hair, easing you down onto your back again. “You can blow me later, right now, I think I might die if I don’t get inside you.”
“Then hurry up,” you lifted your legs, hooking them around his waist and pulling him down onto you.
“Alright, alright,” Jack slipped a hand between your bodies, grabbing himself by the base. You forced yourself to breathe as his tip swiped through your folds, coating his cock in your fluids before he was lining himself up. He pressed in slowly. You felt yourself part around him, your walls stretching around the crown of his head. You were impossibly full, and he was barely in you.
He kept pushing in, both of you panting and looking down, eyes locked on where you were joined. You didn’t think you could take anymore, but he kept going, your walls sucking him in and pulling him into your depths.
“Fuck,” your head dropped back when he bottomed out. He ground forward, staying fully seated inside you and letting you adjust.
“Oh shit,” Jack sat up between your legs, hands gripping your hips, keeping them pressed fully against his. The shift in angle had you keening. “Look at that.”
Your eyes cracked open, trying to figure out what he was talking about.
“Can fucking see myself, holy shit,” one of his hands left your hips, tracing around the very visible sight of his cock outlined in your lower stomach. You were transfixed, watching with bated breath as his fingertips brushed against your skin. Goosebumps broke out across your body at the sensation.
“I wonder…” Jack trailed off, eyes still focused on your stomach. His hand moved, gently laying over the outline of his cock. He let it sit there for just a moment, palming his length through your skin.
And then he pushed down.
Both of you cried out at once. You’d already felt full, but the added pressure of his hand made his length feel even bigger. He was everywhere, completely consuming you from the inside out.
“Holy fuck!” His hips jerked into you, snapping against a spot deep inside you that had you arching in his hold.
“Oh fuck, Jack!”
“Yeah? You feel that?” Jack started moving, his hips withdrawing and punching back into you, rapidly working his way up to a punishing pace. You couldn’t answer with words. He was pushing the breath out of your lungs with every thrust. “God, you’re so full of me, baby.”
And then Jack hiked your legs up over his shoulders, releasing the pressure on your stomach in exchange for keeping your thighs pressed tight to his chest. It opened you up even more to him.
“Oh my god,” Jack bent forward, burying his face back in your neck, pushing your legs into your chest, folding you in half. He was rutting into you, groaning as he chased his pleasure.
You were getting close again, too. Every thrust had the neatly trimmed hairs at the base of his cock grinding over your clit as his tip slammed home against your g-spot. Your eyes were closed, lost in the pleasure. You couldn’t move, completely pinned beneath him and forced to take the overwhelming pleasure.
“Jack! Please!” Your hand tangled in his hair again, holding the strands tightly. It was your only lifeline and you used it to tether yourself to reality.
“Oh fuck,” Jack was panting into the skin of your shoulder. “Fuck, I’m close. C’mon, cum for me. Please, need to feel you.”
You were so close, only a hair's breadth from your peak.
When Jack bit down on your shoulder and his hips stuttered, you came again. You clamped around him, walls spasming and squeezing while he rutted even deeper into you. Jack was groaning your name while he spilled deep inside of you. The hot pusles of his release propelled your own, the two of you pushing each other even higher.
He finally let go of your legs, helping to ease them down until they were resting on the mattress on either side of his hips. He didn’t move to pull out, though. The two of you stayed wrapped around each other, his softening length buried inside you, until the cold was too much to bear.
“So,” Jack gingerly climbed off of you, the cold air rushing in. “Can I take you on a real date now?”
“If you get me a washcloth to clean up with and get the fire started, I’ll marry you as soon as we get out of here,” you were shivering now.
Jack grinned, leaning back down to press a quick kiss to your lips. “Promise?”
another little note: I'm trying out a new reader insert format. usually, I just keep it vague and don't use any form of y/n, but we're gonna do something a little different. my dear friend @fangirl-dot-com asked her followers how they felt about y/n and y/l/n, and someone in the comments said they prefer [name] and [surname] and I like that. its not really used here very much, but I wanted to give it a try. lmk if you hate it but, like, I like it so ill probably keep using it. unless all of you hate it
꒰ wc ꒱ 20k words
꒰ summary꒱ bucky barnes can handle almost anything except the way you make him feel chosen one moment and disposable the next. loving you would be simple, if you weren’t so fucking confusing.
.ᐟ contents |
18+ (MDNI), college au, situationship, bucky pov, avoidant!reader, lovesick!bucky, mutual pining, asshole!bucky miscommunication, commitment issues, yearning!bucky, toxic relationship, reader is emotionally avoidant, alcohol and weed use, unprotected piv sex, drunk sex, oral sex (f receiving), multiple orgasms, creampie, rough sex, dirty talk, jealousy, bucky goes through ittt,
.ᐟ lizzy’s note |
it has been such an honour being apart of this collab. i love it so much. thank you so much to @iamthatonefangirl and @barnesonly for hosting this beautiful cutesy collab, and putting all this effort and thought in, love you bwabies. on another note this fic has also been the bane of my existence. literally created this fic for one scene in mind, only to not add it because i didnt have time, im actually devastated.
anyway enjoy my loves <3
BWAT MASTERLIST — MASTERLIST
divider by my bby @barnesonly
The night was going perfectly until you walked in.
Bucky had a sweating bottle of beer hooked between two fingers, the label curling pink under his damp thumb.
Sam was pressed against his side, yelling something loudly idiotic directly into his ear; something about a bet, or a dare, or a girl whose name Bucky would forget by morning. He caught none of it.
The kitchen was chanting his name. The sound bounced off the sticky counters and the sweat-slick walls, a drunk, gleeful roar for a drinking game he didn’t remember starting, let alone winning.
He bared his teeth in a grin, let the noise wash over him like a wave of approval he was too buzzed to question.
Some girl he couldn’t name had dragged her glitter-dusted fingers across his cheekbone an hour ago, leaving a streak of lime-green that caught the strobe light like a neon sign against his skin.
Steve had been pretending not to laugh about it for the last twenty minutes, mouth tight, eyes bright with amusement every time he caught Bucky working the room with a fresh smear of sparkle on his face.
The whole house smelled like it was sweating out its own wild heart; weed smoke curling thick through the pulsing lights, cheap perfume wrestling with spilled beer and tequila, the sour-sweet musk of bodies pressed too close for too long.
It smelled like a night everyone would be pretending not to regret by the time the sun burned through the blinds.
A girl from Tony’s econ class—Eden… or Edith, he couldn’t remember—had her fingers locked around his wrist, tugging him toward the hallway where the bass bled into something slower, heavier.
The lights back there flickered green, pulsing like a heartbeat under the floorboards. She was pulling him toward the dark, and her lips were parted, and she was saying something he didn’t need to hear to understand.
Bucky let himself be pulled.
One step. Part of a grin. His thumb dragging across her knuckles in a promise he had made to a hundred girls before her. He was already opening his mouth, ready to offer something charming and perfectly hollow.
Then the front door opened.
He didn’t hear it. Not over the bass that was rattling the drywall. Not over Sam’s drunken cackle. Not over the sharp crash of glass shattering somewhere behind him, Thor probably, baptising another piece of the house with whatever expensive bottle he’d smuggled in from Norway. The kitchen cheered.
But Bucky’s head turned anyway.
Like gravity had taken the decision out of his hands.
You stepped in behind Natasha, Gamora a quiet shadow at your shoulder, and you were already laughing, hand pressed to Natasha’s forearm, mouth shaped around a sound the party swallowed whole.
You hadn’t seen him yet.
That, he thought, was always the worst part. Those few seconds where he got to want you without having to hide it. Where he could let the grin slide off his face and just look at you.
Let himself want, openly, stupidly, while the party roared on around him and his hand was still wrapped around some other girl’s wrist.
He must have gone still. Must have stopped grinning, because Sam followed the line of his stare like a bloodhound catching scent.
Sam groaned, and slapped a heavy hand against Bucky’s shoulder.
“Oh, here we fucking go.”
He felt like an impatient puppy, and he hated it, hated the way his pulse had picked up, the way his palm had gone clammy around the bottle, the way he couldn’t stop tracking the curve of your ass as you drifted through the crowd.
Eden/Edith was still talking. Her fingers were sliding up his forearm, nails scraping lightly, trying to reclaim the heat she’d had a lock on before the front door opened.
She didn’t know it yet, but she had absolutely no chance.
Bucky let her touch linger for a beat longer than polite, just long enough to make her think she was still in the running, then he let his gaze drift past her face like she’d already become background noise.
She was still talking, something about a quieter room, a better view from the upstairs balcony, but her words were just shapes in the air, meaningless vibrations against the bass.
He waited. Watched you, Natasha and Gamora carve out a corner of the living room, claiming a sagging couch and a half-empty bottle of something pink. You settled into the cushions like you owned them, one leg tucked under you, head tilted toward Gamora as she said something that made you smile.
And then Scott Lang appeared, as if summoned by the scent of a female audience, already gesturing wildly with both hands, launching into a story that was probably 80% fabrication.
The girl from econ was still talking. Bucky shrugged her hand off his arm and walked away mid-sentence.
He crossed the room with the lazy, unhurried confidence of someone who knew exactly where he was going and knew he’d be welcome when he got there. Scott was still going, his voice rising in pitch as he reached the climax of whatever tall tale he was spinning now.
“—and I swear to God, Hope looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘If you can’t fit it through the door, it’s not coming home with us.’ And I said, ‘Watch me.’”
“That did not happen, Lang,” Natasha cut in, shaking her head, but the smirk tugging at her lips betrayed her.
“On Hope’s life it did,” Scott insisted, pressing a hand to his chest. “Would I lie to you girls?”
The three of you exchanged a look. It was skeptical, humoured, a shared hum that was more mocking than affirming. Scott opened his mouth to continue, but Bucky was already moving into the gap.
“Ladies,” he said, drawling the word like it was a gift he was bestowing. He smiled, a little lopsided, the lime-green glitter catching the light as he shouldered his way into the space between you and Gamora on the couch.
“For fuck’s sake, Barnes,” Gamora muttered, but she shifted, grudgingly making room. Bucky’s focus was already locked on you, his body angled toward yours like a compass needle finding north.
He settled in, his thigh pressing against yours, the heat of him bleeding through the thin fabric of your jeans. He slung an arm across the back of the couch, his fingers dangling just behind your shoulder, claiming the space around you like it was his by right.
“Party started at nine,” he said, his voice already slurred with alcohol and the kind of confidence that came from knowing he was the best thing in the room. He was grinning, his pupils blown wide in the dim light. “It’s almost twelve. What’s your excuse?”
You laughed, and the sound of it hit him somewhere low in his chest. “You’ve never heard of fashionably late, Buck?”
He rolled his eyes, the gesture exaggerated and fond. “Whatever, doll.”
The word hung between you, before your hand moved almost on instinct. Your thumb came up to his cheek, pressing gently against the glitter clinging to his skin. The green flecks caught the dim light, and your touch was featherlight, curious, your brow arching as you rubbed at the shimmer.
“And where is this from?” you asked, your voice carrying that edge of playful interrogation he knew too well.
Bucky’s brain short-circuited. The warmth of your palm against his cheek, the way your fingers lingered just a second too long ,it was enough to make him forget his own name, let alone the girl whose hands had been all over him an hour ago. He blinked, swallowed, and the lie came easy.
“Barton.” He said it flatly, like it was obvious. “Got bored. Started throwing glitter at people. You know how he gets.”
He held your gaze, hoping the alcohol flush hid the flicker of guilt. He didn’t want to say some girl blonde chick whose face he’d already forgotten. Didn’t want to see that hint of something—jealousy? disappointment?—cross your features. Even if he wasn’t sure it would.
Before you could press further, his hand shot out, wrapping around your wrist. His fingers were warm, slightly sticky from condensation and beer, and he tugged gently, an insistent pull that was more plea than demand.
“Come with me.”
You didn’t move. Your grin was still in place, but your body stayed rooted, and you tilted your head, giving him your best scolding look, the one that made his stomach twist because it meant you were about to say no.
“I just got here, Buck. Don’t be rude.”
He huffed, the sound escaping him like an impatient child denied a treat. His jaw tightened, and he turned his head, addressing the two women lounging beside you with exaggerated politeness that was almost ridiculous given his disheveled state.
“May I steal your friend for a few moments? Please?” He even tacked on a smile, though it came out a little strained.
Gamora didn’t bother hiding her irritation. She shot him a look that could curdle milk, muttering something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like dumbass.
It was Natasha who answered, her eyes flickering between the two of you with an amusement that made Bucky feel like a specimen under a microscope.
“Just bring her back in one piece,” Natasha said, raising her glass in a lazy toast. “Preferably still clothed.”
Bucky’s mouth opened, but no words came out. He didn’t have time to form a response, because you were already opening your mouth to protest, and he wasn’t about to give you the chance.
He tugged. Harder this time. You stumbled forward, a surprised laugh escaping your lips as he pulled you off the couch and into the crowd. His hand stayed wrapped around your wrist, a warm anchor as he weaved through bodies and noise, dragging you behind him like a prize he’d won.
“Where are you taking me, Bucky?” you called over the music, your voice half-laughing, half-breathless.
“You’ll see,” he shouted back, not bothering to turn around. His eyes scanned ahead, spotting the staircase, the path clear for now. He felt your wrist shift against his grip, and without thinking, he slid his hand down, interlacing your fingers with his.
Behind him, across the room, Edith/Eden was still watching. Her glare burned against the back of his neck, but he didn’t feel it. He didn’t feel anything except the warmth of your palm pressed against his, the sound of your laughter cutting through the bass, and the need to get you alone.
By the time the door slammed shut behind them, the bass from downstairs was just a dull throb through the walls, a welcome relief from the chaos of the party.
Bucky’s room was a disaster; clothes spilling out of an open drawer, the sour tang of old beer cans mingling with the familiar musk of his cologne, a single lamp casting a weak amber glow over the wreckage.
He didn’t spare it a second glance, making a beeline for his dresser like a man on a mission.
You lingered by the door, arms crossed, taking in the scene with a slow, deliberate sweep of your eyes. “Jesus Christ, Bucky,” you said, your voice flat and deeply amused. “You’re a pig.”
Bucky snorted, a low, warm sound that vibrated through his chest. He didn’t bother turning around. His fingers dug through the wreckage of his top drawer, pushing aside a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a stray condom wrapper that had seen better days.
“Crash here tonight,” he tossed over his shoulder, the words slurring just a little around the edges, “and you can be my maid of honour. Organise my sock drawer. Judge my questionable life choices.”
His fingers finally closed around the small metal tin hidden at the very back. He pulled it out like a trophy, turning just in time to catch the affronted scoff that escaped your lips.
“You wish, Barnes.”
Your voice was sharp, dismissive, but there was a smile tugging at the corner of your mouth.
Bucky held your gaze for a beat too long, something hot and unguarded flickering in his chest. His mouth moved before his brain caught up. “Yeah,” he murmured, turning to his desk to hide the sudden heat creeping up his neck. “Sweetheart, I wish every damn night.”
He busied himself with the familiar ritual of rolling; paper, weed, a careful distribution; refusing to look back, refusing to see if your expression shifted.
A beat of silence. Then your voice came again, softer now, laced with amusement. “You know, you’re cute when your brain-to-mouth filter is busted.”
He snorted, ducking his head to hide the grin spreading across his face. “Shut up.”
He was methodical despite the drink swimming in his veins, surprisingly steady. He sprinkled the weed, spread it even, and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger with a practiced ease that came from plenty of late nights just like this one.
His tongue darted out to wet the edge of the paper, sealing it shut with a final, satisfied press.
When he turned around, holding the blunt up between his fingers like a prize, his grin was crooked. “Look what I got.”
You had perched yourself on the edge of his bed, hands planted behind you, legs crossed. The springs creaked under your weight. That same infuriating, amused smile was painted across your face, like he was a puppet and you were the one pulling the strings.
Like his entire purpose in the universe was to make you laugh, to make you roll your eyes, to make you look at him with that perfect mix of exasperation and warmth.
And God help him, he’d take it. He’d take every scrap of attention you threw his way.
“On a scale of one to ‘I’m about to make a terrible decision’,” you asked, tilting your head, “where exactly are you right now, Bucky?”
He crossed the room in a few long strides, closing the distance until he was standing right in front of you. The blunt hung loose between his fingers.
“Enough that I know exactly how bad of an idea this is, sweetheart.” His hand shot out, wrapping around your wrist, fingers warm and calloused. He pulled you to your feet before you could brace yourself.
You stumbled into him, palms flat against his chest, the blunt pressed gently between your bodies for a fleeting second. “And I’m doing it anyway.”
He didn’t let go. Instead, he slid his hand down, threading his fingers through yours, and tugged you toward the window, the one that led to the fire escape.
“C’mon. Let’s get high.”
Fifteen minutes dissolved into a warm, syrupy haze where time stopped mattering and the only gravity left in the universe was the curve of your body against his.
Bucky was laughing; a low, breathless, almost giddy sound; right against your open mouth. The space between you had surrendered completely, chest to chest, your thighs brushing his, the bitter-sweet taste of the blunt lacing every shared exhale.
He’d stopped passing the joint a while ago. Now it was just a prop, a thin ember burning slowly between his fingers while he held it up to your lips like he was feeding you something sacred. You took a drag without him asking, lips parting automatically, eyes never leaving his.
“That was my last,” you murmured as you pulled back, the smoke curling from your lips in a lazy ribbon.
You didn’t bother aiming it away from him. He wished you’d blow it directly into his mouth so he could taste you.
“No such thing as ‘last’ with me, sweetheart.” His words were slow, syrup-thick, drunk on you more than the alchol in his system. “You started this. Gotta finish what you started.”
He brought the blunt back to your lips before you could argue, thumb brushing the corner of your mouth. You took another hit, holding his gaze like a challenge.
“You’re such a bad influence on me, Barnes.”
Bucky huffed a laugh, shaking his head, the dopey grin on his face mirroring yours. “I’m the bad influence?”
He leaned closer, his nose brushing the shell of your ear, voice dropping to a rough, amused murmur. “Baby, I’m just following your lead. You walked into that party looking like a full-course meal. You climbed out my window. You’re the one keeping me out here, freezing my ass off, just to watch you smoke my weed and smile at me like I’m your favourite toy.”
He pulled back just enough to look at you, pupils blown wide, lips parted.
“If anyone’s the devil here, sweetheart… it’s definitely you.”
Your dopey smile stretched wider, pushing up your cheeks, eyes crinkling at the corners. He almost groaned at the sight. The way you looked at him; like he was a puzzle you were enjoying taking apart, piece by piece.
“Shut up,” you said, your voice soft, fond, dismissive.
The words were barely a whisper before his came, immediate and rough.
“Make me.”
The air between you snapped taut. Your smile faded into something heavier, something that made his pulse skip and slam double-time. He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. He just stared you down, waiting, daring you, his arm tightening around your waist like he was ready to hold you there forever if that’s what it took.
Your eyes dropped to his lips.
Yes. Yes. Close the distance. Kiss me. Let me feel those lips against mine.
He watched you watch him. Watched the hesitation flicker behind your hooded eyes. Watched the want and the caution war inside you. He wanted to beg. Wanted to grab your jaw and bridge the gap himself.
But he held still, letting you make the call, letting you feel the weight of the choice hanging between you.
Instead, you broke the spell with a grin, that same infuriating, playful grin, and shoved him square in the chest.
“As fun as this is, watching you turn into a lovesick mess, Nat’s gonna send a search party if I’m gone much longer.”
You didn’t wait for an answer. You twisted out of his grip, the hem of your shirt riding up just enough to flash the smooth skin of your lower back as you climbed back through the window.
Bucky bit back a groan so sharp it almost hurt. He dragged a hand down his face, letting out a frustrated breath that fogged in the cool air. His entire body was humming, wired, aching.
He didn’t give himself time to think. He followed you on your heels, dropping through the window and landing in the mess of his room just as your feet hit the floor. His hand shot out, catching your wrist, spinning you gently but firmly back to face him.
“You’re gonna pay for that, you know.”
Your eyebrows lifted, amused. “Pay for what?”
“Leaving a man hanging.” His voice was lower now, rougher, stripped of the playful buzz. “Making me follow you around like some puppy. Dangling yourself in front of me and then slipping away.”
You tilted your head, that infuriating smile still playing at your lips. “Poor Bucky. Must be so hard, wanting something you can’t just charm your way into.”
His jaw tightened. There was no malice in your voice; just teasing, still wrapped in that same playful edge that had been driving him up the wall all night.
But something in him snagged on it anyway.
Maybe it was the weed, loosening the screws in his head. Maybe it was the beer, sticky and warm in his bloodstream.
Maybe it was the simple, agonising fact that you were standing in his room with your mouth still soft and swollen from smiling at him, your wrist warm and alive under his thumb, acting like he was insane for wanting the very thing you kept placing just out of reach.
Bucky’s thumb pressed into the delicate skin over your pulse. He felt it skip. Felt the flutter of it beneath his touch, like a bird trapped in a cage of bone and breath.
“Maybe I’m not trying to charm my way into it.”
Your smile didn’t fall all at once. That would’ve been merciful.
It faded slowly, like a candle snuffed from across the room, a gradual dimming that left shadows in its wake. Your brows pulled together, the teasing tilt of your head softening into something careful. As if you were reading the fine print of a contract you hadn’t agreed to.
Bucky should’ve stopped there.
He knew he should’ve. He could feel the edge of it under his feet, that familiar precipice where the air changed and you started looking for the nearest exit without ever moving toward the door. Your eyes flickered, just once. Toward escape.
But he was drunk. He was high. And he was so goddamn tired of wanting you like a dog waiting under a dinner table for scraps, hungry and patient, and always left with nothing.
So he kept going.
“Maybe I’m just trying to figure out what the hell you want from me.”
Your eyes searched his face, hunting for the joke, the punchline, the easy way out.
For one second, you looked almost wounded. Like he had reached past the game and touched something raw without asking first. Your lips parted, and something flickered behind your eyes.
Then you blinked, and it was gone. Wiped clean like a slate.
“Bucky.”
He hated the way you said his name then. Soft. Gentle. Like a warning whispered to a child on the verge of a tantrum. Like you were trying to calm something down before it made a mess.
“What?” he asked, though his voice had already lost its bite, gone flat and hollow.
“You’re drunk.”
He laughed once, short and humourless, the sound scraping out of his throat. “Yeah, you said that already.”
“And high.”
“And still not stupid.” His voice cracked on the last word, betraying him.
Your lips pressed together into a thin, unreadable line.
There it was. The wall. Not slammed up, not obvious enough for anyone else to notice, but Bucky felt it like a physical shift in the air. Your wrist went still in his hand, no longer warm, no longer responsive. Your shoulders drew back half an inch, a subtle retreat.
Your gaze flicked past him, toward the door, toward the party, toward anything that was not this room and the thing he had just dragged into the light.
His stomach dropped before you even spoke.
“I should go back downstairs.”
Of course.
Bucky let go of your wrist like it had burned him. His hand fell to his side, fingers curling into a loose fist, the ghost of your pulse still tingling against his palm.
“Right.”
Your expression shifted. Something tight and wounded flickered across your features before you smoothed it over.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“That.” You gestured vaguely at his face, at the flatness in his eyes, the bitter set of his jaw. “Act like I did something.”
He stared at you.
You stared back.
Downstairs, someone screamed with laughter, swallowed by the bass that kicked harder for a few seconds, rattling an empty beer can on his desk. The sound skittered across the wood like a nervous heartbeat.
Bucky dragged his tongue across his teeth, tasting smoke and bitterness. He nodded once, like he had just figured something out. Like the pieces had finally clicked into place, and the picture wasn’t pretty.
“You didn’t,” he said, and his voice came out rougher than he intended. “That’s kind of the whole point, isn’t it?”
Something flashed across your face.
Hurt, maybe. Guilt. A flicker of recognition at the truth buried under his words.
Or maybe he was making things up again because he wanted so badly for there to be something underneath all that pretty nothing you kept giving him. Wanted it like a bruise he couldn’t stop pressing.
Your voice was quieter when you said, “I was just joking with you.”
“Yeah,” he said, forcing a smile that felt wrong on his mouth. “You’re good at that.”
The air stalled between you.
For a long moment, neither of you moved. You stood there in the weak amber light of his disaster of a room, the glow spilling from the desk lamp casting long shadows across the cluttered floor.
Close enough that he could still smell smoke on your breath, mixed with something sweet, your lip gloss, maybe, or the conditioner you used. Far enough that he knew if he reached for you again, you would probably let him.
That was the worst part.
You would let him.
You would let him touch your waist, pull you into him by the hand. You would sigh against his mouth like you had been waiting for it. You would make him feel like he had finally cracked through every wall you built.
And then tomorrow, in front of everyone, you would smile at him like none of it had happened. Like he was just another face in the crowd.
Bucky swallowed. His throat clicked dryly.
“Go on, then,” he said, nodding toward the door. “Nat’s waiting, right?”
Your eyes lifted to his.
He could tell you didn’t like that. Could tell by the tiny pinch between your brows, the way your mouth parted around a response you didn’t seem to have ready. He had pushed too hard, and now you were scrambling for solid ground.
But you still went.
You brushed past him, shoulder grazing his chest, and he hated himself for noticing the contact, the warmth of you through the thin fabric of your top. Hated himself more for wanting to turn his head and follow the line of your back as you moved away.
At the door, your hand closed around the knob. The metal turned with a soft click.
Then you paused.
“Buck?”
He looked at you because he always looked when you said his name like that.
You seemed to regret calling for him the second he did. Your face softened, and for one stupid, awful second, he thought you might come back. He thought you might say sorry. He thought you might say anything real enough for him to hold onto.
Instead, you gave him a small smile.
“Don’t sulk too much.”
Then you slipped out, leaving the door half-open behind you. The hallway light bled across the floor, carrying muffled voices and the thrum of music.
Bucky stood there for a few seconds, heart punching slow and heavy against his ribs, listening to the party swallow you back whole.
Then he laughed under his breath,low and mean and mostly at himself. The sound scraped out of his chest and died in the empty air.
“Yeah,” he muttered to the cluttered room. “Sure.”
Bucky hated spring festivals.
That was a lie.
Usually, he loved this shit. Loved the noise, the way the quad swarmed with bodies in a heat that felt almost reckless for April, the sun bleaching the grass and pavement into something too bright, too clean.
Loved the cheap beer poured into plastic cups and hidden inside soda cans, the shameless excuse to get drunk in broad daylight and call it school spirit.
Usually, he would have walked in like he owned the whole fucking place.
Today, he trailed Sam and Steve through the crowd with his hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets and a mood that sat heavy in his chest; sour, curdled, thick enough to spoil the entire afternoon.
Sam was talking. Steve was answering. The two of them had been at it for at least five minutes about something Bucky couldn’t muster the energy to care about.
Something about whether Clint could legally enter the pie-eating contest twice if he changed his shirt between rounds.
“He wore a wig, man,” Sam was saying, his voice threaded with genuine affront. “Like that was supposed to make people forget he’s still Clint fucking Barton.”
Steve exhaled a short, tired laugh. “The volunteer was a freshman. She panicked.”
“She panicked because he called himself Clara Barta.”
Bucky stared past them at a girl in a neon-green cowboy hat trying to scale someone’s shoulders and nearly eating shit in the grass.
He wasn’t hearing any of it properly.
His eyes kept drifting before he could stop them. Over the food trucks. Across the knot of bodies near the makeshift stage. Past the sorority booth selling overpriced lime slushies.
Toward every flash of gold jewelry, every laugh that pitched too close to yours, every figure moving beside a redhead or a girl with a glare sharp enough to cut glass.
He was not looking for you.
He wasn’t.
He had told himself that before they even left the house. Had stood in front of the bathroom mirror, dragging his toothbrush across his teeth with too much force, and decided it with a mouthful of mint and stubbornness.
He did not care if you were there. He did not care if you saw him.
He cared, specifically and deeply, about not caring if you didn’t.
If you came up to him, he would be normal. Worse than normal. He would be casual. Cold, even. Polite in a way designed to make you feel stupid for once.
He would not give you that pathetic, eager opening you always seemed to find in him, the one you could press your fingers into until he forgot every reason he had to be angry.
No.
This time, if you wanted his attention, you could fucking work for it.
“You good?” Steve asked.
Bucky blinked.
The question cut through the static in his head like a blade he hadn’t realised was already buried there. Sam and Steve had both stopped walking.
They were looking at him now. Sam with one brow arched high enough to belong on its own zip code, Steve wearing that careful, irritating brand of concern that made Bucky want to throw something soft and harmless directly at his face.
The sun was hot on the back of his neck. The breeze carried the scent of grilled meat and spilled soda, and somewhere a group of girls screamed with laughter over the loudspeaker.
“What?”
Sam’s mouth twisted into a grin that was half amusement, half disbelief. “He lives.”
“I’m good,” Bucky said, the words flat and dismissive.
“You sure?” Steve pressed, his voice quieter now.
“Christ, Rogers, I said I’m good.”
Sam lifted both hands in surrender, palms out. “Nobody said you weren’t. You just looked like you were trying to blow up a lemonade stand with your mind.”
Bucky looked over.
Sure enough, he had been glaring in the vague direction of a table draped in yellow streamers, a handwritten sign propped crooked against a stack of plastic cups reading FRESH LEMONADE $3.
The freshman behind the table, a blonde in a floral sundress, met his stare for half a second before quickly dropping her gaze to the pitcher, her shoulders hitching like she’d been caught stealing.
Great. Perfect.
Now he was terrorising citrus vendors because some girl with pretty eyes and a talent for emotional warfare had ruined his entire fucking week.
“I’m getting a drink,” he muttered.
“From the lemonade stand?” Sam asked.
“Fuck off.”
Steve sighed, a long, tired exhale that Bucky knew too well, but by then he was already walking.
The festival sprawled across the quad in every direction, bright and loud and obnoxiously alive.
Someone had draped green streamers from the trees, their edges curling in the afternoon breeze. The grass was littered with crushed cups and abandoned flyers and bodies lounging in the sun.
A group of guys from the rowing team were shouting around the dunk tank, already shirtless, already sunburnt to a shade of pink that had to hurt. Music pulsed from the stage where some sophomore with a guitar was butchering a song Bucky vaguely recognised.
Normally, it would have been easy.
Smile. Drink. Flirt. Win something stupid from one of the booths while the crowd cheered like it mattered.
Let a girl press herself against his side, her fingers trailing his arm, while Sam heckled him from the sidelines and Steve pretended he wasn’t entertained by the whole spectacle.
That was what pissed him off most.
Everything used to be so fucking easy before you.
Bucky grabbed a red plastic cup from one of the coolers near the fraternity table, the ice water sloshing over his fingers, and took a long drink without bothering to ask what was in it.
Too sweet. Sharp underneath, a chemical bite that tried to singe the back of his throat. Probably spiked by Thor, judging by the way it burned all the way down.
Good.
He drank again, letting the cold settle in his chest like armor.
“Bucky!”
He turned, half out of reflex.
A girl from his psych lecture waved at him from beside the ring toss booth, her hair catching the sun, her smile too eager.
She was wearing a tiny green top that probably would have interested him three months ago, or three weeks ago, or any other version of himself that had not become clinically insane over a girl who called him needy like she knew exactly where to press and exactly how much pressure it would take to make him explode.
Her name was Mia.
Maybe. Maya? No. Mia.
Bucky smiled anyway.
There. Easy. He could do easy. He’d been doing easy his whole damn life.
“Hey,” he said, walking over with the lazy confidence that still fit him when he remembered how to wear it, “You runnin’ this scam?”
She laughed immediately, like he had given her something better than the joke deserved. Her eyes roamed his chest, his arms, the casual way he held his cup. “It’s not a scam. You’re just bad at aiming.”
“That’s hurtful. I’m great at aiming.”
“Prove it, then.”
Bucky leaned one hip against the edge of the booth, letting his grin widen. Behind him, he could practically feel Sam and Steve watching from somewhere near the food trucks, probably exchanging some kind of wordless commentary with their eyebrows.
Mia handed him three plastic rings, her fingers brushing his palm. She let them linger a second longer than necessary, her smile softening into something intentional.
Bucky noticed.
He also noticed that he felt nothing.
Not nothing exactly. He felt the dull satisfaction of being wanted. The little ego-stroke of someone looking at him and deciding he was worth the chase.
He felt the shape of his old self settle over him for a second, familiar as a jacket he had left hanging in his closet, still fitting, still comfortable.
But underneath it, his attention kept pulling elsewhere.
He threw the first ring.
The plastic sailed wide, skimming the neck of a glass bottle before spinning uselessly into the trampled grass.
Mia laughed, bright and sharp. “Great at aiming, huh?”
“Wind interference,” he said, already reaching for the next one.
“There is no wind.” She laughed again, softer this time, her fingers finding the bare skin of his forearm.
“Spiritual wind, then.”
Bucky made himself look at her. Really look. He cataloged the curve of her mouth, the warm spread of her smile, the little glitter sticker pressed beneath one eye.
She was pretty. Genuinely pretty. Warm and open and offering him something he didn’t have to work for.
He should have wanted that.
He wanted to want that. He wanted to feel the familiar heat of being chosen, the lazy satisfaction of a girl deciding he was worth her time.
But the wanting felt hollow. A reflex without the fire behind it. His body was here. His mind was already somewhere else, straining toward a frequency he couldn’t stop chasing.
Then, somewhere behind him, a laugh cut through the noise.
Nat’s laugh, recognisable even in the middle of a crowd.
It wasn’t yours. He knew the difference better than he wanted to. Yours was quieter, wryer, often aimed at him rather than with him. But Natasha was the anchor of your little constellation, and where she was…
Bucky’s whole body went tight.
The casual slouch of his shoulders hardened into something rigid. The easy smile on his mouth faltered at the edges, cracking just barely before he caught it.
He hated himself before he even turned his head. Hated how transparent he was.
Slowly he glanced over his shoulder.
And there you were.
By the slushie booth, standing in the loose triangle you always formed with Natasha and Gamora. Sunlight was threading through your hair, setting the edges of you on fire. A lime-green cup was balanced in your hand, the crushed ice inside melting into a watery gradient against the plastic.
You were listening to something Natasha was saying, your head tilted at that familiar angle, your mouth curved into the shape of a smile that didn’t quite touch your eyes.
You looked beautiful. You looked miles away. You looked exactly the way you always looked when you were present but not entirely there.
Bucky went still. Like a fucking idiot.
After that, Mia became background noise.
Pretty background noise, sure. The kind that came with a sugar-sweet laugh and a glitter sticker catching the late-afternoon sun beneath one eye. Smiling background noise with soft fingers that kept finding excuses to graze his wrist every time she handed him another plastic ring, letting her touch linger a beat longer than necessary.
But background noise all the same.
Bucky tried. He really fucking tried.
He let his weight shift onto one hip, leaning against the edge of the ring-toss booth with practiced ease. He laughed when she laughed, let his eyes drop to her mouth once because that was the sort of thing he used to do without thinking, a reflex he’d honed over years of easy conquests.
He even let her fix the collar of his jacket when she reached for it. Her knuckles grazed the side of his throat, a brief pressure against the warm skin just above his collarbone.
It should have sparked something smug and familiar in him, a pleasant shiver of being wanted.
Nothing.
Worse than nothing.
Because the whole time she was talking all he could think was that her laugh was too bright. Too clean. Too eager to please. It didn’t catch him under the ribs the way yours did, didn’t hook into something raw and leave him breathless.
Her teasing landed too soft. Too safe. Not sharp enough to make him want to chase it, to earn it, to prove himself.
She touched him like she knew he wanted to be touched, generous and open and unquestioning.
And he hated that too, because you never gave him anything that simply.
You made him work for scraps and then looked surprised when he started starving.
Mia said something. He missed it entirely.
“Right,” Bucky said, because it sounded safe enough.
Her brows lifted, “You have no idea what I just said.”
He smiled, charming and empty, a reflex that had never failed him. “I was distracted by your beauty.”
She laughed, pleased despite herself, and shoved lightly at his arm. Easy. So fucking easy.
His gaze still slid over her shoulder.
You were still by the slushie booth, one elbow propped on the counter, the heel of your palm digging into the wood. Your head was tilted toward Natasha, who was gesturing emphatically about something.
Gamora stood half a step behind you with her arms crossed, like campus security hired by hell itself. You had a lime-green straw between your fingers, the plastic bent near the top from where you kept worrying it with your thumb.
You were not looking at him.
Good. Fine.
Bucky turned back to Mia and threw another ring. It sailed in a shallow arc, bounced uselessly off the neck of a bottle, and dropped onto the trampled grass at the base of the booth.
Mia made a sympathetic noise, her lips pursing. “Spiritual wind again?”
“Violent spiritual wind.” He grabbed another ring, testing its weight in his palm.
“You’re terrible at this.” Her hand landed on his bicep when she laughed, staying there a little too long.
Bucky let it.
He let it because maybe you would look over and see it. Maybe you would see her hand on his arm, see her leaning into his space, see him not pulling away. Maybe you would realise he had options. Lots of them.
Girls who laughed easily and touched without hesitation and made him feel like he was winning instead of losing.
He did not need you.
He didn’t.
He had never needed any girl to want him. That was the whole point. Girls liked him. Girls came easy. Girls wanted to be chosen by him, and he had always been good at choosing, at taking what was offered, at moving on before anyone could get too attached.
So maybe you should see that.
Maybe you should watch someone else touch him, watch someone else laugh at his jokes, watch someone else look at him like he was something worth having.
Maybe you should feel even half as stupid as he had felt standing in his room after you left, the silence still ringing in his ears.
Your eyes moved.
Just once.
A quick glance over Natasha’s shoulder, brief enough that anyone else would have missed it. A flicker of movement, a shift in focus. You looked at him and then away again.
Bucky should have felt triumphant.
He should have felt vindicated. Relieved, maybe. Like he had finally managed to press one finger into the soft place beneath all your careful indifference and prove there was something there.
Instead, his stomach twisted into a knot that sat heavy and cold.
Because you did not look angry.
You looked away too fast for him to understand anything at all.
And that was worse.
Mia was still smiling up at him when he turned back, her head tilted just enough to catch the tail end of the afternoon light across her cheekbone.
Her mouth was parted, ready to laugh at whatever he said next.
“You want to try again?”
No.
The word cut through him clean and fast.
He wanted to walk across the quad. He wanted to cross the trampled grass and the careful, deliberate distance you had carved between you like a border he wasn’t allowed to cross.
He wanted to stand in front of you and ask why you had looked at him like that—like he was the one doing something wrong just by existing, just by letting someone else’s hand rest on his arm.
He wanted to grab your stupid green cup out of your hand and press his mouth to the plastic rim, taste whatever sugar-sour thing you had been nursing all afternoon, because, for a reason that made him feel deeply, disgustingly pathetic, he wanted his lips to touch where yours had been.
He wanted to ask why the fuck you got to look wounded when he was the one bleeding out all over the place.
He set the last plastic ring down on the counter.
“You know what?” His voice came out easier than he felt, smooth and practiced. “I’m gonna quit while I still have some dignity.”
Mia laughed, “You had dignity?”
“Once. Briefly.” He dragged a hand through his hair, let his mouth curve into something rueful and self-deprecating. “Freshman year, I think. It was a Tuesday. I peaked early.”
She shifted closer, the toe of her sneaker brushing against his. Her fingers grazed his wrist again. He could feel the opening there, easy, the way girls always were.
All he had to do was lean into it. Let the conversation carry. Let his hand find her waist. Let himself get lost in something simple for once.
Instead, he stepped back.
“See you around, Mia.”
Her face flickered. The smile didn’t drop, but something behind it cooled. A subtle tightening around her eyes, a slight press of her lips.
“Maya,” she corrected.
Fuck.
Bucky blinked.
He smiled anyway, because what else was he supposed to do?
“Right. Maya.” He let the apology bleed into his voice. “Sorry.”
Her smile thinned.
Bucky deserved that too.
He turned and walked away before he could make it worse.
For the next two hours, Bucky made a point of being seen and not approaching.
He let Sam drag him toward the food trucks, let himself be pulled through the thick crowd of students and families and drunk upperclassmen.
He let Steve talk him into watching Clint get disqualified from the pie-eating contest. Thor had stood up from the judges’ table, pointed a finger the size of a hot dog, and loudly accused Clint of being “the same small blond criminal in a wig.”
The crowd erupted. Clint flipped him off with a mouthful of whipped cream. Steve laughed so hard he had to brace himself on Bucky’s shoulder.
Bucky laughed too. He did. It came out at the right time, in the right pitch, convincing enough.
He stood by the dunk tank while Rhodey heckled Tony into climbing onto the seat. Tony was wearing a linen shirt that probably cost more than Bucky’s entire closet, and he looked profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of getting wet.
He kept his distance. But never so much distance that he could not see you.
That was the pathetic part.
His body moved on its own, tracking you like a compass needle finding north. He always arranged himself somewhere with a clear line of sight. Near the stage when you drifted toward the booths.
By the food trucks when you wandered toward the grass, your silhouette cutting through the golden haze.
Close to Steve when Steve decided to talk to Natasha, because then Bucky had an excuse to stand twenty feet from you and pretend it wasn’t intentional, pretend he was just hanging with his friend while he watched your every move.
But every time your face turned away, his mood soured. Every time you smiled at someone else, he wondered what they had said, what they had done to earn that warmth that he couldn’t seem to coax from you.
He was exhausting.
But he couldn’t stop.
By late afternoon, the sun had started to dip behind the science building, turning the quad warm and gold at the edges. The light slanted long across the grass, casting everything in a honeyed haze.
The air smelled like fried dough, cut grass, spilled beer, and the sharp chemical sweetness of the slushie machine that had been running too hard all day, its motor grinding low and tired.
Bucky had finally lost sight of you.
At first, he told himself it was a relief.
Good.
Great.
Maybe you had left. Maybe you had gone back to your dorm. Maybe the festival could go back to being a festival instead of a slow, public study in how little self-respect James Buchanan Barnes apparently had left.
He lasted thirty seconds.
Then his eyes were moving again, dragging across the quad like a searchlight. Toward the drink stands. Over the line at the food trucks, scanning faces. Past the stage, where the band was packing up their equipment.
Back toward the slushie booth, where Natasha was now talking to Wanda, their heads bent together in quiet conversation.
You were not beside her.
Gamora was there, though, standing with her arms crossed in that way she had. Her eyes cut toward him like she had known exactly where he would be looking.
Bucky looked away immediately.
His pulse hammered in his throat.
Fuck.
He shoved both hands into his jacket pockets and turned in the opposite direction, jaw tight, pulse irritated beneath his skin. He was not looking for you. He was not going to walk around this whole fucking festival like a lost dog because you had vanished for five minutes.
“Hey.”
Bucky turned too fast.
And there you were.
Standing behind him. Sunlight soft around your shoulders, spilling through the gaps in the trees behind you, catching the faint sheen of condensation on the clear plastic cups in your hands. Two iced coffees.
For one stupid second, he forgot to be angry.
The feeling arrived in his chest before he could stop it. A loosening. A warmth. The same stupid, gravitational pull he had been fighting all day, undoing him with a single glance.
Then you smiled at him.
Not the teasing, knowing curl of your mouth that made him want to grab you by the waist and pull you into somewhere quiet. This one was smaller. Softer. Almost shy. The corners of your lips lifted slowly, like you were testing whether it was safe to show him that part of yourself.
He did not trust himself to name it.
“They messed up my order,” you said, lifting one of the cups a little. The ice shifted inside, a soft, crystalline sound against the plastic. “Gave me hazelnut instead of caramel.”
Bucky stared at you. He could smell the coffee now, faintly bitter, cut with something sweet.
You held the cup out toward him.
“I remembered hazelnut’s your favourite.”
That was all.
One sentence.
One stupid fucking coffee.
And Bucky felt every cruel, petty thing he had been rehearsing all day loosen in his hands. They slid through his fingers like water, leaving nothing but the raw, embarrassing truth beneath.
He was supposed to be cold. He had planned it. If you came over he was going to look at you the way you looked at him in dayligh; casual, polite, with nothing owed. He was going to make you work for his attention. Make you feel the distance.
Instead, he took the coffee.
His fingers brushed yours around the damp cup. Your skin was cool and wet from the condensation, and the contact was brief but electric. He felt it in his fingertips, up his wrist, settling somewhere low in his chest.
“Thanks,” he said.
The word came out awful. Pathetic. Barely even mean. It was soft when he had wanted it hard. Grateful when he had wanted indifferent.
Your eyes searched his face, careful and quiet. There was something watchful in the way you looked at him, like you were reading a line of text you had read before but were trying to understand differently this time.
“You haven’t talked to me all day.”
Bucky gave a shrug. The motion was stiff, defensive. He brought the straw to his mouth and wrapped his lips around it, buying himself a second.
“Been busy.”
“I saw.”
The straw stopped against his lips.
There it was. Not an accusation exactly. Not jealousy either. Just two words, soft enough to slide under his skin. They found the tender places, the ones he had been trying to protect, and settled there.
He took a sip to give himself something to do.
Hazelnut. Sweet. A little bitter underneath. Warm on his tongue despite the ice.
Of course you remembered.
He lowered the cup. The plastic was slick in his grip.
“Did you?”
Your mouth tightened slightly. A small, almost imperceptible press of your lips that told him the words had landed where he meant them to.
“Bucky.”
He hated that too. The softness. The warning.
“What?” he asked, and even to his own ears it came out harder than he intended.
“You’re being weird.”
He let out a short laugh. It was hollow, barely more than a breath. “I’m being weird?”
Your eyes dropped to the coffee in your hand. The condensation had started to pool between your fingers, and you shifted your grip, watching the water trail down the plastic.
That should have helped him. That should have given him something solid to stay angry with. He wanted you to roll your eyes. He wanted you to smirk, to toss some sharp little joke at his feet and dare him to pick it up. He wanted you to give him a reason.
But you did not.
You just stood there, looking smaller somehow in the middle of all that noise. The festival kept spinning around you and you were still. Quiet. Waiting.
Then you said, “Are you mad at me?”
He was finished.
He hated that he was finished before he even opened his mouth. Hated that the question undid him so completely, that it found the lock and turned it without effort. Hated that you could stand there with a small, uncertain crack in your voice, and he would fold every single time.
Bucky looked away. He dragged his tongue along the inside of his cheek, tasting coffee and bitterness and something that felt too much like surrender.
He brought the coffee to his lips again. Just to have something to do with his hands. Just to keep from saying something he could not take back.
“Why would I be mad?” he asked, because apparently he had decided to be a dick anyway.
You did not answer immediately.
The silence stretched between you like a thread pulled taut, and Bucky watched the shape of your mouth as it hovered around words you weren’t ready to say.
When he looked back at you, your face had gone still in that careful way he was beginning to recognise. The muscles around your eyes had softened, your lips parted just slightly, and there was a patience in your expression that felt heavier than any accusation.
“I don’t know,” you said, and your voice was thinner now. “I thought maybe the other night…”
You trailed off.
The sentence hung in the air, unfinished, fragile. The kind of opening that could be filled with anything; with hope, with blame, with the truth neither of you had been brave enough to say aloud.
Bucky’s grip tightened around the coffee cup. The other night. So you did remember. You weren’t pretending it hadn’t happened, weren’t going to let it dissolve into the haze of party noise and cheap beer.
“You thought maybe what?”
Your lashes lifted. Your eyes met his, and there was no deflection in them now. No clever sidestep.
“I didn’t mean to make you feel stupid.”
The words went straight through him.
Clean through the ribs, past the armour he had spent the last three days layering over his chest, settling somewhere deep and tender. It was meaner than anything cruel would have been.
Because that was it. That was the thing he had been carrying around and dressing up as anger, because anger looked better on him than humiliation. You had made him feel stupid. Stupid for wanting you.
And now you were standing in front of him with hazelnut coffee and remorse in your eyes, saying the one thing he had not known he needed to hear.
His anger lost its shape.
It did not vanish. He could still feel it, somewhere under his breastbone, hot and sore, a bruise that had not finished healing. But it had nothing to hold onto now.
Bucky swallowed. The motion was dry, his throat tight.
“You didn’t,” he lied.
Your brows pinched. The disbelief was immediate, a small furrow forming between your eyes that told him you had seen right through the denial.
He sighed, hating himself, hating you a little, hating the way his body was already angling toward yours like it had forgiven you without consulting him.
“Fine,” he muttered, the word scraping past his teeth. “Maybe a little.”
Your mouth softened. The corners of your lips turned down in a way that was not quite a frown, more like a quiet admission of guilt.
“I’m sorry.”
There it was again. Another scrap. Barely enough. Two words that should not have been enough to undo the knot in his chest, but somehow they were.
Bucky looked down at the coffee in his hand. The ice had melted more now, the water pooling at the bottom of the clear plastic. Then he looked back at you, and the corner of his mouth lifted despite himself.
“You always apologise with beverages?”
“Only when I’m feeling generous.”
“Dangerous habit.” He tilted his head, letting the smirk settle into something more real. “I’m very bribable.”
Your smile came back slowly. It started in your eyes first, a flicker of warmth that spread to your lips, and God, there he went. There he fucking went.
All that resolve, all that careful, bitter distance, folding inside him like wet paper because you looked at him with warmth again.
“You’re cheap,” you said.
“Not cheap.” He shook his head, the coffee cup swinging in his grip. “Accessible.”
“That’s worse.”
“You say that like you’re not standing here trying to buy my forgiveness with six dollars of iced coffee.”
“Seven fifty,” you corrected, and there was a spark of humour in your voice now. “Campus pricing is criminal.”
He laughed before he could stop himself. The sound came out rough and surprised. But there it was, and it loosened something between you, closed the last of the distance.
Your smile widened at the sound, and something in his chest went soft and stupid and loyal.
Across the quad, Sam caught his eye from beside the food trucks. He was standing with a paper tray of fries halfway to his mouth, staring at Bucky over the top of them with an expression flat with disbelief.
His eyebrows were raised, his head tilted in a slow, accusatory shake.
Bucky ignored him.
He looked back at you, and the festival noise swelled around you again, but it felt distant now. Muffled. He nodded toward the far end of the festival where the temporary rides had been set up near the parking lot.
A cheap spinning thing with hanging seats was creaking in slow circles, its lights flickering green and white even though the sun had not fully gone down yet.
Nearby, a smaller ferris wheel groaned every time it moved, looking only slightly safer than a lawsuit.
“You wanna go on a ride?”
You glanced over, your gaze following his nod. Your brows lifted, a flicker of amusement crossing your face.
“With you?”
“Don’t sound so horrified.”
“I’m not horrified.” You turned back to him, and there was a glint in your eye now. “I’m considering the risk.”
Bucky tilted his head, trying for careless and landing somewhere much softer. The words came out before he could stop them, “C’mon, sweetheart. Let me be a bad influence.”
You looked at him for a second too long.
Then you stepped closer, just enough that your shoulder brushed his arm as you moved past him.
“Fine,” you said, the word carrying a reluctant smile. “But if I die, I’m haunting you.”
Bucky followed immediately, coffee in hand, heart gone embarrassingly light.
“Good,” he said, “Then at least you’d be consistent.”
For the last three years at NYU, Tony Stark had treated the end of spring semester like a religious holiday.
A very expensive, deeply obnoxious holiday that involved a beach house weekend at his parents’ sprawling Malibu mansion, that forced you to acknowledge how much money some people had just by existing in its shadow.
First-class flights for anyone he deemed entertaining enough to invite, which was a broad and chaotic metric.
Enough alcohol to poison a small country, and a guest list he described as “intimate” in the same way someone might call a riot “spirited,” given that it usually hovered somewhere around fifty people.
Closest and dearest friends, Tony called it.
Which, for Tony, meant anyone he had laughed with more than twice, anyone who looked good in bikinis, anyone who owed him money, anyone he owed money, and at least three people he claimed were “essential to the ecosystem” despite no one else being entirely sure who they were.
Bucky had always loved it.
How could he not?
It was a weekend designed for him to love. Sun-warm skin and salt-crusted hair, the sharp iodine scent of the Pacific mixing with expensive cologne. Music vibrating through the glass walls deep into the night, until the floors hummed under his feet.
Top-shelf liquor sloshing into cheap red cups because Tony loved the visual dissonance of it, the clash of refinement and raucous excess. People half-dressed and fully drunk before the sun had even properly set.
Bodies, careless and comfortable, everywhere, draped over pool chairs, melting into leather couches, disappearing into guest rooms with sheets that cost more than his tuition.
And this year was supposed to be the best one.
Senior year.
The final spring before reality politely asked everyone to grow up. Before the forced enthusiasm about internships, leases, and entry-level jobs that paid barely enough to justify the commute.
Before the slow, quiet humiliation of being twenty-two and realizing the world had never promised to stay exactly how it was.
The last Malibu trip had a gravity to it, even if no one wanted to say that out loud. Everyone could feel it pressing down on their shoulders.
Steve said it once on the plane, because of course he did.
Mid-flight, with the Pacific stretching blue and endless beneath them, he said something earnest and quietly devastating about how strange it was that they would probably never have this much time together again.
Sam threw a pretzel at his forehead with surgical precision. ”Stop making the trip sad, Rogers. You’re gonna manifest a bad vibe.”
Bucky had laughed along with everyone else.
He was good at that. Keeping things light. Acting like the future was just some vague concept waiting politely far away from him, instead of a door already clicking shut in slow motion while they weren’t looking.
Besides, he had more pressing things to occupy his head.
Like the fact that you were coming.
Not that he was thinking about that. Not obsessively. He hadn’t checked the group chat four times to see if Natasha had confirmed the flight details. He hadn’t hovered near the baggage claim exit a little too long, pretending to stretch his shoulders out, stomach tightening every time the automatic doors slid open.
He hadn’t carefully packed the black shirt, the one you had touched once, months ago, fingers smoothing the collar, your smile going slow and private in a way that he had replayed more times than he’d ever admit.
He was just excited for the trip.
That was all.
The house came into view just as the car turned up the long private drive, a ridiculous sprawl of glass and white stone sitting above the water like it had been dropped there by God specifically to make poor people feel unwelcome.
The Pacific flashed blue beyond it, bright enough to hurt, the sun catching the surface in a million tiny explosions of light. Palm trees leaned over the road, their fronds swaying lazily in the salt-warm breeze.
The afternoon sun poured itself across everything, turning the windows gold and the pool a hard, glittering turquoise, the kind of color that looked fake in photographs but was somehow real here.
Tony stood out front in linen trousers and sunglasses, arms spread wide like a cult leader welcoming his congregation home.
“My children,” he called as soon as the car doors opened. “You made it.”
Sam stepped out first, stretching his arms over his head, his spine cracking in a way that made Steve wince sympathetically. “You say that like we survived war and not a six-hour flight where you slept through turbulence.”
“I survived being seated beside Barton,” Tony said, pulling his sunglasses down his nose just enough to make eye contact. “Which is worse.”
Clint, emerging from the next car with his hair flattened on one side. “I heard that, Stark.”
“You were meant to.”
Bucky climbed out after Steve, sunglasses pushed up into his hair, the warm Malibu air hitting him all at once. The air was different here. Thicker. Slower. It made you want to breathe deeper.
Somewhere inside the house, music was already playing, a low, thrumming bassline that vibrated through the glass walls. Someone had arrived before them and started early, because of course they had. Tony’s parties never waited for the host.
Bucky looked toward the road before he could stop himself, his gaze dragging along the curve of the driveway.
No other car yet.
He looked away immediately, his jaw tightening.
Sam, because he was a terrible person and a worse friend, noticed.
“Subtle,” he said, the word drawn out.
Bucky frowned. “What?”
“Nothing.” Sam’s grin widened, but he didn’t push further. He knew better than to push Bucky when he was already coiled tight.
Steve had the decency to say nothing, but his mouth did that thing where it pressed flat at the corners, the kind of silent judgment that was almost worse than Sam’s teasing.
Bucky shoved past both of them, his duffel bag thumping against his hip, and grabbed his bag from the trunk before anyone else could offer to help.
“I’m getting a room before all the good ones are gone.”
Tony scoffed. “Please. Your rooms are assigned. I’m not running a hostel.”
Sam paused mid-step, his duffel slung over one shoulder. “You assigned rooms?”
“Obviously.” Tony turned on his heel, leading the way inside. “I’m not having a repeat of the Cabo incident. Some people don’t know how to handle free choice sleeping arrangements.”
Clint, trailing behind, muttered, “That was one time.”
“It was twice,” Tony shot back, not looking back.
The inside of the mansion was already half-chaos. Suitcases abandoned in the entryway, a pair of heels kicked off and left under a marble console table, a half-empty bottle of champagne sweating on the counter of the kitchen island.
A bowl of limes sat on the kitchen island, untouched and decorative for now, though Bucky gave it six hours before Thor tried to bite into one whole.
Bucky followed Tony upstairs with Sam and Steve, his bag slung over one shoulder, his footsteps padding on the wide wooden staircase. He tried very hard not to wonder where you would sleep.
Tried and failed.
Which room would you get? Would you be on the same floor as him? Across the hall? At the other end of the house, where he’d have to walk past a dozen doors just to catch a glimpse of you?
Tony stopped at the end of the hall and pointed at a door like a bored hotel concierge, his hand a lazy gesture. “Rogers, Wilson, Barnes. Try not to destroy anything structural.”
Sam pushed open the door and whistled low, the sound echoing in the high-ceilinged room. “Damn.”
Steve stepped into it after him, his gaze sweeping across the king-sized bed, the floor-to-ceiling windows, the balcony that jutted out over the lawn. “This is excessive.”
“That’s the family motto,” Tony said, already turning away, his phone buzzing in his pocket. “There’s food in the kitchen. Drinks on the terrace. Don’t break the bed, I’ll know.”
Bucky went in last. Ocean-facing, because Tony was an asshole who pretended not to be thoughtful.
The room was huge, the bed draped in white sheets that looked impossibly soft, the glass doors slid open to let the breeze in. The water was visible beyond the slant of the lawn, a deep, endless blue that seemed to go on forever.
He dropped his bag on the floor by the bed and walked to the balcony, his hands gripping the railing.
The warm Malibu air hit him again, thicker now. The sound of the party drifted up to meet him, carried on the breeze; the low thrum of music from inside the house, the clatter of ice in glass.
Down below, the patio had already started filling.
Someone was carrying crates of alcohol toward the outdoor bar, bottles clinking with every step. Rhodey was arguing with Tony about speaker placement, his hands moving in broad, frustrated arcs while Tony gestured at the pool like he was explaining architecture to a child.
A few girls Bucky vaguely recognised from campus were stretched near the pool on lounge chairs, their sunglasses pushed up into their hair, laughing too loudly at something Thor said while he stood at the edge of the water, gesturing broadly.
Still no you.
He let his gaze sweep the patio once, just once, the way you might check a clock you already knew the answer to.
Fine.
He had time.
He could get settled. He could take a shower, let the hot water loosen the knot wedged between his shoulder blades.
Behind him, Sam appeared in the open doorway of the balcony, his silhouette filling the frame.
“Don’t start,” Bucky said, not turning around.
Sam leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest. “I just came to tell you Tony’s making drinks downstairs.”
“Great.”
“And to remind you that this is supposed to be a fun weekend.” Sam’s voice was light, conversational, but the words had edges.
Bucky turned from the balcony then, the ocean falling away behind him. The breeze caught his hair, pushing it across his forehead. “I know how to have fun, Sam.”
“Historically, yes.”
Before Bucky could respond, Steve appeared behind Sam in the doorway, his shoulder brushing the frame as he stepped up.
He looked between them with that resigned expression, the one that said he had walked into the middle of something and would now be forced to participate, like it or not. “What are we talking about?”
“Nothing,” Bucky said.
“His disease,” Sam said at the same time.
Bucky stared at him. “My what?”
Sam held up a hand, ticking off fingers. “Symptoms include staring at doors. Emotional constipation. And abandoning perfectly nice girls mid-conversation when a certain someone walks into a room.”
Steve sighed. “Sam.”
“What? He needs medical attention.”
Bucky grabbed one of the pillows from the bed behind him and threw it at Sam’s head. Sam caught it easily, looking infuriatingly pleased with himself.
“See? Irritability. Another symptom.”
Bucky rolled his eyes, but heat crawled up the back of his neck anyway. “I’m not doing this all weekend.”
“Good.” Sam’s voice dropped then, the grin fading around the edges, “Don’t.”
It was said lightly, but not entirely.
Bucky looked at him. For a second, the room shifted into something less like sparring and more like concern.
Sam’s shoulders loosened, the humor bleeding out of his face just enough to show the worry underneath, the part of him that had watched Bucky turn himself inside out over you for months and did not find all of it funny anymore.
Steve stepped forward, his voice gentler now. “Just... don’t spend the whole trip waiting for her to decide your mood.”
Bucky’s jaw tightened. The muscle in his temple jumped.
He wanted to tell them they were wrong. He wanted to say you did not decide anything. That he was fine.
But the words sat heavy in his mouth, and he couldn’t force them out.
So he said nothing.
From downstairs, Tony’s voice carried up through the open doors, bouncing off the glass and the stone. “First round is ready, you ungrateful peasants!”
Sam clapped his hands once. “Saved by alcoholism.”
Steve gave Bucky one last look then turned and disappeared toward the hall.
Bucky followed, because staying behind would look pathetic, and he had already met his quota for the day.
Downstairs, the house had grown louder. More people had arrived while he was up there. Bags piled by the stairs, sandals kicked off near the sliding doors, laughter spilling in from the patio in overlapping waves.
Tony was behind the outdoor bar in sunglasses, pouring something violently green into a row of cups while Pepper stood beside him looking like she had already accepted God’s plan for her evening.
Bucky took a cup the second Tony handed him one.
It tasted like lime, expensive vodka, and exactly what he needed. The alcohol burned a clean path down his throat and settled warm in his chest.
Perfect.
He tipped his head back and drank half of it.
By eleven, Bucky was absolutely, spectacularly shitfaced.
The whole mansion seemed to tilt and breathe around him, swaying on its foundations in slow waves of green pool light, salt-scrubbed air, and the sweet, cloying scent of expensive liquor bleeding from every glass.
Someone had thrown all the glass doors to the patio wide open, letting the party spill out of the house and down toward the pool, toward the dark strip of beach below, toward the ocean rolling black and endless under a crescent moon.
Bucky was having the time of his fucking life.
He had spent the last hour ricocheting between Sam’s shoulder and Steve’s long-suffering presence, laughing so hard his ribs ached and his vision blurred.
Tony had climbed onto the kitchen island at some point to deliver a toast no one had asked for, sloshing amber liquid onto the pristine marble. Bruce had lost a sandal. Rhodey had found it in the freezer, holding it up like a trophy.
Thor had challenged half the house to a drinking competition and laid them out, one by one, a trail of empty glasses and ruined egos stretching behind him like a battlefield.
Bucky, because he was an idiot and because the liquor had convinced him he was invincible, had tried to take him on.
Thor drank like he had been weaned on kerosene and raised by wolves. Bucky had made it three rounds before Sam materialised at his elbow and physically removed the cup from his hand.
“Too pretty to die on Tony Stark’s imported marble,” Sam had said.
Bucky had laughed in his face.
Then his heel caught on nothing and he nearly pitched headfirst into a decorative fern the size of a small car, catching himself on the wall at the last second.
And you had seen it.
You had seen him almost eat shit beside a fern, and instead of looking unimpressed, instead of giving him that careful, distant smile he had grown to hate, you had laughed.
Your head tipped back, the long column of your throat exposed, one hand pressed to your mouth as your shoulders shook. Natasha leaned in to whisper something in your ear, and you laughed harder, nodding.
It was the best sound he had heard all night. The best thing he had seen all month.
You weren’t ignoring him tonight. Not even a little. He had been braced for it, waiting for the familiar wall to go up, but it never came. Since the moment you arrived, you had been sweet. Warm. Present in a way that made his chest feel too tight and his hands itch to reach for you.
Honey, he kept thinking, the word a stupid, syrupy refrain in the back of his mind.
You were warm like honey tonight, golden and thick and spilling over everything. He was a fly caught in it, too far gone to care.
And fuck, you looked good.
That was the other problem, the one pressing insistently against the front of his jeans with every glance you threw his way.
You were trying to kill him. There was no other explanation for the top you had chosen. Thin and tight, clinging to the curve of your torso like it had been made specifically to undo him.
The fabric shifted with every breath, catching the light, and the neckline dipped just low enough to make his mouth go dry. Every time you lifted your arms, your boobs shifted and threatened to spill out entirely.
A possessive, animal part of him wanted to cup them in his palms, slide his thumbs over the soft swell, tuck them back in himself and never let them go.
Your shorts were no better. Sitting high on your thighs, hugging the flare of your hips, leaving acres of bare skin on display. He kept wondering how you had managed to squeeze into them and whether he was going to survive watching you walk away in them one more time.
He was not proud of himself. He wanted to pounce on you right there, in front of everyone, sink his teeth into the curve of your shoulder, taste the salt and sugar on your skin.
He wanted to haul you against him and find out if you felt as soft as you looked.
You wandered back to him sometime after Tony’s third terrible toast, barefoot now, your sandals abandoned somewhere by the pool. In your hands, you held two little glass shot glasses, the liquid inside them a violent, fluorescent pink that glowed under the patio lights like a dare.
Bucky looked at the shots, then at you.
“No.”
You blinked at him, a pout already forming on your lips. “No?”
“I challenged Thor,” he said, as if that explained everything. “I’m cut off. Sam declared a moratorium on my alcohol intake for the sake of my liver and the integrity of the marble flooring.”
“That was stupid,” you said, but your eyes were warm, amused.
“Thank you, sweetheart. I’m acutely aware.”
Your smile widened. God, there it was. That specific, dangerous curve of your mouth that made the bottom drop out of his stomach every single time.
You stepped closer, close enough that the cold plastic rim of one shot glass pressed lightly against his chest, just over his heart. “Come on, Buck,” you said, your voice soft and honeyed beneath the thrum of the bass. “One more. Just for me.”
He should have said no. He had every intention of saying no.
Then your fingers curled into the front of his shirt. Just the tips of them, hooking into the fabric, not enough to pull him toward you, just enough to hold him there.
“Fine,” he heard himself say, the word a complete and total surrender. He was weak and you were evil and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
The two of you clinked the plastic cups together and threw them back.
The liquid hit his tongue. Sugar first, cloying and thick. Then vodka, sharp and medicinal. And something aggressively sour that made his jaw clench and his eyes water.
You made a face immediately, your nose scrunching up, your eyes squeezed shut, a soft sound of disgust escaping your throat.
Bucky laughed so hard he had to brace one hand against the edge of the counter behind him. “Awful, right?”
“Awful,” you croaked, coughing once into your fist.
“You brought it to me,” he pointed out, still grinning.
“I wanted you to suffer with me,” you murmured, your voice hoarse from the liquor.
“Romantic. You really know how to make a guy feel special.”
“Don’t get excited.”
“Too late.” The words came out rougher than he meant them.
He was already excited. Had been excited since you walked through the door in that top, looking like everything he had ever wanted and had no right to touch.
You leaned your shoulder into his side, just for a second. Maybe for balance. Maybe because you wanted to. The weight of you pressing into him, fitting too perfectly into the curve of his body.
Bucky looked down at you. Your mouth was wet from the shot, shining under the dim glow of the patio lights. Your eyes were heavy-lidded, warm, fixed on his mouth.
He didn’t think about it. His hand found your waist, fingers spreading over the bare skin exposed by the crop of your top. You were soft and warm and solid under his palm, and the contact sent a shiver of heat up his arm.
“You’re drunk,” you murmured, your breath brushing his collarbone.
“So are you,” he countered, his thumb tracing a slow, idle circle on the dip of your hip.
“Mm. Maybe.” You didn’t pull away.
“Definitely.”
“You always this handsy when you’re drunk, Barnes?” The question was velvet over steel, a challenge wrapped in silk. But you leaned into him instead.
Bucky’s thumb shifted against your waist, sliding higher, tracing the edge of your ribcage through the thin fabric of your top.
He felt the soft intake of your breath, the way your stomach tightened under his touch. “No,” he said, the word dropping an octave, sliding under the bass of the music, rougher than before. “Just when you’re dressed like that.”
You sighed against him, warm and tipsy, your cheek brushing his shoulder as if you had every right to be there.
“I think I need to call it a night.”
Bucky’s head snapped down so fast the room tilted with him.
“No.” The word came out instantly, offended and pathetic. Then again, worse. “No, no, no.”
You laughed, and he felt it more than heard it, the soft shake of your body against his side. He had one arm locked around your waist, fingers splayed over the exposed strip of skin where your tank had ridden up.
“It’s only eleven,” he protested, tightening his grip like you might dissolve into the party if he let you breathe too freely. “Party’s gonna go on for another couple of hours.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“Don’t leave me alone.”
Your smile curved against his neck. “There’s like forty other people here, Buck. I’m sure you won’t be that lonely.”
He made a wounded noise into the crown of your head. “None of them are you.”
The words came out before he could dress them up as a joke, before he could hide them behind a grin or a roll of his eyes.
You went quiet for half a second.
Then you tilted your face up to him, eyes glassy-bright from alcohol and the green spill of party lights. “I wanna explore Malibu tomorrow. I’m not wasting the whole day hungover because you need attention.”
“You’re so boring,” he groaned, dropping his forehead briefly to your temple.
“And yet.”
“And yet,” he repeated, the words heavy, loaded, full of everything he couldn’t say.
“I’ll let you take me to my room, then.”
Bucky pretended to consider it. Really sold it too, eyes narrowed, mouth pursed like this was a difficult sacrifice and not the only thing he wanted in the world. “If that’s the only way to keep you with me.”
“It is.”
“Well.” He pulled you closer, his hand sliding more securely around your waist, his fingers pressing into the warm skin of your hip. “Who am I to deny a lady?”
“Oh God.”
You laughed again, the sound soft and breathless, and Bucky started walking before you could change your mind.
Or tried to.
The first few steps were a test of faith. The floor seemed to tilt and roll beneath him like the deck of a ship, and the hallway stretched and contracted in confusing rhythms.
You pressed tighter against his side, your arm sliding around his waist to steady both of you, and every time your fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt, Bucky had to remind himself that he was escorting you to bed, not dragging you into his mouth.
The mansion blurred around him. He passed a painting of a sailboat. Then another painting of a sailboat. He definitely took a wrong turn past a large, ugly vase.
Behind him, Sam called out something that got swallowed by the bass. Someone else whistled, low and knowing.
Bucky ignored all of it.
All he cared about was the feel of you tucked under his arm, the soft drag of your breath on his neck, the way your hip bumped against his thigh with every stumbling step. The air through the open windows smelled like jasmine and salt and the faint, clean scent of your perfume mixing with the liquor in his veins.
“Is this even the right way?” you asked as he led you past a framed painting of something expensive and ugly.
“Yes.”
“You’re lost.”
“I’m exploring Malibu.”
“That is not what that means.”
He shushed you, then immediately turned down the wrong hallway.
By the time he found the staircase, both of you were laughing too hard to move quietly. You clung to his shirt as he guided you up the stairs, your body shaking against his, and every time your fingers curled against his chest, Bucky’s pulse kicked harder.
He opened the door with the confidence of a man who had absolutely no idea what he was doing.
The room was dark except for the moonlight spilling through the balcony doors, silver and heavy, painting everything in soft shadows.
The bed was massive, white sheets tangled from where he had thrown his duffel earlier. His shirt hung off the back of a chair. His shoes kicked carelessly near the dresser. The balcony doors were open a crack, letting in the sound of the waves and the cool night air.
You stepped in beside him, looked around for one long second, then burst into laughter.
“This is not my room, Buck.”
Bucky blinked.
Looked at the bed. Looked at his duffel on the floor. Looked at you.
“Oh.”
He turned back to you, trying very hard to arrange his face into something less guilty.
“Oops.”
You laughed harder, your head tipping back, your hand pressing to your stomach like this was the funniest thing that had happened all night. And maybe it was. The sound was bright and unguarded, and Bucky wanted to bottle it.
“I cannot believe you,” you said.
“Honest mistake. Tragic, really. Very confusing architecture in this house.”
“Sure.”
You should have turned around.
You should have made him find the right room. Should have rolled your eyes and dragged him back into the hallway before he could get any more ideas, before Bucky remembered exactly how little space there was between want and stupidity.
Instead, you walked farther in.
Then you collapsed backward onto his bed.
You fell into the mattress with a soft, breathless sound, the white sheets whispering beneath you. Your hair spilled loose across his pillow. The tank top had ridden up from the fall, baring the soft curve of your belly, the delicate jut of your hipbone just above the line of your shorts.
The moonlight sliced silver across your thighs, caught the damp shine of your lips, traced the lines of your body and turned your skin to shadow and glow.
You looked obscene.
You looked perfect.
Like you had been poured into his bed by some cruel, generous god.
Bucky stayed frozen at the foot of the bed. His hand was still on the doorknob, a solid point in his grip, the only thing keeping him upright. His blood was too loud in his ears. He was wrecked.
Thrown off.
Completely, catastrophically fucked.
“You’re in my bed,” he said, the words scraping out of him rough and disbelieving, a rasp that barely carried over the sound of his own pounding heart.
You stretched one arm over your head, a slow motion that arched your spine against the sheets and made the fabric of your top strain across your chest. Your ribs lifted. Your shorts shifted. You looked soft, drunk, a problem he wanted to have forever.
“So I am.”
Bucky swallowed, his throat clicking audibly in the quiet hush of the room.
The alcohol was a warm, syrupy fog settled deep in his skull, blurring his edges and dulling his sense, but some sliver of awareness remained, sharp enough to recognise the disaster unfolding in front of him.
He tried to keep the mood light, to sound like the version of himself that could laugh this off and walk away.
He let out a breathy, unconvincing laugh.
“C’mon, get up. Let me take you to your room.”
“Mhm-mhm,” you hummed, a sound so lazy and content it made his stomach clench.
You closed your eyes and arched your neck, baring the long vulnerable line of your throat to the mercury glow of the moon. Your pulse beat visibly just beneath your skin, a delicate, rhythmic flutter that made his mouth water.
Fuck, he wanted to sink his teeth into that skin. To taste your heartbeat on his tongue. To mark you. “But I’m so comfortable here, Buck.”
His mouth was sandpaper. He tried to swallow again and failed, the motion scraping against his dry throat.
“You gonna get me in trouble, honey.” The words came out rough, a warning wrapped in something that sounded almost like a plea. Please don’t make me do this. Please don’t let me do this.
You lifted your head from the pillow, your hair spilling across his sheets and gave him a slow smile. It was the smile of someone who knew exactly what she was doing.
“Yeah?” you murmured, your voice turning syrupy. “How?”
You weren’t just looking at him. You were fucking him with your eyes, taking him apart piece by piece without lifting a finger.
“For fuck’s sake,” he heard himself mutter.
He felt the last thread of his self-control snap. The sensible part of his brain went entirely offline, leaving nothing behind but pure, aching, consuming want.
He pounced on you, covering your body with his, the mattress groaning under his sudden weight. You met him halfway, surging up to meet him, your hands fisting in the front of his shirt and yanking him down into your mouth.
The first taste of you was sweet, fucking relief.
Expensive vodka, the lingering sugar of your lip gloss, the faint salt of your skin, and something purely you. It flooded every empty space inside him, drowning out every doubt, every hesitation.
He groaned loudly into your mouth, a raw, animal sound that vibrated through his chest and into yours.
He couldn’t get enough. He forced your mouth open wider with his tongue, sliding inside, tasting. Shit, he couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to stop.
Every rational thought dissolved into static, overwhelmed by the wet heat of your mouth, the soft give of your body beneath him, the way you kissed him back like you wanted to devour him too.
He wrenched his mouth away, just far enough to pant against your lips, his forehead pressing to yours. His breath came in ragged, desperate heaves.
“We’re drunk,” he breathed, the words scraping out of him like a confession he didn’t want to make. “We... we shouldn’t do this.”
And then he felt it.
One of your legs slid up, the smooth, warm skin of your thigh brushing his hip before your calf hooked around his waist, locking him firmly against you. There was no escape now. You had him trapped.
Your hand came up, your palm cupping his jaw, your fingers threading into the hair at the nape of his neck. You pulled his mouth back to yours, your lips brushing his as you spoke.
“But I want to,” you murmured against his lips. “Don’t you?”
Bucky never claimed to have any strength. He had never pretended to have a strong will. Not when it came to you.
He dove back into your mouth like a man starving, like a man drowning who had finally found oxygen. His hands were everywhere now, making up for every moment he had held back.
They roamed down your sides, feeling the heat and softness of your body beneath. Down to your waist, gripping the bare skin where the fabric had ridden up. Lower still, over the flare of your hip, the silky expanse of your thighs.
And then your ass. Fuck. Perfect and full, fitting into his palms like it was made for them. He grabbed handfuls of it, squeezing, kneading, pulling you harder against him as he ground his hips into yours.
The moan you let out was muffled against his mouth, a broken, breathy sound that vibrated through his entire body and went straight to his cock.
His hips rolled forward in a rough, involuntary thrust, grinding his aching hardness against the heat of your cunt, the friction electric even through the thin layers of fabric separating you.
A guttural groan tore from deep in his chest, swallowed by your mouth as he kept moving against you.
Your moans were muffled against his mouth, your fingers twisted in his hair, holding him to you like you were afraid he’d disappear. The world had narrowed to the slide of his tongue against yours, the damp heat of your breath mingling with his.
But he couldn’t get enough. Every taste made him hungrier. Every sound you made drove him further past the edge of reason.
He broke the kiss with a ragged gasp, pushing himself upright, his chest heaving. Your hands followed him immediately, desperate fingers catching at his shirt, trying to pull him back down, trying to keep his mouth on yours.
“Sit tight, honey,” he breathed.
His hands were already moving, clumsy and urgent, fumbling at the button of your denim shorts. The thin metal slipped through his fingers once, twice, before he got it free.
His eyes met yours, dark and serious despite the haze of alcohol.
“Tell me to stop, baby.” The words came out low, a last gasp of something that might have been conscience. “Tell me to fucking stop.”
You shook your head hard, the motion fierce and immediate. Your hips lifted off the mattress as you shoved at the waistband of your shorts, helping him drag them down your legs along with your panties.
“Please don’t stop, Bucky.” Your voice cracked, “Please. I’ll die.”
The raw desperation in your voice hit him like a punch to the sternum. His cock throbbed painfully in his jeans, and he had to bite back a groan, had to clench his jaw to keep from spilling right there like a fucking teenager. Christ.
But first, he needed to see you.
He settled back on his heels, his hands braced on your thighs, and let his gaze travel down the length of your body. His eyes traced the curve of your hips, the soft swell of your belly, and finally, finally, to the place he had been dreaming about for months.
He stared.
It felt like the air left the room. His mouth went dry, then flooded with saliva.
She was beautiful. Perfect. Pretty and glistening, the soft folds glistening with your arousal, the little hooded pearl peeking out like she was waiting for him. He felt like he was going to drool.
A sharp shove hit his shoulder, rocking him back.
“Bucky.” Your voice was a whine, “Stop staring. You’re making me shy.”
He let out a laugh, shaking his head slowly. Shy. After everything, you were shy.
He lowered himself, pressing his mouth to the inside of your thigh. Then higher. Another kiss, closer. His lips dragged along your skin, following the sensitive line of your inner thigh.
“M’sorry, sweetheart.” His voice was a murmur against your flesh, “She’s just so pretty. Been dreaming about her.”
You sighed above him, the sound dreamy and soft. “Really?”
He didn’t answer with words. He pressed his mouth to your clit, a single, gentle kiss. You gasped, your hips twitching.
Then he went for the kill.
He dragged his tongue up in a long, slow stripe, from your entrance to your clit, savouring the taste of you; salty and sweet and everything. And then he closed his lips around that little pearl and sucked. Hard.
Your moan was loud, broken, spilling out of you like you couldn’t hold it back. It hit him straight in the gut, a jolt of electricity that traveled down to his cock, making him grind helplessly against the mattress, seeking any friction he could find.
He didn’t stop. He couldn’t. He buried his face in your cunt like a man starved, his tongue sliding through your folds, dipping inside you, then back up to circle your clit. He ate you out with messy, desperate strokes, his moans vibrating against your sensitive flesh.
He fucked you with his tongue, pushing inside you, tasting your heat, your want, your need.
Your hands fisted in his hair, pulling him harder against you, and he went willingly, eagerly, lost completely in the taste and the sound and the feel of you falling apart under his mouth.
You moaned at the intrusion, a broken, breathless sound that vibrated around his knuckles as he sank his middle finger deep into your slick heat.
You didn’t need the encouragement, your hips were already rolling, riding his hand with a desperate, frantic rhythm that made the mattress creak beneath you.
He could feel it building in the way your walls fluttered and clamped around him, chasing that peak with a single-minded hunger that made his mouth water.
“Want another one, sweetheart?” His voice was honey and gravel, the pad of his thumb dragging a lazy, torturous circle over your clit.
You glared down at him from above, your frown sharp and impatient. “Stop fucking with me, Bucky.”
He grinned, and pushed a second finger into you without breaking eye contact. The stretch pulled a sharp gasp from your parted lips, and he started thrusting harder, deeper, the wet, obscene sound of it filling the quiet room. “Don’t wanna fuck with you, baby. I wanna fuck you.”
He felt you clench around his fingers immediately, a violent, fluttering grip that sent a tremor up his arm. A loud, broken moan tore out of you as you came, your body shuddering against his hand, your slick coating his palm and dripping down his wrist.
Fuck. He stared down at the way you pulsed around him, and his brain short-circuited. If this was how you came on his fingers, his cock was going to be absolutely fucking suffocated inside you.
He didn’t give you a second to recover.
He pulled his fingers out and brought them to his mouth, stuffing them past his lips, tasting you. He sucked them clean, groaning around the flavour of you, before he was crawling up your body, dragging his chest over your damp, trembling skin.
He thrust his tongue into your mouth without warning, sharing the taste of yourself with you. You opened for him eagerly, moaning into the kiss, your hands tangling in his hair and pulling him deeper.
Your fingers found his belt, the buckle clicking open under your quick, determined hands. He heard the rough rasp of his zipper, felt your palms push his jeans down over his ass, and you paused just long enough to squeeze, an appreciative grip that made him groan against your lips.
Holy shit. Holy fucking shit. He was about to fuck you. Actually, really, truly, about to fuck you.
He had to contain his excitement, had to focus on his breathing, or he was going to spill like a goddamn virgin before he even got close to being inside you.
And then your hands were flat on his shoulders, shoving.
He pulled back, frowning, ready to ask what was wrong, but the look on your face stopped him cold. You were grinning up at him, wicked and beautiful.
“Let me suck your cock.”
You didn’t give him a chance to respond. You shoved him sideways, trying to climb on top of him, trying to get your mouth on him, and the thought of your lips closing around him almost made his vision go white.
“No, no, no, no.” He caught your hips, tried to wrestle you back down onto your back. “No, sweetheart, just—stay—let me—”
You were laughing, light and playful, but he was deadly serious.
“If you even breathe on my cock, I’ll cum on the spot. I promise.” His eyes met yours, desperate and honest. “Please. Not tonight. Just let me have you. I’ve been waiting for this—waiting for you.”
You paused on his lap, considering. The laughter faded from your face, replaced by something softer, something thoughtful that made his chest ache.
He had to close his eyes. He had to focus on his breath.
Because your cunt was right there. Right on top of his dick. The heat of you seeping through his skin, the dampness of you threatening to coat his aching length.
He could feel every inch of your weight pressing down over him, and if he looked, if he moved, if he so much as twitched his hips, he was going to lose his entire fucking mind.
And then you began to slowly rock up and down his dick, the friction of your slick heat dragging against him like a live wire. You looked down at him with that small, knowing smile, the one that made his chest ache and his cock throb.
“You’re really that desperate for me?”
Bucky nodded, his jaw tight, his throat bobbing as he swallowed. Painfully. Desperately. A confession without words.
You leaned down, your lips brushing his in a kiss so quick and soft it was almost cruel. “Okay, baby.”
He let out a shuddering sigh of relief, of gratitude… and then his eyes flew wide.
Because you were rising. Rising off his lap. Reaching down between your bodies. Taking hold of his dick in your warm hand, and positioning it exactly where you wanted it.
He was hypnotised. Transfixed. The sight of his own flushed tip nudging against your soaking, glistening entrance made his brain short-circuit.
He felt a drop of saliva escape the corner of his mouth, rolling down his chin, and he couldn’t even muster the shame to wipe it away.
Jesus fucking Christ.
You were so tight. The first inch of him sliding into you felt like being wrapped in molten silk, searing and perfect. His eyes flicked up to your face, and he found yours squeezed shut, your lips parted, your breath catching in broken little gasps as you fed yourself his cock inch by agonising inch.
It felt like an eternity before your hips met his, before he was buried to the hilt inside you, and the sight of his cock disappearing completely into your body made his vision haze.
Your thighs settled flat against his, skin to skin, and he gripped your waist so hard he knew he’d leave bruises.
“Don’t move,” he rasped, his voice ragged. “Stay still for me. Just… keep still.”
You clenched around him involuntarily, a soft, reflexive squeeze that made him groan deep in his chest.
“Don’t do that. Don’t do that.”
You pouted, your bottom lip jutting out, eyes still hazy with pleasure. “I can’t help it, Bucky.”
And then you clenched again. Accidentally. Deliberately. He couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He tried to think of other things. Disgusting things. Anything to keep from spilling inside you like a goddamn teenager.
Cut toenails. Moldy fruit. Steve’s ass. None of it was working. Not when your heat was wrapped around him, not when you were sitting there looking so soft and sweet and patient, waiting for his permission.
He gave a strained nod, his voice barely a whisper. “Okay. Go ahead, baby.”
You smiled and then you rose. Rose until only the tip of him remained inside you. And then you dropped.
Violently. All the way down, slamming into his hips, the force of it knocking the air from his lungs and making him grit his teeth so hard his jaw ached. And then you were bouncing, riding him like he was a fairy pony, your pace frantic and relentless, your walls gripping him with every upward stroke.
All he could do was try to keep up. He dug his fingers into your hips, his hands guiding your rhythm, and began to fuck up into you matching your wild tempo, chasing the heat pooling at the base of his spine.
Bucky was pretty sure if his heart gave out right now; if he dropped dead beneath you, buried to the hilt, watching you fall apart on his cock, he’d die the happiest man alive.
This was heaven. You were heaven. The way you moved on top of him, taking everything he had, stealing his breath, his sanity, every coherent thought he’d ever had.
And then he realised.
You were still wearing that top.
The thin fabric clung to your skin, damp with sweat, hiding the one thing he needed to see more than his next breath.
Concealing the soft bounce of your tits with every roll of your hips. He reached up with both hands, fisting the hem, and you didn’t even notice, too busy fucking yourself on him, too lost in the rhythm to pay attention to anything else.
Until the violent shrrrip of cotton splitting in two cracked through the air like a gunshot.
Your eyes flew open, head jerking back. “Bucky!”
“’M sorry.”
The apology came out wrecked, and completely insincere. There was zero remorse in his voice, none in the greedy way his hands immediately found your bare chest, cupping the soft, heavy weight of your tits, his thumbs dragging over the stiff peaks of your nipples.
The moan that slipped past your lips was immediate.
“Needed to see them,” he rasped, watching the way they filled his palms, the way your back arched into his touch. “Needed to feel them.”
A breathless laugh escaped you, a soft shake of your head as you planted your hands flat on his chest and steadied yourself. And then you were bouncing harder, riding him like he was made for this, like you were trying to wring every last drop of sanity from his bones.
But he needed more.
The angle wasn’t deep enough. He couldn’t get close enough. Couldn’t be buried deep enough inside you.
Gathering every ounce of strength he had left, his hands locked onto your waist.
In one fluid, powerful motion, he used his hips to wrench you off balance and flipped you onto your back, twisting your bodies until he was hovering over you, and never once did he slip out of the slick, perfect heat of your body.
A delighted, breathless cry tore from your throat at the sudden shift in power. Your legs wrapped instinctively around his waist, pulling him deeper.
He reached up, one hand curling around the wooden slats of the headboard. The frame groaned under his grip as he pulled back and snapped his hips forward. Harder. Deeper. The sound of skin slapping against skin filled the room mixing with your ragged breaths and the desperate groans rumbling in his chest.
Bending down, he pressed his mouth to the sweat-slicked curve of your neck, biting down just hard enough to make you gasp, to feel your pulse flutter against his lips. “I need you to cum,” he grunted against your skin. “Please, baby. Need it.”
“Huh?” The word came out dazed, strangled. You hadn’t heard him. Your eyes were half-lidded, your lips parted, completely lost in the relentless rhythm of him pounding into you, too far gone to process anything beyond the next wave of pleasure building in your core.
“Cum now,” he grunted, the words ripped from somewhere deep in his chest. “Shit… now.”
He drove into you harder, each thrust a desperate, punishing demand. The headboard groaned against the wall, the frame shuddering with every brutal snap of his hips.
Your nails raked down his back, sharp, frantic lines of fire that he felt all the way down to his bones. And then he heard it; a choked sob that broke past your lips. Not pain. Release.
There. He’d found it.
“Right there, Bucky—right there—”
The cry was wrecked, broken, a plea that sexed through him like a current. He zeroed in on that spot, that deep, swollen place inside you that made your voice crack and your back arch off the mattress.
He bullied it with his cock, over and over, relentless, until your moans dissolved into something shattered and raw.
Then you broke.
He felt it in the way you clenched around him first; a sudden, violent flutter that turned into a pulsing grip, suffocating his cock, milking him with wave after wave of your release.
Your nails dug into the meat of his shoulders, your thighs locking around his waist, and the sound you made, a broken, keening gasp, was the most beautiful thing he’d ever heard.
It was enough to push him over.
Bucky let go.
His balls drew up tight, a hot rush of pressure building at the base of his spine, and then he was coming… violently, uncontrollably, his hips stuttering as he emptied himself into you with a guttural groan that sounded more animal than human.
He stayed buried deep, pumping into you through the aftershocks, his body trembling above yours, every nerve electric and raw.
For a long, suspended moment, there was nothing but the sound of ragged breathing and the slick, wet press of skin against skin.
Then his body went lax.
He collapsed onto his elbows, forehead dropping to your shoulder, his weight pinning you into the mattress as he tried to remember how to breathe. The high was liquid and warm, a blanket of bliss settling over his bones.
And then—
“You’re not gonna be weird about this, are you?”
The words came soft. Disarmingly soft. That was the cruelest part of it.
You pressed them into his skin, your cheek turned against his hair, your voice a low, sleepy murmur. One hand rested loose at the nape of his neck, thumb tracing an idle, almost tender path across the damp skin there.
Like you hadn’t just carved something out of him.
Bucky went still.
He forced his lungs to keep moving. Forced the tension in his shoulders to dissolve before you could feel it. His face was still buried in the curve of your shoulder, his mouth hot and wet against your collarbone, his body a weighted, useless thing draped over yours.
The room smelled of them. Sweat and salt and the crushed-flower sweetness of your perfume, tangled with the raw musk of sex that clung to the sheets.
Below, the house was still alive. The bass was a distant heartbeat through the floor, the drone of voices rising and falling like surf against stone.
Ten seconds ago, he had been floating in it.
Ten seconds ago, he had felt stupidly, dangerously complete.
The whole night had collapsed into this single moment; this bed, this room, the slick, fluttering grip of your body around his, your fingers knotted in his hair, holding him at the center of something that felt, for one perfect, delusional instant, like it mattered.
He had let himself think—
No.
He didn’t get to finish that thought.
Bucky exhaled slowly through his nose. Then he laughed, a short, easy sound that he shaped into exactly the right shape.
“Weird?” He lifted his head just enough to meet your eyes. “Me?”
Your mouth curved, “Yeah. You.”
He gave you the grin. The practiced one. The one that had saved him from worse than this.
“Sweetheart, I’m the most normal guy you know.”
A beat. “That is deeply untrue.”
You laughed then, and the sound hooked into his ribs. He let himself feel it, just for a second. There. It’s fine. Keep it light.
He could do this. He could keep the room warm if he didn’t push. He could lie here, tangled in you, and pretend the words hadn’t hit him like a fist.
Slowly he shifted his weight and pulled out of you. The sound was wet, obscene in the quiet, and it twisted something low in his gut. The heat he had been drowning in vanished the second he was empty.
The chill that replaced it crept up his spine and settled cold in his chest.
Still, he didn’t move away.
His arm stayed heavy across your waist, palm spread flat against the curve of your hip. His thumb began a slow, lazy stroke against your skin, a betrayal of every intention he had to act unaffected.
Bucky swallowed the bitterness climbing his throat and ducked his head, pressing his mouth to the warm skin just under your jaw. Not quite a kiss. Soft enough to deny.
“Relax,” he murmured against you, the words a low vibration. “I’m not gonna propose before breakfast.”
Your fingers paused against his cheek. For one terrible second, he thought he had said the wrong thing.
Then you huffed a laugh, thinner than before. “Good.”
Good.
Bucky smiled anyway, pressing it into your skin.
“Would’ve been a nice proposal, though.” He said it like a joke, because apparently he couldn’t stop picking at the bruise. “Real romantic. Me, you, Tony’s guest room, half the house tanked downstairs.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Yeah,” he said softly, lifting his head to look at you properly. “Probably.”
Your smile flickered.
There it was. That tiny break in you, so fast he would have missed it if he hadn’t spent months training himself to read your face. Your eyes searched his, and for a breath, he thought you might take it back.
Thought you might pull him down and kiss him until the hollow ache in his chest stopped screaming.
Instead, your gaze dropped first.
“I just don’t want things to get complicated.”
Bucky stared at you.
Complicated.
You were in his bed. Your body was still warm and pliant beneath his hand. You were still wet with him. The scratches from your nails were still raised and stinging on his back. His heart was beating so hard it felt exposed, shameful.
And you were talking about complicated like it was something waiting outside the door, not something you had already dragged in by the throat.
He nodded once. “Right.”
Your eyes flicked back to him. “Buck—”
“No, I get it.”
He didn’t get it, yet he got it perfectly.
Both were true. It was becoming a theme with you.
He pulled the blanket up over your hip because some stupid, aching part of him noticed you shiver. Then he settled back beside you, close enough for your shoulder to press against his chest, close enough to pretend nothing had shifted if he tried hard enough.
And he did try. God, he tried.
He let his lips graze your temple. Let his hand find yours under the sheet. Let himself feel the way your fingers curled, briefly, around his before loosening again.
Downstairs, someone screamed with laughter, a bright, drunken shriek that cut through the bass like glass.
The music kicked louder, the walls shuddering with it, the whole house groaning under the weight of bodies and noise.
You closed your eyes.
Bucky stayed awake, watching the ceiling blur above him.
Your warmth was pressed all along his side, your thigh hooked loosely over his, the damp glide of your skin against his making it impossible to forget where they had been ten minutes ago.
And your words were still lodged cold beneath his ribs, sharp as swallowed glass.
Not weird. Not complicated. Not a thing.
He turned his head and looked at you anyway, because he was weak, because he was stupid, because he had apparently decided that dignity was optional where you were concerned.
Your face had softened into sleep. Lashes dark against your cheeks, lips parted just enough to let the slow rhythm of your breath slip through.
You looked younger like this. Softer. Less like the girl who could walk into a crowded room and tilt his whole goddamn world sideways without breaking stride.
He hated you a little then.
The thought came sudden and ugly, rising from his chest like bile.
He hated you.
Hated the way you could lie here, still slick with him, your body still marked from his hands, and ask him not to make it mean anything.
Hated the way you took his wanting like it was expected, like it was easy, like he hadn’t spent months carving pieces of himself off and pressing them into your palm while you barely noticed.
Selfish, he thought.
And yet his arm tightened around you anyway.
Selfish fucking brat.
You take and you take and then you get scared it might mean something, so you push it away before it can push back.
The words burned through him. He imagined saying them. Imagined the way your mouth would part, the little furrow between your brows, the wounded look you would try to hide.
Good, some cruel part of him whispered. Let it hurt. Let you feel stupid for once. Let you feel even half of what I feel right now.
He wanted that. For one vicious, starving second, he wanted to hurt you exactly where you had hurt him.
Then you shifted in your sleep. Barely a breath of movement, a sigh, the slow curl of your fingers against his chest, your palm pressing flat over his heartbeat.
And Bucky melted.
He looked down at your hand resting over his heart and felt the anger lose its teeth.
Not disappear,it stayed there, sore and simmering beneath his ribs, but it had nowhere to go when you were tucked against him like this, soft and warm and trusting him with your sleeping body even while you refused to trust him with your heart.
His throat tightened.
“You’re so fucking confusing,” he whispered, the words barely a vibration against your hair.
He turned carefully onto his side, gathering you closer despite every reasonable part of him screaming to pull away.
His arm slid around your waist, his palm spread wide against the dip of your back, and you came easily, your forehead finding the hollow beneath his jaw as if your body knew where to belong.
The party roared on beneath them. Drunk and careless and alive. The whole house shaking with it.
And Bucky lay there, holding you, feeling like someone had cracked his chest open and left it that way.
He should have moved away. Should have rolled onto his back and let the cold settle between them, let it harden into the shape you had asked for.
Should have protected himself before morning came and you slipped back into whatever version of yourself could smile at him over breakfast like he hadn’t been inside you, like you hadn’t held his face in your hands and asked him not to love you.
Instead, he held you tighter.
Because this was still more than he had before.
Because despite everything, you had become the shape of his world.
His want began and ended with you. His mood rose and fell on the sound of your laugh, the lift of your eyes, the careless brush of your fingers against his.
You made him desperate and angry and embarrassingly alive. You made him feel chosen. You made him feel disposable. You made him feel completely insane.
And he would take it. Every scrap. Every confusing, contradictory piece.
He would take it because he didn’t know how to stop.
Bucky closed his eyes, his jaw tight enough to ache, his arms locked around you like holding on hard enough could keep the morning from coming.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he murmured into your hair, almost mean with the tenderness bleeding through it. “I won’t be weird.”
a/n | my initial plan was after the smut reader avoids, and then bucky freaks out and screams at her during another party and lays out all his frustrations that steve and sam have to physically remove him. three months pass without contact until you two see each other again and we finally get a look at what’s going through reader’s mind and ends with hurt/comfort and hopeful ending
princess : burn out comfort, college au, slight rivals to lovers, eldest daughter! reader- Leon, your rival, just wants you to take care of yourself
overworked : sequel to Princess, enjoying have boyfriend brain with Leon, Leon shows you when to take a break
not so messy : depression/overwhelm comfort, in the princess universe, Leon being a good boyfriend, the magic of cleaning your room (with a hot man)
study or date: a study date with Leon goes awry when an old friend shows up. Luckily, things work out in the end :)
eddie munson .・。.・゜✭
spill your guts : anxiety comfort, love confessions, fake/practice dating au- Eddie gets upset, fear responses die hard
music boyfriend i’m your yum-yum: post highschool! eddie x weird girl! reader, weirdos to lovers- coming soon!
spencer reid ˗ˏˋ ♡ ˎˊ˗
all i do is try, try, try : post prison! spencer x new to the team genius! reader, you’ve always been second best, the second choice- he shows you what it’s like to be first
i’m still trying everything : post prison! spencer x fem reader, in the mirrorball universe (the above fic) now that you and spencer started dating, insecurities start to rear their head- spencer knows just what help you need
buzz : spencer x autistic! reader, having a meltdown isn’t fun, but spencer knows how to help :)
suddenly i had a valentine: spencer x hopeless romantic! reader, you’re not sure you have a chance with the hot guy who frequents your cafe, but he shows you otherwise
aaron hotchner ˙⋆✮
handle with care: aaron x fem! reader, when breaking a mug leads to a flashback, aaron is there to bring you back.
joel miller (hbo) 𓂃⋆.˚
tongues and teeth : jackson! joel is a protector in his heart. too bad you’re having a hard time letting him after everything you’ve gone through, you’re having a hard time letting him. no ellie au (I’M SORRY)
rafe cameron ₊˚⊹ .
youngblood: rafe x black cat! pogue! reader, rafe wants to give the stubborn pogue no guy has ever dated the princess treatment, but she won’t stand for it.
eye to eye, thigh to thigh: sequel to youngblood- you’re having a hard time adjusting to having Rafe of a boyfriend, but thankfully Rafe (and his wallet) are happy to help
evan buckley ๋࣭ ⋆｡ °✩
reduced to skin and bone: buck x fem! coworker! reader- you’re a people pleaser, too good at what you do. It’s a shame Evan “Buck” Buckley sees right through you.
rick grimes .☘︎ ݁˖
i want an innocent love : alexandria leader! rick x fawn (not literally) reader- you’re a soft, sweet little thing- and Rick can’t figure out why he wants you so bad.
couldn’t make it harder: sequel to the fawn reader- some habits are hard to break, but luckily rick can be a patient man
plush: rick x fem! reader- since arriving to alexandria, you’ve put on some weight. rick happens to like it very much
benedict bridgerton ✧˖°.
you bewitch me- benedict x eldest daughter! reader (NOT INCEST)- You’re a spinster in the making, and really, have no business entertaining the likes of Benedict Bridgerton. It’s a shame you both find arguing so invigorating.
jack abbot ⋆ . ࿔ ˚
too sweet: jack x chronically ill! reader- as a chronically ill person, you’ve had your fair share of problems with the medical system. jack abbot fixes that and ends up showing you what truly being taken care looks like
you’ve ruined my life: jack x eldest daughter! reader: as an intern —robby’s chosen one, specifically— you’re used to doing everything on your own and doing it well. Jack takes issue with this.
i’m always on my own: fake dating au! jack x eldest daughter! reader- when your family comes to town for their annual visit, jack offers his services as your fake boyfriend to get your family off your back. you weren’t expecting the line between fake and real to become so blurred.
the cure: jack x people pleaser! reader, tensions run high between you and your attending since he’s the only person who seems to be able to see through you, but even though he doesn’t like what he sees, he’s determined to help.
