Drenchedׅ Opulent Deity𖥔 ۫⋄ 𓍯 @concentratedthots - Tumblr Blog

The Lighthouse

sea captain!steve rogers x siren!fem!reader

summary: a ship lost to the fog, a lighthouse that shouldn’t exist, and a captain that resists your lure. you were supposed to consume him and leave his body for the sea. but steve rogers is gentle where others take, devout where others are desperate, and so achingly good where others rot. and that virtue doesn’t save him from your hunger, just curdles it into something possessive and selfish that needs to drink down his moans until the end of time. after all, why devour something that would be so much sweeter to keep?

warnings/tags: SMUT, fingering, finger fucking, p in v, unprotected sex, praise kink, subby!steve, whimpering/needy steve (the loml!), touch starved!steve, soft dom!reader, teasing, reader on top, light dubcon (tagging this due to siren magic, but steve is enthusiastic), possessive sex, use of pet names (pretty captain, sweet boy, good captain etc), corruption kink, soul binding, steve rogers being steve rogers (sweetest man alive), gothic horror, graphic violence (not directed at steve, comes after the smut), blood and gore, drowning, minor character death, dark romance, old maritime vibes, reader insert no use of y/n, 18+ MDNI!

word count: 16k

song inspiration: the lighthouse by halsey “so i showed him all my teeth and then i laughed out loud, 'cause i never wanted saving, i just wanted to be found.”

from maddie: hi there! so, i’m super nervous as this is my first ever fic on here! is it wise to post a 16k siren AU as my first fic? probably not, but in my defence when i first started writing this it was supposed to be a 5k ish fic for kinktober (oops) and then it ended up being way longer and then i got scared to post and so.. yeah. but here we are!! i have proof read but at 16k it is likely that i have missed something, so apologies in advance. p.s. i’m still new to this type of tagging, if i’ve missed/miss-tagged anything, a polite correction would be super appreciated! <3 also, if you’re a bucky girlie and like the possessive mermaid/siren vibe, please check out keepsake by the lovely @blowingbarnes bc it’s amazing and we kinda thought they’re lowkey twin fics of each other 🥰🥺

Masterlist

The gulls disappeared long before the Nomad lost her course. That was the first sign.

At first, no one said anything. Birds vanish all the time - wind shifts, food grows scarce, and they scatter inland or fall behind. But when the sea stretched into its fourth day of breathless stillness and no gulls circled the rigging, a slow, sour dread began to seep into the minds of the less resolute among the crew. They murmured of ill omens, that the air was too still, the sea too quiet.

The others started to watch the sky as often as they watched the waves, trusting the guiding presence of the stars. But then the fog arrived, and the sky ceased to exist.

It moved like a living thing, curling round the hull and wrapping its fingers round the masts like the groping limbs of some drowned thing clawing up from the deep. The sun had not burned through the veil in over a week. Even the most steadfast sailors were starting to look more often toward the quarterdeck for reassurance.

Captain Steve Rogers never had been one for theatre or fear, and his calmness had steadied men through far worse than fog.

His uniform - navy blue once, now leached to charcoal by weather and time - clung damp to his frame, the gold buttons dulled by brine. Occasionally, the blond hair tucked so neatly beneath his hat stirred loose in the wind. And it fell across watchful blue eyes rimmed with sleepless red, ceaselessly scanning for a horizon that no longer existed.

It was as though the ship had sailed into a world that was not finished being made.

Compasses spun like a drunkard, refusing to point anywhere true. The charts made no sense; every calculation put them somewhere they couldn’t possibly be. They had passed the last familiar isle two days before the fog arrived. The coastline should be visible by now, but like the sky, it remained elusive.

The only thing that had not abandoned them was the blinding pall that devoured distance and sense alike.

Until the lighthouse. That damned lighthouse.

“Captain!”

Brock Rumlow’s voice cut through the mist like a knife, half disbelieving, half warning. Steve stepped out from under the canopy and squinted up into the fog, just making out his Executive Officer in the crow’s nest.

“There’s a light, port side. Thought it was a trick of the mist at first, but, sir, it’s steady.”

Steve moved to the rail, peering into the drowning grey. It was faint, at first, no more than a shimmer through the fog. Then it blinked. Once. Again. A slow, pale rhythm, like something breathing far away. Every rotation came with the same muffled pulse of light, bleeding through the mist - not bright enough to guide, but just enough to feel its watchful presence. Just enough to pull you in.

Each time the light passed, the tower emerged like a stuttering apparition. Black against grey. It loomed with a kind of dreadful elegance, a single void on the horizon. The fog clung to its ribs like flesh on bone, never fully revealing the surface. Just the ceaseless rotation of that pale, pulsing eye.

Steve’s brow creased, just slightly. “There’s no record of a lighthouse in these waters.”

Rumlow clambered down from the rigging, boots thudding softly against the deck. “Maybe it’s new?” he offered, with the brittle edge of someone trying to believe it.

“Or we’ve drifted much farther than we think.” Steve muttered, mostly to himself. He didn’t sound alarmed, but thoughtful, maybe even cautious in the way a man becomes when the sea starts behaving like something unfamiliar.

Behind him, the crew had fallen quiet, looking towards the lighthouse like it might be some kind of saviour. No more talk of omens or charts. Just the deck creaking like arthritic bones, the ropes above groaning in their rigging like tired muscles. They had been in this fog far too long. The sails sagged with damp. Salt gathered on every surface in thin, crystalline veins, as if the ship itself were beginning to ossify.

Steve turned to Stark at the helm. “Hold course. We don’t approach until we know what kind of land that is - if there’s land at all.”

The crew exchanged uneasy glances, the silence between them louder than the groan of the ship. Steve’s order had not sparked protest, but surprise. The kind that simmers just beneath the surface, waiting for a crack in the calm.

Rumlow stepped in closer, his voice pitched low, meant for the captain alone. “Sir, with respect, the crew are getting nervous. And that light, it’s steady. Clearer than anything we’ve seen in days. Don’t you think maybe it’s where we’re meant to go?”

Steve didn’t answer at first. His gaze stayed locked on the sweep of white that cut across the mist.

“I think visibility’s down to nothing,” he said at last, his voice calm, measured. “And I don’t want us running aground on some reef that doesn’t show up on a map.”

With a tight jaw, Brock swallowed and nodded once. But something in his gaze lingered on the horizon, to the lighthouse buried in the fog.

Steve didn’t look away from it either. His head tilted slightly, as if trying to puzzle it apart, to parse its rhythm, its source. But the longer he watched, the more it felt like the light was watching him back. Each rotation passed over the Nomad like a tongue of pale fire, licking at wood and rigging as if tasting what had come to it.

Rumlow’s voice dropped even lower, “You think maybe that’s where the Valkyrie went?”

The Valkyrie. Just the name alone was enough to make Steve pause. The Nomad’s sister ship. Missing three months now, seemingly vanished near these waters. Commanded by a good man - Captain James “Bucky” Barnes.

Officially? Presumed lost to storm. The Admiralty had called the search a waste; gone too long, gone too far. But Steve had disagreed, insistently. He knew Bucky, sailed with him since they were boys, before anyone gave them men to lead. And Captain Barnes would not have gone down easy. Not to wind. Not to fate.

“If there’s even a chance they’re still out there,” he’d urged, “we owe it to them to look.”

That was how he’d always been. Never leave men behind. Never bury a crew without a body. He’d volunteered himself to take the Nomad out - retrace the route, follow the last ghosting of the Valkyrie’s known course.

Just a recovery mission, they’d said, a duty. And they’d assigned him a crew that was not his own, to ensure he didn’t linger too long in the hunt. His men would have followed him to the edge of the world without question. These ones, they’d hoped, would make him turn back when the search turned fruitless.

But now, here they were. No stars. No wind. No world but fog. And the only shape left in it was a lighthouse that should not exist.

Steve blinked, finally tearing his gaze from the light. His eyes met Brock’s, tired but steady. His shoulders rose with breath, slow and measured, before he spoke.

“If the Valkyrie went there, she might’ve had reason. Damage. Crew injured. But we’re not crippled, and we’ve got no map to guide us in. I’m not going in blind, not yet.”

He turned back to the water. Fog pressed against the world like wool over the eyes. The lighthouse blinked again.

Steve nodded once, resolute in his decision. “We stay careful and wait for the fog to shift.” He placed a hand briefly on Rumlow’s shoulder. “I won’t risk my crew chasing shadows in fog that thick.”

“Aye, Captain.”

⋆˙˳𓂃𓂃𓊝𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂁𓂃𓂃˙˳⋆

When the watch was changed and orders were repeated, Steve stepped down from the quarterdeck and made his way back to his cabin below.

The air was heavier in the belly of the ship, thick with damp and rusted salt, every timber groaning like it ached in its bones. His quarters were dim. A single lantern swung with the slow sway of the ship, casting shadows that seemed to move before the flame did.

Charts were spread across the desk, dotted with bearings and notations, all meaningless now. Steve sat hunched over them, sleeves rolled, brow furrowed. He’d stripped off his coat but still felt damp; the fog had crept into everything. Dragging a calloused hand through his hair, Steve blinked down at the compass lying beside the map. Still useless. Still turning in lazy circles like a drunk sailor remembering a waltz.

None of it made any damn sense. Every heading led to nowhere. No drift patterns lined up. He reached for his logbook, intending to write, to record something, anything that might bring order to the chaos. But the ink seemed to bleed too quickly on the page. The candlelight blurred at the edges. His fingers slowed.

Sleep gathered at the edges of him like a restless tide, luring him under.

He resisted at first, his mind too restless to sleep. Rubbed the back of his neck. Shifted in the chair. But the heaviness was strange, not exhaustion, exactly, but pull, thick and difficult to resist. His head dipped once. He snapped upright, jaw tight.

Then it started. Soft, barely a sound.

The echo of something melodic seeping through the walls of the ship, through the brass fittings and soaked oak beams. It threaded into his mind, quiet and patient, settling amongst the fog of his thoughts, carving out a hollow and making itself at home. And still, it pushed deeper, curling warm and low in a place just below his sternum, where longing and memory and fear all reside together. He was dreaming. Or falling. Or maybe both.

Visions of the sea rose up in his mind, yet not the familiar cold expanse that prowled outside the hull, not the greedy grey that clung and gnawed and wished to drag all things down. This sea was warmer, velvet dark, soft as the inside of a mouth.

Steve was drifting through it, though he couldn’t tell if he floated or sank. The world had no up or down, only pull. A constant, inexorable lure toward only one thing: the lighthouse. It loomed above him now, vast and depthless, its crown haloed in light that somehow did not illuminate his surroundings. He was so close he could feel it, the warmth of the light, the snatch of currents curling around his limbs like hands, immobilising.

The water rippled, revealing eyes, open in the deep. Unblinking. Watching. Reflecting that same cursed light from above the surface. Too close, and yet impossibly far.

As if the sea itself had grown a face and turned it toward him.

Steve jerked awake with a violent gasp, the world slamming back into place - the cramped cabin, the sharp scrape of wood as his chair skidded beneath him, the rush of breath filling his lungs.

The cabin lantern guttered low, throwing frantic shadows up the walls. His skin was clammy, his pulse feral. The taste of salt lingered in his mouth, as if he’d swallowed the dream and brought some of it back with him.

He turned, slowly, gaze drawn to the porthole. The light was still there. Each rotation of the lighthouse beam slid through the fog and across the glass like a spotlight, searching. Still watching.

But the hum was gone. The cabin had fallen back into silence, save for the low groans of the ship as it shifted on the still, breathless water. Rising from the desk slowly, Steve shook his head, as if to rid himself of whatever had slithered into him during sleep. Just a dream. That’s all it was. He was exhausted. Worried. Minds under pressure look for patterns and he’d been thinking about that damn lighthouse too long. Of course it had found its way into his dreams.

He paced once, twice, boots thudding dully against the floorboards, then turned for the door. He needed air. Needed salt and wind and human company to steady his mind.

⋆˙˳𓂃𓂃𓊝𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂁𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃 ˙˳⋆

When he stepped back out onto the deck, the world had not changed.

The fog had not lifted; still wound tight around the ship like a shroud. It pressed in close, slicking across his skin with a dampness that clung to his clothes. The cold bit into him slowly, teeth sinking through his skin.

For one disoriented beat, he wondered if time had moved at all. If, instead, it had simply curved back on itself like a wave folding under, dragging him into the same moment. Same air. Same fog. Same towering blot on the horizon, casting its glare across the sea like a curse. It was not growing closer. It was not receding. It simply remained, waiting, as though the world now revolved around it.

His watch betrayed the illusion. He’d slept, if it could be called that, just over an hour. And yet it was as though nothing had moved.

Except his crew.

Warm lantern light carved trembling circles through the mist, casting his men in golden haze and long shadows. They were gathered along the starboard rail, clustered together like crows around carrion. Overlapping voices floated across the deck, carrying a ripple of unease.

Brow furrowing, Steve strode across the deck, boots striking the planks with measured weight, the sound of voices growing sharper with every step - too many, too loud, voices that carried the sour heat of argument and something darker beneath.

“I’m telling you,” came one voice, low and suspicious, “it’s not right. She don’t belong here.”

“Pretty little thing though, would be a shame to let her go back under,” another drawled, peering through a spyglass.

“Shouldn’t bring her aboard,” grunted another, older, voice chewed to bone by years at sea. “Bad luck. All this fog, compasses spinning, and now this? She’s a Jonah. Let her drown.”

“Enough,” Steve’s voice cut through the tangle with ease and the muttering fell away at once.

They parted almost instantly, and Steve stepped toward the rail, spyglass in hand. The fog swirled beneath the low light provided from deck, pooling thick and low across the water’s skin, and for a moment all he saw was drift. It just looked like wreckage, driftwood, rope, a scrap of sailcloth tangled in splintered timber. But then it shifted.

A human form. A woman. You.

Drifting limp across the water, draped half-conscious over a splintered slat of hull like an offering. Limbs slack, pale, boneless in the cold. Mouth parted faintly. Salt clinging to skin like frost. Yet there was movement, just. The soft rise and fall of ribs was the only indication of life.

A seaweed of wet hair tangled around a body wearing nothing but a half-buttoned shirt - unmistakably a sailor’s standard issue. It clung to every curve with the intimacy of breath. White, soaked through, and thin as gauze, it gaped wide at the collar. Its hem dark with water and barely brushing thigh. Every inch of it transparent.

One of his men gave a low whistle, appreciative in a hungry sort of way. Another muttered something crude under his breath.

Steve’s breath hitched. “Jesus.”

He opened his mouth to issue the order, to call his men to help him and do something other than just watch as the sea claimed another victim, but something caught the edge of his vision.

Dark wood, warped and slightly swollen, but unmistakable. Carved faintly into the grain was the faded insignia of the Valkyrie. Faint and weather gnawed, but clear enough to make the blood slow in Steve’s veins. He stilled, the sight striking something low and solemn in him, pulling his thoughts inward, toward darker waters. It held him there a breath too long, until the voices of his crew, sharp and human, tore him back to the surface.

“Women on ships are bad luck,” someone spat. “They call the sea to swallow us. You want to bring that aboard?”

“She’s a woman,” another scoffed, lascivious and oily. “That’s all I care about. And she’s practically naked. I’d say that’s luck enough.”

A ripple of laughter broke the tension - thin, uneasy, edged with hunger. Steve’s hand tightened around the spyglass until the brass bit into his palm. His voice, when it came, was low and absolute.

“I command a ship, not a brothel,” he warned, words edged with ice. “You see a woman half dead and the first thing out of your mouth is filth?”

He didn’t wait for an answer.

“Help me get her aboard,” Steve continued, low and final, every syllable hard with command. “Now.”

⋆˙˳𓂃𓂃𓊝𓂃𓂁𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃˙˳⋆

They pulled you from the water like salvage. Like a treasure they'd found instead of the trap you were.

The rope they lowered wasn’t elegant - a thick loop knotted fast at its end, more sling than harness. It hit the water with a dull splash beside you, bobbing once, then slackening as someone above braced the rigging. You made no effort to move to it, still draped over the driftwood, barely conscious. Or so you looked.

From the deck above, voices filtered down, rough and indistinct, before the groan of the rope ladder. Someone was coming down. A broad shouldered shadow fell over you through the fog, moving with care. When he reached you, the voice came first. A low rumble, roughed by cold and command, yet still laced with warmth.

“It’s alright,” he spoke, as though speaking to a wounded animal. “We’ve got you. I’m going to secure the rope, just stay with me.”

Then hands. Warmer than they had any right to be. Callused palms, sure fingers, touching only what they needed and not a single inch more. You flinched, of course. Twitched like something helpless. He hushed you again. “Easy,” he coaxed, “it’s okay. You’re safe now.”

Safe. How quaint.

The sling was adjusted around you, tugging tight beneath ribs that housed lungs which had never once known the ache of oxygen, had never felt the brutal, mortal pull of drowning. Still, you let a strangled choke slip from your throat, perfectly convincing. Your head lolled to one side, limbs limp with the art of false exhaustion, as the line above drew taut and began to lift.

The pulley system groaned, and you rose, slow and swaying, through the breathless dark. Fog clung to your limbs like it was loath to let you go. The deck appeared in pieces: boots, knees, hands reaching. The hiss of anticipation from men who had not seen softness in months.

You kept your eyes half shuttered, lashes fluttering weakly against your cheeks. The picture of something fragile, plucked from the depths by the mercy of men. Mercy, you knew, that always came with a price.

The rope jerked slightly as they manoeuvred you over the side of the ship. You stirred, just enough, letting soft, whimpering moan escape past your lips. Bait on a hook. Several boots scraped closer to you, and you could practically smell their hunger.

But it was the same steady hands that enveloped you once more, lifting you clear of the rope and the greedy eyes that didn’t care to hide their hunger for your softness. He drew you against him without effort, anchoring you to his chest, against his warmth, as though you belonged there, shielding you instinctively from the others.

"Easy," he said again, close to your ear now, voice achingly gentle. "I've got you.”

You let your fingers curl into the lapel of his coat, just enough to seem desperate. He carried you easily across the slick boards of the deck, accompanied by the murmur of men who hadn’t remembered their decency.

When he reached the quarterdeck, he lowered you slowly onto a barrel, his hands still gripping you until he was certain you were steady. You made sure weren’t, of course. As if on cue, your body swayed forward, tilting into him like gravity had a grip on your bones. Your cheek brushed the hard plane of his chest, and he caught you instantly.

“Hey,” he murmured, crouching down in front of you, “Hey, can you look at me?”

Warm palms cradled your face, so large that they eclipsed your cheeks entirely. Thumbs brushed your hair aside with aching gentleness, the pad of one brushing your parted lips. You let out the faintest shiver, as though cold, though it was really restraint burning beneath your ribs. Eyes flickering open, you blinked up at him through pathetic, fluttering lashes.

Oh.

He was beautiful. Not in the brash, swaggering way of most mortal men, but in the quiet, devastating way that would’ve made your breath catch if you were capable of such a thing. He didn’t belong at sea, not looking like that.

His eyes met yours at once. Blue. Too blue. Luminous against the dimness, limned with the soft ache of worry, and framed by eyelashes far too long and too pretty for a man’s face. A loose strand of blond hair clung to his brow, damp with fog, brushing the furrow of his temples.

And those lips. God, those lips. Full and plush, turned down in something too earnest to fake. They were a softness unsuited to cold orders and colder seas. Lips like that were made to ruin.

And yet, for all his beauty, he still bore the sea’s mark. Fair skin kissed pink along the bridge of his nose and the rise of his cheekbones - the ghost of sun long since vanished from these skies. A man shaped by wind and water. Weathered but unbent.

You blinked again, slower this time. Half dazed confusion. Half something else.

Still, you waited for it, that inevitable shift. The drop of the eyes, the slow souring of concern into something uglier. Desire, or even ownership. A hunger you could sink your teeth into. You’d seen it a thousand times. Men were simple creatures; they always turned.

But his eyes stayed on yours, never even tracing the curve of your breasts through the wet, transparent shirt clinging to your skin that you’d stolen from some long dead sailor. They remained blue and beautiful and impossibly sincere. And it made you ravenous.

Something cruel stirred in the hollow place where your heart should have been. You wanted to crawl into that gaze and poison it. To splinter that softness beneath your hands, and make him beg through those perfect lips. You needed to know what it would take to break something that gentle.

A low whistle sliced the silence, sharp and lewd. Your eyes flicked past the broad shield of his shoulders to where the rest of the crew still clustered, hungry-eyed and unrepentant.

They craned for another glimpse. A pale flash of thigh. The ghost of a shoulder. Or your nipples, dark and peaked beneath fabric turned to gauze by the sea.

They drank you in with the aching greed of men who hadn’t seen a woman in weeks. And even then, never like this - bare legged, shivering and wearing nothing but a transparent shirt. To mortals, an exposed ankle was a scandal. This was a damn invocation.

Their greedy stares crawled over you, hands twitching at belts, eyes sharp with the kind of cruelty that came easy at sea. One of them licked his lips. Another chuckled low under his breath.

You let a trembling whimper pass your lips and drew your arms across your chest as if the gesture could protect you. White knuckled fingers curled into the ruined fabric, as though you were ashamed and human enough to care.

But then the man in front of you moved. Without a word, he shrugged off his coat and draped it around your shoulders, firm and unceremonious. Heavy, coarse wool settled over your shoulders, warm with his heat. Far too large, it drowned you in fabric that smelled of salt and something deliciously alive. He pulled it closed around you with firm, efficient hands.

“That’s enough,” he barked over his shoulder, the edge of command hard and unmistakable. His gaze swept across the crew, lingering on the ones who hadn't looked away quickly enough.

“Back to your posts.” he said, quieter now but no less protective. “You’ll leave her be. Anyone who forgets that will answer to me.”

There it is. That claim. Perhaps he wants you for himself, and this is just personal hunger cloaked in chivalry.

The crew dispersed, slow and muttering, but they obeyed. Even the boldest among them turned away in the end, though not from guilt, just the command of a man.

And then he turned back to you, face softening again like it hadn’t just been carved from iron a second before. He reached for the coat slung across your shoulders and adjusted it with careful hands, tugging it higher to shield your neck from the cold and from their stares alike. His fingers brushed your collarbone as he worked, knuckles grazing damp skin, but the touch was nothing but reverent.

“I’m sorry for their behaviour,” he said quietly, eyes not leaving yours, “but you will be safe here. You have my word as captain of this vessel.”

Captain. Of course. So this is what held out against you.

You’d felt that resolve in the dream, touched the edges of his mind, tasted the knotted tangle of duty and grief in his soul.

Most men came willingly. They came with hunger, lust, and darkness already peeling them apart from the inside. Their souls were already loosened, rotted at the edges, ready to be swallowed.

The song was a mercy to them - a velvet leash they begged to wear. You didn’t always need it; sometimes the lighthouse was enough. The pulsing light on the horizon, a suggestion of warmth in a world gone cold with fog and dread.

You hadn’t had anyone resist your lure in a long, long time.

Not the lighthouse keeper who’d torn his shirt off and dropped to his knees at the first note of your voice. Not the deckhand who’d fucked you in the bilge, pressing your hand to his chest like a confessional even as he wept for the wife he’d left on shore. And certainly not the captain who’d begged as you dragged him under, saltwater filling his lungs before your lips ever touched his.

Oh yes, a man’s soul could be consumed in two ways, but both require him trembling at the edge of himself in a moment of surrender.

One you take in the water, lungs flooding, heart thrashing, the soul straining against the body’s last breath as terror carved it clean. The other you take in bed, just before ruin, when he is blinded by want, and the soul slips loose without a fight. Drowning or fucking - ecstasy and fear blurred so sweetly at their seams, and both left you wet-mouthed and lit from within.

And with this one? With something this pretty? There was no question which method would taste sweeter on your tongue.

But so far, this captain clung to himself like wreckage. The call went out from the lighthouse and he turned his back on it. The song curled round him and he did not answer.

“Come,” he said, breaking the spell of your thoughts. “Let us get you out of the cold. There’s warmth waiting below.”

You didn’t move. Not right away. Just let the tremble run its course, every delicate shiver accentuated by the size of the coat drowning you, as though the cold were sinking deeper than skin. You knew well how to feign fragility and become something that invited protection. You looked up at him, dazed and blinking slowly, lips parted like you could not quite grasp the words he’d spoken.

“Can you stand, do you think?” he asked, with that maddening, patient gentleness that made your skin itch with the desire to ruin it.

You made a soft sound and shifted, lifting yourself just barely from the barrel’s edge, biting your lip like it might hold you steady. Your bare feet touched the deck, wet wood slipping against your soles. The moment your weight tipped forward, your legs crumpled beneath you with theatrical grace.

His arms caught you before you touched the deck.

“Steady now,” he murmured, catching you before you could collapse. Strong arms swept beneath you once more, one beneath your knees, the other curled firm around your back, holding you close against the solid breadth of his chest. “There we are. I’ve got you.”

You sagged against him, still half unconscious. He adjusted his grip, carrying you with an ease that sent a different kind of hunger curling low in your belly, and turned without hesitation toward the steps that led below.

He was taking you to his quarters.

You let yourself go soft, resting your head against his chest to feel the delicious steady thrum of his heartbeat beneath your cheek. The coat slipped just enough to expose the curve of your shoulder beneath a tear in the shirt. And though you felt a slight hitch in his breath, his grip never wandered.

It was almost admirable, but he’d come around. You could feel it already. The tightness in him. The restraint. He wanted. Of course he wanted. That was why he carried you, why you wore his coat, and why he scolded his men. He wanted you untouched because he wanted you for himself.

The ones who thought themselves kind took you somewhere private first, told themselves they were being noble, protecting you, even. They would speak softly, perhaps even brush the hair from your face before their mouth met yours. And then they'd reward themselves for your rescue. They always did.

⋆˙˳𓂃𓂃𓊝𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃˙˳⋆

The captain’s quarters were quiet. A single lantern burned low, swaying faintly on its hook and casting golden veins across the walls. Its light curled into the grain of old wood, flickering across naval maps and shelves of worn books, softening the sharp edges of a captain’s space into something gentle.

His long stride crossed the room easily, slowing before the wide berth at the back of the room. His bed.

He set you down amongst the folds as though laying a relic upon an altar.

The bed gave beneath your weight with a low sigh, the layers parting to cradle you in their dense, lived-in warmth. A patchwork of textures met your skin: coarse-stitched navy blankets, a heavy fur throw that might once have belonged to some northern creature, sheets of worn linen, sun bleached to ivory and softened by use. The covers still held the faint heat of his body, the press of his shoulders marked faintly in the blankets’ rise and fall - a hollow twice your size.

You lay curled in the ghost of his shape and gave a small, pitiful shiver. Without a word, he was moving again, hands pulling another blanket from the foot of the bed before gently setting it across your legs.

Behind him, through the small porthole, the lighthouse pulsed. Patient.

Looking up at him through lashes still heavy with faux exhaustion, you parted your lips in a breathless kind of mute gratitude. He lingered there, caught in your gaze, for just a breath too long.

You saw it, the stutter in his composure, the second blink that came slower than the first, the flicker of something heat flushed across the high plane of his cheek. His gaze did not drop, not quite, but it faltered, hovered somewhere near your mouth. For one aching second, you thought you had him. That you’d slipped into that crack in his restraint, and finally hooked your fingers in the seams of him and started to pull.

But then he shifted. A subtle straightening of his spine, a quick drag of air through his nose, and the spell broke.

“Captain Rogers,” he said abruptly, almost like it had burst out unbidden. The reflex a man who’d just remembered himself after nearly forgetting. The words landed too stiffly, and he seemed to realise it the moment they left his mouth. A flicker of something self-conscious passed across his face.

“That’s, uh, that’s my—sorry,” he added quickly, shaking his head, almost sheepish now. “That’s… my title. It’s not—I should’ve…” he paused, a breath, then, “I’m Steve,” he corrected finally, softer now, but more certain, like he’d found his footing again, “You can call me Steve.”

He—Steve—looked at you properly then, as though trying to offer something gentler in place of command. “Sorry. Ma raised me with better manners than forgetting to give my name.”

And then he turned away, stepping over to a chest near the wall. His movements were brisk, purposeful, trying to rid himself of whatever had overcome him for that moment. Fingers busying themselves with the latch, Steve rummaged for something without looking back.

Your hunger purred louder beneath the surface.

Because now you’d seen the flicker. You’d felt the heat coil off him like a warning. You could taste the want in the air around him. But he didn’t reach for you like every other man before him, possessed with the kind of goodness men so often wrapped themselves in to feel righteous as they stripped you bare. It was unlike any experience you’d had before, but it made your mouth water all the same.

Back at the chest, Steve drew a folded bundle of cloth. They were plain garments - his clothes. Trousers cinched with twine, and a shirt softer than the one that still clung wet to your skin. He brought them to the edge of the bed and set them down without fanfare or a glance below your collarbone.

“These are clean,” he said, head tilted with concern. “They ought to be warmer than what you’ve got. If you feel strong enough to change?”

You let your fingers ghost over the fabric, trembling just slightly. Then, lifting your gaze to him, you gave a small nod.

“I’ll step out,” he murmured, quieter than before, “Let you dress in peace.”

Already he was turning, gaze fixed politely away, moving toward the door. His hand paused at the latch.

“I’ll see if Cook’s left anything warm. You’ll need food. Strength.” A glance over his shoulder, not quite meeting your eyes, but close. “You’re safe here. Take your time.”

For a moment, you didn’t react. Just stared at him, lashes low, like your brain was still climbing back toward language.

Then you let it tremble out, breath first, then sound, “Thank you… Steve,” you whispered, voice hoarse, as though scraped from a throat unused to air.

He paused a moment, like the sound of his name in your mouth had startled him. His spine loosened, shoulders lowering a fraction, as something gentle folded into the weather worn lines of his face. A small, almost boyish smile, and it suited him far too well.

“Of course,” Steve replied, the words entirely earnest. A quiet nod followed, punctuating the moment like a full stop. Then he turned back to the door.

And just like that, he left you alone. No weighted silence thick with male expectation. Just the soft click of the door.

You stared at the wood as though it might open again, half expecting to catch the glint of hunger in his eye as he returned, pretending some false errand only to find you bared and shivering. But no hand turned the latch. No boots lingered on the boards. His footsteps faded into the ship’s bones, until nothing of him remained but the coat around your shoulders.

For a long moment, you didn’t move. Was it shyness? Modesty? Some strange, stubborn honour? Whatever it was, it was unbearable and addictive all at once. It made your teeth ache and your thighs clench.

Still. There were other ways to catch a thing that wouldn’t bite. Most men liked their prey helpless, some trembling thing in need of rescue, but some needed to be seduced rather than begged.

And that, too, you could do.

You slipped from the bed, the coat slithering from your shoulders like a shed skin. The shirt beneath was still soaked, still clinging, and you peeled it off slowly, letting it fall to the floor with a wet sound. The lantern light found your skin, greedy as a sailor’s gaze, kissing the shine of saltwater left across the soft swell of your breasts and the curve of your thighs. It haloed you in something mythic. Lure or not, you were a vision.

Then there was a knock. Followed by the captain’s voice, low and gentle, muffled through the wood.

“Ma’am?” A courteous pause, then, “I’ve brought something to eat. Would it be alright if I come in?”

You stayed silent, letting the pause yawn wide. Naked now in the golden hush, you made no effort to cover yourself, no scramble for modesty. The silence lengthened; you could almost feel his hand hesitating on the latch. The knock came again, a little firmer this time, the shape of your absence already sharpening his worry.

“Ma’am?” He called again, more urgent, voice a note higher, gentleness cut now with genuine fear. “Are you alright in there?”

You still gave him nothing. You could almost hear the decision happen behind the door, the quiet warring of his better instincts. He cursed quietly to himself.

Then, finally, a third knock. Harder. “I’m coming in,” Steve warned, the words gentle but laced with an urgency that left no room for argument.

And then the door swung inward

You gasped, feigning shock, hands darting too late for the shirt that lay on the cot. Your hair spilled across your shoulders, beads of water sliding the length of your bare skin.

He froze. There was a beat of stunned silence. Crimson flooded his cheeks. Panic flared wide in his eyes. Then he scrambled to recover, voice and hands unsteady with mortified haste.

“Oh—Christ, I—” Steve’s voice cracked low in his throat as he spun around so sharply he nearly spilt the content in his hands. “I knocked and I didn’t hear you answer, I thought something might’ve—I’m sorry.”

He stood rooted, mortified, eyes fixed anywhere but you. The lamplight burnished the edge of his jaw, the muscle there ticking with strain.

“No, forgive me, Captain,” you breathed, though inside you’re reeling, half-hoping he’ll try to look, then half-astonished that he does not. “I didn’t mean to worry you. I didn’t hear you knock.”

You finally pulled the shirt he’d left you over your head in slow, deliberate motions, the fabric falling heavy with his scent. It swallowed you whole, hem brushing mid-thigh, sleeves hanging long past your wrists. You left the trousers untouched where they lay folded on the bed, a calculated omission.

Just enough modesty to allow him to look. Just enough indecency to make him desperate for it.

Steve remained frozen near the door, spine stiff as a masthead, though his head hung slightly, eyes fixed somewhere on the floor. “I didn’t mean—” he began, voice ragged at the edges, “I—my apologies, ma’am. I shouldn’t have—”

You moved before he could finish, bare feet over old wood, closing the space between you. Your fingers found the edge of his sleeve, just at his wrist. His skin was warm. Alive. You let your thumb rest against the bone, just long enough to feel the beat beneath. He let out a stammered breath at the contact, relaxing into it.

“I don’t blame you,” you cooed softly, peering up through lowered lashes. “Truly. You’ve been nothing but kind. I owe you more thanks than I can speak.”

Cheeks still flushed pink, Steve turned. Slowly. Warily, like a man half-expecting a trap but drawn anyway. His gaze lifted, cautious, catching only your face at first.

Then, for the briefest moment, his eyes flicked downward, just far enough to catch the pale length of your bare legs beneath the hem of his shirt. His jaw tightened, a muscle ticking hard in the hinge, before his gaze snapped back to yours and held there, unflinching, as if sheer will alone could burn the image from his mind.

He cleared his throat. “It’s not much,” he murmured, finally breaking the silence, nodding toward the bowl he’d nearly spilled. “Just broth, but should help you feel better.” His voice was low, almost apologetic, as though the offering were meagre, rather than more kindness than most men ever thought to give.

You’d met hundreds of men who’ve fed you nothing but themselves and expected you to moan for the taste.

You watched as he set the food down on the nightstand, this captain with his broad shoulders and his careful hands and his infuriating, impossible goodness. Now you were certain - he meant it. The shame, the apology. His kindness was not, as you had assumed, the pantomime of virtue donned to soothe his conscience before indulging himself. He simply was that good.

Because this wasn’t how men behaved. Not sailors, not captains, not the devout nor the damned. Not when faced with something half-naked and grateful in their quarters, looking at them like salvation.

And you wanted him worse for it.

It was insatiable. You had not desired like this before. Not truly. Hunger was different. Hunger was instinct, necessary and sharp. But this was no longer simply appetite.

You wanted to feel him break, to ruin what made him so good. To see that perfect mouth open in surrender. To feel defiance rot into desperation. To lean close, breathe him in as you tore his stubborn soul loose from the sinew of his body, bright and so achingly alive, and swallow it whole.

Easing yourself gracefully back down onto his bed, you slipped into the same hollow of throws he’d laid you in before. You curled your legs between you, letting the oversized shirt ride high along your thighs - a flash of bare skin that went wilfully unseen as he pretended to busy himself with something that didn’t need doing.

The broth waited untouched on the nightstand beside him, steam still coiling faintly from the bowl. But as the scent reached you, your stomach tightened. Dead sustenance. It was a scent that turned the sea in your blood.

“Steve?”

He turned toward you again and you met his gaze with a sweet, sheepish smile.

“I’m sorry,” you murmured, voice still touched with that wounded lilt. “I think I’m still a little unwell from the sea. The broth smells lovely, I just…” You trailed off, pressing a hand lightly to your stomach, eyes low. “I’m not quite myself yet.”

He was at your side again in an instant, crouching, eyes filled with worry that made him easier to devour.

“Don’t force it,” he said. “I can fetch you something else later. Tea, perhaps.”

“You’ve been so very kind,” you replied, voice warm with pretend gratitude. “So gentle. So… sweet.” You leant forward, just slightly, eyes big and round, lower lip caught between your teeth. “How ever could I repay you?”

His breath caught. You could feel his restraint. His gaze slipped again, toward your lips, so you pushed, just a little more. Your hand rose like you barely noticed it and found the line of his forearm where it rested on his knee, fingers brushing his skin, warm and solid beneath the rolled cuff. His body shivered in response.

His gaze flicked once more, unsteady, back toward your mouth, then your eyes, then your mouth again.

You edged just a little closer, palm still resting light against his arm, and whispered, “Isn’t there something I can do for you?”

And for a second, he hesitated. Heat, confused and uninvited, pooled in his gaze. The lighthouse beam swept through the porthole, illuminating his face for one breath, jaw tight, eyes dark with want. Finally, the soft place beneath all that control.

But then it was gone, swallowed by guilt, or principle, or both. He pushed back on his heels slightly, as though that inch of distance could cool the heat you’d stoked between you. Then he exhaled slowly, gaze steadier now, but you could see the strain in it, the quiet war waged behind his eyes.

He pulled a chair across the cabin with a low scrape of wood on wood, and settled into it opposite you, resting his large hands lightly on his knees. The lantern above cast his face in gentle shadow, catching on the furrow between his brows, the tired edge in his eyes.

“You owe me nothing,” he said, low and sure, though his voice was a little rough at the edges, like he’d had to clear something from it first. “But, if it’s not too much to ask,” he added, softer still, “might I know your name?”

There it was again. That unbearable sincerity. That goodness that made your mouth water with the desperation to peel it from him with your teeth.

You tilted your head, lashes sweeping low in something that looked like shy surprise. “My name?” you echoed, soft, as though the question itself startled you. The smallest frown tugged at your lips.

“I…” You started, letting the word hang, then, “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

It slipped out in a hush, a scared tremor to your voice. Tears welled in your eyes, limning your lashes with the sheen of salt. You watched the sorrow bloom in Steve's face, how it called him forward like a prayer dragging a sinner to the altar. He leant in again, unthinking, his hand rising to your cheek as if summoned, wiping away a tear before retreating again.

“That’s alright,” he murmured. “You’ve been through something awful. It’ll come back to you in time.”

He leant back further, elbows to his knees. When he spoke again, his voice was even more gentled.

“The wreckage we found you on, it looked like it belonged to a ship we were looking for. The Valkyrie.” A beat. “Do you remember anything from before we found you?”

You let confusion cloud your features as you drew your knees in a little, making yourself purposefully smaller.

“There was a storm,” you whispered. “Rocks. The ship was… breaking.” You swallowed, as though the memory cut your throat on the way up. “I remember screaming. Wood splintering. And then just… water.” Your breath shuddered, trembling in your chest. “Only water.”

When you lifted your gaze, Steve’s eyes were already on you, full of grief, raw and unguarded. The corners of his mouth were curled tight with a sorrow he tried to hide. Something greedy unfurled in your chest at his expression. This was your in.

He didn’t press you. He only nodded once, small and heavy, accepting something he had not wanted confirmed.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered. “Were the crew important to you?”

He drew a long breath, chest rising slowly beneath his shirt. His eyes did not leave yours now; they held you as if you were the only fixed point in a shifting world.

“The Valkyrie was our sister ship," Steve replied, though the words came out quiet and worn at the edges. "Went missing some weeks back. Her captain—" His voice caught. Stopped. Started again. "Captain Barnes. Bucky. He was... he was my brother in all but blood.”

Oh, you remembered Captain Barnes. Dark-haired, silver-tongued, easier to unravel than this one.

Oh yes, you remembered the way his mouth had moved when he asked if you were some dream sent to bless him or a devil come to collect. You’d answered with your mouth on his. Dragged him under with salt on his lips. Felt his soul flutter loose like a bird with broken wings. He’d begged, near the end. Not for life, or his crew. Just for another touch.

And now, here you sat, bare-legged and aching, watching his closest friend mourn him from the same mouth that would soon tremble against yours. Strange, how fate always liked to stitch its cruelties with silk thread.

Once, a lifetime ago, fate had sewn its threads through your flesh too. You had not always been a wave-wrought thing, built of hunger and longing. But the sea takes and takes, until you are hollowed into its likeness - a tide with a heartbeat, a hunger with a face, pulling all things toward your depths.

And your hunger had teeth now, clawing up your throat. You were losing control of it against the heat of Steve’s soul, flickering bright and untouched against the wake of his loss, begging for you to break it.

Steve had fallen quiet, grief settling over him like a shroud. One forearm braced the armrest, his other hand lifting to rake through his hair, dragging it back from his face in a slow, tense sweep. His eyes blurred at the edges as he pinched the bridge of his nose, just before his gaze dropped.

You slid from the bed, the hem of his shirt skimmed your thighs as you stepped between his thighs, so close the heat of him rolled over your skin, that his breath brushed against your sternum.

A shiver passed through you like a tide, an aching mixture of desire and restraint.

For a moment he didn’t move, just sat, large hands splayed over his knees, shoulders hunched as though to ward off a blow.

You reached for him. One hand cupped his cheek, the other brushed back the unruly hair at his temple. The lamplight burnished his blond strands to a pale gold that pooled around his head like a saint. You coaxed his face up to yours with a pressure so gentle it barely existed, but he followed it, looking up at you, eyes like a summer sky long vanished from this sea, mouth parted in surprise.

He was heavenly like this. All that strength, all that command, undone in a breath.

For the first time, you wondered if you could even touch it. If you could drown a soul this bright.

Yet even he couldn’t hide the shake of his breath, or the way his throat moved as he swallowed. The beautiful, terrible struggle of a good man trying so hard not to be anything else. To stay tethered to his impossible compass of a heart.

But you had him in your claws now. Your desire was sharpening further with each touch, each trembling denial. You ached to have him, to feel him fill you, to taste him shatter.

“Steve,” you whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head, tried to gather himself, tried to be a captain again. “No,” he rasped, his voice rough and uneven with restraint, “I—I’m sorry. You’ve been through hell, and here I am—”

You shushed him softly, thumb sweeping across his cheekbone, feeling the warmth bloom there. You leant in just slightly, enough for your hair to brush his brow, “It’s okay, Steve. You’re allowed to grieve. You’re allowed to miss him.”

He stilled a moment, and you watched his body process the words - the ripple through his shoulders, the breath stall in his lungs, the slow collapse of the last of his armour. He leant his head closer to you, seeking your warmth. A surrender, finally. The kind of surrender only kindness could coax from a man like him.

“You’re a good man, Steve Rogers.”

And God, the way he looked at you then. Not as a captain. Not as a saviour. Not even as a man. But as something softer, lost at sea, craving someone to hold him.

He was trembling, you realised. Quietly, almost imperceptibly. The kind of trembling that comes from being starved of warmth and affection for too long. Your fingers slid down from his jaw, and his lips quivered at the loss, tilting his head into the absence of your touch, chasing it.

But your hand found his, and you drew it up to your face, guiding his palm to your cheek. The rough warmth of him made you ache, heat blooming low in your belly despite the innocence of the touch. His palm was so large, so gentle against your cheek that your thighs pressed together without meaning to.

You turned, lips brushing the heel of his hand. Just the faintest, testing whisper of contact. His breath hitched, a quiet, ragged inhale, and his eyes widened with a hunger he seemed half-ashamed to own.

“Let me help you,” you whispered into his palm, letting the need in your voice lure him further. “You’ve been so good to me. Let me—”

“You don’t owe me—” he interrupted, voice already crumbling, but the protest died in his throat the moment you slid into his lap, thighs bracketing his, baring your exposed, aching core to the hard press of the growing need in his trousers.

The groan that left his mouth was pure need. “Christ,” he cursed.

His shirt bunched around your hips, baring the moonlit length of your legs. Steve’s hands shot to your waist, instinctive and steadying, before freezing. A man grasping a the final edges of his strength.

He looked up at you, pupils blown wide, eclipsing the blue entirely. The muscle in his jaw twitched, set against want.

“This isn’t—” he breathed, throat tight, “We shouldn’t—”

You rolled your hips, deliberately letting your dripping pussy rub against his cock, already hard and betraying his restraint, and the sound that broke from his throat was nearly a sob.

He stifled a moan, hands tightening on your waist as though to hold you at bay.

“Why not?” you murmured, all innocence and invitation.

His hands, meant to push you away, to set you aside and return propriety to the room, stayed exactly where they were. Gripping. Holding. Burning through the thin fabric that separated skin from skin. His head dropped forward, forehead pressing to your collarbone, as though the proximity might ground him. Might make this feel less like falling.

“Because you’re— I’m—” he tried again, but couldn’t finish, the words dissolving between you.

“Because I’m what?” you murmured. “Grateful? I am.”

Your hands rose to his face, thumbs brushing the flush on his cheeks, dragging back through the tousled gold of his hair, damp from sweat and sea air.

“Because you’re a gentleman?” you whispered. “You are.”

His eyes fluttered, lashes casting long shadows against his cheeks. He looked so young in that moment. So breakable. So yours. You leant in, slow and sure, until your foreheads touched. His breath mingled with yours. You let your eyes fall half-lidded, the ghost of a smile brushing your lips.

“But I don’t want a gentleman right now, Steve.” Your voice fell to a hush, pressing a hand to his sternum, his pulse beating strong against your palm. “I want you.”

Then your mouth crushed into his, your lips meeting in a collision that tasted of heat and want and the sea itself. His breath caught hard in his chest, and for one weightless beat he didn’t move, frozen by shock, by need, by the collapse of everything he had fought so hard to hold back.

And then, God, he kissed you back.

His lips parted beneath yours with a soft, desperate sound and you drank him in. It wasn’t greedy or performative in the way a rake might take his pleasure, pressing and biting and claiming. Just aching, desperate want. His fingers clutched at your waist now, involuntary, digging just slightly into your flesh as if you were slipping from his grasp even while you sat still in his lap.

He groaned into the heat of your mouth as your hips rocked, your soaked cunt grinding against the hard line of him still trapped beneath cloth. You felt him twitch against you, felt the throb of him pulsing hot and needy.

Still, he tried to be good.

“Tell me to stop,” Steve rasped into your mouth, the words trembling between each kiss, even as his hands slid lower, fingers pressing into the soft flesh of your thighs like he was trying to remember what it felt like to touch something warm. "Christ, please, just tell me to stop.”

His mouth left yours only to drag over your jaw, your neck, the soft dip beneath your ear, kissing as though your skin were the only holy thing left in the world.

“Please,” he murmured, lips brushing your throat. You felt the ache in it, this man who had likely begged for nothing in his life, begging now, not for himself, but for your escape. “Just say it… and I will, I swear I—”

You answer with a moan, followed by another needy grind, arching against him, dragging your heat along his clothed cock again and wringing a sharp groan from the chest that usually carried command.

“Don’t stop,” you growled against his throat, open mouthed and wanting. “Fuck, Steve, don’t stop. I want you.”

That, finally, broke the captain.

He surged up into the kiss like it was oxygen and he’d been drowning. His hands found the curve of your ass and gripped you tight, easily pulling you closer, until there was nothing between you but damp heat and his pounding heart. The chair creaked beneath you, wood straining beneath the press of two bodies drawn too close. And the light passed through the porthole again, licking over you both, before returning the darkness.

Your hips rolled with wicked purpose, seeking friction, feeding it.

His tongue licked into your mouth with reverence turned desperate. But he let you guide it, let you taste him, let you press him deeper into the heavy chair, his legs spread beneath you as you straddled him like a throne.

You shifted your hips again, slowly now, the slick drag of your pussy soaking the seam of his trousers, and his jaw clenched hard against your neck. He let out a sound halfway between a whine and a curse, muffled against your shoulder where his mouth had now fallen. You felt him tremble. He was so fucking warm. So alive. So solid beneath you, thighs like stone braced between yours, his cock aching beneath thick navy cloth.

Your hands fisted in his hair, tugging until he looked up at you again.

He was panting, lips parted and wet with your kiss, blinking up at you, dazed and so gone, those striking blue eyes wild and wide with devotion. The pretty blush staining his cheekbones turned fever bright. You felt his breath catch when you licked into his mouth again, shameless now, swallowing every gasp.

Beautiful. And entirely at your mercy.

A shaky breath hitched from his chest. “You’re perfect,” he breathed, throat working around a swallow, Adam’s apple bobbing hard like the words had caught on the way out, too big and full of want to pass clean, “so perfect.”

You ground down harder in reply, the damp friction nearly unbearable now. You were so wet, it was obscene. The front of his trousers was dark with it. His hands fluttered uncertainly against your hips like he didn’t know what to do with all this wanting.

So you guided him. Your fingers threaded with his, and slowly, deliberately, you slid his hand between your legs. You pressed his palm against the hot, soaking centre of your need, grinding into it with a soft, keening whimper. His whole body jerked as his fingers slipped through the wetness staining your inner thighs.

“Feel that?” you gasped, rocking into his hand as you pressed your mouth to his ear. “That’s all for you, Captain.”

The groan that cracked out of him was raw, startled, dragged from the very centre of his chest. “Oh—fuck.”

His thumb twitched, his fingers flexed on instinct, and without needing to be told, began circling your swollen clit, spreading the slickness he found. Your mouth fell open, hips canting, and he chased the movement instinctively, before sinking a finger inside.

“There,” you urged, eyes hooded. “Just like that. Good boy.”

You clenched around him, and the broken noise that left him was pure need. Like your words had melted something inside him. Like he’d been starving for that, for praise, for softness wrapped around hunger, for someone to see how hard he was trying to be good.

“Christ, you—you’re so tight,” Steve rumbled, voice breaking open.

His free hand gripped your waist, grounding himself as he worked the first finger deeper, then added a second thick digit, stretching you just enough to burn in that delicious way.

His fingers curled, searching until they found that aching, tender spot inside you, and pressed. You cried out softly, hips stuttering, thighs tensing where they cradled his waist. That sound made him move faster, made his breath stutter against your cheek. His thumb circled your clit now in slow, deliberate swirls, just firm enough to make you squirm.

You let your head fall back, lashes fluttering, and he took it like reward. The wet heat of his mouth found your throat once more. You tilted your head to bare more of it to him, clutching your fingers in his hair as he curled his fingers just so, finding that place inside you that made stars claw behind your eyes.

“You’re good,” you whispered, stroking his hair. “You’re so good, Steve.”

He whined.

Actually whined for you, pulled from the back of his throat, fingers still stroking and curling like he wanted to crawl inside and stay there. You were dripping for him, every thrust sending slick sounds into the air between your bodies, obscene and perfect.

“Such good hands,” you purred, tilting his face up to yours again. His eyes were dark now, unfocused and glazed with heat. “Made to please, weren’t you? I could let you touch me like this forever.”

Steve moaned wantonly. His cock twitched beneath you, thick and trapped beneath too many layers.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” you cooed. “Me, dripping all over your fingers, riding your hand, as you listen to how wet I get for you.”

He nodded his head eagerly, lips parted, breathless, “I want it—I want all of it. Want to make you feel good. Want to feel you fall apart on me.”

You’d never taken a man like this before. Never drawn it out. Never let yourself enjoy it, always too consumed with the end, with the soul, the devouring.

But oh, he made you greedy. For more than just the taste. For the whole experience of him. For the way his mouth trembled against your skin, the way his fingers moved in you, chasing your pleasure. He was so responsive. So good. Not crude in his want, not possessive or pushing, just offering.

He wasn’t chasing his own pleasure, he was chasing you. Your sounds, your body, your release. He wanted you to come. He wanted you to use him. He wanted to give himself away. You’d never felt anything like it. And it made you feral, twisting the craving inside you into something sweeter. Meaner. More desperate.

You wanted to sink your claws into his soul and hold it forever.

You kissed him again deeper this time, opened him like floodgates, and he poured into you without resistance. Your tongue pushed further into his mouth, wet and possessive, tasting him, claiming him. And he let you. He kissed you back with all the fervent, broken worship of a man on his knees before a God he didn’t understand but needed more than air.

He groaned into it, so sweet, so full of need it made your clit throb, your own need spiralling over.

You ground down on him, fucking yourself on his hand, and he watched you, devastated, awestruck, jaw slack and lips parted as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

His fingers were relentless now, stroking deep with every thrust with deliberate eager pressure, like he wanted to memorise you by feel. His thumb never left your clit, and the pads of his fingers were soaked, slick dripping from your pussy down to his wrist, glistening in the lamplight.

“Fuck, just like that, Steve,” you hissed, moaning softly as he grazed that spot inside you again. “So good for me. You want me to come on your fingers, sweet boy?”

Your walls fluttered again, the coil inside you tightening, threatening to snap. He felt it, that telltale clench of your cunt sucking greedily around his fingers, and his breath broke into something rough and urgent.

“I—fuck,” he rasped, barely more than breath. “Please.”

“What is it, Captain?” you teased, grinding down on his hand harder, and you felt the tension twist in your belly, drawing taut. “Want something?”

His lips were on your throat again, open and reverent, as if kissing the words into your skin. “Want to make you come,” he groaned. “Please. I want—need—to see you.”

“Good boy,” you whispered, the praise dripping from your tongue like honey, and God, the sound he made.

A low, shuddering whimper, muffled against your skin. His fingers twitched inside you, deeper, more desperate now, and finally, you came undone.

Your eyes rolled back, hips jerking, muscles clenching around his fingers as tumbled desperately over the edge. Steve held you close, one arm around your waist as you shuddered through it, letting your pleasure soak his hand, your thighs trembling around him.

You rode it out with your mouth parted, breath catching in your throat, your grip tight in his hair as you came with soft, wet sounds and possessive praise. When you finally stilled, he was trembling beneath you, mouth pressed to your sternum through cloth, his breath scorching.

He eased his hand from you with aching care, your arousal coating his fingers in shining streaks. His eyes lowered, and he brought those fingers to his mouth without hesitation. A light, pleased sound escaped him, and he licked the last of you from his knuckles like he was afraid to waste a drop.

You curled your fingers beneath his chin, tilting his face up. His lips were pink, kiss bitten, and his pupils were blown wide with need. Unable you resist, you leant down and kissed him, tasting yourself on his tongue.

“You want inside me, pretty boy?” you purred into his mouth. “You want me to let your cock feel my pussy now?”

He whimpered, nodding furiously, “God,” he breathed. “Please—yes.”

Oh, you were going to ruin him. He was so beautifully wrecked already and you weren’t nearly done with him. You dragged your thumb slowly across his lower lip. It trembled beneath your touch.

Your hands found the fastenings of his trousers and made short, deliberate work of them. His breath hitched when your fingers brushed against the damp front of his briefs, his cock hard and straining. You hummed softly, pleased.

“Oh,” you murmured, drawing the fabric down with slow, indulgent care, “look at you.”

His hips lifted obediently, letting you strip him, dragging the fabric down just enough to free him. And Christ, he was beautiful. Big, thick, flushed dark at the tip, veins like carved marble, twitching in the cold air. Your mouth watered.

You wrapped your hand around the base and heard his sharp inhale, followed by the whimper that he tried, and failed, to swallow. His thighs tensed beneath you, muscles drawn tight as rigging in a storm.

“Is this all for me?” you whispered, teasing your thumb over the weeping head. You felt the way his pulse stuttered under your fingers. “So hard, pretty boy. You’ve been aching this whole time, haven’t you?”

He choked on a sound, nodded. His fingers clenched on the arms of the chair. “I—yeah—please.”

“You did so well for me, going to reward you now,” you muttered against his skin. “My sweet Captain.”

He was panting now, almost shaking under the weight of it all - your praise, your hand, the sheer unbearable pleasure of being wanted. His head tipped back against the chair as you shifted forward, letting his shirt that you still wore fall from one shoulder.

“You love hearing that, don’t you?” you cooed, stroking him him in a steady rhythm, “Pretty boy. Sweet boy. My good, good Captain.”

He whined, nodding helplessly, hips grinding up into your hand. “Please. I need you—need to feel you—please, I’ll be good.”

The plea was so soft, so unlike the guttural demands of others, that it made your pussy clench around nothing, eager for the stretch of him. You released his cock then, and let it slap wetly against his stomach where his shirt had rumpled up. The sound was obscene, and the sight even better. Thick and flushed and leaking for you.

Rising slightly, you guided the head of his cock through your soaked folds until he was panting beneath you, his knuckles white in their grip now.

His hips jerked. “Oh God, please,” he panted.

“I know, Stevie,” you hushed. “I know you need it. You’ve been so, so good.”

You angled your hips and began to sink down.

He was so thick. You felt the stretch immediately, your walls hugging him inch by inch as you lowered yourself down with deliberate, excruciating grace. His head dropped, breath stuttering against your shoulder as his hands moved from the armrest to your waist. His mouth fell open in a silent moan as your heat enveloped him.

“Oh—oh God—,” Steve gritted out, utterly lost in the feel of your heat, so tight and wet around him.

You gasped, head falling back, your walls fluttering around him, drawing him in deeper. “So big,” you panted, “so fucking deep.”

Steve whimpered, barely holding on.

And when you finally sank fully down, taking him to the hilt, you stayed there, tight around him, letting your cunt throb with every desperate pulse of his cock, every ragged breath, every reverent moan like it was the tithe he owed you just for the privilege of being inside.

You leant in closer, your breasts brushing against his chest, your breath ghosting over his parted lips. His head tipped back automatically, offering himself up without thought. And when you dipped your head and licked a slow line up the sweat slicked tendon of his neck, you felt him melt.

“Feel how well you fit inside me, Captain?” you breathed against his throat. “Like you were made for this. Made for me.”

His groan was broken. Devotional. And you kissed him until breath became an afterthought.

He moaned into your mouth like it was pulled from somewhere deep, dragged out past the bones, his hands trembling as they slid up your back, holding you close like he was afraid you’d vanish.

You rolled your hips just right, grinding down in a way that made your clit drag against the base of him and his cock press into that spot inside you that made cry out. Steve gasped into your mouth, eyes fluttering, and you caught the rumble in his throat, deep and broken, the sound swallowed between your lips as he bucked once, unable to help it, his whole body shaking with need.

“That’s it, pretty boy,” you urged. “Just like that. You’re doing so well for me.”

You were so wet that every grind of your hips sounded slick and obscene, your arousal coating him, sliding down the thick base of his cock as your walls flexed around him again and again.

He moaned again, sharp and high in the back of his throat. “You’re so tight, and warm, and—God, please, please don’t stop.”

You arched against him, dragging your cunt up and back down again, digging your nails into his shoulders as your walls rippled around him. His breath caught at the feeling, eyes fluttering. He looked at you like you were a vision, like a holy thing. Something between worship and ruin.

He was so deep inside you, thick and hot, pulsing against your walls like he belonged nowhere else. Like he’d been made for the sole purpose of being taken by you, here, like this.

“Does it feel good, sweet Captain?” you murmured. “Being inside me like this?”

He nodded again, frantic, gasping softly. “Yes… God, yes, feels like—” His voice caught, another desperate moan pouring from his lips. You kissed his throat, let your teeth graze the delicious, pounding pulse beneath the skin.

“Feels like what?” You bit the words, punctuating each one with a roll of your hips, slow and cruel. “Tell me.”

His hips bucked once, before restraint tugged him back down into the chair. His jaw clenched. Sweat glistened at his hairline, in the hollow of his throat.

“Feels like I’m gonna lose myself,” he whispered, hoarse and half-drunk on you. “Like I’m not gonna come back.”

You smiled, slow and sweet and predatory, and rocked down harder. The soft, broken sound he made was punched straight from his lungs, and it made your walls flutter around him.

“You won’t,” you promised, lips brushing his. “Not all the way.”

He moaned once more, a sound dragged up from deep in his chest, and let his head fall back, scrunching his eyes closed.

His body trembled beneath yours. He was so strong, so beautiful, his thighs flexed under you, his arms holding you steady, but it was all yours now. He was all yours now.

He was so close already, on the very knife’s edge of surrender. The bright heat of his pleasure bloomed in the air around you like blood in water.

You felt it when he started break open. Not just his body - though that, too, was a marvel, the way his breath stuttered in your mouth, how his hands gripped your hips like he needed something to hold onto or be swept under. But no, it wasn’t that. Not entirely.

It was the moment his soul cracked open. The moment your lips grazed the hinge of his throat, and some part of him unraveled and let you in. You felt it. Not like slipping inside flesh, but like falling into light.

His stubborn soul was finally right at the surface, soft and shining.

You looked down at him then, really looked, and it was still there, that same maddening goodness that hadn’t dulled no matter how much you’d tried to seduce it away. Even now, right on the edge of release, his heart spilled quietly through his eyes, like you were something to be adored.

Oh, and you could taste it. That sweet core of him, lit golden and trembling and so open now, almost yours, bleeding into your skin, leaking through his tongue, his cock, his fingers.

It wasn’t purity, nor innocence; he’d seen too much for that. But a light. A weightless light that clung to his soul even as his body trembled and gave under yours. Every time your cunt gripped him, every slow press of your hips, you could taste it more - that glowing centre of him, this honest, golden want.

It poured to the surface, aching and alive and so human, braided with grief and hope and everything he’d held together with trembling hands. And you, who had tasted countless, who had consumed kings and sailors and men who begged you for death, found yourself still.

And starving. You could take it. It would be delicious. All that goodness, all that impossible light, collapsing into you like a sun drowned beneath your skin. You could drink him down in a single breath and let the sea carry his bones into myth.

But you didn’t. Because for the first time, you didn’t want to end a soul. You wanted to own it.

You wanted to feel that light flicker against your ribs for the rest of eternity. You wanted to trap that impossible warmth beneath your skin and keep it. To bury it in your darkness and keep it safe, selfish and sacred. To make his goodness yours, until the world rotted, and the sea dried, and the lighthouse finally blinked and died.

You rolled your hips with exquisite pressure, and he shuddered.

“You wanna drown in this pussy, pretty boy?” you murmured, voice coated with your need. “Wanna sink so deep inside me you forget which way is up? Wanna be lost in me forever?”

“Yes,” he begged, shameless and ragged, and he dropped his forehead to your shoulder, teeth biting down gently against the slope of it. “Please—let me—please, I want to drown in you, I want to—,” but the sentence never ended. It bled into another moan, this one muffled against your skin,

“Mmm,” you hummed. “You wanna come while I’m milking your cock, while my sweet little cunt’s got you locked down so tight you’ll never get free?”

He whimpered, loud, desperate, and you clenched around him, watching his eyes roll back, as fingers clawed at your hips - just trying to hold on as you coaxed his pleasure out like a riptide. You were soaking him now, your pussy a hot, tight sheath around his cock, pulling him in, dragging him under.

“My pretty Captain. Mine.” You reaped, voice low and rough with hunger as your teeth grazed his throat. “Say it. Let me keep you.”

“’m yours, please, I want to be—I am—,” he babbled, utterly gone for you, “just let me feel you, want to be yours, forever—please.”

A gasped moan tore free from your lungs at his vow, low and wretched, punched straight from the pit of your hunger. You clamped around him again and he sobbed, just once, pulled from his throat, cracked and quiet.

Your body bucked, hips stuttering above him as your cunt fluttered, aching, coiling tight around the promise of another release. It was too much, the way he said it, so broken and sincere. He gave it freely, that vow, not knowing the shape of the thing he’d handed you.

Forever.

“Good boy,” you praised, riding him a little faster now, the sounds wet and obscene, your slick soaking his cock and thighs. “I’ll be so good to you.”

He whined in answer, cock throbbing inside you. It was twitching with every roll of your body, and still he held back, held on, waiting for you, needing your permission to fall apart.

You curled forward over him, hands bracing on his shoulders, and let yourself grind down hard, chasing that high with a needy gasp. The chair groaned beneath you both, wood whining like it knew something sacred was being defiled.

“Please” he choked, voice breaking. “Please, let me, please—I need—”

The desperation in his voice pulled another high pitched moan from your chest. His soul trembled against the surface, pressed so close it was blinding. His hands shook where they held you, knuckles pale, and you could feel the tension building just beneath his skin.

You leant forward, kissed the corner of his mouth with a gentleness that made him tremble, and whispered, “Come for me, Stevie. Let me have it.”

He broke as soon as the words left your mouth.

He spilled into you with a gasp like a man drowning, clinging tight to your waist as if your body might anchor him against the tide of ecstasy. His whole frame shuddered beneath you, cock pulsing deep inside your cunt as you tightened around him, milking him, letting his pleasure flood you.

His groan was long and helpless, cracked open at the edges, as you followed him over the edge. Your orgasm tore through you like a storm cracking open the sea, flooding every hollow inside you with heat.

Your lips found his and you sucked at his mouth, hungry, greedy, moaning against him like you meant to drink him in. And oh, how he tasted.

His soul, sweet as sunlit water, ached with grief and hope and everything you’d never known in all your time beneath the waves. You moaned against his mouth, helpless, delirious, hips still twitching as the aftershocks pulsed through you. It would’ve been so easy to take his light.

But you resisted. You wanted all of him.

Instead, you opened yourself, freeing the cold, bottomless hollow where a soul should have lived. It spread wide with hunger, aching with want, and you let the black thread of your essence slip into him through the kiss.

It slithered down his mouth, his throat, his ribs before sinking into his chest, coiling tight and possessive around his light. Outside, the lighthouse pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.

Steve gasped softly at the intrusion, but he didn’t pull away. If anything, he opened further, welcoming. And you, starving, drew the smallest thread of gold back with you. Just a sliver. Just enough to live in you.

You kissed him through it, breath panting and broken, as you marked him from the inside out. As your dark thread wrapped around his light like a lover’s arms. He whimpered into your mouth, dazed and trembling, still sheathed inside your body, still pulsing softly.

He was yours now, forever.

Still panting beneath you, Steve’s breath caught somewhere between his lungs and his throat. The light in his eyes flickered like a candle too close to the wind, barely holding. And all of it for you.

You dragged your hands down the flushed, trembling lines of his chest through his shirt, damp with sweat. You could feel his cock softening inside you, the last of his release spilling from where your bodies joined, seeping down your thighs like a claim. Your claim.

Your cunt, soaked and twitching with the last vestiges of climax, throbbed gently around him, reluctant to let go.

“Good boy,” you whispered, possessive and low, the praise more spell than sound. Your fingers traced his jaw, and he leant into your touch. “You did so well for me, my pretty Captain. Took me so well. Gave me everything.”

He made a small, broken sound at that, something between a whimper and a sigh. His eyes fluttered closed for a moment, lips parted, still pink and swollen from your kisses, and the light in his chest pulsed with the echo of you inside it.

You watched him. The way his lashes trembled. The slow, stuttering drag of his breath. He looked spent, like a man who had finally laid down his armour.

Leaning down, you brushed your lips across his temple, a whisper ghosting soft against his skin. “Take me to bed, Stevie.”

His eyes found yours, barely. Dazed and shining and so full of you. He nodded, wordless at first, like he’d forgotten language.

Then, soft and thick with worship, “You’re perfect.”

He shifted slowly, carefully, and you lifted yourself from him, and his cock slipped from you with a wet sound. He gasped at the sensation, already aching at the loss of your warmth. You watched, pleased and possessive, at how his flushed length twitched against his thigh, glistening with your slick and his seed.

He tucked himself away with trembling fingers, still panting, eyes on you the whole time like you might vanish if he looked away.

And then he gathered you into his arms like you weighed nothing. That strength of his, which he’d kept so leashed before, curled beneath you and lifted you with ease.

“You feel like heaven,” he muttered, more breath than word, tucking you close as he stood. His lips brushed your temple as he carried you the few steps to the bed. “Like something I’ve been waiting for and didn’t even know I needed.”

The words stirred something low and dark in your belly. Not lust, not anymore. Something worse. A kind of longing so deep it felt like a wound.

You curled into his chest as he settled you down, his body a broad, sturdy shield at your back as his warmth enveloped you. One strong arm banded around your waist, and a leg tangled with yours. You could feel the tender touch of his other hand along your thighs, your hips, your waist.

He tucked you in further against him, fitting himself round your body protectively. His mouth nuzzled the curve of your shoulder, still murmuring soft nothings against your skin. How soft you were. How sweet. How perfect.

Fools’ words, the lot of them.

Yet you stayed silent and soaked up his worship like something that deserved it. It was a selfish, terrible greed that belonged to dragons coiled around their golden hoards.

But you’d never had this before. There had never been after. Never any body left warm beside you. Never breath, never praise, never touch that lasted longer than the moment before their heart stopped.

And if your heart hadn’t rotted away long ago, maybe you would’ve felt guilt, or shame, or grief for what you took. But you just felt warm.

Like something ancient and wicked curled deep in your chest had finally opened one greedy eye and stretched, purring. You felt his breath against your skin and wanted more of it. His arm draped over your waist and you wanted it tighter. You wanted his pulse. His praise. His bones. You wanted to burrow inside the cradle of his ribs and make a home there.

You shifted in his arms slightly, twisting to face him, watching how his lashes fluttered against his cheek as sleep tried to claim him. You brushed your thumb across his bottom lip, and he sighed softly, leaning into your touch like a man starved.

The air felt heavy, like something was watching. Perhaps the lighthouse. Perhaps the sea. Perhaps something older still.

“Sleep, my good Captain, let the waves take you,” you whispered, voice low and honey sweet, your thumb still stroking the soft swell of his lip. “Let them rock you down beneath. I’ll protect you.”

His lashes fluttered once, twice, before they stilled, his breath deepening, chest rising and falling against yours in a slow, steady rhythm. The tension in his brow eased. One of his hands twitched where it rested against your hip, then stilled too.

Through the porthole, the lighthouse continued its vigil, pale light sweeping across his peaceful face, claiming him. You watched the last of his awareness slip under, watched the final thread of resistance slacken.

“Good boy,” you murmured, just above a breath, lips at the shell of his ear. “So easy now. So soft. So mine.”

And Steve, obedient even in sleep, exhaled like he’d heard you. As though he belonged to you even in his dreams.

⋆˙˳𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃˙˳⋆

Steve woke to screaming.

Screaming and blood in his mouth and the taste of iron in the air. The sea cradled the lower half of his body like it meant to drag him down. A dark, unfeeling mass that offered nothing and took everything. His upper half clung to a rock; he could feel the sharp bite of barnacle-slick stone tearing at his uniform.

The fog hung thicker than ever. Sight was smothered to mere metres. But the rest of Steve’s senses still forced a dreadful vision upon him. One of blood, and thrashing, and splintering wood, and wretched cries.

The Nomad was dead.

Steve’s voice cracked through the air, rough and broken, calling the names of his men. But he was met only with their screams.

The lighthouse now loomed closer than ever. No longer a silhouette in mist, but a vast black monolith. So close Steve could almost reach out and touch its slick, decaying stone if he had the strength. The light still turned at its crown, pale and pulsing, the same ghostly sweep, slow and mechanical, like the breath of some giant godless lung.

And with each pass, it cut through the fog to reveal a piece of hell. And all Steve could do was watch.

First, it swept across Stark, battered and bloodied, lungs snatching for air as he clung to a piece of driftwood. His mouth screamed, but no sound carried. Then the beam passed. And he was swallowed by the fog.

When the light turned round again, there were bodies, two - no, three - floating limp in the water.

Panic surged up Steve’s spine, and a sickening weight curled around his ribs. His body ached, scraped and bruised, and yet it felt distant, as if it belonged to someone else entirely.

Movement stirred beneath him.

Not the tide. Not driftwood. Something darker. Long and glistening like a leviathan’s tongue. Sleek, fast, and far too silent.

Then the light found two more, Rumlow and Rollins, locked together in a desperate grip over the same piece of wreckage. The surface trembled. The sea quivered like something alive. Then Rollins was snatched beneath the black with a strangled scream. A spray of red bloomed across the water as his replacement.

The light passed. Gone.

Steve’s breath caught, blinking hard, breath heaving shallow and fast. It had been a violence so swift his mind lagged behind what his eyes had already seen.

He tried to move, pushed against the stone, but his limbs were molasses, heavy and wrong. His hands slipped on the rock. His heartbeat was too loud in his ears. Or maybe that was more screaming. Distant and high, warbling like a gull, but human. Definitely human.

His vision pulsed with the rhythm of the lighthouse. Flash, horror, then dark. Flash, another name he knew, torn from life mid-scream, then dark.

The fog concealed it all again the moment the light moved on. There was no time to process, only to see and lose. See and lose. Another soul torn from the sea like meat. Each glimpse a needle under the fingernails. Each moment of darkness a breath that could be his last.

Then the next sweep of light revealed something different.

Just above the surface, almost human-like in shape, shoulders just breaching the waterline, hair trailing behind like a veil spun from ink. But it moved like no human.

Steve squinted, chest tightening, bracing himself.

The creature plunged through the sea with a predatory grace. Easy and purposeful. Locked on another target. The man splashed in desperation, arms flailing, mouth sputtering, perhaps to cry out a prayer or plea. But then the creature cooed at him, soft and delicate.

He leant towards the silhouette, and its lips brushed his in a mockery of a kiss. And then it bit. Teeth sank into his mouth and ripped. The blood pulsed from him in thick, arterial sprays. The ocean drank it greedily.

He thrashed once, twice, then the body jerked backward like a puppet with its strings cut, arms splayed wide, the neck bent back too far. A gurgle escaped what was left of his face before the sea swallowed him whole. The light swung away, unremorseful.

Steve choked. A stuttering gasp ripped from his lungs. Salt filled his nose and throat, and the taste of iron doubled, trebled, nausea twisting in his gut. His heart punched against his ribs, mouth open, drawing sharp lungfuls of air as bile rose high and sour in his throat.

But it was silent now. The screams had stopped. And that felt worse.

The light swung back again, over the creature. A suggestion of form mostly submerged, half-made by the dark. And it was moving towards him.

Then the fog parted, and Steve’s heart stopped. It was you.

A creature of sea and bone and abyss. A gorgeous horror. Your skin pale and slick with saltwater sheen and blood, glistening across your bare chest, streaking down your chin, your collarbones, and your breasts like tears of ruin. Mouth as red as a split pomegranate, lips wet with someone else’s end, the sharp white of your teeth just visible behind the plush curve of your smile.

Below the surface, he made out the movement of dark, sinuous muscle, flexing slow with each tilt of your hips beneath the waterline. The tail was as thick as his chest, scaled and ridged with spines. The water quivered around it like the sea itself deferred to you. You truly were a marvel of monstrous design.

Your eyes met his, catching the faint beam of the lighthouse like polished obsidian. But the hunger in them sharpened into something possessive as they trailed over him.

He should have recoiled. Should have pushed back, screamed, fought. Should have begged whatever tattered holy thing he had left to shield his soul from what now stood before him.

But he didn’t. Couldn’t. Something in him refused.

You were beautiful. Not soft, nor safe. No. There was no prettiness in your bloodied grace, no kindness in the divine geometry of your face. You were beautiful the way shipwrecks are beautiful - glittering ruin, strewn with bones and treasure.

And yet, your face was serene, even bared in your monstrous glory. A beauty so terrible it demanded reverence. The kind of beauty men drowned for. Death made flesh.

The moment your fingers brushed his cheek, turning him to you, still wet and stained with another man’s blood, something inside Steve settled.

He let out a breath like something in him had loosened. Like the storm in his chest had found its eye. The uneven, panic struck jerks of his breath subsided. His ribs stopped straining like they meant to crack open. Instead, warmth spread through his spine.

You leant in close, so close the tips of your fangs almost brushed his cheek.

“There you are, my sweet thing,” you murmured, voice like a lullaby, “Still here. Still mine.”

Your hand moved from his cheek to his throat, thumb brushing where his pulse thundered. His head tilted toward the touch like it was instinct.

“You did so well. My brave Captain,” you crooned, and something inside him cracked. His eyes fluttered, breath catching not with fear but pleasure. “Held on so tight. Watched so much. Poor, brave boy.”

Steve moaned.

A soft, broken thing, barely audible, as his body sagged against the rock, strength bleeding out of him. But he didn’t care. He was watching you like you were the last thing that made sense in the world.

You pressed Steve back, gently, until his spine met the cold stone and your breasts brushed his chest, blood-slick skin against his soaked uniform. He didn’t resist, and his hands found their home at your hips, fingertips gently brushing your scales.

“Let go now,” you purred. “It’s done. They’re gone. You’re safe. You’re mine.”

You kissed him, lips still blood-warm, tongue sweeping through his mouth - yours now. He breathed into it, slipping past fear, past thought, and into the dark your touched summoned, fastening to you with the certainty of something claimed.

⋆˙˳𓂃𓂃𓊝𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂁𓂃˙˳⋆

They found him adrift in the fog, clinging to driftwood long since worn smooth by salt and time.

His body was half in the water, half out, slack with exhaustion, skin pale and blooming with bruises. The uniform that once marked him a captain had frayed to shreds, threads of navy and gold dissolving into the sea.

They hauled him aboard with ropes and careful hands.

He told them his name was Steve Rogers. That he had captained a ship - “The Nomad, yes, that’s right,” - and that it had gone down in uncharted waters after a storm.

His voice was quiet, ragged from salt and sea, but certain. His gaze steady, even kind. He smiled when they offered him a blanket. Thanked them with pale lips and soft words that didn’t quite match the bruising on his throat or the hollowness in his eyes.

They mentioned the fog, how it had swallowed the stars, that it had eaten their charts alive. Steve nodded, “Yes, it comes and goes around here.”

And when one of them spoke, hesitant and anxious, of the lighthouse they could just make out through the shifting grey, its pale eye pulsing in slow, even breaths, Steve’s smile deepened.

“You should go there,” he spoke softly, but still edged with that captain’s authority that made men listen. “If you’re looking for safe waters. It’s the only thing still standing.”

They murmured amongst themselves, nodded, then adjusted the sails.

The fog began to close in.

Steve hummed as they turned the bow. A low, tuneless thing, carried off in snatches of wind. His eyes never left the horizon, fixed on the slow, mournful glow of the tower in the mist. His body was still, but his expression remained gentle.

“Soon, my love,” he breathed. “Soon you’ll feast again.”

thanks for reading <3 this is like the longest thing i’ve ever written (even more than my dissertation, which feels crazy to say!), and i’m kind proud of it, so hopefully you enjoyed it! if you did please like & especially reblog/comment, as i would be super grateful for feedback!

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Drenchedׅ Opulent Deity𖥔 ۫⋄ 𓍯