summary ! it'd been five months since you'd talked to john. five months. but when your car breaks down in the middle of the night, he's there for you, forcing you both to confront your feelings.
warnings ! slight angst. 18+ mdni. smut. unprotected sex. swearing. fluff if you squint. john lowkey has a breeding kink lol
wc ! 2.4k
author's note ! i need him so bad chat. so bad. not proof-read.
to be added to my taglist.
The first time your car decided to give out, you went where your parents had told you to. Some random auto-shop far too expensive for most people.
And it worked. For a little.
Three days later, your car broke down on the side of the road. It was close to midnight and you were sure as hell you were going to get murdered. So, you called Hannah to come get you. You were halfway through a conversation when she reminded you she had no car.
"Fuck, Hannah, what am I gonna do?" you grumbled, running a hand over your face.
"No worries. Logan can come get you, and he can fix your car."
You sucked in a breath. John Logan. The name was too familiar. The smell of his cologne still lingered in the air at times when you thought too hard. The feel of him against you, his hands on you, his lips on you.
You tried to shake the thought away. It was one hookup five months ago. Granted, it was also the last time you had a conversation with him for your own sanity, but still.
"Is there anyone else?"
Like Hannah knew you were going to say that, she simply replied, "Nope." And hung up.
You cursed, shoving your phone in your pocket and waited. You knew he'd come. He's just that type of guy. Your doors were locked and you were half-tempted to just start walking home if it weren't for your anxiety.
Ten minutes after you sent your location to Hannah, headlights appeared in your rearview, and a truck slowed down, pulling up behind you. You sighed, sucking in a breath and unlocking your doors, getting out.
Logan stepped out, sweatpants hanging low and shirt clearly just thrown on. Now, you felt a little bad. He was clearly sleeping before this. He walked over to you, the weight on your chest getting heavier as he came more into view.
You'd seen him around, sure, but you hadn't looked. Not until now. His stubble had grown out more, his hair a little longer. He looked more tired than usual, and it didn't seem to be just because of you waking him up at almost midnight.
Still, he smirked, giving no indication that he was upset, and leaned against your car, tapping the hood. "Car trouble?"
You rolled your eyes, although there wasn't much heat in it. "Obviously."
A chuckle. "Well, no way in hell can I fix it tonight. Grab your stuff, let's go."
You wanted to argue. Wanted to get angry that he was going to leave your car on the side of the road for anyone to have, but you didn't. Because logically, you knew he was right. It was too dark, too late, and there wasn't anything around.
He didn't have a shop full of tools and he wasn't superman.
Still, the thought of leaving your car behind sucked.
Logan noticed. "I'll have it towed to my family shop. No worries."
That, unfortunately, made you feel a little better. With a small nod, you grabbed everything important out of your car. The legal documents, your wallet and charger, and your duffle bag you had from spending the night at Allie and Hannah's last night.
You locked the car and shoved your keys in your pocket, following Logan to his truck. The walk was silent, and it was even more silent when you got in the vehicle. Logan called a tow truck, before he put the truck in drive and headed down the road.
For a moment, it was complete silence aside from the hum of his truck. Then...
"You look nice," he said simply. Your eyes flicked over to him for a second, seeing him looking between you and the road, before you glanced away. "Different, a little. Nice haircut."
You swallowed. "Thanks."
The awkwardness was killing you. Mostly because it was clearly only awkward to you. He seemed fine. Like the five months in between his dick in you and now didn't affect him at all. Why would it? It was just a hookup.
He did plenty of that.
You, however, didn't. And you'd been wondering why you did it with him ever since it happened.
"You need a haircut."
Logan laughed at that, low and soft and it went right to your stomach. You were fucked. You had to get out of this truck. "Yeah, I know."
The sound of the blinker pulled your focus, and you realized then that he wasn't heading to your apartment. Duh. Why would he? He had no idea where you lived.
"My apartment is the other way," you said.
"Good thing we're not going there."
The answer was simple enough. Full of confidence and certainty. But it made you spiral internally. Enough so that you asked, "Why?"
"It's almost midnight and you live on the other side of town. Hannah's at the house anyway."
"How do you know that?"
Your eyes met his. He smirked slightly, before looking back at the road. He didn't answer. You didn't like it.
You swallowed, eyes watching out the window as he drove. But there were things unspoken, things you wanted to scream out and things you never wanted to say at all.
Soon, he pulled up to the house, parking the truck and turning it off. He made no move to get out. Neither did you.
"Why'd you disappear?"
The question came unexpectedly. Soft and calm, but full of something you couldn't place. It made your heart race and your stomach drop. You didn't look at him. "Why does it matter?" you replied.
It wasn't meant to be a jab or a comeback, just a simple question, but it hit like one anyway. You felt the tension in the air the second you said it, and you had to swallow a lump that formed in your throat.
Silence. Silence so quiet it might've killed you if you let it.
"It was just a question," he finally said, voice barely above a whisper.
"So was mine."
"I asked first."
"We're not in middle school."
You finally looked at him, a small smile on his face from your words. You gave in quickly. "Because it was weird."
"What was?" He had genuine curiosity in his eyes.
"I don't...I'm not the type of girl who just hooks up with someone."
"I know."
Simple. Certain. It took your breath away and made a million questions run through your head.
"If you know, then—"
"You think I had sex with you as a one-off?" There was no defense in his voice, no anger. Maybe a little hurt, but mostly just genuine curiosity. Like the idea of it was other worldly.
You swallowed. "Well...yeah."
A small, humorless chuckle. "So, that's what you think of me, then?" A genuine question laced with something you couldn't place. Something that hit your chest and made your ribs crack under it.
"It's not a bad thing, Logan."
"Sounds like it."
You sighed. Questions still lingered. "So why did you have sex with me?"
"Because I wanted to." Simple enough, but it wasn't nearly enough to satisfy. He knew that. "Because I thought that it was clear just how much I wanted you when it happened. I guess things should've been clarified."
Your head spun, words bouncing around until you landed on one conclusion. "Wait." A pause, your eyes locked. "You wanted to go out with me?"
"No." Another pause. "I wanted you to be mine."
The air was thick. Heavy with tension of a different kind.
"Still do, somehow."
You swallowed, your eyes frantically searching his as if his brown depths would hold all the answers. "You do?"
"Kind of pathetic, right?" A humorless chuckle.
You shook your head. "No," you whispered.
Something about it solved the questions lingering between you two. His eyes flickered down to your lips, before he swallowed. "We should go inside."
A beat. "Yeah."
The doors opened as you two got out, you grabbing your stuff. You silently headed inside, and by the time you did, everyone was asleep or in their rooms doing something. You sucked in a breath, but didn't even get to head to the couch.
"My bed's big enough for two," he said simply, heading up the stairs. You paused for a moment, before following him up the stairs and into his room.
You dropped all your stuff by his door, looking around. The room was exactly the same as it was the last time you were in it. That made everything feel heavier. Logan went to his dresser, pulling out a shirt.
"Here."
He held it out. Your fingers brushed as you took it. "Thanks."
He nodded, yanking his shirt off and tossing it on his dresser. You took in a shaky breath, closing your eyes. You slowly unbuttoned your jeans, slipping them down your legs and then tossing them on your duffle bag next to your shoes. Your shirt came next, then your bra.
Then you were in Logan's shirt, the consuming smell of him making you a little dizzy. Silently, you walked over to his bed, climbing in next to him.
"I'm sorry." The words hung heavy in the air, but you needed to say them. "For disappearing. I got scared."
"I know."
You sighed, looking at him. His lamp light cast a small glow over his face, and he looked even more handsome than usual like this. "I wanted you too."
"Yeah?"
You nodded. "Still do."
A small smile appeared on his face, his hand sliding over your waist, pressing into the small of your back and pulling you closer. "Yeah?" he repeated.
You smiled softly. "Pathetic, huh?"
He shook his head as he leaned in. "No."
Then he was kissing you. Soft and sure and full of everything you'd been missing since that night. But it didn't stay that way for long. Soon, his tongue was in your mouth and he was pulling you so close that you could feel the hard planes of his body.
You moaned softly into the kiss, and that's all it took for him. He was rolling over, pulling you on him, your legs straddling his hips as you made out. You could feel him hard and aching under you already, and it did bad things to your core.
He groaned, pulling back, breath heavy. "Fuck, I'm out of condoms."
For all of two seconds, the world stopped, but then you were kissing him again, deeper this time. "I'm on birth control."
He groaned into the kiss, flipping your bodies so he was on top, your legs wrapping around his waist. "Can't say things like that to me," he murmured into your lips.
You giggled, gasping as he pressed his hips into yours. "Why not?"
"Makes me wanna fuckin' try my luck."
You moaned, his lips kissing down to your neck. You sucked in a breath, whining softly as he sucked on the sensitive skin, his hips rolling into yours.
"John," you whined softly, tugging at his hair.
He all but growled into your skin, pulling back. "That desperate, huh?"
There was no embarrassment right now. "Been thinking about you for five months. So, yeah."
He smirked, not bothering with his shirt on you and going straight for your panties, yanking them down in one swift motion.
"Tell me what you want, pretty girl."
There was no hesitation. "You. Fuck me."
His hands gripped your thighs, massaging them as he spread your legs. "Ask nicely."
You wanted to wipe the smirk off his face for all of two seconds before his thumb was pressing against your throbbing clit, rubbing slow circles.
You moaned softly, back arching. "Please," you whined.
"Please what?"
"Please fuck me."
He hummed, rubbing his thumb up and down your slit, making you crazy with lust. His other hand worked his sweatpants until he was bare in front of you and all you wanted in that moment was his cock inside of you.
"Are you sure? There's absolutely zero promise of me pulling out," he said seriously, his thumb stopping its movement on your pussy.
You nodded. "I'm sure."
He nodded back, leaning down and kissing you, replacing his thumb with his cock, rubbing the tip up and down your slit, collecting your slick as you both moaned. "Been thinking 'bout this pussy every day for five months," he groaned into your lips, the tip of his cock catching on your entrance with each pass.
You whimpered, pulling him closer by his hair, one hand grasping his back as best you could. His cock slowly pushed into you, not stopping until your legs were shaking slightly from the pressure of him being completely inside of you.
"Fuck, feels so fuckin' good," he grumbled deeply, teeth nipping at your jaw.
He started moving, slowly at first. Deep thrusts that sent your nails raking down his back and your eyes rolling back slightly as your mouth fell open in silent cries. His lips never stopped working your skin, marking everywhere he could get to and making sure everyone knew you were his.
"Oh, fuck," you cried out softly, his thrusts getting faster and deeper as he continued.
"Yeah? Feel good, pretty?" You nodded frantically, nails digging into his back as he fucked you. He chuckled. "Use your words."
"Y-yes, oh, fuck."
He grabbed your leg, hiking it up over his shoulder and deepening the angle so good you let out a louder moan than intended. "There ya go. Let me hear you."
His hips never slowed, never stopped. He was hitting that spot in you so deep and with every thrust. You were clenching around him every time he did it, and he moaned every single time. "Fuck, you're mine now, huh?"
You moaned in response, but it wasn't enough for him. He pulled his head back, looking at you. "Look at me, pretty girl. Tell me you're mine."
Your eyes fluttered open slowly, half-lidded and full of pleasure as you stared at him, face contorting in pleasure as he continued hitting that spot deep inside you. "Fuck, I'm yours. So yours."
He groaned, leaning in and kissing you messily, all teeth and tongue as his thrusts got harder. Not by much, but enough to make your toes curl. "Oh, fuck- John..." you whimpered.
"I know. I can feel this pretty pussy squeezing me. I've got you. Let go for me."
You moaned, nails surely leaving red marks in their wake as your orgasm crashed over you, making your head dizzy and your thighs shake as your pussy pulsed.
He kept fucking you through it, thrusting deep in you and prolonging your pleasure until you were sure you were going to lose all ability to function.
"Fuck, fuck," he groaned, cock twitching in you as he got closer.
Your legs locked around him, keeping him inside of you and giving him no chance of pulling out. That did it for him. One, two, three more deep thrusts and he was spilling in you, causing both of you to moan as his head dug into your shoulder, his hips stuttering.
He fucked you through his orgasm slowly, before coming to a stop, panting. Your breathing was heavy as you laid there, arms and legs still wrapped around him, holding him close.
Your hand came up, carding through his hair as you kissed his temple. "Fuck, that was amazing," you whispered.
He smiled into your skin, lazy and satisfied as he nodded. "Mmm, you have no fuckin' clue, baby."
Lately, you’ve been thinking about having a baby.
Or: the fertility clinic au
Part 1
masterlist
It must be the mother of all quarter-life crises for you to be as torn up about this as you are.
(‘Mother of all’—what an apt phrase for a time like this.)
Two of your friends have babies and suddenly it’s all you can think about. Chubby cheeks and wrinkly fingers; diaper bags stuffed to the brim and shrill baby screams piercing through the house.
You try to help them out as best you can in those first few months, coming over with dinner wrapped in foil and snacks in Tupperware for the exhausted parents, offering to help run errands or tidy up the place while they try to catch up on sleep. The picture perfect friend.
You never thought it’d hit you like this until it does. Baby fever à la max. Even the word ‘fever’ undersells it—the feeling that overtakes you is like a blazing inferno, burning away every other want or desire apart from the one currently tearing you asunder.
It’s all you can think about from that point on. Babies, babies, babies. The milky smell of their heads, the flexible cartilage of their noses, their pudgy, wrinkly yawns and soft sighs. You make excuses to visit, offering to babysit whenever they look like they could use a night out, your agenda so transparent that anyone with eyes could see it.
All you can think when you look at them is that your life has been looking a lot like a house of cards these days: all style and no substance.
They get in your head, alright. That ominous they; not a specific person or group, just a nebulous, widespread opinion permeating far too many corners of your world. All that fearmongering about babymaking windows and that talk of rapidly vanishing fecundity—your eyes nearly bulge out of your head when you come across a TikTok of a thirty-six year old calling her eggs geriatric—and by the end of it, you swear you can hear your biological clock booming between your ears, one swinging gong after another.
You’re able to keep the beast at bay for a bit by tricking yourself into thinking that it’s just in your head. Just one of those things. You’re getting older—of course at some point you’d start to worry about the things you never got a chance to do. FOMO. Regrets blooming into full-blown crises. It’s only natural that it would start to get to you eventually.
Trying to convince yourself of that is not enough to shake the damn urgency from your blood though. You’re like a dog with a bone, too many late nights spent scrolling through parenting forums and conception tips, neither of which are of much use to you as a childless, partnerless person not currently trying for a baby. What does it matter to you if smoking reduces your chances of getting pregnant by forty percent? You don’t even smoke.
You might actually want to have a baby though. Mindblowing after all this time, to think that maybe it wasn’t just a fleeting fancy.
Mindblowing, then abruptly terrifying.
Your present situation is a bit dire. It’s been several years since you last had a partner, none you ever would’ve ever considered having a baby with. Absurd—worse than absurd even. And despite everything, despite the self-imposed countdown ticking away in your head and the stress causing your spine to curl in a half-inch more every single day, you are, thankfully, not desperate enough to reach out to any of them.
So you try. For a short period of time, you make a real, concerted effort to find a partner, going on three dates in a week, each more appalling than the last. It’s the last one that breaks you, your date not only unbearably dismissive to the waitstaff but also entirely uninterested in discussing anything about your life, completely preoccupied with recounting the minutiae of his own life story.
A swing and a miss. You made an effort at least, put yourself out there. Tried to do things the old-fashioned way.
It’s the twenty-first century though, for goodness’ sakes; there are more ways to start a family than just the tried-and-true method.
And that’s how you wind up here, at a fertility clinic on a Tuesday afternoon, PTO plugged into your work calendar with a secretive little “Appointment” reason left for being out of office. It’s no office-busybody’s business though. They don’t need to know about the increasingly debilitating need to have a baby that’s been overtaking you these past few months.
It would clear a lot of things up, but it still isn’t anyone’s business.
The waiting room is a simple, unadorned roost of a room, the walls lined with plastic eggshell-like chairs for all the eggs soon to be hatched. An oddly sterile space for the purpose it serves. It would be a little uncomfortable if it weren’t like every other waiting room in existence, minus any snivelling sick people.
There are other people besides you. Or rather, there were people. People that have already come and gone, not quite so anxious as to turn up an hour early for their two o’clock appointment, their stomachs grumbling from skipping lunch.
And so after the third couple goes in for their appointment with the specialist, you’re left on your own for a bit until a new person walks in.
A man this time, all by his lonesome.
And boy is he a specimen so fine that you can’t help but hope that he’s come to make a deposit. If they let you pick your donor based on build and gait alone, you think you’d have your man right here. You can barely drag your eyes away from him, glued to the rounded muscle of his back, gliding over the curve of his shoulders and up the thick of his neck.
After a brief conversation with the receptionist to check in, he drums his fingers across the counter and takes a seat on one of the little egg chairs along the wall facing yours.
Where he then proceeds to lift his head and lock eyes with you.
In retrospect, you wish you could describe it as a magical moment, but in reality, you just freeze in place, embarrassed at being caught staring. He’s a decently handsome enough man to be good fodder for any later self-care. Square-jawed and bearded.
Good hairline for his age, which you don’t want to take a crack at guessing, but if you had to, it would have to be somewhere around his mid-forties. Maybe late. But it touches him in just the right way, evident in the lines on his forehead and the pull of the skin around his eyes, his beard just ever so slightly flecked with the barest hints of grey.
The writing on the threadbare shirt he has on, almost hidden beneath the plaid shirt layered over it, is barely legible after countless washes. You can almost see straight through it. If you pinched the fabric between your fingers, you think your nails would poke right through. You could rip it right off him, get a better look at the dense pecs that you can just barely make out through his shirt.
You swallow, that thought catching you off guard.
Despite your own embarrassment, his gaze holds steady. Some people aren’t born with shame as a built-in foghorn. Some people look out into the world and genuinely believe it is theirs to conquer, raised on a diet of self-confidence and boldness, free-range audacity.
He’s bold enough, in fact, to rise to his feet and cross to the other side of the waiting room, taking a seat right beside you. He sits down beside you like you're old friends, like there's nothing strange about a man sitting beside a veritable stranger in a completely empty room.
It’s such a bold move that you don’t even know what to say at first, head turned towards him in the chair next to you now with some dumb expression on your face, gobsmacked.
“Can I help you?” you hear yourself ask, years of socialization coming to the rescue. Thank god the gears start turning in your head after that brief second of bewilderment.
“Not at all.” And what a voice too, as if his looks weren’t enough. All unintentional deep-chested purr, leonine English rumbling out of the depths of him, Northern accent to top it off. “Just thought I might introduce myself. Be polite, seeing as how we’re both here for the same reason.”
Unless he ran ahead of a wife still on her way up the elevator, you don’t think that’s the case. You glance around him just to double check the door. “Are we?”
“Maybe a pick-up instead of a drop-off in your case,” he concedes, a droll little note curled up in his voice. “But that’s not so different when the end result’s the same.”
You swallow and force an awkward smile, ignoring the way your heart speeds up. “Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, nice to meet you, um, circumstances aside.” You hold out a hand, which he doesn’t hesitate to take.
“Nothing wrong with the circumstances, but pleasure to meet you too, love.”
His palm feels huge around yours, a warm, firm grip that only yields a few moments later when you have to make an effort to pull your hand away, holding on for the fleetingest of seconds, long enough for a spark of anxiety to shoot through your chest.
You hope that’s the end of it when he finally lets go of your hand. Not because you don’t want to chat up an incredibly attractive stranger, but because you couldn’t imagine the timing being worse.
He, however, seems to have no qualms with carrying on. “Has it taken yet or are you shopping for donors today?”
It’s a horribly invasive question, but you answer it anyway, all buttoned-up and ginger. “Um. No, I’m just here for a consultation. There’ll probably be a lot of paperwork before, um…before we get started.”
“A lot of nonsense for something I reckon we could get done a lot easier together.”
It doesn’t register until it does. Then you just have to look at him and blink, confused.
“Excuse me?” you ask.
He cocks an eyebrow. “I haven’t got this wrong, have I? You said you’re here for a baby?”
“Uh, yes, that’s—that’s what I just said.”
“And I’m here to help someone like you have a baby. Seems like we’d be making both of our lives easier if we just skipped all the red tape and saved you the expense.”
“‘Save me the expense’?” you repeat, stunned.
“Won’t cost anything the natural way.”
You know what he’s insinuating, but you can’t believe it. You actually can’t believe that this man—a stranger, handsome as he might be, good-looking as he might be, husband-envy-inspiring as he might be—would openly proposition you in the waiting room of a fertility clinic. Offer to get you pregnant ‘the natural way’, as if it were a cold drink on a hot day. A side of fries with your order.
“I—I’m sorry, but that’s incredibly inappropriate,” you eventually wheeze out.
That gets a laugh out of him, one of those amused huffs that erupts out of him like a bear flicking a bee off its snout. “Can’t be cagey about this sort of thing, love. You have to be direct when you want to get things done.”
“You do know we’re in public, right?”
“I’d be happy to take this somewhere private.”
The heat under your cheeks might actually result in a physical burn. “I…think I’m going to find somewhere else to sit.”
“Ah, don’t worry about that, love, I’m gonna head out anyway.” A satisfied smile tugs at his mouth. “I think I got what I actually came for.”
Your frown deepens. “You haven’t even been called in yet.”
“Not what I meant.”
Before you can ask what he means, he shifts in his seat, leaning closer to you for just a second, but long enough for your heart to suddenly go wild and your pupils to go big as dinner plates.
“Here,” he grunts, lifting a hip to pull his wallet out of his back pocket, flicking it open and plucking out a business card. He flips your hand over and puts it down on your palm. “That’s my number. When you’re done here, give me a call. I’m sure we can come up with something better than this.”
He taps the card in your hand with a finger. It ricochets through you, the tap rippling up your arm and chest, nearly rocking you back in your seat. Everything he does must be punctuated with the same echoing weight.
He nods to you on his way out, a secretive smile on his lips, just the barest hint of a lift that you might’ve missed had you not been staring at his face. All you can do is stare though, still absolutely floored, practically speechless as you watch him leave.
And then you’re alone again, in an entirely different headspace than when you first sat down.
“John Price?” the receptionist calls out from behind the desk suddenly, but with the man gone, there’s no one else in the waiting room apart from you. “Mr. John Price?”
You blink, stun-locked. You can’t have been the reason he decided to back out of his appointment at the last minute. He must’ve decided to bail at the last minute before throwing a Hail Mary in an attempt to get laid.
That has to be it. He wouldn’t leave because of a brief interaction with you.
The waiting room feels a lot emptier without him now that he’s gone, as if by being made aware of his presence, everything has been indelibly altered. Changed. Slightly less interesting somehow.
You hover somewhere between bewilderment and affront until a flicker of giddiness steals in. Tamp that back down. He's gone, and with him the impossible audacity of what just came out of his mouth. You stare at the door that he just disappeared through, lips parting around a reply you'll never get to deliver, then let out a sharp, disbelieving scoff. The gall.
And yet, despite yourself, you can't quite smother the giddiness bubbling low in the pit of your stomach. Your fingers curl around the business card in your hand.
Eventually it’s your turn. You almost miss the sound of your own name until a lady in purple scrubs repeats it, sending you shooting to your feet. You follow her as she leads you down a hall and towards an open office just as clean and spartan as the waiting room. All there is in her office is a desk, a bookshelf, and a mobile ultrasound machine. Practically empty for all intents and purposes.
Ok lady, you think, sitting down across from her, what’s it gonna take to put a baby in me?
“Four thousand dollars,” she says matter-of-factly, the earlier part of your conversation long forgotten after hearing the price.
That just about knocks all the wind out of you. “Oh,” you bleat, the prospect of ever getting pregnant suddenly a sad and distant dream.
“Per cycle,” she further clarifies, much to your dismay, sliding a couple pamphlets your way. “We’re always hopeful that it’ll take on the first cycle, but we typically see about three to four cycles of IUI before conception occurs.”
IUI—intrauterine insemination. The sperm they have to shove up inside you to just and knock you up. At four thousand dollars a pop.
“There’s no…first time discount?”
“Excuse me?”
“Like the, um…like the home buyer’s loan.”
She seems vaguely apologetic when she shakes her head at least, though that doesn’t really ease the sting. “No, unfortunately. Most of our customers are first time parents, so—”
It wouldn’t make much business sense. “Yeah, no, I get it.”
You do your best to pay attention to the rest of the conversation and ask the right questions, but the sticker shock makes it hard to focus. At some point, the consultation must end because she sends you off with a folder full of pamphlets and QR codes to scan, and a follow-up appointment booked two weeks out for a blood test and a pelvic ultrasound.
No music on the drive home, just silence to let the events of the day marinate.
You know it’s likely just this clinic. It’s not like there aren’t other, probably cheaper clinics. But it’s the principle of the matter, the one factor that you hadn’t considered in this whole endeavour—you’d assumed, obviously, that raising a child in and of itself wouldn’t be cheap, but you hadn't even contemplated that the run-up to actually getting pregnant might be so cost prohibitive.
If you even get pregnant. You exhale in a rush, the thought hitting you like a sledgehammer. God, you might not even get pregnant. You might go through the whole treatment, waste thousands of dollars, and go half-crazy begging the universe to let you get knocked up, and it might not even take.
Dinner is a glass of white wine and burrito straight from the freezer, in no mood to cook or clean even a single dish. You should be cutting down on your alcohol consumption in anticipation of fertility treatments, but that’ll be a task for a later, less devastated you. You’ll rinse the hot sauce off your plate when you’re done eating and leave it in the sink for tomorrow morning.
It’s not how you wanted the day to end. You were hoping to come home invigorated and inspired, already prepping for the next steps in the process. Instead it feels like you’ve taken a massive step back.
Occasionally you like to look up flights to other countries just to imagine what it might be like to get away from your life for a bit, but the ticket price always brings you back down to reality.
This isn’t like that though; this isn’t some temporary flight of fancy or some pie in the sky that you’ll spend decades chasing down in your dreams, hoping for just a single bite or even just a whiff. This is something you actually, genuinely want. A baby. Something you can take with you into the future, something you can build your life around.
There’s got to be another way.
It’s a physical weight in your front pocket. You can feel it now, burning a hole in your hip. When you pull it out, the name John Price is printed on the card in a crisp, typewriter font, his phone number and occupation printed in the same sized font just beneath it.
You stare at the card long enough for your eyes to go dry. Blink. Breathe out, reluctance giving way to acceptance, as tentative as it might be. It certainly wouldn’t be the strangest thing to ever happen. A fun night with a good-looking man, with the added benefit of getting a baby out of it, no strings attached. Not the most irresponsible decision anyone has ever made. Some people join the army, after all.
A shiver runs up your spine when you remember the way he worded it though. Sweat on your upper lip that you have to lick off, the salt sinking into the ridges of your tongue. You don’t think he meant turkey basters and plastic cups by getting it done ‘the natural way’. You saw the way he looked at you.
You could do it for a baby. Let him—and here, you have to squeeze your eyes shut and cover them with your fists—let him do what he has to do to get you pregnant. Cut out the middle man and just let him fit the heavy weight of his body over yours and pry your legs apart to let him sink between your—
ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 (MINORS DNI) BUCKY BARNES doesn’t use his metal hand during sex with you… unless he’s jealous.
he knows you can handle his metal arm, you love it so much that he knows you would love it if he used it during sex— but he never does. he never uses it because he doesn’t want to risk anything. he’s been told nothing will happen, maybe be gentle but he never pushes it…
until bucky sees your pretty little self flirting with some other dude at the bar you two were visiting— he didn’t even know if you were flirting, but you were smiling hard enough and the other dude was looking at you too flirty for him to handle. he doesn’t make a scene in public, only wrapping his arm around you… but at home, he breaks.
your legs were spread out on the bed as your forearms kept you up; watching as bucky spit on your cunt.
“you wanna flirt with him, mhm?” he challenges, leaning in and presses kisses to the inside of your thigh— his right (non metal) hand rubbing up and down your sobbing folds. “so wet f’me but so fucking happy to be around him.”
you whimper at feeling his hand, legs shaking as his body kept them open. “buck— buck— i-i wasn’t flirting with him… just k’keeping conversation— oh!” your words get cut off when he presses two of his normal fingers into you— not completely, but just the tips, just to tease you.
he frowns, leaning in again and finally pressing a kiss on your cunt. “i know you weren’t flirting and that makes it worse; your poor pretty self being flirted with because men can’t handle themselves…” he whispers, licking a strip in between your folds while at the same time, his fingers don’t go any further, in fact they retract, his right hand implanting on the bed right by your forearms.
moans fill the bedroom as he licks up and down, bringing his left hand up as you moan for him. “b-bucky! oh fuck!”
bucky looks up at you as he puts the metal hand close to your cunt— and you can immediately feel the difference in coldness at the sensation— it makes your eyes snap open and look down at him. fuck. no he wasn’t. “let’s see if this pussy can handle my other hand…” he whisper.
you shudder as your right hand reaches down into his short hair, watching with both anticipation and nervousness— it’s just fingers… just a pair of metal fingers. “buck— baby, i-i don’t think i can handle it.” you try to say but the moans of him licking your cunt again break it up again.
he frowns in between your thighs, glee in his eyes that only comforts you. “oh but baby, you always tell me you want ‘em… always asking me to use them… so why not? since this pussy needs a reminder on who she belongs to.”
oh fuck him. your mind internally tells itself. you try to not encourage it... but your pussy flutters at just the right time as he lines up the first finger— his middle, with your folds, feeling your slickness against the cold grey metal of his finger.
he looks up at you as he presses another kiss to your clit. "i'll go gentle, promise, sweetheart." he says; a tonal difference from how he was just speaking— even when this dickhead is jealous, he still is checking to make sure.
you nod your head in understanding, threading your fingers through his brown hair as you begin to feel his slow metal finger insert inside of you. instantly; your body feels the coldness. his arm always ran cold for some reason, he never felt it but everyone who has touched the outside has always said it was cold as fuck... and you fucking shiver the moment his finger presses into you, each inch of his finger disappering into your cunt.
"there you go... good girl, good fucking girl taking my finger... taking it like a champ." he moans, watching with almost awe as your pussy sucks his finger right in.
"it's- it's 'o-so cold, buck." you moan, throwing your head back as your fingers can't help but tug on his hair in response, your other hand grabbing his right forearm.
he chuckles, licking your cunt again, from his finger to the top and back down, moaning at the taste of you. "don't worry baby, it will warm up in this pretty pussy... now, let's see if this girl can handle more than just one."
masterlist is here! click here for more!
ⓘ KENTLUV3R’S WORK. all my fanfics (not the characters) is my very own, coming from my own efforts and my time. do not copy my work, rewrite it, shove it through an ai machine and shit out slop, and don’t repost to wattpad/ao3/c.ai!
18+ | tw - somno (implied consent)
━ Men who love indulging in their sleeping girlfriend. ୭ ˚. ᵎᵎ
He slips into the bedroom late at night, eyes immediately drawn to you lying on your stomach, fast asleep in nothing but his oversized t-shirt. The hem has ridden up, exposing your bare ass and the soft, glistening lips of your pussy. Just the sight of you like this — warm, relaxed, and completely vulnerable — makes him throb.
He quietly undresses and climbs onto the bed. He spreads your legs gently and leans down, dragging his tongue slowly through your folds. You’re already wet. He groans quietly against your pussy, licking deeper, tasting you while you stay lost in sleep.
When he’s nice and hard, he kneels behind you, lines himself up, and slowly pushes inside. Your pussy stretches around him beautifully, hot and silky even while you’re sleeping. You let out a soft, unconscious moan as he bottoms out, clenching around him.
“Fuck, baby… so greedy even when you’re sleeping,” he whispers filthily, starting to thrust slowly. He fucks you with long, lazy strokes, savoring how wet and warm you feel wrapped around him.
Your body reacts on instinct — pussy fluttering and dripping around him with every thrust. He leans over you, pressing his chest to your back as he starts fucking you a little harder, the wet sounds of his entire ltngth sliding in and out of your soaked pussy filling the quiet room.
He reaches around to rub your clit in slow circles while he pounds into you. You whimper and push back against him in your sleep, making him groan. “That’s my good girl,” he rasps, hips snapping faster. “Taking me so well even when you’re out cold.”
When he finally gets close, he buries himself deep and cums hard, flooding your pussy with thick, hot ropes of cum. He stays inside you for a while, gently grinding through the aftershocks, pushing his load deeper.
Only then does he carefully pull out, clean you up, and cuddle up behind you, kissing your shoulder softly. You always sleep better after he fills you up.
Your lives have always moved in parallel: close enough to touch, yet separated by an irreconcilable distance. Bucky is a prince and you are his sister's lady-in-waiting. But love ignores rank, and so does the kingdom's newest desire-inducing substance.
▸ PAIRING: Prince!Bucky Barnes x Lady-in-Waiting!Reader
▸ WARNINGS: NSFW 18+, dubcon because of sex pollen, so much yearning, slight hurt/comfort, public sex, porn with too much plot tbh, possessive!bucky, degradation, filthy talk that border on dubcon but know that she wants to be there as much as him, breeding kink, insecurities, both virgins, bucky is nasty and a lil mean under the influence, probably a lot of historical inaccuracies
▸ WORD COUNT: 16.1K
▸ A/N: "this will be a short pwp," i say, famous last words. thank you so much to @iamthatonefangirl and @barnesonly for organizing this collab. dedicated to @artficlly in honor of pursuit of jade episode 37 iykyk — i'm gifting you the sex pollen by the stream that we never got <3 hope you enjoy this baby of mine. if you do, please let me know your thoughts (even if they are incoherent) through reblogs, comments, and likes!!
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Princes James Buchanan Barnes has everything he could ever want. A palace fit for the king that he will eventually become. Mountains of jewels that shine brighter than the sun and all the stars combined. Bespoke dress uniforms made from the finest fabrics, adorned with elegant aiguillettes and medals of his valor in battles fought and won. Countless women and men alike throwing themselves at his feet for the opportunity of him even sparing them the briefest of glances.
But the only one he truly wants, the only person he truly wishes to hold, is the one thing he cannot have — and it’s you.
You’ve been destined to become Princess Becca’s helper since you were born. Your mother had served the family for two generations; you were born in the palace, raised in the hustle and bustle of the castle with all the live-in staff. You spent years refining your cooking skills in the kitchen that seemed to function twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, decades toiling away in the garden with the landscaper to take care of the queen’s prized roses, and occasionally sneaking into the palace library for a quick novel or two when your mother took her eyes off you.
It was a natural pathway for someone who wasn’t born to nobility yet was constantly surrounded by it.
Fortunately, growing up in this kingdom that is governed with kindness and compassion means that there are paths to advancement that you never anticipated, mainly becoming Becca’s lady-in-waiting. The two of you had been raised together, joint at the hip, to the point where you may not even distinguish which of you is the real princess. The king and queen had welcomed you as if you were one of their own.
Of course, you know that it’s far from the truth. Despite their accommodations and generosity, you’ve always known your place in society. There is a reason why Becca is the one covered in silver and gold, while you’re handstitching the holes in your clothes. She’s seated at a table for twelve with a wide array of dishes and pastries all created to her liking, while you join your fellow staff members for a family meal, cramped together in a table meant for half of you.
You’ve always drawn that line, regardless of how many times Becca tries to cross it.
“Come now, you must come with me to Viscountess Romanoff’s ball!” She huffs, stomping her feet as she always does when she does not get what she wants.
You let out a sigh and Becca’s face falls as she prepares herself for your disappointing response. “Princess—” she glares and you bite your tongue, “Becca, that is not my place.”
“Of course, it is! Many ladies-in-waiting go to these balls.”
“Ladies-in-waiting that were born into nobility,” you correct her with a look.
“It doesn’t matter. You’re my lady-in-waiting and I need you there to— to— fix my dress!”
You know it isn’t true — well, it is only true to the extent that Becca may become ridiculously inebriated and has to be stowed away before she can go as far as risk the royal family’s reputation, and you somehow have become the most reliable person for those circumstances.
However, there are many there that will surely keep her on her toes — literally, including her brother.
“Did you hear that? She needs you to fix her dress. You simply have to attend now.”
The interruption brings both of your attention to the door where Bucky is leaning against the doorway, a smirk curled on his lips. His eyes skip past Becca and land on you and — heaven almighty.
He drinks you in, you in your simple gown, yet his sapphire eyes warm all the same. They darken like the evening has arrived far too early and the moon is nowhere in sight. His smile dims slightly, if only for him to clamp down on the inappropriate sound that climbs up his throat.
Bucky has never been good at subtlety.
You drag your eyes away and back to the lady that you’re supposed to be waiting on. The lady who is currently huffing and puffing as she plops down on the sofa with a scowl. “Will you please convince her to come, Buck?”
He steps further into the room. The air is a little heavier, like his presence has sucked all the oxygen out of the space — but only for you. Your fingers twist quietly together in front of you as you force yourself to stand upright, force yourself to keep looking ahead when his arm brushes yours — an inappropriate proximity for a prince and a member of the staff.
Discreetly, you take one step to the side, just enough to put distance that allows you room to breathe, lest you risk Becca suspecting something transpiring between the two of you.
“You should come,” Bucky murmurs. His gaze is warm on your cheek. His blue eyes no doubt soft as they take you in.
You resist and instead address Becca. “That would be unacceptable, Pr— Becca. Please. The crown prince will be in attendance and the viscountess’ staff are more than capable. I’ve met many of them and you will be in good hands.”
“Well, the crown prince would appreciate his ability to drink the viscountess’ liquor supply for the night without worrying about whether his dear sister can control her alcohol,” Bucky chimes in, which earns a roll of the eyes from Becca.
“I can control my drinking, Bucky. Can you control your deviant desires in the presence of all the other women in the ton?”
Your heart skips a beat. A little nick in your chest to draw blood. You can practically hear the smile wipe off Bucky’s face, his face red as he grits his teeth. “You know that’s not true, sister dear. I’ve never once laid a hand on them.”
“Doesn’t mean you don’t try,” Becca shoots right back.
Another scratch, enough to peel back another layer to your bleeding heart.
It shouldn’t — doesn’t — matter. There has never been anything between you and Bucky. He is the crown prince and you were born to be a lady’s maid at best; it was only the queen’s philanthropy and Becca’s friendship that you were granted this promotion.
Bucky is meant to marry a princess from another kingdom, or at the least someone born to a proper, respectable family with titles.
Neither of which is you.
“Rebecca Marie Barnes.” Bucky’s voice is sharp; it slices through the air and straight towards Becca whose face goes cold the moment it lands.
Becca’s lips purse in annoyance. “I’m going to look for a dress for tonight.” Then she’s lifting her dress and stomping away.
You make a move to follow, only for Bucky to swiftly take your hand. You don’t turn. Bucky forces you to when he tugs you towards him, spinning you around so you land against his chest. You’re quick to flatten your palm on it to push yourself away, but instead, he catches your hand and presses it over his heart.
“It’s not true,” he murmurs. “I’ve never once shown any of them any interest.”
Don’t cry. You’d be a fool to cry over a prince. You steel your gaze as you look up at him. “It would be in your right to do so. A crown prince is meant to take a wife.”
Irritation flickers across his eyes. “There’s only one woman I wish to take as a wife but she seems to deny me that right at every turn. What say you to that?”
“A crown prince is meant to take a proper wife. One fit for the ton.”
“I don’t give a damn about the ton.”
“Bucky!” The chiding comes out on instinct, his name sliding on your tongue like water. Habit — one that you should’ve curbed a long time ago if it weren’t for the two of them always insisting that you call them by their names.
Bucky’s face thaws, mouth curving into a delighted smile. You try to extract yourself from his grasp again but fail to do so when he ducks his head, lips brushing the shell of your ear. A shiver snakes up your spine as he drags you closer to him. “I love when you say my name. I’d love it even more if you called me your husband.”
Your traitorous heart slams against your ribs. Foolish desires plague your very being. It’s been decades since you were first introduced to Bucky, ten years since you first defended Becca against Bucky’s teasing, and far too long since you first fell for the crown prince.
It’s not as if your feelings are not reciprocated; Bucky has made it clear from the start that he adores you dearly. Adores you in a way that is far from acceptable for a prince. But your mother has reminded you time and time again that, no matter how intimately acquainted you are with them, you will never be one of them.
And Bucky deserves a partner — an equal. Someone who can stand tall and proud beside him without the risk of gossip and mockery. You would only give him grief and he would certainly bore of you in the future once the thrill of the chase is done.
So you exert more effort this time to push him away. “Prince Barnes, I must ask you to maintain some semblance of decorum. If you’ll excuse me, I have to tend to the princess.” You do a small curtsy, ignoring the flash of pain in his eyes as you walk away.
This is how it’s supposed to be. This has always been your fate.
“You have to try this on. Please? For me?”
It begins as an innocent enough request. Becca was in the midst of selecting her gown for the evening and that meant that you were right by her side, providing her with the necessary words of affirmation for her to make a decision.
These are the most challenging questions that royalty have to deal with. Sometimes you dream of living such a comfortable life, pampered daily with the sweetest of treats and lavishing yourself with the praise of society. However, you know that things aren’t so simple. There are restrictions that come with being part of this family.
You saw firsthand how many classes Becca had to take as part of her education — in addition to the typical academic courses, she had to spend hours learning proper etiquette, how to sew, how to play a musical instrument, how to entertain and host a gathering. They had to prepare her for her future as a wife. While options are limited for women in society, they are practically a straight-line path for a princess who is not in line for the throne.
Her career, her future, her partner — everything is almost pre-destined.
One day, Becca will marry someone. While she dreams of a happily ever after, she also understands the political nature of matrimony. To maintain power, you have to seek power. She may not be here a few years from now when she’s officially married off to extend her father’s reign. Her parents have insisted that they would never force her to marry, but Becca has always had a strong sense of responsibility.
You both admire and hold sympathy for her.
Unfortunately, in this very moment, you would like to push her out of the carriage so you too could make your escape. Somehow, she has managed to rope you into going to the ball — in one of her dresses.
“This is completely inappropriate,” you hiss. “I should not be here.”
“I want you here.”
“Becca,” you exhale deeply, “if your parents knew about this.”
“It’s a masquerade ball! Nobody will know.”
“I’m coming with you! I fear that makes it quite obvious.”
“I’ll tell them you’re one of our very distant cousins — one from a land far, far away.”
You pinch your nose as the carriage rattles, the silk of your glove glides along your skin. Pulling your hand away, you can’t help but look at the delicate fabric on your skin.
When you first tried the clothes on, you could hardly believe your eyes. You didn’t even look like… you. Gone were your well-worn gowns. The tightness of the corset has you a little breathless, but the dress adorned with intricate sequins and embroidery sliding over your body like water. The silver shimmers underneath the moonlight that spills past the curtains of the carriage, white camellias sewn in a river down your shoulder to your waist.
You reach up to tuck your hair behind your ear, only for your fingers to brush over the diamond necklace that Becca has so thoughtfully loaned you. The gems catch light, winking at you as if they’re letting you in on a secret. Then your fingers catch on your mask, a combination of beads and lace trimming, the same flowers framing the corners of your eyes.
In all your life, you could never have even dared to dream of wearing such things. You never imagined that you would be swimming in such luxury.
If your mother could see you now, she would absolutely murder you. She would bury you six feet under before the royal guards could even get to you.
You know that neither the queen nor king would mind, but what would the rest of them think if they knew? What if they found out that you were no more than a girl born into somewhat fortunate circumstances? That your blood was redder than most of them. Common.
A hand lands atop yours. Becca peeks at you with a nervous smile. “Hey, it’ll be fun. You’ve never been to one of these. Please try to enjoy yourself. I promise that nobody will say a thing.”
“What if I stand out? What if they know that I don’t fit in with the rest of them?” You whisper.
Becca squeezes your hand. “If you stand out, it’s because you look far more beautiful than the rest of them. If you stand out, it’s because they are looking at you with envy. You could’ve easily been the diamond of the season.”
Warmth creeps up your neck as the carriage pulls to a stop. You can already hear the music filtering through the entrance; the sound mingles with the fast rhythm of your heartbeat in a symphony that echoes through your mind.
“Showtime,” she beams.
Now, as someone who has been directly involved in the planning, decorating, and organizing of the extravaganzas, you’ve seen your fair share of ridiculously opulent displays. The palace is, after all, renowned for hosting the grandest of balls, bringing together only the who’s who of society. The guest list is selective, both for security and exclusivity reasons. It is the most sought-after invitation of the season. So when you walk into the viscountess’ home, you didn’t think you would be impressed.
However, you have never been happier to be proven wrong. Every inch of this place has been meticulously swathed in a color scheme perfect for the summer. Florals in every shade of the sunset draped across banisters, hanging over the staircase leading down to the dance floor, and standing tall in structures that do not look humanly possible.
Butlers and maids dressed head to toe in fine fabrics float around the room carrying hors d'oeuvres that look more like miniature works of art. Macarons that match the colors of the flower arrangements, tarts with crusts that crumble perfectly on your tongue, bonbons in perfect spheres dusted in cocoa, and fruits plucked from the vines at their ripest, sweetest point.
The stars twinkle above you to complement the tiny candles that string across the railings to illuminate the room, only outshone by the chandeliers with flickering flames hanging above you. Guests in their Sunday bests drift around the room in excited chatter, spreading the newest gossip that will surely make the papers by morning.
Heads turn as you and Becca enter the room and, before you can duck behind her, she’s linking her arm through yours and pulling you forward into the crowd.
“Becca—”
“Breathe, this will be fun. Enjoy the treats and the wine. The viscountess has exceptional taste, she has gathered the best chefs in the kingdom in her kitchen. Mother simply adores visiting her for tea for the food alone.”
Becca walks through the room with the confidence of someone who owns it. Everyone knows her as the princess even hidden behind the mask, murmurs of awe rippling across the crowd. The men pay particularly close attention, eager to get hers. The women speak of her in resentful admiration.
Becca — the belle of the ball. You, her companion.
“They’re looking at you,” she giggles quietly in your ear.
“No, they’re looking at you, Princess.”
“I’ve been in enough of these rooms to know when people are looking at me. While some are focused on me, most of them are keeping a close eye on you.”
“Likely to see when they would have the opportunity to speak to you alone no doubt,” you mutter under your breath.
Becca frowns at you. “Must you be so cynical? You look absolutely stunning. If you gave the room a chance, you’d know how many of them are keen on dancing with you. In fact, why don’t we put it to a test?”
Right as you’re about to ask her what she means, Becca moves away from you, pretending to be drawn by the dessert that appears to be running away from her. Her name leaves your mouth but you don’t get very far when three men approach you. All of them impeccably dressed, all of them handsome — at least, from what you can see with the mask.
“My lady, would you grant me the honor of joining me for a dance?”
Your lips part in surprise, eyes darting around the room to search for the princess. Becca stands off in a corner, grinning proudly to herself as she nibbles on a cream puff. You bite down the urge to curse before politely turning to the men. “My apologies, I should be getting back to my companion. I can’t leave her for far too long.”
You take a step and one of them moves directly in your path. “I’m sure she’ll find the company of others just as pleasant. Please, you must grant each of us a dance. It would be a privilege for us.”
Although you’ve danced before, it’s mostly to help Becca with her training. You have no idea how these dances work during the balls — the coordination, the etiquette. Your heart begins to race as your throat closes in a panic.
“I can’t—”
“One. One song is all I ask.”
“Then mine next.”
“And then me.”
Your chest flares as you search around the room for Becca again but she is nowhere to be found. Your skin begins to burn as your survival instincts kick in. The last thing you need is for these men to notice and question how they’ve never seen you before at such events, and you would have to craft a convoluted fib that you would be forced to maintain.
Just as you are about to deny them again, a hand presses against the low of your back.
“My lady.”
The voice grounds you in a familiar presence. You look up to find Bucky — even through the mask, you’d know it was him. His favorite cologne clings to the threads of his jacket and his hair, thick and styled, is one you can practically feel on your fingertips. Those days spent by the riverbend, his head on your lap as you read him sonnets—
No. This is not the time to be sentimental.
“Your royal highness.” The men stumble over each other to greet him, their energy shifting to nervous jitters as they look amongst each other.
“I believe the point of the masks is anonymity,” he says smoothly. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind, I would like to invite this lovely lady to a dance.”
He doesn’t wait for your answer, he simply takes your hand and whisks you into the crowd. You don’t have time to think about the consequences of this, more relieved that you’ve escaped that sticky situation.
“Thank you,” you breathe out.
“I believe I should be thanking you for this dance,” he grins.
“How did you find me?”
“I could find you even if you were across the world, mon cher.” You roll your eyes and Bucky huffs a quiet laugh. “I don’t think you’re supposed to respond that way to the crown prince.”
“Perhaps if the crown prince didn’t use such predictably embarrassing lines.”
His lips curl again. “I noticed you the moment you walked into the room. Most beautiful woman tonight. Most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, in fact.”
“Haven’t you been taught that dishonesty is unbecoming on a man?” You snip back.
“You wound me,” he gives a little shake of his head, “Out of everyone, you know that you would be the last person I would attempt to bathe in false affirmations. I know you can see through those pretenses.”
“Then why try?”
“Oh ye of little faith. If you wanted praise from me, you could just say so—”
You balk, snapping back in surprise. “That was not my intention!”
Bucky squeezes your hand as he shifts you around the room. It is then that you realize he’s been guiding your movements all along, every one of your steps falling in line with the others around you. He’s always been a good dancer, far better than Becca who had resisted these lessons for the longest time.
“You look absolutely ravishing tonight,” he ducks his head to whisper in your ear. The smell of him infiltrates your senses, his warmth, the brush of his hair against your cheek. “Of course, you could’ve worn nothing at all and you would undoubtedly still be the most fetching person in this room.”
“If I wore nothing at all, then I’m sure I would fetch the eyes of everyone in this room,” you tease with a small quirk of your lips.
Bucky goes momentarily taut, stiff as he spins you and then pulls you in even closer. His hands tighten around you, like he’s fearful you would slip away at any moment. “Thank the heavens you opted for clothing today. I would rather not imagine anyone else seeing you in such a state. I’d have to dramatically increase this kingdom’s beheading rate. If I do that, what kingdom would I have left to rule?”
“Because you’d have to eliminate the witnesses to my humiliation of the royal family?”
“Because I have limited self-restraint when it comes to you.” You cock an eyebrow in question. “I would have to eliminate anyone who has ever seen you in such an intimate state. I’m a tad possessive you see, I’d rather be the only person alive who’s ever seen you in all of your raw beauty.”
Heat flushes along your skin, a sudden rise in temperature that rarely occurs at this time in the evening. “You’ve never seen me in such a state.”
“I would be the first and the last, my dear. I’ve never been very good at sharing.”
“I am not an object to own, your royal highness,” you bite out with a sour curl of your lips.
“You’re not,” Bucky murmurs softly, “but my heart belongs to you and I was hoping that yours to me — and your affection is the one thing I refuse to ration.”
You look up to meet his eyes. Earnest blue eyes that are far too honest for your liking. That gaze that’s dripping with the kind of affection he cannot counterfeit. Your movements nearly falter, your knees suddenly weak, but Bucky holds onto you even tighter.
“Bucky, I—”
Your gaze snags on the view behind him — a line of women watching the two of you, glowering green seeing your frame tucked against Bucky’s. Women who undoubtedly come from near and far in search of a notable husband to match or increase their standing in society. What better catch than a prince?
Instead of investing his time looking for a proper candidate for a wife, he is instead wasting these minutes with you. It’s been three songs, far from appropriate for two acquaintances, suspicious enough that you can hear the whispers of speculation begin to circulate the room. As the song comes to an end, you’re quick to curtsy in front of him.
“Thank you for the dance.”
You whirl around before he can say another word and disappear into the throng, leaving Bucky to be swarmed by women who are far better suited for him.
Becca stands by a corner, having watched all of this transpire. She’s barely paying any mind to the gentlemen suitors around her. When you come around to her, she’s immediately distancing herself and rushing towards you. Her gaze is eager, far too eager.
She’s had at least two drinks then.
“How was it? I saw you out there.”
“It was fine,” you mutter.
“You’ve only had one dance and it was with my brother. Methinks it’s time to expand your registry. How about the Duke? I hear he gets a little bit handsy and a little fun can do no harm.”
After your conversation with Bucky, you seriously doubt that. You would rather avoid this ball turning into a beheading festival tonight — or Bucky ruining his pristine reputation with society when he decides to do an execution in the middle of the dance floor.
Bucky is many things but he is not a liar. Whether he exaggerates is up for debate but that is not a theory you want to test tonight.
“Or shall we have a few more to drink in the meantime? Their champagne is quite lovely. I heard the viscountess had sourced all of the vintages from her favorite year.”
“Ladies.”
Speak of the devil. The two of you find yourselves in front of the viscountess. Even beneath the mask, her vibrant ruby hair is an easy identifier. She is cloaked in a glimmering black fabric with touches of red, breasts pushed up with the tight wrap aroung her waist. Spiders are stitched into her mask, crawling up the sides.
“Lady Romanoff,” Becca cheers, “what a lovely ball you’ve thrown. This is stunning, our chefs simply must learn from yours, otherwise I’d be tempted to sneak a few of those macarons up my sleeve before I leave.”
The viscountess laughs. “Princess, if you desire the macarons, I shall ensure that they are delivered to the palace by the morning. I believe your queen mother is also rather fond of the bonbons I source from France, I’ve already arranged for it to be sent tomorrow and I’ll make sure we include your macarons with that delivery.”
“You are most kind and gracious.”
Then she turns her eyes to you and you freeze. “And I do not believe we’ve met. Your name, dear?”
Your eyes flick to Becca momentarily before returning to her. You should lie. You should give her another name, but the viscountess has been known to be shrewdly intelligent. If you were caught in a fib, you would likely have your tongue cut out. There have been rumors of what she has done outside this kingdom, things that are far from proper; still, nobody has been brave enough to validate any of that gossip.
So you tell her your name.
“And I presume you are the princess’…” she trails off for a second and you go rigid once more, her gaze sharpens a fraction. “…cousin from far, far away?”
“Um, yes! She has decided to do an impromptu visit because she missed me so. I hope you don’t mind my bringing her, my lady.”
Lady Romanoff smiles like she knows — and you have a feeling she does. She simply doesn’t care. After all, she has always danced to her own tune, including how she’s wearing all black tonight that would be typically reserved for funerals.
“Not at all. I hope you enjoy your visit and my ball tonight. I would avoid Lord Smith, he’s in desperate search of a wife and may latch on to the one new face who appears unaware of the reputation of his temper.” Then she laughs.
“Fair advice, Lady Romanoff, thank you,” you murmur.
With one last squeeze of your arm, she brisks away from the two of you. As you follow her movements, you also spot Bucky as he makes his own escape with a few of the gentlemen you’ve seen come around the palace. He turns in time to catch your eye, his mouth curling into a smile as he winks at you from the distance, right as he disappears out the door.
“Now, shall we indulge in more treats?”
You’ve always been a quick study and there are three things that you now understand about the nature of these functions.
The first is to eat your fill — between the champagne and the specially mulled wines, intoxication is a friendly foe that rears its head far too fast. You have to learn to balance properly.
The second is that the marriage market appears dreary. None of the ladies are interested in the gentlemen, no matter how desperately they try. It appears that the women in the room aren’t too afraid of waiting a tad bit longer if it means they could find the one. This means that the gentlemen are far too preoccupied with harassing the help to keep themselves entertained, not that Lady Romanoff tolerates that behavior; she’s kicked out a number of them already.
Last but not least is that Becca is a social butterfly. While you’ve always been familiar with her friendly nature, seeing her out and about like this, crafting budding friendships with every single person in the room, you’re once again reminded of why the two of you were fast friends. Becca has always been more welcoming, conquering all five love languages on top of the three spoken and written ones that she’s already studying. However, following her around, you are also reminded that you are, in fact, not like her and these interactions are beginning to wear you down.
There are only so many ways you can talk about your dress before the discussions start to sound inane.
There are also so many times you can tolerate the way these women look you up and down. What happened to camaraderie? The catty looks are one thing you don’t expect. In your eyes, you’re a nobody who just happened to be playing dress-up thanks to a good friend. However, you can see how you seem from their perspective — close enough to the princess to attend this ball, apparently attractive enough for the crown prince to steal you for more than a handful of minutes.
You swallow the urge to scream, “I’m nothing more than the help!”
“The prince does have peculiar taste, doesn’t he?” One of them comments and you have to resist rolling your eyes, lest you offend her publicly.
“What do you mean?” Becca asks as she nibbles on her third tart of the night.
Expectedly, the girl’s eyes flick to you for a brief second before her lips stretch into smirk. “I assumed he would take a wife by now. Have an heir to continue the lineage. However, it doesn’t seem that anyone in this room suits his preferences. He hasn’t asked anyone to dance yet — and not for a lack of trying from our part.”
“He did have one dance—”
You clear your throat to interrupt Becca. She looks at you quizzically.
God bless her heart. Becca means well but sometimes she misses some of these cues; she’s too trusting, which is why you have to be the exact opposite.
“Apologies, I meant a dance that would count—” she smiles saccharine sweet. “—that would matter. You’re a visiting relative, right?” This question she directs towards you.
All eyes turn to you. The attention has your cheeks burning. “Correct.”
“She’s actually a very dear friend, but she’s practically family. She knows Bucky very well.”
“Is that so?” You don’t appreciate the way the woman’s gaze flashes with something akin to amusement. “Practically a sister then. I don’t believe I recall where you’re from. I haven’t heard anyone speak of you either.”
“I didn’t say.” Your lips twist up in an irritated smile.
Awkward tension falls upon the conversation. Becca looks nervously between the two of you; this cue is far too hard to miss. “That doesn’t matter! What matters is that we are here now. How about we get some lemonade? It’s quite warm here, isn’t it?”
As Becca busies herself with resolving the tension, which is the last thing a princess should be doing, you take this opportunity to slip away from the suffocating atmosphere of the room.
Perhaps the garden can be healing this time of night.
Bucky would rather be anywhere else but here. Let him correct himself — there is exactly one place he would rather be than here and it would be to be back inside. With you. Dancing. Fetching you drinks. Keeping those overly-excited, unworthy vultures away from you.
The moment you stepped through those doors, he knew he was in for a long night of suffering. Time and time again, you’ve rejected his advances. He knows you feel the same way, has felt you leaning into his touch before you would pull yourself away. Your stubbornness has always been endearing, but Bucky yearns for the day when he finally breaks through those walls.
It’s not an if, it’s a when.
Because Bucky has always achieved everything he’s dreamed of and you are his most important one.
However, for now, he is instead subjected to the debauchery of his peers. Dukes, viscounts, and fellow noblemen who have far too much time on their hands to be exploring substances that shouldn’t be explored. Sam is in the midst of lecturing their tight-knit group about this vial he procured while out in the countryside, some fermented liquid that supposedly produces the most vivid, imaginative visions that have you questioning reality.
The others ooh and aah in fascination but Bucky’s eyes continue to stray towards those double-doors where you stand on the other side.
“Your royal highness, I have something that may be of interest to you.”
To that, he does turn with a raised brow.
“I specifically obtained this one for you. I am sympathetic to your cause—” Sam teases and Bucky responds with a withering glare that does nothing to deter his friend. “—and when the time comes and you hope to last, this will be immensely beneficial.”
“His cause is hopeless if he doesn’t do anything about it,” Steve laughs.
“I appreciate your vote of confidence, Rogers. Believe me, it’s not for a lack of trying,” Bucky mutters as he leans back against the stone pillar.
Sam grabs his hand, slips it into his palm and closes his hand around a small tin. “Very potent. I wouldn’t recommend more than a pinchful at a time. A pinchful should last you through an hour, but what a delicious hour it will be.”
He doesn’t know how to tell him that Bucky doesn’t need this sort of chemistry to make him last. Every time he’s near you, his pants tighten like a schoolboy again. Thirteen and realizing that this desire to kiss you isn’t a result of friendship. As he got older, he realized that these urges aren’t those that should be held against his sister’s lady-in-waiting.
Urges that blossomed into far more when he feels his chest constrict, breath stolen from his lungs, whenever he catches a whiff of that perfume. Or how he can’t resist peeking at you from around the corner whenever you sneak into the library, wondering what book has absorbed you this time, how quickly he could read it to spark conversation with you. Or how desperately he tries to make you laugh just to hear that tinkling melody that loops like the nation’s best symphony in his mind.
There are days that Bucky wishes he wasn’t born into this family, that he could be normal, so he wouldn’t be forced upon societal standards that he has no desire to follow. He could pursue you and you wouldn’t constantly put this chasm between you.
But then if he hadn’t been born into this life, then he would’ve never met you. He would have never known what it means for love to consume his very soul, how one person could mean the world to him, to a point where he would give it all up — the riches, the rule — to be with you.
Fate is a funny thing.
“I don’t need this, Wilson,” Bucky grunts as he tries to push it back into Sam’s hands.
Sam raises them. “No, sir. Think of it as an early coronation gift. Perhaps once you can change the rules of the kingdom, you would be inclined to follow them too.”
“Think he’s a jester,” he mutters to Steve with a roll of his eyes.
“In another life, my prince, perhaps in another life,” Sam grins cheekily. “You simply have to breathe it in. Like the usual stuff. Again, very powerful so be careful. Otherwise, you’d be trapped in that state for hours on end and your only relief would be to…”
Bucky’s eyes rise to meet his. Sam only wiggles his eyebrows in response. He makes a face of repulsion. “That’s how you rid yourself of the effects?”
“The more you finish, the lighter the effects will be. However, if you don’t find any form of… relief, then it could last for hours and you’d be hurting everywhere — and I do mean everywhere. It’s the strongest form of desire that can be relieved if you fulfill it.”
Bucky looks down at the tin again. Unassuming. Small. How powerful could this little thing be? He tucks it inside his coat, if only to appease his friend, and lets them resume with the conversation.
By the time they adjourn, Bucky is sufficiently exhausted. All he wants is to go search for you. It’s only been an hour and he already misses you. What a fool he is — if only the kingdom knew that the crown prince’s only weakness is a woman who doesn’t even want him.
As the other men filter back indoors, Bucky moves to follow. That is, until your perfume tickles his senses. You’re outside. He whips around to try and find you but you’re nowhere in sight.
Perhaps this is his chance. The two of you would be in Lady Romanoff’s prized garden, far away from the prying eyes of the palace or the rest of the ton. He looks at Steve and Sam, waves them away. “Go on. I’ll enjoy the fresh air a little bit more.”
“Alright, don’t look too thrilled that all those women inside are waiting for their prince to return.”
Bucky winces. Of course, he’s felt their hungry gazes all night. All of them practically vibrating where they’re standing, fanning themselves a little faster, batting their eyelashes a little more rapidly. He has zero inclination to humor any of them because the one person he wants to dance with is the one who won’t even look at him.
With one final gesture, he begins to prowl further into the grounds, further away from the mansion, to find you.
Little does he know that the tiny tin rattles like a cry against his chest, lid loose as he walks at a pace that’s far from careful.
After exploring the gardens for a bit, you almost wish that Lady Romanoff would adopt you under her wing to understand her excellent taste in design and decoration. The architecture is as old as time. Each brick feels intentionally placed like it’s meant to be part of history. The stream that sits quietly further away from the palace brings a touch of natural life to the otherwise manmade masterpiece.
A boat sits swaying in the gentle evening breeze and you’re half tempted to paddle yourself out to the middle to find some form of peace. However, given how deep it is into nightfall, you assume you’d have to eventually make your way back to find Becca. She’s promised not to touch another drop of champagne for the evening so you trust her to make good decisions.
Just as you turn to begin your journey back to the mansion, the last person you expect is standing before you.
“Bucky, what are you doing here?”
In the darkness, he stumbles towards you, mumbling incoherently. You strain your ears to decipher him but it’s near impossible when his words blur together. He’s clearly intoxicated. You wonder how much liquor Steve and Sam have fed him and lord knows what else.
When he finally stands where the moonlight shines across the concrete, you see the flush that sprawls like an illness across his skin. His breathing is labored and his fingers continue to tug at the collar of his shirt, clawing almost desperately. With his mask long gone, you can see how his pupils are blown wide as they drink in the sight of you, a mix of relief and desire in the constantly shifting shades of his ocean eyes.
He breathes out your name like a prayer when he sees you. “Gods, you look…” he trails off again as he moves towards you, walking side to side as if his legs can’t bear the weight of him.
You catch him before he can topple over, his entire body draped over yours. You thank the heavens that you’ve done enough manual labor in your life that you’re able to prop him up, pushing him up against the wall. Your hands on his shoulders as you frown at him.
He doesn’t smell too heavily of liquor but there are strange particles on his coat that you suspect are the reason why he’s behaving like this. You bite back the urge to scold the crown prince of all people to be more responsible. When you look up at him, he’s looking down at you with a lazy smirk.
“Bucky, what did you take?”
“Y’smell…” he leans forward again, nearly tipping over but his nose ends up buried in your neck. You feel him inhale, deep, before a long, extremely indecorous moan rumbles against your skin. Heat slithers up your spine, pushing your blood south between your legs. “Fuck, you smell so good.”
Biting your tongue, you try to push him back against the wall but he’s faster. His arms wrap around you, holding you tight against his chest as his mouth trails warm against your skin. He whispers your name again — like a promise. “Bucky, please, I can’t help you like this.”
“Need—” he chokes then, whimpering.
“What do you need? Tell me.”
“You.”
You stroke his hair gently as he continues to mumble words you cannot hear against the pulse in your neck. “I know, I’m here. Tell me what you need.” Worry torments your heart as you press the back of your hand against his forehead. “Heavens, you’re burning up.”
“So hot,” he whines, “so, so warm.”
Without removing himself from you, he begins to shed off his tailcoat first, casting it aside. Then his fingers reach for the buttons of his waistcoat, fingers seemingly too uncoordinated to undo them.
“Please. Help,” he pleads.
How can you say no when he asks so sweetly? But at the same time, you really shouldn’t be doing this. “Bucky, this isn’t a good idea. I don’t think you should—”
“Help me.”
Gods, you’ve never been good at saying no to this man, not when he sounds like he’s in pain. Your gloved hands reach towards him as you begin to unbutton him slowly, revealing more and more of the linen underneath. Then Bucky pushes it off his shoulders.
“My shirt next.”
“Bucky!” you gasp, “That’s completely out of the question. I couldn’t possibly.”
“It’s so warm, mon couer. Please.”
He’s never played a fair game, but particularly when he addresses you so charmingly in French. You remember when he first started calling you those terms, practicing the foreign language on his tongue in a way that had you leaning in to listen for more. You asked him what they meant, and he said, “Only the truth.”
My love. My heart. Your heart feels like it’s been lit on fire when you read the translations.
You never questioned it further. Becca always took it as teasing, like Bucky’s being his usual charismatic, mischievous self. But every time he calls you that, you know that it is the truth. A truth you keep contesting for the sanctity of your mind.
Because if you accept that you are his love and that you are his heart, you don’t know how much of your resolve would be left.
And Bucky deserves more than that. He deserves the world, which he already has. You can’t be the reason that he loses all of it.
“We should head back. Becca’s going to be wondering where we are.”
“Becca can be patient,” he murmurs as he finally finds the strength to rip his shirt open, the buttons flying off as the fabric is torn off his body, leaving him bare in front of you. His abdomen ripples with the kind of muscles that come from the hours spent training, the hours you spent watching him practice.
Saliva pools on your tongue and you feel like a dog taught to drool at the sight of its master. You’ve seen him shirtless before, of course — god knows the man loves to be fully exposed to the sun in seasons like this. However, something about him is different this time. He’s practically soaked through his shirt, his body glows with a sheen layer of sweat.
“You have a fever, Bucky. You need help.”
“Need you,” he repeats, clearer this time. His brows then meet in the middle as he looks down at you. He tugs the mask off your face, letting it drop to the floor as he searches your eyes. Deep blue, bluer than the summer sky. “There you are,” he says softly.
Your heart stutters as you shy away from his gaze, his fingers catching your chin to tilt you to face him again. His eyes fall to your lips, your lips separate, sticky with whatever Becca had swiped onto you earlier.
Then he slants his lips over yours and you feel the fireworks explode inside your chest. Bucky’s moan spills down your throat as he kisses you deeper, harder. Ravenous is the only way you can describe it. He’s chasing after your lips like you’re the last drop of water for a parched man. He breathes the air from your lungs, an intimate exchange that has noises you’ve only made in the quiet of your room — alone — rising from your stomach.
It’s everything you’ve ever imagined, and so much more. You spent nights picturing what this could feel like in painstaking detail, hoping that it may happen one day — in the slightest of chances.
But then that anxiety seeps back in, creeping under your skin enough to wake you from this dream.
“Bucky—” He kisses you again, quashing whatever rational thought you’ve only just begun to formulate.
“Tastes so sweet, even better than I thought,” he murmurs. “So sweet, my love. Gods, I could kiss you for days and I’d never tire of it.”
“We shouldn’t—” Your protest once again dies in your throat as Bucky begins to kiss along your jaw, placing a wet trail of fire as he mouths down your neck, counting your racing heartbeat. Your palms flatten against his chest, damp and humid. He’s sweating bullets but you don’t get the chance to interrupt again.
“I need you,” he groans, “lord, I need you.” His fingers catch your hand and press it against his chest. Your heart pushes against your ribs. “You smell so good. I can’t stop thinking about you. Thinking about what it would be like to kneel at your feet, your leg over my shoulder, and bury my face in that pretty pussy of yours.”
A gasp wrenches from your throat as you jerk back. “Bucky, that is— oh my god, that is unacceptable!”
“It’s the truth,” he growls, “I can practically smell you between your legs, your sweetness on my tongue. I want you to press your hips against my face and let me feast like a king. Slip my fingers in there and feel how you resist me, how you act like you don’t want this but you’re dripping all over my fingers.”
The moan that climbs out your chest is involuntary and it’s all Bucky needs before he’s flipping you around and he’s pressing your back against the pillar. A gust of wind blows, providing some semblance of reprieve to the sudden sweltering heat that blankets you. It does nothing to soothe Bucky who looks at you like you’re the perfect prey, skin exposed to him with your hair twisted up like the forbidden fruit.
Bucky isn't a godless man, but in that moment he swears there isn't a higher power who could stop him from having you.
He silently asks the heavens to turn their gaze away from the sin he's about to commit. Because whatever happens next, he won't be seeking forgiveness.
He will only offer his thanks.
He kisses you again, tongue slipping past your lips just as he swallows your surprised sound. His tongue strokes against yours, licking up and pressing against it until you’re trembling against him.
You no longer have authority over your body, how every ounce of energy dissolves into thin air against him, knees nearly sending you crumbling to the ground if it weren’t for his own strength holding you up. One of his hands is ont he back of your neck, keeping you close, and the other on your hip. His mouth continues to move against you as if he’s savoring every inch of you.
Distracted by the taste of him and his seemingly contagious fever, you barely realize when Bucky peels back layer upon layer of your eveningwear. The weight of the fabric pools around your feet with a soft thump. His fingers are frantic as he pushes each piece off your shoulders, leaving you only in your shift and your stay. The corset is tight around your body and Bucky snarls to himself when he can’t seem to untangle the loops.
Then you hear it, the sound similar to clicking tongues as Bucky tears it off your body. When the haze clears just enough for you to realize what’s been done, you shove him away from you, but your power doesn’t throw him very far.
“Bucky, this is indecent. I can’t be—”
“We’re too far past decency, my love.” He stalks back towards you, capturing your lips in a languid kiss that eviscerates your objections into ash. “Beautiful. You had the eyes of everyone in that room tonight. I loathed seeing you surrounded by all those men earlier. Undeserving creatures who think that they have an opportunity with you.”
“I—I wasn’t interested in any of them,” you whine as he works his way down your neck, teeth and lips marking slow, deliberate claims against your skin. Ones that spell out mine.
“I know,” he murmurs against your pulse, smiling as if the answer was never in doubt. “You don’t need to fret. You’re mine. I wouldn’t let them near you. I wouldn’t even allow you to look their way.”
His mouth drags lightly over your skin again. Unhurried, certain.
“Only me. Always me.”
It’s not a question, nor an order. He’s stating a fact. For as long as you can remember, regardless of how many handsome bachelors walk through the palace doors — or even through the staff entrance, you haven’t spared any of them a second glance. Your heart and eyes have always belonged to him.
Bucky takes your hand and gently removes your gloves. He brings your hand up to his lips, placing one gentle kiss after another. First on your wrist, then up your forearm, to your bicep, until he’s on your shoulder. He moves this final layer to the side just enough for him to press wet kisses on your collarbones.
However, despite his attempts to divert your attention away from the actual matter at hand, you can’t help but worry. His temperature is a far cry from normal, you fear what would happen if he weren’t observed and provided the necessary remedies.
“You’re sick, Bucky. Please let me take you back to the palace. Let me fetch your carriage so we can at least summon the royal physician to assess you.”
“No, won’t help,” he grunts, “need to— need to—” and the next word that slips from his lips has your heart slamming against your ribcage— “fuck.”
Your mouth dries and your own desires begin to overwhelm you. This isn’t right. He’s not himself. He’s not in his right mind. What he needs is a doctor and a bed and—
“Sam said,” he exhales harshly, “I need to get it out. To stop this.”
“Get what out?”
“Need to finish.”
Finish. Fuck. Your throat suddenly feels like sandpaper.
He needs to climax.
“Don’t think I’ll be satisfied with finishing once,” he huffs honestly as his hands reach up to cup your breasts. He lets out a little pleased noise as he feels up your soft flesh, the shape of your breasts molding to his hand as he massages them. With only one barrier left between the two of you, it feels as if there’s nothing at all there. “My gorgeous girl with her gorgeous tits. I always knew you’d fit so perfectly in my hands. You don’t know how many times I’ve dreamt of this, putting my hands on them, pinching these lovely pert nipples—” he moans as he tugs on your nipple, electricity coursing through you in a zing straight down to your core. “How it would feel to have my cock tucked in between your tits.”
You don’t have the voice to argue, nor the mind. All you can think about is how delicious it feels for Bucky to be touching you. Your head leans back as your eyes slide shut, your mind lost in the sensations of his touch.
“Please, let me have you, my love. I need— I need you.”
His hand doesn’t wait for an answer, they begin to bunch up your skirt, pinning them against your hip with his wrist as his fingers trail up your inner thigh. You fight against your shudder and he lifts his mouth back to your lips to kiss you, just as his fingertips make contact with your core.
You’re sticky down there already, a mess from the proximity and his scent and his feverish warmth. This is still Bucky — your Bucky — but he’s also different, like all of the chains that have held him back, that have granted him the patience all these years, have been shattered. This is the result of all the times you’ve rejected him again and again and again. All of the times that you have rejected these feelings within yourself.
Now the dam has been destroyed and all those times you’ve swallowed your pride and your wants, they’re finally being released and they completely drown you.
The moon reflects off the water, illuminating Bucky’s face in a shifting series of ethereal colors. Even with the glimmer, his eyes are dark. A fog clouding his judgment. His desire is unwavering. The more you touch him, the more you let him touch you, the stronger the effects of his fever.
If possible, he grows even warmer. His skin practically searing against yours but nothing burns more than his fingers between your legs, the delicate stroke of your lips, moist with the evidence of your lust.
“You’re drenched down here, my sweet girl,” Bucky moans, “is this all for me? Were you thinking of me the same way I was thinking of you?”
“Bucky, please,” you jolt, hips rising when he dips a tentative finger inside you.
It’s almost embarrassing how easily he slips himself in there, aided by the slick between your legs. He pushes a finger in as he gulps down your pleasured sound, a desperate little cry as his fingers stretch out your insides.
You’ve never had anyone else touch you like this. You’ve barely even touched yourself like this; even when left to your own devices with nothing more than your imagination and the lingering scent of Bucky’s cologne on your threads, shame still restricts how much pleasure you allow yourself.
However, out there, with Bucky in control, you relinquish that power to him. You let him determine how much pleasure you experience, how much gratification you can get under his ministrations.
Bucky’s fingers are skilled as they work you open, scissoring you open until your teeth sink into his shoulder. “My pretty girl, look at you. I want to hear you cry for me, want to know how good I make you feel.”
Obediently, your lips split open in a wail that shakes the air.
“Let me have a taste of you,” he murmurs and draws his hand away from you. The loss is almost instantaneous, a sudden chill where his touch had been, but it’s replaced by the fire that burns bright in your gut the moment he drags his wet fingers along his lips. He breathes it in like he’s memorizing the scent of you before he slides his fingers over his tongue. “God, you’re perfect. Sweet, as I expected.”
Then Bucky sinks to the ground and there’s something about the crown prince on his knees before you that has you faltering. Someone whose blood is bluer than the ocean shouldn’t risk scraping his knees for a mere maid — and yet here he is.
“Hold your skirt up for me, sweet girl.”
You want to protest. You want to say no. You want to remind him again that this isn’t a good idea but there’s determination in his eyes that have you whimpering, fingers reaching for the hem of your skirt to reveal yourself to him.
Bucky drags a finger along your slit again, collecting the moisture and wiping it on his tongue with another moan. He leans forward and your eyes slide shut, heart thrumming in anticipation with the steady pulse in your veins. He kisses you slowly at first, making his way up your thigh but his patience is thin and soon enough he’s burying his face between your legs.
His tongue strokes up your pussy, legs still clamped shut in your apprehension. Bucky looks a little irritated when he can’t seem to properly taste you so, with one hand, he holds one of your legs up by the thigh and opens up your leaking cunt to him. He curses under his breath when he sees you glisten in the flickering night.
The stars in the sky blend in with the ones behind your eyes when he finally lays his lips on you. He mouths at you hungrily, like he’s wolfing down his last meal. His tongue presses eager strokes along your walls that have your legs closing in around him again — only for his hand to pry them open once more to grant him access to the nectar between your thighs.
“So sweet, so soft,” Bucky groans against your pussy. His lips suckle eagerly, the lewd slurps ricocheting off the surfaces in this quiet night. In the distance, the music continues quietly, but here — you’re accompanied by the sound of your quickening heartbeat and Bucky’s delighted grunts.
Each time he licks you, he buries himself deeper and deeper, until his nose bumps against your clit and his face glistens with your arousal. Your fingers tangle in his thick hair, damp with the sweat from his fever. When you tug on it slightly, Bucky sticks his face in even deeper, moans even louder.
You can see how his erection only grows underneath his trousers, needy for attention, and yet satisfied all the same by your own pleasure. He tilts his face to reach new angles, his fingers pushing inside of you to keep you full while his tongue flicks that sensitive bundle of nerves.
It doesn’t take you long fall apart, walls closing in around his tongue and his fingers, spasming with your orgasm — the first of the evening.
For a moment, guilt enters your system and you’re forced to look down at Bucky remorsefully that he didn’t even achieve what he set out to do. However, you notice the shaking of his shoulders, a shudder wracking through him as his hips twitch upwards. A pulse down there.
“Y-you finished?”
Bucky nods, unabashed as he comes to a stand. “Do you see what you do to me? Cumming untouched in my trousers like a prepubescent boy who can’t even control himself.”
“I didn’t— I mean, you didn’t even touch it.”
“The mere thought of you finishing around my mouth like I’ve always dreamed is enough for me, my love.” He tucks a loose strand of your hair, one that have fallen loose from your updo, behind your ear. “However, I’m far from done. This fever — I can’t break it without you. I have to have you.”
Again, he doesn’t wait for your permission as he steals the air from your lungs with a passionate kiss. This time, you can taste the sweetness of champagne on his tongue along with something a little more unique. Something that belongs solely to you and now also belongs to him.
“I’ve been leaking for you all night, sweet girl,” Bucky mumbles, “I couldn’t stop thinking what you look like underneath this dress. How soft and supple your body would be. Apparently, everyone else had the same thought. I could see how they looked at you. I should have them all stripped of their titles and banished from the land.”
“Bucky,” you chide, warmth flaming your cheeks. “That would be incredibly rude. Nobody did anything.”
He rolls his eyes as he presses you back against the pillar, reaching down to his pants. You hear the fabric shifting as he holds you up and frees himself. You’ve never seen one in real life before, only those diagrams that Becca likes to tease you with.
And the real thing looks far more intimidating.
It stands upright, a thick vein running along the top as the head strains red. It looks almost as if that line pulses, encouraged by the purplish lines that sit underneath the surface. A new pearl sits at the tip of him, pearlescent as it rolls down the length of his cock, already sticky and stained creamy white from the mess in his trousers. It’s fat and it’s long and you can’t imagine that fitting inside you.
You must’ve voiced your fears aloud because Bucky is then saying, “Don’t worry, mon couer. We’ll make it fit.”
He lifts you up, drawing a squeal from your lips, as he wraps your legs around his waist. The head rests against your entrance, the sight of it already has your pussy drooling over the tip, like it’s preparing for his cock.
“She’s excited to have me,” he muses quietly, “she’s dripping. So eager to have me. You haven’t been filled before, have you? You’ve never had another man touch you?”
You must’ve taken a moment too long to respond, too preoccupied with the incredulity of the situation.
The low roar sounding from Bucky’s chest has you looking at him. Fury claws at his eyes, the usual bright blue shifting darker as he sneers. His hands tighten around your hips. “Has anyone else touched you? Who is it? Is it the stableboy? I’ve seen the way he looks at you. I’ve been meaning to replace him—”
“Bucky, god, no. Nobody!” You pant, “Where would I find the time?”
“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you? I know your good heart would want to protect them.”
Your lips curl. “No, I would have no reason to lie to you.
“Good, because I fear the dire action I would’ve had to take if you told me otherwise.”
“I’m not yours to own, Bucky,” you snap.
“That’s where you’re wrong, sweet girl. You’ve always belonged to me, whether you knew it or not. You’re mine and I’ll kill anyone who even dares to think about you.” Another surprised sound escapes your lips and Bucky only smirks. “This pussy especially. I’ll shape it to the size of me, you won’t ever know pleasure with anyone else. I’ll train her to only please me and only me.”
Before you can admonish him for acting so barbaric, Bucky notches the tip into you. You can already feel the stretch, your pussy resisting the entry of something so… large. So imposing. But he pays it no mind; instead, he uses your own juices to lubricate his entry as he pushes slowly into you, inch by inch.
He drives deep inside of you, swift and merciless the first time, to yank a gasp from your throat. Another expletive leaves his lips as his head rolls back, eyes slamming closed as he relishes in the feel of your cunt wrapping around him.
Your entire body is under a spell, experiencing something otherworldly that no language you know could describe. It burns like you’ve been placed on a stake to be set ablaze, like every atom in your body is being torn apart and rearranged. It’s divine deliverance in the pain, but one that provides you with the kind of relief you don’t expect.
“You feel so—” he chokes as he drags himself out before pushing back in, faster this time, the slide easier. The ache still screams between your legs but you let them fall apart anyway, allowing Bucky to take control over the situation.
His name falls from your lips — this time as a plea, but you can’t tell if you’re begging for him to stop or to go faster. You want to get past the hurt, want to feel the sort of pleasure that you’ve only heard whispers about. But at the same time, a small piece of you relishes in that pain — it reminds you that you’re human, that this is new, that this is real, and that Bucky is right here with you.
“So tight, so fucking wet. You’re completely soaking my cock, sweet girl. I always knew you were meant for me, this pussy was made for me. No one else can ever see you like this, do you understand me?”
Bucky jerks his hips forward, his arms under your knees, hands on your ass as he presses you against the wall. The surface is solid against your spine, holding you upright as he fucks up into you. His grunts are muffled into your neck as he breathes you in, like your scent fuels the fire in his veins.
When you don’t respond, too drunk off the sensations of Bucky driving into you at a pace that has you delirious, he punctuates one thrust particularly hard.
“I asked, do you understand me?”
A sob crawls out of your throat as you nod, tears leaking down your eyes. He doesn’t apologize for your cries, he knows you better than that. These tears are from the overwhelming waves of emotion, the heightened tension that grips your lungs until you can’t seem to find the capability to breathe.
“You feel like heaven, my love. I’ll fuck you to the shape of my cock, until you can’t take anyone else but me — until you won’t even consider taking anyone else. I’ll ensure everyone in this kingdom knows that I’ve defiled you, that you’ve taken my mark on your skin and inside of you. I’ll ensure that you will only be mine.”
The shame settles hard and fast in the pits of your stomach. If everyone could see you like this, pinned outside against a wall by the prince, fucked like a whore in heat with your pussy clamping down around him, you could never show your face again. A desecrated maid who couldn’t keep her legs shut for a prince.
Anyone would be lucky to have him, but no one in their right mind would let even the crown prince take them before marriage. They would rather die than be labeled a slut. A harlot. You would be the bane of your family, no one would speak of you again and you would be banished to the outerlands.
But this is Bucky and even the concept of him keeping you as his dirty little secret only sends thrills through your veins.
“Bucky, you can’t—”
He laughs, dark and sinister. Like the idea of him unable, unallowed to do anything is absurd. “I’m the crown prince, sweet girl. I am the future of this kingdom. What I say goes. If I say you are mine then it is true. No one will come within a foot of you. Not after I’m done with you. I’ll make sure everyone sees the marks of my affection for you. I’ll imprint them in places everyone can see and other places that nobody will ever see.”
His words have your heart clenching in mortification and a humiliating level of arousal. The debasement of your character, the degradation of your morality — apparently none of it means anything if it means you have Bucky between your legs and his cock buried deep inside your cunt.
“I’ve laid my claim on you. No one else will ever touch you. You—” thrust “—are—” thrust “—mine.”
Staying true to his promise, his fingers dig deep into your flesh. Deep enough that you’ll surely carry those bruises with you for some time. The litter of prints on your neck and above your breasts will have to be covered by your high necklines, gowns that would only raise suspicion in the summer.
But most of all — the taking of your virginity, your purity plucked from your hands and placed into Bucky’s — is the kind of mark you will never undo.
Bucky is too lost in his own pleasure, too focused on delivering you to your second peak of the night to recognize the telltale signs of your climax approaching. Your whines crescendoing, the stutter of your heartbeat as your fingers sink into his shoulders. His name spilling from your mouth in an uneven rhythm.
“I will cum in you, sweet girl. I’ll fill you up with so much cum, I’ll have you dripping all the way home, I’ll make sure you’re leaking all over the carriage before I take you again in my chambers. Gods, I’ll tie you to my bed, make sure that you’ll never deny me again.”
Your heart smashes into your chest, threatening to catapult out with his warning. For some godforsaken reason, the idea of being Bucky’s plaything — tied up with no other purpose than to serve his pleasure — has you gasping in desire, your legs closing in around him as you feel your senseless craving crescendo.
“You want that, don’t you? You just want to be my pussy. Keep your legs open, this pretty cunt dripping yours and my cum all over my sheets. My darling girl is nothing but a whore who wants cock to keep her plugged up at all times. You won’t have to worry about a thing ever again.”
“Bucky, please—”
“I’ll breed you until you carry my heir.”
That jars you awake and you’re scrambling, a conflicting concoction of pure, unadulterated want with the terrifying fear of the consequences to follow. “You can’t! Bucky, you have to stop. You can’t get me—” you hiccup, “—you can’t get me pregnant. Your heir has to come from a proper bloodline.”
“I no longer care about propriety and bloodlines. They have kept us apart long enough. I’m the crown prince and, what I want, I get. What I want is you and you alone. Why would I need some uptight, prissy noblewoman who doesn’t know how to cum around her husband’s cock?”
“Bucky!” You gasp as he fucks you hard and fast. His pace is unrelenting and every slide of his cock inside you scrambles every single sensible thought in your mind.
“And I have you — I can feel your pussy choking me. You — while you’re getting fucked outside with the risk of someone finding us. Yet, look at that, you’re squeezing me even tighter, my love. I always knew you were made for me. Every inch of my depravity, you take it even further. You complete me.”
Your stomach coils with something deep and tight, an unknown force set out to subject you to the strongest cut of humiliating pleasure. As a proper woman, you shouldn’t take such words, even from a prince. You shouldn’t stoop so low as to attain this form of high.
However, your mind and your body and your heart do not align. While your rational mind screams at you to put a stop to this, your adoration for Bucky — now forced to surface after years of stomping on it and swallowing it with guilt — and your pure primal need — what many consider to be your purpose — join and meld to push you to keep going.
To chase after this sought-after pleasure that few can even dream about. If the cost of is to reduce your dignity and pride, then so be it.
“And now, I will complete you,” Bucky murmurs sweetly before he shoves himself inside you over and over again until you’re a weeping mess, your legs quaking as your body slides up against the wall with every thrust. Tears leak down your face, destroying Becca’s efforts to make you look beyond yourself.
But all that physical destruction is worth it when your insides are being remade.
With one final thrust, Bucky spills inside you. Warmth coating every part of your walls, thick, clinging onto your skin like it’s marking you with a permanent mess. Your second climax twists inside your gut, rising up to your chest to constrict your lungs as your pussy curls tight around him. His need to complete you is complemented by your own need for the same. Your walls keep him in, trapped, until every single drop is milked from his cock and buried deep inside your cunt.
Bucky doesn’t let up, he fucks into you until he’s groaning sensitive against your neck. His breathing is even hotter than before, each exhale like a furnace in the middle of the desert.
“I’m not done with you yet.”
Those words no longer spark fear, but zealous anticipation.
Then Bucky takes you again — you on your feet, him behind you as he fucks you against the wall, your breasts in his hands to hold him steady as he cums into you again, the milky white seeping out from where you two are joined. But then he misses your face too much so he grabs your chin, turns you to face him, and devours you in a messy kiss that has your teeth clicking almost painfully.
Then he has you laid out over his clothes, your back on the floor, your knees and thighs against your torso, as he fucks deep inside you, promising you that it’ll take this time. That he’ll try as many times as he needs to until his seed takes.
Then you’re on your hands and knees as Bucky pounds into you from behind, his thighs slapping against yours, his fingers reaching around to your clit in intentional circles that have your body quivering underneath him, and he doesn’t stop until you’re cumming around his cock and he’s filling you up with another load.
Then you’re cleaning him up, the taste of his cum and your pussy a more potent substance than all the liquor in the nation combined. The thick liquid spurts down your throat like you’re being fed your dessert, a treat for having done so well.
And again and again and again.
For a while, you forget that Bucky is relentless only due to the poison in his veins, his depraved hunger only exacerbated by the delicious textures of your cunt around his cock. An addiction that he could never suppress.
When both your limbs finally give and enough of the toxins have been excreted — inside you, mind you, the two of you slump down on top of both your clothes. A mess of damp fabrics and fluids that even the best solvents in the kingdom could never remove.
Bucky turns over to you with a groan — the same sound that’s been rattling inside your mind, the same sound that will surely affix to every crevice inside your brain for weeks, if not months — and slumps an arm over your waist.
He nuzzles his face against your cheek, a small chuckle tickling your face. He hums, pleasantly exhausted. You’re a disarray of tangled limbs and gummy skin. You can’t help but laugh too.
“Why are you laughing?” He smiles, leaning down to press a kiss on your bare shoulder. Somewhere along the way, you’ve stripped yourself of your final layer too, leaving you completely nude.
The circumstances are far from believable. If you had told yourself that this was how your night would end, even your wildest imagination couldn’t have conjured up this conclusion. “I can’t believe we’re doing this in the middle of Lady Romanoff’s ball.”
“She would skin us alive if she knew,” he smirks.
“Yes, she would.”
The third, unexpected voice has the two of you jumping, your fingers immediately reach for more clothes to cover you up, at the same time Bucky also drapes his jacket over your body.
Lady Romanoff stands closer towards the land, where the water doesn’t extend. She then approaches, oil lamp in hand. You can’t unriddle whether her expression is contemptuous disgust or unpredicted amusement.
Meanwhile, the two of you are still clad in nearly nothing, only the moonlight to cast shadows that cloak you.
“Lady Romanoff, I apologize profusely. We didn’t mean any disrespect—”
Bucky’s quick to interject. “It was entirely my fault. I have been subjected to… urges that were outside my control. It was a substance, you see.”
His words have your heart palpitating in an uneven rhythm. The words land unexpected sharp, like a piercing wound straight through your beating organ.
Urges that were outside my control.
This was never meant to happen. You and Bucky. This night. All of it is a fever dream. A product of your desires catalyzed by a chemical compound. Bucky never would’ve done it otherwise; the two of you have always run in parallel lines, never meant to intersect.
All of his words — sweet nothings.
Just like this evening.
“I’m fully aware of the substance you speak of, I am frankly surprised that you would be so careless as to consume it at such a public place, your royal highness,” Lady Romanoff muses.
Bucky winces, scratching the back of his ear awkwardly. “I stumbled and the container had been loose. Unfortunately, I was forced to consume nearly all of it — at least, what didn’t end up on my clothing.”
Lady Romanoff only hums thoughtfully. “If I remember correctly, the aftermath to this substance would be a deep sleep. Rather fast, I’m afraid.” This time, she turns to look at you. “I shall set up a room for the two of you — you can enter through the back. Most of my regular staff is gone and I’ll arrange for my lady-in-waiting to prepare it. She is most discreet.”
“We can—” Bucky stops then, seeming caught off guard by the sudden dizzying spell. He sways slightly, words slurring together in a jumbled mess before he falls against you. His breathing even.
“It appears my memory serves me well,” she says, voice tinged with unexpected pride. “Come, my dear.”
As promised, most of the party has dwindled down to a few inebriated guests that Lady Romanoff organizes to be delivered home in their respective carriages. You and Bucky have been set up in a wing far from the prying eyes, this is where they’ve restricted most of Lady Romanoff’s staff, only the trusted are allowed.
Her lady-in-waiting and her most trusted butler had been sent to help carry Bucky back — of course, after you properly dress him. No explanation was provided beyond the crown prince getting “ill from the food”, but you assume that they suspect something else is at play, particularly when you yourself look like you’ve been mauled by a wild beast.
After Bucky has been settled into his room and you’ve been provided your own as a guest, which you insisted against, but Lady Romanoff insisted against your insistence, her staff is sent away. Bucky snores quietly on the bed, he’s been in and out. He was somewhat awake long enough to help the butler walk him back into the mansion, enough to plop himself down on the mattress.
Your heart is uneasy with worry but Lady Romanoff touches your shoulder. “He should be fine. He has most of it out of his system, I presume?” She cocks an eyebrow. Heat crawls up your neck as you nod. “Then he will recover by morning. He may be weary for a while but he’s in good hands.”
“Thank you for your generosity, Lady Romanoff,” you murmur, “I do apologize for the inconvenience and my… impudence.”
“No apologies needed. I spoke to Wilson and he’s received an earful from me about bringing untested substances — in unsealed containers, at that.” She pauses then turns to you, “You’ve been quite the kind… relative, for a distant one.”
She knows. You know that she knows. She knows that you know that she knows.
This is a mess.
“Yes, I’m rather used to caring for him,” you clear your throat, and then realize what you’ve just said. “In a way where he’s almost like my brother. We grew up together.” And that one isn’t a lie per se.
“I’m sure,” she says with a twinkle in her eye. “Well, take my words with a grain of salt, but I would like to ask you to proceed with caution. You seem to be a smart woman, I’ve seen you with Becca, how you manage to fit right in with society. While I am a romantic at heart, I am also a realist — and the truth is that the challenge will lie with you. As the crown prince, he will be untouched. Unharmed. The realm will protect him before it will protect a woman.”
“I understand that,” you nearly sigh, glancing back at Bucky.
It’s what you’ve always known — your position in society. It’s why you never accepted Bucky’s advances, nor your own feelings regarding him. It’s easier to pretend that it doesn’t exist, that you aren’t in love with the crown prince as a mere maid — even if it hurts.
“But his royal highness is also a good man. I’m sure he will choose wisely,” Lady Romanoff smiles. “Now, please rest. I will arrange for separate carriages to deliver you both home in the morning.”
“I should return now—”
“What you should do is rest,” she presses with a pointed look. “Furthermore, I believe he could use some tending to tonight — in case he wakes or has… remaining urges.”
She’s teasing you, and it’s working because your face feels like it’s been trapped in a heatwave all day. “I’ll make sure he gets through the night and will depart first thing in the morning. I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you any further.”
“No inconvenience. This has perhaps been the most entertaining occurrence this season.” Her eyes are practically twinkling in delight.
Your teeth sink into your bottom lip. “Lady Romanoff, please forgive me for overstepping, but if I could ask for your discretion regarding this matter—”
She waves you off with a reassuring smile. “You need not ask. I understand the position you are in and I would never trouble another woman more than necessary. I also would not enjoy making an enemy out of the palace and I doubt the crown prince would let things slide if anything were to happen to his precious lover.”
Your mouth opens to correct her, she gives you a look that tells you not to even attempt to lie to her. You technically wouldn’t be fibbing.
After all, it was only his urges that allowed him to do such things to you tonight. At the end of the day, you’re still nothing more than a maid — a member of the royal staff. A lover is what you are not.
“Have a good evening, dear.”
“You as well, Lady Romanoff.”
Once she leaves the room, you go to check on Bucky one last time before you move to your own room; it is an adjacent space, connected by a door should you need access to his room. That distance, while small, still feels much too large.
You pull the blanket up higher on his waist, brush the wet strands away from his face as you check his temperature again. His fever has come down plenty, he’s at least broken through it and now he’s simply sweating out the rest.
With that, you pull your hand away and ready yourself to move to your own room.
Except, you don’t get the chance, not when you feel those familiar fingers wrap around your hand before you could move. You whirl around to find Bucky drowsily looking up at you. His eyes glow in the moonlight spilling through the massive windows.
“Stay,” he murmurs.
“Your royal highness, I should return to the chambers Lady Romanoff has provided. If the staff were to return, I wouldn’t want to have to explain the circumstances.”
“How many times have I told you not to call me that?” He says, but there’s no bite to his words, only affection.
You swallow thickly, chancing another look at your door.
“Stay,” he insists again, “please.”
Who are you to deny the crown prince? Your frail heart can’t seem to do that, not when it could be your last evening with him.
So, you slide under the covers when he makes room with a giddy little smile. He tucks you into his chest and kisses the top of your head. “Sleep, sweet girl.”
And for once, you listen to him.
Come morning, the reality of the situation has carved itself deep into your bones. While you wake up in Bucky’s warmth, his arms around you and your legs on top of each other, you know that this is the last part of your dream. The epilogue. This will be nothing more than a memory, maybe even the figment of one.
You swiftly clean yourself up, ensuring that you are properly clothed and presentable before you make your way to where Lady Romanoff had directed you. She is nowhere to be found but a carriage has been arranged to take you back to the palace. The sun hasn’t even risen when you slipped out of bed.
With one last look at Bucky who’s still sleeping peacefully, you take your leave.
You’re back early enough that none of the staff are awake yet, but you also can’t bring yourself to sleep. The gown Becca had lent you hangs by your door quietly, a stark reminder of the evening you thought you had crafted in your mind. You turn over to ignore it.
However, slumber doesn’t find you and so you begin your duties early. The princess’ gown, the tea, everything a lady-in-waiting should do in the palace.
It’s expected that Becca has questions about where you went last night. She was frantic with worry at the thought of losing you somewhere, or if something had happened to you that she refused to leave.
“Lady Romanoff informed me that you and Bucky had returned earlier because he was ill,” she says, forehead creasing with lines, “I apologize that your night was ruined by my brother. I was hoping you would enjoy the remainder of the ball.”
“I enjoyed it plenty already, don’t worry,” you smile. “Thank you for giving me that opportunity.”
“Well,” she eagerly presses, “were there any handsome bachelors that caught your eye?”
Only one and he is the one you certainly cannot have.
“No, I believe we were out there to assess the men for your own relationship.”
Becca blushes, fanning her face. “No, no one of importance.” She’s never been a good liar. “Okay, there was one but Bucky would kill me if I tried. Have you ever noticed how attractive Lord Rogers is? He also has such a kind heart.”
If he had a kind heart, he would’ve stopped Bucky from taking that ridiculous substance, you think bitterly, unfairly.
“I’m sure he is,” you only say.
“How was your evening then? Did you really not see anyone to your liking?”
You smile softly at her. “Princess, even if there were, it would not be my place.”
“That’s rather unprogressive of you! I’m sure there are suitors who would care little about such trivial things.”
Naive, hopeful Becca. This is why you love her.
Before you can respond, Becca perks up and waves behind you. You turn and that’s when you see him — Bucky. He’s crossing the ground with long strides like a man possessed. He’s a man on a mission as he wastes no time at all in closing the distance.
He looks furious.
He also looks an outright mess — shirt unbuttoned, sleeves haphazardly folded, hair sticking up at odd angles. It looks as if he rolled right out of bed at the Romanoff house and came straight here. Here to this garden that you’re walking with Becca.
You have a feeling that that’s exactly what he did.
“Brother, you’re looking much better—”
“You left,” he instead speaks directly to you.
You grit your teeth, doing your best to avoid Becca’s look of utter confusion. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean, your royal highness.”
“I thought we’ve established that we’re past that level of formality,” he snaps, “I’m not letting you escape this conversation. If you’ll excuse me, sister dear, I need to have a little chat with this one.” His hand covers yours, none of the gentleness from last night, instead he squeezes it tight like he’s afraid of you slipping away again.
Becca doesn’t follow, she’s too busy gaping and slowly piecing things together.
All the while Bucky is dragging you stumbling and tripping over your own feet towards a more secluded part of the gardens, away from the curious eyes.
You’re trying to pry his fingers off you to make your escape. “Bucky, stop. Stop this.”
He does stop dead in his tracks but he immediately spins around to face you. “No, you stop,” he growls and the sound shoots straight for your chest. “After last night, after everything that’s happened, you simply – what — leave? I woke up and you were nowhere to be found. Lady Romanoff was the one who had to tell me that you departed earlier.”
“I had to return to my duties first,” you say brusquely, “I have responsibilities to tend to, your royal highness. It also would have been inappropriate and highly suspicious if we arrived at the same time.”
“Damn propriety,” he barks, eyes glowering, “I think you should cross that word off your vocabulary after last night.”
Said last night flashes before your eyes, like paintings that could force a priest to pray. You’re warm all over now, the ghost of his touch on your skin, his mouth mapping out every inch of you like he’s memorizing the dips and curves of your body. The feel of his cock, hot and wet, sliding inside you, spilling evidence that took you far too long to clean last night.
Even now, you can almost still feel it dripping down your legs.
“You left,” Bucky presses.
“You weren’t yourself last night. Like you said, they were urges as a consequence of the substance you accidentally took. It was nothing more than a fulfillment of the circumstances.”
He scoffs, “I said that to Lady Romanoff, not to you. I did not want her to hold you responsible for the state we were in. To me, last night was— last night was everything.”
The lump in your throat only grows, tears prick your eyes. He can’t do this. Not now. You’ve made your decision to let that dream go.
“It shouldn’t have happened,” you whisper.
“Shouldn’t have happened?” He echoes, aghast. “Is that regret I hear in your voice?”
“Bucky…”
“Because I don’t regret it. Not a single damn thing. I want you, I’ve always wanted you. I’ve made it very clear that I love you and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. If I had to give it all up, I would — if that meant that I could finally hold you.”
“You can’t say such things!” You hiss, “You are the crown prince!”
“And sometimes I wish I wasn’t! Because it would make this easier, wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t have to restrain yourself every time you speak with me. You wouldn’t have to call me such ridiculous titles when all I want is for you to say my name. Because I know you love me, I know you do. You can’t look at me the way you do and expect me to believe that you don’t feel anything for me.”
Your heart splits down the middle, parts of it chipping away. “I— it doesn’t matter how I feel or what I want. You have a long line of noble ladies waiting for you to make your choice—”
“I’ve already made my choice and damn anyone else who gets in my way. I’ve already had a taste of you, my love. I’m never letting you slip through my fingers again. I’ll speak to my parents—”
“Don’t!” You interrupt. “Please don’t. It’s— it won’t be you who would suffer the consequences. If they know of what… we did, if they know that it goes far beyond the previous evening, it wouldn’t be you they punish. My mother and I…” Your sentence trails off as your voice cracks.
Bucky cups your face, presses his forehead against yours. “I wouldn’t dare let a thing happen to you.”
“It’s not your choice.”
“It is. If they want me to be their heir, this is my choice. They have to make theirs.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“No, that’s love.”
You swallow thickly as he leans back only slightly, pained like he can’t even bear this amount of distance between the two of you.
“I love you. I love you and that’s a fact truer than the sun that spills light onto this earth. I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise to care for you, to cherish you. I promise to be a man fit for you. I won’t be perfect because god knows nobody in this world could deserve you, but I’ll always try my damndest to make you happy.”
“Bucky,” you breathe out..
“Say yes. Say you’ll be mine. You’ve made me wait all this time. All these years wasted. Don’t let us forego anymore.”
Could you really do this? It would be a risk — not only to you, but to your mother, to the staff. They would be questioned if they’ve ever encouraged your entanglement with the prince. Becca — oh god, what would Becca even think? It would be an incredibly selfish decision.
“Don’t do that,” Bucky murmurs as he tightens his fingers around your face, “don’t think about anyone else. Think about you and what you want.”
You want him. You do.
“You’re mine regardless, sweet girl. I’ll protect you no matter what you decide. My heart is yours.”
“Yes,” you whisper and the answer comes easier than you think, “yes. I’m yours.”
Bucky lets out a wet laugh, blue eyes glistening as he presses his lips against yours. “You’re mine. I’ll protect you, I swear it.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know,” he rasps, “I know. Thank you for trusting me. I promise to do right by you. No matter what happens, know that my entire life is yours. I’d burn the kingdom down before I let anyone lay a finger on you.”
“Becca might get to you first,” you choke out a laugh.
Bucky swipes the tears from your cheeks with the pads of this thumb. “Then maybe I will have to take your protection first.”
“Deal.”
+ sam: my google searches from this are so embarrassing but hey i tried. i havent written bucky in a hot second but this one took me by the throat so i hope you enjoyed it!!! i love hearing thoughts so please share them if you liked it <3
Oh woww when I saw it was a smut from the regency era, I did not expect it to be this hot, this is just so filthy in the best way and the arggg the yearning between the 2 is just perfect, I love thisss (and anything relating to sex pollen fics is my weakness🥵 )
Pairing: Andy Barber x Female!Reader
Word Count: 4,683
Summary: It was hard to believe that once upon a time, Andy Barber was a stranger to you. Because now? Now he was your everything, just like you were his.
Warnings: Mob AU. Explicit language. Established relationship. Flashback. Mob boss!Andy. Reader is a delicate thing with a rough history. Boss/employee relations. Reference to non-con touching. Touch avoidant. Allusions to past abuse and forced sex work. But also a good amount of fluff and affection tbh.
A/N: I am beyond tickled that this Andy won my recent poll. He’s the one I’ve been most eager to write, but there are so many other stories and babes that I know deserve my attention, so it was hard to commit to him. Thank you for giving me an excuse to indulge and also expand this verse. I hope you enjoy this ❤️
P.S. Andy made his debut in mob enforcer!Ari’s story, but you don’t need to read that to read this.
It was getting to be that time of day when you were starting to flag.
As hard as you worked, as supportive and helpful as you wanted to be–especially to Andy–your brain could only handle so much.
Especially when you were running on barely a few hours of sleep last night.
So you finished the final must do on your list for the day, closing your laptop with a small swell of relief as you rose from your seat at the small table in the corner of Andy’s home office.
It was one of your favorite rooms in the manor, and not just because you spent so much time here with Andy. The decor was traditional–and expensive–a myriad of dark woods and butter-smooth leather. The walls were lined with built-in shelves, stacked with books and dotted with expensive pieces of decor, and even some antiques that probably cost more money than your brain could comprehend.
But your favorite personal touch were the two pieces of framed artwork hanging behind Andy’s desk. They were abstract and colorful, and each time you got swept away staring at them, you swore your eyes gleaned a completely new shape or scene or meaning behind them.
Andy once told you the story of how he had won them in a bidding war at an antique auction after months of tracking down any artwork he could find by his late mother’s favorite artist.
It seemed like such a small thing about himself that he had shared with you–but it showed the kind of man that Andy Barber was.
Devoted. Determined. Strategic. Patient when it counted most.
And never willing to give up.
You smiled as you slowly made your way to where he sat hunched over his executive desk, still deep in his own work despite the approach of early evening.
It was traits like his devotion and patience that had finally won you over completely–despite how gun-shy you had been at the mere idea of anything more with Andy.
With anyone, really, given your history.
But even you couldn’t deny that the more you got to know Andy, the more time you had spent with him, the more the thought of something more had taken root in your brain and began to flourish.
And now here you were.
Clocking your proximity, Andy finally pulled his eyes from his computer screen, straightening in his leather-back chair. His gaze softened as it landed on you, his lips tilting up at the corners into your favorite smile.
“All done for the day?” he asked, pushing his seat back and making room for you, because he knew you well.
So Andy didn’t bat an eye when you nodded in response to his question before slowly sinking to the floor, until you were sat between his feet and resting your cheek against his knee with a soft sound of contentment.
“I rescheduled your meetings for tomorrow to next week, like you asked,” you murmured, your eyes fluttering as Andy reached out and began to gently pet your head. “And I ordered flowers for Ari’s mother for her birthday next week, too.”
“Thank you, honey,” Andy murmured, his fingers teasing along the shell of your ear and making you shiver. “You take such good care of me, of all of us. I bet you even reminded Ari of his mother’s birthday, just to be safe.”
Your cheeks warmed, because Andy was right, and his tone was so fond colored with the kind of tenderness–just for you–that made your insides swoop and flutter. You hid your face against his leg, your insides fluttering some more at the sound of Andy’s quiet, husky laugh.
But speaking of Ari, something tickled your brain, something that made you frown as you tilted your face up and opened your eyes, your gaze shining with worry.
“How are things with the art gallery?” you asked. “Is the business owner next door still causing you trouble?”
Andy’s eyes danced at the mention of the woman who owned the tea and bookshop next door to his new business. “She’s nothing to fret over, honey. Ari’s taking care of her.”
At that, you nervously gnawed on your lower lip. As much as you had come to accept the fact that Andy was a mob boss–and sometimes had to do ruthless, unsavory things–he treated you so well, and was so loving, that it wasn’t an issue for you.
In fact, it provided a sense of security that you had never known until Andy–the fact that you now had such a powerful and competent protector.
But still… you didn’t like the idea of Ari hurting anyone, of the things you were sure he had done and was capable of doing. No matter how respectful and protective he was of you.
You didn’t wish his dark intentions on anyone, even someone who had proven to be a thorn in Andy’s side from day one.
But then again, given the rivals and competition he usually dealt with, this woman’s antics were almost… charming.
“Don’t look so worried,” Andy hummed, gently caressing your cheek. “He’s dealing with her in a way I’m quite certain she enjoys.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.
“Oh.” Your eyes widened enough to make Andy laugh. “Well… good. I know the gallery is your pet project and the first business that you’re genuinely excited for.”
“And it’s the perfect front for arms dealing, which drives the most revenue, so really it’s a win win.”
You hummed in agreement, once again sinking against Andy as he continued his light touches and caresses. His fingers danced along the tension in your shoulders, moving slower and pressing firmly, until you were making a quiet sound of relief as the knots of tension seemed to melt away into nothing.
“You slept fitfully last night,” Andy said.
You nodded, leaning into the cradle of Andy’s palm that now rested against your cheek. He tilted your face up so he could get a better look at you, observing the shadows beneath your eyes with a small frown and furrowed brow.
“More nightmares?” he asked.
This time you hesitated, but only briefly, before nodding again.
You didn’t hesitate because you wanted to hide your struggles from Andy, or because you were embarrassed he had of course noticed the state of you, but more so just because you hated to think about your nightmares, and the things from your past that caused them.
At your admission, and the way your shoulders hunched and curled just a little, Andy’s touch instantly became more intentional. His hand moved to grip the back of your neck, squeezing in that way he knew melted your brain and made all of your anxiety dissipate.
Of their own accord, your hands lifted so you could cling to Andy’s thighs, pressing your forehead against his knee and nearly curling around his leg like a koala–greedy for his touch.
Even after all this time, you still couldn’t believe it, the way Andy’s touch affected you–in a good way. That you loved it and often needed it now.
Because there had been a time when you thought that you would never enjoy the touch of another again…
18 Months Ago
“Another month in the green,” Andy said, sounding pleased as he scrolled through the financial slides on the tablet he held.
“Bet you’re fucking tickled that you went all in on the club with me,” Lloyd Hansen preened, sinking back in his desk chair and giving Andy a shit-eating grin. “I told you this would be a money maker. There’s nothing like it for miles and miles.”
Andy hummed, setting the tablet on Lloyd’s desk, his face serious as he eyed the other man. “And I bet you’re fucking tickled that I gave you permission to set up shop in my territory.”
Lloyd rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, you made me work for it and go in halfsies with you, so.”
“You’re welcome,” Andy smirked.
Lloyd scoffed, opening his mouth to likely fire back something Andy would make him regret, but before he could speak a word, his office door flung open and you were forcefully shoved inside.
You squealed as Lloyd’s head of club security–the brute–gave you another shove that had you nearly face planting into the thick, expensive carpet.
“Didn’t I tell you I wasn’t to be interrupted?” Lloyd snarled at said brute.
“Sorry, boss,” he grunted, giving you a lethal glare, “but she caused a scene out on the floor.”
Lloyd’s eyes snapped to you so quickly that you flinched.
“Did she?” The chill in his voice had you cowering in dread as the security guy quickly ducked out of the office, pulling the door closed as he went and shutting you away with your prickly boss.
You were too terrified of Lloyd, and too distressed after what had happened out on the night club floor, to notice the stranger sitting across from Lloyd’s desk.
“This is the thanks I get for hiring your cry baby ass?” Lloyd hissed as he rose from his seat.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Hansen,” you quavered as he rounded his desk and stalked closer. “But… I, I told you, I don’t like to be touched and one of the men out there, he grabbed me and–”
Lloyd didn’t stop his approach until he stood toe-to-toe with you, causing you to visibly tremble as you hugged yourself tightly and kept your head ducked low, your eyes fixed on your feet.
“You’re in a fucking night club, toots, dressed like that, might I add–“ Lloyd scoffed.
“You made me–“ you countered weakly.
“It’s called a work uniform.”
You thought that was a stretch as you eyed your outfit which wasn’t much more than a pair of metallic booty shorts and a sorry excuse for a shirt that nearly had your breasts spilling out the top.
And you weren’t even one of the cage dancers, you were just a server.
“You told me you needed this job, that you were desperate for work,” Lloyd growled.
At that, your head lifted, your gaze frantic as it met Lloyd’s. “I am, I do! Please, I’m sorry–“
Lloyd shook his head. “I can’t have you out there causing a scene anytime the clientele gets a little handsy. That’s part of the job. I mean, what the fuck did you think you were getting into working here?”
“Please, sir, I need this job. I don’t have anything else or anyone or–”
“Oh boo fucking hoo,” Lloyd sneered, dipping his head close and making you recoil. “I gave you a chance. I was more than generous. You get paid well. You get benefits. And this is how you thank me?”
Your chest hitched, a sob working its way up to your throat, because he was right. You had been so obviously out of your depth when you had shown up here for your interview, but you had also been beyond desperate for the gig, for a steady income, to survive.
And now you had gone and fucked it all up because you couldn’t just do what all the other servers did and acclimate to your environment.
“Get out,” Lloyd enunciated slowly before straightening. “And don’t come back.”
“No! Please!” Your voice was pitched with hysteria as panic flared within you.
Because you couldn’t lose this job.
“I can… I can do something else! Anything else!” you cried, trailing behind Lloyd as he turned his back on you and sauntered toward his desk. “I can tend bar or or do inventory or–”
He whirled on you suddenly, making you squeak as you walked right into him and then sharply drew back as if you’d been burnt.
There was a mean glint in Lloyd’s eyes as they slowly trailed over you, in a familiar way that had your belly sinking and your skin crawling.
“The only other use I have for you wouldn’t be ideal since you don’t like being touched, cupcake.” Lloyd made a lewd gesture with his fingers and tongue to get his point across, giving a mean laugh as you hugged yourself tightly and stumbled away from him. “That’s what I thought. I have no use for you. You’re useless. So get fucking gone.”
He turned away, clearly dismissing you, his words reverberating in your head loud enough to drown out all of your panicked thoughts.
Because you were useless.
Your tears finally fell as your devastation consumed you. You would be out of your shitty apartment within weeks if you couldn’t make rent. You’d be back on the streets, needing to do whatever it took just to get by.
You shuddered with dread just thinking about it. Especially in this city.
But you had nowhere else to go. No one to turn to.
You had nothing.
You were nothing.
“GET OUT!” Lloyd’s holler made you snap back to the present moment.
You physically jumped at his raised voice, whimpering before turning on your heel to scurry out of his office, but a quiet, unfamiliar baritone made you freeze in place.
“Wait.”
Lloyd huffed. “Really, Barber? You’re undermining me in my own club?”
“Our club. And I’m not undermining you. Just because you don’t have a use for her, Hansen, doesn’t mean I don’t.”
The tiniest, weakest flare of hope flickered within you as you turned and looked at the man who spoke, not nearly as bold in your gaze as he was.
Even though he was seated, you could tell that he was tall, his posture straight and confident, his shoulders broad beneath the dark suit jacket he wore. His skin was fair and flawless, his face shadowed with a dark, meticulously kept beard that matched the floofy swoop of his brown hair.
But it was his dark blue eyes that made your own gaze linger, and widen.
Because you realized that the stranger wasn’t watching you with a lecherous look like most men you’d come into contact with. His gaze was shining with something new and unfamiliar–sympathy, and calculation.
“Take her out to the car,” he nodded, and another man you didn’t even notice until now materialized from the dark corner of the office.
He was the biggest, broadest man in the room. His hair dark and long enough to curl around his blue, denim shirt collar. He was so big, in fact, that when he stepped toward you, you whimpered again, cowering at the sheer size of him.
“He won’t hurt you,” the stranger with the pretty blue eyes promised. “Go on. We’ll speak once I’m done here.”
You swallowed hard–nervously–but you were nodding before you even realized it, your body picking up on the softness in his tone and gaze before your brain did.
It made zero sense, especially given your history, but you trusted him, instinctively.
So you turned, grateful when the man you assumed was his bodyguard didn’t touch you as he corralled you out of the office and down the back hallway of the club.
Once you were tucked away in the dark, luxurious SUV parked out back, your mind started to spiral again, all the frantic noise inside your head blaring on a loop.
What were you doing?
You didn’t even know this man.
If he was in business with Lloyd, you couldn’t imagine he was much better.
But then you remembered the softness in his voice when he spoke to you. In his gaze when he looked at you.
He saw your fear and desperation and it seemed like maybe he actually wanted to help you.
Lord knew you could use that right about now.
You were startled from your thoughts as the back door opened and the stranger appeared, climbing in beside you. You noticed how he seemed intentional in keeping some distance between you–in respecting your personal space.
It was such a far cry from Lloyd and pretty much every other man you had ever met, that you felt a lump swell in your throat, and you had to look away from his intent gaze to blink the tears from your own.
“What’s your name?” he asked gently.
You took a breath, peeking over at him as you murmured your name.
He gave you a small smile, introducing himself in return. “I’m Andy Barber, it’s a pleasure to meet you, despite the circumstances.”
Your lips trembled into an almost hopeful smile.
“You need work?”
You nodded fervently, so much so that you made yourself dizzy as you breathed, “Yes, sir.”
“Do you have any skills or notable experience?” Andy asked.
And just like that–you wilted.
Because you didn’t. You barely had an education, and your resume was laughable–just a string of odd jobs that never lasted long, and the kind of years-long gap that would make any eyebrow raise.
The only thing you had to offer was what Lloyd alluded to back in his office.
Yourself. Your body.
But you couldn’t do that. You wouldn’t. Not again. Not even if it was your choice this time.
You wouldn’t, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t.
Andy’s quiet voice broke through your internal spiral–your mindless mental chant–as he told you, “You know, I didn’t start out at the top. I came from nothing. But someone with means saw potential in me. They gave me a chance. So I’m willing to do the same for you.”
And there it was again, that tiny flicker of hope sparking to life in the deep recesses of your tarnished soul.
“Why?” you couldn’t help but ask. “You don’t even know me.”
“I’m very good at reading people, and I think you’re someone capable of loyalty, and that I prize most above all. Skills can be taught, knowledge can be gleaned, but loyalty? Trust? Those are innate and of the utmost value, especially in my world.”
You looked at Andy again and couldn't help but shiver. His poise, his confidence, his direct gaze.
You weren’t quite sure who he was, but you knew that you had somehow stumbled your way into the path of someone important. Someone powerful.
Someone who maybe, if you earned his trust, if you made him proud, he would keep you safe.
And that, to you, was of the utmost value.
So you took a deep, shaky breath before whispering, “I can be loyal.” You swallowed before continuing, “And I can work real hard, no matter what you ask of me,” your voice faltered. “Except… I don’t… please, I’m not–“
Despite your fumbling, Andy seemed to understand where your mind had gone. What fear overtook you now.
You saw him reach for you–perhaps his intention was a comforting touch–but he must have remembered you didn’t like to be touched, because he pulled up short and his hand retreated, resting on his thigh instead.
“That isn’t what this is,” he said gently.
“Okay,” you squeaked, sinking beneath the weight of your relief. “Good. T-thank you.”
You peeked over at him again, feeling unsure but also a little mesmerized. Because Andy Barber was beyond handsome. In fact, he was beautiful, but his eyes… your gaze couldn’t stop returning to his and the softness that resided there.
No one had ever looked at you that way before.
Without vile or cruel intentions aimed your way. Without malice or greed. Without the promise of pain, or worse. So much worse.
“Well, this seems pretty cut and dry to me, and genuinely the most pleasant interview process I’ve ever experienced,” Andy said. “So, you’re hired.” He winked, looking delighted when that got a quiet giggle out of you.
But the sound of your amusement cut off abruptly as the car began to move, and you jolted upright, panicked.
“Relax,” Andy soothed, his fingers twitching against his thigh like he was once again resisting the urge to reach out with a comforting touch. “We’re just driving you home, and then you can come to my place tomorrow and we can discuss how you can best support me,” Andy explained. “Where do you live?”
You didn’t respond for a moment, not so much because you didn’t trust him–didn’t know him–but because you were embarrassed by the answer. But after a beat, you gave it to him anyway.
Andy didn’t wrinkle his nose in disgust or make a judgmental remark like Lloyd had when he read your address on your new hire paperwork. He just relayed the address to his bodyguard, who was driving, before sitting back in his seat.
“Would you be open to relocating?” Andy asked, clearly taking you by surprise. “If I have you assisting me daily, it makes the most sense for you to live on my property.”
“I…” you hesitated, not wanting to spoil this gift so soon after receiving it.
Especially since you had no other prospects.
“I wouldn’t want to intrude,” you said carefully.
Andy’s eyes sparkled at your diplomatic answer. “You wouldn’t be. Most of my staff have quarters at my manor. Like Ari,” he nodded toward the beefy man in the driver’s seat. “Same with my personal chef and butler.”
“Oh,” you murmured, nervously wringing your hands together in your lap.
Because it seemed like Andy had a whole staff under his employ. Not to mention a manor.
Again, you couldn’t help but wonder who he was, whose orbit you had been drawn into.
“Can I think about it, please?” You asked, not wanting to give up all of your minimal autonomy at once.
Not wanting to make what could be a very life-changing decision before you knew Andy better.
“Of course,” he replied easily. “I can show you around tomorrow to help inform your decision. How does that sound?”
“Very generous.”
Andy shot you a small smile, and your belly swooped at the sight before you quickly looked away, your leg jiggling with nerves as Ari steered the SUV onto your street.
The vehicle eased to a stop at the curb just outside of your dingy apartment building, and you found yourself unable to look at Andy–to risk seeing the pity in his eyes.
“Here, why don’t we exchange numbers?” Andy suggested, fishing his cell phone from his inner jacket pocket.
You pulled your own dated device from your back pocket, quickly fulfilling his request before clutching your phone between your sweaty palms.
“I’ll send a driver to pick you up tomorrow at eight thirty, does that work for you?” Andy asked.
“Yes, but you don’t need to,“ you objected. “I can take the bus, or–”
“It’s a safety precaution on my end,” Andy assured you. “I don’t give out my home address to many. Not in my line of work.”
He winked to make light of something serious, and you once again found yourself wondering what–exactly–was Andy’s line of work?
What were you getting yourself into?
But you just as quickly shook that thought away, because this opportunity–Andy’s kindness–it was all you had, and it was truly a gift.
No one had ever done something like this for you before, had given you a chance, a helping hand in a moment when you needed it most.
And you wouldn’t waste it.
So you nodded, mustering a smile despite your anxiety as you told Andy, “I’ll be ready tomorrow at eight thirty.”
“Perfect,” he smiled. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
He watched as you opened the car door and slipped outside, hesitating before you turned back to him. Because a new feeling was overriding your nerves now.
Gratitude.
You felt so very thankful for this unexpected opportunity. For Andy’s empathy and belief in you.
You weren’t used to getting help or lucky breaks.
You weren’t used to anyone caring about you in any way at all.
It must have been written all over your face too, all these thoughts swirling inside of you, because Andy’s features softened as he watched you, another one of those small smiles cursing his lips.
“Go get some rest, honey, I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
Your belly swooped at the term of endearment, and you lingered for a moment, wishing you were good with words, that you could articulate how grateful you were, how much this meant to you. But you finally settled on a very earnest, “Thank you, Mr. Barber.”
“No need to thank me. And call me ‘Andy.’”
Your insides fluttered at his request, and you nodded. “Goodnight, Andy.”
“Goodnight,” he echoed, watching your retreat.
Despite the way you hurried up the front steps and into the entryway, the SUV seemed in no rush to depart, instead idling at the curb until you were safely inside.
You scurried up the four flights of stairs to your unit in a daze, your brain trying to process everything that happened tonight. You were out of your new job at the club, but it seemed like something better could be awaiting you.
Thanks to Andy.
You were terrified to really get your hopes up, because so rarely did things go your way, but this time, weirdly, the excitement–and anticipation to see Andy again–was something you just couldn’t shake…
“Come here, honey.”
The sound of Andy’s voice brought you back to the present moment, your hazy mind surfacing from one of the few pleasant memories you had.
Blinking owlishly, you glanced up to find Andy watching you in soft amusement, his big hand held out toward you.
You slipped your hand into his, allowing Andy to pull you first to your feet, then into his lap.
His arms circled you in an instant, tugging you close as his lips pressed a kiss to your forehead. As you went pliant against him, resting your cheek on his shoulder, he murmured, “We’re going away for a long weekend.”
Your head snapped up in surprise. “We are?”
Andy smiled as he caressed your cheek. “Well, as long as you want to, but it’s why I had you clear my calendar tomorrow. I think some peace, quiet, and nature will do you good.”
You couldn’t suppress your giddy smile if you tried. “We’re going to the lake house then?”
Andy’s smile was more of a grin as he nodded, “I know it’s your favorite.”
“Thank you, Andy!” you squealed, nearly bouncing in his lap as you hugged him and pressed a kiss to his beardy cheek.
Andy’s eyes twinkled at your sweet excitement. As you went to pull away, his fingers caught your chin, staying your retreat as his eyes ignited in a way that had a surge of warmth pooling low in your belly.
Slowly, his gaze meeting yours and not shying away, Andy pulled you in for a real kiss. The kind of kiss that made it impossible to catch your breath because you could feel with each and every press of Andy’s lips against yours how much he loved you, cherished you, wanted you.
You were nearly panting once he pulled away, your eyes dazed enough to make him smile.
“You never need to thank me for taking care of you,” Andy hummed, touching his lips to your forehead. “For treating you the way you deserve.” His next kiss warmed your cheek, then he placed a final kiss on the other before pulling away at last. “Why don’t you go pack?”
“I will, in a little while, but first, can we just…” You sank against him, loosely clinging to him as you nuzzled your cheek against his chest. “Stay like this for a little while?”
“We can stay this way for as long as you want,” Andy promised, his big hand touching your back before settling into a slow, soothing rhythm–up and down, up and down–making you go even more pliant against him.
Humming your content, you allowed your eyes to flutter shut, truly feeling your exhaustion for the first time all day.
But you felt something else alongside it, something that–once upon a time, but not so long ago–you never would have thought you would ever feel…
As Andy’s soft, musky scent filled your nose, as his warm, reassuring touch smoothed up and down your back, as you tucked your face against the crook of his neck and breathed in as deep, you felt truly and unequivocally safe.
🥹 You guysss. I love them SO hard. I would be so beyond grateful and delighted if you took a moment to drop me a comment or reblog with your thoughts. Pretty please! With a naked Andy and Ari on top?! 😘
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Summary: Your father sends Bucky to bring you home.
Word Count: 300
Playlist Prompt: Say Something - A Great Big World & Christina Aguilera / “It was over my head”
Warnings: Mention of arranged marriage (not to Bucky), mob AU, possessive behavior, Bucky Barnes (he's a warning, okay?).
A/N: Day 17 of the June Jukebox Scribbles Challenge by @societynsoelsscribbles . ❤️ Not beta read and written on my phone, so any and all mistakes are my own. Divider by the talented @saradika-graphics. Please follow @navybrat817-sideblog for new fics and notifications as I no longer do taglists. Comments, reblogs, feedback are loved and appreciated!
You didn’t even make far when Bucky Barnes found you.
Of course, your father sent his best enforcers to track you down. He probably thought it would soften the blow since it was Bucky. You trusted him most of all out of his men.
Bucky looked almost bored leaning against his car, his hair blowing in the light breeze. You liked the leather jacket on him. You half expected him to show up on his bike, but that wouldn’t be practical if you tried to fight.
He’d win anyway.
“I’m not going back,” you told him, your eyes as defiant as your tone.
He sighed, but he made no move to grab you yet. “You shouldn’t have run.”
“And my dad shouldn’t try to force a marriage on me, but here we are,” you snapped.
You stupidly thought Bucky would speak up for you when your dad said the alliance with a total stranger would strengthen the families. It was a foolish thought. You weren’t together.
But you hoped…
And I am feeling so small
It was over my head
I know nothing at all
You backed up when Bucky suddenly moved toward you in purposeful strides. There was violence in his eyes. But he would never hurt you.
“And you should’ve trusted me to handle it,” he said through his teeth.
Your heart pounded. Bucky hardly ever let his emotions show. That was a reason why your dad liked him. He was lethal. Efficient.
Cold.
Not like this.
“I-”
He gripped your chin tenderly. “Do you really think I’ll sit back while you marry someone else?”
Your eyes widened.
Did… Bucky want you?
“Get in the car,” he ordered gently. “And trust me.”
You didn’t want to go back.
But you had to trust that Bucky had a plan.
He has to have a plan, right? Love and thanks for reading. ❤️
Captain John price who feels a little insecure with his much younger girlfriend. It’s been so long since he’s been intimate with anyone and perhaps he didn’t have the same amount of “spring” as the younger folk.
So he goes to his most trusted lieutenant, asking for help.
That’s how ghost ends up holding your back against his chest while your boyfriend John is settled in between your legs.
“Look, see that Captain?” Ghosts fingers barely brush your clit, pulling the hood back. “You’re gonna need to show this part some extra love. Kiss it, suck it, lick it, hell, even spit on it.”
Price stares at your pussy with infatuation, drooling at the sight of you being so shy in his best man’s arms. He can feel your legs trembling as they drape over his shoulders.
You immediately let out a soft gasp as prices lips tenderly suck your aching clit.
Now price is a quick learner, and it doesn’t take him long to find just what makes you tick- you make it so easy with your adorable reactions after all.
You’re squirming, panting, whining- “shh shhh shhh,” muses ghost from behind, muscular arms holding you back. “Don’t make it harder for the man.”
He sets you straight with a decent slap to your right tit. You yelp, earning a low chuckle from the man. “Sorry, doll. Force of habit.”
Ghosts eyes trail down your body to where his captain is vigorously working his mouth like a starved man. “Doing well, sir. She’s ‘boutta cum.”
Prices tongue does a lovely flick over your clit before engulfing it whole again in his warm mouth. You can’t help yourself as you desperately roll your hips over his chin and beard, increasing the friction.
Ghost holds you tighter against him, hands resting on the underside of your chest as he whispers something only you can hear. “Cmon, baby. Cum for the captain why don’t ya? And after, we can get to the main event.”
You’re so caught up in the growing knot in your stomach that you miss the way ghost rolls his stiff dick into the curve of your ass from behind. “I like to lead by example y’know.”
You get injected with an unknown toxin and now your loyal teammates are determined to help ease your suffering.
— pairing: Task Force 141 × fem!141!Reader
— cw: 18+ | sex pollen; dubcon/fuck or die; dd:dne; medical & military inaccuracies; pining; hurt/comfort; angst; fluff; cum and orgasms as the antidote; wc: 12k+
author's note: This has been in my drafts for two years 💀 And she would've said yes to all of them.
"We need some answers, Kate. Now." Captain Price's voice booms inside the spacious briefing room.
He's practically pacing in front of the desk like some anxious K-9, arms folded over his plate carrier as he keeps his sharp eyes trained on Laswell and the two scientists sitting behind their laptops, staring at their respective screens.
Meanwhile, the rest of his team is still as geared up as their Captain—all waiting for orders or further instructions, scattered around the room and listening with bated breath while Price grows more agitated with each shaky exhale he can hear coming from you.
You're currently sitting on one of the tables, boot-clad feet dangling off the edge as you stare at the ceiling, right into the fluorescent lights above, ignoring the way your eyes begin to sting from their brightness.
You've been putting on a brave face since getting stabbed with the needle a few hours ago and you've kept the façade up since hopping off the helo back on base, but it's getting harder to mask the panic rising inside you as your body starts to feel funny.
You swipe the back of your gloved hand over your sweaty forehead, catching the cold perspiration on your feverish skin with the rough fabric, and out of your peripherals, you notice the way your teammates' heads snap in your direction—different-coloured pairs of eyes assessing you with worry, concern, and a hint of curiosity.
Soap and Gaz are standing to your left and right respectively, sneaking glances at you whenever you shift on your spot, while the Lieutenant is still as a marble statue a little offside, arms crossed over his bulky tac vest.
Laswell begins to explain calmly, clutching a thick folder to her chest.
"We're still waiting on anything concrete, John, but the research papers your team managed to extract have offered a great insight on that—whatever that bioweapon is."
Bioweapon.
Your eyes widen as you sit up straight, the word making your heart race and your skin crawl with fear. Both Soap and Gaz take a step closer—two strong pairs of arms outstretched and ready to catch you if you faint.
"Easy there, John—" Laswell says firmly, unbothered by his tone as she takes a step towards the captain and gestures at the two scientists watching the scene unfold with wide eyes from behind their laptops.
"They said she won't die. The amount of injection was too low… apparently."
Apparently?!
You inhale sharply and open your mouth to announce your imminent panic, but you're interrupted when one of the scientists speaks up first.
"That is correct, sir. She won't die."
Professor Doctor Boswel, as the name badge on his white lab coat states, chimes in. Price stops pacing at once, though his sharp eyes scream you better start explaining now, or one of you will be made responsible for this.
"Bringing the syringe back to base was the decisive factor. Our team at the lab is still working to decipher and translate the medical reports and research papers your team recovered, but we can confirm that this bioweapon is most likely a toxin."
A low murmur of various curses goes through the briefing room as you try to ignore the odd tingles in your limbs—like they're going numb from sitting in a bad position for too long—and process the doctor's words instead.
"You're saying I've been poisoned, doc?" You butt in crudely, letting out a humourless laugh as you begin fidgeting with your hands, clenching and unclenching them to get rid of those tingles while a cold drop of sweat trickles down your left temple and is swiftly wiped away by Soap's gloved thumb.
"Fuckin’ hell, lass. Ye dinnae look too good," Soap mutters under his breath, exchanging a concerned glance with Gaz, who then looks to the captain for guidance with a serious frown.
When Gaz turns around abruptly, you get a whiff of his scent, and you're ashamed to admit to yourself that you inhale it deeply—musk and sweat and gunpowder smoke, a hint of his fancy body wash lingering underneath all the grime. A perfect concoction of what is entirely Gaz.
It's intoxicating. Mouth-watering.
And absolutely inappropriate, because he's one of your best friends and a comrade.
What the hell is happening?
Of all the injuries and wounds you've already acquired during missions and deployments, this must be the fucking worst. You'd rather get shot or stabbed than sit here, feel strange as hell and be ogled like a failed science experiment.
Price's eyes flicker to Ghost, who hasn't said a word since sitting you down on the table with a gruff order to stay seated, and then to his three sergeants, lingering on you heavily before he turns back.
"What kind of bloody toxin?"
"It seems to be some sort of aphrodisiac, but… uh, well—about fifty times worse than that."
The other scientist, Professor Doctor Adebayo, answers tentatively, as if explaining it out loud makes him uncomfortable.
"The reports say it turns men—"
Dr. Adebayo hesitates, clearing his throat and looking between Laswell and Captain Price, until the latter lets out an exasperated sigh.
"Turns them what, doc?"
It's Laswell who says it eventually, "Turns them aggressive, John. Feral with lust, as ridiculous as that might sound."
The CIA agent finally looks in your direction before approaching you slowly while Dr. Adebayo seems to heave a sigh of relief as soon as she takes over.
"A high dose of it can be used to lower one's inhibition levels to a point where even the most honourable man would resort to sexual assault to ease his urges."
Her factual yet grim explanation makes the tension inside the briefing room spike tenfold. Every man present tenses up, visibly uncomfortable—Ghost especially, who's practically vibrating with strain.
Using a toxin like that—a bioweapon—on soldiers in the field could lead to even more and worse war crimes, and everyone here is aware of that.
"Wait—what? What the fuck?" Gaz utters, bristling next to you while you grip the edge of the table, gritting your teeth as the tingles intensify and wreck through your body in waves that leave you shuddering with each one.
"'Scuse me, what now?" You scoff. "Does that mean I'm gonna turn into a fuckin' nympho any second?"
Multiple pairs of eyes snap towards you at your choice of words. Some look intense and laced with worry. Price scolds you with one glance. Others look mildly amused—the latter being Soap, who lets out a snort but tries to cover it up with a fake cough into his fist.
Laswell surveys you intently, though her voice softens when she addresses you directly.
"How are you feeling, Sergeant? Are you in pain? Nauseous?"
A beat of silence follows. Your eyes flutter briefly as you meet Kate's blue gaze, and you exhale a long breath through your nostrils before you answer curtly.
"I feel weird."
You feel like you're about to get your period, but you keep that information to yourself for now and try not to wrap your arms around yourself self-soothingly.
Your lower abdomen is starting to tighten and cramp. Your gut twists like you just chugged a steaming bowl of soup and your limbs keep tingling—from your toes to your fingertips, and up to the tip of your nose. Tiny vibrations along with hot and cold flushes that make you quake and squirm in your seat on the table.
Kate squints at you, though she doesn't press further.
"What kind of effect will this stuff have on her?" Price enquires gruffly, more level-headed this time, his gaze shifting from the two scientists over to you and then back.
Meanwhile, as you crank your sore neck from left to right to get a good crack in, your eyes catch sight of Soap's muscular forearms and—to your horror—they linger.
The sleeves of his combat fatigues are rolled up to his elbows, exposing dark coarse hair and thick veins and that damn SAS insignia tattoo.
You want to trace the black lines with your tongue and imagine the salt of his skin on your parched taste buds.
And your eyes widen when a sudden rush of mind-numbing, pulsating heat makes you squeeze your thighs together as you clench your jaw to keep the lewd sound bubbling up in your throat from escaping.
Soap shoots you a quizzical look, one eyebrow raising as you avert your eyes from him swiftly, heat crawling up your neck and prickling beneath your skin.
"Fuck," you breathe, doubling over with a groan as the muscles in your thighs and lower abdomen begin to cramp up painfully while you can practically feel your pussy start convulsing around nothing, leaking with arousal and soaking into your underwear.
In a matter of seconds, your team—Ghost included, like a solid wall of quiet reassurance—are by your side, keeping you upright, asking questions, though their deep, accented voices are muffled as your quickening heartbeat begins to thud in your ears.
Their every touch seems to burn through the thick layers of your kit.
"Kate—Kate," Price is by her side in a few long strides, ducking his head to get on eye-level with her as he points at the two scientists accusingly, though Kate is already on her smartphone, contacting the lab again.
Price huffs like an angry bull trying to protect his herd as he turns his attention back to Dr. Boswel and Dr. Adebayo, who seem to be in a frenzied discussion, watching the way you're cramping and writhing.
"What the fuck is happening to her?" He barks at them, demanding an answer yesterday.
"It's—it's the toxin," Dr. Boswel stammers obviously, blinking up at Captain Price from behind his glasses. "She didn't get the full dose, but it's still—" He pauses, eyes flickering nervously under the captain's glare. "—bad."
Another gut-wrenching moan from you echoes through the briefing room as you squirm in Gaz's embrace, and Price must restrain himself from directing his wrath towards the two men in front of him—it's not their fault, after all.
It's his.
"Oxytocin might help… neutralize the toxin in her body," Dr. Adebayo remarks, clicking his pen nervously as he stares at his laptop screen before meeting Dr. Boswel's eyes, who is waiting for an elucidation.
"The hormone," Dr. Adebayo clears his throat again, clearly uncomfortable, "—not the drug." He clarifies, clicking his pen a few more times.
Laswell lowers her phone and shares a look with Price, holding an entire conversation with one long, meaningful glance, the one learned and perfected over more than a decade of working together, when Gaz's voice breaks through the chaos, calling for attention.
"Cap'n! What do we do?!"
You're not brought back to the barracks but Captain Price's private quarters.
Your squad makes sure to keep you out of sight in your condition; away from prying eyes while Ghost sneaks through the shadows with your quivering form cradled against his chest, carrying you bridal style like you're something fragile, something vulnerable he must protect.
Once safely inside the captain's flat, the curtains are drawn before your heavy gear is stripped from you, all while you don't even bother paying attention to who is grabbing or holding you at this point.
All that matters is someone touching you.
Your brain is mush, reduced to your most simple and carnal desires. No shame nor worry about the needy noises you're making whenever one of their big, strong hands strips another layer of clothing.
"Shit, I think she has a fever," Gaz mutters, cupping your face with both hands as he investigates your hazy, unfocused eyes while you let out another pathetic whimper. "She's completely out of it."
"Get her into the guest bedroom. Down the hall, first door on the left," Price orders gruffly, trying to keep his eyes from wandering up and down the length of your trembling, half-naked body.
"I'll call the senior consultant."
Ghost grumbles a low curse under his breath when your hand brushes over the front of his crotch—by accident or voluntarily this time, he doesn't dare imagine—and leaves the guest bedroom while Gaz and Soap manoeuvre you onto the king-sized bed.
Meanwhile, you don't care about the effect your uncharacteristic behaviour has on your teammates and superiors.
Whenever they try to make you drink or take an easy bite of food—whether it's a chewy protein bar or an overripe banana, because Price has no proper groceries at his place—you twist in whoever's embrace you're in, turning your scrunched-up face away like a petulant toddler.
"I don't wanna," you whine and hiccup, protesting each time Gaz tries to lift the rim of the water bottle to your lips, your speech now slightly slurred, glossy eyes averting their gaze as you breathe shallowly, squirming while Soap keeps you propped up with your back resting against his chest on the bed.
Gaz, who has been trying again to make you drink a sip of water for the past twenty minutes, looks back at his Lieutenant and Captain helplessly.
"Doc said we need to keep her hydrated," Price announces, rubbing his bare hand over his tired face. "Keep flushing that bloody poison outta her system and—"
Suddenly, Ghost's deep, gravelly voice interrupts the captain's speech with a harsh bite to it. "Johnny."
Soap, who has been trying his best to ignore the way you keep grinding your arse against his crotch in this position, ducks his head at the sharp and sudden warning.
"What? 'M not doin' anythin'," he grunts before sucking in a sharp breath as his cock keeps stirring and twitching in his combat trousers, "Fuck, lass, please—"
Soap tries to keep you from moving; his ungloved hands get a firm hold of your hips, but you're practically panting and mewling in his lap, making it harder for him not to crumble under the pressure building up in his dick.
Then Gaz is swift to pluck you out of the Scot's embrace with a disdainful frown, like you're some toy that was stolen from him.
"Don't be a fuckin' perv, Soap," Gaz snaps, cradling you into his arms, where you immediately begin pawing at his black compression shirt, determined to get your palms under it and on his bare skin.
"She can't consent!"
It's Price who approaches the bed then, while Ghost stays leaning against the doorframe, keeping a keen eye on the situation.
"Enough! Both of you," Price barks, eyes flashing before his shoulders drop with a rough sigh. He pinches the bridge of his nose. "Doc said it might help if—"
John stops mid-sentence, clenching his strong jaw. He can't believe what he is about to say, and he crosses his arms over his chest again, feigning control while he internally braces himself for his next words.
"Those doctors said it might help if she… climaxes."
His words hang in the air like a thick fog that no one can quite see through nor think in, and everyone seems to be holding their breath while you finally manage to tug Gaz's shirt out of his waistband, making him cuss under his breath when you go on to lick a long, wet stripe over his exposed abs like some feral lioness, utterly hungry for a taste.
"Shit—Babygirl, no, d-don't—" Gaz stammers helplessly while a rush of heat goes straight to his neck and cock simultaneously, overwhelmingly so.
He pushes you away by your shoulders—and hates himself for how reluctant he is at it—and he winces when your blunt nails claw into his bulging biceps, digging into his skin even through his shirt with another whimper.
"Please, Kyle… Let me—" you mewl, batting your eyelashes up at him. "It—It fuckin’ hurts."
Soap pushes his fists into his eye sockets, heaving a deep breath that turns into a frustrated groan. "Steamin' Jesus, lass, ye’re fuckin’ killin' us here."
"Take a bloody walk, MacTavish," Price orders, pointing his thumb at the door over his shoulder, and while Soap climbs off the mattress, grumbling to himself with an obvious erection pressing against the seam of his zipper, Price addresses Gaz.
"And you, Garrick, take—" He hesitates again, balling his hands into fists at his sides, trying to keep his own body in check at the sight and sounds of you, before he nudges his chin towards the door of the bathroom.
"Take her to the shower to get the fever down and… help her."
The captain's last words are nothing more than a strained grumble.
Gaz gapes at his superior. Soap freezes in his steps at the end of the bed, openly gawking and blinking like he didn't just hear right. Ghost visibly stiffens and shifts his stance, still leaning against the doorframe of the guest bedroom. No one can see the way he grits his teeth so hard he might chip a tooth behind his balaclava.
"But sir—"
Price shakes his head; brows set in a stern frown as he holds Gaz's widened gaze.
"She'd want you to take care of her if she could actually consent to it. And that's an order, Sergeant."
Ghost wants to disagree, but keeps his mouth shut and exhales a sharp huff of contempt instead.
The rest of the men try to distract themselves around Captain Price's flat while Gaz takes you to the en-suite bathroom like he was ordered to.
Not asked, ordered to.
He keeps repeating that in his head as he walks you towards the bathroom door with his arm around your waist, your body listing into his side like you've forgotten how to hold yourself upright. His jaw is set so tight his molars ache.
He's been ordered to do a lot of things in his career. Clear rooms. Hold positions under fire. Drag wounded men through mud while rounds cracked overhead. He's followed every order without hesitation, because that's what good soldiers do—they trust the chain of command and they execute.
This doesn't feel like any of those things.
He keeps the bathroom door unlocked—just in case you faint and he needs help—and lets out a huff when you fling yourself into his body suddenly and the air is knocked from his lungs.
"Easy," he pleads with you while his head dips down, and he inhales your familiar scent before he can stop himself. Sweat and the remnants of whatever lotion you put on this morning underneath your gear before the mission, something warm and sweet that he's caught whiffs of a hundred times before in passing and never let himself think about for longer than a second.
"Easy there, love," he tries again, his trembling hands wrapping around your midriff tentatively.
Gaz hates these circumstances. Hates how the mission ended in such a bloody mess. Hates how excited he is to undress you to your underwear, and he despises that this is how he'll get to have you for the first time.
This is not how he'd imagined it.
He never imagined it. Not in any concrete, detailed way. Not like he'd planned it in his head, step by step—the restaurant he'd take you to first, somewhere nice but not so nice you'd take the piss out of him for it. The way he'd tell you after the second drink, maybe the third, that he'd been thinking about you. Casually. Like it hadn't been eating him alive for months.
He hadn't planned any of that.
Fucking liar.
You make a sound against his chest, somewhere between a sob and a moan, and your fingers twist into the wet fabric of his compression shirt, tugging weakly.
"Kyle… Kyle, I need—"
"I know," he murmurs, and his voice comes out rougher than he intends. "I know, love. C'mon."
He manoeuvres you towards the shower, reaching past you to turn the dial to lukewarm. The water sputters, then hisses to life against the tile, and steam begins to curl at the edges of the glass.
You're still in your underwear—plain, standard issue, nothing designed to be sexy—and it doesn't matter, because the sight of you trembling and desperate in front of him with water beginning to mist across your skin is doing things to his head that no amount of mental discipline can counter.
He starts to dismantle his assault rifle in his head.
You stumble into the shower cabin and he follows, still fully clothed. The water hits his chest and soaks through his compression shirt in seconds, plastering the fabric to his skin, and the cold shock of it helps. Briefly.
Bolt. Firing pin. Cam pin.
"C'mon, Babygirl," he coos at you as he turns your quivering body in his embrace until your back is flush against his chest. One arm wraps tightly below your breasts, forearm pushing up against the swell of them through the soaked fabric of your bra, and he tries, and fails miserably, not to take a long look over your shoulder.
Buffer tube. Buffer spring. Buffer.
You melt against his body and his cock throbs in his combat trousers, straining against his briefs uncomfortably. The water is doing nothing for the heat radiating off your skin. If anything, you're burning hotter, pressing back into him with small, involuntary rolls of your hips that make his breath stutter.
Lower receiver. Trigger assembly. Trigger—
"Please," you whimper, and his entire train of thought derails.
Your head lolls back against his shoulder, exposing the column of your throat, and he can see the way your pulse hammers beneath the surface, rapid and frantic. Your hips buck against his hand when he finally—finally—lets it trail down over your lower belly, his calloused fingers dragging across the wet skin, feeling the muscles jump and twitch beneath his touch.
"Yes—yes—yes—" you chant breathlessly, and your hips cant forward, chasing his hand with a desperation that makes something crack open in his chest.
Fuck—fuck—fuck—fuck.
He cups your pussy through your knickers and the heat of you against his palm nearly makes his knees buckle. He can feel you through the thin, soaked fabric and he's not sure if the wetness is from the shower stream or if it's all you.
His chest is heaving when he finally gathers enough courage to dip his long fingers beneath the waistband of your underwear. His jaw clenches and his mind grasps desperately for the drills again—clear left, clear right, move to the next room, check your corners—anything to stay anchored while you let out a moan that echoes off the tile walls and punches straight through him.
You're so wet, so swollen, it's obscene. His fingers slide through your folds with zero resistance and the groan that rips from deep within his chest is involuntary, guttural, ashamed. He can feel your arousal ooze from your entrance, slick and hot, and he can already tell how tight you'd feel clenching around his fingers, how you'd—
No. He's not going there.
"Fuck," he curses under his breath, more to himself than to you. "I'm only doin' this for you, Babygirl. This is only about you."
He says it like a prayer. Like if he repeats it enough, it'll be true.
His fingers press on your clit, pulsing and twitching already, and he starts rubbing small, firm circles over it, adjusting the pressure when your breath hitches or your thighs clamp around his wrist. He reads your body like he reads a room. Methodically, attentive, and cataloguing every reaction.
You writhe and squirm in his tight grip, your nails digging into the arm he has banded around your ribs, and every sound you make, every whimper, and stuttered gasp of his name, chips away at the wall he's trying to keep standing between following an order and wanting this.
"M-more, Kyle, please!"
Gaz curses himself, but he gives you more.
Two fingers pressing into you, slow and careful despite every instinct screaming at him to give you what you're begging for. You clench around him immediately, hot and tight and silky, and his cock kicks in his trousers so hard he must bite the inside of his cheek to keep from groaning.
He curls his fingers, searching for the spot that makes your thighs shake, and when he finds it, you keen so loudly the sound bounces off every hard surface in the small bathroom.
"That's it," he murmurs against your temple, his lips brushing your skin without quite kissing. "That's it, love. Let go for me."
He's not sure when he started talking to you like this. Somewhere between the first touch and the second, the clinical detachment he'd been clinging to crumbled and something else took its place—something tender and fierce and terrifyingly honest.
Your first orgasm hits you hard enough to make your entire body seize in his arms, your back arching away from his chest as a strangled cry tears from your throat. He holds you through it, fingers still working, still pressing and giving, because even as the tremors wrack through you and your legs give out, he can feel your body already winding up again, the toxin refusing to let you rest.
"Shh, shh, I've got you," he breathes, adjusting his grip to take your full weight when your knees buckle entirely. "I've got you."
You cum again two minutes later, and then again after that, and again, and Gaz loses count somewhere around the fifth or sixth time, when his fingers are cramping and his arm is trembling from holding you upright and the water has long since turned cold.
Each time, he thinks it'll be enough, and each time, your body coils tight again within minutes, the toxin driving you right back to the edge with a cruelty that makes him want to put his fist through the tile.
He doesn’t want to imagine what a full dose would have done to you. To anyone.
When you tell him that you're hurting—repeatedly, begging him to make you cum in that desperate, broken tone of yours—the young Sergeant is sure something dies inside him on the spot.
"Kyle—Kyle, I need more, I need you to—please—Fuck, please!"
He knows what you're asking for. You're grinding back against his cock, which has been rock-hard and aching for what feels like hours, and every roll of your hips sends a jolt of white-hot arousal through him that he must physically brace against.
"I can't," he grits out, and it takes everything in him. "Christ. I can't do that to you. Not like this."
"Please—"
"No, Babygirl." His voice cracks on the word, and he presses his forehead against the back of your head, squeezing his eyes shut. "Not like this."
He drops to his knees instead.
The tile is hard and unforgiving under his kneecaps and the now cold water from the shower hits the back of his neck, but he barely registers any of it as he turns you to face him and hooks one of your legs over his shoulder.
He looks up at you once—your hazy, unfocused eyes, the way your chest heaves, the water running in rivulets down your body—and then he leans forward and drags his tongue through your folds in one long, broad stroke.
The sound you make is devastating.
Your hands fly to his head, fingers scrabbling for purchase on his wet hair, and your hips jerk forward so violently he must grip your thigh to keep you steady. He groans against you, he can't help it, and the vibration makes you cry out again, blunt nails raking over his scalp.
Gaz eats you like he's starving for it, because the truth he can't say out loud is that he is.
He's thought about this. Dreamed about it. Wanked to the idea of it in the dark of his bunk with his fist shoved against his mouth to keep quiet. And now he's here, on his knees in his Captain's shower with cold water running down his back and your taste flooding his mouth, and it's everything and nothing like what he imagined because you're not choosing this—you're not choosing him—and that knowledge sits in his chest like a brick.
But he doesn't stop.
Gaz licks and sucks and fucks you with his tongue until his jaw aches and your thighs are shaking so badly you can barely stand, even with his hands gripping your hips. He makes you cum on his mouth twice, then thrice, pressing his face into you each time your body locks up, working you through it with relentless, single-minded focus because if he stops to think about what this means, about what happens after, he'll fall apart.
When he finally pulls back, his lips are swollen, his chin is slick and his cock is so hard it genuinely hurts. You're still whimpering, still reaching for him, still not done, and the toxin is still pumping through your veins with no sign of stopping.
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and exhales a shaky breath, pressing his forehead against your hip.
"I need—" His voice is wrecked. He swallows hard, then tries again. "I need a minute."
Not because he's tired, or his fingers are cramped and his jaw is sore and his knees are bruised from the tile. No.
But if he stays on his knees in front of you for one more second, he's going to give you what you're begging for, and he will never forgive himself for it.
He stands on unsteady legs, turns the shower off, and reaches for the towel hanging on the rack outside the cabin. His hands are shaking as he wraps it around, and you cling to it loosely, swaying on your feet.
"C'mon," he says, guiding you towards the door with one hand on the small of your back. His voice has steadied, but his eyes haven't. "Let's get you dried off."
You're protesting. He's cursing under his breath. There's shuffling, a stumble, and then he grabs the door handle and swings it open—
And Soap nearly falls backwards into the bathroom.
"Soap!"
The Scotsman catches himself on the doorway, one hand gripping the frame as he glances over his shoulder with a look that's not even remotely sheepish enough for a man who was clearly pressing his ear to the door thirty seconds ago.
Gaz is still wearing his clothes, though they're completely drenched—his compression shirt is a second skin, his combat trousers heavy with water, boots squelching on the tile. He's holding you by the forearm as you stand next to him, loose towel wrapped around your body, still trembling, still making those small, desperate sounds in the back of your throat.
"The fuck, mate? Did you eavesdrop on us?"
Soap shrugs as he straightens up, adjusting his stance in a way that's clearly meant to disguise the state of his trousers. "Was jus' checkin' on ye."
"Checking on—" Gaz's jaw works, nostrils flaring. He wants to snap, wants to shove Soap back into the hallway and slam the door, but he's running on fumes and you're leaning into him again, your face pressed against his soaked chest, mumbling incoherently.
"She needs—" Gaz starts, then stops. Looks down at you, back up at Soap. Something heavy passes between the two men, unspoken but understood.
"She needs more than I can give her right now," he finishes quietly, and the admission costs him more than any of them will ever know.
Soap's expression shifts. The boyish smirk drops, replaced by something sobered, and he gives Gaz a short nod—the kind they exchange in the field when one of them is spent and the other takes point.
"A'right," Soap answers, surprisingly steady, rolling his broad shoulders. "Ah’ve got 'er."
Gaz transfers you into Soap's waiting arms with a gentleness that borders on reverent—one hand on the back of your head, the other guiding your shoulders—and he doesn't let go until he's sure Soap has you secure.
Then he walks past them both, water dripping from every inch of him, and doesn't look back.
He makes it to the kitchen before his hands start shaking badly enough that he has to brace them flat on the counter. He stands there, head bowed, water pooling on the linoleum beneath him, and breathes.
Ghost is leaning against the opposite wall with his arms crossed, and he doesn't say a word.
There is no need to.
Soap carries you back to the bed like you weigh nothing to him; one arm under your knees, the other around your back, the towel slipping loose and neither of you caring, and he lays you down with a surprising gentleness that contradicts every tightly coiled muscle in his body.
He's been hard since the briefing room, balls throbbing uncomfortably. Over two hours of it. The kind of persistent, throbbing ache that sits low in his gut and pulses in time with his heartbeat, and he's been dealing with it the way he deals with most discomfort.
By ignoring it aggressively and hoping it fucks off on its own.
It has not fucked off unfortunately. Truth be told, he’d be worried about himself if it did.
"Right then," he mutters, kneeling on the mattress beside you as he cracks his neck and rolls his shoulders again like he's about to breach a door. "Let's sort ye out, hen."
And that's the thing about Johnny MacTavish—he doesn't agonise. Not the way Gaz does, all quiet guilt and moral calculus. Soap's moral framework is simpler, blunter, built from different materials. You're his teammate, you're hurting, and he can help. Everything else is noise.
That doesn't mean he's unaffected; doesn't mean his hands aren't shaking when he settles between your legs and pushes the towel fully away from your body, or that his breath doesn't hitch hard enough to hear when he gets his first proper look at you fully naked, spread out on the white sheets with your chest heaving and your thighs trembling and your eyes half-lidded, glassy, barely tracking him.
Christ, you're beautiful.
He's thought about this. Fuck. Of course he has. He's not a bloody monk, and you're you.
He's thought about it in the gym when you spot him on the bench press and your face hovers above his, upside down and grinning. He's thought about it on long transports when you fall asleep against his shoulder and he stays perfectly still for hours so you won't wake up. Or when you laugh at his shite jokes that no one else finds funny, when you steal chips off his plate in the mess, when you call him Johnny instead of Soap and don't even notice you've done it.
He's thought about it a lot.
But not like this.
"You with me?" he asks, tapping your cheek lightly with two fingers. Your eyes roll towards him, struggling to focus, and you make a sound that's part whimper, part plea.
Close enough.
"A'right, sweetheart. I've got ye."
He doesn't ease into it the way Gaz did. Where Gaz was methodical, with careful touches, measured pressure, and constant checking, Soap is instinct. He reads you through vibration and sound, adjusts on the fly, follows the frequency of your moans like he's tuning into a signal.
He dips his head between your thighs and licks into you without preamble, broad and hot and greedy, and the noise that tears out of you rattles something loose in his chest.
"Fuck—tha's it," he groans against you, the vibration making your hips jolt, and his big hands grip the backs of your thighs to keep you spread open and steady. "Tha's my bonnie girl."
He's not quiet about it, either. Soap eats pussy the way he does most things. With enthusiasm, commitment, and absolutely zero self-consciousness. Wet, filthy sounds fill the bedroom, punctuated by his own groans and your increasingly incoherent cries, and he doesn't give a single shit that the door is open, and his team can hear every obscene noise he's wringing out of you.
Let them hear.
His tongue works over your clit in fast, tight circles, then broad, flat strokes, alternating rhythm and pressure every time he feels your thighs start to shake. When you try to close your legs, he pins them open with his forearms. When you try to squirm away—overstimulated, oversensitive, too much and not enough at the same time—he follows relentlessly, dragging you back by the hips with a growl that rumbles against your soaked flesh.
"Nuh-uh. Stay still f'me."
He makes you cum with his mouth in under five minutes and then doesn't stop.
Your fingers twist into the sheets, into his mohawk, clawing at his scalp as your back arches off the mattress and a wrecked sob punches out of your lungs. Soap groans in response, the sound reverential, like your pleasure is a hymn and he's on his knees in church.
He keeps going. Lapping at you through the aftershocks, sucking your clit between his lips until you're keening, pressing his tongue inside you just to feel you clench around it, and when you cum again with his name breaking apart on your lips—Johnny, Johnny, fuck yes, Johnny—he nearly blacks out from how hard his cock throbs in response.
His hips have started moving on their own. Small, involuntary rolls against the mattress, his aching cock grinding against the sheets through his combat trousers, and he knows he should fucking stop, should pull his hips back, should focus on you and not the desperate friction building between his body and the bed.
But he doesn't stop.
He is physically incapable.
You taste like honey and salt and something almost medicinal underneath—the toxin, probably, working its way out of your system through your sweat and your slick—and he's drunk on it. Drunk on the way you say his name, how your thighs tremble against the sides of his head, drunk on the wet sounds of his tongue on your cunt and the way you keep pulling his face closer, harder, more.
"God—fuck—lass, ye taste so fuckin' good—"
He's rutting against the mattress in earnest now, his hips snapping in sharp, desperate little thrusts, and the friction is nowhere near enough and exactly too much at the same time.
The sheets are going to be ruined. He doesn't care. Can't. He’s a weak man, and his entire world has narrowed to the taste of you on his tongue and the ache in his junk and the way your body keeps arching into him like he's the only thing keeping you alive.
"Please—please, Johnny, I need—I can't—"
"I know, hen, I know—" he pants against your inner thigh, pressing a biting kiss there that makes you yelp, "—jus' one more, c'mon, give me one more, aye?"
He flickers his tongue, seals his mouth over your clit and sucks, hard, and you shatter. Your thighs clamp around his head, your hands fist in his hair so tightly it stings, and the scream that rips from your throat is ragged and raw and so fucking beautiful that he comes.
Inside his combat pants.
His hips stutter against the mattress and a guttural, muffled groan vibrates against your pussy as his cock pulses and spills, hot and wet, soaking through his briefs and into his trousers. His arms shake, his vision whites out for a second, and he has to press his forehead against your inner thigh and just breathe through it, chest heaving, while you whimper above him, still trembling from your own orgasm.
He pulls back slowly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and the reality of what just happened settles over him like a cloth soaked in ice water. He stares down at himself, at the damp patch darkening the front of his trousers, and lets out a long, defeated exhale.
"MacTavish."
Ghost's voice comes from the doorway; flat and sharp, dripping with contempt.
Soap closes his eyes, disappointed in himself, exhaling through his nose. "Aye. I know."
"You know?" Price's voice joins Ghost's, closer, much heavier. The captain is standing just inside the bedroom now, arms folded, jaw set. He looks at Soap the way a father looks at a teenage son caught doing something monumentally stupid.
"Get yourself sorted. Now."
Soap doesn't argue. He climbs off the bed on unsteady legs, not meeting anyone's eyes, and adjusts his trousers with a grimace as he shuffles past Ghost in the doorway.
Ghost doesn't move to let him pass. Makes him squeeze by, shoulder to shoulder, just to make it uncomfortable.
"Disgusting," Ghost mutters, low enough that only Soap hears it.
"Fuck off, LT," Soap mutters back, and there's no heat in it. Just shame.
You don't notice the shift at first.
One moment there are hands and mouths on you, voices and pressure and friction. The next, everything is quieter. Stiller. The mattress dips on one side and stays dipped, a solid weight settling beside you but not on you, not against you, not close enough to touch.
You whine at the loss of contact, of heat, of anything, and reach blindly for whoever is there.
A large hand catches your wrist. Gentle and firm, holding it in place.
"Don't."
One word. Low and gravelly, scraped raw like it was dragged over broken glass and wire mesh on its way out of his throat.
Ghost.
He's sitting on the edge of the bed with his back straight and his boots still on, because taking his boots off would mean he's staying, and staying would mean—he doesn't finish the thought.
Price asked him to sit with you while Gaz and Soap pulled themselves together. Asked this time, not ordered, because Price knows that ordering Ghost to do something he doesn't want to do is about as effective as ordering the tide to turn. Ghost agreed with a single nod, and now here he is, and every muscle in his body is locked so tight he might snap a tendon.
You're lying on your side, curled in on yourself, wearing nothing but your sodden underwear again and the ghost of everyone else's touch on your skin. The towel is long gone. Your body is still trembling, still feverish, still caught in the grip of the toxin, and the soft, pained sounds you keep making are doing things to him that he absolutely cannot allow.
He's hard. Has been since you doubled over and moaned and he had to watch your body betray you in front of everyone. His cock is straining against his trousers, thick and heavy and insistent.
Ghost pretends it isn’t. He's very good at pretending things don't exist.
"Simon…"
His jaw clenches beneath the balaclava. You rarely use his first name—none of them do—and hearing it now, in that voice, breathy and desperate and small, is a kind of cruelty he wasn't prepared for.
"You need to drink something," he murmurs, and reaches for the water bottle on the nightstand without looking at you.
"Don't want—"
"Wasn't bloody askin’."
He unscrews the cap and turns to you, and the mistake—the critical, tactical, unforgivable mistake—is that he looks at your face next.
Your eyes are glassy and wet, your lips parted around shallow little breaths, and you're looking up at him like he's the only solid thing in a world that's been spinning for hours.
Not with lust—not the way you looked at Gaz and Soap—but with something quieter. Something that reaches past the toxin and grabs hold of something deeper.
Trust.
You trust him. Even now, reduced to your basest instincts, your intoxicated, unhinged brain still recognises him as safe.
Something fractures behind his ribs, and he shuts it down immediately, brutally, the way he shuts down everything that threatens to breach the walls.
"Sit up," he orders, and his voice is soft yet steady even if the rest of him isn't. He slides one hand behind your head—just his palm, just enough to support your neck—and lifts the bottle to your lips.
You drink. Slowly, reluctantly, with small sips that dribble down your chin, but you drink. He holds the bottle still and watches the column of your throat move with each swallow, and when a drop of water runs from the corner of your mouth and trails down your neck, dark eyes track it all the way to your collarbone before catching himself and looking away.
"More," he says curtly, bringing the bottle back.
You manage a few more sips before turning your head away with a pitiful sound, and he lets you, setting the bottle aside. His hand lingers on the back of your head a moment too long—his thumb brushing once against the nape of your neck—before he pulls it back like he's been burned.
You reach for him again. Fingers closing around the fabric of his sleeve, tugging weakly.
"Stay. Please. Don't—Don't go."
"'M not goin’ anywhere." The words come out before he can vet them, gruff and low, and he immediately resents himself for saying them so quickly, so easily, like a confession slipped out under duress.
He lets you hold onto his sleeve. That much he can allow. That much won't cross a line he cannot uncross.
You shift closer, seeking warmth, and your body curls towards him until your forehead is pressed against his thigh. He goes completely rigid, every muscle locking and nerve firing, and his hands hover in the air on either side of you, not touching, not pulling away, suspended in the unbearable middle ground of a man who wants desperately but won't take.
Another small whimper from you. Not desire this time but pain. The cramps rolling through your body in waves, the toxin still doing its vicious work even after everything Gaz and Soap wrung from you. You're shaking, and not just from arousal. You're exhausted. Dehydrated. Your body is at war with itself.
Ghost is not a gentle man. He knows this about himself the way he knows his blood type and his boot size. It's a fact, unalterable, built into the architecture. He doesn't comfort. He doesn't soothe. He handles.
But.
His hand comes down on the back of your head, and it stays.
Heavy and warm through the leather of his glove. Not stroking just resting, a solid weight against your skull, and you let out a breath that sounds like it's been trapped in your lungs for hours.
You stop shaking. Not entirely. The tremors are still there, running through you in small aftershocks, but the worst of it eases under the steady pressure of his palm, like he's an anchor and you've been drifting.
"Ghost?" Your voice is small, barely a whisper.
"Yeah."
"It hurts."
He closes his eyes behind the mask. His hand presses down just slightly—a fraction more weight, a fraction more warmth—and his throat works around words that don't come.
He knows it hurts. He knows Gaz and Soap's efforts weren't enough. He knows what the doctors said—what Price said—and he knows what would fix it, and he can't.
Not because he doesn't want to. Because he wants it too fucking much.
Simon Riley is not a man who trusts himself with things he wants.
Wanting, in his experience, is the first step towards destroying, and he has destroyed enough for one lifetime. Touching you now the way his body is screaming at him to would not be careful or measured or controlled or gentle.
It would be all consuming, and he would take too much, and he would never be able to look you in the eyes again.
So he sits on the edge of the bed with his boots on and his cock aching and his hand on the back of your head, and he holds himself perfectly, agonisingly still. Just a solid shadow in a bedroom.
You press your face harder against his thigh and he lets you. Your fingers tighten on his sleeve and he lets you. Your breath evens out incrementally but still too fast, still too shallow, though calmer now, and he lets that happen too, guarding it like a perimeter, daring anything to disturb it.
He doesn't know how long you stay like that. Long enough for the light under the curtains to shift and for his leg to go numb beneath the pressure of your head. Long enough for Gaz to appear in the doorway, freshly changed into borrowed civvies, and stop dead at the sight of them.
Ghost meets his eyes over the top of your head. His expression is unreadable behind the mask, but his hand doesn't move from your hair, and that says more than his face ever could.
Gaz nods once and backs out without a word.
In the kitchen, Price is pouring two fingers of whisky into a tumbler and staring at the far wall like it owes him money. Soap is sitting at the table in a pair of Price's joggers, his soiled trousers balled up in a plastic bag at his feet, looking like a scolded dog.
"She's calmer," Gaz says quietly as he enters, and both men look up. "Ghost's with her."
Price takes a long drink. Sets the glass down. Rubs a hand over his beard.
"It's not enough, is it."
It's not a question and Gaz doesn't answer it.
"She's still in pain. She keeps—" He stops and swallows thickly. "She keeps asking. Saying she’s in pain."
The captain stares at the whisky in his glass. The silence stretches, tense and heavy, pressing in on the walls of the small kitchen.
"She needs more than fingers and a mouth," Soap says bluntly, because someone fucking has to, and delicacy has never been his strong suit. Gaz shoots him a look, but Soap holds it, unapologetic.
"He's right," Price agrees suddenly, and the words taste like bile. He pushes away from the counter and stands to his full height, shoulders squared, and for a moment he looks every inch the officer. Burdened, resolute, carrying a decision he'll second-guess for the rest of his life.
"Gentlemen's agreement," he says. His voice is low, steady, absolute. "What happens tonight stays in this flat. No one treats her differently when this is over. No one brings it up unless she does. No one holds it over anyone, including himself."
He looks at each of them in turn—Gaz, then Soap—and holds until he gets a nod from both.
"And we tell Ghost."
Ghost doesn't agree.
He listens to the terms of the gentlemen's agreement from the doorway of the kitchen, arms crossed, stance wide, radiating the kind of stillness that makes lesser men instinctively check their exits. When Price finishes, Ghost holds the silence for a long, loaded beat.
And then: "No."
Price doesn't flinch. "No to which part?"
"All of it. My part." Ghost's voice is flat and final, stripped of everything except the decision itself. "I'll stay with her. I won't fuck her."
Soap opens his mouth—probably to say something spectacularly unhelpful—and Gaz kicks him under the table without looking.
Price studies his Lieutenant for a moment. Then he nods once, heavy with an understanding that doesn't need to be spoken.
"Fair enough." He rolls his sleeves up to his forearms. The mechanical motion of a man preparing for something he cannot delegate. "I'll go first."
No one dares to argue.
Unlike Soap, Price closes the guest bedroom door behind him and stands there for a moment with his hand still on the knob, just breathing. It smells of sex and pheromones, but wrong.
The room is dim. Someone turned off the overhead and left only the bedside lamp, casting everything in low amber light that softens the edges of the furniture and the shape of you on the bed. You're curled on your side, knees drawn up, one hand clutching the pillow beneath your head. The sheets are wrecked; damp and twisted, pulled loose from two corners, and your skin glistens with a thin sheen of sweat.
You look small.
That's the thing that hits him first and hits him hardest.
You're one of his soldiers. He's seen you clear buildings, haul wounded men twice your size to extraction, take a round to the vest and get back up swearing. You are not small. You have never been small or fragile.
But you look it now, trembling and fever-damp and reduced to a version of yourself that he never should have had to witness, and the weight of that sits on his shoulders like a ruck full of stones.
He crosses the room in a few strides and sits on the edge of the mattress. The frame groans under his weight.
"Sergeant."
You stir, your head lifting, and your eyes find his face. They're glassy and unfocused, but there's a flicker of recognition—Captain—before it's swallowed by the next wave rolling through your body. You let out a sound that's half sob, half moan, your thighs pressing together, and your hand reaches out blindly until your fingers catch the fabric of his shirt.
"It hurts," you whisper. "Still hurts. Why does it still—"
"I know." He catches your wrist, holds it. His thumb presses against your pulse point to check, and it’s rapid, thready, way too fast for simply lying on a bed. "I'm going to help you."
He says it the way he says we're moving on that compound at 0300 or I need eyes on that ridgeline. Leaving no room for ambiguity, because if he allows ambiguity into this room, he'll start thinking about what he's doing, and if he starts thinking, he'll stop, and if he stops.
You'll keep hurting. Under his command.
He stands long enough to strip his shirt over his head and remove his belt, and then he's back on the bed, propped against the headboard with you between his legs, your back against his bare chest; coarse salt and pepper hair rasping against your tacky skin. One arm wraps around your midsection, heavy and secure, anchoring you.
"Easy," he murmurs against the top of your head. "I've got you, love."
His free hand trails down your stomach, and your muscles jump and twitch beneath his rough palm. He catalogues every reaction. The hitch in your breathing, the way your hips tilt up to meet him, the small, desperate noise you make when his fingers dip below your navel. The same way he catalogues threat patterns and exit routes.
This is a mission. He is completing the objective. He is taking care of his wounded soldier.
He keeps telling himself that as he peels your underwear down your thighs and off, tossing them aside. As he runs his hand up the inside of your thigh and feels you shake. As he finally cups you and discovers just how wet and swollen you are, dripping on his fingers, he has to close his eyes and clench his jaw against the visceral punch of arousal that knocks through him.
This is the job. You gave the order. See it through.
He works you with his fingers first, because he needs to know what you can take. Two thick fingers pressing into you slowly, carefully, and the sounds you make guts him.
"That's it." His voice is lower now, rougher. "There you go, sweetheart."
He doesn't call his soldiers sweetheart. He has never, in twenty-odd years of service, called anyone under his command sweetheart. The word falls out of him like a loose round, and he can't take it back.
Your sopping hole clenches around his fingers and his cock, already hard and straining against the front of his trousers, jerks so violently he must bite back a groan. He curls his fingers inside you, finds the swollen spot that makes your spine arch and your breath stutter, and works it with a patient, devastating precision.
You cum and gush on his fingers with a broken cry, your body locking up in his arms, and the aftershocks roll through you in long, shuddering waves that he holds you through without a word.
It's still not enough. He knows it won't be for a while longer.
Price reaches for the condom on the nightstand—Gaz found them in Price's bathroom cabinet, a half-empty box, almost expired, shoved behind the toiletries like an afterthought—and tears the foil with his teeth while you keen and squirm against him, already spiralling back up.
He undoes his trousers and pushes them down just enough to free himself, because keeping them on feels like maintaining some essential boundary, some last scrap of separation between Captain Price doing what needs to be done and John wanting what he shouldn't want.
Rolling the condom on is a particular exercise in self-control. His cock is thick, flushed dark when his foreskin slides back, weeping pre at the tip, and every brush of his own fingers against the oversensitive skin makes his abs clench.
He lifts you with ease, one hand on your hip, the other gripping himself, and positions you above his lap.
"Sergeant," he grunts through gritted teeth, "look at me."
Your head lolls back against his shoulder, eyes half-open, and you meet his gaze as best you can. He searches for something in your expression—recognition, maybe awareness, you—and finds enough of it to quiet the loudest of the voices screaming in his head.
"If it's too much, y’tell me. That's a bloody order."
You nod hazily. He doesn't know if you actually processed the words, but he needed to say them. Needed that on the record, if only between himself and God.
He lowers you onto him slowly.
The sound that comes out of him is not one he's ever made before.
You're scorching hot and soaked. Your body takes him inch by inch, clenching and fluttering around him as gravity and his guiding hand ease you down, and by the time you're fully seated in his lap, he's seeing stars and his fingers have left dents in the flesh of your hip.
"Fuck," he breathes, and the word is ragged at the edges, torn from somewhere deeper than his chest.
You moan shamelessly, and the relief in the sound nearly undoes him. Like something that's been wound unbearably tight has finally been given slack. Your body relaxes against his, tension draining from your muscles for the first time in hours, and the change is so visible, so immediate, that it almost justifies this.
Almost.
He starts to move. Rolling his hips up into you, slow and deep, both hands gripping your waist to control the pace. He keeps it measured; long and deliberate strokes that drag against your inner walls and make you whimper with each one, because if he lets himself go, if he fucks you the way his body is begging him to, he'll lose himself entirely.
And he hates—Christ, he hates—how fucking good you feel.
He hates the way you fit around him like you were made for it, and the way your head falls back against his shoulder, how your lips part and you breathe his name—not his rank, not Captain, but John—and the sound of it rushes through him hot and electric and wrong. Hates the wet, obscene sound of your body taking him repeatedly; that his hips are moving faster now, snapping up into you with a force that makes the headboard knock against the wall.
Hates that he doesn't want to stop.
Your eyes squeeze shut, your head tips back as you cry out. "John—John—oh god—"
His arm tightens around your ribs, crushing you back against his chest, and his mouth finds the curve of your shoulder—not kissing, just pressing there, teeth grazing skin, breathing you in. His other hand slides down between your thighs and rubs tight circles on your clit in counterpoint to each thrust, and you come apart so violently in his arms that he has to hold you through it with every ounce of strength he has.
You clench around him like a vice and he follows you over the edge with a bitten-off groan, his hips stuttering, his cock pulsing deep inside you as the orgasm tears through him with a ferocity that whites out his vision.
For a few suspended seconds, there's nothing left. No rank, no mission, no guilt. Just the pounding of his heart and the aftershocks rippling through both your bodies and the impossible, terrible warmth of you around him.
Then reality seeps back in, cold and unforgiving, and Captain John Price opens his eyes and begins the long process of hating himself for every second of the last twenty minutes.
He pulls out carefully, disposes of the condom, and fixes his trousers. When he leans you back against the pillows, your eyes are already glazing over again, your body winding up for more, and the sight of it makes something weary and furious crack behind his chest cavity
He cups your jaw, tilting your face up. "Stay with me, Sergeant. Stay with me."
You whimper, and your hips shift restlessly against the sheets.
Price stands and walks to the door on legs that feel like they belong to someone else.
"Garrick. You're up."
Gaz and Soap take you in turns after that, and it's different this time.
Where the first round was clinical in its own way—Gaz with his careful guilt, Soap with his missionary zeal, Price bearing the weight of command—this his round is rawer.
The boundaries have been breached, and the gentlemen's agreement hangs over the room like a ceasefire that everyone knows is temporary.
Gaz is gentler than Price was. He lays you on your back and settles between your thighs with a tenderness that borders on devotion, pressing his forehead against yours as he pushes inside you.
He goes slow and gentle, and whispers things against your temple that no one else can hear, private things meant only for the space between your mouth and his.
"I've got you," he murmurs repeatedly. "I've got you, Babygirl, I'm right here. I will be here."
He comes inside the condom with a shudder and your name bitten into the skin of your shoulder, and when he pulls out and rolls onto his back beside you, he stares at the ceiling for a long time without blinking, tears prickling at the corners of his eyes.
Soap goes after. He's not gentle—can't be, doesn't know how to be, not with the way you claw at his back and wrap your legs around his waist and beg him harder, please, harder—but he's present.
He hooks your knee over his broad shoulders and fucks you deep, watching your face with a focused intensity that's almost clinical in its own right, cataloguing every reaction, every gasp, adjusting angle and depth and rhythm like he's zeroing a scope.
"Tha's it, sweetheart, take it—fuck, yer so—fuck—"
The condoms run out after Soap's first round.
Gaz discovers this when he reaches for the box on the nightstand and finds it empty, and the look on his face—the quiet oh, shit—would be funny in any other context.
"Cap'n," he calls, voice strained. "We've got a problem."
Price, who has been standing in the hallway staring at nothing, appears in the doorway. Gaz holds up the empty box. Price closes his eyes.
"Then pull out," the captain says flatly. "That's an order."
It should be simple, and it’s anything but.
Gaz tries. He genuinely, sincerely tries, but you're clenching around him so tightly and making those sounds, those desperate and wrecked, grateful sounds, and when your orgasm hits and your walls contract around his cock in rhythmic, milking pulses, his hips stutter and he buries himself to the hilt and spills inside you with a choked groan before his brain even registers what his body has done.
"Shit—shit, I'm sorry, I—fuck—"
He pulls out too late, watches his cum leak from you onto the sheets, and drops his head against your sternum with a devastated exhale.
Soap doesn't even pretend he's going to manage it.
"'M not gonna be able to pull out," he announces with a frankness that makes Gaz want to strangle him. "Jus' bein' honest, Cap."
"You'll pull out or I'll pull you out myself, MacTavish."
And yet Soap does not, in fact, pull out in time.
Price has to physically haul him back by the shoulder, and even then, Soap's cock jerks and pulses as it slips free, painting your inner thighs and lower belly with hot, thick ropes of cum while the Scotsman lets out a string of Gaelic curses that would make his mother disown him.
The room smells like multiple people fucking and sweating and something medicinal—the toxin, working its way out of your pores at last—and you're finally, finally, starting to slow down.
The desperate edge has dulled. Your whimpers are quieter now, tired rather than urgent, and your body has stopped arching off the bed every few minutes.
You're still reaching, though. Still searching for contact, for warmth, for a body against yours.
Ghost enters the room without being asked.
He's stripped down to his black t-shirt and trousers. The balaclava is still on, but his gloves are off, and the sight of his bare, scarred hands is somehow more intimate than anything else that's happened in this room tonight.
He doesn't look at the other men or acknowledge the state of the sheets or the smell or the heavy, post-coital guilt saturating the air.
He simply moves to the bed, sits down, and gathers you against his chest with a practised efficiency that suggests he's been rehearsing this moment in his head for the last two hours.
You go willingly. Boneless, exhausted, trembling with the last dregs of the toxin and the cumulative aftermath of more orgasms than your body was designed to handle in one night. Your face presses into the crook of his neck, your fingers curl loosely in the front of his shirt, and you let out a breath that sounds like surrender.
Ghost pulls the duvet up over both of you. One arm settles around your back securely. His other hand comes up to cradle the back of your head, fingers curling into your hair, and he holds you against him like he's shielding you from blast radius.
"Go to sleep," he says quietly. An order and a request and a plea all compressed into three words.
You make a small, incoherent sound against his throat.
"I know." His hand moves over your hair, slowly and gentle. "Sleep."
Price watches from the doorway for a moment. Then he pulls the door halfway closed and leaves the Lieutenant to his vigil.
In the kitchen, the captain pours himself another whisky—three fingers this time—and drinks it standing up, staring at the drawn curtains. Gaz is in the shower. Soap is sprawled on the sofa in the living room, one arm over his eyes, dead to the world.
Price's phone buzzes. Laswell.
How is she?
He stares at the screen for a long time. Types and deletes three different responses before finally settling on one.
Handled. Debrief in the morning.
He sets the phone face-down on the counter and finishes his drink.
Hours later, you wake up slowly, like surfacing from deep water.
The first thing you register is warmth. A wall of it, solid and breathing, pressed against your back. An arm draped over your waist, heavy with sleep. Fingers loosely tangled in yours against your sternum.
The second thing you register is that you are naked, sore in places you don't want to think about, and your mouth tastes like the inside of a boot.
The third thing is the balaclava.
You can feel it, the knitted fabric against the back of your neck, and the slow, even exhale of breath warming your skin through the cloth. The chest behind you rises and falls in the deep, steady rhythm of genuine sleep, which means the Lieutenant trusts this room enough to have let himself go under.
Which means something, though you're too foggy to figure out what.
You shift slightly, testing your body. Everything aches. Your thighs, your hips, your abs, your jaw for some reason, and there's a deep, bone-level exhaustion settled into your muscles that reminds you of the tail end of a bad flu.
The cramps are gone, though. The tingling, the feverish heat, the desperate, clawing need—all of it has receded, leaving behind a hollow, wrung-out emptiness.
And memory. Fragments of it. Arriving in pieces like delayed radio transmissions.
Kyle's hands shaking as he touched you. I'm only doin' this for you, babygirl. Johnny's mouth on you, hot and relentless. The sound he made against your thighs.
The shower. The water. Voices.
John.
Your eyes open wide and your body goes rigid, and the arm around your waist tightens reflexively. Ghost pulling you closer in his sleep, an unconscious response to a perceived threat, even though the threat is just you waking up and remembering.
You lie very still.
The flat is quiet. Early morning light edges around the curtains, pale and grey, and somewhere in the distance, you can hear the muffled sounds of the base waking up—vehicles, a distant shout, the rhythmic thud of boots on tarmac.
You don't move, don't speak. You stare at the wall and breathe and try to organise the wreckage in your head into something you can process.
Behind you, Ghost's breathing changes. Shifts from deep and even to something shallower, more aware. His arm tenses around you, a brief contraction of muscle, there and gone, and you know the exact moment he wakes up, because his entire body goes perfectly, absolutely still.
Neither of you says a word.
His hand is still tangled with yours against your bare chest. His thumb rests against your knuckle. But he doesn't pull away.
The silence stretches. Not uncomfortable, exactly. Heavy. Full of things that need to be said and won't be. Not now, certainly not yet, and maybe not ever. And there is a fragile, terrified understanding that what happened in this room changed the molecular structure of something that can never be unchanged.
Finally, after what feels like an hour but is probably two minutes, Ghost speaks.
"How do you feel?"
You consider the question. Really consider it, not the reflexive I'm fine that sits on your tongue out of habit.
"Like shit," you answer honestly. Your voice is wrecked, raspy, and it hurts to talk.
Then, so quietly you almost miss it, he answers, "Yeah."
His thumb moves once. A single, slow stroke across your knuckle.
Then he lets go of your hand, carefully disentangles himself from around you, and gets up without another word. You hear his boots being pulled back on. The soft click of the door.
You lie in the bed that smells like all four of them and none of yourself, and you stare at the wall, and you breathe.
A/N: We will not be silent. We will not be silenced. #bringvalkoback #wewantvalko
Words: 4452
Warnings: none
Wooden bullets, a camouflage Hunter uniform, fingerless gloves… You checked yourself over in the reflection of the glass wall separating the row of desks from the chair circle your team had formed, your hand stroking your newly modified gun.
There were many reasons you had volunteered for this mission, one of them being wanting to prove yourself able to handle danger by yourself despite your rather passive Evol; another was that there was a slim chance that whatever beast the Hunter’s Association was intent on chasing down was like you—misunderstood and perhaps more powerful and capable of harm than they even realised.
There was so much you had yet to learn about yourself, things you couldn’t share with Tara, with Xavier, let alone Jenna. Sylus was the only one who knew—in fact, Sylus was the only one you could trust to keep your real potential a secret. For now.
“This,” Captain Jenna said, pointing at the projection on the screen, “is what we call the screamer. It’s a Protocore-powered device sending high-frequency sound waves undetectable by the human ear.”
An image of a wooden, cube-shaped contraption popped up.
“Our tech team built it using mahogany and oak. Due to its fragility and size, it will be difficult to travel with it, so we will deploy an action team to weaken the target before we can reach it with the screamer.”
“Judging by previous sightings and the state he left his battlefields in, we concluded that his Evol must be some form of Metallization. Basically, what this means is that he can either control any object made of metal, manipulate magnetic fields around him, or turn everyday objects into metal. Maybe it’s all three,” Tara explained.
There wasn’t much information to go by. The target was referred to as a beast, a creature half-man, half-wolf, a shapeshifter. You had read about them during your studies, before your final Hunter exam. They were rare—extremely rare. But they existed, more commonly known as werewolves. And as of right now, one of them was wreaking havoc across Linkon City. His motivations were, as of yet, unclear. For all you knew, he wasn’t even a true threat to the city. But after your past experiences with new types of Wanderers, caution was warranted.
Jenna nodded. “Once activated, approach with caution. At best, the screamer will force the wolf to its knees; at worst, it will briefly distract him. You might only have a small window to strike. Use that.”
You raised your hand. “I volunteer to march ahead on the frontline. If we fan out north, north-west and north-east of the no-hunt zone, we are bound to run into him sooner or later. We’ll send out flare signals as soon as we spot him.”
Jenna nodded. “Approved. We don’t need to get too close to him, merely close enough. But you’re not going alone.”
“Too many of us might give our location away. We’d make too much noise.”
“That’s true,” Tara said. “If his hearing is as good as we think it is, he’ll hear us from miles away.”
Jenna took a deep breath. “In this case, I propose a Hunter with an active Evol and hence the ability to defend themselves beyond guns and swords leads the frontline.”
The room remained silent. No one volunteered, and Xavier wasn’t present.
“Captain, I can do it,” you insisted. “If this Valko is only half as smart as we are, then he will know about our assets—minus our secret weapon, of course. He will expect someone with a high-damage Evol. We could catch him off guard and practice diplomacy. I promise I won’t try to fight him alone unless he attacks first. If he thinks I’m alone, he might be giving me intel we need. Please, Captain Jenna.”
Your supervisor sighed. “Fine. Approved. But no heroics, do you understand?”
“Understood.” No heroics. That shouldn’t be too difficult.
A twig snapped under the sole of your boot. You cursed quietly. You were close. He was close. There was a clearing opening up before you. Under different circumstances, it would have made the perfect spot for a picnic in the woods. But not today. Not right now. Not with danger lurking in the bushes.
“It’s not safe for a little bunny to be out here all by themselves… Don’t you know there are wolves in these woods?”
You froze when he stepped into view. He wasn’t fully transformed. He was…a man. A very tall, very muscled man. His red hair reflected the pale moonlight above you, peeking through the crowns of the trees, illuminating the small clearing just enough for you to spot a pair of dark wolf ears and a long, fluffy tail that was almost cute.
His yellow eyes bored into you like a hard diamond, pinning you in place as if the vines on the ground had snaked around your ankles to restrict your movement.
You couldn’t see his face, not with the snout-like mask he was wearing. Regardless, he matched the description the Hunter’s Association had briefed you on.
“Valko. That is your name, isn’t it?”
He took a step towards you, and your hand slowly wandered to the hilt of your gun—just in case.
“Who wants to know?”
“There is no need for violence. If you cooperate…”
He scoffed. “Cooperate?” Another step. But then, he paused. “Your scent…”
“My…scent?” You blinked.
“You smell…good.”
“That’s… not exactly what a sheep wants to hear from the wolf…” You muttered to yourself. You took a step back, hand tightening on your gun.
An amused smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “Not a bunny? Are you a sheep?” Exceptional hearing, check.
“I’m a wolf in sheep's skin,” you retorted with all the courage you could muster. It was him; there was no doubt about it. If Tara’s research on him was true, then your weapon was useless. You’d have better chances fighting him with a wooden stick.
“A Deepspace Hunter, I take it? Your uniform and gear already gave you away. And they sent you out here, all by yourself? Alone? To capture the big bad wolf?”
“I’m just here to talk.”
Valko tilted his head. “You’re here to talk? Wolves don’t talk, bunny.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Then what do I call you? Wolfsbane? That’s a name you’ll have to earn first.”
“I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you force my hand.”
Valko chuckled. “Is that so?”
His hand barely moved, yet the invisible pull that flung your gun out of your grasp and against a tree, where it burst into dozens of pieces, was charged with so much sizzling force that your own Evol jumped, eager to dig its claws into his power and resonate with it. You could practically taste it on your tongue, like that faint flavour of metal, those times when you bit your tongue and swallowed your own blood.
Well, this was inconvenient. Those wooden bullets were utterly useless without your gun. What were you supposed to do? Bring a wooden sword? A plastic toy lightsaber? Damn it, where was your team?
He moved again, a slow step making the leaves under his boots crunch before he started at you with a speed invisible to the naked human eye. Alright. Hand-to-hand combat it was. You were strong. You trained for this. You could overpower him; you were smaller, faster…
Within the fraction of a second, he had you pinned against a tree, your right wrist trapped above your head with his hand tightly wrapped around it, and his strong, unnaturally warm body encaging you like prey.
You thrashed, bringing your knees up just in time to kick him in the chest. He let go to catch his balance, and the tree trunk behind you gave you momentum, allowing you to take a full swing at him with your clenched fist. His pained groan was all the confirmation you needed to know that the blow landed as it should have.
Valko didn’t go down, though. He lunged at you, his strong arms wrapping around your waist and swinging you across him. His boot at the back of your head and his hand around the back of your neck were the only things that kept your head from colliding with the hard forest ground.
You huffed, snaked your legs around his calves and pulled hard on his arm. He went tumbling enough for you to flip over and straddle him for another blow.
“Are you insane?” Instead of attempting to land his own attacks, however, he simply snatched your wrists with a single hand and sat up, his devilishly beautiful face only inches from yours.
That…wasn’t fair. He didn’t even give you a chance to fight him properly. Damn it, he didn’t even fight back. You were a skilled Hunter, you were trained in hand-to-hand combat, you could take him if he just—
Valko reached up with his free hand, slowly tearing the mask from his face and tossing it aside. It dematerialised before it could hit the ground.
He was… he was handsome. Both Tara and you would have given him a ten out of ten had he popped up on one of the dating apps you stalked together every now and then during girls’ night. You gnashed your teeth. You didn’t want him to be handsome.
He leaned forward, his fangs inches from your throat… You squeezed your eyes shut, but the annihilating bite never came. He stilled almost entirely, his nose pressed against the crook of your neck, inhaling as if you were the only source of oxygen left in Linkon.
Stall him. You have to stall him.
“Who…are you?”
“A wild, unbound will, surrendered only by you.” He pulled back and smirked. He smirked? Why did he look so happy all of a sudden?
“W-What?” You blinked, palms pushing against his rock-hard chest in a futile attempt at pushing him off you. Those muscles were pure heaven. What?! No, stop thinking that!
“Mine…” he growled.
“What are you talking about? Back off!” Another shove. Valko did not budge an inch, his grip around your wrists remaining one of iron. His mouth opened slightly, warm lips brushing over your skin, a hot breath ghosting over it, fangs gently chafing along your neckline.
“My mate…” he mumbled, his voice deep and…feral. You swallowed. Did he just say mate?
You twisted your left wrist in his grasp, desperate to activate your Hunter’s Watch and call for back-up—only to realise that whatever he had done to the magnetic field surrounding you had rendered your tech completely useless.
Both Xavier and Tara were on their way, and they had a whole team with them, armed with more wooden bullets along with the screamer. If you held out just a little longer, if you stalled long enough for them to reach you… wait. Could they even still see your live location?
“Your heart is pounding… are you afraid of me?”
He answered the question before a single sound could escape your lips.
“Don’t be. You’re under my protection now.”
“What are you even talking about? I don’t need protection.”
“Maybe you don’t. But I’ll give it to you anyway.”
You gasped, unable to process your world turning upside down when he jumped to his feet and threw you over his shoulder without even the hint of a stagger. Next thing you knew, you were flying. Not literally—but Valko was running through the woods so fast he might as well have been lifting off the ground.
“Let me down! Let me down right now!” Struggling against his tight grip, you flailed helplessly.
“You think I didn’t smell them? You were luring them to me, but all they would have run into is a blood bath. You should thank me, bunny. They’re your friends, aren’t they? I’m showing them more mercy than they deserve for attempting to cage me like a dog. Consider it my engagement gift to you.”
Your heart skipped a beat, a mild distraction mixing in with utter shock at how close your face was to his perky butt right now. “Your what gift?”
“Stop squirming. We’re almost there.”
“Almost where?!” Your voice cracked, a hysterical cry breaking free from your lungs when he leapt across a small cliff, up to the mouth of a dark cave. Pale moonlight reflected on the smooth stone, gravel crunching beneath his soles when he landed and hoisted you into his arms like a bride.
You peeked at your Hunter’s Watch. There was still no signal; in fact, the small screen remained black even when you shifted in his forced embrace to tap it.
Ignoring your ongoing protest, he carried you into the cave. A temporary hideaway, perhaps, but certainly not his home…right?
“Let me down,” you demanded once more. This time, he obliged.
Furs lay scattered on the cold stone ground, a fireplace with logs to sit on surrounding it near the entrance. He put you down in front of what resembled an armchair but was simply a stone carved to look like a piece of furniture with more furs draped over it.
You weren’t alone. About half a dozen yellow eyes met you with curiosity, wolf ears perked, and tails on high alert. His pack.
“Uh… hi.” They didn’t…exactly look scary. At least, not as scary as Valko.
You crossed your arms, locking your eyes on him when he turned around and took a few steps back to give you space. Damn it, it would be a lot easier to see him as the beast he had been introduced to you by the Association if he actually looked like…well, a beast! But he didn’t. You longed to scratch him behind those wolf ears and to touch that fluffy tail to test if it was as soft as it looked. And you certainly didn’t mind the idea of exploring the rest of his body either. Stop that, will you?!
“Explain.” Crossing your arms before your chest, you waited. He didn’t seem as hostile as he was when you first laid your eyes on him, less…threatening. It was almost like he completely switched up his personality and behaviour towards you as soon as he smelled your…your scent? Yeah, what the heck was that all about?
“You’re my mate,” he said as if it were obvious. The werewolves behind you gasped—and sniffed. Valko stepped in front of you. “No one touches her without my permission,” he roared. You peeked behind you just in time to see them lower their heads in respect. Wow.
“What’s a mate? And you can’t just kidnap me because you think you’ve got some wolfy claim on me, you know!” You rose, pushing him away to emphasise your words.
“I didn’t kidnap you. You were the one hunting me down, remember?”
“I’m a Deepspace Hunter! It’s what we do! It’s your fault for causing a ruckus! Are you or are you not involved with EVER?”
Valko had the audacity to sigh. “I promise, I’ll explain everything to you. Sit. Please?” He was pouting. He was actually pouting. Pressing a metaphorical slow-motion button, you sank into the soft furs, yet remained on high alert.
“How much do you know about wolves?” he began.
“So you really are a werewolf?”
Valko smirked. “What, were you all just making guesses?”
“They’re rare. Closer to a myth than based on real sightings and scientific studies.”
“Correct.”
He paused, and you stared at him. He sighed.
“Yes, I am a werewolf. No, I don’t only transform on a full moon. I have full control over my shapeshifting abilities, but I do get stronger on a full moon. My sense of smell, sight and taste is heightened, comparable to that of a real wolf; silver does not harm me, and yes, my Evol happens to be Metallization, rendering your little toy guns useless. The wooden bullets were a cute idea, though.”
“How does it work?”
“My Evol?”
“I can manipulate magnetic fields around me to bend metal objects to my command or metalise objects entirely.” Tara had been right then. It was all three.
“Werewolves are not as rare as you think. We’re simply…very good at hiding. We don’t interfere in primitive society unless it’s absolutely necessary, and if we do, we blend in.”
“Primitive society?”
He nodded, his expression dead-serious. “Your need for work, money, meaningless trinkets, this underlying sense of duty to do your part, pay your bills, then roll over and die. You know, all that.”
Shit. He had a point. “It’s not all bad,” you tried. “This system ensures—”
“…ensures that the rich stay rich? Society is a slave to politics, mostly men in power who don’t care for the well-being of their people. We do.”
You scoffed. “What, you’re saying your strict wolf hierarchy is any better?”
“It is.”
“What’s your rank then?”
“I’m an Alpha.”
You sighed. “Of course you are.”
Valko raised an eyebrow. A minute of silence followed.
“And earlier, you called me…you called me your mate.”
“You are.”
You blinked. “I’m going to need a bit more information than that.”
“Every wolf, werewolf or otherwise, has one fated mate destined to be by their side. They are ours to protect, ours to care for, and ours to serve. Few of us are lucky enough these days to ever find them. Once we find our companion, it becomes our life duty and honour to protect and care for them. It’s…tricky to explain if you’re not a wolf, but when you first meet them and pick up their scent…you just know.”
You blinked, images of his naked, sweaty body above you flashing before your inner eye. What in the…?
“How would you even know? You’ve never met me before. You don’t even know my name. And I’m not a wolf.”
Your heart almost jumped out of your chest when he stated your name in full. It rolled off his tongue like a prayer, like he was tasting the words like a sweet piece of chocolate melting in his mouth. “I keep tabs on things, you know. And I pay attention to details. And… There is one thing you need to understand, bunny. Wolves mate for life.”
Your heart jumped—and not for entirely negative reasons, which was, arguably, worse. “I never agreed to be your mate. In fact, you kidnapped me and dragged me to your cave like I’m your dinner.”
He snorted. “Don’t tempt me.”
“My colleagues are going to come look for me. You can’t keep me captive forever. They’ll hunt you down and stake you.”
“Stake me?” It was the first time he laughed. It was a pleasant sound, much to your dismay. “I’m not a vampire, bunny.”
No. But Sylus was, more or less. Where was Mephisto when you needed him to send a message?
“You’re not my captive,” he went on. “If you want to leave, I am not going to stop you. But that will not keep me away from you. I will watch over you.”
Your jaw dropped, but your Hunter’s Watch beeped before you could respond. Two messages from Tara and three from Xavier chimed in. The reception returned for a split second. Was he aware? Or had he let the messages slide through on purpose?
“I need reassurance from you.”
“Sure. About what, exactly?”
“Your involvement with EVER. I am willing to hear you out, but you, your company and your pack have been causing panic in the city. I need to know your intentions. I need to know you mean no harm to its citizens. If EVER is threatening you… We can help. We’ve dealt with them before.”
“It’s not like that.”
“And we’re quite civilised, thank you very much,” one of the werewolves cut in with a deep frown. “We’re not interested in gobbling up Little Red Riding Hoods like you.”
“Rude. I’m not even wearing red!”
“Give us some privacy, will you?” Valko said. The werewolves retreated almost immediately. Who knew how deep this cave was. “It’s true we have dealings with EVER but not in the way you think. I can’t tell you yet; it would put our entire operation at risk. But I can take you to my research facility and prove it to you.”
“When?”
“Whenever you’re ready. Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, next week. You’re welcome in my lab anytime, bunny.”
“If I take you up on this offer, if I get clearance by the Association…” (Which you probably wouldn’t and you’d have to improvise if you wanted answers.) “Then what do I tell my colleagues?”
“Tell them you lost track of me. That’s safest for everyone. Tell them I wasn’t hostile and that I didn’t try to attack you.”
You raised an eyebrow. “But you did try to attack me.”
“You pulled a gun on me, bunny. It was self-defence. You throw a neat punch, by the way. My cheekbones still hurt.”
You scoffed. “I need to go back. They’re looking for me.” You climbed back on your feet, moving towards the mouth of the cave. Valko wrapped his arm around your waist and pulled you close before you could take another step.
“I can’t let you do that.”
Your heart sank. “And why not?”
“It’s not safe.”
Valko took a deep breath. “Look, we are in this no-hunt zone because we’re tracking a rival pack. It’s too dangerous out there at night, especially not this close to a full moon.”
“I can handle myself.”
“I have no doubt you can, bunny. But these wolves are ruthless. They’d tear you to pieces long before you’d even have a chance to shoot. And once they smell that you’re mine, they’re going to hunt you too because by hurting you, they’re hurting me.”
“They’ll smell that you’re…that I’m your ‘mate’?”
“They will. Please. You’ll be safe here, I swear it. I know this is all a lot to take in, but I promise to you that I won’t let any harm come to you.” Valko offered you his hand, his grip around your waist loosening. You hesitated.
Could you trust him? Every single Hunter training you’d ever pushed through pointed to doing the opposite. But the way he’d cradled you earlier, like a cherished bride…you couldn’t believe he meant to harm you or keep you hostage to blackmail the Hunter’s Association.
His smile when you took his hand was so genuine it warmed your heart.
“I can’t just stay here without telling anyone.”
“I’ve blocked your GPS signal to hide our location. They won’t find you here.”
“That does sound like kidnapping to me, you know,” you grumbled.
“Let me finish. New plan. Contact them tomorrow. Tell them we took you in because of the hostile wolves we are chasing. Request a meeting with the chairman of EonCore Tech, and he will clear things up for you.”
“Who’s the chairman of EonCore Tech?”
Valko smirked. “Me.”
Your face fell. “You?”
“Me. I know I’m asking for a lot for very little in return, but your life will be in danger if you go back out there.”
“You have no idea what I am capable of. Besides, that is one more reason for me to go back and warn my colleagues.”
“How long will it take for them to abort the mission for tonight?”
“Midnight. The deadline is midnight. But there will be a search party out for me.”
“I know,” Valko growled. “This is a surprise for me too, bunny. I don’t know who you are, not yet. But I will know you. Your likes, your dislikes, your habits, your pet peeves, how you drink your milk tea and what food makes your mouth water. I will know everything about you.”
“And what if I don’t want that?”
Valko remained silent for a long moment. “You really think me the villain, don’t you?”
“Convince me otherwise.”
“I will.” Your lips parted when he approached and knelt before you, his hands by his side. “We have a common enemy. If you can’t trust me yet, trust that. Okay?”
“…Okay.” You weren’t entirely sure what compelled you to agree with him. But, strangely enough…you did feel safe around him. Like he would rip apart heaven, hell and Earth to keep you out of harm’s way.
He nodded. “You should get some rest now. You look exhausted.”
You eyed him, letting your gaze drift further into the pitch-black cave and then back to him.
“They will not touch you. And I’m not leaving you.”
After what felt like ten full minutes of contemplation, you finally sank onto the makeshift bed covering the ground near the wall. Hidden enough to provide protection from the wind, it was, however, way too chilly in here to even think about sleep regardless.
“I don’t usually sleep in caves,” you mumbled. It was surprisingly more comfortable than you’d expected. You leaned back, folding into what resembled a fetal position. Like hell you’d take off your armour.
“Me neither, bunny.”
You frowned.
“What, did you think I live like a wolf all the time? I have a house, you know. It’s quite spacious, actually. You should come visit.”
Valko lay down next to you, inching closer until he could drape his arm around you.
“What…do you think you’re doing?”
“You’re shivering. I’m keeping you warm.”
You blinked. You weren’t opposed to this. You weren’t opposed to this at all. But you barely knew this guy!
“You feel it too, don’t you? Somehow…”
You bit your lower lip and turned, presenting him your back. Mistake. Bad mistake. His warm breath against the back of your neck sent pleasant shivers up and down your spine. “Fine. Just…keep your hands in appropriate places.”
You’d barely finished your half-hearted warning when he shifted even closer, nuzzling your neck and rubbing his nose over whatever bare skin he could find. You sucked in a sharp breath. The man was so big he almost enveloped you whole. Your entire body longed to lean against him, to rest your head against his chest and let him worship every inch of you. Oh, you… Snap out of it!
“There. That’ll do for now,” he said softly.
“What…was…that?” You were panting. Why were you panting?!
“I made sure to get my scent all over you. The other wolves in the area that are part of my pack will know that you’re mine, and they will protect their Alpha’s mate with their life.”
You swallowed. “I’m not…yours.” You didn’t sound convinced. Fuck, you didn’t sound convinced at all.
You could practically feel him smirk behind you. "Looks like you're a wolfsbane after all."
And yet, against all reason…you fell asleep in his arms that night.
A/N: Part 2 is cooking and will feature his nightly visit to MC’s balcony! ♥ I have more Imagines planned for him, and for the other love interests (and other characters in general) too, of course. I'm not gone, pinky promise! Work this year has been crazy and this mess with Valko sort of rattled me awake!
summary: robby tells you he wants to keep things casual after you catch him flirting with noelle. he's less enthusiastic when he finds out you've been seeing his best friend. (5k)
characters: michael robinavitch / fem!reader, jack abbot / fem!reader, trinity santos, dennis whitaker, mel king
contents: established relationship, friends with benefits, jealousy, mutual pining, angst, possessive!robby, allusions to smut
FIC #5 / 20 FOR 20
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
You and Robby were not together. Not officially, and definitely not publicly. You were hardly together privately, if you were being real honest with yourself — aside from a few stolen nights after particularly draining shifts, where he’d show up at your place with takeout and exhaustion sitting heavy in his eyes and promises of distracting you from the hard day; where he’d then wake up before sunrise and leave before you had the chance to miss him.
Casual. That was the point. Because he was an attending, and you were his resident, and Robby had already made the mistake of blurring those lines once before. “It gets messy, sweetheart,” he murmured against your bare shoulder one night, voice heavy with sex and sleep alike. “And when it ends, it… It really fuckin’ ends, you know?”
You didn’t know what he meant by that, actually. You figured he was saying that dating within the hierarchy tends to crash and burn in some way or another, but you didn’t press him on the issue then. Though now you think that maybe you should’ve.
You should’ve told him to give this a name back then — whatever this thing was between you — because at least then you’d have a name for the feeling searing in your chest just now, as you’re forced to watch Robby flirt with Noelle on the other side of the workstation.
You’re examining the chart glowing from the iPad in your hands, trying hard to ignore the ache in your lower back and the fact that you haven’t eaten since six that morning, when the sound of Robby’s sudden laughter graces your ears — finding you despite the buzzing chatter of the crowded E.R.
You glance up automatically and find him leaning against the counter, with the sleeves of his undershirt pushed up to his elbows and his stethoscope looped lazily around his neck, towering several inches over Noelle.
“You’re getting less grumpy in your old age, Robinavitch,” the older woman quips beneath a quiet smile and the faint flush coating her caramel-colored cheeks. She arches a manicured brow in his direction, dark eyes glimmering beneath long lashes. “Something been improving your mood lately? Or some-one?”
Your palms go clammy around the tablet in your hand. You never wanted anyone to find out that you were dating your attending, but god, your heart stops beating just to hear your name fall from his lips.
Robby laughs instead, a sharp exhale from his nose.
“You always think you know everything,” he says with a shake of his head, though you can still hear the smile in his voice when he tells her, “I’m not sure your new boyfriend up in ortho would like you asking about my love life, Hastings…”
“Oh, I stopped seeing him ages ago,” Noelle scoffs. “He kept calling himself an alpha male unironically, and I— couldn’t take it anymore.”
Robby physically recoils. “Jeez… And here I thought your taste in men improved after me.”
Their laughter entwines and lingers in the air for several lingering moments. It’s more familiar than flirtatious, but your stomach twists with a sick feeling anyway. Because Noelle was, to put it simply, everything you weren’t. She was effortlessly gorgeous and carried all that confidence in her matching pant suits and pulled-back curls. She was much closer to Robby’s age, too, and their lengthy history is one you know you couldn’t compete with if you tried.
You feel a little like a child as you watch them talk in hushed voices. You flare with all the embarrassment of one, too, when Robby’s eyes lock suddenly with yours.
You turn away a beat too late, just in time to catch the look that flashes suddenly across his weathered features — as if he’d somehow been caught. You pretend not to notice, or otherwise care, when he dismisses himself from Noelle and closes the distance between you. He towers over you the same way he had with her, smelling like a mixture of his cologne and your bed sheets.
“Hey…” he says, all casual, stuffing his hands into his scrub pockets and nodding to the tablet in your hands. “You get that CBC back on Central Eight?”
“Yep,” you deadpan, still without looking at him.
He flinches slightly when you shove the chart suddenly at his chest with a less-than-gentle hand. His brows lower in confusion when you turn on your heel and walk away a second later, with considerably more ire than you had that morning. (‘Cause you’d been complaining about some mild insomnia for a while now, so Robby fucked you to sleep the night before. He figured you’d be in a better mood today accordingly. But alas.)
“So I take it you’re not helping with this endoscopy?” he calls after you, pulling his glasses from his shirt pocket for a better view of the screen in his hand.
“Nope,” you call back, already halfway down the hall — not as his resident, but as a woman halfway scorned.
Whitaker’s eyes dart back and forth like he’s watching a tennis match — between you, Robby, and the bloodied head wound he’s watching you stitch up with practiced hands. There’s a heavy tension he can feel simmering in the air, snatching all the remaining oxygen out of the room. Even from where he stands behind you, peering over Trinity’s shoulder, he feels hardly shielded from the building stress.
“Call ortho for a consult for me, will ya?” Robby asks you, or rather politely commands, without looking away from the chart in his hands.
You, similarly, don’t glance up from your sutures as you tell him, “You have a pair of free hands, don’t you, Dr. Robby?”
The man’s eyes dart to you in an instant, peering at you over the top of the glasses sitting low on his broad nose. His dark brown gaze glimmers with a mixture of amusement and shock as a faint smile flickers beneath his beard.
“Excuse me?”
“I’ll do it!” Whitaker blurts, half-strangled by the tension, as he rushes for the red phone across the room. It’s quite telling, the younger boy finds, that he’d rather suffer a call with Park the Shark than watch this lover’s quarrel unfold.
Robby squints as he takes a slow step towards you. His eyes flit from your deadpan face, to your gloved hands, to the balding head of the unconscious patient you stitch up.
“Have you eaten today?” he wonders aloud.
“Are you gonna ask if I need a nap next to?” you scoff. “I’m not a child.”
“Well, you’re kinda acting like one,” Robby says within a breathless chuckle. “So do you wanna maybe dial the attitude back a notch?”
“Sorry, Dr. Robby,” you say flatly, tying off the final stitch with sharp, methodical movements. “I’ll remember to stroke your ego next time— Maybe then you won’t accuse me of being a bitch.”
“I wasn’t—”
A laugh sputters suddenly from Santos’ mouth before she can help it. She hides it behind her fist when Robby glares at her and pretends to cough instead.
The tension between the two of you doesn’t snap until around the tenth hour of the shift, when you’re hiding from the chaos of the E.D. with the excuse of fetching more supplies from the walk-in closet. Robby enters like a dark cloud, mixing with your own storm, and threatening to create a most fatal concoction when he corners you against the shelf. (You hadn’t stopped moving for about four straight hours, to be fair — this was his only real chance of getting you alone.)
“What the hell is your problem today?” the older man says in lieu of a greeting.
You huff and roll your eyes, shoving at a pack of saline flushes a little harder than necessary when they threaten to fall from the shelf and on top of you. Robby watches with narrowed eyes and a pair of weathered hands splayed on his hip.
“Did I do something to you? ‘Cause you’ve been acting crazy all day—”
You slam the cabinet door shut with a resounding clang, so hard it refuses to latch,before spinning on your heels to face the man behind you. The glare you give him almost makes him flinch before he swallows down the instinct to.
“Crazy?” you echo through a tense jaw. “You flirt with Noelle all day, right in front of me, and now you’re calling me crazy?”
Robby blinks owlishly back at you for several long moments.
You almost think you see a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth beneath his mustache, before a chuckle sputters suddenly from his lips. You flinch at the intensity of his laughter, and at the distant mania glimmering in his dark eyes.
“Oh, my god—”
“Don’t laugh!” you exclaim, face burning under the weight of your embarrassment.
“—That’s what this is about?”
“Yes! It is. Because I thought I was enough for you.”
His weathered features soften with a heavy sigh, though traces of his amusement still remain — equal parts fond and exhausted.
“Oh, c’mon… You know this wasn’t supposed to be anything serious,” Robby croons gently, taking slow steps towards you. “That was the agreement, right? Casual. So we could avoid all… This.”
You peer up at the man from beneath your lashes when he plants himself in front of you. You try not to melt when you catch a whiff of his dizzying cologne. “This?” you echo.
“Yeah… You know, all the… jealousy and the— arguments,” he huffs with a lazy shrug and crosses his pale arms over his chest. “I’ve been through this before, kid. Trust me. This is… This is what’s best.”
Your chest sears with a mixture of red-hot anger and ice-cold jealousy. Your jaw tightens at how detached he sounds, how rational, as if he were discussing policies instead of real actual feelings. (If he was even capable of those). You want him to feel this, too — this awful, wretched jealousy clawing at your ribs from the inside out.
You fold your arms tightly across your chest, forcing your voice into a deadpan as hurt simmers somewhere beneath the words. “So I can see whoever I want?” you ask him.
Robby’s expression flickers slightly, almost imperceptibly. His adam’s apple bobs in his throat as he swallows, but his dark gaze never once wavers from yours.
“Of course, you can,” he tells you, though his taut voice threatens to betray him. “We’re casual. That was the deal.”
“Okay,” you nod once and turn away from him again, giving him very little to play off of as he tries and fails to call your bluff.
Robby’s forced to stare at the back of you while you pull a large pack of lap pads from the shelf. His brows knit in confusion when you spin back around to face him, mostly back to normal again, with a ghost of a polite smile dancing the edges of your mouth.
“Run these to Trauma 1 for me, will ya? Dr. Al-Hashimi needs ‘em for a trauma patient coming in.”
You press the package to Robby’s chest before he can answer and walk past him for the exit before he can blink.
Three days after the fact, you’re sitting in a crowded bar a block away from the PTMC, drowning your post-shift sorrows in half-priced beers.
In those three days, you haven’t seen Robby once outside of work. There were no more stolen kisses in empty elevators, no more lingering touches in stairwells, no more “come over” texts sent in the dead of night. And Robby thought it was strange, because the two of you weren’t even fighting anymore — not technically, anyway — and yet you were more distant now than ever.
“Question,” the man murmured casually from the other side of the desk while you finished up your charting at the monitor. “Is it me you’re avoiding or just my apartment?”
“What?” you scoffed, still typing. “I’ve just been— busy, Robby.”
“Hm…” he sighed, less than convinced.
You didn’t spare him a second glance — not then and not when you took Santos’ offer of happy hour and Friday night karaoke. The girl herself returns now to the cracked pleather booth in the corner of the dingy bar, where you sit with Mel and Whitaker, after butchering another Alanis Morrissette song.
Her chest heaves with panted breaths under her black tank top, pale skin sticky with a thin layer of alcohol-induced sweat.
“Okay, what’s with the long faces over here?” Trinity jokes as she steals a room-temperature fry off your plate, talking through the mouthful. “I know you and Robby are fighting or whatever, but I just gave the performance of a lifetime up there.”
You slurp nosily at the remnants of your fruity drink and nearly choke on it at the accusation. “What?” you cough with the thin straw still in your mouth. “We aren’t— fighting. What are you talking about?”
“Oh, please,” Trinity scoffs and reaches for her beer. “You’re both been acting like a couple of… divorced parents at soccer practice.”
“Okay, I don’t even know what that means—”
“Playing nice in front of everyone as not to evoke suspicion, which inevitably turns the obvious tension between you from angry to sexually charged,” Mel rambles matter-of-factly. Her blonde hair sways around her jaw as she nods, left slightly crimped from her undone braid.
Your eyes flit to Whitaker then, who nods much more solemnly in agreement.
Your face burns red-hot in response. “Well— we’re not even, like, together or anything, so…”
“Mhm…” Santos hums with a knowing look that makes you shift uncomfortably in the booth. She takes another quick swig from the amber bottle in her hand before her gaze zeroes in on an unfortunate Whitaker. “C’mon, Huckleberry. You’re up.”
His light eyes widen, glassy with exhaustion and alcohol alike. “I’m… Up?”
“Yeah. You’re doing karaoke with me. Let’s go,” Trinity says as she slides once more off the weathered vinyl. She frowns when she rises and finds the boy still sitting in place. “Let’s go, I said! We gotta get back in line before the spots fill up—”
Whitaker scrambles to follow the girl towards the stage despite his better judgment. You use that as an excuse to get another drink, tugging the skirt of your dress further down your thighs as you go. You weave through the crowd of strangers and coworkers alike until you reach the sticky wooden counter.
You lean your elbows against it and flash the bartender a kinda smile. “Can I get another aperol spritz, please?”
“Put that on my tab,” a familiar voice says from beside you.
Your head whips to find Jack sitting there, one chair down and nursing a sweaty amber bottle of cheap beer in his pale hand. He looks more relaxed now than you think you’ve ever seen him — camo pants baggy around his legs, black t-shirt untucked from the belt, warm around the edges from the alcohol.
You feel very suddenly overdressed in your form-fitting velveteen number and cross your arms over your chest to hide beneath the loose cardigan you wear over top of it. “Oh, you don’t have to do that—”
“I insist,” the older man smiles. “You deserve it after that canthotomy you did today. You were a real trooper.”
The bartender slides a cocktail glass across the wooden surface over to you. The orange liquid threatens to slosh over the thin rim. You give him a polite grin in return. “Thank you,” you tell the man, then grow considerably shier when you turn back to the attending sitting a stool down from you. “Thanks, Dr. Abbot.”
“Jack,” the older man corrects before bringing the lip of his bottle back up to his mouth.
“Jack,” you echo softly.
The man shifts on the hard stool, keeping his prosthetic limb stretched slightly ahead of him beneath the bar. A not quite silence settles between you then, filled by the buzzing bar all around you. Your eyes cut to the stage on the far side of the room, where Santos belts the lyrics to “You Oughta Know” and Whitaker stumbles over himself to get the foreign words out.
“I think Shen is looking for a karaoke partner,” you quip, nodding your head towards the doctor standing by the stage and flipping through the binder of song choices there.
The dim overhead lighting turns Jack’s silver curls a softer golden shade when he turns his head to follow your gaze. He grimaces instantly at the thought. “Yeah, absolutely not.”
“Why?” you laugh softly, with the thin straw dancing against your mouth. “You scared?”
“Yes,” the man answers without a second thought. “And I’ve been shot at before— Today, even— And somehow karaoke still feels more terrifying.”
Your eyes squint in his direction, glittering with something foreign. “That’s a little dramatic, don’t ya think?”
“Eh. Maybe a little.”
You scoff and slide into the bar stool beside him. “You don’t strike me as someone who embarrasses easily, Dr. Abbot.”
“That’s because you only know me at work,” he quips halfway into his beer, before licking the amber sheen from his mouth. “Where I am equal parts competent and mysterious.”
“Mysterious?” you repeat skeptically.
“Mm,” Jack nods with narrowed eyes and a faint smile twitching the corner of his lip. “Very tortured, you know? Very brooding.”
“Ah, yes…” you sigh with alcohol glittering on your lips like gloss. “The very brooding, tortured doctor who makes dinosaur noises to win over scared children in pedes.”
Jack pauses mid-sip, pale eyes narrowing. “Well, this is new…” he hums.
Your stomach flips at the way he’s looking at you. Heat crawls instantly up your neck. You feel very suddenly suffocated by the heavy cardigan on your shoulders. “…What is?”
“I don’t know,” he answers with a lazy shrug, though his heavy eyes dart once down your form and up again. You don’t realize, until then, that this is his first time seeing you in anything other than your dark black scrubs. “You… Flirting with me.”
You exhale a breathy laugh, if only to dispel the anxiety clawing at your chest. “Flirting? Is that what this is?”
“Hey— You’re the one who called me mysterious.”
“Actually, I was clarifying if you thought you were mysterious.”
“Still counts.”
“Does it?” you squint.
Jack smirks behind the lip of the beer bottle against his mouth. His adam’s apple bobs with a short sip before he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “You know… For a while there, I thought you hated me… Considering you never talked to me unless you had to.”
“You work nights, Jack— I don’t talk to you because I see you for, maybe, twenty minutes out of my day,” you scoff, and don’t realize you’ve called him by his first name until his eyes glimmer with amusement. You turn away with a shake of your head as your face burns, bringing the straw back up to your mouth. “Though, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t consider it…”
“Oh, really?” Jack hums with raised brows. “What’s the verdict now, then, huh?”
You let your gaze drag over him deliberately as you ponder the question, biting at the straw between your teeth. You scan over his toned biceps, his lean stomach caged beneath his form-fitting tee, and his spread thighs that make your head spin, before meeting his eyes once more.
“Now,” you hum sweetly, “I think I’m starting to understand the appeal…”
Jack stares at you for a long moment before he lets out a low, disbelieving laugh. The lamplight shines in his greying curls as he shakes his head. “Yeah? And how does Robby feel about that?”
Your eyes harden in an instant.
Jack raises a free hand in surrender. “Hey, I’m just sayin’— He looks like he wants to put his fist through a wall any time another attending talks to you for more than thirty seconds.”
Your chest tightens unexpectedly. You swallow hard to fight the strangling feeling — of Robby, and of his laughter in the supply closet — as you shrug a lazy shoulder in response. You don’t bother to lift your cardigan when it slips softly down your arm.
“It’s casual,” you tell him.
Jack studies you for a long moment. The corner of his mouth curls into a slow half-smile, and you feel your heart stuttering behind your ribcage.
“Casual, huh?” he hums and brings his bottle back up to his mouth. “Interesting…”
Morning arrives slowly through the veiled curtains of the quiet bedroom, where pale golden light cuts softly over hardwood floors and rumpled sheets. You rouse gradually, cocooned beneath strangely heavy blankets that smell differently from your own back home — like unfamiliar detergent, cedarwood, and musky cologne.
For a blissful wink of a moment, you don’t remember where you are. Not until you stretch your tired limbs and brush a scruffy leg with your foot, anyway.
Your breath catches. Your heavy eyes snap open. Your body prickles with heat as flashes from the night before return to you at once — of the walk home from the bar, of Jack’s laugh against your throat, of his stubble scraping your skin, of the teasing murmur in his velvety voice as he told you to cum for him.
Your thighs clench together at the memory, while a lingering ache pulses pleasantly low in the pit of your stomach.
You lift your head from the pillow and inhale sharply through your nose as your eyes scan the foreign bedroom, which you had been too busy to do the night before.
There’s an expensive-looking record player in one corner, sat beside a crate of well-loved vinyls. There’s a bookshelf lining the far wall — cluttered with medical textbooks, old paperbacks, and framed photos from his military days. His camo bag, etched with his name, slouches by the entrance, and over the foot of the bed, you can see his prosthetic limb lying beside your shoes.
Other than that, it’s strikingly empty, with very little decoration on the wall or bedside tables. It makes sense, you figure, for a man who is working far more than he isn’t.
Your head turns in the opposite direction to find Jack sleeping soundly just beside you. The gentle rays of morning light brush over the canvas of his bare back, turning his freckles there a deeper shade of golden brown. He’s got one arm shoved beneath the pillow he folds into his cheek and the other lying loose across the mattress — from where your waist must’ve been before you slithered out from underneath it.
Your chest pinches at the sight of him. With pride, maybe, at having conquered him. And with a pang of white-hot guilt that twists when your mind inevitably drifts to Robby.
You slide out of bed, careful not to let the mattress give too much beneath your weight. You grimace when the fabric of your t-shirt twists uncomfortably around your form, only to find that you’re wearing Jack’s shirt, which had seemingly been given to you at some point last night. It falls over your thighs when you stand, bare feet padding as you gather your discarded clothes.
You bend down to drag your underwear back up your thighs and wince when your head throbs from last night’s cheap cocktails. With your dress and knit cardigan balled in your arm, you toe your shoes back on. Your breath hitches when the mattress shifts with a soft creak.
Jack squints when he raises his wild head. His mouth twitches when he finds you at the foot of the mattress. “Y’know…” he rasps, voice rough with sleep. “I’m at least grateful you’re not robbing me before sneaking out. That’s very courteous of you.”
“I’m not sneaking,” you scoff. “I just… didn’t want to wake you.”
The man inhales sharply as he twists onto his back, charcoal sheets tangling around his waist. You force yourself to look away from his lean stomach and the red claw marks you left on his scruffy chest when he stretches his toned arms above his head.
“That’s sweet,” he says with a wince. “But unfortunately, I wake up if somebody breathes wrong in the next room.”
You exhale a soft laugh.
Jack’s eyes soften around the edges at the sound of it. “You workin’ today?”
“Yep, in about…” Your eyes flit to the alarm clock on his nightstand. “Half an hour.”
“Brutal,” he scoffs.
“You’re fault.”
“Don’t say that like you didn’t have a good time,” he teases with narrowed eyes, then softens slightly when you turn away. You fumble with the stubborn back of your shoe, and his chest twists at your silence. “Do you… Do you regret it?”
“No,” you answer instantly.
“Good,” he hums, relaxing visibly once more into the sheets. “Me neither.”
Your stomach blooms with warmth. You shift awkwardly on your feet before him, even still. “So, uh… What— What now?”
“Well, feel free to use my shower, if you want—”
“I’m serious, Jack,” you insist gently, then add, more sheepishly. “But I will be using your shower, actually, thank you…”
Jack inhales deeply, considering. “Well,” he starts carefully, “I like you. Obviously.”
Your pulse rushes like a teenage girl.
“But,” he continues, as relief and disappointment tangle in your chest all at once. “I also know that neither of us is in the right spot for a relationship right now…”
“So… Casual?” you offer lightly, mouth lifted in a tired smile.
“Casual,” Jack agrees with a firm nod and glassy eyes.
You wear the night before all over, despite your desperate attempts to hide it.
Robby notices it the moment he sees you — how relaxed you are, how happy you seem to be. Whatever had been plaguing you before is now long gone, and that alone should be enough to comfort him. But still, he can’t shake the feeling that someone had gotten rid of all the aching for you — fucked it out of you the way only he could.
“You’re in a good mood today,” he observes while signing off on the chart you’d given him.
“Am I?” you hum.
“Yeah,” he nods, clicking his pen with his thumb. He glances at you over the top of his glasses before averting his gaze once more. “What’d you get up to last night, huh?”
“Nothing,” you shrug. “Other than watching Santos butcher Alanis Morrissette’s discography at karaoke… Maybe I just slept well.”
“You usually only do that at my place.”
Your brows furrow when he passes the clipboard back to you. “I’m sorry— Are you accusing me of something, Dr. Robby?”
His mouth opens to respond — to tell you that he can smell the foreign body wash on your skin, far muskier than the delicate sweet-vanilla he’s used to. But the automatic doors across the station swish open and shut before he can.
Jack enters with his camo pack slung over his shoulder and brings a cool evening breeze in with him. Robby can’t help but notice how your eyes find each other’s almost instantly, clicking like magnets and lingering together like there’s a secret that only the two of you know about. His stomach swirls with jealousy.
“Look alive, degenerates,” Jack announces in lieu of a greeting, then quiets slightly when he reaches your side. “What’d I miss?”
“I was just briefing Robby on last night at karaoke,” you answer with a polite smile. “And how I will never be able to listen to Alanis Morissette after Santos’ crimes last night—”
“Fuuuck you,” Trinity drags out from the desk beside you, still sluggish from the long day and the hangover that won’t seem to leave her.
“Don’t drag me into this,” Jack quips. “I took an oath as a physician to do no harm.”
You exhale a quiet laugh. The man’s eyes soften around the edges, as though pleased at having earned the sound, before walking off towards the locker room. He leaves a trail of musky cedarwood as he goes, and Robby’s heart drops when he finally places the scent — the one he’s been smelling on you all day.
The realization hit him like a truck.
His expression darkens instantly when he turns back to you.
“Supply closet,” he mutters lowly as he walks past you. “Now.”
Your stomach drops at his tone. He takes all the remaining breath from your lungs with him as he goes. Your chest stings accordingly — with a surge of pride at his jealousy, and with a pang of distant regret at his hurt. You follow behind him down the long hallway to the supply closet like a scolded child. He barely waits for the door to click shut behind him before rounding on you.
“You slept with him?” he shouts, eyes wide and wild.
You cross your arms tight over your chest, with your head tilted inquisitively to your shoulder. “Aren’t you the one who said I could see whoever I want?”
“Yeah, I meant random assholes at the bar,” he snaps. “Not my best fucking friend!”
An incredulous laugh sputters from your lips. “Oh, so now we have rules? What happened to just being casual, huh? If you can flirt with your coworkers, why can’t I?”
Robby’s dark eyes narrow as he takes a slow step towards you. You catch a faint upward flicker of his mouth as he asks, “So that’s why you did it, huh? You just wanted to piss me off?”
Your anger spikes instantly. You feel it prickling red-hot beneath your scrubs. Because he’s an arrogant asshole, maybe, or maybe because a distant part of you knows that he’s right.
“No, actually,” you tell him anyway. “Because not everything’s about you, Robby. I did it because Jack wanted me. Because he didn’t treat me like I was just another one of his dirty secrets—”
“Yeah, alright,” Robby scoffs a breathy laugh and turns away, running a pale hand through his chopped brown hair.
“Because being with him made me feel good—”
“I said alright!”
“Aw, what’s wrong, Robby?” you coo, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Does it bother you that somebody else wanted me?”
Robby exhales another one of his stupid laughs.
Your chest swells with a burning feeling that makes you feel like crying. “Why is it so hard to admit that you care about me?”
“I care about you! Of course, I fucking care about you!” he exclaims, red in the face. “Because I’ve spent months trying not to screw this up.”
“Oh, please,” you roll your eyes. “Says the man who practically shoved me into someone else’s bed.”
“Oh, don’t do that,” Robby squints.
“Do what?”
“Act like this is what I wanted—”
The words die in his throat when the silver knob to the closet door clicks suddenly behind him. The hinges open with a quiet squeak a second later. Your heads whip in sync to find Santos in the threshold, rubbing at her tired eyes as she steps into the room. She doesn’t realize the two of you are in there until the door shuts behind her again.
Her wide eyes dart back and forth between the two of you for a moment. “…Why does it feel like I just walked into a hostage situation?” she quips in a monotone.
“Now you know how I felt last night,” you joke back weakly.
She flips you off and walks further inside. Neither of you says a word as she retrieves a case of saline flushes and four-by-fours from the shelves. The plastic crinkles loudly in the silence.
“Please. Feel free to continue,” Santos deadpans as she leaves. “I definitely won’t be listening with my ear pressed against the door.”
The entrance shuts behind her with a dull click that sounds much louder in the quiet. You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding as Robby pinches his nose between his thumb and forefinger. When he lifts his head against, his eyes zero in on you.
“We’ll finish this when we get home,” he tells you, firmly.
“Can’t tonight,” you shrug, lying through your teeth. “I have plans.”
“Yeah, not anymore, you don’t.”
Your stomach does a back flip at his words, at his very sudden act of dominance that makes you feel like melting into a puddle at his feet. And judging by the newfound glint in Robby’s dark eyes, he notices it, too.
SUMMARY Trying to avoid your hopeless crush has worked surprisingly well… until you accidentally send him a consult request.
IN WHICH Brendon Park proves that the hospital's most intimidating attending has every right to his god complex.
WARNINGS 18+, MDNI, explicit sexual content, workplace romance, attending/resident, awkward crush, reader is down bad, power imbalance, praise kink, size kink (even though reader is mentioned to be curvy a couple of times, park is huge and so is his dick 😮💨), pussy pronouns, oral (f rec), unprotected pnv, body worship, breast play, nipple stimulation, mild choking, slight dumbification, discussion of fractures for like two seconds, mentions of Robby and Whitaker, no use of y/n. partially proof read.
NOTES gif credits : @bodeckerhedron thank you for making it just for me 🙂↕️ (you’re supposed to say “yes, i did make it for you!”)
Colles is a distal radius fracture, usually treated conservatively with a cast. The x-ray above is NOT Colles. It was the only ones that remotely matched my colour scheme. And as usual, the image above does not depict reader, just for vibes.
⟡ READ ON AO3 ⚚ PITT MASTERLIST
There's exactly one upside to being friends with someone in Ortho, even if all of them were just morons with a god complex.
Faster consults.
Peterson was the same as you. Same year, same matching cycle, equally sleep-deprived and increasingly philosophical about whether any of this was worth it — the answer was yes, obviously, but only at certain hours and in certain lighting.
He was Ortho and you were EM. The hospital's hierarchy made you equals, but if anyone asked you, you'd say he was doing a little better than you.
Officially he couldn't sign anything. Unofficially, he could tell you that you were right, and give you the right to say "seen by Ortho." Basically, an excuse wearing scrubs.
You keep Peterson on decent terms, he comes down earlier for consults. Everyone goes home.
Good networking, if you ever had to explain it out loud. Which you wouldn't, because there was one other reason, something that no one except you knew.
Peterson was the single most efficient way to get around a consult without having to see Park.
The problem wasn't that you didn't want to see Park. You wanted to see him, badly. It's just that, something happens when you do see him.
The brain that had passed med school, performed codes at asscrack hours, goes offline. You'd be a functioning person, and then Brendon Park would appear in your peripheral vision, and you'd be a nobody, standing with your mouth slightly open, aware that something was supposed to be happening somewhere and nothing beyond that.
You'd proven this spectacularly multiple times. The latest incident was a week ago. Park had come down for a consult, a MVC, called down to the ER by Robby himself.
You'd been so committed to not watching him, and guess what had happened?
You walked directly into his chest.
When asked about it, you'd learned to say "accidentally bumped into him."
But 'bumped' was underselling it honestly.
What happened was a whole body collision. Face-to-sternum. Your suture tray went in one direction. Everything on it — needle driver, forceps, the forever-in-shortage 3-0 ethilon — went everywhere else.
He'd caught your elbow for half a second, which to you, felt like years, everything playing out in slow motion. It was the kind of reflex one would use to steady a child. "Watch your step." His eyes did a quick pass over you, checking for any damage. "You good?"
You'd said something, that part you remember. For the life of you, you still couldn't figure out what exactly you'd said.
He didn't seem to mind anyway as he'd kept walking, not even throwing a glance over his shoulder. You on the other hand, were rooted to the ground, staring at his interscapular distance, a longing wife sending her husband out to war, a wistful look on your face.
Robby found you exactly like that. He brought you to your senses by snapping a glove at your shoulder, startling you. Without a single molecule of sympathy, he said, "stop drooling in my ER. And please pick those up."
You picked up the tray and it's discarded contents. What you couldn't pick up was your dignity, it had taken residence at the cold hard linoleum floor of the ER.
So yeah. Peterson. Earlier consults and a decent enough heart rate at all times.
That was why he got sent the text. 63 year old woman, fell on an outstretched hand in her driveway, arrived with pain and swelling at the distal radius, classical dinner fork deformity.
You got the X-ray. Classic Colles' — dorsal displacement, clean break. Needed Ortho eyes and a note in the chart and that was it.
You : Colles. You free?
You attached the X-rays, hit send and went back to your patient.
You didn't look at the screen.
You should have looked at the screen.
Forty-odd minutes later, Whitaker appeared at your elbow, looking pale. Well, paler than usual. "Why is Park down here?"
You looked up from your chart. "Sorry?"
"Shark." He lowered his voice, like the man could hear his own name from two rooms over. "I've checked the board twice. We only have one Ortho case and it's a Colles'." He frowned at his tablet like it had personally disappointed him. "He doesn't come down for a Colles'. He'd call every sleeping resident in the building before he personally came down here for a Colles'. Even if the systems didn't work, he'd make someone carry the films upstairs."
You followed his line of sight to see Park. Big mistake, your brain started bidding you goodbye. But you feigned indifference and continued your chart. "Maybe they're short upstairs."
Whitaker looked at you like you'd suggested maybe the defibrillator was decorative. "He's the attending. If they're short, he makes their lives miserable, he doesn't physically transport himself four floors down for a Colles' fracture."
"I don't know, Dennis. Probably came down for something else." You brushed him off, trying to block out the fact that Park was standing at a five metres distance and the traitorous organ inside your chest had already picked up on it.
Whitaker wandered off, probably to some hole where no one — no, Park — couldn't find him.
You continued for about one more minute. But then you remembered that Peterson hadn't texted you back.
He always texted back within ten minutes. That was the entire arrangement. The one rule. Immediate response. You knew he wasn't in the OR. There were no emergency cases in the morning, and as far as you knew, Monday wasn't elective OR day.
Peterson picked up sounding mildly surprised that you'd called instead of texted. No one called anyone anymore. "Hey. What's—"
"Did you get my text?"
"What — what text?"
The floor dropped out from under you.
"I'll call you back," you hung up before he'd finished his next word, your messages already open, thumb scrolling backward —
Dr. Park Ortho.
No, no, no. You'd texted him. You'd made him come down. God, if you still believed in her, was a cruel entity.
Park's name should not exist in your phone, a number you absolutely shouldn't have. You are not his resident, you are not even tangentially his responsibility, the only reason you have it at all is because you asked Peterson for it three months ago under the thin pretense of Robby asking for it. God knows why Peterson bought it, why the Chief of Emergency Medicine would need a measly resident to ask for the Ortho God's number, but he'd given it to you nonetheless. You just kept it there like a lottery ticket you knew wouldn't win.
Three images, sent at 2:23 PM.
Three? Shouldn't it be just two? X-ray wrist — AP and lateral.
Your thumb flied to the thread, and the first two photos were AP and lateral views.
The third though.
You almost dropped the phone. Almost being the keyword. Because you couldn't afford to drop it down the floor, what with the photo on display.
It's you.
The photo was taken three days ago. Having bought yourself an actual matching set for once, lace, dark red, you'd taken one picture. Just the one, for yourself. Like you take a picture of a meal you were proud of cooking. Same logic. You'd honestly forgotten all about it.
Until now.
Now Brendon Park had a photo of yourself in red lace intended for absolutely no one on this earth, with the caption 'Colles. You free?' underneath it like the universe's cruelest punchline.
Your options were limited. Transfer request, clearly. A sudden and urgent family emergency in another state, and you could continue your residency in some second rated hospital there. But, you liked working here.
You could disappear right now, walk out of this building and never come back, let your absence become the cautionary tale they told at department holiday parties for years. There was something almost freeing about that last one. But once again, you liked working here.
Also Robby would actually end you if you left mid-shift.
A throat being cleared brought you to the present. You looked up to see Park towering over you, shoulders so broad and perfect, you almost wanted to bury yourself in his chest and beg for forgiveness.
"Present the case, doctor."
"M-me?" You pointed at yourself with your free hand, like that one little duck from The Ugly Duckling, as though he'd asked you to march into battle, a bewildered look on your face. Like the medical degree you had held no value at all.
"You were the one who texted me, right?" He turned around and walked towards South 16, where the cause to all your problems peacefully existed, drinking orange juice.
Without any other choice, you followed him.
When you opened your mouth, you discovered that every word you'd ever known had evacuated your skull at once.
Park, for his part, did not rush you, looking at you with a sort of expression reserved for kids who threw tantrums, a somewhat 'go on, I'd like to see you try' look evident on his face.
"I, she's, it's a—" You looked down at the chart in your hands like it might volunteer to speak for you. It declined. "I-It's a wrist."
Transferring was the only option left for you now.
"Glad we covered that." Park deadpanned. "Walk me through it."
Okay, this was pushing it. There's no reason to walk him through a Colles'.
That only meant one thing. He was mad and wanted to kill you.
You were going to die in your own ER, of this, right here, in front of six witnesses. Whitaker was hovering at a respectful distance looking intensely curious.
Your pulse was audible. Well, at least to you.
Park stepped forward, barely an inch, and his voice dropped, his cologne invading your senses almost immediately. "I'd love nothing more right now than to have you dumb on my cock." It was conversational, almost bored, like he was commenting on traffic. "But you've got a patient in front of you, so how about you focus?"
Like he didn't do anything ridiculous like suggest you die a painful death at his dick, he slowly retreated, a smirk playing on his lips, composure perfectly normal.
You presented the case without making a fool of yourself any further than you already had. Mechanism of injury, dorsal angulation, neurovascular intact distally. Possibly because it was a play you knew well, watched and performed a thousand times, at a thousand other places, what with it being one of the most common fractures in the elderly.
Your mouth ran the whole program without having to consult the rest of you, while you sat somewhere a few feet outside your own body and watched him nod along and glance at the films on the tablet like the last ninety seconds had never happened.
"Closed reduction. I'll send a resident down." He spoke to the room, not you.
"Okay," you still responded, nodding your head for good measure.
He looked at you for one more beat, a look with nothing professional left in it whatsoever. "Wait for me. After your shift."
Before you caught up with what had happened, he was walking away, pausing once to nod at Robby — who was glancing between the two of you — and then he was gone up the elevator.
Once again, you stood at the middle of the ER, with your dignity at your feet.
Luckily, Robby did not materialise behind you, only Whitaker did. "What was that about?" His brow was furrowed like he was already constructing six different worst-case scenarios in his head.
"Nothing." You were already walking the other way, shaky legs and all.
"Why do you look like you just saw a ghost?"
If only he knew.
The rest of your shift was something you survived rather than participated in. You sutured, discharged, charted, and your brain ran on a loop the entire time: dumb on my cock — wait for me — dumb on my cock, with occasional breaks to consider which state had affordable housing before promptly circling back to the cock thing.
By the time you clocked out you'd made and unmade about nine decisions. You spent an embarrassing amount of time in the locker room that you'd defend as getting yourself together and anyone else who'd watched would describe it as you reapplying your lip balm.
Park was leaning against his car in the parking lot when you got outside, scrolling on his phone. He looked up before you'd made it halfway across the lot.
Your legs begged for you to turn back, it's not too late to maybe live out your days in the hospital, like Whitaker did that one time.
Thanks or no thanks to your prefrontal cortex, you did not retreat back to the confines of your job, put one foot forward and reached Park. "You didn't have to wait outside." And, that that was the sentence your mouth had chosen, out of every sentence currently available in the English language.
"Wasn't standing in that lobby with Robby asking me forty questions about why I'm still in the building." He tilted his head toward the passenger side. "Get in."
With a nod reserved only for superiors, you got in.
Your bag sat in your lap and you kept fiddling with the zipper, which you were aware of but couldn't stop doing.
"You gonna be okay over there?" His eyes were still on the road, but head slightly tilted over to your side. "Or should I be worried?"
"I sent an attending a photo of myself in my underwear. Attached to a wrist X-ray. Asking him to come look at it." You stared straight ahead, unable to look at him. "Doing great."
That pulled something out of him, not quite a laugh, more of an exhale through the nose, amused despite his best efforts not to be. "Wasn't my least favorite outcome of the day. And wasn't that lingerie?"
"That's an extremely unprofessional thing to say to a resident, Dr Park."
"Wasn't talking to a resident." The statement ended with your name, with the same monotone you used to deliver his. He didn't elaborate any further, and you decided, wisely, not to push.
Against better judgment, you looked at the side of his face though. You didn't know someone could look this good clean shaven. He did not mind you looking at him. Or if he did, he didn't show.
"How'd you even know it was me?" you asked, mostly to fill the air. "You didn't have my number."
"Caller ID's a hell of a thing." He said it like that should have been obvious, which, you supposed, it was. "Been trying to find a reason to come down and see your face all shift. You handed me one."
Park the shark? Coming down to see you?
You did not have a comeback, nor did you need one.
You spent the rest of the drive looking very intently out the window, aware of him glancing over more than once, the anticipation of what's coming twisting your stomach in knots you'd rather not feel right then.
His place was not what you'd expected. A man cave you could've predicted, preferred even. But this was more … homely, telling you this perpetually grumpy guy that you've been pining after has a soft side.
There was a blanket actually balled up on the couch, when you hadn't expected a blanket at all.
A framed photo on the stairwell wall hung slightly crooked. You had the genuinely deranged thought that you wanted to fix it, like you lived here, like that was a thing you got to have an opinion about. You did not get to have an opinion about it. You'd known the man's address for nine minutes.
He dropped his keys in a bowl by the door, the single most domestic gesture you'd ever watched him make. You stood in the entryway feeling abruptly, stupidly out of place.
"Shower," he said, moving toward the hallway, not framing it as a suggestion. "You smell like the hospital."
You almost laughed at the bluntness of it. The fact that he wasn't bothering to pretend this was smooth or romantic, loosened a knot in your chest.
The last person you'd done anything like this with — a general surgery resident — hadn't cared what either of you smelled like. He'd had you on his bed in your hospital socks within four minutes of his front door closing. You remembered lying there afterward, painfully aware of the day's grime still on his sheets, wondering if that was simply what dating other doctors was always going to be like. Safe to say, you never called him back.
But, this was shaping up to be a different experience entirely.
Park pointed you toward the bathroom and went to shower himself.
You showered fast, mostly out of nerves, with a bodywash that smelled unreasonably good for something so utilitarian. When you came out wrapped in a towel, you could hear water running behind a different door somewhere down the hall. A folded gray t-shirt sat on the counter that hadn't been there before, soft form what looked like a hundred washes, a faded logo on the chest you didn't recognize and didn't try to.
You put it on. Nothing else. It seemed like an instruction that didn't need spelling out. Some reckless part of you was already curious to find out if you'd read it right.
Park came out of his own shower in grey sweatpants and nothing else. His chest was, well… there.
When he found you sitting on the edge of his bed, he stopped in his doorway just to look. Your knees were pressed together like that was somehow going to undo the last several hours.
"That's a good look on you." Which was interesting phrasing, from a man who looked like that.
"It's the only thing you gave me to wear." You crossed your arms in front of your chest, the t-shirt riding up with the movement, soft thighs delectable for him to look at.
"Take the compliment." He crossed the room slowly and stopped right in front of where you sat, close enough you had to tip your head back to keep looking at him.
He leaned down and kissed you before you could come up with anything of value, one hand braced on the mattress beside your hip, the other curving along your jaw.
You'd been kissed before. If anyone had asked you, you would describ them as fine. Only now, you were learning that 'fine' is not a word one should use to describe a kiss, this one rewriting every touch of lips you've ever had.
A sigh escaped into it without you meaning to, a soft, helpless little exhale that you heard yourself make and immediately regretted because it meant he heard it too.
He pulled back maybe an inch, mouth still close enough that you felt the warmth of the words. "That good, huh?"
Smug fucking bastard.
"Shut up."
He kissed you again, shorter this time, mouth crooked as it pressed against yours. "You sighed."
"People sigh."
"Not like that they don't." Calloused hands spanned your hips, warmth of it raising goosebumps across your skin even through the fabric, as he softly tugged at it. "Take this off."
"You gave it to me thirty seconds ago."
"And now I'm asking for it back." A faint and wicked smile crept into the corner of his mouth. "Take it off."
Your hands weren't entirely steady when you reached for the hem, more nerves than cold as you pulled the shirt up and over your head in one fast motion. Mainly because you didn't trust yourself to do it any slower, letting it drop somewhere on the floor between you.
The air hit your skin half a second later, followed quickly by the realization that you were now sitting on his bed with nothing on at all while he stood there covered from the waist down.
Reflex more than decision, your knees pressed together, automatic modesty your body apparently decided it needed. His eyes dropped immediately, mouth curving into a half smile.
Big, rough hands made contact with the softness in your thighs, rubbing up and down like he was calming your nerves, followed by a soft tap to your outer thigh. "Open up."
When you stared at him blankly, upstairs evacuating again, he crouched in front of you, hands settling on your knees, thumbs pressing slow circles into the inside of them. "Open up, baby. I want to see her."
You blinked at him. "H-her? Her who?"
Brendon laughed like you'd genuinely caught him off guard. "Your pussy, sweetheart. What'd you think I meant?"
Heat went straight through you, a different kind than the embarrassment, though the embarrassment hadn't entirely left the building either. The two emotions tangled tight together until you couldn't separate one from the other.
You let your knees fall open slowly, watching his face the whole time, needing to see what it did to him.
The sound that left him when he finally got a proper look at your core went straight back to it, slick gathering. "Fuck." His thumbs kept moving, working higher up your thighs. "Look at you."
Only a whimper slipped past your lips, unable to look at his eyes anymore, even if they weren't focused on yours, but an entirely different part of you.
He dragged one finger up the inside of your thigh, slow enough to border on cruel, stopping just shy of where you actually wanted him. "You're soaked, baby. All this from a wrist consult?"
"From you —" Your mouth caught up half a second too late, and you paused, pressing your lips together.
He looked up. "What was that?"
"N-nothing."
"Mm." His thumb made one more lazy circle over your skin and you realised he probably already knew. He sat back slightly as he studied you, fingers not yet reaching for the delicacy on display, content with only working you with his eyes now. "You know what I was thinking when I came down?"
You were not going to ask. You were absolutely not — "What?"
"I wanted to see how you looked. You always get this look." He tilted his head to look at you, hands still stationed at your thighs. "When you see me. You know that?"
"What?"
"That one." He nodded at your face, like it was helpfully demonstrating itself for him right now. Knowing you, it probably was. "Like your brain just took a long lunch and forgot to clock back in."
"I do not."
"You do. The lights go out." He pressed a kiss to the inside of your knee. "I've been curious what it looks like when I've actually got my hands on you."
"W-what?"
A parrot. You were more parrot than human, what with all the 'what's you were repeating.
"You're so clueless it's adorable." Clueless from his mouth wasn't any different, having heard it strug with a hundred other insults aimed at his residents. Adorable, on the other hand…
"Don't say adorable."
"Why not?"
"It — it means something different when you say it." You pointed at him, which from your current position — naked, with his hands on your thighs — was a spectacular show of nothing. You held it anyway. "I'm not adorable. I'm a competent —"
"Mhmm."
"— medical professional."
"Okay." You knew every version of his okay. Months of listening to him from across rooms while pretending very hard you hadn't been doing that, and the 'okay' he'd just used meant he'd already won and had no further interest in pursuing the argument.
The Peterson arrangement was there specifically to avoid this and here you were anyway, sitting on his bed, having been kissed and told you were adorable, like you were a squirrel.
"You're not actually agreeing with me, are you?"
Brendon's eyes fluttered close with a soft smile on his lips. Domesticated almost, looking every bit different from the hospital version of him, damp hair falling onto his face without the usual gel to hold it back.
Piercing eyes bore into yours, an intensity that was miles ahead of what you'd experienced before. The tough guy act he usually dons at work seemed to have revealed itself for what it truly was — an act. "Do you want me to agree with you, or eat you out?"
It was so casual, interrupting your flow of thoughts about how soft Park the Shark looked. A minute to organise your head and you were stuck on the "eat you out." Who even asked things liked that?
Brendon was waiting for you and looked like someone who would be comfortable with the wait. He was good at that actually, the waiting it out. Once had even Robby cave, you still weren't sure how that happened.
"W-what?"
"Focus, babygirl." Babygirl. That was new, that was nice. "Use your words. What do you want?"
You'd think ER doctors would be good with words. You talked dying people down from panic, talked families through the worst sentence of their lives, knew exactly how to phrase things to a scared kid in triage. Words were the whole job, basically.
Apparently that didn't transfer, and once again, this was proving to be an uncharted territory. A shark swimming around you in the ER, you can handle. That was shallow waters, and you had an upper hand, known turf. Whatever this was, you absolutely couldn't.
Trying to repeat that sentence was hard, you opened and closed your mouth like a fish out of water, one the shark would very gladly devour, as you finally settled on, "yes."
"That's not what I asked, was it?"
"E-eat me out." Finally out of your mouth, heat crawling up your neck as his lips curved into an all knowing smirk, quickly vanished by your utterance of "Bren."
You had never called him that before. Even under your own sheets, with your hands between your thighs, you've fantasised and moaned 'Brendon', but this one had simply arrived. A new development, one that softened the shark's cutting bite.
"Good girl." Brendon praised, and it went straight to your cunt. "Such a good girl."
Shouldn't show all your cards the very first time you're together, you'd once decided long back, and had a stellar record of following it up until this point. With the way this night was going, you were pretty sure you'd be cardless by the end of it.
Before you could say anything, Brendon's mouth found your carotid, pressing soft kisses, and briefly — very briefly, for your disappointment — returned to your lips, a chaste kiss, a soft denial as you chased him.
As he continued marking you with featherlight kisses and gentle suction, you were becoming increasingly aware of the bulge in his pants.
There was this grey sweatpants theory your friend had told you about. Never had a reason to think about it before. You were thinking about it now.
Brendon's palms settled on the sides of your ribs. You must've been sleeping with pocket sized humans, because both of his hands seemed to span the whole of your torso, clearly big enough, having absolutely no problem showing it.
It wasn't like you hadn't noticed them before. You had, on numerous occasions, standing on the nurses' station while he picked up a severed limb to examine. But none of that actually showed you how large his hands were, and how it could make you look small in comparison.
His mouth was now warm at your clavicle, your sternum, until it reached one of your breasts. A sudden gasp from you, and you felt him smirk over your skin.
One of his hands left your hip to hold your other breast, palming it as he ravished this one with a particularly strong suction that made your toes curl.
Calloused fingers deftly played with your hardened nipple, and you yet again tried to stifle a moan.
Brendon pulled apart reluctantly, only to chastise you. "I wanna hear you. Don't hold back."
The next one came out loud as you nodded, the second his mouth closed back around your other nipple, tongue flicking against it while his hand kept working the first one between two fingers.
Your hips lifted off the bed on their own, looking for anything to grind against, and found nothing but air.
"Patience." He said it against your skin, not even looking up.
His trail of kisses lowered past your ribs, your stomach, the softest part of it you'd spent a considerable amount of time thinking about.
Brendon didn't seem to mind though, only pressing more open mouthed kisses, saliva streaking over bare skin, even sinking his teeth a few times, evidence of it you were sure to find the next day.
When his hands met your thighs, they spread them so wide, completely exposing you, even though his eyes made contact with yours once before looking back at your wet core, basically inviting him to taste.
Brendon's mouth descended to your cunt as his big hands kept your thighs open however he'd wanted. You squealed at the first touch of his tongue over your wetness, lips closing over your clit, while two of his fingers parted your slick folds with utmost care, the one contrasting his pull on the soft bud.
"You taste so good," his voice was muffled against your folds, the raspy tone almost had you coming right then, just from that.
One finger teased your entrance, circling it just right, his tongue taking the opportunity to delve into it, a high pitched moan — one that you didn't know you were capable of making — ripped past your lips.
The hands that were bunched at the sheets went straight to his hair, a tug that he seemed to enjoy as a groan vibrated through him.
His tongue worked slow circles around your clit while his fingers found a rhythm inside you, curling on every withdrawal, and your thighs started shaking against the sides of his head before you'd even seen it coming.
"Brendon —"
He hummed against you instead of answering, the vibration of it nearly enough on its own, and one of your hands left his hair to grab blindly at the sheet, twisting it into your fist like you needed somewhere else to put all of it.
He pulled back just enough to drag his eyes up your body. Chin wet and mouth shiny, as he reached for your hand — the one that had abandoned his hair — and manoeuvred it right back to where it was, encouraging you. "You can pull at me however you want."
Apparently he wasn't as attached to his hair as you'd thought.
With that, his mouth met your cunt again, a smirk right against your clit before gently sucking it between his lips.
The sound that tore through as you came wasn't one you were familiar with. Glad you weren't — it probably would've gotten you into trouble if this was your apartment.
When your thighs shook at the aftershocks and your fingers tugged at his hair with all their might, Brendon gentled his attack over your pussy, but kept nuzzling into you like he didn't want to stop.
He kissed his way back up. Your stomach, your sternum, your throat, and when he finally got to your mouth you tasted yourself on his tongue and didn't hate it the way you probably should have. "Gotta taste how sweet you are." It was said right against your lips.
A whimper left you in mock protest as you pushed at his chest with the heels of your hands.
"What? I'm not wrong." He kissed you one more time like he was trying to prove it. "You're sweet everywhere, you know that?"
"Stop it."
"Mouth." A soft peck to your lips, lingering there. He pulled back just far enough to watch your face catch up. "Neck." Shark teeth grazed the side of your throat gently, then again with more weight behind it, enough to make your breath catch. He stayed there a moment, mouthing slowly along your pulse.
"Clavicle." Of course the Orthopedician uses the anatomical term, instead of the romantic 'collarbone' you'd have gone for, but you weren't complaining, as his mouth pressed into the hollow of it.
His mouth found the space between your breasts next, a little towards the left, one kiss pressed right over your hammering heart, his breath warm and slow against your skin.
"Breasts." He took his time at your chest this time, mouth closing over one nipple while his thumb worked slow circles on the other, and you squirmed under him, fingers curling into the sheets, the whole idea of him making a point dissolving into the fact that he just wanted to.
His mouth dragged down over your ribs one at a time, like he was counting, his exhale warm the whole way down.
"Stomach." He said it against the soft give of you and pressed an open mouthed kiss into the part of yourself you were probably the most insecure about. But, insecurity didn't stand a chance against Brendon. He stayed there long enough that you squirmed again, and felt him smile against your skin like the squirming was exactly the reaction he'd been after.
The last one he skipped saying out loud. He looked up at you once, a darkness already sitting in his eyes. Every kiss before this was focused on this lips, but this one, his tongue came into action, flat and slow against you, and you understood, with sudden total clarity, that he'd meant every word.
This part wasn't about making you cum, as he immediately started making his way up, no, kissing his way up, at the same pace.
By the time he reached your mouth you'd pushed yourself up to meet him, sitting on shaking legs, hands sliding over his chest, his ribs, the muscle flanking his spine you'd spent months pretending not to notice.
When you dragged a thumb over his nipple out of pure curiosity, he jerked under your hand, a startled laugh breaking loose that didn't match the rest of the night at all.
"Did you just —" You did it again, intentional this time, grinning up at him.
"Don't." He caught your wrist before a third attempt, a boyishness flickering across his face. Evidence for later, blackmail for the next time he tried to act untouchable in front of everyone, dealt in private of course.
"You're ticklish."
"I'm not ticklish."
"Brendon Park." You said his full name like you were reading it off the board. "Attending Orthopedic surgeon. Ticklish."
"You're done." He caught both your wrists in one hand easily and pinned them gently to the side, just above your thigh. His other hand found your chest instead, thumb circling slowly over one nipple, watching your face the whole time. "That what you were trying to do?"
Your hands stayed pinned, no way to touch him back, and the lack of an outlet had your hips lifting off the bed before you'd decided to let them.
He let your wrists go, sitting back to look at you, a thought visibly surfacing behind his eyes. "You know people look at you, right?"
That came from absolutely nowhere, as you gawked at him, wondering who looked at you and where. "What?"
"At the hospital. People look at you."
"They do not."
"Night shift nurse. New surg intern." His eyes flicked toward the door like someone was about to walk through it. "Robby."
Robby couldn't possibly — "Robby looks at me to yell at me, those are very different things."
You crossed your arms on instinct, and the motion pushed your chest up, drawing attention to the soft flesh, drawing his attention.
He pressed you back into the mattress, mouth finding your nipple, tongue working slow circles while his hand kept the other one busy. "You'd know," he said between pulls, "if you weren't so busy ogling me."
"I don't ogle you." Your hands found his hair on their own, fingers soft against his scalp, betraying the indignation in your voice completely.
"Sure you don't."
"I don't." It came out breathier, not exactly your intended outcome.
"Yeah." Agreement, except you both knew it wasn't. He hooked an arm under you and shifted you higher up the bed. Easy, like you weighed nothing. Something about being moved effortlessly, like being tossed like a blanket, settled warm inside your chest.
Brendon kissed down your stomach again, on his way to sit up. When he finally shoved his sweatpants, you watched him do it without meaning to stare, except you were absolutely staring, probably with your mouth wide open.
He kicked them off the end of the bed and you got the full, unobstructed view of exactly what the grey sweatpants had been hiding.
"You're huge." The words left you without you having a say in it, hands immediately flying to clasp your mouth as if you can claw them back by sheer willpower.
"Yeah?" He wrapped his hand around himself and pumped slowly, watching you watch him do it. His hands pried yours from your mouth and wrapped your fingers around him in place of his own.
You barely managed to circle him, the size of him making your own hand look almost comical wrapped around it.
Brendon hissed through his teeth when you gave an experimental stroke, hips twitching forward into your grip like he hadn't expected it either.
He let you work him a few more times, watching your face more than what your hand was doing, before he pulled you off gently and laid himself down flat against your stomach instead, the full hot weight and length of him resting there like he was giving you a preview of what was coming. "See how huge, baby?"
A nod was all you could manage as you stared down at where he sat against your skin, leaking, a thin shine already smeared where he'd dragged himself there. The sight of him measured against your own body, against the soft of your stomach, made your mouth go dry all over again.
He tapped himself once against your stomach, a light thud right at your navel. "Say it again."
"No." Shaking your head, you wanted to disappear inside your own skin, the amount of attention lavished upon you almost overwhelming. The intensity of his stare alone made your knees feel like jelly.
Thank god he had you spread out on his bed. If not for that, you'd definitely have made a fool of yourself in front of him. Again.
"C'mon." He rocked his hips, dragging himself an inch across your stomach, sure of himself. It would've been obnoxious on anyone else, but he looked incredibly gorgeous and that only made your thighs press together. "I like hearing it."
"That's not — I wasn't complimenting you."
"Sure sounded like one." He braced a hand beside your head and pushed in slowly, the stretch of him pulling a gasp out of you before he'd even finished the thought. "Wanna see?"
It took you a second to get what he was offering, and you nodded. Brendon reached up, cupping the back of your skull, guiding your head up so you could watch where he was already halfway inside you, your walls stretched thin and shining around the sheer width of him, more than you'd thought your body had room for.
The sight was too much to take in directly, and your head dropped fully into his palm before he'd pushed in another inch, a laugh breaking out of him.
Watching your face now instead of where your bodies met, Brendon kept pushing in. Your walls clenched around him at every fraction of an inch, a stretch that bordered on too much before settling into something pleasuring.
"You good?" He asked breathless, jaw tight, hips frozen in place as he filled you to the brim.
"Uh-huh." Barely legible syllables were all you could muster.
"Words, baby."
"Move, Brendon."
The air left your lungs in one go as he pulled back almost all the way and slammed back in, your spine coming off the mattress on its own.
Somewhere at the start of this, or the weeks leading up to this, you'd thought he'd be controlled and calm, not one word wasted. He somehow turned out to be the exact opposite but also the exact same.
It felt like you were being taken apart, one piece at a time, while he was also losing himself a little. You could tell by the way his jaw kept clenching, his breath stuttering against your ear like he hadn't planned on that part happening to him too.
His hand slid up from your hip to circle around your throat, more a question than a grip.
"That picture." It barely registered as language. You were somewhere past language by then, his cock and his hand at your throat only things you could process. "Who was that for?"
"What picture?" It wasn't that you were being difficult on purpose. When put in a position you've been mostly dreaming about for the past however many months, the only thing grabbing your attention was right in front of — no, inside — you.
The question floated somewhere above you like it belonged to a conversation happening in another room.
He laughed against your throat, and bit down right over your pulse, sharp enough to sting and soft enough to soothe a second later with his tongue.
On top of that, one of his hands found your nipple, twisting the peaked bud between two fingers, hips coming to a halt.
A half formed protest rushed out of you. "Wha — why'd you — why'd you stop?" Breathy and whiny, your hips tried to chase friction, trying to take whatever he'd stopped giving.
"Tell me, baby." Soft and merciless words in the same breath.
"I don't — don't know, Bren." Your hands found his shoulders, nails biting in without much intention behind it, just somewhere to put the desperation since he'd taken away everything else.
"Did I fuck you dumb, sweetheart?
You shook your head against the pillow, which wasn't even an answer to anything, more just a reflex, the kind of thing your body did now in place of words.
His hips a dead weight notched right where you needed them moving, he waited, patient, that felt almost cruel given the state he'd left the rest of you in.
Like a browser with a hundred tabs open, your mind buffered, going through each of them until it landed on … The Picture. Right. The wrist X-ray, the caption, the —
Oh.
Oh.
The realization was so slow and stupid, the way answers always showed up two minutes after you needed them in a viva. "No one," you somehow got the words out. "I — I took it. For me. Wanted to see how it looked."
Brendon went still processing that — stiller than he already was. "Yeah?" His mouth dragged along your jaw, and his cock dragged out of you, then he pushed in all the way deep into you, like the confession had unlocked something in him he'd been keeping on a leash. "You looked real good, babydoll."
Heat crawled up your neck that had nothing to do with the stretch of him or the slow drag he'd settled into, just the stupid, helpless pleasure of being told that.
Babydoll settled alongside sweetheart and babygirl, right in between them like it had always lived there, and it hit the same place good girl had, and you knew it was all over your face. Every card, every single one, face-up. He looked at you and saw all of them.
You knew and couldn't stop it. You preened. There wasn't a better word for it. Your whole chest just sat up and asked for more.
If he'd noticed, he didn't make a show of it. "Next time," he said, "you're wearing that. And I'm taking it off you myself."
Your cunt clenched around him at the word 'next', an involuntary thing. Of course, he'd felt it, a laugh coming out low and a little wicked against your collarbone. "Oh." His hips stuttered once, to test you or if he was that affected, you weren't sure. "She liked that."
You wanted to die. You wanted to die and also you wanted him to say it again, both feelings sitting side by side without bothering to fight each other for space.
He hooked his arm under your knee and dragged it higher over his thigh, opening you up wider underneath him.
The new angle had you gasping before you'd even processed the shift, his cock pressing somewhere new and unbearably deep.
"Fuck, you feel —" His jaw went tight, breath catching against your ear, and the sentence just died there, unfinished.
You felt a little fierceness in you sit up too, a little smug. He wasn't unaffected. Whatever this was doing to you, it was doing it to him too. That single broken half-sentence felt like a win.
Somewhere underneath the noise, you understood it now. The thing the nurses whispered about — the god complex of it all. You'd rolled your eyes at every Ortho guy who’s acted like they personally invented bone.
Now, you couldn't speak for the rest of them. You hadn't slept with all of them, for one, and didn't plan to start now.
So, the sample size you were working with was n=1, which was not statistically significant in the traditional sense, but you were convinced.
This one. This infuriating, occasionally tender man currently splitting you open — he'd earned whatever god complex he wanted to keep.
"Where do you want it?" His voice dropped, hips losing the rhythm he'd clinged to, like he was holding the last of his control together with both hands. "Tell me, baby."
"Inside." It came out before you could second-guess it. "Please, Bren. Inside."
"Fuck. Good girl." The praise went straight through you, the same way it had the first time. Except now it had nowhere left to land except your shaking core, your whole body drawing tight around the words and around him at the same time.
Brendon reached between you, two fingers finding your clit, and the combination of that and the angle and the low filthy murmur of 'want you' and 'need you' against your throat sent you over before you'd even braced for it, your whole body locking up around him, vision actually whiting out at the corners for a second.
He followed almost immediately after, a groan tearing out of him that didn't sound anything like the composed, deadpan voice you'd known, hips stuttering, before he stilled deep, spilling ropes into you, both of you breathing like you'd run somewhere.
His forehead dropped to your shoulder, one hand smoothing the line of your hip.
You lay there underneath the weight of him thinking, distantly, that you'd never once associated gentle and Brendon Park before tonight and now you weren't sure you'd be able to separate them again.
Eventually he rolled to the side, pulling you with him against his chest, his hand now tracing slow lines up your spine.
"I should go," you said, even as your body did the exact opposite of going, settling deeper into him.
"Or," his mouth was against your neck, "you could stay."
"I'd be late." You'd already started counting the hours, and whether you had a fresh set of scrubs in your locker or if you'd have to do the walk of shame in yesterday's, whether anyone would actually notice or if you were just assuming the entire hospital revolved around tracking your sleep schedule the way you currently were.
"I'll write you a note." He said it with such a straight face, you almost believed there was a version of this where that worked. Brendon Park scrawling an excuse on a prescription pad and Robby just accepting it without asking a single follow-up question. The image alone nearly made you laugh into his chest.
You propped yourself up enough to glare at him, even though the effect was probably ruined by whatever state your hair was currently in. "First of all, I'm not five. I’m not going to school. Secondly, you're not my attending."
His hand found the back of your head before you'd finished the sentence, guiding you back down against his chest. "Robby's the only attending you take orders from, huh?"
"Well. He is my attending."
"Mm." For a man who'd had you twice in the last hour, he sounded almost petulant.
"Brendon. I'm in your bed." You tipped your head back to look at him, his mouth set in a soft frown, more like a pout. "You don’t have to be jealous of Robby."
"I'm not."
"You're jealous of Robby right now. Post-nut."
His nose scrunched up, and you immediately wanted to kiss it. "Don't — don't say post-nut."
A laugh cracked out of you, and not a cute one. "Park the Shark. Jealous. Of Robby." You dragged out the syllables, drawing it into a sing song taunt.
"Watch it."
You bit down on a smile and lost, mouth pressed flat against his chest where you figured he couldn't see it.
Apparently he could feel it though, his hand stilled mid-stroke. "You're hiding."
"I'm not hiding anything."
"You're smiling. I can feel it."
"Shut up, Brendon."
EXTRAS guess who was studying Ortho when this plot came to mind? Also final fic for a while, I’m going on a proper break this time 🙂↕️
description box; dex tries very hard to be good and behave when he finally finds his new and true north star. he fails. you don’t exactly mind.
warnings; to be fair, dex his pretty much own warning lol, smut implied, toxic and unhealthy relationship dynamics, skewed power imbalance, codependency, stalker!dex, dex is a control freak, obsessive!dex, explicit content (hehe…), nsfw!!!, MINORS DNI!!, established relationship, dex is still a murderer with psychopathic tendencies, not proofread… you have been warned ;)
dex is a stalker. your stalker (he wouldn’t waste his time learning so much about just any person, thank you very much…). not that he would have labelled himself as such, dex himself would have rather called himself your protector. protector who watches you in your tiny, little flat, miles away on another building’s rooftop, spying through the window. a friendly watcher, a concerned… someone. that is what he settles on because right now, you don’t even know him.
the first time he inserts himself in your life, you immediately like him. of course you do, he had carefully assembled himself a mask in order to be the kind of person you like, would talk to. be friends with. in his mind, he makes a disapproving, little tsk sound. if only you knew how easy it was to hack your phone, look up internet searches, break into your home while you were away… but that would change, eventually. he would make you a safe home. he would protect you. he would provide for you. he would take care of you. he would shield you from the world, burn it down if he had to. that’s the thing about dex, he loves in radical extremes and catastrophes; there is no such thing as “casual” or “low-key” with him.
privacy is also a foreign concept to him. privacy? we’ve never even heard of her. jokes aside, dex genuinely thinks there are no secrets between the two of you. of course, there are… darker things, disturbing things, in his mind that he doesn’t tell you. but really, it’s for your own good. he doesn’t want to scare you away, give you a reason to run, knowing that if you did, he would run right after you. it was an instinct, the same way a cat couldn’t help but chase a little mouse. but you were his. as much as dex was yours. leave? you weren’t allowed to leave. or leave him out of anything—he wanted to know everything about you, every single thing there was. dex was overwhelming like that, all-consuming and intense in his loving, but you couldn’t help but fall for him anyway. it was hard to ignore that sort of loyal, undying devotion, that sort of… worship.
when you two started dating, he offered you himself wholly, his heart, his life, every breath he took; he would die for you, he would kill for you, he would do anything for you—take him. keep him. but don’t leave him. never leave him. his separation anxiety is severe like that. sometimes, dex gets anxious simply when you’re in a different room than him, even when he’s at your apartment.
he is a little ocd about… everything. he likes being in control, getting to call the shots, making the decisions. it’s not a masculinity thing, it’s just that dex prefers knowing where to go, getting to plan ahead and assess everything. he’s like a german shepherd that way—it’s ingrained into him, a habit more than a conscious want. but he needs it. and by god, do you love it. you yourself were incredibly indecisive, preferring to hang back and chill out rather than take the lead, which made the dynamic between dex and you pretty much perfect.
and because he is obsessive as hell, he always knows what you like and dislike. how, you have no idea. but dex is incredibly observant, very serious about getting to know you. he always knows things about you. like a clairvoyant, in a way.
dex puts your needs above his. usually, it means that he’ll do whatever you want him to do. his frantic, anxious heart tells him that if he does it, he’ll endear himself to you, earn your love, make him worthy of you not leaving him. because dex thinks he does not deserve you. you are a good person, in the purest, most literal sense of the word. overflowing kindness and a radiant sort of sweetness that attracted all kinds of lesser men, and an innocence that has dex hooked and addicted to you. you draw him in like a moth to a flame, and it’s inevitable, he thinks, that you’ll leave him. you’ll find a better man, a man who doesn’t need a north star to tell him how to be a good person, a man who is perfect and just as good as you.
but he’s selfish. he’s selfish, and he’s not even sorry for it. he wants you. needs you. has to have you. so, he endears himself to you. making it harder for you to leave. and if he is a little suffocating in his love, you don’t complain about it. after all, he showers you with affection and sheer love, and oh, if only you knew how far it went…
dex gets crazy possessive. he needs to be with you at all times, partly out of separation anxiety and partly because he doesn’t like the way some men look at you. hungry, greedy—disgusting. he hates it. but dex behaves, because normal men don’t kill the sleazy, creepy men sitting across the bar, winking at their girlfriend, with a vodka shot glass. it takes every muscle in him tensing and keeping his eyes trained on you to hold back. he knows you wouldn’t approve. he thinks he could get away with it without you knowing. but then you turn around, flash that wonderful, captivating smile at him, and he is… calm. calm in a way his thoughts have never let him be. and there is a hungry, starved urge in him to be closer to you, skin to skin, soul to soul, no, closer even, he needs to be closer than that, has to be, he would fold himself into you—
jealousy. a huge, huge everyday thought that dex carried with himself. for a man so composed and reserved, you can, surprisingly, tell quite easily when he is. he clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth against each other in a motion that flexes the sharpness of his face, and he begins to tense. which is, in its own way, a beautiful thing to witness: his biceps swells, back muscles becoming more and more defining as he tensed, veins popping in his huge, calloused hands and the spot around his strong, firm neck, and you swear he becomes even taller and bigger and larger… it’s s mouthwatering sight. or intimidating, for the ones he directs his dark, murderous glares at. you love it, love the way he automatically placed his palms on your shoulders as he guides you to a place more far away in the bar, taking the lead every step of course, tall frame willing any man stepping close to take an instinctive step back because that deadly stare has mine, mine, mine written all over it.
you actually find yourself finding your jealous boyfriend quite adorable. to everyone else, he is this unbelievably large mass of pure muscle, power and strength, a man you would very much not want to cross, but to you, that’s… dex. simply dex. your sweet, awkward, adorable unit of a boyfriend. who is so, so good at sex.
his favourite position is missionary. he likes you right where he can see you, observe every facial expression you make, every oh so little sound, gasp, whimper, whine… he likes it when you’re like this. unguarded. lost in the pleasure he’s giving you, hair flowing and framing you freely. he loves it when you cling to him, legs wrapping around his waist, giving him the sweetest sounds as you grab his arm helplessly for support. it makes him feel needed, appreciated, loved.
another position dex quite likes is burying himself into you from behind, because he gets to hold you. it’s pathetic, and depressingly romantic, he knows. but he can’t help it, he likes having you in his arms. where you can’t escape him. where you’re his willing prisoner. he likes pressing the weight of his body against your back, marking your neck in places you can’t see, it almost makes up for the fact he can’t see your face. but your body tells him everything he has to know. most times, he overstimulates you on accident, he has a high sex drive, he can’t help it, and after he tears orgasm after orgasm out of you, your legs usually tend to get all wobbly and weak. and your arms become so useless of all that overwhelming pleasure that you can’t even hold yourself up right, becoming entirely dependent on dex holding you up. arm hooked under your waist, he can do it effortlessly with just one arm. you can just stay there, look pretty, and let him do all the work. he doesn’t mind. in fact, he finds it sort of cute when you get all docile and pliant like this, because when you’re this out he can easily make you forget that he said he was going to pull out before he came. which… he usually does. but something in him, something vile and evil and selfish and dark, secretly loves the thought of knocking you up. just the thought of your belly all swollen, pregnant with his child, makes him go feral.
it’s not baby trapping. you don’t get it, dex loves you—it’s just that, well… he likes having you right where he can see you. by his side, in other words. which you of course would be, if you were pregnant. and would that be such a bad thing? he would… love that child, that baby growing in your womb. he would, he knows he would. and dex doesn’t make promises, but he would be a good father. he knows he would be. and he desperately, pathetically needs you to want him to be by your side.
dex needs affirmation more than anything. his separation anxiety is already the worst, but the paranoia… oh, the paranoia eats him up. this would solve it—a child. a child created by the little, good parts of him and the entirety of you. all of you. won’t you just give him a baby? please, pretty please?
the third position he loved getting you into is kneeling between his legs. when he sits on a couch, cradling your bobbing head between his impossibly large hands as you try to take all of him, that’s when he is at his happiest. that is when that serene feeling washes all over him, washing away all the paranoid voices screaming, when he looks down and just sees his girl. his sweet, darling girl, trying to please him, accommodating for him in your mouth, trying to make room for all of him. dex loves it when your eyes go a little glassy, when your gaze becomes a little bit dazed. that’s when he knows you’re in that sub space, where he knows your thoughts quiet down, too. and if he is honest, he may just be very attracted to you crying. a bit. he is not a pervert, he swears. after all, he’s one of the good guys now!
author’s note: i have SO fallen for the benjamin poindexter propaganda. curse wilson bethel and his enchanting face. um, i also have a confession to make: i have not watched daredevil… i’ve just been influenced by the tiktok edits… i’m sorry… have some pity for a fellow victim of the wilson bethel face card yeah? so if there are any canonical divergences—just ignore it lol. or pretend it’s part of the au. if it even can be called an au, as our darling dex is clearly very capable of being insane on his own?
anyways, enjoy my lovelies! lmk if you want a part two.
(i have so many delicious ideas y’all would NOT believe it)
May I pretty please request a short blurb of Bucky with a reader who has an abnormally high sex drive?
Bucky With a Girlfriend Who Has a High Sex Drive
WC 919 (yay I’m getting better at writing shorter fics!)
TW established relationship, super-soldier stamina, very very suggestive
Bucky thought he had a high sex drive.
He had enhanced stamina, enhanced recovery, enhanced everything, and for a while he assumed that meant he was a problem. He wanted you too much. There would be too many mornings where he woke up hard against your thigh, too many nights where kissing you once turned into him pinning you beneath him until the headboard creaked.
He had even warned you when you first started officially dating.
He did it like he was admitting to a terrible flaw instead of looking at you with those beautiful blue eyes and telling you he wanted you all the fucking time.
“I’m not exactly normal about… sex,” he’d said, thumb dragging over your wrist. “The serum changed things. Stamina. Appetite. Um… drive.”
Your mouth had twitched into a smile. “Appetite?”
His ears had gone pink, but he held your stare. “Yeah.”
You had looked him up and down, shameless enough to make his teeth clench.
“Hm,” you’d said. “We’ll see about that.”
Bucky had been so sure. He really thought the serum meant that he’d have to tone it down.
Then, after months of being friends with benefits, he learned what you were like when you were in a relationship.
You might have an even higher sex drive.
You’re not exactly louder about it. Sometimes you were sweet. Domestic and barefoot in the kitchen, wearing one of his shirts, humming into your coffee like you hadn’t dragged him in bed three times yesterday.
But then you’d look at him over the rim of your mug.
That look.
Bucky would recognise the mischief in your eyes low in his stomach before you even opened your mouth.
“Buck,” you’d say, soft and sweet.
And he’d groan like a man already defeated.
“Again?” he asked once, voice rough, half laughing into the crook of your neck while you climbed into his lap like the answer was obvious.
You blinked at him, looking at him with innocent eyes and bare thighs bracketing his hips. “Is that a no?”
His hands tightened on your waist so fast it gave him away.
“No,” he said immediately. “No, of course it’s not a no.”
You smiled, smug and pretty, and rocked down against him until his head tipped back against the couch.
Bucky had been tortured, frozen, shot at, thrown through walls.
Nothing humbled him like you wanting him.
You got him messy. Everyone thought Bucky Barnes was disciplined, but you got him undone.
You got his mouth open. You got his hair ruined. You got his metal hand gripping the couch hard enough to make the frame creak while his flesh hand slid between your legs and found you already soaked for him.
“Jesus,” he breathed, forehead dropping to your shoulder. “You’re gonna kill me.”
You hummed, pleased, rolling your hips against him. “I thought you had enhanced stamina.”
His laugh came out broken. “I do.”
“Then keep up.”
His eyes went dark.
“Yeah?” he murmured, and the next second he had you under him, your back pressed into the cushions, his body heavy between your thighs. “That what you want?”
You reached down, wrapped your hand around him and watched his eyes nearly roll back.
Every time, that was your favourite part.
That ruined, hungry look when he pushed inside you and had to pause like he was praying for control he didn’t have. Not that you even wanted it.
“Fuck,” he whispered.
You smiled against his mouth, moving around him just to feel the shudder move through his whole body.
“Still think the serum makes you special?”
Bucky groaned, dropping his forehead to yours.
Then he started moving.
Slow at first, because he was still your Bucky, because your pleasure was a mission he intended to complete with military precision. But then you hooked your legs around his waist and pulled him deeper, and the sound he made was almost inhuman.
“You’re greedy,” he said, kissing your jaw, your throat, and the corner of your mouth.
“You love it.”
His hips snapped forward harder, and you gasped.
His mouth brushed your ear.
“Fuck,” he admitted, voice low. “I do.”
Boy did he love being wrong about your sex drive.
He loved that you wanted him past the point of reason. He loved that you could make a super soldier sweat, make his thighs shake, make him press his face into your neck and laugh breathlessly.
He loved dragging you into bed after dinner because he had looked at you too long. Loved waking up to your mouth on his throat and your hand sliding beneath the waistband of his sweats. Loved the mornings where he ended up late because you had tugged him back by the chain of his dog tags and whispered, “One more.”
One more was never one more. Bucky learned that quickly. Not that he would have it any other way.
And every single time, he pretended to complain. He’d groan your name, call you trouble, tell you that you were going to get him fired from the new avengers, as if they could ever afford to fire him.
Still, his hands would already be on your waist, his mouth already open against your skin.
He would already be hard again, heavy and flushed between your thighs, because the truth was embarrassingly simple:
Bucky thought he had a high sex drive. Then he met yours.
He realised, very quickly, that he had been outmatched.
—
Note : I’m supposed to post a John Walker kofi request today, but I'm still unhappy with it so I’m gonna look at it with fresh eyes. Probably going to post that Sunday/Monday now!
the first time your daughter walks, the whole house goes stock-still.
you're at the sink, wrist-deep in warm water, washing dishes. john, sat at the breakfast nook with the paper and tea. you had set the baby down on her play mat to keep her busy, but she's apparently grown bored of her small world.
the moment john sees her, he abandons his reading and swings off the bench, opening his arms to her.
she puts one wobbling foot after another, babbling as she slowly crosses the floor. neither of you breathe. her tiny arms windmill as she closes the distance to her father, at last pitching forward into his waiting arms with a squeal. john laughs, delightedly hauling her up against his chest while she giggles and takes big handfuls of his beard. she swivels toward you with a big smile, and john catches your eye over the crown of her head.
here it is. the future john dreamed of and whispered to you night after night for years.
you both spend the day coaxing her to wander around the cabin. he takes her outside to walk the garden and along the fence at the property line.
later, after supper and a bath, you lay her down in her crib and soon enough, she's fast asleep. she sprawls, mouth stuck open, one tiny fist curled under her chin. you watch her for a long while, still in a daze of how your life has changed yet again in the span of a single day. tomorrow, john'll have to check every room with fresh eyes, reassessing all his baby-proofing so far. he'll think about what she can reach now, what she'll pull herself up on, and any escape route she might discover.
he's leaning in the door frame when you turn to leave, backlit with the hallway light. you go to his side and tuck into it like he likes, and together you stand in silence for a few minutes more. eventually, he presses a kiss to your head and takes you to bed.
it's better because he's happy. slower and gentler.
"remember when you used to cry an' cry about this? used to beg me to not come in you," he grunts as he bottoms out. "hard to believe, isn't it."
he slows to slip his hand beneath your chin, tilting your face up just enough for his thumb to rub along the collar locked around your neck. it's long since softened from years of wear, so soft that you often forget you're wearing it.
STOPPP, not me being so smiley for how soft and fluffy this is.. Then being smacked in the face by the twist at the end (oh I just realised the tags 🤣)
⭐︎ warnings: nsfw, civil war canon compliant, smut, mentions of size difference, widows have a red room variant of a super soldier serum, sexual tension, enemies to lovers, sex pollen, touch starved, bucky is so down bad, dry humping, bucky is a virgin, virginity loss, premature ejaculation, multiple orgasms, body worshiping, arguments, banter, physical fights as foreplay
⭐︎ word count: 11.1k
⭐︎ a/n: first time writing for civil war bucky and a black widow/avenger reader, kinda nervous. this is also my first attempt writing sex pollen. i hope i make the founding fathers proud with this one. gif
synopsis:
While Bucky Barnes is on the run, Steve entrusts you to look after his old friend while the rest of the team tries to resolve the conflict with Tony Stark peacefully. As if babysitting a grumpy ex-Hydra soldier wasn't hard enough, an airborne toxin gets released—one designed to weaken a super soldier's resolve with the intention to trap them... and an unexpected side effect that skyrockets their libido.
Between the constant bickering and fighting for your life, you have to keep reminding yourself, "I refuse to be Bucky's first."
← previous fic | main masterlist
There were a few things you could respect Steve Rogers for.
He always seemed to know what was best for the team, he had a good head on his shoulders, and he always tried to find a way to resolve conflict with the least amount of bloodshed possible. He was a respectable man—respectable enough for people like you to follow him into hell.
But there were also plenty of things you disliked about him.
Namely, once he had a plan, he stuck to it whether the people around him agreed or not. Unfortunately for you, his current plan involved you babysitting the world’s most wanted Hydra assassin.
And that was the Winter Soldier.
“What!” you barked in disbelief, throwing your hands in the air. “No! I am not watching him. I’m coming with you—”
Steve was already gearing up—wearing the suit he stole from the Smithsonian and strapping on his shield last.
“No,” he replied, sharp and firm. “Trust me, it’s better if you stay put. If I show up with Buck by my side, it’s not gonna look good.”
Steve motioned towards Bucky, who just stood there looking about as useful and clueless as a bag of bricks.
The kicked puppy look on his face almost made you feel bad for him. Almost. Because if it weren’t for him, and your own stubborn loyalty to Steve, nobody would be in this mess in the first place.
“Look, you’re going to talk to Stark, right? Nat’s with him. Let me come. I can talk to her while you work things out with Stark, and maybe we can figure out a better solution—”
“We shouldn’t even consider talking to Nat. She’s in deep with Tony and the Accords. And besides, I don’t trust—” Steve cut himself off, his lips pressing into a thin line as his eyes flickered between you and Bucky. “Never mind.”
You crossed your arms and narrowed your eyes. “Don’t trust what?”
The tension in the parking garage turned uncomfortable really fast.
No one dared speak or move—it felt like a bunch of kids walking in on Mom and Dad arguing and refusing to pick sides. Even though you already knew what he was going to say, you kept your eyes fixed on Steve with a silent threat for him to continue.
Steve sighed and stepped forward, mentally cursing himself for letting the words slip.
“You Widows—they’re known to be deceptive,” Steve explained as calmly and gently as he could, though it didn’t help.
“I just… can’t risk you talking to Natasha. It’s too dangerous.”
Offended wasn’t even the right word for it.
Everyone in this line of work—including you, especially you — knew about the Black Widows and their reputation. You were a group of young girls broken down and rebuilt into perfect chameleons. Widows were trained to whisper sweet nothings into a victim’s ear, only to hold a blade to their throat, slit it without remorse, and go about the rest of their day as if nothing had happened.
Steve wasn’t wrong, but the hypocrisy of his logic made you feel sour.
He didn’t trust your background, yet in the very same breath, he was willing to leave you entirely alone with Bucky—his best friend, and the only piece of his past he had left. If you were truly so deceptive, so inherently untrustworthy, what was stopping you from turning Bucky over to Stark the second Steve cleared this garage?
You wanted to cry. You had been loyal to Steve, standing by his side while the rest of the team split up and tore at each other’s throats—and this was how he repaid you? By humiliating you in front of everyone?
But you’d die before you let a single tear fall in front of Steve, or anyone else for that matter.
Swallowing the lump in your throat, you tightened your jaw until your teeth hurt and forced your gaze away.
“Fine.”
You were going to protect his precious best friend—not out of submission, but to shove his own prejudice right back down his throat. You would prove to him, definitively, that you could be trusted.
“I’ll watch over him,” you added, trying to keep cool. “I’ll keep my comms open, too—just in case you want to pop in and check if he’s still alive.”
Steve returned your sarcasm with a relieved exhale. “Thank you—”
“Don’t mention it,” you cut him off, waving a hand dismissively as you walked past Bucky—who was standing there looking like a child of divorce. You headed for your motorcycle.
“Are you coming, Barnes?”
Before joining you at the bike, Bucky walked over to Steve with a fond look in his eyes. They shared the same brotherly hug they'd been exchanging since they reunited. Steve mumbled something into his shoulder—probably reassurance that everything was going to be okay—before finally sending him off to you.
You rolled your eyes, slipping your helmet on to block them out.
As everyone else cleared out of the garage, Bucky walked over to your bike. You handed him a helmet, and he started strapping it on.
“Should I drive?” He asked.
You blinked at him, your face going blank despite him not being able to see it.
“I’m sorry?”
“I’ve been hiding in Bucharest for a while,” Bucky explained. “I know some discreet spots where they won’t find us.”
Even though neither of you could see the other’s expression, you couldn’t shake the feeling that Bucky was testing your competence—and on top of everything that had led to this moment, especially that little conversation with Steve, your patience was wearing dangerously thin.
“Barnes, I assure you that whatever spot you’re thinking of, a SWAT team is already sweeping it.” You revved the engine. “Get on.”
Bucky muffled a deep sigh inside his helmet. Based on his stiff posture, you thought he might argue, but he finally conceded, swinging his long leg over the back of the seat.
As you gripped the handlebars, you waited for him to hold on, but nothing happened.
Glancing at your side mirrors, you saw him awkwardly plant his hands at the edge of his seat, leaning back as far away from you as the space would allow.
“I’m gonna need you to hold on,” you ordered without looking back.
Bucky hesitated, not moving an inch.
Annoyed, you killed the revving engine for a second and glared at him over your shoulder. “Do you want to fall off?”
Bucky still didn’t budge. He kept his posture uncomfortably stiff, his eyes boring down at the empty space between his hips and the arch of your back.
“I’ll be fine right here.”
You couldn’t believe the gall of this guy. You had been tasked with something that was supposed to be so simple—tedious, sure, but easy enough—yet he was making your job twice as difficult. You glared at him through your visor, your voice strict even through the muffle of your headgear.
“Steve entrusted me to look after you. If he finds out on the evening news that his most wanted best friend fell off the back of my motorcycle and got captured by the government, then he’s never going to talk to me again. And everyone who is risking their lives for you did it all for nothing because you chose to be stubborn. Now, I am not going to repeat myself. Hold. On. To. Me.”
You couldn’t make out his expression, but slowly and reluctantly, he leaned forward and wrapped his thick arms around your waist.
“Tighter,” you commanded.
From the short time Bucky had known you, he already knew there was no point in arguing.
He let out a sigh into his helmet and wrapped his arms around you just a little tighter than before—but still kept his hold loose and, well… as respectful as he could manage.
“Bucky, I need you to hold me tighter,” you urged again.
It had already been a good five minutes since everyone left—and here you were, stuck with the man who, if caught, could risk your life and your position, all because he refused to hold onto you properly.
To you, this was nothing but a nuisance.
But for Bucky…
Bucky was holding onto every thread and reminder left from the forties of what it meant to be a respectful man. Especially since it had been so long since he’d not only been this close to a woman, but held one.
“Tighter!” you shrieked, patience finally snapping.
“Fuck, you know what? Fine!” he snapped back, adjusting his hips so that his chest was pressed up right against your back, wrapping his strong arms around you tightly enough to make you gasp.
“Is that tight enough for you?”
“Perfect,” you croaked sarcastically.
Without giving him another second to respond, you kicked the bike into gear and finally steered it out of the garage.
You were determined to keep your pride intact. His broad chest was pressed up against your back, trapping your body heat until your leather jacket felt burning hot against your skin. His metal arm was a hard band across your midsection, while his flesh arm gripped you still.
You were so small compared to him. He could easily take over—yet here he was, being your obedient puppy.
“Where are you taking me?” Bucky shouted over the rush of wind as the two of you whipped through the busy streets of Bucharest.
“To an amusement park,” you shouted back. “Don’t you want to ride a roller coaster?”
Bucky let out a tired sigh.
You managed to find sanctuary at an abandoned, overgrown rooftop greenhouse. Located on the very outskirts of Bucharest, it was far enough from the city center to avoid suspicion, but still close enough to keep your comms within range of Steve.
You paced the rooftop, feeling restless as your mind overworked with what Steve and the rest of the team could be doing right now.
Were they already fighting? Would Stark actually listen to reason and put all of this to rest?
Letting out a defeated sigh, you kicked a stray pebble, watching it skid across the concrete of the rooftop.
“This is ridiculous,” you mumbled to yourself. “Stuck on babysitting duty when I should be out there.”
Lifting your head, your eyes locked onto Bucky. He was standing dangerously close to the edge of the roof, peering down at the distant streets below.
“Hey!” you barked, pointing a finger at him like a mother scolding a child. “Step away from the edge! You’re going to fall.”
“I’m just keeping a lookout,” Bucky mumbled, his back still facing you as he refused to step away from the edge.
“You’re just making my job harder than it already is,” you argued, throwing your hands up in exasperation.
You pointed aggressively to the dusty wooden crate tucked against the brick wall.
“Just go sit over there or something.”
Bucky’s brow twitched the same time his patience snapped. He turned around to finally face you, his jaw clenched so tight his molars were crying for help.
“Would you stop talking to me like I’m a child?” he snapped, stepping away from the edge—not because you had ordered him to, but to match your hostile stance as he stalked toward you. “I’m sorry you got stuck with the shitty job of watching over me, but I can handle myself just fine, thanks.”
His defensive outburst made you raise a brow.
“Oh, really? You can handle yourself just fine?” you crossed your arms and scoffed. “Is that why the entire global government is hunting you down right now? Is that why Steve had to throw away his entire reputation just to keep you out of a cage? Because you’ve got it all handled?”
Bucky’s chest heaved, his fingers curling into tight fists at his sides.
The mention of Steve’s sacrifice definitely hit a nerve, you could see the guilt in his eyes.
A part of you wished you hadn’t said it at all, and you were just about ready swallow your pride and apologize, until…
“You’re from the Red Room,” he said, stepping closer. An involuntary shudder went down your spine. “You’ve done terrible things in the past—just as I have. You know exactly what it’s like to have someone like Steve bend over backwards for lowlifes like us.”
You didn’t realize just how close he was standing until his hot breath hit your face, only shortening your temper.
“We don’t ask for the help, yet they do it for us anyway,” Bucky’s voice graveled into a whisper. “Don’t talk down to me like you don’t know what it’s like. When in fact, you’re worse—”
You were already seeing red before he could even finish his sentence.
You quickly unsheathed a pocket knife from your belt and lunged at him, aiming straight for his throat just as a threat to silence him.
“You don’t know a damn thing about me!”
But Bucky was faster.
He brought his metal forearm up just in time to block the blade, making an ugly scraping sound. He twisted his wrist to disarm you, but your grip on the knife was tight. While one arm was held captive by his, you used your other to try and deliver a punch—which he also dodged.
You resorted to your legs, bucking them up to deliver hard kicks to his stomach. He grunted after each hit your leg managed to put out, but his hands moved quickly to grab the collar of your jacket and hurl you backwards to the nearest wall.
You cried out, face scrunching into a wince as your back slammed into hard brick.
The impact made you drop your knife. Bucky pressed his heavy body right against yours, aggressively tucking his legs between your thighs so you couldn’t use the space to swing your knees at him again.
“I can’t believe this is who Steve decided to trust me with,” he hissed in your face.
“Get off of me!” you yelled, squirming beneath his body.
“You drew your knife at me,” Bucky roared back. “Maybe Steve was right. All you Widows have a tendency to break your vows whenever things go even remotely south for you—”
You weren’t going to sit there and take his insults. Gritting your teeth with a brace, you pulled your head back and slammed your forehead directly into his face.
Bucky groaned out in pain, his grip on you loosening as he stumbled back with a hand to his face. Seizing the small window of opportunity, you shoved his chest away and dove towards the floor, reaching for the dropped pocket knife.
Before your fingers could even brush the hilt, his large hands grabbed you from behind and slammed you right back into the brick wall again.
You let out a breathless gasp as your face was forcefully squished up against the brick.
Bucky’s flesh hand came to the back of your head, pushing your skull firmly against the wall to keep your vision pinned away from him. At the same time, his metal hand gathered both your wrists behind your back, locking your two arms prone.
“Let go of me!”
You started to violently squirm and writhe, trying to buck your back against him—to tire him out, but Bucky moved his entire lower body to seal the space. His hips pressed tightly up against your bottom, his chest to your back, pinning you completely helpless as you were left trapped between him and the wall.
“No. I don’t care if you’re Steve’s friend, or if Steve respects you,” Bucky hissed, his breath right at your ear. “If I find my life in danger—after finally being free from Hydra, I’ll kill anyone who gets in my way. Even you.”
Bucky’s chest was heaving against your back.
He was angry.
He hated how much a woman like you could get under his skin with just a few sarcastic words and petty jabs.
One moment he was flustered just holding onto your waist during the bike ride, and now, he had you pinned up against the wall, your life completely in his hands.
You grit your teeth. “Dammit, Barnes—”
“—do you hear me? Hello? Anyone copy?”
You and Bucky froze. His eyes went wide as he leaned his head down toward the earpiece tucked just behind your earlobe where Steve’s voice was emitting. You glared at Bucky through the corner of your eye.
“Steve’s calling for me. I can’t answer it unless you let me go.”
“Status check. Code Blue-Alpha. Repeat, Code Blue-Alpha. Do you copy?”
Bucky was hesitant.
He didn’t want to let you go—afraid that you might actually threaten his life again the second he backed off.
Instead of releasing you, his metal hand kept the tight grip on both your wrists, while his flesh hand finally let your head free. Shifting his body closer, his finger reached around to press the button on your earpiece, activating the channel and allowing you to speak.
“Steve,” you breathed, catching your breath. “I’m here.”
“There you are!” Steve let out a relieved, staticky sigh through the comms. “How are things over there? Are you two alright?”
You and Bucky side eyed each other.
The situation was ridiculous—the two of you were still tangled in each other’s limbs, bodies pressed tight against one another, chests heaving in sync as the adrenaline from the fight slowly began to die down.
“We’re fine,” you lied. “Your boyfriend’s still alive.”
Bucky huffed a disbelieving laugh right against your ear. He didn’t say it out loud, but you could already hear his thoughts. This fucking woman.
Steve wasn’t laughing, however. His voice was serious.
“Listen to me carefully. We just got word that there are traps set up around the highest points of Bucharest. They’re wired to release an airborne toxin—specifically meant to target the biology of a super soldier.”
You watched Bucky’s eyes. His brows furrowed, concentrating on Steve’s voice as his grip on your wrists loosened slightly.
“They’re trying to smoke him out,” you reasoned. “What about the regular civilians? Will it affect them?”
“No. Just us. I’m already wearing a rebreather mask on my end,” Steve continued with a rasp. It sounded like he was running from something. “But Bucky doesn’t have one. You need to keep him inside and be extremely careful.”
There was a cold knot forming in the pit of your stomach.
Steve was thinking about Bucky, and Bucky was thinking about himself, but neither of them knew your full medical history—how could they?
During your time in the Red Room, they had pumped your veins full of a biochemical serum. It wasn’t the exact super soldier formula that created Captain America, but it was a heavily modified variation meant to enhance your physical abilities, speed up your healing, and maximize your strength.
It was what made you into a Widow. And right now, you had no idea if that same chemical footprint was enough to trigger the airborne toxin.
“Steve,” you swallowed hard, your voice shaking with worry. “How is Natasha doing? Is she with you?”
If Natasha was fine, then maybe you would be, too.
Behind you, Bucky must have sensed the sudden spike of panic in your posture. He took a step back and finally released his tight grip on your wrists—relinquishing his hold over your body.
He inhaled a deep breath to steady himself, but stopped midway, choking as if something had gotten stuck in his lungs. His chest hitched. He sniffed the air again, letting out a harsh, hacking cough in return.
“Fuck—” Bucky choked out, his hand flying to his throat.
You spun around, catching the way Bucky stumbled blindly against a wooden crate. Your heart started to race in a panic.
“Steve?” you called into the earpiece, your eyes scanning the rooftop for any signs of the trap he had just mentioned over comms. “Steve, do you copy?”
There was no answer.
The static on the other end had cut out completely. Steve had already ended the line to focus on his own escape—either that, or his comms had been jammed. You tapped the button behind your earlobe again desperately, but there was nothing.
“Steve! Respond!”
Bucky called your name from where he held himself against the crate—a sound that was broken, small, and almost whiny.
“Bucky!” you cried out, abandoning the comm line completely and focusing entirely on the man you were tasked to protect. “Are you okay?”
“Hot,” he winced, letting out a deep groan. “It feels... hot.”
You knelt by his side, the palm of your hand flying to his forehead to check his temperature. Your eyes widened at how warm he had suddenly become. He wasn’t nearly this hot when he had you pressed up against the wall just mere seconds ago.
“Fuck. Did the toxins get to you already? But how! We’re on the outskirts—”
Bucky lazily raised a finger just past your head. You whipped your head around, squinting past the sunlight that pierced the clouds.
There, you saw a hazy, almost pollen like fog beginning to drift from across the rooftop building far from you.
“Shit,” you cursed, wrapping your arm around his waist and positioning his heavy arm over your shoulders to help him up.
“Come on, we’ve gotta hide you somewhere. You’re too weak to run if you get caught.”
You tried lifting him up, but he was too heavy to carry just on your own. You groaned beneath him, using every bit of your strength to try and keep him steady.
While you struggled, Bucky’s breathing grew heavier. His eyes were half lidded and unfocused—he could barely keep them open.
“Stay with me, Bucky,” you murmured against him with a grunt, dragging your feet to get him inside the greenhouse.
It was a glass enclosure, but the walls were muddied with dirt and the plants were overgrown enough to provide decent cover. It wasn’t as indoors as you’d like, but it was the closest place you could take him with your current strength.
Bucky’s eyes fluttered down to you, letting out a heavy sigh.
“I think… I need to sit.”
Suddenly, he felt like he was suffocating in his own clothes. The breeze in Bucharest was cool, but his body felt like it was burning up from the inside. What was even worse was your touch—having your body pressed up against his made him react in ways he never thought he would.
Or at least, not anytime soon.
You stumbled over an overgrown branch, losing your balance and your grip on Bucky.
“Shit—I’m sorry,” you mumbled.
Bucky lay on the ground, adjusting his body so that he was flat on his back. His heart was beating rapidly in his chest, the organ trying to tear its way out. His vision and mind went hazy, and his flesh hand was clammy.
The tension was even worse whenever he looked at you. His pupils would dilate the second his eyes landed on your body, his breath getting stuck in his throat.
You knelt down, trying to get your hands under his arms to haul him back up, but Bucky flinched away with a sharp hiss.
“No,” he rasped. “Don’t… don’t touch me.”
You furrowed your brows. You had no idea what kind of side effects the airborne toxins had been released—Steve hadn’t specified. But right now, you couldn’t afford to stand around and ponder it. You groaned, trying to lift him up one more time, but your body suddenly felt even weaker than before.
Your knees buckled as a strange aroma began to drift into your nose. It was a musky, almost tangy smell filling the deep pockets of your lungs.
“W-what the hell…?”
Bucky’s chest rose and fell heavily from where he lay on the floor, his dark, half lidded eyes meeting yours. “Do you feel it, too?”
Meeting Bucky’s eyes in this state was the worst thing you could have possibly done.
Suddenly, the greenhouse felt smaller—a glass enclosure closing in on the two of you. Your body felt molten, and you wanted nothing more than to strip your clothes off.
Grunting, you began to pull down the zipper of your jacket, and Bucky inhaled sharply.
“Hey—what… what are you doing?”
“It’s hot,” you breathed, your head spinning. “Need to take my jacket off.”
The heat inside your own skin was hurting, but for Bucky, it was absolute torture.
The super soldier serum in his veins processed the toxin at an accelerated rate, making his flesh feel like it was working overtime. His blood was rushing—hot and heavy—pooling lower until he was completely and unapologetically hard under his pants.
He wanted to rip his own clothes off. He just hoped you wouldn’t notice the tent poking between his legs—or maybe a dark part of him did, and he wanted you to offer to take care of it.
Fuck. What was he thinking?
But it wasn’t like you were thinking straight, either. Abandoning your jacket, you were left in just a tank top that clung tightly to your chest, offering Bucky a full view of your tits. You knelt right back down beside him, your hands clumsily reaching for his shoulders to lift him up again.
This was going bad for Bucky.
Too close.
Too close. Too close. Too close.
Bucky caught your scent—a natural floral and feminine smell mixed with an underlying musk of sweat that made his head spin with an overwhelmingly dangerous amount of desire.
“Stop,” Bucky choked out, his voice dropping deep and dangerous.
His right hand shot out, wrapping tightly around your bare wrist, while his metal hand gripped your hip to keep you from leaning any closer.
“Don’t... don’t do this. Get away from me right now.”
“Bucky,” you panted. “I need you to get up for me.”
“I can’t,” he groaned, letting his head fall back against the floor. “I mean it. Move away… or I swear to God, I won’t be able to control myself—”
Your gaze drifted down his body, your eyes widening at the prominent bulge waiting for you between his large, strong legs.
It throbbed and twitched beneath his pants, growing harder and more unbearable by the second.
This position was too compromising—too vulnerable, and far too dangerous for you both.
Bucky had no strength to get up on his own, and you could feel your own body betraying you by the second. You would have to relieve this for him now, or it would be doom for you both.
“Goddammit,” you cursed, bracing yourself mentally.
You moved to cradle Bucky between your thighs, mounting his lap while he was pinned weak to the floor.
His eyelids flew open, and he used all the strength left in his body to lift his head and stare up at you, bewildered and off guard.
“What the hell are you doing—!”
“We need to take care of this,” you muttered, grinding your hips tight and firm against his, making him let out a groan.
“We need to fix your problem before they find us. They set up that trap not too far from this building. There’s a chance they’re already scouting it out. It’s only a matter of time—”
Bucky’s eyes were filled with hungry lust as he stared at the point where your hips were rubbing against his. He was so hard it fucking hurt. He didn’t dare touch you—because if his hands made contact with your waist, with that warm, smooth skin just beneath your tank top that was begging to be licked, he would probably embarrass himself and cum in his pants right then and there.
“Shit—wait. Hold on. I—fuck.”
You reached for his zipper, tugging it down, and the sudden movement made his hips buck up against yours.
“Now’s not the time to talk, Barnes,” you panted, the toxin blurring your thoughts. “We need to take care of this now, or we’ll be in deep trouble. And Steve’ll have my head—”
“Fuck, shit. Wait—! I’ve never…”
You were losing your patience. You stopped your hands, glaring down at him. “Never what, Barnes?”
His face burned an embarrassing shade of red. He refused to look at you, his eyes suddenly far more interested in the overgrown plants next to him than your face.
“I’ve never had… sex,” he admitted quietly, swallowing hard.
Oh.
Oh.
Bucky was a virgin?
“Oh my god,” you whispered.
You felt incredibly foolish straddling him with your hands still hovering over his open zipper.
You felt shameful—you felt like a harlot, throwing yourself onto him and thinking you could resolve this entire crisis just by getting him off with a few strokes. You felt dirty, humiliated, and deeply guilty.
“I’m so sorry,” you stammered, quickly scrambling off his lap.
Your legs felt like jelly—a testament to the toxin fully taking hold of your own system.
“Shit. I’m so sorry, Bucky. I didn’t know. I mean, that doesn’t excuse it, but—”
“No,” Bucky rasped, his hand catching your wrist before you could back away entirely.
His grip on you was so tight and dominant, it felt like a pickaxe slowly chipping away at your remaining resolve.
“Don’t go,” he broke out, his voice a desperate, tortured rasp. “Please. Keep going. It hurts. I need you to relieve it.”
If he had said that to reassure you, you felt anything but. In fact, you felt even guiltier because of how broken and desperate he sounded.
“Bucky, I can’t.”
His brows knitted together tightly, his face twisting unpleasantly—he was upset.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because—”
“Because what!” he barked back, rolling onto his side to give you his full attention. You tried really hard not to look at the outline of his hard cock pressing against his pants. “You threw yourself onto me. You promised Steve you’d take care of me—so you’re going to come back here and finish it.”
“Bucky, I’m not going to be your first!” you yelled out, and that finally stunned him into silence.
Your chest was heaving with a frustration you didn’t even know how to name.
With confusion and a flash of embarrassment taking over his gaze, his fingers finally loosened, releasing your wrist reluctantly.
“I’m sorry,” you said, much softer this time. “I’m sorry. Just… if you need a minute to take care of it yourself, I’ll be over there—” you pointed to the far end of the greenhouse “—I’ll keep watch.”
“And what about you?” he asked, his dark eyes trailing down your body in a way that did absolutely nothing to help your situation. “Don’t you need to take care of yourself, too? You feel it, don’t you? That… primal need.”
You pressed your lips tight and tore your gaze away, not trusting yourself to look at his pained, desperate expression. You couldn’t look at the way his body was open and inviting you back in, or the way his voice went so coarse when he said the word need.
“I’ll be fine.”
You were not fine. And Bucky certainly wasn’t, either.
You tried to keep your concentration focused outside the greenhouse, forcing your hazy eyes to stare through the glass panes to keep watch. But your gaze kept betraying you, drifting right back to the corner to watch Bucky where he sat propped up against a wooden crate, his legs spread wide.
His chest was still rising and falling heavily, his long hair damp with sweat and falling over his darkened eyes.
You had told him to take care of his business, but he hadn’t made a single move since you stepped away from him. Your own urges were becoming impossible to control, too. You found yourself squeezing your thighs tightly together, trying to find any form of friction, any relief from the ache that had been building up ever since the toxin first wafted into your lungs.
It didn’t help that you could feel Bucky’s eyes on you, watching you from behind, tracing your silhouette.
It felt telepathic—as if his silent gaze was speaking directly to your body, knowing you wanted exactly what he was desperately craving too.
No. You couldn’t go to him.
If you walked up to him right now, neither of you would have any control left, and you would both submit to the drug completely.
He was a virgin. You couldn’t take something so precious from him. He had already been through a lifetime of torture and lost autonomy. You wouldn’t be able to live with yourself if you took his first time over a stupid, weaponized toxin.
Sex was meant to be reserved for someone special—and you were far from it.
“Bucky,” you finally called out, still refusing to turn around and look at him. “Are you okay back there?”
“…No,” he muttered with a thick rasp. “Come here.”
You sucked in a breath.
Every instinct in your brain was telling you stay exactly where you were, but your body was entirely out of your control now.
Your feet dragged you across the dirty floor until you were standing over him again.
You dropped to your knees in front of him with a sigh. Trying to frame it as purely medical check, you lifted a hand and pressed your palm flat against his forehead to check his temperature once more.
He was still burning up, but the fever felt even worse.
Every hot breath he exhaled hit your exposed collarbones, and the way he was sitting—legs spread wide with you kneeling directly between them—made you feel like a mouse being lured into a trap.
Realizing just how dangerous this proximity was, you swallowed hard and began to pull your hand away. But Bucky didn’t let you. His fingers wrapped tightly around your wrist to hold you back. He let his heavy eyelids flutter shut and slowly leaned his head into your touch, rubbing his stubbled cheek right against your warm, open palm.
“Stay,” Bucky pleaded as he his metal hand came to hold your hip. “Stay here. I need you.”
A breathless groan rumbled warmly into your palm. You froze, your eyes locked onto him as you watched the lethal super soldier—the very man who had pinned you up against the wall just minutes ago—unravel helplessly right in front of you.
As he held you there, you felt an unbearable heat trickle between your legs.
Your cunt pulsed, and you squeezed your thighs tightly together to soothe the desperate ache spreading through your lower body.
The friction was a temporary fix, but the tight grind of your thighs only made you ache for more.
Bucky nuzzled his face deeper into your palm, inhaling your scent like a dying man catching a breath of fresh air.
Then, his parted lips pressed a soft, wet kiss against the center of your hand. And another one. Then another, right against the inner skin of your wrist.
“Bucky… what are you—”
“Please,” Bucky whispered against your skin, looking up at you through his dark, thick lashes.
His eyes were dilated, the blue completely washed out by a lust that made you burn from the inside out.
“I need you.”
“You… You don’t know what you’re saying,” you muttered, shaking your head in a desperate attempt to find your reason.
Bucky held your hand tighter, refusing to give you any chance to escape.
“Please, don’t go. Fuck—I need you so bad, it hurts,” he choked out. “This ache won’t go away until you help me take care of it.”
His eyes never left yours. Under normal circumstances, every confession leaving his lips should have left him feeling deeply ashamed or embarrassed. But right now, he didn’t care. His body was on fire, and your touch was only stroking each and every flame.
“I know I’m a virgin, but I don’t care—and you shouldn’t, either,” Bucky rasped.
His large hand covered yours, forcing your palm down his chest—slick and damp with sweat—until he guided your hand directly over the heavy erection waiting for you beneath his pants.
“I can make you feel so good. I can fix this for both of us. Please.” He begged.
You let out a shudder as his large hand swallowed yours, guiding your palm to slide up and down against the length of his cock. Even through the denim, you could feel him throb and harden rapidly beneath your touch, his breathing turning incredibly shallow and fast.
“It hurts so bad,” he groaned, his eyes unhinged by the toxin. “Doesn’t it hurt you, too?”
You looked down, biting your lip hard at the sight of Bucky’s thick bulge pressing directly against your fingers. He twitched beneath your touch.
There was nothing you wanted more than to finish the job you had started earlier—to finish unzipping his pants, sink right down onto him, and show him exactly what it felt like to be inside a woman for the very first time.
But you couldn’t.
Not like this.
“Bucky, I can’t—” you whispered so softly, it sounded like a whine. “I can’t be your first.”
Bucky trembled a sigh, his head falling back against the wooden crate. But he didn’t let go of your wrist. He began to subtly shift his weight, rocking his hips up in a tilt that forced his thick length to slide right against your captive palm.
“Why not?” he murmured, deep and gravelly. “You don’t think… you don’t think I’d do a good job?”
His question was so innocent, though the very thing he was doing wasn’t. He kept grinding his clothed cock into your hand—seeking pleasure from just your palm—and you felt yourself going insane.
“No, it’s not that,” you tried to pull your hand back, but he held you tight, using your trapped hand for his own pleasure. “Sex is supposed to be something that you save. And your virginity is something you give away to someone special. Not… not a casual teammate—not someone like me—”
Bucky interrupted you with a groan, his hips bucking up higher against your palm. All of your words went in one ear and out the other. The only thing he could process right now was how good your hand felt—and how much better it would feel if he sunk into something tight, wet, and warm.
Like your mouth… or your…
“I don’t care about any of that,” he choked out.
His hips rolled into your palm with a needy jerk.
“I need this. I need you. I’d be more than happy to give it to you. Fuck—I’ll give it to you so good. You’re the one I want. I need you—”
Bucky’s mouth dropped into an o shape, a sharp hiss of breath filling his lungs as his hips bucked uncontrollably. His eyes never left yours as he suddenly started spilling in his pants. A warm, thick liquid began to seep through his jeans, leaving your fingers sticky with his seed and musk.
You couldn’t believe it.
Bucky had just finished right in his pants.
“Bucky…”
His face was unreadable.
His head was tilted back against the crate, his eyes boring into yours through heavy lids and long lashes. He was breathing heavily, trying to catch his breath while letting his cum shamelessly pool in the tight space of his pants.
You figured he’d pull your hand away any second now—that finally releasing all that pent up frustration would make him feel well enough to move to a safer location.
You tried not to point it out to save him from the embarrassment. And most importantly, you tried not to give in to the intense sensation of his warm spunk right beneath your fingertips.
“You should be feeling better now, right? We should keep moving—”
With his grip on your wrist tightening, he hauled you forward until you collapsed back to the ground. Two strong arms wrapped completely around your body, caging you flush against his chest.
Your knees—already so weak—forced you to straddle his lap. Your hands flew to his broad shoulders for balance as you found yourself perched directly over his ruined pants.
“Hey—what are you—!”
Bucky nuzzled his face straight into the crook of your neck, his hot, erratic breaths turning into open mouthed kisses against your skin.
“More,” he begged, the deep vibration of his voice tickling you. “S’not enough. I need more.”
Your breath hitched when his hands started to roam over your body. His fingers tickled beneath the hem of your tank top, the metal fingers cooling your skin and making you gasp out loud from the sudden cold.
No.
I won’t let this happen.
I refuse to be Bucky’s first.
But despite your emotional turmoil, you couldn’t bring yourself to pull away. Not with the way his hands were roaming around your body, claiming every inch of you as his through touch alone. Not with the way he was looking at you, his mouth parted with desperation.
And especially not when he had just let himself spill in his jeans from nothing but your touch and closeness.
“I know you feel it too,” Bucky rasped against your neck. “I know you’re wet down there, begging to be touched. Begging to be filled. I can fix you, baby. Just let me take care of you, please.”
He pulled back slightly, looking up at you with wide puppy blue eyes that made your heart ache and your pussy clench.
“Can I kiss you?”
You searched his gaze, breathless. “You want to kiss me?”
His metal hand left your waist, slowly crawling up your spine until his fingers tangled firmly in the hair at the back of your head, keeping your eyes pinned to his. His pupils were completely blown out, his gaze demanding an answer right now.
You should have said no. You should have pushed his chest, reminded him of the drug, and scrambled away to safety.
He was a virgin, sure. But with the way he was looking at you while holding you tight—you felt like you were going to be ravaged.
But your resolve was already a fragile thing. And with the way he was looking at you, you knew you were in too deep. Your body was hurting—aching for him in the exact same ways he was aching for you. The only way you two could fix it was each other.
You pressed your lips hard against his, and Bucky let out a rough, needy sound into your mouth.
His grip tightened in your hair, pulling you deeper into the kiss.
The fever burned through your veins, and the way his tongue danced with yours only made the fire burn hotter. He was tasting you, broken whimpers tearing from his lips with every slick slide of his tongue. Saliva mixed together, leaving you both completely breathless, your lips and limbs tangled.
You rolled your hips back, grinding yourself deeper against Bucky’s pelvis.
His cock twitched inside his jeans, poking hard against you. You didn’t know how—but he felt even bigger and harder than he had before.
“I can’t take it anymore,” he panted against your mouth. “Fuck, I can’t—I need to feel you. Need to be inside you.”
His hands scrambled down to your waist, his fingers fumbling with the button of your pants. He popped it open with a rough tug—threatening to break the button itself—as his knuckles brushed against your hot skin.
Bucky groaned at the sight.
The lace of your panties was poking through the opening, damp with sweat and your scent. He inhaled deeply, and you wondered just how much his heightened senses were actually taking you in.
When he let out a satisfied sigh, you knew he could smell everything.
“Look at you,” he praised, his eyes tracing the curves of your body. “You’re so beautiful. It makes me want to ruin you.”
You chuckled—a sound that came out raspy and sultry without your intention, making Bucky’s cock twitch beneath you.
“Quite a bold statement for someone who’s never had sex before,” you teased, your hands trailing slowly down his chest.
Bucky’s jaw tightened. He accepted your challenge, gripping the waistband of your unzipped pants and yanking them down your thighs.
The moment your bare skin was exposed to the cool air, Bucky wasted no time traveling his eyes down the expanse of your legs. Catching his bottom lip between his teeth to keep from drooling like a madman, his gaze raked over the inner and outer curves of your thighs. His mouth went dry at the sight of the little wet spot that had collected near your clit.
His large hands slid up your thighs and behind you, squeezing your ass firmly in his rough palms.
“So fucking beautiful,” he growled, his thumb swiping over your clit, smearing your own juice all over the lace.
“Fuck—you’ve been dripping all this time. You need this just as bad as I do, and you’ve been holding back?”
You swallowed hard. “It’s not too late. We don’t have to—oh!”
You cried out once his fingers slipped past the hem of your panties. His fingers dipped between your folds, collecting your arousal with embarrassing wet noises as he tried to rub at your clit.
“No, Bucky… it’s right here—” You grabbed his forearm, guiding him to the right spot, and arched your back with a sharp cry when he started rubbing deep circles against the sensitive bud.
“Oh my god,” you gasped.
This was the pleasure you were looking for—but it wasn’t nearly enough.
There was an empty ache deep inside you that was begging to be filled. But you weren’t going to demand that of him just yet, in case he changed his mind.
A lazy, boyish smile tugged at his lips as he watched you come undone from his fingers.
“Yeah?” he huffed out a breath. “That feel good, baby?”
“Yes—don’t stop, please,” you cried helplessly.
His other hand lifted your tank top up and over your head, quickly unhooking your bra to fully reveal your tits. With a low grunt, he leaned forward, capturing one of your perky nipples into the wet warmth of his mouth.
You moaned loudly, your hand flying to the back of his head and giving his hair a hard, desperate tug. He liked that a lot, moaning against your skin in pleasure.
Bucky’s tongue swirled around your nipple, licking and sucking until you were arching off his lap at his mercy.
He was making a beautiful mess of you, switching between both buds and letting his mouth worship your body. His rough stubble tickled your chest while his fingers continued their clumsy work down below, sliding through your slick folds and rubbing messy circles right against your clit.
The wet, squelching sounds of his fingers moving against your soaking flesh filled the greenhouse—the filth of it only making you wetter and causing the toxin to course even harder.
He suddenly pulled his mouth away from your chest, a string of saliva connecting his lips to your skin, and finally looked up at you.
His lips and chin were slick and shining from giving your breasts such sloppy, adoring kisses.
“I need to be inside you,” he pleaded. “Please… I need to put it in. I need to stuff you so full of me, baby. Please, let me fuck you.”
Your eyes searched Bucky’s.
He looked like an even bigger mess than before. He looked and sounded utterly helpless, his chest rising and falling heavily, his face tight with an expression that made it look like he was physically hurting.
Even though he had just come in his pants moments ago, he needed so much more.
You knew that once you gave in to him completely, there would be no holding back for either of you. He would have to live with the fact that you would be his first.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Bucky slowly slipped his hand out of your panties, bringing his fingers up to his lips and licking the juices clean. “You’re scared, but I’m not. I know what I want, and what I want right now is you.”
Bucky gripped your waist, raising you off his lap and pinning you flat against the ground.
He slipped his large body directly between your legs, his strong thighs forcing yours wide open as he covered your frame with his.
Your hair was messy across the dirt floor, framing your face as you laid beneath him breathless. The toxin was taking over control of your body—every single nerve demanding to be touched by the man between your legs.
You felt like you were in heat, consumed by a fever that only Bucky could cure.
His eyes fell over your body, tracing your tits and stomach, his gaze locking onto the way your panties—already a soaked mess—looked like they were begging to be torn away by his teeth.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, his hands making quick work of your underwear.
With a harsh tug and a sharp tearing sound, the fabric gave away.
“I’m so sorry for what I’m about to do to you.”
Your panties didn’t even make it past your knees before tearing clean off your thighs. You winced slightly.
It was dizzying to think about how you had found the strength to fight Bucky earlier, only to now be reduced to a breathless, aching mess over a piece of torn fabric.
Bucky leaned back on his heels, unbuckling his belt and shoving open his unzipped, stained denim jeans.
The moment he pulled his cock free, it sprang forward then back—the tip slapping against his abdomen.
He was thick, his cock fully engorged and begging to be wrapped in something tight and warm. Pre-cum glistened at the tip, trailing down his shaft and mixing with the creamy white essence from his earlier release.
His eyes were glued to your soaking center, legs spread wide and inviting. His jaw slacked as he lazily pumped himself at the shaft, prepping his cock for your warm embrace.
He claimed he was a virgin, but the way he was looking at you with such a hungry look in his eyes made you think otherwise.
“Bucky,” you breathed, heart racing. “Are you sure you want to do this? With… me?”
Bucky leaned over your body, using his metal elbow to prop himself up while he slapped the tip of his cock against your entrance.
You weren’t sure where he learned that from, but the dirty act left you clenching around nothing.
“The more you ask, the harder it is for me to stay in control,” he gritted through clenched teeth. “I’m just gonna have to stuff you full of my cock just to prove how much I want you.”
You craned your neck, watching Bucky rub his tip up and down your folds—smearing his pre-cum while coating his shaft in your own slick juice.
When he positioned himself right at your opening and poked gently, testing your stretch, your folds immediately parted for him. You were so wet and pliable from the toxin that you were sure he would slip right in without a fight, despite how big he was.
“Just… just enough to get rid of the side effects, okay?” you muttered, though it sounded like you were trying to convince yourself more than him.
Bucky either didn’t hear you, or maybe he did and he just chose to ignore it.
With a clench of his jaw, he slowly pushed his hips forward, his eyes glued to the spot where your cunt wrapped around the head of his cock.
The sensation was delicious. Your body was burning hot, tight, and dangerously wet. He had only sunk the tip in, but it was already the greatest thing he had ever felt in his life. His eyes rolled back as a deep groan tore in his chest.
“Ohhh…”
Despite the toxin making your body more accommodating, you were still tighter than either of you expected.
You were being stretched completely and fully as Bucky kept going, relentlessly sinking his cock all the way inside until his dark, hairy base pressed flush against your folds. He was so big, and a part of you was grateful that he had already come once before this—because right now, his entire body was shaking with an uncontrollable need.
“So goddamn tight,” he cursed, his face twisting that looked almost like pain. “I never… fuck, I never expected pussy to feel this good… Christ.”
He stilled inside you, letting your body adjust to his size. But in reality, he was the one who needed time to adjust to your tightness.
You paced your breathing. Being stretched full by him made you want to scream at him to hurry up and move, to fuck you right into the dirt floor of the greenhouse—but you couldn’t make that kind of demand of a virgin.
Since it was his first time, despite the unfortunate circumstances, you were going to guide him gently.
“Hold me here,” you murmured, taking his hands and guiding them back to your thighs. “Feel me. It’s soft, isn’t it?”
Bucky breathed hard, nodding as he held you.
“When you’re ready, just move your hips nice and slow. Take your time.”
His face fell into a tight scowl, as if displeased with that order.
Every single one of his base instincts was screaming at him to fuck you hard and fast—to claim every surface of your pussy with his cock.
“F—fine,” he reluctantly agreed, his voice strained. He gripped your thighs tightly, spreading you open as he began rocking his hips back and forth.
His eyes were glossy with desire, transfixed by the sight of his cock disappearing in and out of your body.
A thick, creamy white ring was forming around the base of his shaft, staining the unruly dark curls that sat at his pelvis.
Every time he pulled out, he made sure to sink back in even deeper, rolling his hips forward until the tip of his cock kissed your cervix.
Your eyes rolled back, your hands clutching his broad shoulders as he buried himself inside you.
“Fuck… just like that,” you moaned. “Keep going.”
“Does… does that feel good?” He swallowed hard, fingers digging deeper into your thigh.
You nodded fast. “So good—I don’t want you to stop. Please, don’t stop.”
Your breathless plea made him scowl , a frustrated snarl leaving his lips.
“This is torture.” He groaned.
You furrowed your brows, looking at his angry expression in concern. Torture? That wasn’t what sex was supposed to feel like. The last thing you wanted to do was hurt him.
“Bucky,” you said, pressing your hand against his sweating chest. “If this is hurting you, we need to stop right now. Pull out of me—”
You gasped as his metal hand circled tight around your wrist, prying it away from his chest and pinning it over your head. He slammed you back to the floor, his large body shadowing yours as his face hovered.
His dark eyes bored deeply into yours—and you felt like if you so much as looked away, he might take it as a threat.
“No, I can’t—I can’t do slow,” he growled. “The drug in my veins, it’s like it's yelling at me to take what I want. And what I want is to fuck you until you cry.”
Your breath left your lungs as Bucky slammed his hips forward, burying himself inside you.
He pulled out halfway before fucking right back in, a broken gasp leaving your lips as you arched your back against the floor from the pleasure. You hadn’t expected him to fuck you this hard—being a virgin and all—but you couldn’t complain.
You had been craving to be taken like this since the moment the drug first entered your system.
“Oh my god—!” You cried out, tears prickling at the corners of your eyes.
“Ah—fuck, you’re so tight,” Bucky cried out.
He buried his face into the crook of your neck, his breath scalding against your skin as he relentlessly pumped his hips in and out of you, using your vulnerable body like his own personal sex toy.
“It feels too good, fuck, baby. Everything feels too good—I can’t stop,” he moaned.
Your moans blended together into a dirty symphony.
The toxin was amplifying every single touch, his thick shaft stretching you out completely—turning your usually strong and poised body into mush with every thrust.
Your wet walls clenched down on him every time he threatened to pull out, as if sucking him right back in. Bucky was entirely lost, his mind short circuiting from the pleasure.
Every time he buried himself deep, your swollen pussy tightened around him like your body was trying to milk him dry. You whimpered with every single thrust he gave you, your teary eyes meeting his in a lustful haze as you wrapped your legs tight around his hips for support.
“Fuck—my god, don’t do that—” He sucked in a sharp breath. “You’re squeezing me so tight. God—if this is what sex feels like, I never want to stop.”
He tilted his head down, his sweaty strands of hair tickling your hot face as he stared back down at the exact point where his hips got lost with yours.
Every stroke of his cock inside your tight body came with a hot wave of pleasure, amplified by the toxin coursing through your blood.
The sensation was addicting.
Bucky had never felt a pleasure like this before. He’d jerked off a few times in his apartment just to quickly relieve some stress, but that was always by himself.
He was a curious boy back in the forties, but he had never been close to getting any action like this.
To him, this was like a dream come true.
But he needed to go deeper. These regular, sloppy thrusts weren’t enough. He needed to feel more.
With a snarl, he leaned back to grip the backs of your thighs and shoved your knees up towards your chest, folding you into a tight mating press.
Before you could adjust to the new position, he pressed his hips against yours to lock you in place and sank down even deeper than he had before.
Your eyes flew wide, nearly bulging from their sockets as a sharp gasp ripped from your throat. His cock was stretching you at an impossible angle, burying himself so deep you could’ve sworn you saw stars.
Because you were already so sensitive from the toxin, having him bottom out so hard against your cervix made your core shudder uncontrollably, causing your legs to shake. Your head fell back against the floor, your toes curling in the air as your vision went hazy.
“Oh my god!” you cried out in a mix of pain and pleasure. “It’s too much—I can’t… you’re gonna make me cum!”
You felt your walls start to hyperventilate around his length. You knew he felt it, too, because he immediately doubled his pace.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized, but it didn’t sound sincere. “Fuck—I’m so sorry. It just feels too good—fuck, I—”
His voice broke into a pained moan the moment your pussy tightened. You came hard around him without warning, your neck arching as a loud moan strained your vocal cords.
Bucky’s entire body tensed, his face twisting in a grimace from how your climax was squeezing him.
The feeling was exquisite, and fuck, he wasn’t going to last another second when he was buried this deep inside of you.
He knew your body was sensitive and overworked, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop moving. His balls had never felt this full, this heavy. He was close, so fucking close, and the more your pussy fluttered around his shaft, the more desperate he became to chase that same release.
“Shit. M’gonna cum,” he cursed, his hips stuttering as he hilted himself deep inside.
His cock twitched—he had never came inside a girl before, but he was determined to do so now.
He was going to make sure he filled you, to stuff your tight hole to the brim with his backed up super soldier seed.
“Gonna cum inside,” he warned, his metal hand sliding beneath your lower back and lifting your hips up to meet his thrusts. “I’m gonna cum inside—fuck, I hope that’s okay. I’m sorry. I can’t—I can’t control myself.”
You couldn’t muster a single coherent word. Only muffles and teary whimpers escaped you, but it didn’t matter what you said while Bucky was in this state. He had no intention of stopping.
His blue eyes were crazed, rolled back so far in his sockets you could see the white. He grit his teeth, meeting your hips with sloppy and wet thrusts. A litany of curses mumbled in broken strings under his breath, until finally…
“Oh my god—I’m cumming. Take it, baby. Take every single drop of me. Don’t let it go to waste. Please, I need this. I need this so fucking bad—”
With a firm grip on your thigh, he pinned you down and pushed his hips against yours.
His tip kissed your cervix, pulsing twice before his body gave way to your tightness. You were being filled by the thick, heavy pumping of his seed. You could feel his cock twitching relentlessly against your walls, determined to flood every inch of your pussy.
He buried his face in your neck, his chest heaving violently as he stuffed you so completely full that your lower belly felt heavy.
“I’m so sorry,” he pleaded brokenly.
Bucky trembled from head to toe, and despite his mumbled apologies, he kept your hips pinned securely so that not a single drop of his release could escape. He was spent, breathing in shaky and ragged gasps against your skin. He didn’t want to pull out yet, still savoring the feeling of your pulsing walls squeezing the very last drops from.
The two of you lay on the floor, tangled and sweaty in each other’s limbs. Once you finally caught your breath, your hands gently caressed his broad back, a comforting gesture that caught even you off guard.
“How… how are you feeling?” you finally mumbled.
Your body tensed as you braced yourself for an answer.
Now that the side effects of the toxin seemed to be wearing off, dread started trickling in.
You were terrified that everything you had just done with Bucky would be something he’d immediately regret. A part of you tried to tell yourself that you didn’t care—that he had despised you before this, and he would simply go back to hating you again.
But after being his first, there was an undeniable connection in the way you felt beneath him.
If he was already starting to feel regret... well, you weren’t sure how you would handle it. Guilt? Probably. The longer he stayed silent, the more the worry gnawed at you.
He eventually huffed a breath, but he didn’t pull away.
“If you’re wondering if I’m going to regret this,” Bucky began, his voice so raspy and tired that it sent a shiver down your spine. “The answer is no.”
You sucked in a breath, expecting a but to follow.
Bucky attempted to lift himself up slightly so he wasn’t crushing you, but he was still so sensitive that the movement made him wince sharply. He couldn’t bring himself to pull out yet, so he collapsed right back against you with a soft huff.
“I wish I could just stay like this,” he muttered, wrapping both arms around you while resting his head against your sweaty chest.
He looked so small and vulnerable in that moment, and it made your heart ache for him.
“Just holding you,” he whispered, hugging you tighter as his voice grew quieter. “Instead of constantly running, fearing for my life, or being taken away. I just want to stay like this. Holding a pretty girl.”
The tension was starting to become too much for you to handle. Your face burned, unsure of how to process the sudden compliment. Trying to break the tension, you huffed a soft laugh and continued to rub your hand up and down his broad back. He seemed to like your touch very much.
“I’m sorry you lost your virginity this way.” you tried to joke.
Bucky chuckled against your chest. “The man I was in the forties probably would’ve done a much better job.”
“Well, this wasn’t bad at all—I’ll tell you that much.”
The two of you lay there, chuckling softly in each other’s arms, until the loud, sudden static of your earpiece made you both jolt.
“Do you copy? Report in.”
You both froze, your hearts beating rapidly for an entirely different reason now.
Bucky cleared his throat as he reluctantly tried lifting himself up. The friction of his slick and semi-hard cock sliding out of you made you let out an involuntary whimper.
“Status update,” Steve pressed, his tone anxious. “Are you two safe, or are you compromised?”
Compromised, sure. But definitely not in the way Steve meant.
Suppressing a giggle, you tapped your earpiece with a bright smile, catching Bucky's eye.
“Glad to hear your comms didn’t break, Steve.”
A relieved sigh came from the other end. “Give me a status report. How are you two? How’s Bucky?”
You watched as Bucky began to pull his clothes back on, his face an embarrassing shade of red as he tried to compose himself. You chuckled softly.
“We’re fine.”
halfway through proofreading this i lowk realized this was slop. i thought i had a good idea and then lost the plot. if you actually liked this please consider leaving a like and hit that subscribe button *epic outro music*
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