forever is the sweetest con

she/they | 21 | minors dni

[earthtomia]

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╰┈➤ she/they | 21 | bi | minors dni

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[superbassbuck]

call me maybe ! | bucky barnes (18+)

⤷ neighbor!bucky barnes x f!reader

⭐︎ warnings: nsfw, smut, fluff, sexual tension, reader is a college student, age-gap (reader is early twenties, bucky is presumed mid 30s) voyeuristic and exhibitionism, homoeroticism, "slut" "good girl" "whore" public sex, fingering, dry humping, groping, dirty talk, degrading, size difference, mechanic!steve, slight steve x reader, reader is a pervert but bucky is too highkey, player!bucky, bisexual awakening!!!!

⭐︎ word count: 10.2k

⭐︎ a/n: happy pride month!!! if it wasn't obvious enough, yes, it is based on the song call me maybe by carly rae jepsen. real ones know the parodies to this song on youtube. wasabi productions ifykyk. gif by sebstangif

synopsis: There’s a new guy who moved in right across from you. He’s a total mystery, but his looks certainly aren't. Since he's subtly trying to get your attention, how could you not entertain him? Especially when you have your best friend, Steve, in your ear telling you to go for it.

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Hand washing the car on a hot summer’s day was something you would never normally do.

You always let your dad handle a job like that. He’d always tease you for being ‘spoiled,’ always hitting you with the typical line of, “What happens when I’m gone? How will you take care of yourself?”

And every time he hit you with that line, without fail, you would find yourself grabbing the plastic bucket, soap, and sponges out of spite, just to prove a point.

Now, you were outside, drenched in a mixture of sweat and water as the sun beamed down. You were splayed over the hood of the car in a way that looked anything but sexy. You had on a tank top and shorts—natural, given the heat—but despite the porn director approved outfit, you looked anything but pornographic.

Matter of fact, if someone were to come up to you now, they would probably lose interest instantly.

“Hey there,” a familiar, deep voice called from behind you. “Looking pretty hot.”

Normally, you would scramble to make yourself look at least somewhat decent for anyone who approached you in this state.

But it was your best friend—so who cares?

“Steve,” you huffed, raising a leg to balance yourself on the hood of your dad’s car. “Are you going to help me or just taunt me?”

Steve crossed his arms, watching you slip and slide all over the green station wagon that looked like it was ready to fall apart at any given moment.

“Has your dad seen you like this yet? I’m sure if he saw what a poor job you were doing, he wouldn’t ask you to clean it again.

You puffed a strand of hair out of your face. “The reason I’m cleaning in the first place is to prove to my dad that I’m perfectly capable.” You mumbled under your breath, “… He called me spoiled.”

Steve chuckled lightly. “Can’t say I disagree.”

Sneering, you spun around and hurled your wet, soapy sponge in his direction. It landed right in the center of his chest, dampening his snug t-shirt with a dark spot that began to spread. He laughed, catching the sponge before it hit the ground.

“Get off the hood before you hurt yourself,” he grinned, taking a step closer.

You grunted as you slid off the car. As you stood up, your eyes trailed past Steve’s shoulder—something unfamiliar catching your attention.

The house across from yours had been unoccupied for months, but someone had recently moved in. Days had passed, and you hadn’t seen the new neighbors yet. But for the first time since the ‘FOR SALE’ sign was removed, you were finally seeing the man who lived there.

He was tall—maybe around Steve’s height. He had dark hair that fluffed messily at the top, and he was covered in dirt, looking as though he’d been doing yard work all morning. The sun hit his eyes, and he squinted, shielding them with a large hand.

As he looked up, his gaze drifted across to your lawn, and his eyes met yours for a long moment.

A warm, friendly smile tugged at his lips, and he waved. You blinked, a light smile forming on your own face when you realized he was waving at you. You waved back shyly, and his smile grew wider.

“He waved at me,” you pointed out.

Steve, curious, glanced over his shoulder. When he caught the man’s eye, he gave a quick, short nod—a casual greeting between guys.

“He seems nice,” Steve shrugged. “Your new neighbor?”

You nodded, stealing a few more seconds to look at the man across the street. He bent over, his large traps tensing against his cotton tank top as he shoved a pair of gardening gloves over his rough hands. He crouched, his dirty boots and jeans digging into the soil as he began to pull at stubborn weeds.

A man. Hard at work.

The best kind of man.

“He is,” you breathed, looking back at Steve. “And he’s hot, too.”

Steve huffed a laugh, stepping out of your way and towards the car, sponge in hand. “You trying to make me jealous, sweetheart?”

You rolled your eyes, grabbing a spare sponge from the soapy tub. You stepped up to the opposite window from Steve and began to scrub.

“You know, I’ve seen this play out in movies and stuff—” Steve shouted from the other side of the car. “The girl who washes her car and catches the eye of the conveniently attractive neighbor across the street.”

You quirked a brow. “In movies, or in porn?”

Now, it was Steve’s turn to roll his eyes.

“Point aside, you should go for it.” He peeked at you over the roof and nodded in your neighbor’s direction. “You’ve been single for quite a while now. It wouldn’t hurt to dip your toes back in the dating scene.”

You snorted. “Whatever happened to you being jealous?”

Steve shook his head at your comment. “I’m just saying—you’re young and pretty. You could grab that guy’s attention if you really tried.”

Pausing your sponge, you glanced over your shoulder, catching your neighbor’s gaze again. He had been staring at you—for how long, you didn’t know. Either way, your heart did a little flutter in your chest, your face warming at the thought of him watching you.

“You really think so?”

Steve hummed. “Have I ever lied to you?”

Since that day, and with the help of Steve’s encouragement, you found yourself spending more time outside just to catch your neighbor’s eye.

Most mornings, he was already out there working on the front of his house—mowing the lawn, painting fences, or tending to the plants.

The job itself didn’t matter. It was the man behind it all who suddenly made this boring, textbook suburban neighborhood interesting.

Despite only a few days passing since you last washed the car, you miraculously decided to wash it up again the day Bucky was working on the front of his house. How convenient!

Grabbing your tools while wearing a tank top—thinner than the last one—and shorts that rode so far up they were bordering on a wedgie, you stepped out with a confident stride that immediately caught his attention.

He glanced at you from his spot on a ladder, squinting as he smiled.

“Good morning!” you chirped.

“Morning,” he shouted back, nodding to the same car parked on your driveway. “Cleaning again?”

“Oh, yeah,” you smirked, motioning to your bucket. “Just something I like to do every few days.”

If Steve or your dad were here, they would be laughing in your face.

The man’s eyes slowly raked over the car—taking mental note of just how pristine and shiny it already was—before trailing back to you. “Must be a high maintenance girl, huh?”

It was just something about the way he said it—his voice deep and textured with a rasp that made every syllable sound flirtatious. You chuckled softly, your face warming.

“Something like that.”

He chuckled in return before getting back to work.

You dunked the sponge into the bucket of soapy water and got to work. Most of your time was spent focusing more on suggestive poses than actually getting the car clean. You stretched your arms high to reach the roof so the hem of your tank top rode up, then leaned low over the hood, letting your short shorts ride up to reveal the curve of your ass.

It didn’t take long for your clothes and skin to be covered in soap and water. The sun was in your favor today, catching the water as it glistened on your skin and the soap as it trickled down your thighs.

One quick glance over your shoulder made your heart stutter.

You knew you were doing it right because he was looking right at you.

He slowly began to descend the ladder. Before you knew it, he was walking in your direction, crossing the street until he reached your driveway. You had to bite back a smile as the sound of his boots scuffed closer, stopping just behind you.

“I believe we haven’t properly introduced ourselves,” he called out to grab your attention.

You didn’t turn around right away, careful not to make it too obvious. You glanced over your shoulder first, your back arching in a way that felt a bit of a strain—thanks to your usually terrible posture—then slowly stood up, trying not to groan at the sudden soreness.

“I don’t believe we have,” you said, setting the sponge down and wiping your wet hand on your damp shorts. Good enough.

You extended your hand and gave him your name.

He returned the gesture with a smile, his grip warm and rough—the hands of a working man.

“It’s nice to meet you. I’m Bucky,” he huffed. “Bucky Barnes.”

He looked around, appearing almost skeptical to be standing in your driveway. “You look young,” he pointed out. “Are your parents home? I’d like to introduce myself, being new to the neighborhood and all.”

“They’re on vacation,” you explained. “I’m a student over at Jepsen University.”

“A student, huh?” He rubbed his chin with his left hand. No ring. “A pretty thing like you oughta’ be careful at Jepsen. There are a lot of nasty frat boys roaming around campus.”

You chuckled, a light sway in your movement. “You went there?”

He nodded. “Graduated top of my class.”

Even though there was no ring, you still needed verbal confirmation before throwing yourself at him.

“How are you and the family liking the neighborhood so far?” You tested.

Bucky took it upon himself to lean against your car, making the frame creak slightly. He didn’t seem to care about the soap dampening his jeans.

“Well, me and my girl are liking it so far,” Bucky said. “It’s quiet, and plus, I get a good view across the street.”

You made a face at his explanation. My girl. He had a wife? Or a daughter? He was deliberately flirting with you, wasn’t he?

Bucky caught your expression and laughed lightly, waving a hand dismissively.

“My girl Alpine,” he clarified. "She’s the cat loafing on the windowsill in my living room, always staring out.”

You felt your face warm, and your posture eased up instantly. Not only was your neighbor hot as hell, but he was single—and a cat dad! There was a bit of an age gap, but that wasn’t something you couldn’t handle.

You crossed your arms, the movement accentuating your breasts beneath the thin tank top, and jutted your hip out to emphasize your curves. You smiled pridefully, watching as Bucky’s gaze traced a slow path from your eyes down your body.

“Like father, like daughter, then.”

His grin widened handsomely. “What can I say? We like looking at pretty things.”

You smiled, biting the inside of your cheek. He was such a natural flirt—and despite all your attempts to grab his attention, your words suddenly failed you when the time came.

Bucky glanced around the driveway as if he were still searching for someone. Then, he asked, “That guy who usually comes over to help you out—” he brought up slyly, still looking around, “he your boyfriend?”

You blinked at his question. The way he was subtly trying to fish for information made your stomach do a flip in celebration.

“Steve?” you asked, your voice coming out breathier than intended. A small, teasing smile tugged at your lips. “No, he’s not my boyfriend.”

You noticed the way Bucky’s shoulders relaxed slightly at your words. He was jealous.

“He goes to Jepsen, too?” He questioned.

“Yeah, he’s my senior.”

“Ah,” Bucky drawled. “A frat boy, then?”

You couldn’t help but laugh at his endless questioning. “I wouldn’t call him that. He’s my best friend,” you reassured him, watching the way his blue eyes searched yours. “He just comes over sometimes to help out—or more like he comes over to make fun of me while I do all the work.”

Bucky chuckled a deep, gravelly sound that was effortlessly charming. “Best friend, huh?” He pushed himself off your car, taking a step closer to you. Fuck, he even smelled good. “Well, I can’t say I blame him for wanting to hang around. Though, if you ever need a man who’ll actually help instead of just laughing at you, you know where I live.”

He tilted his head toward the house across the street, his gaze dropping to your lips for a second before meeting your eyes again.

“You said your parents were away on vacation?” he asked.

You nodded.

“For how long?”

“Just for a couple of days,” you replied.

Bucky hummed, an amused smile playing on his face as he looked at you. He leaned in, his voice releasing a low murmur as his warm breath tickled your skin.

“A couple of days, huh?”

You caught his gaze tracing a path down your tank top before he met your eyes with a devastatingly slow smirk. If he had this much confidence at his big old age, he was definitely a troublemaker when he was in college, that’s for sure.

“Would you look at that? That’s plenty of time for us to get well-acquainted.”

He watched the way your breath hitched and smiled, looking satisfied. He pulled away and turned back towards his side of the street. If he didn’t know any better, he might have thought he heard a small whine escape you.

“See you around, neighbor,” he called over his shoulder with a charming smile, sauntering down your driveway and back towards his own.

As he walked off, your heart was beating with excitement—beating far too fast to keep up. And the only thing you could think about was how much you were going to gloat about this to Steve later.

You sat across from Steve at the same dingy diner where you two met every Thursday for brunch.

While you sat cross legged on one side of the booth, Steve sat opposite from you in a crisp navy blue collared shirt with a name tag that read HYDRA’S MECHANIC! and the name Steven on the top right.

“He has a cat, Steve. A cat!” You smiled, dipping your toast into a pool of egg yolk. “Her name is Alpine—and he called her ‘his girl.’ Isn’t that so sweet? I nearly had a heart attack right there in the driveway.”

Steve held a coffee mug in his hand, watching you. He was supposed to be heading into work in twenty minutes, but he was currently occupied with the girl in front of him—and her endless rambling.

“And he’s single,” you continued through a mouthful of toast. “No ring, no wife—just a gorgeous, ripped cat dad with a voice that sounds like it came straight out of a smutty audiobook.” You paused, taking a quick sip of your drink. “I mean, yeah, he’s definitely got a few years on me. He’s a little older, but honestly, it doesn’t matter. It just makes him more…” You sighed dreamily. “Capable.”

Steve didn’t say a word. He set his coffee cup down, picked up a fry, and dipped it slowly into a side of ranch with a lopsided smile.

“What?” you asked, your brow furrowing as you caught his grin.

“Nothing,” he said simply, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

“Steve. I know that face,” you pointed out. “That’s your ‘I’ve got something to say, but I won’t’ face mixed with something else. Come on, tell me! What are you thinking?”

Steve chuckled, wiping his hand on a napkin before leaning back in the booth. “I don’t know how I feel about you going after some guy who’s that much older than you. He seems like the type of guy you have fun with—not someone you bring home to your parents.”

Your eyes went wide. “What? You encouraged me to go for it!”

Steve held up his hands defensively. “I know, I know! It’s just… I don’t know. Can’t a guy worry?”

You couldn’t help but smile at his bashfulness. “Aw, you’re worried over little ol’ me, Stevie?” You tilted your head, taunting him.

He rolled his eyes. “You know what? Forget I even said anything—”

“No, no,” you leaned in, resting both arms on the table “Okay, fine. I’m hearing you. What can I do that’ll make you more comfortable in this situation?”

Steve shrugged, lifting the coffee cup and bringing it to his lips. “Could start by meeting the guy, I guess.”

“Okay,” you agreed casually. “He did mention you, actually.”

Steve quirked a brow, eyeing you over the rim of his mug. “Did he?”

You nodded. “He asked if you were my boyfriend.”

He scoffed a laugh. “Boyfriend? He’s already getting jealous? God—how old is he again?”

You gave him a look. “He was just curious, Steve.”

“Sure, and I’m a superhero fighting crime in New York.” Steve set his mug down, dipping another fry into ranch and plopping it into his mouth. He gathered his phone and wallet, quickly tucking them into his pockets. “I gotta go. Shift is starting soon.”

“Wait.” You sat up straight. “My dad won’t stop texting me asking if you can fix the wagon—it keeps making this weird noise and he won’t leave me alone until you look at it.”

“I’m free tomorrow after work. I’ll swing by then. I’ll consider this—” he motioned to the table, where the bill sat squarely in the middle with your name on it, “—payment for the repair.” Steve pushed himself out of the booth, licking the ranch off his thumb before pointing a finger at you. “I’ll text you. And don’t screw the guy ‘til I meet him.”

You couldn’t even get a word in before Steve was already rushing out the door, the bell jingling after him.

“Yeah. Okay, Dad.”

After paying for brunch, you drove home feeling giddy.

Turning the corner onto your street, you spotted Bucky right outside his house, mowing the lawn. This time, he was shirtless.

You purposefully slowed down to get a good look at him, but the moment he looked up and spotted your car pulling into the driveway, he smiled—aiming it right at you through your fishbowl wagon on wheels.

Parked in the driveway, you took a quick look at yourself in the pull down mirror, checking to make sure there weren’t any crumbs on your face or a stray strand of hair sticking out. Smoothing down your top and adjusting your shorts, you stepped out of the car—aiming for casual. But with the way your heart was beating, you were anything but.

Bucky had killed the mower engine and was wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead. He looked hypnotizing, his chest and stomach glistening in the afternoon sun.

“Eventful day, I take it?” He nodded towards your car. “Noticed your wagon was missing from the driveway this morning.”

He had noticed you were gone? You tried your best not to smile.

“Oh, yeah,” you leaned against trunk nonchalantly. “I went to have brunch with a friend.”

Bucky crossed his arms over his chest—a move that did very interesting things to his biceps that were hard to ignore—and leaned his weight back on one leg.

“Let me guess,” he said, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Steve?”

After Steve’s comment about Bucky being jealous, you couldn’t help but bask in confidence. You quirked a brow, a teasing smile playing on your lips. “Are you jealous?”

Bucky tilted his head, pretending to contemplate the question as he looked you up and down.

“Only a little,” he admitted with that handsome smile of his.

You grinned. “Well, there’s no need to be jealous, I assure you,” you explained, pushing yourself off the car.

Taking a step back, you gestured vaguely to his yard. “I’ll let you get back to it, though. You look pretty busy,” you said, despite how much you actually wanted to pull up a folding chair and just stare.

You turned to head towards your front door, but you didn’t get far before his voice stopped you.

“You know,” Bucky called out as he began crossing the street. “Your car is looking a little dirty.”

You stopped and turned back, your breath catching as you watched him make his way onto your driveway. Shirtless and confident, he looked even more imposing standing on your property than he had the other day. He came to a halt beside the green wagon, glancing at the circle of bird poop sitting right on the roof.

Then, he looked back at you with a smile—as if he already knew you wouldn’t say no.

“Need some help cleaning?”

“I…” Your eyes trailed to his bare chest slicked with sweat. You didn’t know how you were going to control yourself, but despite it all, you swallowed hard and said, “Yes.”

Minutes later, you found yourself grabbing all the supplies needed to get the car cleaned. Bucky stood by the bucket, holding the hose as the water filled the plastic. It took everything in you not to stare at the way the sun was shining down on his tanned skin, sweat and water glistening down the hard lines of his stomach.

His jeans sat dangerously low on his hips, the hem of his briefs peeking out over the top. He hadn’t even started cleaning the car yet, but he already looked hotter just standing there than you ever felt trying to look appealing while washing the wagon.

When the bucket was full, he lifted it by the handle without much struggle. You watched as his biceps and forearms flexed against the weight of it. His eyes caught yours, and you swallowed hard, quickly forcing your gaze away.

Bucky stepped to the passenger side, opposite where you were standing. He didn’t seem bothered by your staring.

Actually, he seemed to be feeding off the attention, especially after catching you several times.

“This is a nice car,” he commented, dunking a sponge into the soapy water. “Vintage. I’m surprised she’s still kicking around.”

While Bucky scrubbed down the passenger side, you kept trying to sneak glances through the untinted windows. From where you stood, you had a perfect view of his chest muscles and his stomach pressing against the glass as he worked.

“Uh—yeah,” you cleared your throat, forcing your focus back. “It’s from the sixties. It’s my dad’s, actually. Steve just helps me fix it up.”

“Your friend Steve,” Bucky mused, peeking at you over the roof. “He a mechanic?”

“Yup,” you nodded. “So if you hear loud car noises coming from across the street tomorrow when he fixes it, you can blame him.”

“This Steve guy sounds like a total catch,” Bucky said with a light laugh. “You sure you’re not dating him?”

You weren’t sure why Bucky was so insistent on you having a secret relationship with Steve. You had your fair share of insecure men who were jealous of you hanging around with someone like Steve Rogers, and you figured that habit died out once men hit the age of twenty five. But with Bucky standing across from you, poking at your relationship with Steve, you were starting to think that wasn’t the case.

“I swear, I’m not dating Steve.” You raised a pinky so he could see it over the roof. “Besides, he’s like an older brother to me.”

Bucky blew a raspberry.

“Poor kid,” he chuckled. “But really, I’m surprised he hasn’t made a move on you.” He bent down to clean the rim right above the tire, letting his eyes trail over your body through the window. “If I had a pretty girl like you in my life... we wouldn’t have been friends for long.”

You felt your heart stutter.

What did that even mean?

Did he mean he would make you his girlfriend?

You wanted to hear him say it—to blurt out the answer himself.

You dumped your sponge in your bucket, letting yourself get damp with the soapy water.

“Is that so?” you challenged, trying your best to play it cool. “And what would we be then?”

He stood up with a low groan, looking at you over the roof. He began making his way towards your side of the car, moving purposefully slow as he dragged his sponge across the hood—hardly even pretending to clean it anymore.

“After watching you wash this car—looking like a woman straight out of my dreams? We’d be a lot of things,” he said smoothly, locking eyes with you as he reached the corner of the bumper. “But ‘friends’ sure as hell isn’t one of them.”

You grinned, allowing him to be the one to approach you as you continued scrubbing.

“So,” you kept your voice playful, a little teasing. “You’ve been watching me?”

Bucky didn’t bother denying it.

He stopped just inches away from you. He let his tongue run slowly over his bottom lip, his eyes traveling shamelessly down your body. He was mesmerized with the path of the soap bubble trickling down your collarbone, sliding between the curve of your breasts before disappearing into the thin fabric of your tank top, where your perky nipples were poking right through.

It was hard for him to ignore. They were practically begging to be licked.

“Hard not to,” he rasped, stepping closer until he was standing directly behind you. He propped one strong arm against the roof of the wagon, locking you in. “Especially when you’re giving me a view like that from across the street.”

You let out a shaky breath—one that you hoped he didn’t catch, but he did. You stared at him through the reflection of the window, and his eyes were on you—tracing your face, leaning in to smell you.

It was this very moment that made you remember the age gap, because he was moving and talking so smoothly, like it was all natural to him. As if he had been swooning women like you for years.

But you weren’t going to let that shake you up.

You pushed your hips back subtly, letting your damp ass press against his hips. You tried not to gasp at the straining bulge that was waiting for you between his legs.

“Well, I’m right here,” you said quietly, staring at him in the reflection. “So, what then?”

Bucky looked around, his gaze sweeping across the street to make sure no one else was near.

With one hand still propped against the car, the other found your hip, giving it a firm squeeze to keep you right where you were with your ass pressed tight against his cock.

“Do you want to know what I love most about being in this neighborhood, aside from the fact that I have a super attractive neighbor living across from me?”

He rocked his hips forward, letting his hard bulge nestle perfectly between the curve of your bottom. His cock was fighting the restraint of his jeans, and just from that small movement alone, you could feel how big he was.

Bucky pressed his lips against your ear, murmuring low and tickling your skin with his warm breath. “I love how quiet it is. There’s rarely anyone outside, or even driving by... so when I touch you like this...” His hand slid up from your hip to cup your breast through your tank top. “No one will even notice.”

You gasped as he fondled your tits, his rough fingers flicking the sensitive peak of your nipple. As he dampened your shirt with his wet hands, the water seeped through the thin fabric, making every bit of friction feel even more sensitive than the last.

“Oh my god,” you gasped, your eyes fluttering shut.

“Oh,” he let out a low, rough breath. “You’re so reactive. I’m going to have so much fun with you.”

Bucky’s hand left the roof of the car to wrap around your eyes, pulling you even closer against him. He rocked his hips—back and forth, in a steady rhythm—dry humping you right there against the green wagon in your driveway where anyone could see.

The friction of his denim against your damp, thin shorts made a warm heat pool in your lower belly. Every grind of his hips was met with a hard twitch in his jeans, making your body ache for more.

His hands were everywhere. One hand gripped your hip, tickling the skin beneath the fabric as he gave your flesh a possessive squeeze.

The other continued to fondle your tits, tickling your nipple through the wet cotton. His thumb and forefinger would catch your nipple, rolling it until you were arching your back and whimpering his name.

“Cute noises coming out of you,” he murmured against the crook of your neck, his teeth grazing your skin. “I wonder what kind of noises you’ll make if someone were to drive by and see what I’m doing to you?”

You shuddered as his hands roamed lower, his fingers playing with the hem of your shorts. He undid the button with just one hand, letting his fingers trace the skin of your mound, grazing low until he found your clit—lightly rubbing the nub of his finger against it.

A moan left your lips as you arched your back deeper against him. He groaned as your ass rubbed against his throbbing cock.

While Bucky’s fingers toyed with your clit—rubbing in deep, circular motions—he rocked his hips, seeking pleasure of his own. You were moaning, breathing hard as you stared down at him playing with you.

“Bucky… I… mph—” you moaned, your voice pitched high. You ground your hips against his hand, fucking yourself onto his fingers.

With Bucky standing right behind you, he looked down at the soapy water trickling over your chest, his cock growing harder by the second.

He wasn’t lying when he said you looked like a woman straight out of a dream. He wanted nothing more than to tear your clothes apart—which he could do easily—and fuck you right on the hood of the car he’d been watching you parade yourself on for the past few days.

He was so horny, he needed to sink into you—fast.

But first, he needed to see how much of him you were willing to take, starting with his fingers.

“Gotta test you, baby,” Bucky rasped against your ear. “See how much your little pussy can take.”

His hand traced down from your clit to your folds. He groaned once his fingers made contact with your slick heat. You were so wet, so easily riled up, and so ripe for the taking, yet he wanted to make this last.

Bucky glanced around one more time—the coast was clear. He shoved your shorts down, exposing your ass to the cool air, and pushed your lace panties to the side. He probed his middle finger against your entrance, dancing his digit in a curling motion to prepare you.

“So wet,” he murmured, grinning at your little gasps and mewls. “Could easily slide my finger right in.”

His middle finger slowly eased into your pussy, the warm flesh of your entrance accommodating him smoothly. There was a bit of a stretch, sure, but he could easily finger fuck you right now with no struggle at all.

“How many can you take?” he asked.

You felt your face warm at his question. “… Two.”

He hummed against your ear. “Two, huh?”

Without warning, his ring finger took a quick drag against your entrance—already stuffed by his middle finger—and slid in slowly. Your mouth dropped as a broken gasp tore from your throat. The stretch was burning. His fingers were long and thick, and having two of them inside was enough to fill you completely.

“Fuck—Bucky!”

Bucky didn’t give you a chance to fully adjust to his two fingers before he started moving—thrusting in and out, curling deep inside you as he searched for every sensitive spot. With his free hand still clamped onto your hip, he humped you from behind, groaning as his denim jeans grew even tighter around his throbbing cock.

He was so hard it was painful.

His need to sink himself inside you was spiraling out of control as he felt his pre-cum soaking into his waistband. He gritted his teeth, his jaw clenching as he watched the way your ass bounced against his hand, swallowing his fingers with every move.

“Christ,” he hissed against your neck. He slowed his hand just enough to hook a third finger against your entrance, probing the tight and overtaxed muscle. “You’re squeezing my fingers so tight, baby.”

He looked at you through the reflection of the window, and you stared back, caught in his dark gaze. “It feels good, doesn’t it?”

You nodded with a whimper.

Bucky hummed in satisfaction, and without warning, he pressed the tip of his pointer finger against your stretched entrance.

Your eyes flew wide at the sensation as he slowly began sinking that third finger in, forcing you to press your tits and hands into the glass window for support.

“Bucky,” you gasped. “What are you—!”

“Think you can take three?”

He couldn’t even sink his third finger in all the way, your body simply wouldn’t allow it.

The stretch was a dizzying mix of burn and pleasure, your hips going stiff as you struggled to take him in. He was breathing hard against your ear, and you could feel every heavy throb of his cock right behind you.

“Oh my—fuck, Bucky! It’s too much, I can’t—”

He continued rutting his hips against yours, silently encouraging you to accommodate all three fingers. You could tell he was trying to hold back. His fingers stayed there, unmoving, while his hips did all the work.

“Shit,” Bucky cursed, his hand stilling completely inside you. “Three’s a little tight, huh? Come on, baby. Try for me. If you can take three, then you can take my cock with no problem.”

You let out a shaky breath, trying to relax the muscles that were fighting him.

Slowly, you began to push back, easing yourself onto those three thick fingers and sinking down until you felt the base of his hand press against your folds.

Bucky groaned, his head dropping onto your shoulder as he felt your tight cunt finally give way to accommodate him. He was hard as hell, his balls growing heavier and his cock thickening against your lower back with every heavy breath he took.

“Fuck. That’s a good fucking slut,” he hissed, his hips rutting in an uneven motion. “Taking all three fingers—God, you’re being so good for me.”

His teeth traced the column of your neck, biting gently to make you gasp. His lips closed against your skin, sucking and marking you as he murmured filth in your ear.

“So fucking tight,” he whispered. “Been watching you for days, thinking you were going to be untouchable—just eye candy for a man like me living across the street.” He curled his fingers, hitting your sensitive spot and making you cry out his name. “Who knew I’d have you right here, pinned against your daddy’s car, being stretched out in broad daylight.”

You watched him through the reflection, your pussy clenching around his fingers at the dark way he was staring at you.

“Oh, you’re such a little slut for your neighbor, aren’t you?”

Your cunt fluttered around him, his fingers fucking you so thoroughly you felt like you could cum.

“Bucky,” you whined, your hips twitching as you tried to clench your legs together. “I’m—I’m gonna—”

“No,” he grunted, his voice deep and rough. “Not yet.”

If he had fucked you for even a second longer, you would have cried out in pleasure and came right there in your driveway.

But instead, he abruptly yanked his fingers out, the vulgar squelch sound following after. You let out a cry of frustration, your body slumping against the window as he left you feeling cold and aching.

Behind you, Bucky’s eyes locked onto yours in the window’s reflection as he slowly licked your juices off his fingers. The act was so unapologetically filthy that your face burned with embarrassment.

“You even taste sweet, too,” he murmured.

He took a step back, his hands fumbling with the zipper of his jeans. He gave himself a quick squeeze through the denim before finally freeing himself.

You couldn’t help it. You looked over your shoulder and your breath hitched.

Now, you understood exactly why he wanted you to take three fingers first.

His cock was massive, thick and pulsing for you. He stepped back into the space between your legs and slapped his cock against your lower back. It was hot, hard, heavy, and already wet at the tip where he leaked pre-cum. His breathing was labored as he grabbed his shaft, rubbing the tip against your bare ass—smearing his slickness and marking you from behind.

Bucky moaned at the sight of his pre-cum glistening on your soft skin.

“What a pretty, pretty whore,” he cooed. He leaned over you, his thick arm hooking around your waist to bend you over while your hands pressed against the window.

He couldn’t wait any longer. He slapped his cock against your wet pussy, making you wince as your body hummed with anticipation.

“Your pussy’s all stretched out now, ready to take me.” He grabbed his shaft, positioning the head right at your entrance.

The tip of his cock nestled perfectly between your wet, aching folds. Just the sensation of it alone was enough to make him groan in pleasure.

It felt as if your entrance was giving him warm, wet kisses, welcoming him home.

“So, it should just slide right in,” he rasped, slowly drawing his hips forward and beginning to sink into you. “Fuck.”

He couldn’t even make it past the head because of how tight you were squeezing him. His face scrunched in a twist of pleasure and pain, his arm wrapping you tight as he fought for control. You mewled and whined so sweetly—the sound of it should have made him feel bad, but it only made him want to tear you apart more.

“Fuck—how the hell are you still so tight, even after everything?”

Every time he tried to draw his hips forward, your body buckled and clamped down, refusing to give an inch more than the head of him.

“God,” he hissed, forehead dropping to the back of your neck as he struggled to breathe. “What a tight pussy fuck.”

He tried to rock into you again—slow and agonizing. He was gritting his teeth until his jaw ached, his cock pulsing as your cunt fluttered around him, desperate to stretch around his size.

“F—fuck, Bucky, I’m trying—” you whimpered.

“Come on, baby,” he rasped, rocking his hips and trying to find pleasure from what little was already inside you. “I already stretched you out. I know you can take me. You’re just so fucking small.”

You looked at him over your shoulder, and your breath caught. His face was twisted. He looked almost angry—snarling from how difficult this was for him.

You tried pushing your hips back, wincing from the delicious stretch.

“Is this hurting you, Bucky?” you asked, your voice coming out more timid than you’d like. “Are you hurting because I’m so tight?”

A raspy, deep groan tore straight from his throat. You were asking out of genuine concern, but he took it as a challenge.

“God—you fucking—are you trying to test me?”

Bucky kicked your legs wider, his hands clamping down on your waist. He hauled your body back into his, then completely sheathed his cock into your tight pussy.

The air left your lungs the minute your ass pressed against his pelvis. His dark curls were hot against your skin as he finally, finally buried himself all the way inside you. He was in to the very hilt, but you were still so tight that moving was nearly impossible.

He stayed perfectly still for a moment, his forehead resting against your shoulder as he let the sensation of your tightness settle.

In the window’s reflection, it looked as filthy as it felt—a large, shirtless, and sweaty man mounting and rutting into you from behind like an animal, his broad shoulders swallowing your frame as his heavy arms circled you, keeping you pinned close and tight.

“Fuck,” he choked out. “There it is. There you are.”

After a moment of adjustment, he began to rock his hips. He drew in and out slowly, fucking you with deep, hard strokes that made the car creak.

“Christ, look at you,” he hissed, his eyes fixed on your reflection over your shoulder. “Stretched wide open—fucked like a whore for the whole neighborhood to see. You’re taking every goddamn inch of me, aren’t you, baby?”

Your face twisted in pleasure, your bottom lip hanging open as you moaned a litany of words. “Don’t stop... Please, Bucky, please.”

“This was why you were putting your body on display for me, huh? Hoping I’d finally cross the street one day and fuck you.” He fought for his breath as his hips increased the pace, his cock sliding in and out of you, relentlessly making you his. “You’re a smart cookie, too. Made sure your parents were out of town so you could act like a total slut.”

You moaned, eyes rolling back at his filthy words as your body clenched in reaction. “Yes! Yes, Bucky! I’m a slut for you!”

He groaned as he tilted his hips, forcing himself even deeper into your abused pussy.

“Squeezing me so tight... I can only imagine how you’d react if your parents were to drive down the street right now. Imagine them seeing their precious daughter getting split open by her older neighbor—a man they haven’t even met yet.”

He felt your body begin to tremor, your walls fluttering around his pulsing cock. He leaned in even closer, his hot, raspy breath dancing against the shell of your ear.

“Now, what would happen if your poor best friend—Steve, was it?—drove down here expecting to fix your car, only to find you with your tits pushed against the glass, stuffed full of my cock? How would you react then?”

Your knees wobbled and your eyes rolled back at the image. Your body convulsed, your pussy squeezing him impossibly tight at the filthy thought of it.

“Oh, my god—S-steve...!”

Bucky huffed a disbelieving laugh, followed immediately by a deep, guttural groan at the sensation of you clenching around him. He didn’t even care that you moaned another man’s name when he had you stuffed.

“Fuck, so goddamn tight,” he rasped, his arms wrapping around you tighter as you shook. “Shit, you like it, don’t you? The idea of getting caught by your best friend? Fuck—what a goddamn nasty whore you are.”

His hips began to blur against yours as he fucked you harder, the car creaking and groaning with every thrust.

“Bet he doesn’t even know how you’re clenching around me just at the thought of him. Bet he’d ask to join in, wouldn’t he? Would you let him?” He leaned over, biting your shoulder to stifle his own grunt. “Would you let your best friend watch me split you open like this?”

You nodded frantically, sweat beading at your temple from being used so thoroughly. The talk—the idea of it was filthy, a dream that you would’ve never considered doing, but Bucky was fucking you so good that anything he said at this point was hypnotic.

“Yes, yes, Bucky, please! You both can take turns using me!”

“Nasty little slut,” Bucky hissed, his teeth biting gently at your skin again. “Fuck. I’m getting close.”

You nodded hard again, your knees nearly giving out if it weren’t for his big hands holding you back. “Me—me too, shit—!”

Bucky’s grip on your body tightened, pulling you close against his bare and sweaty chest.

After three hard thrusts that bottomed out against your womb, he let out a deep grunt against your neck, his body going stiff as he finally came.

His cock pulsed as cum began to spill out of his tip, pumping you full of his seed and staying completely stuffed inside you until you were filled to the brim. Your head tossed back as a cry left your throat, your overworked pussy clamping down on him and pulsing in a way that milked every last drop out of him.

He held you tight, breathing deep into your back as you both fought for air. “Fuck—you’re draining my balls dry, sweetheart.”

You both started to laugh—deep, tired, and rumbling laughs at everything that had just transpired out in the open, right in your very driveway.

Bucky looked down, pulling out slightly and watching with blown out pupils as his cum trickled out of you and onto the concrete, where it mixed with the soapy water.

“Dirty, dirty girl.”

You spent the following afternoon in your room, going through lectures, though you were hardly paying attention to them. With your cheek resting on your palm, your eyes kept drifting to the open window that gave you a perfect, convenient view of the house right across the street.

Bucky’s house.

The driveway was empty, and the lights inside were off. The blinds were pulled open though, and you could see Alpine—the little cat he mentioned—loafing on the windowsill and staring back at you.

In that moment, the two of you were exactly the same.

Just waiting for Bucky to come home.

The silence of your bedroom was overtaken by the rumble of a truck engine. Sitting up and peeking out the window, you recognized Steve’s battered pickup truck turning into the driveway before the engine cut out.

Steve climbed out of the driver’s seat, looking as exhausted as ever, but he had still shown up for you.

You smiled, racing down the stairs to meet him outside. In the driveway, it was clear that his shift at Hydra’s mechanic shop had done a number on him. His navy blue collared shirt was stained with sweat and motor oil, with dark streaks smeared across his jaw and down the length of his thick forearms.

“Steve,” you breathed with a smile. “Thought you forgot about me.”

Steve shut the door, the truck shaking from the force. “Could never forget about you. Work was just running me late.” He reached for his tools in the flatbed with a tired groan. “How’s your car holding up? Been using it since we had lunch yesterday?”

Your face warmed at the question.

Using it wouldn’t be the right term for it, you thought.

“Not really,” you said, trying to hide the bashful expression on your face.

“Still making that weird creaking noise?” he asked, walking over to the front and popping the hood.

You bit your lip and nodded. “Yep.”

Steve stood over the engine, glancing at wires and mechanical parts that were completely foreign to you.

“How’s it looking?” you asked, hovering over his shoulder.

He didn’t look back as he lifted a straining wire with his pointer finger, examining it closely. “Looks like she’s been through it.”

You had to bite back a snort. You would’ve complimented him on his sense of humor—if only he had known any better.

“Thanks for doing this, Steve,” you said, giving him a pat on his sweaty back. “My dad’s going to be real grateful.”

Steve nodded. “How are you and that neighbor doing?” He still kept his focus on the wires, his voice casual and unassuming. “You two didn’t screw each other after my warning yesterday, right?”

You were so glad he was focused on the engine—the face you made would’ve given it all away.

“What kind of girl do you think I am?” you scoffed playfully, crossing your arms defensively.

Steve glanced up at you with a chuckle. “A good one, I hope.” He brought his tools to the edge of the car, rummaging through the kit. “You two exchanged numbers yet?”

“Do I have to?” you shrugged. “He lives right across the street.”

Steve tilted his head, agreeing. “You make a good point.” He looked back at the engine. “When are you going to introduce me to the guy?”

You leaned against the car with a roll of your eyes. “Steve, you’re sounding an awful lot like my dad. And why are you in such a rush to meet him, anyway?”

Steve shrugged, pulling a wire stripper out of his toolbox before setting it back down on the ground. “I’m your best friend, alright? It’d give any man peace of mind to know what kind of person you’re talking to. Hand me a wrench, would you?”

Crouching, you dug into his toolbox until you found something that resembled a wrench. You handed it to him.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, taking the tool from your hand. His brows furrowed as he wrestled with a stubborn bolt, the muscles in his forearms and biceps flexed hard, giving you an up close and personal view of a working man.

After the filthy things Bucky hissed in your ear yesterday, you couldn’t help but stare. Bet he’d ask to join in, wouldn’t he? Would you let him? Even worse was the memory of what you cried out in response. You both can take turns using me!

You wanted to slap yourself for the secondhand embarrassment you were giving yourself.

You wouldn’t consider it—no, you couldn’t. Steve was the person you grew up with, the one who fended off your bullies in kindergarten. Steve was the one who drove you to school every morning in high school. Steve was the one who took you to prom when no one else did.

Steve was family.

But as he stood there, covered in motor oil and sweat, you finally understood why a man like Bucky would be jealous over you hanging out with a man like Steve Rogers.

The wrench slipped, clattering against the frame of the car before hitting the driveway with a noise that made you flinch.

“Shit,” he cursed under his breath. He bent down to pick it up. He stood up straight—reminding you all over again of just how big he was compared to you—and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

While you were having filthy thoughts about your best friend, he was standing there in an increasingly sour mood. Between the long shift at Hydra’s and the oppressive heat of the bright afternoon sun, he looked completely spent.

You didn’t know the first thing about wire strippers or engine blocks, and you felt useless just hovering over his shoulder.

“I’m going to go make you a lemonade,” you said, giving his shoulder another supportive pat. “I’ll be back, okay?”

Steve didn’t say anything. He just gave a single, firm nod to let you know he heard you.

As you retreated inside, a car that Steve didn’t recognize pulled up to Bucky’s driveway.

It was a sleek, black convertible sports car. Steve couldn’t help but clench his jaw at the sight of it. Of course Bucky drove a sports car.

He stood no chance against his rundown pickup.

Bucky stepped out of the vehicle, running a hand through his hair. As he turned to glance at your driveway, expecting to see you, his blue eyes landed on Steve instead.

For all that talk about wanting to meet him, Steve really only cared to do it if you were there, bridging the gap. So for now, until you returned with his lemonade—which he was sure would make Bucky jealous—Steve tried to keep himself too occupied to notice him.

But he kept catching movement in his peripheral vision. Then another. Then another. A stupid, persistent movement that wouldn’t go away, like a goddamn fly.

Steve finally lifted his head and saw Bucky still in his driveway, waving.

Waving?

At what?

Steve turned around, expecting to see you standing right behind him with the lemonade, but you weren’t. The porch remained empty—meaning Bucky was waving at him.

“Need any help there?” Bucky called out from across the street, resting his hands on his hips.

Steve pressed his lips into a thin line and shook his head. “I’m good!” he called back. Short, straight to the point, and friendly enough.

He looked back down at the engine, but it didn’t take long before a bright spark jumped from the terminal with a loud popping sound. Steve jolted back with a hiss, snapping his hand away from the burn. “Shit!”

Across the street, Bucky was already making his way over with a smug grin that Steve caught—and one he especially wanted to wipe off.

Jesus. Where were you?

“Here,” Bucky finally reached him, occupying the small space between the car’s engine and where Steve was standing. “Let me help you with that.”

Before Steve could fight for his spot, Bucky was leaning over the hood, adjusting the wires in a way that made Steve—the man wearing an actual mechanic’s uniform—feel like a fool.

Steve stepped up to the hood, propping his arm against it as he looked the man over. “So, you’re the new neighbor that moved in not too long ago, right?” He already knew the answer, but this was at least him trying for short conversation.

Bucky looked up at Steve, his eyes slowly tracing over his uniform. Steve felt his eyebrow twitch.

Was Bucky silently insulting him?

“Yup,” Bucky drawled with the pop of the p. “And you must be my pretty neighbor’s best friend. The one she always talks about.”

It was getting harder by the second for Steve to go along with this. Bucky acted like the very frat boys at Jensen that Steve had warned you to avoid at all costs—and this man was in his mid-thirties, for crying out loud.

“Yeah. That’s me,” Steve mumbled.

Bucky stood up straight, extending his hand for a shake. “Bucky.”

Steve was wary, his eyes narrowing slightly as he looked at the offered hand before finally reaching out to take it.

“Steve,” he replied with a firm grip.

Bucky stared at Steve for a moment longer—as if studying him—before looking back down at the engine with a huff of laughter. “You know, for a guy who works at a mechanic shop, you’re struggling pretty bad with a simple alternator issue.” He bent over the engine again, examining it. “Are you trying to actually fix the car, or just trying to impress your lady friend?”

Steve let out a dry laugh as he pulled a rag from his back pocket to wipe his hands. “It’s been a long day, alright? I’ve been dealing with different cars all day, the sun is giving me a headache, and now I’ve got my best friend’s neighbor to worry about—”

He stopped himself before he could spill too much, but Bucky caught it anyway. He chuckled, the corners of his eyes wrinkling as he looked up at Steve from where he was bent over. “You’re worrying about me?”

Steve swallowed hard, trying to play it off. “I mean, I’m just looking out for her. New guy in the neighborhood, it’s just a habit.”

Bucky hummed, a small, knowing grin resting on his lips as he turned back to the engine block.

He leaned further under the hood of the old sixties station wagon, his fingers moving towards the distributor cap and the fraying ignition wire Steve had been struggling with. Bucky repositioned the stubborn ceramic boot, adjusting the distributor to ensure the connection wouldn’t spark again.

He wiped his hands on his thighs as he stood up straight.

“Since it’s an older model, you’re going to need to buy a specific point and condenser set for a sixties Ford wagon. But this should hold her over for now.” Bucky looked over at Steve. “You got a piece of paper so I can write down the part number you need?”

Steve blinked, surprised and undeniably impressed by how easily Bucky had handled it.

“Oh. Y-yeah, hold on—” He dug into his back pocket and pulled out a small, worn notepad and a pen, handing them over.

Bucky took them, resting the pad against the car’s fender as he scribbled down the specifications. Steve glanced up, watching you through the kitchen window where you were completely oblivious, still focused on making the lemonade.

Surprisingly, he actually liked the guy. Despite the age difference, he could see potential in Bucky. He was handsome, owned his own house, drove a nice car, and was clearly respectful and handy. He was exactly the type of man your parents wouldn’t pass out at the sight of.

He was a good man for you—regrettably so.

Bucky finished writing, flipping the notepad shut and handing it back to Steve along with the pen. “Here you go.”

Steve smiled, and this time it was polite and genuine.

“Thanks,” he muttered. “It was nice meeting you, Bucky.” He held up the notepad with a slight nod. “She’ll appreciate this. I’ll tell her you said hi.”

Bucky’s smile widened just slightly. He glanced over his shoulder, catching your silhouette through the kitchen window where you were still occupied with the lemons. His gaze lingered on you for a split second before he looked back at Steve, his expression unreadable.

“Don’t mention it,” Bucky said smoothly, giving Steve a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Remember, I’m right across the street if you ever need help.”

He gave a parting nod before turning on his heel, brushing past Steve to head back to his side of the street.

Steve watched Bucky disappear past his front door. By the time the door clicked shut, you had finally stepped out onto the porch with two glasses of lemonade in your hands. Perfect timing.

“Sorry I took so long,” you said breathlessly, walking down the steps and handing him a glass. “It’s been a minute since I last made it from scratch, so…”

“You just missed him.”

You raised a brow in confusion. “Sorry?”

Steve brought the cold glass to his lips, taking a long sip of the tart drink before nodding towards the house across the road.

“Bucky.” He let out a satisfied exhale, wiping his mouth with the back of his arm. “He was just here—helping me with your car, actually.”

Your eyes went wide, your head snapping towards Bucky’s house—though he was nowhere to be found. You reached up, trying to smooth down your hair.

“He was? Is he coming back?” You asked, sounding too excited for your own good.

Steve shrugged, taking another sip. “Probably not. Seemed like he had other things to do.”

You looked at Steve, your eyes narrowing skeptically.

Steve caught your look and let out a soft laugh, adjusting the cold glass against his palm. “What?”

“So…” you teased, swaying back and forth subtly. “I assume you two talked for a bit then? How was he? What do you think of him?”

Steve shrugged again, a genuine smile breaking through the tired expression he had on before. “Alright, alright. You know what? He’s not a bad guy. He actually helped me fix your car. I like him.” He handed you back the empty glass, flipping through the crumpled pages to find the note Bucky had left. “He even told me what part we needed to order to get this thing fixed up and working again—”

He froze in the middle of his sentence. His eyes went wide, staring at the page as his words got lost in his mind.

You raised a brow, confused with Steve’s sudden change in demeanor. “Well? What part is it? Is it expensive?”

When he didn’t answer, you took it upon yourself to step closer and peek your head over his arm to look at the notepad. What you saw made your breath hitch, and your own eyes went wide.

There was no part number.

Written in bold handwriting, on the paper was a phone number, Bucky’s phone number, followed by a little message in black ink.

you’re gonna have to call me if you want that part number. xoxo, buck.

Your jaw hung so loose, a fly could’ve flown in at any moment. Steve didn’t know what to say either—if anything, he was standing there frozen, waiting for you to say something first.

“Oh my god,” was all that managed to leave your mouth. You looked up at Steve, your wide eyes meeting his. “Is Bucky…?”

Steve, poor Steve, who remained completely oblivious to the fact that you and Bucky had fucked just yesterday on this very driveway, only felt confusion and secondhand guilt.

He glanced across the street at the sleek, clean Mazda resting in Bucky's driveway, specifically staring at the custom vanity license plate on the back that read ‘BIGBUCK.’

Steve swallowed hard, his cheeks flushing with a rosy shade of pink. Though, he could easily excuse it for the sun.

“Of course,” he mumbled to himself. “He drives a Miata.”

if you were curious to know why a mazda miata specifically, you can thank r/askgaybros for that when i was conducting my research.

if you've made it this far, as always thank you so much for taking the time to read my work. interactions are always appreciated, I love reading every bit of them!

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[smorgaswhored]

At your back door yellin’

(cause I wanna come in)

pairing: grumpy!trailer park!Bucky x fem!trailer park!reader

warnings/tags: 18+ MDNI, smut (soft dom!Bucky, breeding kink, unprotected p-in-v, oral - f!receiving, fingering, creampie, ass play, multiple positions, dirty talk, squint for daddy kink), age gap (r mid 20s, B late 30s), use of nicknames (ex: “kid”), mechanic!Bucky, semi-slow burn, so much angst, arguing, mentions of troubled pasts (ex: bad parents) mentions of prison, mentions of alcoholism, smoking, drinking, no use of y/n

words: 30.2k (WTF!!!!!!!)

summary: When your neighbor saves you from a tight spot, you go out of your way to thank him. You quickly find out that he doesn’t want your thanks — actually, he doesn’t want anything to do with you. The hurt stings while the curiosity burns, but the cracks begin to show when tensions rise. Is it a classic neighborhood dispute, or is there something bigger hiding beneath the surface?

sammy speaks: celebrating 1k+ followers by taking a trip to angst town. thank you for reading and following my blog, I love all you dearly!🤍 also rip to all the letter g’s that did not make it into this fic, you’ll see what I mean

“That doesn’t sound too good, hun.”

Through the windshield, you spot your neighbor standing in front of the hood with a full laundry basket against her hip. Donna’s eyes sweep suspiciously across your car, as if she thinks the ticking of your engine could double for a time bomb.

You groan, your forehead meeting the steering wheel with a dull thud. “I know.”

“What’s wrong with it? Battery dead?” she asks, coming over to your rolled down window. You crack an eye open at her.

“When I know, I’ll tell ya.”

Her answering look is sympathetic.

“Was never too good with cars myself. Harold did all the fixin’ when he was still around. You got somewhere to be?”

“Job interview,” you mumble, the leather digging into your brow; you’re trying not to focus on the sweat soaking through your best shirt, or your growing anxiety over your fast-approaching interview time. Donna shifts the basket to her other hip.

“Could try callin’ on Bucky. He works at Rogers’ garage down on Miner Street. It’s Sunday, so he should be home.”

Your forehead peels away from the sticky wheel. “Who’s Bucky?”

Donna nods toward the other side of the park. “Bucky Barnes. White trailer with the boots lined up all neat outside the door.”

“Have I met him?”

“Doubt it,” she replies. “He works mean hours, leaves before sun up, comes back when it’s dark. But he’s always ready to help a neighbor out when he’s here. Real sweet guy.”

You blow a stray hair out of your eyes. “You think he can fix whatever’s wrong with my car?” you ask, your doubt as strong as your hope.

Donna smiles like she knows something you don’t. “Bucky can fix anythin’ he gets his hands on.”

You turn in your seat, spotting the white trailer with the boots out front. It looks devoid of life, like it was plopped onto that spot of land by a strong gust of wind rather than by human design. The curtains are drawn, vines creep up the paneling, the gate on the far side of the yard swings in the breeze, but there’s a rusting brown pickup parked in front of it. Promising enough.

“Okay,” you say. “Bucky Barnes. Mechanic. Got it.”

“Good luck,” Donna says with a grin, tapping your arm before walking away.

You step out into the scorching heat of the late July afternoon and make your way across the park, stepping over discarded children’s toys and overgrown flower beds. As you near the trailer, you see the pairs of boots your neighbor spoke about lined up with military precision, all well worn but still taken care of, not a speck of dust or dirt on them, which is rare in a place like this.

You knock three times on the plain brown door before taking a step back, holding your breath. Grasshoppers hum, the wind whips; you don’t hear anything inside the home for an agonizing amount of time, enough time to double the sweat pooling on your lower back. You’re about to try knocking again when the door finally creaks open.

Out steps a mountain of a man.

Big arms and bigger shoulders, broad chest and long, thick legs. He wears boots identical to the ones outside, blue jeans that are in desperate need of a wash, and a black henley that offers an intimidating glimpse into what those arms are capable of. His dark hair is a mess on top of his head, sticking up in all different directions, and underneath it is a face so unexpectedly handsome, you’re not sure how it ended up in a rundown park like this instead of somewhere on a billboard advertising cologne. Sun-kissed, weathered, and deadly serious, but striking in a way you could never forget, triggering a blush on your already flushed cheeks. And then you meet his eyes: electric blue and narrowed at you under furrowed brows, raising the hairs on the back of your sweaty neck.

“Can I help you?” he grunts, voice low and gravely. It scrapes against your spine.

“Hey,” you say quickly with a 1000-watt smile, showing off your nerves. “Hi. Uh, Bucky, right? I’m your neighbor. I live—“ You hook your thumb over your shoulder. “—back that way. The one with the pink door. Um…I was hopin’ you could help me out. My car, it’s — well, it won’t start. Makes a clickin’ noise every time I try turnin’ it over. Donna said you’re a mechanic and might be able to help.”

His expression doesn’t change. He stares unblinkingly at you.

“I, um—,” you can feel yourself faltering, your heart rate rising as the seconds tick by, “I don’t mean to barge in on your Sunday, but I’m pretty desperate. I have an interview in, like, twenty minutes, and I really need this job. Do you think you could take a quick look?”

He eyes you up and down, assessing. You try not to smile wider in case it leans too close to deranged. “You live here?” he demands. You nod.

“Moved in about a month ago. Sorry we’re only meetin’ now, I should’ve introduced myself sooner.”

You offer your name and stick out a hand. Bucky ignores this, staring past you in the direction of your trailer. You watch as his eyes narrow, like he’s weighing the honesty of your words.

“Look, I can pay you, if that hel—“

“Is it the little silver thing?” he cuts you off.

Your lips part. “Uh, yes. Yeah.”

Bucky grunts and turns back inside, shutting the door behind him. The shock of it leaves you frozen in place, reeling, until he reemerges as fast as he left, carrying a toolbox half the size of you; he holds it easily in one hand like it weighs nothing, but you can hear the stock of heavy tools clanking around inside.

“Let’s go,” he mutters, stepping past you. You struggle to keep up with him as he stalks toward your car, like a man on a mission that he’s already running late for. You sneak glances at him while trying not to trip on the cracked walking path, noting the faded scars on the back of his hands, the ticking jaw underneath his beard, and the very tip of a dark tattoo peaking out from beneath his collar. A feeling churns in your gut.

Everything about him screams rough. Rude. Even potentially dangerous — from his imposing figure, to his curt words, he seems like the furthest thing from what you would call ‘sweet.’

But regardless of Donna overselling his altruism, beggars can’t be choosers, and you’ll call him sweet all day long if it gets you to your interview on time.

Bucky lets out a heavy breath when he sets the toolbox down next to your car. He nods at you.

“Try it again,” an order, not a request.

Your limbs twitch into action like a bee flew under your skirt. Sliding into the hot leather seat, you turn the key in the ignition and are met with the same low ticking noise from before. The lights flicker on your dashboard in protest.

“Terminal clamp.”

You jump, finding Bucky almost cheek-to-cheek with you while he leans through the open door. He’s close enough for you to smell dirt, sweat and something heavier on him.

“Shit,” you hiss in surprise, but he’s already pulling away and moving toward the front of the car.

“Pop it,” he calls out.

You exhale slowly and do as you’re told. Sweet, your ass. Bucky lifts the hood and locks it in place before bending over the hot engine, pushing up the sleeves of his shirt.

You step out of the car, hovering near the door but craning your neck to watch. “Terminal clamp?” you repeat.

Bucky takes a moment to respond, long fingers moving deftly through the cables and wires and plugs and bolts. He unscrews something, and steam leaks out.

“On your battery,” he grunts. “The part that connects it to the wires. It’s rusted down. Look.”

He beckons with two oily fingers crooked in your direction. It’s borderline crass, and you find yourself hurrying over without argument. Bucky’s mouth is set into a hard line as he watches you gaze down at the engine, looking without really seeing.

“There,” he points impatiently to a black box near the front. Your eyes catch on the rust growing over the top of it.

“Oh. Yeah.”

“Yeah,” he imitates you, high-pitched and sharp; your eyes snap back to him. He’s clearly not amused by your answer. “When was the last time you had your battery checked?”

“Haven’t had the time lately,” you answer, crossing your arms indignantly over your chest.

“Your daddy don’t check it for ya?” he prods, wiping his hands on the back of his jeans before opening his tool box. Irritation rears up inside fo you. Something about his tone, bitter and mocking, makes you think about hitting him over the head with one of his wrenches.

“My daddy hasn’t been sober enough to tell a battery from a brick since 2009,” you snap.

Bucky pauses while rifling through his tools, but only for a moment. “Batteries need replacin’ every four years. How old’s this one?”

You chew your lip, still thinking about the wrench. Bucky pulls out a small metal plate and a brand new cord, along with a screwdriver that looks like it’s seen better days. When he turns to you, his eyebrows lift expectantly.

“It’s…old,” you relent. Bucky snorts and leans over the car again.

“Define ‘old’ to me, princess.”

A zip of electricity runs down your spine at the pet name, angry and hot. “I don’t know,” you grumble. “It came with the car and I bought it five years ago. And don’t call me princess.”

A ghost of a smirk crosses his face. “Whatever you say, kid.”

You glare at him while he unscrews the rusted plate from the battery. Despite your growing frustration, and the nearing interview time, and the heat pressing down on you from all sides, you quickly become entranced with the way his hands move expertly with the replacement parts. It’s obvious he’s well-versed with the inside of a car.

“This will hold for a few days,” Bucky says, attaching the new cord to the engine. “But you need a new battery. Forget it, and you’ll be needin’ a new car. Am I makin’ myself clear?”

Something about the sternness in his voice creates a pressure on your chest that feels foreign and strange. “Yeah, new battery, got it,” you mumble.

He glances at you but says nothing, screwing in the clean plate. As he finishes up his work, you look back at your trailer, the paint on the front door peeling, the screens torn in most of the windows. You clear your throat. “Donna says you fix a lot of stuff for the folks around here,” you begin. Bucky makes a noise of acknowledgement. “You ever, uh…fix any showers?”

He pauses to look back at you, blue eyes sharp. “That a line?”

“What? No!” you sputter, cheeks on fire. “No, it’s — my shower pressure. It’s shit, it’s…not a pick up line. I’m askin’ if you can fix that, too.”

He grunts, satisfied with his finished product, and closes the hood with a snap. You step back, watching as he tosses the screw driver back into the box and wipes his hands on his jeans again. When he turns to you, his face is closed off, stoic.

“I’m busy,” he says, blunt and to the point. The rejection stings like a child daring to touch the point of a needle for the first time — sharp and surprising and oddly shameful. The embarrassment pulls your eyes away.

“But if I find some time, I’ll let you know.”

His gaze is steady and unreadable when you meet it again. You nod quickly.

“That’d be amazing,” you gush, hands clasped together, “thank you—“

“I haven’t even fixed it yet, save your thanks,” he cuts you off.

“Still,” you reply, taking a step toward him, “I’d owe ya big time. Oh, you’d be doin’ me a huge favor ‘cause I need all the help I can get on this place—“

“What’d I just say, kid?” He glares are you, hands on his hips. “Now go on before you start wastin’ any more of my time,” he snaps, jerking his chin toward the car. You hesitate with your hand on the door, the smile on your face flickering doubtfully.

“Is it…safe?” you ask slowly.

Bucky scowls, mean and dark. “Don’t insult me.”

That gets you scampering into the seat. You twist the key, and after a breathless moment, the engine roars to life, the vents blasting you with hot air, but air nonetheless. You let out a whoop and pat the steering wheel proudly, the hope creeping back in. When you look out the windshield, you see Bucky’s already packed up his tool box and is making his way back to his trailer.

“Hey!” You scramble out of the car. “Hey, wait!”

He doesn’t turn around, just lifts his free hand over his head.

“Thank you!” you call out. He doesn’t respond. You watch him as he rounds his truck and disappears into his home. Then your phone buzzes.

“Shit—“

You’re peeling out of the park in seconds, leaving behind a cloud of dust and two blue eyes that watch you go from the safety of his trailer.

You take the keys out of the ignition and lean back in your seat, the smile on your face still as big as it was when the owner announced you got the job. In that moment, it was like the sun had broken through the clouds after years of rain.

It isn’t anything special, just a serving job at one of the many roadside diners in this small town, but what it stands for is more than you’ve had most of your life. Independence, stability, roots — everything you’ve been chasing after for the last few years now finally within your reach. No longer are you relying on the kindness of so-called friends that kick you out when it becomes inconvenient for them, or the generosity of low-life boyfriends that expect indentured servitude for a bed to sleep in; no longer are you couch surfing your way down highway 70, wondering what your next meal is going to cost you, or if your mother will pick up the phone when you’re too low on cash for gas. Just by getting the job, by finding your own little place to call home, you’ve broken free of the chains that have held your pitiful family lineage captive for years.

That’s worth celebrating.

You grab the six pack off the passenger seat before climbing out of the car. Thankfully, the evening air is much cooler now, and settles gently on your skin. Crickets chirp their congratulations, the breeze pats your back, and the light left on inside your trailer welcomes you home.

You sigh as you take it in, a soft smile on your face. Just this morning, you found the peeling front door, weedy garden and crooked paneling daunting; now it looks like a project you want to dive headfirst into, an opportunity to create something beautiful out of nothing, much like your own life.

You’ve got one foot on the steps when the wind grabs your attention. The large oak tree in the middle of the trailer park groans as it shifts, and you glance back to watch the leaves sway in the dusk, shadowed and haunting in a strangely beautiful way, until your gaze catches on a patch of light just beyond it. The white trailer with the boots out front has its curtains open now, and you watch as a shadow passes across a window.

Bucky.

The pressure returns to your chest tenfold, the same as before. Because of him, you get to cheers to a new life with a cold beer on your ratty little couch, and he walked away without so much as a thank you…

You adjust your grip on the six pack when you make your decision, sudden but resolute, and you’re crossing the park before you can think twice about it. A reward is reaped better with others.

As you approach, the shadows in the windows become clearer; wide shoulders, strong arms, big hands that set a mug on a shelf. Your breath goes a little shallow remembering how he towered over you. Stepping up the path, you watch as he pauses in front of the window, as still as a deer in headlights. Your knuckles just meet the door when the light inside flicks off.

You blink, eyes darting back to the window. The trailer is now dark. You can’t see inside, can’t spot movement — it’s pitch black where his figure was, where he stopped in front of the window right as you walked up…

You knock anyway. The beer bottles are cold against the skin of your leg as you wait, condensation dripping down your ankle. But the light doesn’t turn back on and you don’t hear weight shifting over cheap flooring. The crickets that sounded so nice before start to mock you the longer you stand there. You count to ten before trying again, a light rap on the wood.

Nothing.

Your heart sinks before you can stop it, the feeling painful and confusing. You bite down on your lip hard enough to draw blood, cheeks blazing in the soft light of the moon, then set the six pack in front of his door.

Bucky’s lights do not turn on when you make it back to your trailer, and they’re still not on when you spare one last glance out the window. The beers sit untouched on his front step.

Embarrassment courses through you like a summer fever, hot and alive and consuming. It eats away at all of the previous joy from your new job, and that bothers you more than you care to admit.

With a shake of your head, as if to clear the feeling out, you toss the keys on the counter and move to your tiny bathroom to turn on the shower. The nozzle sputters twice before the bare minimum drizzles out. You’re reminded of how you asked Bucky to fix it, the cryptic response he gave you, and how you nearly melted in response — the heat floods back to your face.

You really wish you kept those beers.

When the dried sweat has been scrubbed from your skin, and you’ve pulled on the softest sleep clothes you own, your mind has officially moved from denial to bargaining.

Donna said Bucky works brutal hours — maybe he has a strict sleep schedule. Like he can’t function unless he gets a full eight hours. Maybe it’s a ‘no visitors, lights off by nine on weeknights’ kind of thing. That makes sense for a fully grown man to have…right?

The reasonings filter through your head long after you’ve crawled into bed, some more believable than others. Eventually you decide that you just caught him at a bad time, and that it had nothing to do with him possibly seeing you through the window.

You’ll run into Bucky and explain the beers left on his door step; he’ll explain that he was tired, or he was busy, or something else completely normal and valid, and whatever lingering feelings you have over the whole thing will dissolve into nothing. Maybe you’ll crack a joke, maybe he’ll actually smile. Maybe the ice breaks and you’ll have another neighbor to call a friend in this new home.

You tell yourself this over and over until your restless mind finally fades to black.

You rise with the sun the next morning for your first shift. Your head is pleasantly empty of last night’s internal discourse, and you take it as a good sign.

Breakfast is pitiful — coffee and toast — but you’re too nervous to fill your uneasy stomach with more. When you pull on your uniform and spin every which way in the cracked bathroom mirror, though, the nervousness begins to fade. The dress is threadbare and half a size too big, but the color compliments your skin and emphasizes how bright and giddy your eyes are, bringing a light to your face that you haven’t seen in years. That tattered hand-me-down is a beautiful gateway opening up to a better future, a real future. You already love it.

When it’s time to go, you step out into a quiet, windless morning that promises to be a scorcher later. As you toss your purse into the passenger seat, you hear the rumbling of an old engine approaching, growing louder by the second. A familiar brown truck with the windows rolled down pulls up to the exit, just a few yards from where you stand.

Bucky sits in the driver’s seat, sporting an off-white t-shirt and dark sunglasses. He adjusts the radio, touches the rearview mirror, and pushes his shades up his nose before glancing up. Even behind the tinted lenses, you know that he sees you, and your heart nearly jumps out of your chest. But you still manage a smile, lifting your hand in a small wave.

He stares at you, an immovable statue except for his fingers white-knuckling over the wheel. A moment passes that feels like both a millisecond and a lifetime. You wonder if you should say something. But before you can, he looks away, the truck roaring once more as he eases out of the lot and into the street like he never saw you.

You watch his taillights drop beyond the horizon, your stomach dropping with them. The blatant dismissal sinks in, heavy and cutting, and it brings back all of the embarrassment from the night before. You fight desperately against a few angry tears stinging your eyes, but the hum of your fully-functioning engine does nothing to drown out the ringing in your ears.

You’re not sure which is worse: him ignoring you, or your reaction to him ignoring you.

You’ve dealt with disregard your entire life. Your childhood is a treasure trove of disappointment and neglect, carelessness and chaos, all of it later contributing to your steel-thick skin and low expectations of others. So you’re not sure why a stranger is affecting you like this — and a surly, intimidating stranger at that.

But something about him actively choosing to pretend you don’t exist presses on a bruise you’ve had covered for years. It rattles you more than anything.

Hands shaking, you put the car into drive.

The journey to the diner passes in a blur as you kick yourself mentally for the weakness. Your biggest mistake is that you went to him when you were too vulnerable — you were practically cracked wide open with need, and all it took was a helping hand for him to slip past your usual defenses. Were the sharp edges and sharper tongue not obvious red flags? What is it about Bucky that made you assume so quickly that he would be your friend? You taught yourself much better than that.

Despite the evidence, at the root of you, you refuse to accept it. Bucky’s lack of reaction was completely out of sorts; you know he’s far from friendly, but to completely ignore you is crazy work. So crazy that it just doesn’t make sense. There has to be some explanation for it, other than the obvious.

But unlike last night, your brain draws a blank on reasons for his behavior.

By the time you make it to the diner, you’re determined to figure this out. You need to see him again, to create an opportunity for an olive branch, and to learn if he’ll take it.

You get your first chance less than a week later, when you’re headed toward the mailboxes before the sun’s fully risen. You see a hulking figure already in front of them that you recognize right away. Bucky’s distracted while rifling through his mail, looking disheveled but still undeniably handsome in the pink light; he even looks relaxed, for once, instead of his usual guarded attitude.

“Good morning,” you say, smiling as you open your mailbox.

He tenses as he turns your way, shoulders taut and face creased. His jaw works as he stares you down, like he’s considering words and biting back the harsher ones. But instead of saying what’s on his mind, he grunts, short and crude, before turning on his heel and walking away. Your eyes follow him as he returns to his trailer and slams the door shut. It scares a flock of birds out of a nearby tree.

You stand there with a hand on the mailbox, jaw agape. The message couldn’t be any clearer. But for some reason, you shut your mouth with a snap and stand straighter, determined. His petulant, teenage antics are not enough to get you to throw in the towel yet.

So you try harder. You learn that you both leave the park around the same time, and when his truck rumbles past you, you wave, even if he isn’t looking at you (in a very obvious way.) You don’t care. You still try. He never waves back or throws you any acknowledgment, although you would bet your life on him seeing you each time, and eventually he starts leaving earlier, truck already missing from its spot when you’re headed to your car.

On the few days you’re both not working, you often see him mowing his lawn, mending his fence or washing his truck, domestic things that may trick passerby into thinking he’s a normal, pleasant guy. You fall victim to it as well, even knowing what you know, and head over with the intention of trapping him in a conversation. But as soon as you get remotely close to Bucky’s property, he mysteriously disappears, leaving you to feel like you just saw a ghost rather than your very alive neighbor.

You still don’t give in, but he continues to make it harder. When your car pulls up next to his at a red light, he’s theoretically interested in the SUV in front of him. When you’re passing out day-old pies from the diner to the neighbors, he doesn’t answer the door even though you can hear the TV on inside. When you’re taking a stroll around the park and he’s headed your way, he turns around and walks in the opposite direction.

Frustrating is the politest way you can describe him, but your mind can’t seem to take the hint.

Until the delusion crumbles when you least expect it. You’re bone-tired after your shift, and even your purse full of tips can’t ease the pain from your back. Pulled up to your trailer, you notice a group of three people slowly making their way across the park. One quick look tells you it’s the Markhams, stooped and gray-haired, shuffling down the pathway, and in between them is none other than Bucky, carrying a dozen grocery bags on each arm that you know aren’t his.

You watch as he leans down toward Mrs. Markham, listening to something she says, and your eyes go wide when he throws his head back in a laugh, pure joy lighting up his face. The sound creeps into your car, oozing warmth and light that is at odds with the Bucky you know. Mr. Markham adds a comment that gets him laughing harder, lines crinkling around his eyes, nose scrunching up in delight. You greedily take in this new side of him while your stomach roils with something bitter and nauseating.

So the sweet side of Bucky does exist. You’re watching it in real time as he helps his elderly neighbors with their groceries, chuckling in amusement as they banter back and forth. He holds the door open for them, too, even with his arms full, making sure they cross the threshold safely before letting the door fall shut behind him.

This must be the Bucky that Donna spoke about. The Bucky that everyone but you, apparently, gets to see.

The realization settles inside of you like an anvil dropping from the sky. So it’s just you that he doesn’t like. It’s just you that he can’t bear to be a neighbor to.

Occam’s Razor strikes again.

You move mechanically out of your car and into your home, your body carrying you through the motions while your brain twists itself up into a painful knot. You comb through everything you did and said that Sunday afternoon when he fixed your car; did you offend him? Did you push an unknown boundary? Did you ask for too much? Did you say too little? Were you too loud or too quiet? Too slow to thank him for his help?

Yes, you snapped a few times, but you only ever matched his energy, and everything about him implied that he can take as good as he gives. So what happened? What did you do? Why is your neighbor so unconcerned with whether you live or die?

Whatever the reason, it’s done its damage. Bucky wants nothing to do with you, and that seems to be the way it is.

Later that night, when sleep evades you, and you’ve tossed and turned for hours on end, a terrible loneliness creeps in for the first time since you arrived at the trailer park. It’s familiar in the worst way, reminding you of all the horrible people you met and all the shitty pit stops you made on your journey here. You thought you left that feeling behind — you thought wrong.

It follows you around for the next few days, leaving you hollow and numb. You’re on autopilot most of the time: you smile at customers and make conversation with the neighbors, you gossip with your coworkers and play with the children next door. But it’s constantly there in the back of your mind, like a memory you can’t erase, and when you’re alone in your little home, you feel it wrap around you like a straight jacket.

You’re lonely. And Bucky’s indifference toward you brought it front and center. For you, companionship had always been fleeting and one-sided, transactional at best. You’d had enough of it to the point that companionship was something you began to avoid, even when it promised a warm bed and a free meal. You thought a place to call your own and a means to support yourself were enough to keep the grass greener on your side. Now a stranger who sees nothing to gain by being your friend has reminded you that you’ve never had anyone in your life that wanted to be there just because.

The grass slowly withers away to a dry, lifeless brown.

You think you’re hiding it well, but Donna asks about it when July has rolled into a rainy August.

“How’ve you been, hun?” she says around her cigarette, pushing back one of the many hairs falling out of her clip. “Feels like I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“I’ve been pickin’ up more shifts,” you reply automatically, pulling roughly on the broken piece of siding. Donna watches as you struggle with it, leaning against the far side of the trailer.

“You’re gonna work yourself into an early grave if you keep that up. You leave at dawn and don’t come back ‘til dusk seven days a week. Young thing like you needs time to herself.”

“I’m tryin’ to save up,” you grunt, snapping the siding in half. The part connected to your trailer swings down dejectedly. You look her way. “In case you haven’t noticed, this place is fallin’ apart, and it takes money to put it back together.”

She hums, tapping the ashes from her cigarette. “Why don’t you just ask Bucky for help?”

You pause from picking up the broken pieces of siding in the grass. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t wanna bother him,” you grumble, avoiding her eyes.

“Oh, please — Bucky would be happy to help.”

“Are you sure about that?” A sudden hint of irritation in your tone. Donna stands up straighter.

“Whaddya mean?” she asks, eyebrows raised. “Something happen?”

You shake your head quickly. “No, there’s not — no. He just seems really busy, that’s all. No use askin’ for his time when he doesn’t have any.”

There’s a brief silence as Donna considers your words. “Something happened,” she repeats. You toss your head, eyes narrowing in her direction, but she keeps going. “Did he say no to fixin’ your car? Or was he mean? Like he’d rather be talkin’ to anybody but you?”

You let out an exhale, long and ragged, and debate answering truthfully.

“Well, yeah,” you admit, “but that ain’t nothin’ I’m not used to. He was actually—“ Your jaw clenches. “He was helpful. Ruder than hell — and bossy, but he got it fixed and told me to get a new battery and stuff. But ever since then…” You trail off, Donna waits. “It’s like he regrets doin’ it. I’ll see him walk by and his eyes pass over me like I’m not even there. I try startin’ a conversation and suddenly he’s got somewhere to be. He’s avoidin’ me, and I don’t know why. I’d be fine with it if I knew what it was, but I got no clue.” Knees in the grass, you watch as a caterpillar crawls over a leaf and onto a piece of siding; you pick it up carefully, watching as the insect runs circles over the plastic, nowhere to go, just as confused as you. “Why’s he like that?”

“Oh, hun,” Donna soothes quietly, stepping closer to your crouched position. “Is that what’s been botherin’ ya? Bucky not bein’ welcomin’?”

“Yes — I mean, no. That’s not what’s botherin’ me, it’s just — it’s hard to explain.” You set the caterpillar down and stand, brushing the dirt and grass from your knees. “And it’s a lot more than just not bein’ welcomin’. I could get hit by a semi right here on Pueblo Street and I don’t think he’d even blink.”

“Now I know that’s not true. What’s goin’ on in that head of yours, sugar?” Donna asks patiently, putting her cigarette out on the broken siding.

You watch the ashes drop to the ground, fragile, crumbling, and still smoking. Your eyes scan the park, naturally pausing over the white trailer with the curtains drawn and boots out front; there’s no truck outside, so he must be working. Yet the empty house still stings a little to look at.

“I thought that the job and movin’ here meant I figured everything out,” you mutter. “Instead an old man decidin’ he doesn’t like me for no reason reminded me that I’m still on my own. I’ve dealt with it my whole life, so I get along just fine by myself, but I’m only human. I still want someone to — to care about me.” You fight through the sudden lump in your throat.

“And Bucky doin’ you a favor brought that up,” Donna confirms. You nod reluctantly.

“Guess so. It was just nice to have someone care, even if he was grumpy as hell about it. Now he pretends I don’t exist and I keep rememberin’ all the times I thought I found someone who cared, only for them to just—“ You flick your hand like you’re waving off a bug, inconsequential yet inconvenient.

“Honey, we care.” Donna wraps an arm around your shoulders, warm and tight, holding you to her. “You got all of us now, and we watch out for each other.”

You open your mouth to point out that one of them does not, but she beats you to it.

“Bucky is a special case,” she sighs. You watch as she gazes at the white trailer, too. “It took him a while to come around to us. He was quiet, kept to himself, coming and going at odd hours…but eventually we wore him down. Kept inviting him in even when we knew he wouldn’t come. Kept offering our help even when we knew he wouldn’t take it. But then he did. I think Bucky was gone for a few days when a big storm came through — a tree fell and knocked out the left side of his trailer, crushed the roof. We got together and started patching it up just as he pulled in. Told us he could handle it but we wouldn’t take no for answer and did it with him anyway. He was real grateful, awfully sweet and apologetic, extra kind to everyone that helped out, but we told him it’s what we do for each other. After that, it was like living next door to a whole new person. I think he just needed to see that we cared for him no matter what, and that we’d be there for him even when things were tough.”

You huff, kicking the dirt at your feet. “Doesn’t explain why he’s got a problem with me. What’s his deal?”

Donna’s hesitant to answer, pulling out another cigarette and lighting it thoughtfully. When there’s a cloud of smoke in the air between you, she says slowly, “He did some time at the state pen.”

Your eyes snap to her, but she shakes her head a little.

“He hasn’t said much, but from what I gathered, Bucky lost more than just his freedom when they handed him his sentence. Family don’t bother with him anymore, told him as much when he was paroled, and he had no choice but to make do alone somewhere else. That can mess a person up, make them suspicious of others, make them think bein’ alone’s the only way to go about this life.” She looks at you then, a soft smile on her lips. “Sounds like someone else I know.” Her words feel like a sucker punch to your gut, but she waves a hand at you. “That’s all I’ve got, though, so if you’re curious about it, you’ll need to ask him.”

You chew the inside of your cheek, replaying the story, picturing Bucky in an orange jumpsuit behind bars. For some reason, the image seems wrong, but your curiosity begins to burn.

“I doubt I’ll get the chance,” you mumble.

“Give it some time,” Donna chirps. “He’ll come around. But you—“ She wraps a thin hand around your wrist, squeezing with intention. “—next time you’re feelin’ a little too sorry for yourself, you come find me. By the time I’m done with you, you’re gonna be beggin’ for some alone time.”

A smile reluctantly breaks across your face, the first genuine one in weeks. “Sure, Donna. Thanks.”

You’d think your talk with Donna would help ease Bucky Barnes from your head, but it seems to have the opposite affect.

While your cocktail of emotions towards him has been watered down by Donna’s story, the urge to understand him is stronger than ever.

You still see him occasionally, driving past in his truck, stalking toward the mailbox, trudging around his yard; you pick up where you left off with your routine, waving and smiling and wishing him a good morning even when he’s already halfway across the park. Nothing changes in his attitude toward you, but it only makes you more curious.

Between grueling ten-hour shifts at the diner, you capitalize on a specific tidbit you learned from Donna, how the neighbors’ generosity got Bucky to crack. You know you have better things to do than trying to win over someone who doesn’t want to be won over, but your stubbornness has always gotten the best of you in your weaker moments.

You choose to act when he isn’t home, aiming to lessen the pressure instead of amping it up. You spend an entire day baking ten dozen cookies for the neighbors and make sure to leave a few at his door with a note to come by if he wants more (he doesn’t). You suffer through sunburn and dehydration while sweeping the entire walking path around the park, paying special attention to Bucky’s portion so that the dust doesn’t settle over his boots. You sprint through a downpour to pull his clothes off the line, covering your trailer in his shirts and jeans and — gulp — underwear to air dry before folding them up carefully and delivering them to his front step in your laundry basket once the sky’s cleared up.

It’s waiting for you outside your door the next morning as you’re leaving for work. No note, no sign of a thanks. You blink when you see it, wondering how he knew it was your laundry basket in the first place.

Still, nothing changes. You try really hard not to obsess over it. And life moves on as usual.

One Friday afternoon, you find yourself sitting in a cheap folding chair next to a handful of your neighbors; they caught you after a slow shift when your social battery hadn’t dropped below empty yet, calling you over with wide smiles like they’ve been waiting hours for you to show. The group is converged in a circle next to the oak tree, passing around beer and flasks of whiskey and shooting the shit. You’ve made quick friends with the girl two trailers down, Wanda, who isn’t much older than you but has a lightness to her that feels like a breath of fresh air. Her husband, who she calls Viz, sits with his arm draped around her shoulders and a look on his face like there’s nowhere else in the world he’d rather be. They ask you how you’re liking the park, how the repairs to your trailer are coming along, how your job is going. You feel a deep sense of gratitude forming the more you speak with them.

Neighbors filter in and out of the group like clockwork as the afternoon sun fades into the evening sunset. If they can’t stop for a drink, they still join in on the conversation, gossiping and commenting on the goings-on in town, or stirring up good-natured trouble before resuming their chores — Donna comes by to threaten you all with the hose if you don’t pick up after yourselves. You’re convinced you’ve met everyone in the park by this point, and you’ll need to make a list to get their names straight, but they all have one thing in common: they’re all pleased that you’re here.

The beer eventually begins to dwindle, but spirits are still high in the circle. Wanda’s in the middle of telling a story about a squirrel that got into the Markhams’ trailer when you hear the deep rumbling of an engine in the distance. Wanda doesn’t seem to notice it, but you know that sound anywhere. Sure enough, Bucky’s brown truck comes up the hill and pulls into the park as Wanda’s imitating Mrs. Markham’s screams from her standoff with the intruder. While the rest of the group roars with laughter, you watch as Bucky parks the truck in front of his trailer and steps out. That’s when Wanda spots him, too.

“Hey, Buck!” she calls out, hands cupped around her mouth.

Bucky turns toward the group, his eyes sweeping across the faces. You swear they pause on you for a half a heartbeat.

“Come join us! We’ve got beer!” Wanda shouts, waving a hand over her head. A few others in the circle add their agreement, ushering him over and shaking their flasks. Bucky stares for another moment, as still as the trees behind him, before turning around without a word and heading for his trailer. The door shuts with a slam. A few grumbles go up around you, but Wanda just shrugs, smiling lopsidedly. “Eh, if I got off work early, I’d probably want some peace and quiet, too.”

You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding, a sense of unease tainting the picturesque scene around you. “Does he…do that often?” you ask as casually as you can.

“Get off work early? Never. He works more than anyone I know—“

“No, I mean…” your finger points vaguely in the direction of the white trailer, “does he usually just ignore you when you ask him to hang out?”

She tilts her head, lips curving. “No, he’s usually at these things when he isn’t workin’. But if he’s home already, it probably means he threw out his back or somethin’. I know Steve threatens to fire him if he doesn’t go home and rest when that happens. Leave it to Bucky to take an order that seriously.” She laughs. “I swear those two were soldiers in a past life.”

You nod, your mind already dissecting the new information. He didn’t look like he was hurt…but you remember his eyes resting on you for a beat too long. The beer and whiskey combo in your stomach churns.

You fidget with your drink for the next half hour, barely hearing the conversations around you. An uncomfortable feeling has settled in your chest, tight and anxious, and your racing thoughts do nothing to help it. Finally, you can’t take it anymore, feeling restless and in pursuit of answers. You excuse yourself and head for your trailer, but when you’re far enough from the group, you take the long way around the park to Bucky’s, your heartbeat growing louder with each step.

You knock on the door before you can convince yourself otherwise, listening to the laughter of the circle as you wait. There’s a shuffling on the other side, then a soft grunt, and the door swings open.

Your lips part.

Bucky stands before you in nothing but his blue jeans. Your eyes jump to the wide expanse of his chest, the hard muscles of his abs. A smattering of dark chest hair tapers off down his stomach and disappears into his pants, right below his belt buckle. You forget how to breathe.

He stares down at you while bringing a beer bottle to his mouth and taking a hard swig. A drop of condensation lands on the dip between his collarbones, and your tongue subconsciously darts out to wet your lips. He shifts his weight to lean against the door frame, expression neutral. “What do you want?”

You realize you look like a fish out of water and shut your mouth with a snap, swallowing thickly as you feel an unwarranted heat bloom in your gut.

“Um,” you start, silently cursing the way your voice shakes. “Not sure if you heard Wanda, but we — uh, we were wonderin’ if you wanted to join us. Patrick’s doin’ a run to the liquor store so there’ll be plenty of beer soon. Or we still have some whiskey. Unless you’ve got plans…” you trail off, eyes flicking to his shirtless chest.

Bucky’s face doesn’t change. “Don’t have plans.”

“Then you should drink with us.”

“Not interested.” You blink.

“…why not?”

He shrugs.

“Don’t feel like drinkin’ with company.” He takes another quick sip from his bottle. Your eyes catch on the label and recognize it immediately from your own preferences; when you look back at Bucky, you find him watching you closely, blue eyes hard and unapologetic. You suck in a breath through your teeth, a strange feeling buzzing beneath your skin. Maybe it’s the alcohol, maybe it’s the heat, maybe it’s the undeniable thrill of seeing him shirtless, but you feel close to exploding.

“Don’t feel like drinkin’ with company, or don’t feel like drinkin’ with me?” you say quietly, eyes ghosting over his frame.

A look crosses his face, something close to bewildered, before he hides it behind his usual expressionless mask. “What’re you talkin’ about?”

You flash him a tight-lipped smile though far from amused. “Sure, like you don’t know.”

“Kid, I don’t have a clue,” he grumbles, though the hand holding the beer bottle twitches.

“Oh, don’t play dumb,” you snap before you can stop yourself, a dangerous flush running through your body, “you know exactly what you’re doin’. What you’ve been doin’ for the last month. Avoidin’ me like I’m the tax man and you’ve got a debt to pay. You don’t like me? Fine. No problem. I don’t need you to be my friend. But I won’t put up with you actin’ like I don’t exist in front of everyone else anymore, and if you keep doin’ it, I’ll make your sad, lonely, little life hell. So just stay away from me and I’ll stay away from you. Got it?”

Your words hang between you for a sour moment, and not even the cheerful sounds of the group can cut through the tension. Your chest heaves as you scowl at Bucky; he scowls right back, though you notice that the tips of his ears have gone a rosy shade of red and his grip on the beer bottle looks close to destructive. Your eyes scan his hardened face one last time before you turn on your heel and kick up a cloud of dust behind you as you march back to your trailer. This time, you slam the door.

Inside the trailer, the urge to throw something, anything, is too strong to ignore. Your vision zeroes in on the laundry basket Bucky returned a few days ago, and you lunge. Taking the cheap plastic in your hands, you hurl it against the floor with all of your strength, gritting your teeth while biting back a scream, watching as it breaks into a hundred different pieces with concerning ease on your linoleum floors. What follows is a silence so bitter, you can taste it in your mouth.

Your temper slowly fizzles out as you absorb the mess you made. You shouldn’t have done that. You shouldn’t have let him get to you again. Now you’ve got a room full of shame and no laundry basket.

Exhaling heavily, you run a hand through your hair while peeking out the window to see if the circle of neighbors heard your crash out. Nobody’s looking your way, thankfully — instead, they’re cheering on Patrick as he emerges from his car with two new cases of beer. A pang of longing hits your chest, but you know you can’t go back out there now, not after this. So you resign yourself to picking up the remains of your laundry basket, piece by piece on your hands and knees until they ache from the pressure and you’ve cut your fingers on the jagged edges.

Later, when you’re nursing a small hangover with a cup of tea and an ice pack on your head, you wait for the regret to sink in over the heated words you threw at Bucky. But, strangely, it doesn’t. Now that the buzz from the alcohol and the leftover anger have vacated your body, you’re left with an odd sense of calm about it.

Sure, you got something off your chest that’s been weighing you down for weeks, but you had truly convinced yourself that you were optimistic over the Bucky situation. You had been foolishly hopeful that you could get through to him. Your outburst said differently. You should feel embarrassed, defeated, tired, but instead you feel…good. You handled it, just like you’ve handled every other hurdle in your life. Maybe not gracefully, but grace has never been your forte, and you don’t really mind.

You only wish that Bucky had shown some sort of reaction to being called out, a protest, a sigh, anything — but the man is as expressive as a bucket of cement. Knowing him, you wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t listen to half the things you said. He probably thought the whole thing was a waste of time, something to forget about as soon as he shut the door…

Doesn’t matter. You’re not going to lose sleep over your emotionally repressed neighbor anymore. You’re not going to spend another second thinking about him.

This turns out to be easier said than done.

You get to enjoy a peaceful week without seeing or thinking about Bucky, until Sunday rolls around. You’re doing laundry, which proves to be harder than usual without a laundry basket, leaving you to juggle armfuls of clothes while trekking back and forth between the park’s shared washing machines and your trailer. While the last of your wardrobe dries on the line outside, you’re moving around your little home in a faded pink tank top and an old pair of some ex’s boxers. The radio plays rock classics while you prep dinner, and you hum along as you man the stove and chop vegetables.

Then a knock interrupts.

You set down the knife and glance out the window, but whoever’s outside is hovering next to the door out of sight. You think it’s Donna, coming by with eggs after she borrowed some from you the other day, but when you open the door, you’re downright shocked to find who’s on the other side.

Bucky stands with one hand against your door frame, the other holding his toolbox, dressed in dirty jeans and a plain black t-shirt that hugs his body in an ungodly attractive way. You take a step back in surprise when his eyes find yours. They’re bright, but guarded. He nods at you.

“You said your shower’s broken,” he says in greeting, voice low like he doesn’t want to be overheard.

Your mouth falls open. “Huh?”

His lips press together in an impatient line. “Your shower. You asked me to take a look at it the other day.”

Your mind feels like an old computer you had to reboot to get working again. You blink at him as it comes back to you.

“Yeah,” you answer slowly, “but that was before.”

He huffs, looking over his shoulder at the park behind him. “You want your shower fixed or not? I got things to do today.”

“Then go do ‘em.” You cross your arms over your chest, trying your best to look down your nose at him while being completely submerged in his shadow.

“Don’t be stupid,” is his retort, “I’m offerin’ you help.”

“Don’t need it. And don’t call me stupid,” you snap.

“You gonna fix the shower yourself?” Bucky challenges, tilting his head at you. You feel heat rush to your cheeks as his eyes sweep up and down your figure, taking in your thin tank top and rolled up boxers.

“Maybe,” you throw at him, though it lacks the previous bite. The corner of Bucky’s mouth curls up.

“Then at least let me watch.”

Your spine locks as a jolt of something new and strange spreads through your body. Your brain decides now is a good time to remember just how attractive he is beneath the oil and dirt and rough demeanor — especially when shirtless.

“That’s — I don’t — you—“ stammers out of your mouth. Bucky responds by pushing past you into your trailer. You stumble into your couch, still struggling for words as he fills your little kitchen with his wide shoulders and long legs, his hair nearly brushing the ceiling. He sets the toolbox down on your table, briefly glancing at your half-made dinner.

“Smells good.”

His gruff tone is a sharp contrast to his casual words. You shake your head, though you feel like you could use a solid smack to the face. “Do you normally go around bargin’ into your neighbors homes?” you ask, slightly breathless. He looks at you, amused.

“When the neighbors are bein’ dumb, yeah. This the bathroom?” He points to the pocket door on his left.

“I told you not to call me—“

“Stupid, I know. I didn’t call you stupid, though.”

Your jaw clenches hard enough to hurt, watching as Bucky pulls open the bathroom door and squeezes into the tiny room like it’s his house. The sound of the shower turning on comes a second later.

“I thought I told you to stay away from me,” you grit through your teeth. “You got a hearing problem, old man?”

From the bathroom, Bucky chuckles, soft and deep. “Old man,” he mutters to himself before shutting the water off and reappearing, eyes pinning you in place. “I can hear just fine. Heard all of your cute little temper tantrum the other day.“

Your entire body flushes against its will. ”Then why are you here?” you demand. Bucky begins rifling through his toolbox.

“You asked me to fix your shower.”

“Yeah, a month ago,” you scoff. “And before I knew how big of an ass you are.” Bucky’s mouth does that half-smile again as he picks up a wrench. It might be the same one you imagined hitting him over the head with.

“That ain’t very nice,” he murmurs, eyes flicking to you. “You hardly know me.”

Your lip curls. “And you don’t know me, but you already decided I wasn’t worth your time.”

He exhales heavily, swapping the wrench for another one and weighing it in his hands. “This again?” But before you can let out the blood-curdling scream that’s been building up inside of you, he sets down the tool and turns your way, shoulders set and face stony. “Look, if I hurt your feelins by not takin’ your invite, then that’s on you. It ain’t personal, neighborhood bondin’s not really my thing as you could probably tell—“

“Unbelievable,” you mutter bitterly, shaking your head. “First of all, I know you’re lyin’ — Wanda said you’re always around when somethin’ is goin’ on. Second, you’re completely missin’ my point.”

“I was gettin’ to it,” he says louder, pointing a sharp finger at you. “But it seems you have a habit of jumpin’ to conclusions before hearin’ a person out.”

“Hearin’ a person out!” you cry, throwing your hands up; the sarcasm drips thick into your tone. “When would I ever be able to hear you out when you walk the other way when you see me comin’?”

He levels you with a hard look, blue eyes burning into yours. Butterflies erupt in your stomach, unwelcome and distracting, but you hold your ground.

“I don’t do friends,” he grunts, “I’m not good at bein’ one and I’m too busy for ‘em anyway. Fixin’ your car that day, I could tell that’s what you were lookin’ for, and I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea in your head.”

You laugh, dry and harsh. “Well, you certainly got your point across, Bucky.” His hand twitches, a quick clench and unclench of fingers; you observe it coolly, eyebrow cocked. “You know, for a guy who “doesn’t do friends,” there are a lot of people in this park who think you do.”

“That’s different,” he’s quick to say, brushing it off, “I’ve known ‘em for years. Thin line between familiar and friends, not my fault if they pick one and I pick the other.”

You scoff.

“Sure, okay. So what happens in, say, five years — when I’m still livin’ across the park from ya?” you ask, taking a bold step forward. “Will I get grandfathered in to your half-assed friendship, or will we still be goin’ at it like this? ‘cause I’m startin’ to think it’s less about you bein’ anti-friends, and more about you not likin’ me.”

“You won’t be here in five years,” he says with a roll of his eyes. “This place ain’t anythin’ more than a pit stop on your way to somethin’ else. You’re young — real young — still got most of your life ahead of you, some great, big future out there somewhere, but it ain’t here. So, no. I don’t think we’ll ever be friends.”

With an inaudible crack, something shifts inside your chest, something heavy and painful as memories of your past flood your thoughts, ruthless and relentless in their intention to hurt. You pull your arms in close to your body, feeling goosebumps on your skin.

“You don’t know anythin’ about me and my future,” you tell him quietly. He shrugs.

“Maybe not, but I know restless when I see it. And I know grit. You’ll want something better eventually, and you’ll go after it.”

The silence that follows is deafening. You look everywhere but him, unwilling to show him just how much his words got to you, but he keeps his eyes steadily on you, unblinking, unwavering, like he’s finally noticed you for the first time and needs to learn everything he can about you in this very moment. Finally, he sighs, running a hand through his thick hair and frowning at the floor.

“But…I think maybe I was…doin’ too much. I didn’t see it that way before, but I do now,” he says, still gruff, but softer now. “Lemme fix your shower. To say sorry for bein’…for bein’ an ass. I know what it’s like to be ignored…and I should’ve realized how things might’ve come across to ya.”

You exhale shakily. So, no. I don’t think we’ll ever be friends. You look away, struggling to separate the sting of his words from the peace offering in front of you.

“Alright,” you relent, packing up the pain and setting it aside. He nods before picking through his toolbox again. You shift your weight, feeling awkward and out of place in your own home. Clearing your throat, you bravely add, “Does this mean I can expect a wave in the mornings?”

Bucky makes a noise in the back of his throat that could pass for a laugh. “Don’t get too ahead of yourself now. Just because I’m sayin’ sorry doesn’t mean I take back what I said about bein’ friends.”

“Yeah. You’re a grumpy old man who likes to be alone. Got it.”

He tosses you a look over his shoulder, equal parts irritated and amused, while you bite your lip to stop yourself from acting on the hurt simmering inside of you. As the fight in you deflates, you take a few careful steps into the kitchen, leaning against the counter as Bucky sorts through a handful of knuts and screws. “So…” you start, searching for a stop to the thoughts inside your head, “what’d you end up doin’ that night?”

“What night?” Bucky grunts.

“The night we were drinkin’.”

He hums, pocketing the screws and picking up a screwdriver. “Finished up a couple projects,” he says slowly. “Got some chores done.”

“Really,” you state, brows furrowed. “Didn’t look like you were up to anythin’.”

He looks at you then and his eyes are unreadable. “Why do you say that?”

“Because you answered the door without a shirt. And you were drinkin’ a beer. The beer I left at your door when you were too scared to answer it, by the way.”

Bucky snorts. “You askin’ for a thanks? I had my head under car hoods all day. I think I deserved a cold drink.”

He turns for the bathroom again; this time, you follow, hovering in the doorway as he starts loosening the shower head from the pipe. “Do you always answer your door halfway to nude, or did I just get lucky that day?”

Bucky laughs, really, truly laughs. Whatever burdened expression you were wearing is wiped clean off your face as you bask in the sound of it.

“It’s called laundry, sweetheart. I smelled like a wet dog on an oil rig after workin’ twelve hours in the heat, and I didn’t care to sit in it any longer.”

“Still,” you mutter, watching as he catches the unattached shower head before it drops to the ground, “you could’ve put on a shirt before greetin’ me like that.”

“Like you’re much better,” he says, glancing over his shoulder at you; again, his eyes rake up and down shamelessly, but this time it feels more concentrated, observant. The blue looks a shade darker than before. You gape at him.

“It’s — well, I’m just—“

“Doin’ laundry?” Bucky supplies quietly. You snap out of it when he turns back to the shower, pulling out his screwdriver.

“Whatever,” you grumble, feeling hot, “just let me know when you’re done.”

You leave him in the bathroom to pick up where you left off chopping vegetables. You should probably have a clearer head when handling a knife, but you’re too riled up to sit still and wait for him to finish. What was that look about? He says he doesn’t want to be your friend, then he stares at you like you’ve got something he wants. Is he waiting for you to snap at him again, or is it something else?

You’re silent while you work, just the radio and the sounds of Bucky working on your shower filling the trailer. Every now and then you’ll hear the water run, or a hushed curse under his breath. You’re just turning off the heat on the stove when he steps out of your bathroom and puts his tools away.

“Pressure’s fine now,” he tells you, snapping the toolbox shut. You turn to him, hands on your hips.

“Mind if I check?” Another half-smile from him as he gestures for you to go ahead. You shuffle past him, brushing his shoulder as you go. You’re shocked to feel how warm he runs, almost hot to the touch; your cool skin begs you to step closer. In the bathroom, you turn the handle and are pleasantly surprised to see water shoot out at a mostly normal rate.

“Nice work,” you call out before turning it off. Bucky’s waiting for you in the kitchen, leaning against the table with his arms crossed and a curious look on his face. “What?” you can’t help but ask, stopping in your tracks.

For the first time since meeting him, Bucky looks slightly put off, like a thought’s crossed his mind that he’s wondering if he should voice aloud. “Are you—“ He clears his throat. “Where were you before this?”

You blink. You haven’t heard that question in a while. “La Junta. But I grew up in Dodge City.”

He nods thoughtfully. “Got family there?”

“Maybe,” you shrug. “Couldn’t tell you where my daddy is. Mom’s got a new boyfriend, don’t know if they moved.”

“What about you? You got a boyfriend?” he murmurs, examining his dirty hands.

“I wouldn’t be askin’ you for help if I did,” you answer, blinking, and you turn back to your food to hide the heat crawling up your face. Bucky hums. Then, to your immense surprise, you hear him ease himself into the tiny chair at your table.

“So you’re on your own,” he comments, as if what he did wasn’t completely at odds with your earlier conversation.

Your shoulders tense instinctively. Well, isn’t this just ironic? The man who made you feel lonely wants to know how lonely you are.

“Could say that,” you respond slowly, “but Donna and the others have been real welcoming. They say the door’s always open.”

You hope he catches the barb in your words, the subtle call out, but Bucky just sighs. “Yeah, they’re like that. Would give you the clothes off their back in the middle of a snowstorm if you needed it. Good people — too good, sometimes.”

“Nobody can be too good,” you say, eyeing him over your shoulder. “I think the world could use a few more people like them.” He meets your gaze before dragging it down your figure again, but it’s softer this time, less analytical and not necessarily uncomfortable. You quickly turn back to the stove. “Didn’t take you as the type to chit chat,” you quip.

“Oh, am I bein’ too friendly now?”

“I thought you got things to do today.”

“I do,” he grunts. “I’ll get to them.”

It hits you suddenly that you’re not sure if you want Bucky to leave yet. When you chance another glance at him, you’re struck with how comfortable he looks sitting there. His broad frame takes up a whole side of the table, and he’s slouched down just enough in the chair with his legs spread wide, like he owns the place, like he knows the inside of your trailer well, like he’s familiar with the way you move around the kitchen.

A teasing smile makes its way onto your face. “If I didn’t know better, it sounds like you’re lookin’ for a friend to pass time with—“

“Don’t be difficult,” he mutters, head tilted as he crosses his arms; his biceps bulge, the golden skin stretching like an invitation for you to touch, taste, bite—

“You sure like givin’ orders, huh?” you remark, matching his stance. Those blue eyes find yours and don’t let go.

“Only when it’s needed,” he says, voice lowering to a pitch that could rumble the floors beneath your bare feet. To your chagrin, it goes straight to your gut, settling there with a deep heat that awakens something inside of you. You scramble to push it down, afraid of the truth showing plainly on your face.

“Bossy,” you mutter under your breath, looking away. Bucky chuckles, somehow making it worse.

“Somethin’ tells me you don’t do well listenin’ to others.”

Your hand tightens over the plate you’re pulling from the cupboard. “Yeah, well. Most people tell you to do things ‘cause it’s better for them, not for you.”

He hums. “You listened pretty well to me.”

Your cheeks flush. “Judgment error,” you mumble.

“Did you get the new battery like I told you to?”

“Uh…” You have the grace to look sheepish because, truthfully, you forgot. You close your mouth before telling him that if he hadn’t completely derailed all of your rational thinking with his avoidant behavior, you’d have remembered.

“I stand corrected,” he mutters, pushing out his chair. Bucky only needs to take two steps until he’s looming over you, pulling out a card from his back pocket. He takes your hand in his and places the card there before his fingers slide to your wrist, gripping tight. “Rogers’ garage on Miner Street. I want you in there this week for a battery change. Unless you’re tryin’ to blow that hunk of junk up.”

You gulp, looking down at where he’s holding you. “I have work,” you whisper.

“After work, then. I’ll be there.” He searches your face, waiting for your confirmation. You nod, but he doesn’t let go. A moment passes where it’s just the two of you breathing along to the soft melody of the radio.

“You’re helping me again,” you blurt. His fingers dig a little deeper into your flesh.

“And?”

You take a steadying breath, your brain picking through your words carefully. “Awfully friend-like, if you ask me—“

Bucky groans, pulling away and leaving sparks along your skin. He picks up his toolbox, giving you a quick glance. He looks like he’s about to say something, and you find yourself desperately wanting to know what it is. But he seems to think better of it and makes for the door, opening it up to the heat of the August evening. His eyes meet yours one last time. “Enjoy your dinner.”

He’s a step out of your trailer when you call his name. He stops immediately, looking over his shoulder. “Thank you,” you say in a rush. “For fixin’ the shower.”

A pause, then, “No problem, kid.” The door swings shut. Through the window you see him traipse across the park and to his truck where he tosses the toolbox into the back, then he disappears into his home. Whatever things he had to do seem to be forgotten. Or nonexistent. A smile curls across your face before you can stop it.

The following weeks feel like a fever dream compared to the last month. You find yourself face-to-face with Bucky a number of times, some by coincidence, some by design.

A quick nod as he drives past you in the morning turns into a quick conversation at the mailbox the next day. It’s mostly you talking, but he stands there nonetheless, listening quietly to your unprovoked story of a difficult customer from the other week. Following that, you bump into him on a walk around the park with Wanda, where he manages to crack a smile when you recount how the little kid next door ran you over with his bike earlier that morning. He makes you promise to treat the patch of road rash on your thigh with rubbing alcohol, warning against infection and causing you to blush like a school girl being told off.

A storm rips through the town later that week, ripping off shingles and felling trees, making the lights flicker uncertainly from time to time as the wind batters the side of your trailer. After the worst of it’s passed, you step outside to assess the damage; you think it’s superficial, nothing that threatens the structural integrity of the outbuilding, but you don’t know the first thing about evaluating storm damage.

Luckily, Bucky materializes out of nowhere like he could read your mind from across the park, offering to check for leaks and punctures that could lead to greater troubles down the road. He claims he does it for all of the neighbors, waving off your word vomit of gratitude with a huff and a scowl, but once again, he either forgets about the others, or those intentions never existed, because when he’s finished fortifying your trailer, he sends you a small salute before crossing the park and disappearing back into his home.

A few days later, you find yourself at the mailboxes with Bucky after he came up behind you with a muttered, “mornin’”, and now he’s listening to you talk about your boss’ erratic revamp of the menu. You manage to pull from him that he’s partial to the danish pastries your diner sells, so you knock on his door later that night with a bag full of them and a smile on your face, watching as the tips of his ears glow bright red when you hand them over. He thanks you in that gruff way of his that doesn’t sound grateful at all, but it’s enough for you.

But to your shock, he repays the favor the next evening.

You’re curled up on the couch with a book, listening to the weak clicks of the AC unit in your window, when you feel your trailer give a sudden lurch. Your glass of water topples off the side table, your basil plant spills into the sink. You’re questioning the probability of earthquakes when it happens again — this time more powerful than the last.

When you open your door, the last thing you’re expecting is Bucky — shirtless again — using a hammer to extract the rotting pieces from the walls of your trailer. You call him crazy — it’s ten o’clock at night and he’s just finished a fourteen-hour shift, after all — but he just grunts and tells you that they were an eyesore, that he was getting too impatient not to do something about them. You’d be offended if your body wasn’t humming with a pleased rush of adrenaline from his attention, however workaround it may be.

You spend the remainder of the evening watching from your open door as he fixes up your little home. Despite the cooler night air, he still gleams with sweat from the effort, and you learn to appreciate this quickly; he looks like trouble and heaven wrapped up in the likeness of God’s surliest angel. By no means are you religious, but all other explanations for how a man that looks like that winds up in your yard seem to defy natural laws. Watching the muscles in his arms ripple as he tears the siding off its hinges, you’re convinced a higher power had to have intervened for this moment to happen.

You’re all too eager to offer him a beer when he finally finishes. He takes it before sitting down wordlessly next to you on your stoop. Then it’s silent except for the crickets and the bullfrogs, but you find it peaceful rather than charged like it usually is between you.

Up close, the tattoo that once teased you that fateful day that you met is on full display. It’s an intricate piece that extends across his back from shoulder to shoulder; black ink curls around three names written in elegant calligraphy: James, Winnifred, and Rebecca. The longer you stare at it, the more your fingers itch with the need to touch it, to trace the whorls from point to point.

You take a large sip of beer for courage.

“What’s this?” you murmur, the tip of your pinky barely grazing the ‘a’ at the end of Rebecca. You feel Bucky tense up beneath your touch, and you know right away that you’ve crossed a line, possibly tearing down what little you’ve built since he fixed your shower. You wait for the blow to come, for the other shoe to drop, for him to stand and leave you all alone in the dark.

But he doesn’t. Instead, Bucky slowly relaxes, muscle by muscle. “My family. I don’t…see them much anymore.”

You let that sink in for a moment. “So you’re on your own,” you comment, using his words.

Bucky hears this and turns, unleashing the full force of those big blue eyes on you. Something flashes across them, and it could be anything: pain, recognition, anger, validation. All real emotions for a situation you’re only too familiar with.

“Yeah,” he finally mutters, looking down. Your gut twists.

Just from that one little word, you could glean all of the history behind him, the past that’s riddled with regret and hurt, and you push against the sudden urge to wrap him in a hug. Too much too soon for begrudging acquaintances. You settle instead for soft words in the form of a distraction.

“Well, except for Donna. She doesn’t know how to leave anyone alone.”

Bucky gives a half shrug, sipping on his beer. “You’re not wrong.”

“Y’know, everyone here kind of adores you.”

“I doubt that.”

“You should hear Donna talk about ya.”

The corner of his mouth ticks up as he glances at you. “That bad, huh?”

“She says you’re the sweetest guy,” you share with him conspiratorially. “That you help out a lot, actually. And that you’re quiet, but you’re really kind when you wanna be—“

“Alright, I get it,” he mutters, eyes scanning the park. “Easy to believe the lie when she says it like that.”

There isn’t any venom to his words, just a simple statement around a beer bottle. You tear your eyes away from watching his neck extend on a swallow, dazedly finding the oak tree. “I know it’s not a lie,” you say, picking at the peeling label of your drink. “I saw you the other day, helpin’ out the Markhams. All of you were laughin’, too. It was…sweet.”

Bucky’s quiet for a moment. He leans back until his forearms rest against the step behind him, stretching out his long torso like he’s asking you to count all six abdominals. “Don’t get used to it,” he mutters darkly, and it sounds like a threat more than anything, but the little pout on his face negates whatever abrasiveness he was hoping for. It makes you giggle.

“Uh-huh, sure. I know a big softie when I see one.”

He rolls his eyes before taking a sip of his drink. “Believe what you want, kid, but I’m not the type to give flowers or sweet nothins.”

Your attention sharpens at his words, a spike of curiosity jetting through your bloodstream. “How else do you woo your woman then?” you tease, just enough to hide the neediness in your voice, the urge to know the answer.

Bucky turns to you, brows furrowed. Then — so quick, you almost miss it — his eyes dart to your mouth and back. The wind shifts, your fingers tingle, Bucky pushes up so that he’s brushing shoulders with you again; you feel like they’re fused together by some invisible, magical weld. He stares straight ahead, elbows on his knees, thumb running circles around the rim of the beer bottle. “Don’t have one,” he mutters.

You blink.

“Really?” His face twists into a scowl. “Huh. Guess it’s hard to believe a good lookin’ guy like you doesn’t have a few crawlin’ all over him. Unless it’s by choice.”

Bucky frowns impossibly deeper, it’s almost laughable. “Why would it be by choice?”

“Because apparently you can barely handle havin’ a friend, or so you say,” you point out.

“Doesn’t mean I’m a fuckin’ loner,” he grumbles. “I just don’t…get out that much.”

“I bet you’d do pretty well for yourself if you did, sittin’ all alone on a barstool with the sad guy look you got goin’ on.”

“I got what?”

“Y’know,” you start with a grin, “the sad guy look. When you’re all mysterious and unavailable. Add in broody, quiet and stares a lot, women will think it’s hot.”

Bucky goes so still, even his thumb pauses.

“Oh, yeah?” he asks quietly, looking very thoughtfully at the oak tree. “Is it doin’ somethin’ for you, kid?”

The smile flickers off your face. Oh. Oh no.

“Uh…”

He eyes you sideways, and you know you’re as red as a stop sign. You gave yourself away before you could even go on the defense. You take a big sip to buy you time, but he’s there and leaning into the spot where you skin touches, and all the sudden your thoughts explode in a hundred different directions, because why is he still staring at you, and why is he actively getting closer, and why, for the love of all that’s good and holy, does he still not have a shirt on?

You think he’s never paid closer attention to you before now, and he’s destined to see through your lie when your face is there to direct him to the truth. So you gamble on a half truth.

“I think it’s a pretty universal thing to be attracted to,” you say with a shrug, giving a mediocre performance on playing it cool. He hums.

“But do you like it?” Bucky presses softly, and your stomach drops into a flip. The wind shifts again, and this time, you can feel something mysteriously close to electricity buzzing back and forth between your skin and his. Why does he care? you ask yourself, as if you know the answer.

“I…” your voice wobbles traitorously, but you know there’s no way out of it now, so you’ll go down swinging. You turn to him, and your eyes connect like a head on car crash: dangerous, devastating, impossible to look away from. “Yes,” you whisper.

He smiles faintly. “Thought so.”

“Please don’t,” you groan.

He chuckles but doesn’t look away, and you’ve already developed Stockholm Syndrome from being held hostage by his gaze. His reaches out to brush a hair from your face, natural, instinctive, and you’re holding your breath without even realizing, feeling the zip of chemistry from the tips of his fingers as they touch your cheek. You’re so close, you could lean in and brush noses with him if you had the nerve to. Or more, which you’re starting to think about—

“You might be the prettiest thing this town’s ever seen,” he murmurs, low and rough, and oh, does your heart try to leap out of your chest and drop into his hands.

You feel your cheeks flush, your sense of reality growing hazy, because is this really Bucky Barnes sitting in front of you saying that?

But he pulls back before you can even think of a response, chancing one last glance at your mouth before silently falling back into position next to you.

For a while, he doesn’t say anything. You don’t push him to. And when your finger brushes the ‘a’ again, he leans your way. Your mind is oddly free of thought as you trace the names gently — you’ve probably gone into shock over him letting you touch him like this. You’re not sure what compelled you to do it, nor what convinced Bucky to allow it, but for a few quiet moments, you feel yourself breaking through one of the walls he had up between you. You wonder if he feels it too.

Later, after he calls it a night and you’re lying in bed, watching as the patch of moonlight crawls across your ceiling, you feel like maybe he was right — maybe you weren’t going to be friends. Because maybe you were always meant to be something more.

Saturday arrives with a bang as thunderstorms roll through the county and soak everything in its reach, but by the time your shift ends, the sky has opened up to an endless portrait of oranges and pinks and purples. You take the scenic route home, windows down to let in the smell of earth and rain, and a smile on your face that hurts your cheeks and feels dangerously close to permanent. A stack of pastries sits in your passenger seat, boxed carefully and tied with a string to keep them from sliding.

When you pull up to your little trailer, Donna’s waiting for you outside your door. She descends on you immediately, taking the pastries from your hands and whisking them away to the middle of the park where the neighbors are setting up for a barbecue.

“Thanks, hun!” she calls out. “Now get outta that rag and put on somethin’ cute — we’re dancin’ later!”

By the time you emerge from your trailer, uniform swapped for something lighter that sways in the wind, the park party is in full swing. Donna’s taken up the mantle as the Chief of Staff of the buffet line, Viz is unloading cases of sodas and waters from the back of his truck, little Mrs. Markham tenderly sets up a s’mores station for the children, and Wanda’s tossing strings of lights through the limbs of the oak tree.

You rush forward when she gets tangled up in a line, stopping the threat of a hard tumble by unwinding it from her ankles. Wanda grimaces. “Thanks. Guess I can forget that career in the rodeo.”

Viz perks up from filling a cooler with drinks. “I wouldn’t say that, honey. You’re a hell of a cowgirl to me.”

Wanda blushes as red as her hair while you fight back a laugh. “Viz,” she mumbles, but her husband just sends her a wink before turning back to the cooler. “Sorry,” she says to you, the color slowly fading from her cheeks. “He can be…pretty affectionate when he’s home.”

You shake your head, smiling. “No, don’t be sorry. I think it’s sweet.” Your fingers work with hers to straighten out a knot in the lights. “Is he gone pretty often?”

She nods. “Three weeks of the month, usually. Long-haul truckin’ definitely wasn’t our first choice. It’s dangerous, and the time apart can feel painful. But the pay’s decent and…well…” She looks around cautiously before leaning in. “We’re tryin’ to start a family.”

“Wanda,” you breathe, eyes wide. She hushes you gently, but she’s smiling now.

“I know. But you can’t tell anyone — especially Donna. She’ll make it a whole thing.” She scrunches her nose adorably.

“My lips are sealed,” you vow, miming a zipper closing across your mouth.

“Thank you,” she says, squeezing your hand. “Now let’s get the rest of these figured out.“

After several more attempts at lassoing lights onto branches, the two of you end up abandoning that plan and decide to treat the trunk like a maypole; each of you take hold of a string and run circles around the tree until not an inch of bark is visible. Your side splits from laughter as you try not to trip over the exposed roots, chasing after your newfound friend. You collapse onto the grass after, knocking shoulders and gulping down air as the rest of the neighbors start to mingle around you. The smell of grilled meat and oil lanterns fills the air. Conversation is a constant hum that provides a comforting white noise. Children race across the grass, dragging bubble wands behind them and leaving a whimsical trail for the lightning bugs to follow. You take a look around the park, at your friends and neighbors sending you easy smiles and carefree waves. They don’t know the quiet impact it has on you, what it means to be on the receiving end of their kindness. It’s like they’re standing at the open door, waving you in and welcoming you home.

Viz comes over and hands you both a water. You take it with a muttered thanks, grateful to have something to distract you from the swell of emotions rearing up inside of you.

That’s when you hear it: the sound of an old engine revving up the hill. Your breath hitches as you watch the brown truck pull into the lot, Bucky’s figure shadowed by the setting sun behind him. Your lips part when you notice he isn’t alone.

The truck comes to a stop next to Viz’s. “Ah,” he says, pushing himself up from the ground. “Finally. Bucky’s here with the good stuff.”

Bucky jumps out of the truck with the ease of a seasoned cowboy dismounting from his horse. Dark shades cover his eyes, but he flips them up as Viz approaches; they shake hands, Bucky clapping Viz on the back. “Good to have you back,” you hear him say, a crooked grin on his face. In the back of your mind you know you’re blatantly staring, but this is new material that your curious brain is desperate to consume. His passenger comes around the other side of the truck, a tall, broad man with sandy blonde hair and oily jeans that give Bucky’s a run for their money. His face is weathered and chiseled like the driver’s, but there’s a softness to it that begs you to trust him, like all of your problems could be solved with just a look.

“Steve,” Viz greets, extending a hand. The newcomer shakes it, grinning.

“Good to see you again, Viz.”

You’re drawn back to Bucky as the other two catch up. His blue eyes sweep across the park, intentional and analyzing. When they fall on you and Wanda, he goes still for a moment. A part of you shrinks in fear, your heart racing in your chest when you remember the last time he picked you out of the crowd.

But Bucky’s hand comes up in a simple two-fingered wave. Wanda waves back. “Hey, Buck!”

“Wanda,” he says in that low tone of his, but his eyes never leave you. “Hey, kid.”

“Hi,” you answer, the faintest trace of a squeak in your voice. Bucky nods, an indefinable look on his face, before turning back to the truck and opening the back. Viz gives a whoop of delight when he sees the kegs waiting to be tapped.

“Right on time, Barnes. You did good.” Bucky shakes his head.

“This was all Steve. That red-headed bartender at Bruce’s is sweet on him.” Bucky’s companion chuckles, bashfully ducking his head.

“Nat’s just a friend.”

“Yeah, pal. Be sure to thank her extra nice for us when you’re at her place tonight.”

The party really takes off once the three men drop the kegs near the coolers. The rest of the group crowds around it like bees on honey. Wanda recruits you to set up a table of solo cups and sharpie markers, but you’re not much help for the urgency she needs. You’re finding Bucky lifting 160 pounds of beer like it’s a sack of feathers to be very distracting while trying to un-stack cups.

Viz christens the first keg with a spray of foam that everyone groans at, but his effacing smile tells you there’s very little that could dampen his spirits, including a botched keg. He quickly fills two cups (of mostly foam) for you and Wanda, and you laugh when she cheers you to “the rodeo life.”

You toss it back like medicine, hoping the alcohol clears your mind of the mysterious haze of self-awareness and poor attention span that Bucky brought with his arrival. The beer dribbles down your chin, and as you move to wipe it off, you glance up.

As predicted, your eyes find Bucky standing a few feet away; by all accounts, he’s locked into a conversation with Steve and Patrick that requires all of their heads to be pulled close together. But while Steve and Patrick exchange enthusiastic words, Bucky’s tight-lipped while staring at you.

You blush, an embarrassed smile flashing across your face while you use the back of your hand like a napkin. You expect him to look away, like a normal person does when they accidentally catch eyes with someone, but he doesn’t. He coolly takes a sip of his own drink, a muscle ticking in his jaw while he watches you. A ripple of heat runs down your spine that has nothing to do with the weather; it’s reminiscent of the feeling you had when his hand held tight to your wrist in your trailer, but it’s like it’s been cranked up to level 1000. When he swallows, you can see the tip of his tattoo curling at the base of his neck, and your fingers give an involuntary twitch as they remember the feel of it beneath them. Bucky shifts a half-step in your direction, and for one delusional second, you think he’s going to come over. But Donna wanders into your line of sight before the heat of his gaze can fully brand itself into your skin.

“Can I get your help with the salad? Mary went to get more plates.”

You’re dragged away before you can say a word.

Throughout the rest of the night, Bucky always seems to be on your periphery. Wherever you turn, he’s there, just a few feet away. Not close enough to warrant a conversation, but not far enough to be coincidence. You know the park isn’t big, but the proximity seems constructed, considered, careful, especially when you can feel his eyes on you at all times. When you refill your drink, he’s finishing his. When the line for the food forms, he’s three people behind you. When you pass by with a tray of desserts, he steps out of the way wordlessly, pulling Steve with him before you can excuse yourself. And he watches you go.

As the sunset melts into twilight, and Wanda’s lights begin to steal the show, you find a chair next to the speaker softly playing Fleetwood Mac. Across from you, Viz is coaxing Wanda into being the first ones to dance; she shakes her head, adamantly against it, but allows him to pull her from the chair anyway. Donna has a content look on her face as she oversees cleanup, which she shooed you away from almost immediately. Bucky’s coworker is doubled-over with laughter listening to Mr. Gonzalez’s tale of a fishing trip gone wrong. But Bucky is missing.

Your eyes scan the park instinctively, even delving into the dark corners between trailers or the full parking lot on the other side. You’re halfway out of your chair — to do what, you’re not sure — when you hear something drag across the dirt.

Bucky pulls up a chair and takes a seat beside you before you can blink. He has a fresh beer in one hand and a pack of cigarettes in the other, which he tucks into the front pocket of his red flannel.

“Enjoyin’ yourself?” he murmurs in greeting, observing the party in front of him. You can smell traces of smoke on him, layered beneath the scent of oil and something that reminds you of the woods behind his trailer.

Your gaze drops to the drink in your hand. “Yeah, this is great. Never been to something like this before.” Bucky settles into the chair, his knees spreading wide until one just barely grazes yours. “Did you guys close up the shop for this?” you ask, nodding toward Steve.

“Have to. Otherwise Donna would have our asses.”

You laugh softly. “Yeah, I got the impression this is pretty important to her when she made me RSVP.”

A ghost of a smirk flits across his face. “Her and Harold used to host this every year. After he died, she dug her heels into keepin’ it a tradition since it meant so much to him. Hard to say no to her when she’s got her mind set on somethin’.”

“I didn’t know that,” you admit. “I just thought she really likes barbecues.” Bucky laughs into his drink, and you nearly preen at the sound. “That’s really sweet, though. I wish I could’ve met him.”

“He was a good man,” Bucky agrees. “Had a lot of strong opinions about things I had no idea about. Most of it sounded crazy to me, but I ended up learnin’ my fair share from him.” He looks sideways at you. “Taught me how to use a lawnmower.”

“Really?” you laugh in disbelief. “When was this?”

“Maybe four years ago,” he says.

“Oh, shut up, you’re just lyin’ now. You build cars from scrap metal for a livin’ — there’s no way you didn’t know how to run a lawnmower.”

He shrugs. “Didn’t have a reason to until I moved here,” he says simply, like that explains the issue.

“Whaddya mean?”

He shifts in his seat before taking a sip of beer, looking past the party at the woods beyond. “There’s no grass where I come from.“

Your head tilts, eyes assessing his profile. The lined planes of his face remain as impassive as ever, but his shoulders don’t meet his ears like you expect. He seems relaxed — or at the very least, prepared — for your inevitable follow up question about his past.

“Where you from, Bucky?” you ask. He opens his mouth, but you quickly point a finger at him with a sudden burst of inspiration. “No, wait. Lemme guess…El Paso.”

The corner of his mouth curls up. “No.”

“Hmm,” you take a sip of your drink, pretending to take your time considering his accent like you don’t already have it memorized and catalogued neatly into a quiet corner of your brain. “Amarillo?”

“Nope — not Texas.”

You pout. “Gimme a hint.”

“East coast.”

You stare.

“Give up already?” he teases, but you wave him off.

“East coast, no grass, bad manners—“ Bucky snorts. “You from Jersey or somethin’?”

“Worse. Brooklyn.”

Your jaw drops. You weren’t expecting that answer. “You’re kidding, right? You’re not from Brooklyn.”

“Born and raised,” he mutters with a grin, amused by your response.

“But how do — where did you — you don’t sound like — what?”

“A story for another time.”

He’s still smiling, but there’s a shuttered look in his eye that doesn’t come from sitting next to you; it comes from revisiting ghosts in your mind while the world moves forward without you. You sit back, occupying yourself with another sip of beer while he comes back to the present.

“For what it’s worth, you can push a lawnmower like a sonofabitch now,” you venture.

He laughs, and your heart swells as you listen to it. It’s surprisingly high-pitched and breathless for a man as big as he is, but it contains something childlike that sounds tragically beautiful to someone who never laughed much as a kid. You count the lines around his eyes, you commit the scrunch of his nose to memory, you hold your breath as his knee knocks into yours and stays there.

“You watchin’ me mow my lawn, kid?” he hums into his drink, eyes flashing.

You balk. “I never said that—“

“You’re implyin’ it.” His husky voice encourages the color in your cheeks to saturate.

“It’s just somethin’ I noticed in passin’,” you plead. He takes mercy on you, for once.

Shaking his head, he mutters, “How’s the diner? It’s Tony’s place, right?”

“Yeah — do you know him?”

He purses his lips in thought, watching as the Markhams begin a slow sway on the makeshift dance floor while Wanda and Viz twirl around them. Several other pairings have joined in on the fun, spinning and dipping and waltzing along to Dire Straits.

“I know him…not very well, though. Friend of a friend, more like,” he adds, nodding at Steve. Then he clears his throat, offering you his drink when he sees that yours is now empty. “He a — he a good boss? He’s not doin’ anything he shouldn’t, right?”

“He’s fine,” you share, accepting his cup with a blink. You’re hyper aware of your lips hugging the rim exactly where his did as you take a sip. “Likes hearin’ the sound of his own voice, but that’s the worst of it.”

Bucky nods. “Good…good.”

Donna marches past then with a firm hand on the shoulder of a young teenage boy. The face beneath the crew cut is fifty shades of red, and his hands are covered in — what you hope is — melted marshmallows. Bucky snickers as Donna hauls the boy up to a group of middle-aged women chatting by the tree; one of them, who you can only assume is his mother, erupts into angry chastising as soon as she spots the teenager.

“Uh oh,” you mumble, watching the scene unfold. You can see how the boy takes after his mother as her face transitions to cherry red the longer she berates him. Bucky‘s still chuckling.

“Nate’s always been a trouble-maker, but he don’t mean much harm by it,” he murmurs in your ear. Donna watches with a sharp eye as the mother points a shaky hand in the direction of their trailer, and Nate slinks away, head bowed. “Oh, he’s gettin’ off easy,” Bucky says. “That’s a lot better than facin’ Donna’s justice.”

You grin. “No kiddin’. She runs this thing like the Navy Seals. I almost dropped the potatoes earlier, thought she was gonna spank me,” you giggle.

Bucky’s head whips around faster than humanly possible, the movement so quick it stops the laughter right in your throat.

“Can’t say stuff like that to me, kid,” he says, voice like silk over gravel.

You stare at him. In the low light of the lanterns, you can just see that the blue irises have changed shades into something darker, heavier; they’re locked on you with an intensity that doesn’t match the lightheartedness of the party. You gulp, he notices.

“Why not?” you whisper. And then his eyes drop to your lips, indisputable and poignant. Your breath hitches as the shape of him changes in front of you, as the delicate foundation of a relationship based on tolerance gets crushed to pieces by just one quick look.

“A man could get ideas,” he rumbles softly.

Your heart begins to pound in your chest, echoing faintly inside of your head. The noise of the barbecue fades. “What kind of ideas?” you push recklessly, and your eyes sink to his own mouth. His tongue darts out to wet his lips as if in answer.

“Ideas he shouldn’t be havin’ about his neighbor…who thinks he’s an ass.”

“I don’t think you’re an ass,” you breathe. He smiles faintly.

“No? All it took was a few weeks of bein’ your friend to change your mind?”

“Thought you didn’t wanna be friends,” you reply quietly. Something makes him pause, taking the time for a slow inhale and exhale to ground him. But underneath it is pure and unadulterated restraint — you can see it clear as day in the lines of his face, a sailor fighting valiantly against the storm.

“No, I don’t wanna be your friend,” he murmurs. But the words are not a rejection, they’re an invitation.

“Then what do you wanna be, Bucky?”

You bite your lip, and his eyes zero in on the tug of your teeth against the flesh. He leans in ever so slightly, like a magnet’s suddenly activated between your mouth and his, and your body hums with a desperate need to know what he tastes like—

“There you are!” Donna’s voice cuts in. She steps in front of you with her hands on her hips, and you jump in your seat like you touched an open wire. “Well, what are you doin’ sittin’? I told ya we’d be dancin’ later, and that dress looks too good on ya not to swing it around.” She looks at Bucky. “And whaddya know, you’ve got a partner right here!”

Your heart stutters in your chest as she points at him, anticipation already squeezing your lungs at the thought of Bucky’s hands holding you close while you sway gently to the music—

“Come on, Donna, you know I can’t dance. I’m not gonna make the poor girl suffer through me steppin’ on her feet,” Bucky answers gruffly.

The dismissal snuffs out the growing heat in your veins like a bucket of ice water on a candle. Your face drops, your eyes finding the dirt beneath your feet.

“That excuse is gettin’ real old, Bucky,” Donna counters, looking suspicious.

“Because it’s true,” he grumbles. “Not my fault you insist on there bein’ dancin’ every time you put somethin’ together.”

Exhaling shakily, you plaster an apologetic smile on your face as you meet Donna’s eye. “Yeah, actually Donna, I think I might turn in. I picked up a shift tomorrow mornin’ and I should at least try to show up sober.”

You see Bucky turn to you out of the corner of your eye. Donna frowns. “The party’s just gettin’ started, sugar, this ain’t the time for sleepin’.”

Chuckling dryly, you push yourself to your feet, the beer catching up to you momentarily as you take an extra step to steady yourself. You feel Bucky’s hand hover near your waist before you see it. You do your best to ignore it.

“I know, and I’m sorry. I should’ve told you sooner. But you know how it is. I got bills to pay and supplies to buy.” You roll your eyes like it’s not physically hurting you to be pulling away from her and the rest of the group, but you can’t be near Bucky right now. Not until you’ve reconciled all of the feelings you’ve felt tonight with the reality of your situation with him. You’ve learned the hard way how logic wins out over emotions, and you’re just sober enough to recognize you need a moment to align yourself with this self-inflicted mentality. You place a quick peck to Donna’s cheek, squeezing her arm. “The party’s beautiful, Donna. Truly, I’m honored to be a part of it. Thank you for hosting.”

She gives you a sad look, one meant to keep you in place, but your feet are carrying you away before you can let it pull you back in. You throw a wave over your shoulder at Wanda, but she’s too busy wrapped up in Viz’s arms to notice. You think some distance between you and Bucky will help to elevate your heart rate, but footsteps behind you put an end to your theory before it can be tested.

“Can I help you?” you ask, struggling to keep your voice light. Bucky’s stride matches yours easily, and he takes a glance at you.

“Thought I’d walk you back.”

You make a face. “It’s thirty feet away, Bucky.”

“Yeah, well, it’s dark out.”

“You can see my door from here.”

“Don’t be difficult,” he rasps like the back and forth is exhausting him. He takes half a step closer to you.

Your jaw clenches, but you say nothing as he walks you to your trailer, just out of reach of the lanterns and music and chatter. You step up to the door but turn sharply toward him when you feel his foot on the little stoop. “Alright, I’m home.”

“What happened back there?” he asks, eyes scrutinizing your face, probably reading right through you. “You were fine and then you weren’t.”

You gulp before bravely sticking your chin in the air. “Nothin’ happened. Just remembered I got work, that’s all.”

“You don’t work Sundays,” he says, shaking his head. Your back meets the door when he leans in. “Why’d you lie to Donna?”

“I didn’t lie, I picked up a shift to help a friend out. And how do you know I don’t work Sundays?” you ask, voice sharper than you intended for it to come out. At least it’s better than cracking on the tsunami of emotions you’re barely holding back.

Bucky blinks at you, going still. You’re not a mind reader, but you can hear the gears turning as his expression evens out into something you can only describe as inescapable resolution. Slowly, so slow you’re wondering if he even knows what he’s doing, he places his hand on the door next to your head; with his arm so close, you can smell how the sun’s baked into his skin, how metal seems to be an undertone all over him. And now his nose is an inch from yours.

“‘cause I watch you,” he murmurs, as soft as the evening breeze. His eyes fall to your mouth, and you can physically feel it, the pressure there, the charge of the unknown next step. Your hands flatten on the door behind you in an effort to hold yourself back.

Your mind plays over the different paths laid before you. Should you lean in? Change the course of this poor excuse of a friendship forever? Should you wait for him to make the move? Let him deal with the consequences of potential bad decisions in the morning? Should you pull away? Give yourself the time to cool off and clean up this mess of emotions following you like a shadow all night?

“You’re thinkin’ too much,” Bucky says. Your eyes refocus on his — his pupils are so wide, you’re afraid you’ll fall into them.

“I’m just tryin’ to figure you out,” you whisper, your breath mingling with his.

“Probably better if you don’t,” he answers, a hint of sadness in his tone. You search his face, but it reveals nothing; only his eyes offer any indication that he’s in control of what’s happening.

“You think that’s enough to stop me?”

Bucky’s mouth curves, but it quickly fades away. “You’re somethin’ else, kid.”

Then, as quick as it was cast, the spell is broken. Bucky leans back, his fingers lingering on the door. “Have a good shift tomorrow,” he says, voice solemn as he steps down from your stoop. And then he’s walking away.

It takes you a minute to gather yourself. The night presses in around you, cool air replacing the heat of Bucky’s closeness from moments before. With a shuddering breath, you slip into your trailer, closing the door on the party, on your friends, on Bucky behind you.

Endless rain floods the countryside the following week. Roads close, streams overflow, leaks and cracks in the trailers are exposed. You unwillingly enter into a war with a certain corner of your roof, and an empty ice cream bucket takes up permanent residence underneath it as your counterattack.

But every time you have the urge to knock on Bucky’s door to ask for help, something stops you. Flashes of the night of the barbecue, of the suggestive pitch of his voice, of his face a breath away from yours, consume your thoughts until you’re frozen in place with indecision paralysis. The ‘almost’ of it all has you twisted up in ways far more complex than when he tormented you with his indifference.

You go over every interaction in your head like a DVD menu on repeat at three in the morning. You think your signals to Bucky couldn’t have been clearer, yet he pulled away, even after giving you every indication that he wanted it, too. Confusion is too simple of a word to sum up how you feel, and you’re still too riled up from Saturday night to dissect it all head on.

Work offers a necessary distraction — at first. The weather brings in a rush of people seeking shelter from the downpour, which means less time for you to think about where you left things with Bucky, and the hours leave you exhausted to the point of collapsing onto your bed and tumbling into sleep as soon as you make it home. Then you wake up and do it all over again.

Eventually your coworkers begin to notice the toll it’s taking on you. You’re still a novice while they’re veterans, fully acclimated to the ebbs and flows of roadside diner foot traffic, so they urge you to take the first cut of the day after already battling through four grueling shifts that week. You don’t have the energy to fight them. You’re ushered out the door with orders to take a hot shower and a nap as soon as you get home. The rain soaks your uniform instantly as you rush to your car, but it’s still warm enough outside to keep your lips from turning blue as you start the journey home.

While the diner had been bustling with activity, the roads are eerily devoid of other people and vehicles. Most likely due to the flood warnings, but unlike them, you don’t have much of a choice.

You haven’t seen another car in ten minutes when the lights on your dashboard flicker. Your eyes snap to it immediately, recognizing the warning signs that nearly derailed you almost two months ago. A soft whine escapes from your chest as you feel the car begin to shake.

“Come on,” you breathe, pressing on the accelerator. The engine whines back. The radio cuts out, your lights turn off, and the car slows to a crawl. It’s with tears in your eyes that you step on the brakes and put the car into park. “No. No, no, no, no, no.”

Your forehead meets the steering wheel. You get a sick sense of dejavú.

Sniffling, you turn off the car and wait before trying it again. You hear a familiar ticking sound over the patter of rain on your roof.

“Fuck,” you whisper as the first tear falls.

Your mind is too sleep-deprived to come up with solutions. Your cell phone died hours ago because you forgot to charge it overnight. Your body aches everywhere from being on your feet all day, and you think if you tried to walk home, you’d pass out in a ditch after fifty yards. You’re stranded — literally stranded on the side of the road.

So you let yourself cry, great heaving sobs that sound warped and hollow in your little car. While the release feels compulsory, it offers no relief, and that makes you cry even more. Outside, the rain persists its assault on the empty county road.

When your cries have turned into hiccups, you’re left shivering in your wet uniform. A chill has crept through the vents as darker clouds roll in. You hug your arms to your chest, breathing deeply to calm yourself down, but your body continues to vibrate past normal human function. You glance at the back seat, where an old sweatshirt lays crumpled and wedged next to the door. You crawl into the back, extracting the fabric with shaking hands and curling up underneath it. It provides some warmth, but not much.

You don’t know how long you lay there, fighting off exhaustion and self-loathing. You have no sense of time since the clock on your dash powered off with the car. The only things you register are the rhythm of raindrops and your slowed breathing.

And then you hear it.

It’s faint, almost like you’re imagining it. But it grows louder and louder the longer your ears strain to catch it. Your head lifts off the seat, and through the side mirror you spot headlights.

A brown truck with an old, rumbling engine drives past your car before slamming on the brakes. The red tail lights blind you momentarily. It quickly backs up a few meters until it’s parked right in front of yours. The driver’s door opens, and out steps Bucky.

You let out a whimper, your eyes squeezing shut. This isn’t real. It can’t be.

But he’s there pounding on your window, calling your name. You shoot up, shaking again, and lock eyes with him through the glass. Bucky’s dark hair is plastered to his forehead, beads of water dripping down his nose and off his beard. You watch as he takes in your wet uniform, your flimsy blanket, your trembling chin.

“Sweetheart,” he says softly, voice muffled through the window. Slowly, you crawl across the seat to open the door. He swoops in before you can say a word; large hands grasp your arms and pull you out of the car. He practically carries you to his, a hand shielding your face from the rain, before setting you down gently on the bench seat of his truck. His touch moves to your shoulders, your throat, then your face, thumbs brushing wet strands of hair from your eyes. “Are you okay?” he demands to know. “Are you hurt?”

You shake your head. “N-no, just c-c-cold. My c-car, it — it d-d-died.”

Bucky’s lips press into a dangerously thin line before he reaches across you to crank up the heat in the truck. “Stay here,” he mutters, then closes the door on you. You whimper again, your eyes following him as he runs to the back of the truck and grabs his toolbox. He reaches inside your car to pop the hood, and then he rolls up the soaked sleeves of his red henley before getting to work.

Burning hot shame floods your body. You don’t need to be a mechanic to know what’s wrong with your car.

Your gaze slides to the empty road past the windshield. The headlights reflect off the puddles of water accumulating on the gravel, creating distorted spots of light in your vision further warped by the sheets of rain. The heat from the vents touches your skin, but does little to permeate the cold that’s seeped into your bones. You slide into the center of the bench, sticking your numb fingers into the slats to warm them up faster. A quick glance in the rearview mirror shows Bucky’s already closed the hood of your car; he stands in the downpour rubbing his face with both hands. You scurry over to the far end of the bench when the door opens a moment later, and he drops into the seat, drenched and silent.

You don’t look at him, he doesn’t look at you. The rain continues to fall.

Bucky inhales. “It won’t start.”

You clench your jaw to keep your teeth from chattering, inching closer to the heat. Your mind is a mess of fragmented responses.

His hand flexes on his thigh, the scars turning white against his skin. He exhales. “I told you to get the damn thing replaced,” he says, voice so low you can barely hear him. He turns to you, burning a hole into the side of your face with his stare. “I told you to come in to the garage.”

Your eyes sting with fresh tears, but whatever resilience is left within you refuses to let them fall. Not in front of him. “I kn-know.”

“But you didn’t.”

The barely suppressed anger in his voice triggers something in you like a fight or flight response. You meet his eyes and see the storm inside of them that rivals the one outside. Passion not so different from the kind you saw Saturday night.

“I didn’t have t-time,” you say, as calmly as you can. Bucky’s hand flexes again.

“Bullshit,” he counters.

“It’s the truth—“

“No, it’s not. I said to come in after your shift. I said I’d be there. And you still didn’t come.”

You shake your head. “I just — I forgot, okay? I was g-grateful for the help, I still am—”

“Kid, you got an odd way of showin’ your appreciation. Do you actually want the help, or did your deadbeat daddy fuck you up so bad that you don’t know how to accept it?”

There’s never been a louder silence than the one that follows his words. He recoils from it before you can, shoulders slumping like the weight of the world’s been dropped on them, a pained look slashing across his face. Your chin wobbles harder than before as the remark echoes in your head.

“Fuck, kid, I didn’t…” Bucky huffs. His hand crosses the distance of the bench, fingers grazing the skin of your thigh. You smack it away on instinct, but it doesn’t go far, dropping to the leather bench inches from you. “I’m sorry,” he says softly. “I shouldn’t have said that. I went too far.”

A single tear rolls down your cheek. You brush it away quickly like it’s an open wound you need to cover.

“Please look at me,” he whispers. The fight in you balances on a razor-thin wire, one side begging you to explode on him, the other offering peace. You find your car in the side mirror, a lone figure of used and abused metal, struggling desperately to just stay alive.

Bucky lets out a heavy breath when your eyes meet his.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats. You see the relief on his face mixed with the regret; it radiates off of him in waves. Slowly, you nod, your body trembling from the cold and something deeper. Bucky notices and draws back, his gaze tracing your figure.

“Come here,” he says gently, opening his palm to you.

You hesitate, the fire still burning in your eyes, and he waits.

But not for long. You slide into his arms with a soft grunt, too willingly, too easily. He catches you and holds you tight against him, hands rubbing along your arms to bring heat back to them while yours land on his chest. Your head fits perfectly into the crook of his neck, your nose skimming the wet skin. He smells like he always does, of oil and metal and pine. You inhale greedily, and it’s like a tonic to your frayed mind, clearing it of the scattered memories of a broken home.

“I didn’t mean it,” he whispers into your hair. Your eyes close.

“I know,” you whisper back.

This silence is softer, easier. You fall into it gratefully as your body slowly begins to relax against him. Bucky’s pure muscle beneath you, but it’s not uncomfortable; you mold to him like you were made to.

He shares his warmth by leaning into you, his nose dragging along your hair; the rhythm of his breaths is stable, even, and yours falls into sync with it naturally. He shifts closer, a hand curling around your waist. Because your history of push and pull dictates an eventual separation, you take the time to feel the steady rise and fall of his chest, the scratch of his beard on your temple, the wet fabric of his jeans brushing against your legs, and you memorize it all, something to hold you over late at night when the loneliness howls at your window and begs to come in like a stray cat. You sigh as your fingers curl into his shirt with every intention of never letting go. Bucky responds with a deep, measured inhale, stabilizing, grounding, human. You soak in every ticking second of this temporary peace. And then his lips, impossibly warm, find the shell of your ear, and your eyes shoot open.

You wait for him to move, to pull away, to gruffly say he’ll handle your car and take you home. He’s done his job, you’re practically burning up by now, and you know he can feel it, too. But he doesn’t let go of you. If anything, he holds you closer. Your heart begins to race — not from his actions, but from what you’re about to do.

You pull back slowly, just far enough for him to see the silent permission in your eyes, the wordless request for him to close the minimal distance between your lips and his. Bucky’s breath hitches in his chest, that steady rhythm halted.

And then he kisses you.

Softly, tenderly, delicately. Words that have never been tied to Bucky before. This hardened, uncompromising man moves his mouth over yours like it’s a gift from the heavens that could be ripped away from him at any moment. A low sound escapes from deep inside his chest, a strained variation of a sigh of relief.

You echo your relief back to him, a barely there whimper against his lips that reverberates down your spine. His fingers tighten around your waist, dragging you closer, while his tongue swipes across the seam of your lips. You open for him, physically, mentally, emotionally. He tastes faintly of metal, of smoke, of coffee, of days spent eagerly waiting for him to return home, of long nights tangled up in old sheets, of oversized sweatshirts and stolen bites of food and messy toothpaste kisses. Of a gentleness you’ve craved your whole life. You’re instantly addicted to the brief taste of this improbable future.

His tongue caresses yours and he groans, his hands and lips quickly turning rougher, needier; you welcome it eagerly. A fire’s been lit inside of you, and grows with every stroke of his mouth. You pull at his shirt, he tugs at your waist. You follow his hands as they move you across his lap, your legs bending to straddle him in the tight space of the bench seat, your chest pressed to his. Bucky breaks away from your lips to gulp down air, but one look at you hanging breathless over him eradicates his need to breathe. He wraps a large hand around your neck and pulls you back down. Your hips roll on top of his instinctively as he ravages your mouth, earning you a soft grunt when your center meets the stiff bulge beneath his zipper. He greedily presses down on the small of your back, encouraging you to do it again. And again. And again.

The hand around your throat tightens imperceptibly when you drag your heat across his erection, whining as the jeans provide a delicious friction to your core. He thrusts up into it, as if he can feel it through the layers of fabric. He groans like a starving beast that’s just found the only thing that can satiate him.

“Bucky,” you pant against his lips, an implied request for more.

His eyes flutter open. He looks at you. You think he’s about to completely make you his.

And then he gently pushes you off his lap.

Your body goes cold immediately. From the loss of his warmth and from the sudden change in tension. He unhooks your fingers from his shirt and presses himself carefully against the car door, running a hand down his face. “Fuck,” he breathes.

“W-what did I do?” you whisper. He shakes his head, unable to meet your eyes.

“You didn’t—“ He swallows. “You didn’t do anythin’.”

“Then why did you stop?”

He exhales through his nose, lips pressed into a tight white line. He’s mad. Or disappointed. Or something between the two. “Kid, I…I shouldn’t have kissed you.”

You swear you can hear the sound of your heart cracking in two. “But I wanted you to,” you tell him, a tremble in your voice.

“I know. You shouldn’t.”

Your throat tightens. “What do you mean?”

He finally looks at you then, and you see his blue eyes are filled with agony, his face lined with regret.

“I’m no good for you,” he murmurs. Your mouth opens, but he cuts you off before you can say a word. “I’m old, and I’m poor, and I’m goin’ nowhere in this life. I can’t — I can’t be what you need.”

“You don’t know what I need—“ you start, but he shakes his head.

“Yes, I do. You need a man that can give you the kind of future you deserve for pullin’ yourself out of the shit. Gettin’ tangled up with someone like me will only hold you back.”

You have to bite down on the sob threatening to burst from your chest. Through gritted teeth, you say, “That’s not your decision, though. You don’t know the kind of future I want for myself.”

“Kid, I’m an ex-con with one too many skeletons in the closet. I live on the fringes because that’s the only place that’ll take me, and I’ve got no way out of it. There is no future with me.”

“Bucky, you’re not—“ your voice shatters and splits. “I don’t care about any of that, ‘cause that’s not how I see you. You’re more than your past. What you’ve done doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to want more—“

He barks out a humorless laugh.

“Fuck, I know a lot about wantin’ more. It’s all I do these days, and it’ll all your fuckin’ fault.” His eyes flash as they find yours, vicious with pain. “I’ve wanted you ever since you stood at my door yellin’ ‘bout makin’ my sad, lonely, little life hell. Couldn’t stop thinkin’ ‘bout how I wanted you to do it, ‘cause hearin’ you throw a fit at me was the first time I felt excited about somethin’ in years. And when I’m not thinkin’ about it, I’m dreamin’ about it. About comin’ home to your sweet smile waitin’ for me, and I wake up emptier than I ever felt sittin’ in a jail cell because I know it ain’t real. You got your claws in me so deep that I can’t go a minute without thinkin’ ‘bout you. And I can’t do nothin’ about it.”

All the air has left your lungs, and Bucky’s chest heaves like he stole it from you. He looks like he’s on the brink of imploding, or breaking apart, or jumping out of the car and sprinting into the woods. You reach for him, the only thing you can think of to do—

He flinches back, turning to the window. “Don’t,” he mutters. “Don’t make this harder than it already is.”

“But it doesn’t have to be hard, Bucky!” you cry. “I want to be waitin’ for you, I want—“

“You don’t know what you want, but I promise it ain’t me.”

Tears prick your eyes, hot and painful. “Stop,” you whimper. “Stop tellin’ me what I want and don’t want. You’re not bein’ fair — you’re not even givin’ this a chance—“ He shakes his head quickly, meeting your gaze to deliver the death blow.

“You can argue all you want, but I won’t see it any different. I won’t trap you here with me. This can’t…this can’t happen.”

His words sting like a slap to the face; you reel back, pushing distance between you and him. Bucky lowers his eyes, as if he can’t bear to watch the fallout he caused. Another silence settles in the cab of the truck, this one heavier than the others, and thick enough to strangle you. You lean back in your seat, one hand on the door handle, the other pressing down on your chest, keeping you held together.

“I wanna go home now,” you whisper, blindly staring out the windshield.

He obeys instantly. Bucky’s silent as he shifts the car into drive, From the corner of your eye, you see his face is set in stone, a familiar look from the days he wasn’t speaking to you. You know what it means — he’s already shutting down, already pushing you out of his life again.

The drive to the trailer park seems to stretch endlessly; seconds feel like hours, minutes feel like months, ruthlessly challenging your inherent idea of time. When you crest the hill and pull up to your trailer, your body has gone numb from willing time to move faster.

Bucky avoids your eyes once the truck’s in park. “I’ll have your car brought into the shop,” he mutters, voice monotone and clipped. “I’ll drop it off tomorrow.”

Your lips press together to steady the tremble in your chin.

He fidgets in his seat, knuckles going white around the steering wheel. “I’m sorry.”

Your jaw clenches, your heart aches, rejection is a slow-moving poison in your veins. And you’re angry.

“Maybe it’s best if you actually stay away from me this time,” you say, ice embedded in every word. He flinches, but you don’t care. You’re sliding out of the truck and shutting the door on him before he can respond, not daring to look back as you trek through the downpour to your home. When you’re safely inside, you stand very, very still, listening to his car idle listlessly before he slowly drives away, taking your heart with you.

The worst part of it all is that Bucky is right.

Never mind the confusion over how a man that shunned you for your kindness could look at you like you were his last hope. Never mind the embarrassment of making the neediest sounds for someone that refuses to hear them again. Never mind the terrible grief you feel for something that almost existed.

What hurts the most is that he’s right. You’ve felt it in your bones since the day you signed the lease to the trailer — your future wouldn’t stop here. The miles you’ve put behind you don’t exist because you were meant to settle.

Make no mistake, you love the trailer, you love the diner, you love everything they’ve given you and everything they stand for. They bought you freedom from a life condemned to shitty boyfriends and stacked pennies and a lingering taste of resentment at the bottom of every numbing bottle.

But there’s more out there that you ache for; still undefined, still obscure, yet it calls to you in the quiet moments between work and sleep.

And Bucky…

You’ve had enough time to reflect on his words that you can read between the lines of them. His life outside of prison started and ends where he is now, whether he wants it to or not. His future has concrete guardrails that won’t budge for a whim or an opportunity, and most certainly not for a girl lacking direction with a history of going where the wind takes her.

You understand what he saw when you hovered over him in the cab of his truck, that look in your eyes that dared him to follow you into the unknown.

His life is figured out. Your very presence urges him to challenge it.

He’s the rock to your balloon. Better to cut the string now than let you wear yourself thin trying to take him with you.

Your realization makes it easier to avoid Bucky, not that you see much of him anyway. Your car appears in front of your home before your shift the next day. No note, no knock on the door, no indication that it was even Bucky who brought it back. You don’t consider tracking him down to thank him, and you’re not sure how you would: he starts leaving for work before you wake up, returning home only when you’re tucked into bed, like he knows your schedule intimately enough to avoid you completely. Remembering what he once said about watching you, maybe he does.

On Sundays, he’s tucked inside his trailer with the curtains drawn tight, his once-pristine yard slowly becoming overgrown with weeds and disrepair that is so unlike him, it would cause you worry if you didn’t know better. When the probability gods smite you both and you’re walking towards the mailbox at the same time, you stop in your tracks, eyes meeting across the park like magnets drawn together. You turn around and walk the other way before you can do anything stupid — like beg him to reconsider. You’d think it would feel good to turn the tables on him, but it feels like ripping out the stitches on a wound that’s far from healed.

Following the mailbox incident, you both become hermits, which is a hard role to take on in a community as active as this one. Donna’s already forced her way into your home multiple times, demanding your participation in some neighborhood event or another. You think if she asks one more time, it might just kill you to see the look on her face when you tell her no.

You escape to work when you can, picking up enough doubles that Tony pulls you aside and asks in his signature beat-around way if you need a loan. For a moment, you consider taking it and getting the hell out of dodge, setting off in pursuit of whatever it is that you’re chasing. But you wouldn’t know the first place to go — it’s hard to find treasure without a map — and abandoning your boss after taking his money seems like a quick way to put the journey to an end before it even starts.

So you tell him about the repairs to the trailer, and he shrugs to hide his relief before approving your fifth double of the week.

The days roll into nights roll into days. Your brain works through a constant stream of food orders and the future and instant coffee and Bucky. Only in the silence of your room in between wake and sleep do you let yourself remember his charged admission to wanting you, or the fantasized future he dangled in front of your face before snatching it away. Sometimes you can barely breathe for the weight of it all pressing down on you, curling in on yourself like he took a tire iron to your gut instead of telling you it isn’t meant to be.

But you’re a resilient girl. So you carry on, always aware of the option of a next step but never knowing what it is.

You’re coming off a seven day bender of double shifts when the next step becomes clear.

The drive home from the diner is silent — you don’t bother turning on the radio these days, and the views of the mountains and forests that once made you feel alive hardly catch your attention anymore. You’re too tired, too preoccupied, caught between your car and an imagined life where you go home to a trailer that isn’t empty.

But an empty trailer is what you’re expecting when you pull into the trailer park. You tumble out of your car, exhaustion sitting heavy on your eyes.

“Where’ve you been?”

You jump a foot in the air, a tight breath tumbling from your lips as you look around for the source of the voice. Bucky’s sitting on your stoop with his knees bent and a half-empty beer bottle hanging from his hand; illuminated by the moonlight, you can see that his hair is a mess, like he’s been running his fingers through it all night, and his face is severe with apprehension. You breathe deeply to settle your racing heart, but the sight of him has skyrocketed the beat all over again.

“Bucky,” you sigh — you’re surprised you could find your voice so quickly. “What are you doin’ here?”

His gaze rakes over you, from your beat up shoes to your hair falling out of its clip, before he takes a large gulp of his drink. “You’ve been comin’ home late. Later than me.”

You stare back at him, wondering where this is going, and not oblivious to the fact that you’d have to crawl over him to get into your trailer. Casual intention at its finest — he’s making sure you talk to him.

“I’ve been workin’ doubles,” you tell him, glancing at the door.

“What for?”

“Because truck drivers make great conversationalists.”

He rolls his eyes and sets the beer down, unfinished. “Don’t be difficult. Just tell me.”

A rush of anger surges through you at the familiar words. “I think I earned the right to be as difficult as I want.”

Bucky stands, taking a step toward you that feels like more than just him closing the physical distance between you. Your breath gets caught in your chest when you see the storm brewing behind his eyes.

“I know you’re mad at me,” he murmurs. “I get it. You can be as mad as you want. But I’m just tryin’ to make sure you’re okay.”

Your chin lifts. “I’m fine.”

He scans your face, searching for the lie under the surface. “You in some kind of trouble?”

A breathless scoff escapes you. “No, I’m not in trou—”

“You need money?”

“What?” Your expression goes sour. “Bucky, no, what the fuck? I don’t need money, I’m just workin’ more, that’s all—“

“Why?” he presses. You growl at him.

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“It’s none of your business, Barnes.”

“Kid, just tell me why and I’ll leave you be—“

“Because it helps me to not think about you!”

The outburst catches him off guard; he leans back like he’s avoiding the blast radius, a frown creasing his face. He runs a hand through his already-mussed hair, and it sticks up at odd angles that a part of you desperately wants to smooth down.

“I didn’t…” He sighs, hands on his hips. “Okay.” You cross your arms over your chest, suddenly finding interest in the dried coffee stain on your shoes. Bucky shifts his feet in the dirt next to them. Neither of you move, but you can feel his gaze on you again. “You look tired,” he says.

“Gee, thanks.”

“I just meant…maybe a break from the doubles wouldn’t hurt. You look dead on your feet. You gotta take care of yourself.”

“Right, because no one else is gonna,” you shoot at him. “I think I got it handled.”

“Kid…”

“I can take care of myself, Bucky, you don’t need to check on me just ‘cause you feel bad.”

“That’s not why I’m here—“

“Oh, yeah?” you cut him off with a surge of venom in your voice, watching as he fails to meet your eyes. “Why are you here then? ‘cause I thought I made it pretty clear that I want you to stay away this time.”

Bucky stares past you at the oak tree, his jaw clenching and unclenching in time with his breaths. “Yeah,” he mutters quietly, “you did.”

“Obviously not, since you’re here.” You finally have the courage to step around him, taking care not to brush his shoulder as you pass him on your way to the door. “Maybe third time’s the charm—“

Bucky says your name, painful yet reverent, and it cuts through the calm of the evening like a knife.

You turn slowly to face him, the keys forgotten in your hand. You didn’t hear him come up behind you, but suddenly, he’s right there, a foot away and looking like the remaining distance is torturing him.

“It doesn’t matter,” he murmurs. “You could tell me a million times over and it still won’t work.”

You inhale sharply. “What are you sayin’?”

He shakes his head, testing a cautious step forward, and the little gap between you shrinks. “I’m sayin’ I can’t stay away from you.”

Your heart jumps to your throat. “Bucky…”

“I can’t stay away from you,” he repeats, firmer, more certain now. “I hate myself for it, for not bein’ able to do the one thing you asked of me, but I feel like I’m dyin’ every day I don’t see you. And that makes me hate myself even more ‘cause I know I don’t deserve you — and you deserve more than anythin’ I could give you — but I lose all my fuckin’ willpower when it comes to you.”

His words land like a blow to your chest and a kiss to your cheek. Sharp yet sweet, violent yet comforting. You stare at him, lips parted with a hundred questions and a million emotions.

Bucky’s eyes meet yours as he closes the last few inches between you, calloused hands reaching for your face hesitantly, afraid to overstep, afraid to spook you, afraid to worsen the devastation he’s done. You think about the last time he held you, what it cost you to be haunted with that feeling of forever thinking you’d never get it again, and for a moment, every cell within you screams to push him away. Danger, danger, danger, your instincts tell you, reducing him to nothing better than the boys that have come before him, the ones that let your heart go carelessly only to yank it back when it was beneficial for them.

But this is Bucky. Not the pathetic excuses for men that potholed your journey here. Even when he broke your heart, he did it for you.

His fingers are gentle as you let him cradle your face, a passing look of relief turning his eyes a softer blue.

“I know I told you this can’t happen, and you told me to stay away, but I don’t have it in me to see either of those through,” he whispers, thumbs sweeping across your cheeks. “I’ve had enough of my own restraint holdin’ me back. I spent the last seven years convincin’ myself that I don’t deserve a good life because I threw half of it away for people that don’t give a shit about me anymore.”

He takes a deep, shuddering breath, and his eyes flutter shut at whatever memories haunt him. When he opens them again, his gaze is clearer, steadier, like he quietly made a deal with his demons to leave him be for the night. His eyes drop to your lips, just a brief glance that could easily be missed, but it isn’t, because you can’t take your eyes off him. Not when you can practically hear his heart beat in his chest, can feel the heat of him beneath his top, the rough skin of his hands reminding you that this is very, very real and not some imagined scenario you’re still stuck in on your drive home. His fingers tighten around your jaw and Bucky leans in to press his forehead gently to yours.

“When you said you wanted me,” he begins, voice rough and hushed, “it was like comin’ up for air after bein’ under for too long. You’re a livin’, breathin’ example of going through shit and still comin’ out the other side of it, and for the first time in years I thought maybe that could be me, too. But I panicked — I pushed you away like I already knew you were gonna leave because everyone else did. I’m more sorry than you’ll ever know for hurtin’ you like that. I’m a fuckin’ idiot. I’m a stupid old man.” He holds you closer, his grip on the verge of leaving marks. “But kid, I’ll give you everything I got, all the time I have left on this earth, whatever you want…if you’ll have me.”

The world tilts a little. You might have stumbled if Bucky wasn’t holding you like you’re the last light left before the armageddon. He’s so close that you can taste the beer on his breath, and you inhale deeply, drinking it in like it’s straight from the bottle. But a small voice is there in your head, providing clarity on the point of contention that drove him away in the first place…

“Bucky,” you whisper, pulling back. His eyes frantically dance over your face, brows furrowed. Your heart pounds painfully against your chest. “I think…I think you were right. What you said in your truck.” Your eyes fall shut. “About me wantin’ more than what I have now. There’s something else out there that’s meant for me and I…I realized I can’t leave it be. That I’ll do whatever it takes to have it.”

He inhales sharply, his large frame stilling against yours. You look at him then, and he’s stricken, balancing on a fragile fence between panic and hope. Your heart aches more for him now than it ever did while you kept your distance, for this rough, immovable, larger-than-life man. Despite the tears, despite the wicked words, despite it all, he calls to you. He calls…

You blink. “But it isn’t what you think.”

As you say the words, something aligns inside of you, a shifting of your soul. It settles comfortably, like it was waiting patiently for you to figure it out. What you’ve been chasing after all this time is no longer abstract or vague. It’s clear as day, as bright as a beacon, and it’s right in front of you.

Reaching up to cover his hands with yours, you thread your fingers through Bucky’s, appreciating the warmth and sturdiness of his grasp. He’s still looking at you frantically, like you might pull away at any second and tell him to get lost. You squeeze gently.

“This whole time I thought a better life meant gettin’ out of the cycle of hell back home. Leavin’ it all behind so I wouldn’t have the chance to become another sad statistic in that shit town, and makin’ my own way so I’d never have to rely on others who only saw me for what I could give ‘em.”

You shift closer to him, until your noses brush, until your lips are ghosting each other.

“And then I met you,” you breathe. “And I realized how lonely it is. I don’t know what it’s like to be loved or taken care of or given kindness just because. I wasn’t searchin’ for it when I ran, because I didn’t think it mattered — as long as I could dig myself out of where they tried to bury me. But somewhere along the way with you, it all changed.”

Your hands slide up his arms, slowly, carefully, leaving goosebumps on his skin in their wake. The tension leaks from Bucky as your arms wrap around his neck, a soft sigh escaping from his parted lips.

“The trailer and the job — you’re right, they’re not enough. They aren’t gonna give me the future I want. Because the future I want is a place to call home with someone who can give me what’s been missin’ from my life. And I want it to be you.”

A pause. Heartbeats racing in sync. Your eyes meet.

Bucky’s mouth is on yours before you can register him leaning in, and there’s an urgency to his kiss that you sends a thrill down your spine. One hand tangles in your hair, the other maps your body until it finds your waist and drags you closer as he pushes your lips open with his tongue. He moves differently than before, fueled by an emotion that doesn’t fall under a single name, but his determination is as tangible as ever. He’s taking what he wants now.

You pull away with a gasp, forehead resting against his. “Baby,” he murmurs, soft and husky, “it’s already yours.”

Your fingers find his lips and press lightly into wet skin. “You mean it?” you ask with wide eyes.

“I meant every word,” he promises. His hand tugs lightly at your hair, tilting your chin up just how he wants it. “No more stayin’ away. Couldn’t get me to if you tried.”

He seals it with a kiss, demanding and brutal, yet burning with his adoration. Your body’s pulled flush against his and it feels like coming home. Those hard planes fit against your soft curves like puzzle pieces that pledge a lifetime of coming together like this again and again.

You’re panting by the time you pull apart. Bucky’s eyes are half-lidded and full of dark intentions, but you can feel him holding back, testing his restraint, handing you the controls now.

It’s the easiest decision to make.

You pull at his shirt while slowly backing up the stoop. He follows, scooping up the keys you dropped before placing a gentle kiss to your cheek, your temple, your jaw, and unlocking your door. He pulls you into his arms once you’ve crossed the threshold, mouthing at the juncture where your neck meets your shoulder. Your breath hitches on little gasps and moans as his hands find your ass and massage it with interest.

Bucky walks you deeper into your little trailer like he owns the place, feasting on your skin and stopping only at the bedroom door. He pulls away to meet your gaze, and you see his pupils are blown.

“Kid, I’m not here just for this,” he murmurs, mouth hovering over yours. “I need you to know that.”

“I do,” you whisper while your heart swells from his words. “But I want this. I want you.”

He groans, backing you against the wall as his brow meets your temple, sighing against your ear as his thigh slides between yours. “I’ll be so good to you, baby, I promise. Lemme take care of you…”

Hands guide your hips down onto the rough fabric of his jeans, easing you across his thigh with a drag that sets off fireworks in your stomach. You breathe heavily as each pass of your clit over his muscled leg fuels the building heat within you. Bucky kisses the hinge of your jaw, the shell of your ear, whispering, “Fuck, I can feel you. Soaked already…drivin’ me crazy.”

“B-Buck— more,” you whimper as you roll your hips, searching for more friction. He grabs your jaw, something just short of gentle, and makes you meet his eyes as he presses you further into the wall. The arousal slides hot and sticky out of you, soaking your panties and sure to leave a mark on his jeans, making you glide faster on top of him. He groans when your mouth falls open in a choked gasp.

“You look too good like this, baby, gettin’ yourself off on me,” he breathes. “So goddamn pretty.”

Heat rises to your cheeks. You reach for him as you hit a new angle that makes your body sing, fingers curling in his hair to bring him in for a savage kiss, a lustful mark of new territory in your relationship; his thumbs dig into the crease where your legs meet your hips, and you can just feel the hard outline of his length straining against his jeans as it presses into your stomach, making your head spin. Bucky’s teeth nip at your bottom lip, pulling a whine from you that he swallows whole.

It’s almost too much. Like jumping off the deep end and not knowing how far down it goes. It’s terrifying, it’s disorienting, it’s perilous. But you still want to touch the bottom. You still want to know where this goes. You want more.

“Bucky,” you exhale against his lips. He holds you tighter. “Make me yours.”

His eyes flash with possession, with desire, with an enduring need that is rooted in something deeper than the lust you share for each other. It’s trust in its purest form. An exchange of souls, an agreement of devotion. Bucky gathers you up in his arms until you’re pressed against him.

“All mine,” he swears, rough and low, and carries you into the bedroom.

Bucky tosses you on the bed quickly before kicking the door closed and leaving the moonlight as the only witness to what comes next. When he looks at you, something’s shifted — something that makes the heat in your core rise to dangerous temperatures.

“Off,” he demands, dark eyes falling to your uniform. You push up to a sitting position, fingers trembling in anticipation as you slide the dress down your body until it crumples on the floor in front of him. Bucky kicks it aside, unable to look away from the sight of you in nothing but your thin bra and panties.

“Jesus,” he breathes, voice rough, licking his lips while he gets his uninhibited fill of your body. “Look at you.”

Your self-consciousness is short-lived when he leans over to press a tender kiss to your mouth, cradling your jaw like it’s a priceless treasure.

“So fuckin’ beautiful,” he whispers.

Your skin is set on fire when a large hand skims your bare thigh, pushing your legs apart until you can feel a cool breeze against the mark your arousal left on your panties. The vulnerability makes you gasp, but his touch is there to keep your legs where he wants them.

Bucky pulls back to watch as his knuckle drags across your center, teasing the ache just on the other side of the fabric that grows more insistent by the second. You’re throbbing for him, failing to hide your wanton moans as your pussy clenches around nothing but air. He moves his fingers gently over the fabric, finding your entrance and circling it expertly.

“This mine now?” he asks you, lips hovering over yours. You nod desperately. You’ve never been so turned on it your entire life. “Say it.”

You gulp. “It’s yours, Bucky. All yours.”

“All mine,” he echoes, “been wantin’ her for too long.” He traces your folds until he finds your clit. You cry out, legs spreading wider for him like he pressed the magic button. He swears under his breath before capturing your lips in another bruising kiss.

“Perfect girl,” he rasps into your mouth. You melt beneath him as he plays with your clit through your panties, a pattern of soft circles and hard presses that makes your toes curl.

But just as the pleasure begins to crest, his hand is gone. A sound rips from your chest, half-growl, half-whine, as you’re edged for a second time with no relief. Bucky just smirks and slowly pulls his shirt over his head, muscles rippling as he reveals his broad chest and tight abdominals, like a curtain being dropped for the grand finale. Immediately, your hands reach out to touch him, the sharp edges of his body, your lips pressing to the center of his stomach before you can help it, and you look at him as your mouth moves lower.

But Bucky cuts the trail off by sinking to his knees in front of you. “You can suck my cock like a good girl another time. Let your man eat first.”

His thumb sweeps across your jaw gently, then pulls at your bottom lip until you suck it into your mouth. He groans as you bite down lightly, tongue swirling its promises for another night. Bucky’s other hand finds the clasp of your bra, popping it open with practiced ease that should frustrate you but instead elevates your heart rate. Your bare chest is eye level with him, and he wastes no time admiring the way your body is illuminated by the moonlight.

“Fuck,” he breathes, and his thumb is tugged from your mouth so that he can cradle both breasts in his hands, the pads of his fingers stroking the delicate skin until goosebumps erupt under his touch and you’re arching into his hold. “Been hidin’ these from me,” he grumbles, thumb flicking your nipple. You whine when his teeth graze the other, soft and gentle, the bark before the bite.

“Bucky,” you whine, “touch me.”

“I am touchin’ you,” he says around your nipple, a smile in his voice as he sucks heavily at the skin. Your hips jerk up, seeking out some sort of friction that he’s not giving yet.

“More, Bucky, please.”

He mouths at your breast, confident, intentional, and mind-blowingly skilled, while his other hand squeezes tightly around the unkissed one.

“You beg so sweet, baby, but be patient f’me,” he mutters, switching sides. You’re inching closer to the edge of the bed, to grind against what, you’re not sure, but your core is dripping with arousal that snakes a heady trail down your thigh while your pussy throbs from the lack of attention. As he laves at your chest, you bury your hands in his hair, and he makes a small noise of satisfaction before moving his kisses lower, down your naval. He pushes you back slowly until your spine brushes the bed, a thin squeak leaving your lips as his hands find the juncture of your thighs and pulls them open wider to settle between them.

His teeth catch on the waistband of your panties. He looks up at you, and you’re outrageously close to coming just from the sight of it alone.

You realize he’s waiting for your permission, so you offer a frantic nod.

“Good girl,” he says through his teeth, pulling the fabric down your legs with swift efficiency until you’re completely naked before him. He sits back on his heels to stare.

“Don’t,” you whimper, eyes squeezing shut as his thumbs rub tiny circles that get closer and closer to your leaking center with each swipe.

“What?” he answers. “Just lookin’ at what’s mine.”

You can feel his gaze like a physical caress on your folds. It makes your back arch, your hips jerk, and he hasn’t even fucking touched you yet. A man who wouldn’t even meet your eye two months ago can’t look away from the most intimate part of you, and it’s making you come apart in ways that should require psychic evaluation.

“Hold still, sugar,” he orders, voice stern and hold unforgiving as he pins you in place.

“But—“

“No.”

You bite your lip, daring to lift your head and meet his eyes. They’re still focused on your aching cunt, watching as it drools so easily for him. And then he leans in.

Bucky presses a kiss to your clit, just a whisper of a touch that has you twitching yet again. But before the first noise of frustration can slip out, his mouth moves an inch lower, then another inch lower, a line of gentle pecks until he reaches your entrance and curls his tongue into you.

Your mind blanks out while your body reacts, thighs clenching around his shoulders, fingers twisting into his hair, every muscle in your body locking up. Oh.

He eats like it’s his livelihood, tongue circling your entrance before digging inside with a precision so intense, it’s like he already knows exactly what you need. His mouth dances there before his tongue revisits your clit, small flicks before heavy strokes of his tongue to get you writhing until the cycle repeats itself. The tell-tale coil in your gut tightens, your orgasm on the horizon.

“Taste so sweet,” Bucky rumbles, his eyes shooting up to find you already watching him. A dark look crosses his face, something you’ll remember for the rest of your life, before he buries himself back into your center. You whine, head falling back against the bed.

“How does it feel, baby?” His beard tickles the skin of your thighs. You pant and grip his hair tighter.

“S-so— so good—“

“Yeah? Can my girl take more?”

“…m-more?”

Bucky’s mouth is teasing your clit when you feel the blunt ends of two fingers circle your entrance. Your eyes pop open, and you manage to pull yourself onto your elbows in time to watch as his long fingers sink inside you, making your jaw fall open on a whimper. The feeling of them sliding against your walls immediately unlocks a new level of pleasure that is different from anything you’ve felt before, a level that you know only Bucky could have reached.

He curls his fingers, moving them in and out at a deviously slow pace while his tongue flicks faster and faster against your clit. A cry rips from your throat. The coil in your stomach grows tighter, hotter.

“Bucky,” you warn.

“Yeah, baby,” he mumbles between licks, meeting your eyes again. “Give it to me.”

A soft moan tumbles out of you. Pressure that is as cruel as it is generous snaps like a thread, and you come apart on his mouth like it’s the first time your body’s allowed you to feel alive.

“That’s it,” Bucky mutters into your core, easing you through it, “just like that, sweet girl.”

The pleasure strips you raw until you’re nothing but a live wire, twitching and moaning at every swipe of his tongue, every curl of his fingers. He sighs deeply into your cunt, contentedly, like your release was his release, too.

“Fuckin’ hell, woman,” he rumbles, forehead dropping to your thigh as his fingers slowly pull out of you. “Those sounds...Could make a man addicted.”

He pushes up from the floor while you struggle to catch your breath, watching you like a bird of prey that just found its next meal.

The golden skin of Bucky’s torso draws the gaze of your sluggish, post-orgasm brain. It grows closer and closer as he crawls over you, and your tongue darts out to wet your lips. Or to lick every inch of him. Either could apply here.

He settles between your legs easily, naturally, and your hands find his arms as they brace himself on either side of you.

“Be a doll and get my belt, yeah?” he murmurs against your ear, brushing a kiss to the shell of it. You shiver, your hazy brain finally registering the feel of his jeans on your thighs, and reach down with trembling fingers to unclasp it slowly, the zipper following with a sound that splits through the tension of the hot night air.

He kisses you deeply then, a strong hand around your jaw, your name whispered against your lips.

Your hands drift up to his shoulders, fingers curling into the ends of his hair as he pushes his jeans down, his boxers with them. Your eyes gravitate toward the hardness now tucked against your leg, and all it takes is a quick glance to realize that Bucky is truly a big man in every way. A whimper slips from you as you catch the shiny red tip twitch with need.

“What is it, sweet girl?” he murmurs, tilting your chin up to meet his eyes. There’s a light in them that suggests he already knows the answer to his own question.

You swallow thickly. “What if it doesn’t…”

He chuckles softly, brushing his lips to your cheek. “It will. You wanna be a good girl for your old man, don’t you?”

“Bucky,” you mumble shyly, cheeks tinted pink as something warm spreads through your stomach.

“I said I’d be good to you, and that’s what I plan on doin’.”

His hands move you effortlessly until you’re flush with him, just enough space for Bucky’s hips to rock with slow, shallow movements, his cock sliding through your folds and coating himself in your dripping arousal. You bite down hard on your lip when it rolls over your clit, and his eyes snap to your face, watching intensely as the mounting pleasure begins to show.

You let out a shaky exhale when he notches his cock at your entrance, lashes fluttering.

“Eyes on me, baby.”

And in an inevitable moment of tenderness, Bucky’s hand finds yours, fingers intertwining as he brings it up over your head. Then he pushes in.

You gasp, Bucky curses softly, a tension leaking from both of your bodies as he finds his sweet relief in your warmth. You’re stretched out right away, and he’s only halfway in, but it’s a fullness that makes you feel complete, rather than feeling intrusive. You tug at his hair, pulling him closer until he eases through your tightness and slides in to the hilt. Your consequential moan harmonizes with his.

With all the restraint left in him, Bucky holds still, feeling the walls of your pussy spasm around his cock. The pattern of pressure could make him blow his load right now if he eased up even an inch on his self-control, so he grits his teeth and focuses instead on the look on your face as you adjust to him. You’re so beautiful, even with tiny tears slipping down your cheeks, that little crease between your brow. And you’re such a good girl for keeping your eyes on him.

His good girl.

“You okay?” he whispers, kissing away the tear streak on your jaw.

“Yes,” you breathe, blinking. “It feels…you feel so good, Bucky. I didn’t…”

A sound rumbles in his chest as he tests out a soft grind. You squirm instantly, hips rolling to meet his for double the pressure. His cock touches something deep within you that makes the room blur, makes you cry out.

Bucky’s free hand pushes down on your hip. “Sweet girl, if you do that one more time, this is gonna be over before it even starts.”

The pout comes automatically. Bucky kisses it off your face with the eagerness of a teenage boy, sucking your lip and folding your tongue with his as he begins a snail’s pace of little thrusts. Your cunt still pulses around him like it did when he first slid in; it makes him shake as he tries pulling out, only to be sucked back in at the first chance. His hand tightens around yours.

“Oh, God,” you whimper when he gives you a harder thrust.

“Jesus Christ, baby,” he sighs, “so fuckin’ tight, tryin’ to kill me.”

“Keep goin’, Bucky. Harder.”

“Fuuuuuck…” He picks up speed, cock dragging heavily against your walls, hips snapping. You can hear it, the wet slick of your bodies meeting, and it makes your eyes roll back as you picture his cock drenched in you.

“Perfect pussy,” he grunts. “Fuckin’ made for me. Can feel it.”

Bucky’s cock throbs while he pounds into your cunt, and the rhythm transitions into something deep and desperate and almost out of control. All the while, you can’t look away from him; even as your body jolts and moves with every thrust, your eyes are glued to the broken expression on his face, the raw vulnerability of him seeking out his pleasure in you while on a mission to give you yours.

“Fuck, Bucky,” you moan, back arching as he hits your sweet spot suddenly. His mouth descends on your throat, beard scratching at your skin.

The weight on your hip disappears when Bucky grabs your other hand, pulling it up beside the first. His thrusts get impossibly faster as he holds you down, determined to find the sweet spot again, and again, and again, until stars burst in front of your eyes, drool spilling from your lips while you mouth half-formed words that don’t exist.

Bucky pulls back enough to take it in, eyes roving from your face to where your bodies connect to the hands he holds down, and back. “You look so pretty like this, baby,” he pants between thrusts. “All dumbed out on my cock, like you should be. Takin’ me so well.”

You whimper when you feel your stomach tighten, your muscles beginning to lock up in that way only an earth-shattering amount of pleasure can create.

“Gonna cum,” you whisper, the first coherent sentence you can think of. Bucky groans, placing a bruising kiss on your lips as his hips pummel into yours.

“Do it,” he growls into your mouth. “Wanna feel you.”

Your body trembles as it explodes and puts itself back together just to explode again. The corners of your vision go blurry. Your orgasm crashes into you with a ferocity stronger than the last, your pussy fluttering around Bucky’s cock.

His pace slows as you come back down to earth, but you’re barely given enough time to catch your breath before he’s slipping out of you and turning you over onto your stomach. You whine softly when he pulls your hips up, settling behind you on his knees.

“Goddamn, you’re a dream,” he mutters huskily, and you feel his warm breath fan over your lower back. A soft kiss is pressed to the swell of your ass before he palms roughly at it with a strong hand. “Should’ve taken you sooner.”

His hand slides lower until it cups your folds, fingers exploring and rubbing and circling freely, making you bury your face into the sheets when he brushes your sensitive clit. He learns what touch triggers the neediest sounds from you and capitalizes on it until you’re all but wriggling away from him. He catches your waist and pulls you back.

“No no no,” he soothes. “Lemme take care of you.”

Bucky slides a finger into your hole, then a second, just because he can, curling them up as if to hook you in closer. You cry out and he hums in response before his thumb brushes over your other hole, the one that’s tight and quivering from the pressure of his fingers working your cunt.

“Fuck, baby,” he breathes, pushing on the muscle enough to get you careening back into him. “You’d let me take you here, too, wouldn’t you? You’d be so sweet to me, so fuckin’ tight around me where no one else has been…ain’t that right, sweet girl?”

All you can do is jerk your head in a nod. He plays with both holes like he owns them, and at this point, he does. The pleasure that hadn’t really died down from your last orgasm is already on the rise again, spiking and cresting in ways you’ve never experienced before the more he circles that second hole.

“Bucky,” you gasp as he presses down on it; not going in, but just enough to break through the rim.

“Next time,” he says wistfully, pulling his fingers out of you. His cock is there to replace them in a heartbeat, and then he’s pushing back into your pussy like he never left.

“Shit—“ you exhale.

Bucky’s length feels different in this position. Longer, bigger, heavier. You don’t have to look to know he’s making your stomach bulge. He lets you adjust for a moment before taking on a pace that’s steady yet intentional. He finds his grip on you, one hand on the back of your neck, the other on your hip, pushing you when he pulls back, pulling you when he pushes in. Smack-smack-smack.

“J-J-Jesus, Bucky, it f-f-feels— t-t-too much—“

“You’re doing so good for me,” he murmurs, grabbing your neck tighter. “Such a good girl.”

He grinds into you, reaching a new depth that has you sputtering on a dry sob, pussy clenching down on him. Bucky groans.

“I know, baby, she’s been waitin’ so long for it. Gonna fill her up…make sure you’re mine for good…keep doin’ it ‘til everyone knows whose bed you’re in…”

His hips jerk suddenly, sporadically, a powerful thrust that bullies the deepest part of you and pushes you up the mattress. A breath expels out of him that could almost be categorized as a whine.

“Fuck,” he pants, “I’ll keep goin’ ‘til it takes. ‘Til you’re mine in every way. Never lettin’ go of ya—“

Your heartbeat thuds in your chest, in your veins, in your ears. You barely hear his words, let alone process them, but they still send a jolt of pleasure straight to your gut. You can’t think of anything but the drag of his cock on your walls, the stretch of your entrance at this new angle, the hold of his hand on your neck that suggests he doesn’t plan no letting you go anytime soon. And why would you want him to?

“Fill me, Buck…please. I want it…” you whisper into the pillows.

Bucky comes almost as soon as the words leave your lips, with a couple of quick, stuttered thrusts before burying himself so deep inside you, you feel him in your chest. His groan is long and ragged as the sticky release leaves his body and enters yours, settling with a finality that leaves more than just a mark on your insides. You sigh deeply as you feel him slowly relax behind you, the last of the shockwaves making his cock twitch as he pulls out. His spend leaks from your entrance and down your thigh, but a quick swipe of Bucky’s thumb returns it to where it belongs.

“Ahh—“ you hiss, but Bucky moves with purpose, gently hauling you up by the neck until you’re cradled against his chest, arms wrapped around your middle. His breathing is heavy in your ear.

“You good?” he mumbles. You only have the capacity to nod, sinking into the sweaty warmth of his skin while he places chaste kisses on your neck. “C’mon, then.”

He picks you up off the bed and carries you to the bathroom, letting you be for a moment to clean yourself up, and you know the image of his bare ass walking away is burned into your retinas for good. He returns with a set of panties and the wifebeater he was wearing before, now dressed in his boxers. He helps the shirt over your head, holds the panties for you to step into, and the act is considerate and intensely intimate, something you weren’t expecting even after the endless devotion you just received from him. His blue eyes watch you closely, softly, still dark from the throes of passion, but free from any haziness and uncertainty. He is where he wants to be, doing what he wants to be doing; there’s no room for doubt, not when you see him look at you like that.

A slow kiss is pressed to your shoulder once you’re dressed. He tugs you back into the bedroom, a possessive hand on the small of your back that guides you beneath the sheets. Bucky slips in behind you, enveloping you in his familiar scent of sweat and metal and evergreen, pulling you to him after so many days of pushing you away.

“Bucky?”

“Yeah?”

You bite your lip. “Was it really me yellin’ at you that did it for ya?”

There’s a small pause before you hear a soft chuckle, just a puff of breath on your skin.

“I’d be lyin’ if I said it wasn’t. But…it was also the before, and the after, too. Still bein’ able to have a smile that big and pretty after all the hell life’s put you through. After all the hell I put you through…it’s hard not to fall for that. You’re a…good person to be around.”

Your stomach erupts with butterflies, your skin zings with electricity wherever he touches you. His words are exactly what your soul craves, so much so that it hurts.

“Careful,” you whisper, “this is startin’ to sound like the sweet nothins you say you don’t give.”

You can feel his smile against your spine. He tugs you closer. “Don’t be difficult.”

“Me? Never.”

A few beats of silence pass, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to lie next to him without saying a word.

“I meant what I said,” he eventually murmurs, absentmindedly stroking your collarbone.

“What part?” you whisper, lips brushing his hand.

His voice is gruff in your ear, low and tentative. “‘bout not lettin’ you go.”

A smile cracks across your face. “Oh, yeah?…what about the other parts?”

He makes a quiet noise in his throat. “Y’heard that?”

You crane your neck to look back at him. He’s focused on a spot on your shoulder, smoldering intensity written across his face dulled only by a touch of sheepishness.

“I heard all of it,” you tell him softly. His eyes meet yours, dark blue storms drowning you in their path.

“Couldn’t help myself,” he says, licking his lips before placing a hot, open-mouthed kiss on the back of your neck. You bend toward him like a flower to the sun. “I want you waitin’ for me when I get home. I want you givin’ me hell for being late for dinner. I want you doin’ laundry in my underwear.” His lips brush your skin again, hands wandering beneath his shirt. “I want you keepin’ me up all night, lovin’ on me ‘til I know nothin’ but you. I wanna show you in every way I know how that I can be what you need.”

Your hand curls in his hair, forcing him to look at you. “You already are,” you whisper.

Bucky slots his mouth over yours with a groan, promising tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, with his kiss.

sammy speaks again: if I told you this took me two months to write would you believe me? 30k words too like I could have shortened it sammy let’s be real, but I think my body physically rejects the idea of not providing an encyclopedia of a build up. which this seriously is, holy introspection and emotions like can I write normally for once? anyway idk what happened to me but I’m just grateful I’ve finally broken through the funk!

good news is I feel way more open and inspired to write my other wips after signing the dotted line on this one. let me get through a couple shorties and then I’ll be back with one of those!

as always I appreciate all the love and feedback, and thank you again for following this blog❣️

[winteryn]

RAW & OLDER (ex)boyfriend’s dad!bucky barnes x female!reader [14.4k]

— ⟢ SUMMARY: you catch your boyfriend cheating on you with another girl at your neighbour’s halloween party. bucky barnes, his hot and thoughtful dad, is ready to take care of your broken heart. — ⟢ WARNINGS: 18+ MDNI; she/her pronouns for reader; mentions of reader's family; reader wears a skirt and makeup; original characters; age gap (reader’s in her mid 20s; bucky's 40+); cheating; light angst; emotional hurt/comfort; lots of praises and pet names; smut; size difference; soft dom!bucky; slight jealousy; slightly possessive!bucky; big dick bucky organization (🙂‍↕️); dirty talk; nipple play; oral (f receiving); fingering; unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it pls); mention of reader being on the pill; multiple orgasms; overstimulation; riding; caught in the act (the ex boyfriend overhears them 🤪).

A/N: I was too excited to wait until tomorrow, this was my first dilf!bucky story after all 😭 hope you'll enjoy!

The retail store is too bright and colorful compared to the stormy sky outside. 

You and your friends have been coming here ever since middle school. Back then, Yelena’s older sister was the only one with a driver’s license, piling all of you into her car to take you wherever you wanted to go. Halloween has always been your favorite excuse to spend time together, with Kate opening her doors for your annual sleepover: a night of mildly scary movies, gossip about the cutest guys in town, and enough junk food to leave all of you clutching your stomachs by midnight.

By the time you started high school, your older neighbor’s extravagant Halloween party had become the talk of the town. Hosted in her massive mansion, it was the kind of event people counted down to months in advance. You’d never considered yourself much of a party girl, but it was the perfect excuse to dress up and show off the elaborate costumes you and your friends spent weeks planning.

When college began, the four of you ended up scattered across different universities around the state. Nearly a year passed without shared laughter in the canteen and a morning dose of tight hugs to begin your days, until you finally agreed to reunite this October. It would probably be the last chance for you four to meet for a long time. With everyone caught up in their own schedules and studies, moments like this had become rare, that’s why you were determined to make the most of these three days together.

The store looks exactly the same as it did ten years ago: fake cobwebs dangling from the white ceiling, evil-looking pumpkins staring down at customers from the shelves, racks of masks and toys that once felt endless. Now, you swear everything seems smaller than it used to be.

The air still smells of dust and cheap plastic. Strangely, it’s that sharp, chemical tang coming from the latex masks lining the walls that makes the place feel so familiar.

The first room is completely devoted to rows and rows of children’s toys, while the second—normally a storage space—is crammed with costumes and accessories messily thrown together. From the ceiling, a dozen paper bats sluggishly sway in the cold draft slipping through the old windows, while somewhere on the counter, a motion-sensor witch clutches a plastic pumpkin-shaped bowl of sweets, cackling like a banshee every time someone reaches for a piece. The sagging orange letters spelling HAPPY HALLOWEEN are stuck to the front of the counter, crooked and peeling at the edges, and you’re pretty sure the owner has left them there all year round since you can remember.

It definitely looked scarier and quieter when you were younger, the fact that it’s located in an isolated area of the town near the woods didn’t really help. Now, it’s just the kind of place that tries too hard to be spooky, only to end up looking a little tacky.

Wanda has been wearing a perpetual scowl since she started browsing through racks of angel wings and synthetic, overly lavish princess gowns, searching for something less glittery and darker. A few rows over, Yelena tries to give you a heart attack by silently hovering behind you, switching between different clown masks each time you turn around. Kate, on the other hand, is determined to find a Wednesday Addams costume—she’s been completely obsessed with the show lately.

You already have your outfit at home: a short skirt and a lace top paired with sparkling boots, the colors an homage to your favorite Barbie doll. You’re still bitter about missing Rachel’s Halloween party because of the chickenpox you caught from Kate in senior year. You had everything ready down to the smallest detail, that Barbie costume was flawless. Instead, you spent the night in fleece pajamas, curled under the covers as you peeked from behind your pillow at Art the Clown mauling people on screen, while the muffled music from the neighboring mansion made your walls vibrate.

Still, you decided to tag along for old times’ sake.

“Black or maroon?” Wanda holds up two identical dresses.

Kate hums, absently twirling a wig between her fingers as she studies the fabric. “Black.”

“Maroon,” you say without looking up, inspecting a bloodstained lab coat before placing it back on the rack with a grimace. “It suits your hair.”

“Lena?” Wanda turns to the blonde, who’s currently trying to stab her own palm with a fake knife to test how real it feels.

“Is that even a question?” She lifts her eyebrows, gaze landing on her dark red coat.

“I know, but it looks cute in both colors.” Wanda hesitates, eyes flicking between the dresses before finally putting the black one back with a sigh. “Alright, I’m done. Have you found anything interesting?”

“I can’t believe they don’t have a Wednesday costume,” Kate frowns, rifling through plastic bags for the third time. “It’s like, one of the most popular shows ever.”

“You know online shopping exists, right?” Yelena shoots back, tossing the knife into a display bin. “Just buy a black dress with a white collar.”

“But I wanted the school uniform, not some generic dress.”

The blonde rolls her eyes, already fiddling with a pair of popping-eye glasses.

“Hey, is Nathan coming to the party?”

You flinch, almost dropping the fake vampire teeth in your hand, not expecting Wanda standing so close beside you.

“Yeah. He has some things to take care of at his apartment first, so he’ll meet us at Rachel’s house.”

A disgusted ugh echoes behind you, and that makes your lips curl into a small smile despite the clear vitriol on the blonde’s features.

It’s no secret that Yelena can’t stand your boyfriend, Nathan. They’ve only met once, but that was enough for him to immediately pick up on her dislike. He often tried to get an explanation out of you, but you always brushed it off, claiming that your friend is just like that.

In truth, you know exactly why every word coming out of his mouth sounds like a fork scraping against a plate to her ears.

During the first months of your blooming relationship, Nathan had a habit of disappearing, ignoring your messages for days—sometimes for an entire week—only to come back with grand gestures as if nothing had happened. It left you confused and anxious, and Yelena more than anyone spent entire nights on the phone trying to calm you down, warning you about how unreliable he was. After a while, you convinced yourself he was just the type to get bored easily, the kind of guy who discards the “old toy” the moment a new, shinier one comes along.

Then, just before Christmas, he stood at your dorm room door with the biggest bouquet of flowers you had ever received, and an apology on his lips. He explained—almost shamefully—that his behavior stemmed from his parents’ toxic relationship. He didn’t go into details, only that their divorce had been messy, something that left him with a warped sense of commitment. Still, he insisted he liked you, that he was finally ready for something real.

Yelena had been furious. Not only did you let him off far too easily, but there had been little to no groveling—nowhere near enough to make up for the emotional whiplash he’d put you through. She was certain, deep down, that he would hurt you again someday. And your best friend didn’t want to see you that miserable ever again, especially for an asshole like Nathan.

You can’t really blame her for feeling so strongly. She was the one who comforted you during those sleepless nights, listening as you tried to make sense of his sudden distance when everything had seemed to be going so well.

It’s not like she brings it up all the time, but whenever his name comes up, she can’t help slipping in a sarcastic remark or two—ones that, despite yourself, make you laugh.

“Oh, so Casper finally decided to show up.”

That’s another thing: she refuses to call him by his name. Back when you used to cry over him, she’d come up with ridiculous nicknames just to lighten the mood. Casper is the latest, because of how little you see him these days. Always busy, always somewhere else. Fleeting like a ghost.

“His professors are giving him hell, cut him some slack, Lena. He’s practically living in the library nowadays.” Wanda glances at you with quiet sympathy, nodding along as you speak. “I always tell him to text me when he gets home, but some days he’s so exhausted he forgets. And the few times he does remember, it’s like three in the morning.”

Yelena’s eyebrows lift at your explanation. For once, though, she doesn’t argue. She just shakes her head with a resigned half-smile.

You met Nathan at the beginning of your first academic year. He and his dad had just moved to your hometown; apparently, his father had grown tired of the chaos of the city and decided to start working from home. Home, in this case, meant his mother’s hometown—the place where Mr. Barnes’ parents met years ago, during a summer visit to their relatives. After marrying, they moved to New York and never really came back.

When the divorce happened, Nathan stayed with his father and eventually enrolled in the nearest university to remain close. Once your relationship grew more serious, the two of you started traveling back and forth together, mostly because he had a shiny, fully functioning car, unlike you. And that’s when he finally introduced you to his dad, James Buchanan Barnes.

Now, Nathan is undeniably handsome and after meeting Mr. Barnes, you can clearly see where he gets his looks from. The difference is... his father is on another level. It’s not just that he’s handsome. The man is hot. Yes, there are streaks of white in his beard, and crow’s feet appear whenever his smile softens his features—but those details don’t take away from his looks. If anything, they only make him more attractive.

He’s big, too: broad-shouldered, towering over you with an ease that’s both intimidating and… not unwelcome. And he’s a real gentleman. Every time you stayed over for lunch or dinner, he served you first, firmly refusing to let you lift a finger, insisting his son is more than capable of cleaning up after himself.

The first time he pulled out a chair for you, your heart dropped straight to your stomach.

Since February, your boyfriend has been buried in projects and assignments, and you’ve often gone back home alone. Because of that, you stopped visiting Mr. Barnes—it didn’t feel right showing up when Nathan wasn’t there.

That is, until you ran into the older man at the local supermarket one day, and after his usual gentle hug, he looked at you with his kind, blue eyes, his voice as warm as a cup of hot, creamy chocolate, “You know you’re welcome to visit anytime, right? It doesn’t matter if Nathan’s home or not.”

Despite your initial hesitation, you went. And then you went again. More times than you’d like to admit.

Conversations with him drift so effortlessly from ridiculous stuff he sees on the internet yet doesn’t quite understand, to more serious topics. At some point, you even started confiding in him. No matter the problem, Bucky always seems to know exactly what to say to soothe your worries. More than anything, he treats you like an equal, an adult. He doesn’t tiptoe around your age, or reduce your personality to his son’s girlfriend. With him, you’re just… you.

It’s almost unsettling, when you think about it—how often he’s been there for you compared to your boyfriend. Nathan replies late, often too late. There’s always an excuse: a project he still has to finish, a study session that ran too late, outings at the bar with friends he supposedly never sees. The times you try to ask about his day, he brushes it aside, steering the conversation back to you after a two-word response, until eventually he disappears again for hours.

At first, you had your doubts, and you hate yourself a little for it now.

You never told anyone—not even your closest friends—but once, you went to his faculty library. Not to spy, you told yourself. Just to... check, to make sure he was actually there.

And he was. Completely absorbed in his books.

You left with shame burning hot on your cheeks. That night, when he texted you to let you know he was home, you couldn’t even bring yourself to reply. The guilt only got worse when you realized how often your thoughts drifted to Mr. Barnes throughout your days. Over something small, like seeing a cat minding its own business in the streets—because he once told you he used to feed the strays when he was a kid, but his chance to adopt one of his own is now long gone since Nathan is allergic—or when you need advice on an assignment. He’s always there. Even when he’s busy, Mr. Barnes still takes the time to send a quick message, apologizing for delayed replies. You told him he didn’t have to do that, you understood he had work, responsibilities... Yet he just smiled and kept putting you first anyway.

During one of your weekly video calls, Kate asked about Nathan, mentioning she hadn’t seen him in the background for a while. You brushed it off pretty quickly, explaining how busy he’s been with his studies, and the conversation ended there. 

Later, while talking about food, you casually mentioned a restaurant Mr. Barnes had recommended. He’d made a habit of suggesting places he’d tried with his colleagues, knowing how much you and your friends enjoy exploring new cuisines together.

The silence that followed was mortifying.

Your gaze slowly lifted from the blanket you were knitting to find your friends staring at you, half amused, half shocked. Promptly waving off their nosy questions, you insisted you just saw each other from time to time. That he’s kind, funny, easy to talk to. Still, they teased you about having a tiny crush on your boyfriend’s dad.

The joke got out of hand the following week, when you accidentally admitted the blanket you were working on was for him—Mr. Barnes had discovered your hobby and casually mentioned that he’d love to have something made by you some day.

Yelena nearly lost her mind. At one point, she actually dropped to her knees in front of her phone, dramatically begging you to leave Nathan and just sleep with his dad.

You awkwardly laughed it off, your face burning as you resisted the urge to hang up and disappear under your covers.

In the end, Wanda stepped in, declaring there was nothing wrong with being friends with your very attractive almost-father-in-law. That helped… a little. Because you’re not doing anything wrong. You’re just two adults who get along, who often text each other for hours between a good morning and a good night. Who share an occasional cup of tea when you’re back in town that promptly turns into you staying for dinner because he is a great cook and always has a new recipe he found on Pinterest that made him think of you.

It just so happens he’s your boyfriend’s father.

You do like Nathan—a lot. And he wants you just as much. You’ve been together for two years now, for fuck’s sake! Life just… gets in the way sometimes. Things will settle down once he graduates in winter and you both understand where you want to go from there.

Every relationship has its ups and downs.

This is just a rough patch.

This year, your neighbor truly outdid herself. Rachel was the ultimate popular girl: indulgent parents, cheer captain of the only high school in town, and glossy dark waves that every girl tried so desperately to imitate. Everyone wanted to be her, but few had the privilege of sitting at her table. She wasn’t the stereotypical mean girl—just ambitious and filthy rich. Her pretty features had sharpened since the last time you saw her. After enrolling in one of the most prestigious law schools in the country, many thought her days of excessive drinking and wild nights were behind her.

Apparently not.

The rumors of her Halloween parties had spread far beyond your town. Everyone counted on her keeping the tradition alive, and now she returns each year, bringing more and more people with her, to host the biggest party in the county.

One look at the claustrophobic living room, now a dance floor, makes your lungs constrict, the strobe lights not helping at all as they blind you while flashing across the sticky floors. Costumes blur together: you saw at least a dozen demons, three cowboys, and Rachel and her two best friends as the iconic Plastics. Though every time you think you see the flash of Nathan’s leather jacket, it turns out to be a stranger. He had texted an hour ago that he’d just parked, having thrown together a leather biker jacket and black trousers to pass as Danny Zuko from Grease, but so far, no sign of him.

Laughter ripples through Rihanna’s Disturbia from a group leaning against the kitchen counter, the walls of the lavish mansion rattling along the pulsing bass. Someone spills a drink in front of you, narrowly missing your top. Your temples pulse with an excruciating headache when a group of guys holler like animals after completing a keg stand: they each wear a plastic bag with a condom sign attached to their chest, hugging each other in victory. Yet you can’t help but imagine how Nathan would’ve laughed at the scene.

Right. Nathan. Where the fuck is he?

“Hey!” Your shoulders jump at the shout over the beginning of Thriller. Yelena and Wanda appear at your sides, pulling you toward the open patio windows overlooking the huge backyard without much ceremony.

“Have you seen Nathan?” You ask while scanning the crowd by the punch bowls.

“Nope.” Yelena mutters something else under her breath, but you decide to ignore it. It must be another one of her tailored nicknames for your boyfriend.

The cold air sharply hits your face as they lead you outside, goosebumps prickling your skin.

“Why are we here? It’s freezing and I still need to find Nathan. He got here an hour ago and—”

“I’m starving!” Wanda cuts in, practically skipping across the grass. “C’mon, they’re grilling sausages! Hot dogs! Want one?”

You squint at her, confused. Her rambling is classic Wanda, nervous energy spilling out at a mile a minute.

“Wanda, stop, for fuck’s sake.” Yelena snaps, planting her feet on the ground firmly.

“What’s going on?” You glance back and forth between the two of them, but they are too busy staring each other down to acknowledge you, a silent conversation you can’t follow unfolding in frowns too subtle to catch.

Wanda shakes her head, addressing you with a polite, closed-lip smile. “It’s nothing. Let’s just eat.” She reaches for your hand, but you step back, glancing at the other.

“What’s going on, Lena?” Her jaw clenches.

“There’s no need to make a scene right now.” Wanda hisses.

“There’s no need—” The blonde sputters outraged. “This is fucking insane, what is your problem?”

You step between them, grabbing their wrists. “Hey! I don’t know what’s gotten into you, guys, but I need you to calm down and tell me what’s up.” You bark. “Kinda feeling left out here.” Your attempt to lighten the mood is entirely overlooked as Wanda tilts her head, silently begging the blonde to be patient.

“She deserves to know.” Yelena grits out.

“Not now! It’ll just make things worse for her.”

“You think it’s better if we wait?”

The argument draws a few stares from the patio. Kate, watching from the door, clumsily invents a story about a lost lipstick to defuse tension, quickly making her way to you as most people shrug and return to their drinks.

The air suddenly feels heavier, tension crawling up your spine and settling in your shoulders.

“Someone tell me what the fuck is happening. Right now.” Your voice shakes despite your effort to stay calm. “Is Kate okay? Did Nathan do something?”

Yelena simply exhales a long breath, pushing her tongue into her cheek in annoyance. Wanda takes your hand at once, her eyes pleading.

“It’s not about Kate. She’s fine. We’ll explain later, okay?”

“No,” you snap, wrenching your wrist free. “Explain now.”

Yelena huffs. “You’re just making it worse.”

Wanda’s auburn hair swings as she faces her, her voice turning serious. “Me? We know you hate his guts, Lena. You’ve been waiting for him to fuck up since the moment they started dating. But could you please put your fucking ego aside for once and think about her wellbeing? We’re in the middle of a party and you’re ruining her night.”

“Oh! I am ruining her night? You have been kissing his ass since the very beginning. And you talk about my fucking ego? You’re such a bi—”

“I saw Nathan upstairs making out with a girl!” The words pierce through the booming music like thunder.

Yelena and Wanda go abruptly still, all their annoyance vanishing at once as they slowly turn to face you with wide eyes. Kate is standing behind you, half-squirming as she watches you with something akin to desperation.

The ominous pit of nervousness you’ve been carrying in your stomach for the last hour suddenly doesn’t feel so irrational.

“I’m so sorry.” Kate whispers after a heavy pause, fingers fidgeting.

“Upstairs… where?” The words taste bitter on your tongue.

“In one of the bedrooms. The one closest to the bathroom.” She looks mortified, unable to meet your gaze.

You shove past her before you can even fully digest what’s going on, barreling through drunk students and ignoring their startled stares.

The strobe lights fracture the room into flashes of color—violet, red, sickly white—laughter spiking through the air in uneven bursts. The sharp tang of beer clings to everything, mixing with the artificial sweetness of fake fog that curls low around your ankles. It should feel alive, electric. Instead, it dulls to a distant, muffled hum as Kate’s words settle heavy and cruel deep in your chest.

Step after step, heavier than the last, your chest tightens, each breath catching halfway in, sharp and fast. For a moment, it feels like the world simply... pauses. It’s just you and the growing ache in your throat, threatening to spill over.

You hear Yelena screaming your name as you burst into the bedroom on the left. It’s empty, dark, and the bed is intact. Heart hammering painfully against your ribs, you storm into the next room, scaring a couple of people lingering nearby for a moment of intimate quiet. The door slams against the wall with a splintering bang, and in that moment you swear your heart stutters—one missed beat, maybe two—before it kicks back in, pounding wildly like it’s trying to break free. The sound rushes up into your ears, a violent, dizzying thrum that makes your head spin.

You stand there, frozen in the doorway, not knowing whether to scream, to run, or to crumple right there and let the floor open up and swallow you whole.

Maybe throwing up seems the best option as you take in the disgusting scene before you.

Nathan turns, confused by the sudden commotion. A girl is straddling him, but the light is too dim to recognize her, though you can clearly see how her skirt is bunched at her hips, exposing her lower half. The moment his eyes meet yours, he roughly shoves her away, causing her to squeal as she falls on the other side of the bed. Nathan’s weak voice calls out your name, but you are already turning away. 

The scene is quite pathetic, Yelena thinks, as Nathan clumsily tries to run after you, but he keeps stumbling into the pants creased around his ankles.

“Wait—fuck, baby wait! It’s not what it looks like!” He shouts as he runs in the living room, fingers clumsily trying to zip up his pants.

“Shut up, Barnes.” Yelena’s voice cuts sharp from the stairs, Wanda and Kate close behind her. The music fades further, letting nearby partygoers witness the drama.

With a sharp inhale, you stop right in the entryway, fingers curling into fists at your sides to steady the chaos inside you. You refuse to give him the satisfaction to see you cry.

In the spur of the moment, you decide to turn around, lips parted to tell him to go to hell, but a shriek erupting from the top of the stairwell stops you.

“You’re an asshole!” The girl stands there, mascara smeared and skirt hastily pulled down.

“Jesus Christ.” Wanda tiredly rubs the bridge of her nose.

The girl’s face seems familiar, but you can’t place her. Maybe she used to go to high school with you? One of the many forgettable faces of your past.

“You’re a fucking liar, Nathan Barnes. You promised you’d tell her about us. You promised me you’d leave her.”

Someone in the crowd gasps, but it barely registers.

“What the fuck, Nathan?” You grimace, repulsion tightening your chest.

“I—I didn’t…” His voice falters, head turning back and forth between the two of you, a mix of shame and panic flashing across his features.

“I’ll tell you what he did, since he’s too much of a coward.” The girl interrupts, slowly stepping down the stairs. “We’ve been dating since March and he kept promising me he’d break up with you. He told me he did it as soon as he got here... But apparently it was just another lie.” She throws him a look of disdain, arms crossed to her chest.

Since March.

He’s been dating another girl for eight months. No. He’s been cheating on you with another girl for eight months.

The floor crumbles under your feet.

The constant busyness, the unanswered texts, the lack of intimacy, all the weekends you decided to come back here and he never once seemed to care about tagging along, not even texting you to make sure you had safely arrived, knowing your car is literally a jalopy.

The image of her straddling him flashes behind your eyes over and over again, cold sweat rushing down your back as you realize how many times they have acted like that undisturbed, how Nathan was about to have sex with her while his girlfriend was in the same house, waiting for him downstairs.

You refuse to meet some stranger’s pitiful eyes, or worse… their small smirk, the amusement dancing in their eyes. Somewhere nearby, people keep laughing, dancing, kissing, while you stand there, in front of the person you wasted two years of your life on, feeling like the butt of a scornful joke. 

Guilt has been eating you alive since you doubted his words that day, yet he has been betraying your trust all along. Something shatters inside you at the realization that maybe everything you shared at first—the whispered plans for traveling the world together, the way his hands always found yours under the table, the warmth of him wrapped around you late at night—was never real at all.

You feel exposed, far beyond anything physical. The rawest parts of you burn under all these curious eyes, laid bare in a way you can’t hide from. You need to cover yourself, to disappear behind something—anything—a blanket, a jacket, a closed door.

Swallowing around the lump in your throat, you force out one last question.

“All the assignments, the projects—were they real at all? Or were they just a cover to fuck another girl behind my back?”

Nathan opens his mouth but doesn’t answer. His pleading brown eyes only stoke the fire in your veins, looking at you like he deserves your sympathy.

Shaking your head, you sprint toward the door, ignoring your friends’ desperate calls of your name. They try to reach you, but there’s too many people gathered there to watch the scene like a movie. By the time Yelena, Wanda, and Kate get to the front yard, you’ve long vanished into the dark.

Yelena curses out loud in Russian, stomping back inside to give that asshole a piece of her mind, and Wanda and Kate can only hurry after her, trying to stop the blonde from sending Nathan to the hospital.

Walking in the biting October cold clears your mind a little, even as the tears keep flowing. You hadn’t even noticed them until you had to slow down, your feet hurting in those damn boots. Sniffling, you keep your head down; despite being alone in the dark, that mix of humiliation and disbelief still makes your skin burn in shame. You didn’t do anything wrong, yet thoughts of how stupid you’ve been cloud your mind.

How could you have been so blind? All the signs were there, and you chose to ignore them.

That girl… she went to your university, which is why she felt so familiar. She’s pretty, you can’t deny it. And yet, was that enough for you to deserve that? Was she funnier than you? More caring? Better in bed? What were you lacking? You’ve always considered yourself average-looking—decent, sure, but not someone guys have ever fought over. You flirted, went on a few dates, but it never went beyond that. Maybe someone had a crush on you at some point, but you never knew.

It hurt your confidence, of course, but then Nathan happened, and that was your first mistake, probably—tying your self-worth to the way he treated you.

And now you can’t even go home and cry yourself to sleep. Kate was the only one with a purse, so you left all your belongings with her, except for your phone since you were waiting for Nathan to text you.

Going back is not an option, it feels like walking into a cage full of starving lions, especially since Nathan will probably be there still—either with her, or already laughing the whole thing off. She didn’t seem the slightest bit fazed by his betrayal. If you were in her place, you’d be questioning him, wondering if you’d be on the other side as well someday.

You’ve seen it before. Your aunt was miserable after forgiving her cheating husband. He begged, cried, swore it was a moment of weakness. She was too busy with her job and he needed her, that’s how he justified himself.

So he fell into another woman’s vagina.

Your mom refused to speak to her for a while after her decision to not divorce him. Your dad then eventually convinced her to change her mind: that good-for-nothing was likely to do it again, and she couldn’t risk leaving her sister alone and vulnerable. Four months later, your aunt came home early from a work trip to surprise him—but she was the one whose heart fell to her feet.

He was in their bed with one of her closest friends.

After witnessing and experiencing that kind of pain first-hand, you can’t bring yourself to wish the same hurt on her. Even if she knew Nathan was already taken, even if she willingly started a relationship with him. But why would a single girl like her worry about your relationship when your boyfriend—well, ex-boyfriend—didn’t seem to care in the first place?

You sigh, thinking of your parents. They’re out of town for your dad’s birthday. You can’t call them at one in the morning to tell them what happened. It wouldn’t be fair; you know they’d drop everything to come home if they knew and you can’t ruin the rare time they decide to treat themselves. After working so hard, this trip is the only moment of peace they are willing to indulge in once a year.

The back of your hand brushes over your raw cheeks in a useless attempt to clean yourself a little, tears still clouding your vision as you stare down at your phone screen, your finger hovering over that one contact that could save you, but shame pins you in place.

How can you face Mr. Barnes? Calling him now doesn’t just mean worrying him, but also possibly interrupting his night with… well, a woman. He’s a single, attractive man with a big house all to himself. Nathan was supposed to stay over, so who knows what the older man had planned for tonight?

It also means telling him about what happened.

The possibility of him defending his son makes a lonely tear slide down your cheek. No, Mr. Barnes would never justify a cheater. He’s too smart, too emotionally intelligent for that, even if the cheater in question is his own child.

Taking a deep breath, your mind races, torn between desperation and hesitation. The thought of disturbing him like a little kid makes you want to crawl into a hole and never get out, but it’s freezing outside and you are starting to not feel your toes. Your finger trembles with indecision above the screen, until reflex takes over. It presses the call icon.

You gasp, quickly bringing the phone to your ear when it immediately comes alive with his muffled voice.

“Sweetheart? Are you okay? Do you need something?” His deep, serene voice eases the wild thumping in your chest at once.

Right, another thing about Mr. Barnes. He calls you sweetheart, and seldom, other cute pet names slip by that make your traitorous heart flutter and your cheeks burn.

When you sniffle, he calls your name urgently.

“Are you busy?” You swallow, biting your trembling bottom lip.

“No. Never for you. What happened? Do you need me to come get you?”

You nod, then let out a frustrated huff when you remember he can’t see you. The faint clink of keys reaches your ears, a small, shaky smile tugging at your lips. You haven’t even replied and he’s already getting ready to come for you.

“Please… if you’re not busy.” You mumble.

“I told you I’m not. Don’t worry.” You hear a door close. Moments later, his voice returns. “Are you alright? Are you safe?”

You glance around, telling him you’re sitting on a bench in front of Ms. Garcia’s house. From his silence, you can gather his shock—you’re almost thirty minutes away from Rachel’s place.

“Why are you there, sweetheart? Is Nathan with you?” His words are slightly distorted by the rumble of the car engine.

“No, I’m alone. He’s still at the party.” You shiver as the cold metal of the bench presses against your bare thighs. “And I’m alright. Just tired.”

He doesn’t need all the details right now. The least you can do is explain in person.

“Doesn’t sound like it,” he murmurs under his breath. “You’ve been crying.”

You simply hum at his statement, expecting him to hang up, but instead he waits, respecting your silence, keeping the line open rather than leaving you alone in the dark.

When the familiar black SUV pulls up in front of you only a few minutes later, your body reacts instinctively. You hang up and watch as Mr. Barnes steps out. Before you can even find the right words to thank him, he’s around you, holding you close against his broad chest. Your lips part to whine out a pathetic apology, but the sound dies in your throat. Tears fall again, soaking his shirt.

“I’m so sorry… I didn’t know who to call,” you sniffle, swallowing an embarrassing sob. “My parents are out of town and Kate has my keys, but I didn’t want to go back there—”

“Hey, hey.” He gently pries your head away with a hand on your cheek, enough to examine your devastated eyes. “I’ve always told you I’m here if you ever need something. Anything. So don’t you dare apologize. I’m so proud you remembered that and called me, sweetheart.”

Your gaze drops at once on a random spot on his neck, unsure what to say next.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” His other hand cradles your left cheek now, thumbs brushing away the lingering tears at the corners of your eyes. You shake your head lightly, jaw tightening at the thought.

“Alright, alright. We’ll go at your pace.” He frowns. “Do you want to come home? It’s freezing and you’re—”

The next words die in his throat as his blue eyes sweep over your body like they are acknowledging the rest of you for the first time that night. Now you feel so foolish for not bringing a jacket. Despite the cold, you’d known Rachel’s house would feel like a furnace, packed with sweaty dancers and drinkers. A dramatic escape in the middle of the night was not in your plans and yet here you are.

Even in the middle of your internal scolding, you can easily notice how Mr. Barnes blinks, seemingly snapping out of whatever thought had caught his entire attention, only to quickly glance back up at your face. Being under the lamppost, it’s easy to spot the blush creeping across his cheeks.

You’re his son’s girlfriend, of course he would feel awkward with you so close and barely covered.

“I guess you didn’t want to hide your pretty outfit.” He comments instead, amusement lacing his tone. Your eyes widen. “You’re always beautiful, by the way. A jacket wouldn’t have ruined it.” He winks as his hand comes to rest on your back, guiding you toward his car. You’re still processing his tone and its meaning as he opens the passenger door to help you inside.

He’s never explicitly called you beautiful before, compliments used to stop at your outfits or your makeup.

Once inside, the engine hums to life, but before he takes care of anything else, he makes sure to turn on the heat. You shiver, muscles slowly loosening as the warmth seeps through your chilled body.

“Better?” He glances at you, receiving a simple, grateful nod as answer.

“Fuck, should have thought about bringing you one of my jackets.” He was probably talking to himself but you catch it anyway, pressing your palms lightly to your thighs. It’s just a jacket—nothing grand—but the thought behind it makes you breathe slightly more easily.

Bucky maneuvers the vehicle on the roadway, unhurriedly driving back the way you came from. A sense of dread abruptly washes over you at the realization that you are about to pass by your neighborhood, right in front of Rachel’s house. You try to be as subtle as possible when you slide down the seat, at least to not be completely recognizable from the outside, your head turning toward the window as if that could be enough to disappear completely. Bucky notices anyway, keeping a careful eye on you as you drive by the mansion looming chaotic in the dark.

“I saw Nathan with another girl.” You blurt out once Rachel’s house is at a safe distance. The car swerves slightly, your stomach twisting with a hint of fear as your hand instinctively reaches to grab the edge of the seat. Your worried eyes fly to Bucky, meeting his shocked gaze.

“Sorry, I’m so sorry.” He clears his throat. “How…”

You take a deep breath, eyes back on the road, feeling too ashamed to face him.

“Kate caught him in one of the bedrooms upstairs. When I opened the door… a girl was straddling him. They were kissing, and… probably about to do other things.” Another lump swells in your throat. “Apparently all those assignments and projects were just an excuse.” You scoff out a humorless laugh, the back of your hand already brushing a lonely tear away.

“They’ve been together since March, and he promised her he’d break up with me soon.”

Each word feels like biting broken glass.

From your peripheral vision, you see his body stiffen, knuckles whitening around the steering wheel. Apologies form on your tongue as a reflex, but why? For calling him to pick you up? For having to be the one to reveal such a horrible thing about his son? You don’t even know, yet his crushed expression is enough to make you feel terribly guilty.

Then, something happens that completely catches you off guard.

His hand reaches across the console, covering yours, fingers intertwining.

Mr. Barnes is good with words, yet that simple gesture is worth more than any speech right now. Tears come back with such a violent speed that shocks even you, but you try your best to bite them back, mortified about the whole situation.

Confused, you watch the car steer, eventually coming to a stop at the roadside. Bucky exhales heavily once the engine is turned off, plunging you both into darkness. His body then turns toward you as best he can in the cramped space.

“Can you look at me, sweetheart? Please?” His voice is barely a murmur, fingers squeezing yours gently. Reluctantly, you lift your chin, catching him in your peripheral vision. “Thank you.”

“I know you’re hurting right now, and words might feel meaningless in the face of this betrayal, but please… listen to me carefully.” His blue eyes burn fiercely. “Sometimes people don’t know how to treat something good the way it deserves, but that says nothing about its worth. I’m deeply disappointed in Nathan. I didn’t raise him to behave like this, and believe me, I will have words with him. Very strong ones.” You squeeze his hand back, the corners of your lips lightly lifting despite pain stabbing your chest.

“Don’t blame yourself, Mr. Barnes. Your words are never meaningless to me,” you murmur, frowning at your knees. “He is an adult, responsible for his own actions, and still chose to do this. He could’ve ended things with me before starting something with her, but instead took the easy way out without remorse.”

Bucky slumps back against the seat with a slow sigh, staring absent-minded at the dashboard. Eventually, a humorless laugh falls from his lips. “I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

Your eyebrows jump up at the bitterness in his tone, and he allows a rueful smile. “My ex-wife cheated on me. That’s why we divorced.”

Your jaw drops.

“Nathan was thirteen and he still had to witness how much his mother’s choices affected me. It wasn’t easy for him. I never spoke badly of her, never kept him from seeing her... but he still chose to stay with me.” He sighs tiredly, head softly falling back against the headrest. “They only went back on speaking terms a couple years ago. Nathan felt like she betrayed him as well… refused to even text her at Christmas.” His neck turns just enough to look at you. “Has he ever told you that?”

You shake your head, swallowing.

“I’m—I’m so sorry, Mr. Barnes. I didn’t know… Nathan never talks about his mom, much less about your divorce.” Your words are not louder than a whisper.

His hand squeezes yours. “No need to apologize, sweetheart. The scars are there, but they don’t hurt anymore.”

Mr. Barnes straightens up after that, looking more resolute. “My point is, I’ve been through that kind of betrayal. For a long time, I was miserable, frustrated with her for ruining what we had, and with myself for missing the signs. And Nathan… he was the only good thing to come out of that marriage.” His gaze is fixed on yours with newfound strength, his voice tender. “Some days you’ll be angry at the world. You’ll stay in bed and cry your heart out, you’ll even miss the happy moments with him. But it won’t last forever.”

You clear your throat at that, staring down at the glove box for what feels like minutes. “Is it wrong,” you start quietly. “That I’m more upset about him betraying my trust than actually losing him?”

“What do you mean?” He tilts his head slightly, the simple gesture letting you know he’s here for you, ready to listen.

“He was always busy, and deep down I knew something was off. I guess… unconsciously, I’ve been trying to distance myself emotionally so I wouldn’t get hurt.” Your eyes widen at once, quickly trying to correct yourself as you realize you are still talking to his dad. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I liked Nathan and I’m shaken by what he did. He built a whole, new relationship behind my back. But…” You sigh, shoulders falling in dejection.

“I’m not actually sad about losing him.” You whisper. Saying that out loud only makes you feel more uncomfortable, causing you to shift your weight in your seat in a last attempt to ground yourself. “I don’t even know if I’m making any sense right now.”

“You’re angry because he made you doubt your self-worth.” He says softly.

“Yes!” You exclaim, facing him with surprise.

Bucky nods pensively. “And you’re upset because he betrayed your trust.”

“Exactly.” The dam breaks. “I’ve been feeling guilty since that day I followed him to the library to see if he was actually there to study. I felt awful for a whole month! I was doubting all the work his professors piled on him while he was breaking his back on those damn books. But in reality he was just fucking someone else the whole time.” Your hand flies to your mouth as you hear him chuckle, eyes wide at your own honesty. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to be so crude.”

“Don’t you dare apologize. I feel so bad whenever I curse around you.”

You share a soft, meaningful laugh, before the car falls into a comforting silence.

“Thank you, Mr. Barnes.” You murmur, taking a deep breath. He returns your smile, squeezing your fingers once more before starting the engine.

“You know I’m here for you. Always.”

He claps his hands lightly, and somehow it feels like that dark cloud pressing on your head has finally lifted. “C’mon, let’s get you home so you can get more comfortable and rest. You had a long night.”

“Are you sure you’re not busy? I don’t want to crash your free night—”

“Are you kidding? I love your company. And you didn’t interrupt anything, I was just watching a movie and eating some leftover candy, waiting for a text that you got home safely.”

Once the car is parked in its usual spot, Mr. Barnes is quick to get out and jog to your side to open your door. You whisper a shy thank you, still not used to all these caring gestures.

“Alright, here we are.” He breathes out, shoulders relaxing as if the familiar smell of his home alone is enough to soothe any worries. He leaves his sneakers in the shoe rack by the entrance and you follow suit, placing your boots neatly in the space he vacated for your shoes long ago, back when Nathan had started bringing you over more frequently.

“Are you hungry? Wanna shower first?”

You press your palm to your temple, eyes closing briefly. “A shower would be perfect. I feel sweaty from the party and I’m pretty sure my clothes still smell of weed.”

He doesn’t ask if you drank—he knows you despise the taste of alcohol, but also any type of substance that could make you lose control. He simply leaves a glass of water and some Advil on the kitchen counter, then jogs upstairs to grab some clean clothes for you. You take your time finishing the glass, savoring the simple act of rehydrating after walking and crying for so long in the cold.

Once you are alone in the bathroom, the reflection in the mirror makes you flinch. Your makeup is completely ruined: lipstick smudged at the corners, eyeshadow streaked under your eyes, mascara melted. The thought of Mr. Barnes seeing you like this has you shuddering in shame, but you push the embarrassment aside for now. You’re too drained.

A sealed bottle of micellar water and a package of cotton pads on the counter catch your eye immediately. With a relieved sigh, you remove the ruined makeup, silently making a mental note to thank him for his thoughtfulness.

The warm water cascading over your skin and the floral scent of the products tidily lined up on the shower caddy are enough to ease the strain in your muscles. Once dry, you pull on the black shirt he left on the small stool and a pair of boxers, adjusting them according to your comfort. You are actually so relieved he provided you with his own clothes, instead of Nathan’s. Making sure you’re presentable enough before heading downstairs, you glance at your reflection in the mirror one last time, before you have to take a second look. Because on the far left of the counter sit unopened some products you recognize too well: a moisturizer for your skin type, a gentle cleanser, some neutral-smelling deodorant, and a purple toothbrush. All pristine and unopened.

Did he buy all this for you? Even after nearly a year since the last time you slept here?

Your chest tightens at the thought of someone caring enough to remember such simple, forgettable things about you, taking a deep breath before diving into your skincare routine.

When you enter the kitchen, the breathtaking sight of Mr. Barnes’ broad back makes you pause momentarily. The domesticity of it all—him cooking for you, the quiet familiarity of being surrounded by his smell in his home—fills you with a strange fuzzy feeling that leaves your skin pleasantly warm and tingly. You’ve never been here at this time of the day, alone with him, clad in his clothes.

Turning around, he places the plate he was previously arranging on the table, before he glances up at you. Smiling, his lips part as if he wants to say something, but the words die on his tongue when his blue eyes fall on your naked legs. Clearing his throat, the man abruptly turns back around to swipe the counter.

“Are you feeling better?”

“Yeah. Thank you for the clothes.” You sit, eyeing the plate with interest. “And the sandwich.” You add with a smile. Your stomach aches a little from all the sugary soft drinks, so a proper meal will only do you good.

“They look good on you.” He mumbles, glancing down. Then, with a playful smirk. “Still, I miss the Barbie outfit.” You giggle, unsure whether he’s teasing or truly means it.

“Oh, and the hygiene products—thank you for those as well. When did you get them?” You quip, devouring half of the bread as if you haven’t eaten in ages. 

“I’ve been stocking them since you started staying over, just in case you forgot something.” He shrugs with another effortless smile.

Bucky knew you were going to spend multiple nights here and wished for you to be comfortable and safe in his home. Simple as that.

You had to pack an overnight bag with all your things whenever you went over to Nathan’s apartment. It never occurred that you could just leave something behind, because it was so sporadic for you to spend the night there. Plus, he lives with three other people, so you didn’t want to intrude. Yet, now that you’re realizing how much Mr. Barnes has been going out of his way to take care of you, you can’t help but think about how many things Nathan took for granted.

Only when you finally settle on the sofa do you realize how much your body has been hurting from all the dancing and the walking. It instantly becomes one with the cushions.

Your phone lights up once on the coffee table, half of Wanda’s message visible from here. You texted the group chat to let them know you’re safe with a friend. Yelena will understand immediately, you are certain of that. Your eyes mindlessly catch a really sorry, but you don’t have the energy to deal with the situation right now. They know you’re alright and sheltered from the cold, and that’s enough for tonight.

The TV drones on in the background; a mediocre horror movie is playing on cable, but you can’t bring yourself to focus on it—or anything else, for that matter. Not when Mr. Barnes is sitting comfortably beside you, the warmth of his body tempting you to move closer. For a moment, it feels like he’s glancing at you as intently as you’ve been watching him.

The moment you properly look up and he doesn’t shy away, the air between you hums with an unspoken, charged tension. You must be imagining things, half delirious from exhaustion, because he keeps glancing back and forth between your eyes and your lips, something akin to desire burning hot in his eyes.

You don’t know who leans in first, but suddenly the space separating you disappears. The first touch is tentative, a timid brush of hands, and then, as soon as the tips of your noses touch, he is pressing against you like he’s been craving your lips for ages. One of his hands cups the back of your head, guiding you closer until your fingers tangle in his shirt.

It shouldn’t feel this good. It shouldn’t feel this right. It shouldn’t...

It shouldn’t happen.

“Wait—” You gasp, abruptly pulling back. Your eyes snap open, staring at him with horror dawning on your features. “W—What… what are we doing?”

“Shit,” Bucky mumbles under his breath, chest heaving as he tries to regain a crumb of control on his raging heartbeat. “I’m—I’m so sorry.”

“Oh my God, I’m a terrible person!” You slump forward, hiding your face in your hands as hot tears threaten to spill again.

“Hey, c’mon now sweetheart.” His shaky palm smoothes over your back. “Why would you be a terrible person? You did nothing wrong.”

Your head snaps towards him, regarding him with red and glassy eyes.

“I just kissed my ex-boyfriend’s dad!”

“If anything, I kissed you.”

“We both leaned in!”

Bucky moves closer, taking your other hand in his. “Okay, okay. Let’s take a deep breath now—”

“Oh God, if Nathan finds out—”

A firm call of your name has your shoulders fall down in defeat. Bucky’s hand travels to the back of your neck, gently turning your face until you are forced to look at him.

“You know you don’t owe him anything, right?” His voice is grounding, calm, but it’s not enough to quell the storm in your head.

“Why are you so calm? You’re his dad! I shouldn’t feel—” You pause abruptly, swallowing thickly. The way his eyes are wide with hope makes you want to sob in his arms.

“Feel what?” He urges, squeezing your hand.

“I…” 

“Feel what, sweetheart?” Shame keeps your throat closed, physically unable to utter any sound. So Bucky takes the matter into his own hands, cradling your cheeks with both rough palms.

“I’ve wanted to kiss you since the day you ran in here, smiling about your A on that paper about online language evolution you spent weeks stressing over.” Bucky admits softly. Your breath hitches.

“You looked at me with stars in your eyes,” he continues with a proud smile. “And I felt so lucky to be part of such a happy moment for you. And then you hugged me and believe me, I tried to ignore it, but I just felt… complete.”

His voice drops to a whisper. “I felt like a dirty pervert whenever my eyes fell on the curve of your waist. Whenever I imagined the adorable sighs you’d make against my lips. Whenever you strutted here in my house with those damn revealing shirts, jealous that the whole neighborhood got the chance to admire your beautiful cleavage.” Sighing, his eyelids flutter shut for a second, as if trying to focus.

“You were Nathan’s girlfriend and here I was, resenting my own son for getting to have you like this. For being the one to call you his.”

He lets his words hang, heavy with honesty. “I promised myself I’d keep my distance. But no one ever compared to your pretty eyes, your passion, your energy.” He swallows, kind eyes flicking once between your eyes and your parted lips.

“Nathan had his chance and failed to take care of you, to love you like you deserve. He was so cruel, baby, and I can’t allow myself to stand by and watch you suffer when I’m right here, begging you to let me show you how much I am enamored of you. Let me be the man you deserve by your side. Someone who knows what you need just by looking into your eyes.”

“And what do I need now, James?” His breath hitches, not expecting his first name to sound so right on your tongue.

Bucky, James, Jamie… He doesn’t care. He just needs you to demolish that already fractured wall of propriety that has kept you apart all along. 

“My lips on yours.” His blue eyes shine, smitten, and that is enough to give you that confidence boost you’ve been looking for a while. Your fingers graze his jaw for a fleeting moment, before they grab his shirt to pull him forward.

You meet him in an urgent kiss, your other hand tangling in his hair, pulling just enough that the guttural sound clawing out of his throat has your thighs squeezing close. His tongue roams freely in your mouth, until oxygen leaves you entirely. You kiss for what feels like a lifetime, your lips fitting together like the final two lost pieces of a puzzle.

His palms fondle the curve of your waist until he finds the courage to guide you on his laps with a hand on your thigh. A moan is muffled against your mouth when your covered core comes into contact with his crotch, his bulge the proof that you’re not the only one affected. One hand sneakily trails up your torso, resting ultimately on the side of your breast, a gentle squeeze of your flesh eliciting a gasp out of you, so you take the chance to grind down on Bucky, the teasing movement leaving him moaning under you.

When you separate, he regards you with blown pupils, his chest raising and lowering with ragged breaths. 

Your fingers finally allow themselves to do what they’ve secretly wished for since the moment you sat on this couch: starting from the gentle creases on his forehead, they tenderly trace down his dark brows, until they reach the sharp profile of his nose, his blushing cheekbones, the trim stubble on his jawline. His mouth parts just a fraction when your thumb strokes his bottom lip, his next breath shaky, frightened to interrupt this sublime, quiet connection. 

“You’re stunning, James.” You utter softly with a faint smile. His eyes flutter shut with a sigh when your fingers move then on to his collarbone. Shivering, the older man wraps one muscular arm around your back, bringing you close, until he can comfortably lean in to return the favor, lavishing the column of your throat with wet kisses. Your head falls back, brokenly gasping each time his teeth gently graze your skin.

“You’re driving me crazy with all these cute, sinful sounds.” He growls, a grin blooming on your mouth at his poorly concealed desperation. The hand firmly resting on your ribs slowly travels down to your side, leaving a trail of goosebumps behind; then over your half-bare thighs, until it lands on your covered ass. Your gasp gets promptly swallowed by his mouth when he hungrily squeezes the flesh, encouraging the circular movements of your hips against his erection. The sound of his low groan makes your pussy throb, suddenly shifting your focus on the embarrassing dampness of the boxers you’re wearing.

When was the last time someone touched you as if you were their most precious treasure?

This time your kiss is more animalistic, all teeth and tongue, than the ones you previously shared, a testament of your growing arousal. 

“Baby,” he breathes out, cradling your cheek to assure you’re making eye contact. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, you know that, right?”

“Mmh?” Your movements are a little more lethargic after the way his hands have gently played with your curves, your fingers weakly curling into the fabric covering his broad shoulders. The ghost of his palms on your chest and thighs still tingles on your skin, and you slightly tilt your head when he starts talking again, regarding him with half-lidded eyes.

“We can do whatever you want. You wanna watch a movie? I’m already opening Netflix. You wanna sleep by yourself? I’ll make the bed in the guest room right away. We can cuddle all night if you’d let me—” 

“What if I want you to fuck me?” The words feel like cotton candy in your mouth, yet you don’t miss the way his eyes widen.

There is a brief, meaningful pause.

“Are you sure?” His voice shakes a little as his hands squeeze your hips. 

“Please.” Your sigh almost has him maneuvering you on your back to see what other sweet sounds he can coax out of you. Just for him.

“Yeah? You’ve been thinking about it, sweetheart?” You simply hum, slowly nodding. “About all the ways I could make you come on my tongue?” He whispers, towering over you as his firm fingers keep your chin raised, preventing you from hiding.

Squirming in his lap, you are forced to look him in the eye as your slick steadily soils his boxers, cheeks scorching hot with a hint of mortification.

“Did you think about me when you were fingers deep into your sweet pussy? Imagining it was my cock making you scream?” He continues calmly. “Did you come like a good girl with my name on your lips, mmh?”

You whimper, nodding jerkily. “I was... so lonely.”

“Well,” he chuckles smugly. “You won’t have to worry about that anymore, pretty girl.”

A squeal claws out of your throat as Bucky lifts you without much of a fuss. You keep your legs tightly wrapped around his waist, your arms circling his neck with newfound strength. Moaning, he has to stop multiple times on the stairs as you can’t resist leaving small pecks all over his jaw, teeth softly biting the most sensitive spots.

It’s the first time you cross the threshold of his bedroom, yet it doesn’t feel as awkward as it should. 

You completely ignore the big walk-in closet and his en-suite bathroom as soon as you are placed in the center of the large bed, his six-foot frame covering yours without actually resting his full weight on you. Your lips meet again and this time, his palm travels under the shirt you are wearing, finding your bare chest. 

“James, wait—” You moan, hips twitching up as his fingers graze your already erect nipple. You’re now fully lying on your back with his hard body straddling you, but a weak push against his chest is enough for Bucky to immediately lift his torso up. 

“Are you oka—”

“More than okay, I feel so good. I just—I need to make something clear.” This time it’s you who cradles his jaw, swallowing thickly. “I like you, James. I think I have for a while, actually. It wasn’t just... pure admiration, or friendship. And this,” your finger wriggles between the two of you, pointing at your chests. “It’s not a one-night stand for me. I don’t want you to think you’re... some sort of revenge; much less a rebound.”

“This is a dream come true.” He mumbles against your lips, caressing the back of your head in awe. 

“I’m gonna make this right, okay sweetheart?” Bucky kisses your forehead, then focuses on both cheeks. “I’m gonna take care of you.” His mouth trails south, on your neck. “Play with your sweet pussy until you are nice and ready to take me.” Your eyes roll back, shuddering at his low voice whispering right in your ear.

“Worship your body until you are left shaking and gasping in my arms, orgasm after orgasm.” The fingers trailing up your thigh finally reach the inner part, his thumb stroking the wet fabric right where you need him the most.

“Then I’m gonna fill you up,” your hips buckle up, causing him to huff out a chuckle. “Yeah? You like the sound of it, angel? Like the idea of me stuffing you full with my cum until you can’t take a step without it sliding down your thighs?” 

“Bucky, please.” You breathe out, trembling fingers squeezing his forearm. 

His shaky exhale gives his excitement away, despite his confident and collected behavior. He makes sure to look in your eyes for his next words.

“Gonna take you on a date tomorrow, alright?” You simply nod, swallowing as his other palm traces your bare stomach, lifting the shirt up and up, until your ribs are exposed to the warm air of his bedroom. “Give you everything you deserve and more.”

His smirk grows when you whine at his hands moving away to take off your top. A low groan falls from his lips when your naked chest is finally exposed. His large hands cup your tits without much thought, the pads of his thumbs brushing over your nipples, eliciting another whimper out of you. You finally look up at his face, biting your bottom lip when you notice the way his eyes have turned darker, just like the ocean abyss, as they marvel at your breasts, perfectly fitting inside his palms. 

“Such gorgeous tits, sweetheart.” Your cheeks instantly heat up at the praise; overwhelmed by the sudden attention on your naked torso, you try to turn your chin away, but Bucky is faster. Cradling your cheeks, he turns your head until you are forced to stare right at him.

“None of that hiding shit.” He mutters against your breasts between kisses, your back arching the moment his tongue starts lavishing your nipples, until they are both raw and turgid. 

“You’re going to lie back and watch me as I ravish you, darling.” 

The boxers are suddenly discarded on the floor. It’s electrifying, being so open for Bucky to freely admire you. You’re quivering under his devoted gaze and tender smile, your breath hitching each time his fingers stroke a patch of burning skin as he takes his time in appreciating every single curve, every aspect that you might consider a flaw. To him, they’re new features to cherish. A way to learn you in the most intimate of ways.

You don’t even notice your eyelids fluttering shut. The rustling sound of fabric is what drives you to open them, just in time to catch Bucky throwing his shirt somewhere on the carpet.

He truly is handsome, with his strong physique and his muscles still defined, even with the small layer of fat covering most of it. 

With a lewd twist of his lips, his hands guide your legs up until your feet are firmly planted on the mattress and your knees bent. You are certain your heart is going to come out of your chest if Bucky doesn’t hurry up, rather focusing on pressing sweet, delicate kisses from your ankle to your thigh, just stopping short of where the skin turns wet with your arousal. His smirk is devilish when your breath hitches in frustration, taking his time in giving the same reverent treatment to your other leg.

“I’ve got you, sweetheart.”

By the time he finally lies between your spread thighs, you are a shaky, sensitive mess, palms instantly covering your face when his nose almost touches your clit as his thumbs delicately part your folds.

Bucky lightly gasps. “Look how pretty you are. Already so wet for me, pretty girl?”

To be fair, you think this is the most aroused you’ve been in your whole life.

It’s mortifying how quickly your first orgasm approaches, it only takes Bucky a few languid circling movements on your clit and you’re already clenching, shivering against the beige bedsheets. 

Breathy moans and whimpers fall from your parted lips as his fingers toy with your nub some more. “You’re so responsive, darling.” He marvels, licking his lips. “But not yet.”

Your pathetic whine once he focuses on your hole only fuels his teases.

“I know, sweetheart.” He soothes, a thick finger gently tracing up and down the seam of your entrance. “Just a little more. I promise it’s going to feel so good later.”

And just like that, one of his digits is inside you. Your limbs go rigid, before his other arm comes up to rest on your belly, his thumb finding a leisure yet firm rhythm as it rubs your clit, grinning when your body melts at once against the cool sheets.

You sigh at the heavenly sensation, and Bucky feels the exact moment it starts feeling good, your hole slowly making room for another finger.

“There we go, pretty girl. Is that the right spot? You are gripping me so tight, darling, bet it feels so good, right?”

Your eyes squeeze shut as you can only manage a nod, your own hand shooting down to anchor itself to one of his shoulders as the tip of his tongue replaces the finger taunting your nub. The first swipe makes your head fall back. 

“Bucky!” A loud moan resounds through the dimly lit room, making his cock twitch. 

“Jesus Christ.” His growl vibrates pleasantly against your tender core. “Has anyone ever tasted you, baby?”

“No!” You sob at his fingers pushing against your sweet spot. 

“Fucking fools.” He snarls. “I’ll take care of you from now on, sweet girl. You won’t have to worry about anything.” He rasps out, feral with the thought of you making a mess on his face now that he has been blessed with your taste. “Just need to sit back and be good for me.”

You sniffle, the muscle of your stomach clenching to keep your orgasm at bay. You’re completely enraptured by his gentle yet solemn voice, not so different from the way his fingers play with your body. You subtly rock back on them, drawing him deeper and deeper.

“Oh I know, I know baby. I can feel you want to come.” Your hips twitch up, but the arm blanketing your belly keeps you nice and still as he enjoys his meal. His stubble leaves crude marks on the sensitive skin of your inner thighs, the rough friction causing your back to arch as high as his heavy arm allows.   

“You know, sweetheart felt like the safest option.” He pants, coming up for air, his lips glistening with your arousal. “Now I can finally call you whatever I want.” 

“Baby,” he leaves a kiss on your mound, half-lidded eyes fixed on your crumpled features. You couldn’t be more grateful for Nathan to have his mom’s eyes. “Darling,” his lips move on your clit next, sucking harshly. “Pretty girl—oh.”

You hoped he wouldn’t notice the way you clenched at that, but of course the smug bastard does. 

“You like when I call you pretty girl?” You toss your head back as his thumb goes back to flick your nub. He can only coax out an embarrassed squeak that vaguely resembles a yes, but it’s enough to make Bucky smirk with pride.

“Yes, my pretty girl?” He relishes in the way you clench again, knowing you’re at your limit now. 

“Give it to me, angel. C’mon,” he growls, ravaging your clit with steady suckles. “I’ve been too well-behaved and patient.” 

Your head falls back against his pillow as your eyes fall shut, your first orgasm of the night hitting you hard and leaving you whimpering and dizzy under his palms. Your body tightens as wave after wave of pleasure seeps deep into your bones. Bucky groans at the sight of your pussy practically swallowing his damp fingers. You have never felt so good you could cry, the added sensation of his coarse beard against your sensitive core making your thighs tremble precariously around his head.

“Gorgeous.” Your nails cling onto his shoulder as you ride it out, humping his face with abandon under his soft grunts of encouragement. Bucky’s hips have been twitching against the mattress for a while now, unable to stay stoic in front of a goddess like you unraveling so sweetly before him. With a final teasing kiss to your clit, his thick fingers finally pull away.

You’re still breathless when Bucky lifts himself up, enough to pull you into another hungry kiss. Tasting yourself on someone’s tongue is definitely new, but not unpleasant. Not when a pathetic sound—half moan, half whine—claws out of your throat at your tongues dancing.

“Wish I could stay between your thighs all night.” He mumbles against your lips. Kissing Bucky… It’s just so lovely. Particularly like this, when he is towering over you, so close that the trimmed hair on his chest softly brushes your nipples as it heaves against yours. Your body lurches at the light stimulation on your raw nubs, completely missing the way one of his hands abandons your hip to swiftly discard his boxers. 

It’s only when Bucky gets into an upright position that you can finally catch a proper glimpse of his body. Even his cock is beautiful, for fuck’s sake, all flushed and thick, proudly curving up toward his belly. You gulp thickly at the sight of how majestic he looks, naked and kneeling for you, before you promptly shy away at the amusement twinkling in his eyes. His strong arms wrap around your thighs without a word, dragging you closer to him until his length lightly nudges your core. His tongue is inside your mouth before you can even let a full gasp out. Whining, your fingers slip into his hair as he teases the seam of your entrance with the tip. 

“So impatient.” He chuckles at your eager hips, before extending his arm towards the night stand.

“No!” Your fingers shoot forward and wrap around his bicep, causing Bucky to freeze entirely.

“I’m clean, got tested last month, and I’m on the pill.” You wheeze out, suddenly fearing your implicit request will be rejected. 

Bucky scrutinizes you with open surprise, before a long, pensive exhale slowly leaves his nostrils.

He places a sweet peck on your forehead. “I’m clean too. But are you sure, sweetheart?” His brows furrow in worry.

“I’ve never let anyone else do it without.” You swallow nervously, taking his hand in yours to guide it to your cheek, unconsciously leaning into his palm.

“Want you to be the first.” You whisper. 

“Fucking hell.” He grits out, letting his forehead fall on your shoulder. It’s your turn to smirk now, until you feel the bulbous head of his cock insistent against your hole.

“Oh.” You squeak out once he slides in halfway without much resistance on your part. The sight of your glassy eyes rolling back has him groaning.

“Feeling alright, doll?”

“Fuck—yes, fuck, it’s just—big!” You gasp, stiffening at the burning stretch. “More... More, I need more please.”

Despite your begging, Bucky feeds you his cock gradually, fearing he could hurt you and possibly scare you away forever. Once he bottoms out, his jaw clenches at the mere realization of finally being inside his girl. Attempting to calm the both of you down is difficult, yet he finds the strength to still, his lips finding yours at once. His self-control weakens precariously the more your body grows pliant under his, your walls hugging his cock so tightly he can feel every little, eager movement. The lewd, wet sounds of your mouth moving against each other only spur him on as his hips involuntarily jerk forward.

“Bucky.” 

“Yes, yes, I know sweetheart.” He coos at your ragged breaths. “Gonna make the ache go away, mmh?”

Dragging his hips back slightly, Bucky carefully studies your expression, and only when he finds no sign of discomfort he lets himself slip right back in, harder. 

“Oh, sweet girl.” He grins at you clinging onto his shoulders. “That feels good, right? Hear how she sings for me?” Leaning in to plant his lips right over your damp brow, he allows his hips to slowly move back, biting back a loud groan at the squelching sound.

“Need to see you fall apart on my cock.” He grunts.

“Please, need—harder.” You cry out, eyes rolling back as the tip nudges your sweet spot. Your moans grow higher and louder once he starts pounding you earnestly, your slack body trapped under his broad one, sliding up and down the mattress with each brutal thrust. 

Bucky loses himself a little the moment he buries his nose in the damp skin of your neck, licking and kissing away the salty tang of your sweat, finally fucking you properly. The slapping noise of your skins meeting shamelessly fills the bedroom, mixing with your labored breaths and desperate moans. 

“Shit, doll.” His growl vibrates against your pulse. “Need this all the time, need to hear your sweet squeals as I carve a place for my cock inside your cute little pussy.”

The way he kisses your mouth like a starving man, and how his cock fits so perfectly inside you, stirs a warm feeling inside your chest, far too tender compared to the throbbing ache in your belly. 

“Such a good girl for me, taking all of me so well.” He gushes deliriously, smiling at your connected lower half. “My girl. My pretty, sweet girl.”

“Come with me?” You whimper, your nails digging into his soft skin as pleasure threatens to swallow you whole.

“Want to give you another one.” He pants, slowing down just enough to properly look you in the eye. “I’m not so young anymore, sweet thing.” The back of his hand brushes your cheek with such tenderness you almost forget the hard length plunged deep inside your pussy, before Bucky resumes his punishing pace, coaxing moan after moan out of you. 

Your mouth falls open in a silent scream, your body tensing as your back arches, finally letting yourself go.

“That’s it!” He draws the words out, keeping his eyes firmly on your face. Your legs feel like they are falling to pieces, sore but still squeezing helplessly his waist.

“So tight, so good for me. You look like an angel, sweetheart. A pretty, fucked-out angel. Wish you could see how beautiful you look with a big cock giving you exactly what you need.” He can hardly fend off the devastating orgasm threatening to make him fall apart; yet he keeps going, wanting to prolong your pleasure as much as he can. It’s only when your whimper borders on painful and your palms shoot down to push at his chest, that his hips gradually come to a stop.

“Holy fuck.”

Your lower half is pleasantly aching by the time you are coming down from your earth-shattering climax. Bucky is still trying to dominate his instincts, jaw clenched and nose lightly tracing the soft skin of your collarbone, breathing in your scent. The primal urge to make you his violently rattles at the cage of care and protection that Bucky scrupulously crafted day by day, just to keep it contained. He’s at his limit, yet he always makes sure to take such good care of you first... your stunning, kind Mr. Barnes. 

But now it’s your turn to have your fun with him.

“Get up.” You mutter, pressing on his pecs. Panic briefly crosses his features as he clumsily lifts up on shaky muscles. You don’t let him go too far though, gently pushing him until he’s laying on his back. When you land directly on his crotch, cock still snuggled inside you, his eyes widen in astonishment. 

Everything feels more sensitive like this.  

You don’t care about your aching joints, nor about your sensitive and sore body still going through the aftershock, immediately setting a fast pace. You bounce up and down, biting your bottom lip as you stare at his parted lips. Your combined ragged breaths make you clench around his length, loving the way you sound together. Bucky is too busy pawing at your hips with one hand and groping your breast with the other to rationally think about something clever that would surely turn this debauched doll in his laps into the timid sweetheart he likes teasing.

You’re not sure how long it has been, but what makes you still is definitely not the sudden uncomfortable stiffness in your lower back, but rather a loud, muffled noise.

Like something falling, or... a door slamming shut.

You stop at once, your wide eyes meeting Bucky’s astonished gaze. His shock, though, has short life, as his hands land on both of your thighs with a resounding smack, encouraging you to go on.

“Bucky!” You reprimand him, gasping at the abrupt stimulation against your sweet spot. The older man under you slowly lifts his torso up, encircling your waist as he gently guides you down with him, until your forehead rests against his.

“We have already established that we like each other and that this,” he points between you two just like you did before. “Is not a one time thing.” You nod quickly, still panting and alarmingly aware of all the noises coming from downstairs: bare feet thumping against the tiles, a cabinet closing, a small sigh of relief after drinking some water.

“Don’t you want to give him a taste of his own medicine?” You can’t believe the shadow of malice falling over his eyes.

“He’s your son!” You whisper-shout, partial to his proposal but still too timid to go along with it.

“And you are my girl.” He growls with the same heat, his fingers digging into your skin bruisingly. “The same girl he cheated on for eight months.” 

Something shatters inside your chest. You don’t know if it’s the reality finally catching up to you, or the humiliation gradually mutating into a fiercer, hotter thirst for vengeance. Or maybe it’s the way this absolutely lovely man just defined you his girl so easily. No shame, no reservations.

Your palms press against his shoulders, urging him to fully lie back down. The slow smirk forming on his lips matches your playful smile.

“Fuck.” Your hips resume their pace with a newfound strength. 

“You’re doing so well, angel. Look at you, taking all my cock in your tight little pussy. My pretty girl, all mine.” His dirty words only spur you on, taking his hands to guide them back on your curves. In the meantime, the stairs creak under careful yet not-so-silent steps, as Nathan warily makes his way up. 

“Oh my God. Mr. Barnes, ’s so big.” You gasp, completely forgetting about your ex probably standing just outside the door. You don’t miss the way Bucky’s breath hitches at the name you used to softly utter with so much admiration and respect, now sounding so beautifully obscene as you cry for his cock. Faintly grinning down at him, you squeeze the hand fondling your breast, Bucky immediately looking up from your core engulfing his length so well. 

“Yeah? And whose pussy is this, mmh?” His fingers settle on your clit with determination, careful to put the right pressure, and you respond at once, riding him faster. 

“Yours! Fuck, always been yours!”

"Good girl.” He groans, using every bit of self-restraint to not succumb to the heavenly feeling of you desperately gripping his leaking cock.

“That’s it.” His jaw locks. “Come for me, my beautiful girl.” Your third climax of the night is the most intense. You shatter with a breathy shriek, collapsing against Bucky’s chest as he promptly catches you. The urgent noise of footsteps climbing down the stairs and the final bang of the front door slamming shut are completely disregarded as you fall apart in the most delicious of ways.

“Fuck, you just tightened so fucking hard, baby girl. Feel so fucking good coming all over my cock, you were made for me.” His head falls back, exposing the refined line on his throat. “Taking it so well.” You cling to his large frame, shaking and whimpering as his hips ruthlessly chase his own pleasure. 

“’M gonna ruin you for anyone else, angel.” The crack in his voice tells you he’s close, his hands keeping you nice and still as you try to relax, letting him use you.

“Bet you’ve never looked this lovely with him,” he hisses, his thrusts frantic and sloppy. “Never came this hard—shit, you’re gonna be leaking my cum from now on.”

With one last effort, your chin lifts enough for you to whisper right into his ear, “’M yours, Mr. Barnes. Always have been.” 

His grip around your thighs borders on painful, but you don’t care as long as his filthy groans turn louder and needier. His hips thrust up once, twice, and then he is holding you down as rope after rope of his cum reaches the deepest part of you. Your content sigh at the surreal sensation of finally being filled soothes Bucky a little, his body finally falling back against the mattress as his cock keeps twitching inside you.

“Shit,” his next exhale is harsh, tired eyes staring dumbfounded at the ceiling. “I’ve never come this hard in my life, sweet girl.” His palms trace a slow path up and down your back, and you silently thank him for staying inside you. You are not sure you’d react well if Bucky were to part from you at once after what you just did.

Your weak body settles on his little by little, until you are completely pliant in his arms.

“C’mere and give me a kiss, I miss my pretty girl.” His mouth moves against your temple, before his thumb and index finger tenderly hold your chin to coax you out of your hiding place.

You lazily yield, meeting him in a languid kiss that is more tongue than lips. 

“The best.” Kiss. “Prettiest.” Kiss. “Girl.” Kiss. “You’re so good to me, took it all inside and didn’t waste a single drop.” He playfully growls against your jaw, eliciting a tired giggle out of you.

“Bucky, it tickles.” You squirm slightly, wrinkling your nose when he leaves a gentle peck right on the tip. He couldn’t be more proud of how serene you look, safe and thoroughly fucked as you lie drowsily on his chest.

“So,” he sighs after a while, arms squeezing your waist as he beams up at the ceiling. “About that date…”

— ⟢ END NOTES: thank you so much for reading 💕 my masterlist → winteryn's masterlist

I mentioned it before but the inspiration for the title comes from this spectacular meme, of course lmaooo

[metal-armed-muse]

BAD HABITS

DAD’S BEST FRIEND BUCKY X F!READER

SUMMARY. What’s so bad about Bucky Barnes? The fact that he watches you or calls you kid while he does it?

WORD COUNT. 12.2K WARNINGS. age gap, dad’s best friend, bucky calls reader ‘kid’ but she’s 25, MDNI, smut, forbidden relationship, guilt, mutual pining, first time, virginity loss, oral (f receiving), unprotected pnv, breeding kink, cum play, possessive language, bucky is obsessed with reader’s stomach, soft aftercare, porn with plot sprinkled, no use of y/n. FROM KIE. The summary makes it seem like he’s some sleazy asshole, he’s not. I tried real with the title and summary, and that’s all I could come up with. Sigh.

READ ON AO3!

Kid. The word has always been there between you, too worn-in to sound accidental now. Kid at nineteen, when you came home during college break and saw him for the first time, sitting at your father's dining table, quiet and so beautiful it annoyed you for three straight days. Kid at twenty-one, when you brought home cheap wine and he took the corkscrew from you while you were mangling it, his fingers brushing yours, that you almost dropped the bottle opener entirely. Kid at twenty-four, when your dad started leaving tools here and Bucky started appearing in your kitchen with excuses thin enough to see through.

Kid, so he could look away.

Kid, so you'd stay safe.

You've been watching him for six years now. Learning the way he takes his coffee, the tells when he's had a bad night, how he'll rub at his left shoulder where metal meets flesh, like the junction still aches. You've seen all of it, studied all of it.  Sometimes you think about making a list, just to prove to yourself how pathetic you've become. Line item number one: he takes his coffee black but adds sugar when he thinks no one's looking. Line item number seventy-three: the nightmares are worse in winter. You could write a dissertation on Bucky Barnes and never run out of material.

You've watched him go from your dad's traumatized war buddy to something resembling human again. Watched him learn to laugh at your dad's shitty jokes and argue about sports teams and pretend the nightmares didn't still wake him up sometimes.

Watched him, lately, watch you back.

It's different the way he watches you. You don't think there's a name for it, or if there is, it is too scandalous to say out loud. His gaze will catch on your mouth when you're talking, or track the movement of your hands, or linger on the strip of skin between your shirt and jeans when you reach for something on a high shelf. Then he'll look away fast enough to give himself whiplash, and call you kid again like the word's a shield against whatever he's been thinking. It's one of those 'say it enough times, you'll start believing it' situation.

The first time you caught him staring at your mouth, you'd forgotten what you were saying mid-sentence. Just stood there like an idiot while he blinked and looked away. Your dad asked if you were feeling okay. You weren't. You haven't been okay since you were nineteen and saw him for the first time.

What's killing you now is that you don't know what happens next. You've played out a dozen scenarios in your head — him kissing you against the kitchen counter, you finally calling him on his bullshit, the world ending before either of you has to acknowledge this thing happening between you two. But you can't predict Bucky Barnes. He's controlled but also has triggers you don't know from stories he won't tell, and trying to guess his next move is like trying to catch smoke.

When you let yourself into your apartment on a Tuesday and hear him at your sink, you're not even surprised anymore. This has become routine. Your dad forgets his stuff more often than not, Bucky shows up to collect them, the excuse wearing thin each passing day. Both of you pretending this is normal.

"Kitchen," he calls before you've closed the door.

You don't question why he's here before you're even here. To be honest, it makes you happy, to see someone else — no, to see him. The henley he's wearing enhances his biceps, you almost want to chew through it. You've seen him in this shirt before. You know you have. But every time feels like the first time, like your brain can't quite process the reality of him. There's grease smudged on his jaw that he's completely missed while washing, all you want to do is let your fingers touch him under the guise of removing it. His hair's getting long, and you have approximately thirty seconds before you do something stupid like offer to trim it for him.

"Where's dad?"

Bucky glances at you, a fractional hesitation before he shuts off the water. "Got held up at work." He reaches for the dish towel — the one you've told him a hundred times not to use for his greasy hands — and starts drying off. "Said he'll grab the bike next week."

"Right. Next week." You drop your bag on the counter, not surprised once again. Your dad's been saying next week for three weeks now. At this point, the bike is practically furniture. Why does he leave his things over here if he never cares enough to get them back himself? 

"Well, he's busy." 

"So, he sent you?"

"He didn't send me, I offered," he says. The way he's looking at you now makes your aware of your heartbeat, the steady thunk it used to be is now replaced by this erratic energy that has nowhere else to go.

The kitchen suddenly feels too warm. Or maybe you're too warm. Maybe you've been too warm since the moment you walked in and saw him standing at your sink. You shrug out of your jacket, feel Bucky's eyes track the movement, watching the fabric slide down your arms, every inch of your skin waking up under his gaze. When you look back at him though, his eyes are fixed on the ragged towel at his hand, like they weren't on your skin this whole time. 

The grease on his face is starting to bother you. Though, bother would be a big word. You just want to rub it off. Why? You don't know. Maybe to get your hands on him. "You've got something on your face," you tell him.

His hand rises automatically, searching for the stain in the wrong place. "Where?"

"Other side. No — here, just —" You step closer, and immediately realise this is a mistake. You know it's a mistake even as you're doing it, but your hand's already there, thumb swiping at the smudge on his jaw.

Bucky goes still, that's the only way to put it. A whole-body freeze, every muscle locked down. You're close enough now to see his pupils dilate, to count his eyelashes if you wanted to, which you absolutely do not want to. That's what you keep telling yourself. Liar, something in you whispers. You've wanted to count them since forever. You've wanted to note every detail of him and keep them somewhere safe.

There's a faint knowing of the world running in the background, but nothing else seems to matter when he's still not moving. And neither are you. "Got it," you say, but you don't step back.

"Thanks." 

Your thumb's still on his jaw, his stubble rasping against your skin. You can feel the texture of it, slightly coarse. Suddenly, you're struck by the intimacy of knowing how his face feels under your hand. This is the kind of knowledge that belongs to girlfriends and wives, not to the daughter of his best friend who's been harbouring increasingly inappropriate thoughts for years. You can feel his pulse jumping in his throat, like he's been running. Neither of you is moving. Neither of you is even breathing if you're entirely honest. There's a slow dance of his eyes, from your own to your mouth, then back to your own. Yours do the same, mirroring him in the most minute way possible. There's about three inches of space between your mouth and his.

"This is a terrible idea," Bucky says as he leans in, which in turn makes you lean in. The distance closes in itself by excruciating degrees. 

"The worst." The two words from your mouth are swallowed by his own, the space between you both narrowed to a negative as his lips touch yours. The first graze of it is gentle, testing. Like he's afraid you'll shatter or bolt or realize what a stupid thing this is. But you've been waiting for this. There's months — no, years — of watching, wanting and pretending you weren't doing either, years of lying to yourself that you could be satisfied with just existing in his orbit, and gentle just isn't going to cut it. You fist your hand in his shirt and pull him closer, breaking whatever thread of control he's been clinging to.

Bucky makes a low sound in his throat and kisses you harder, hand coming up to cup the back of your head, metal arm sliding around your waist. The metal is cool even through your shirt, a shock of temperature that makes you gasp into his mouth. He tastes like coffee and mint gum, the taste so unique because it's him. When his tongue sweeps into your mouth, you forget how to think in complete sentences. Language becomes optional, unnecessary. Who needs words when you have this, have him finally, finally touching you the way you've dreamed about. Your free hand finds his shoulder, gripping hard enough to feel the shift of muscle under skin, as he backs you up until your hips hit the counter.

The kiss turns messier and desperate. His beard scrapes your chin, fingers tangling in your hair, pulling small sounds from you. You'd be totally embarrassed if you had any capacity to think. But, you're drowning in it, in him, in six years of wanting finally combusting into this.

The limbo of the kiss, the existence narrowed down to the dance of your lips is mercilessly interrupted by his phone buzzing in his pocket.

Bucky tears his mouth away from yours with a curse that would make your father blush, his forehead finding residence at your temple, both of you panting. You can feel his breath on your skin, uneven, matching your own. His hand shakes slightly as he fumbles for his phone.

"It's your dad."

The words are a bucket of ice water, waking up fear and shame, squashing any leftover desire. Guilt crashes over you in waves. This is your dad's best friend. Your dad's traumatized war buddy who he trusts completely, who he invited into his life, into your life. And here you are with swollen lips and shaking hands, having just had his tongue in your mouth. 

Bucky steps back, puts physical distance between you before he answers the phone. The loss of his warmth feels physical, like something's been ripped away. "Yeah?" His eyes are still on you, pupils still blown, gaze oscillating between your parted lips and your pleading eyes. "No, just wrapped up. Heading out now." A pause where he could take a deep breath, but doesn't. "Yeah, she's good. I'll tell her."

When he hangs up, the silence that follows is excruciating.

Expectant eyes search his face, his mouth, guilt threading through your own features as you take in his. Whatever you'd expected him to say, it wasn't this, "I should go," Bucky says

"That's it?" The words tear through you, frustrated and angered by his choice, his decision. "That's all you're gonna say?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"I don't know. Maybe any sentence that doesn't make me feel like I imagined the last five minutes."

His jaw clenches and unclenches. You can see him thinking, the gears turning behind his eyes, weighing what he should say versus what he wants to say. He looks like he's choosing his next sentence carefully. But when it does come out, it doesn't seem all that careful. "You didn't imagine it."

"No? Great. Very comforting." You cross your arms, looking like the very kid he claims that you are. "So what, you kiss me like that and then just leave?"

Bucky doesn't quite meet your gaze as he grabs his jacket and starts his way away from you, stillnot looking at you. 

"Why?" You prod. 

"You know why." Finally, he looks at you, whatever you see on his face makes you want to hit him or kiss him again. Pain, maybe. Regret. Want that he's trying desperately to bury and failing. Not trusting your body to keep its distance, you put some between you, stepping back. Bucky sighs, and runs his metal fingers through his hair. "Your dad's my best friend. I'm too old for you. This is — we can't —"

"I'm twenty-five, Bucky."

"I know how old you are. You think I don't know exactly how old you are? You think I — Fuck!" The frustration in his voice borders on anguish, like the knowing is what's killing him.

"Then what's the problem?"

"The problem is that your dad would kill me. The problem is that I've got no business touching you. The problem is that I can't —" He runs his hand through his hair again, and you think he might pull it off if he's not careful. "I need to go."

Bucky walks out, leaving you standing in your kitchen with kiss-swollen lips, racing heart, and anger. You're furious. At him for kissing you and leaving. At your dad for existing. At the whole goddamn universe for making this so complicated. At yourself most of all, for still wanting him even as he walks away.

A week. Seven days of you jumping every time someone knocks on your door, checking your phone obsessively like he's going to text you, half-expecting Bucky to show up with another tissue-thin excuse about tools or motorcycles or whatever.

He doesn't.

Day two, you convinced yourself you hallucinated the whole thing. Day three, you stared at your kitchen counter trying to remember the exact spot where he'd backed you up against it, like if you stand there long enough you'll be able to conjure the feeling of his hands on your waist.

Your dad picks up the bike himself. Mentions Bucky's been busy with some job for Sam, says it casually, disinterested. That means he has no idea anything's changed. You smile, nod and try not to think about the way Bucky's mouth felt on yours.

It doesn't work.

You replay the kiss in your mind so many times it starts to feel like fiction. But, you can still feel the ghost of his metal arm around your waist, still taste coffee and mint when you close your eyes.

On day seven, you've nearly convinced yourself to show up at his apartment and demand answers.

But he shows up at yours.

It's Tuesday night, exactly one week later. You're in old sweats and a tank top, halfway through a pint of ice cream you're eating straight from the container. 

The knock is an inconvenience at this time, perfectly ruining your plans of rewatching Brooklyn 99, turn your mind off and eat the damn ice cream. You almost don't open, 9 PM is hardly any time for visitors, hoping that person takes the hint and fucks off.

The second knock comes up more insistent, a hurry in the air, forcing you to pad towards the door, ice cream in hand. 

And there's Bucky. 

Bucky, who looks terrible, dark circles under his eyes, wearing an expression like he hasn't slept in days. He looks how you feel, which is both gratifying and heartbreaking. His hair is damp. It takes you a moment to understand it's drizzling. Drizzle would be a stretch, for the raindrops are the size of a pomegranate pearl, dropping down with vigour. 

"Hey," he says.

"No." You start to close the door, even though all you want to do is haul him inside, towel off his hair, dry those strands that are matted together. 

His boot hits the doorframe, an obstacle in your plans, a test on your self-preservation. "Wait —"

"I don't want to hear it, Bucky. I really don't." You try to push the door close anyway, mustering up the courage. But he's stronger than you physically, stronger than your thinning anger, which is dissipating by the second. "Move your foot," you try somehow. 

"Not until you let me talk."

"Why should I?"

"I don't know. Maybe you're a nicer person than I deserve."

A smile starts to break into your features, but you quickly tone it down. He's not playing fair, showing up here looking lost and using that voice. "Flattery's not gonna work."

"I'm not trying to flatter you. I'm trying to apologize."

You stop pushing on the door, the bare minimum you could do without showing all your cards. "Then apologize."

"Can I come in?"

Now, that would be a tremendously bad idea. If he comes in, you're not sure where else he'll be coming in. 

"You can apologize from right there." 

Bucky's quiet for a moment, studying your face. You try not to show your true feelings,keep your expression neutral, unaffected, like your heart isn't actively trying to beat its way out of your chest. "I'm sorry. For leaving like that. For not calling. For —" He looks like he's frustrated with himself, abruptly stopping the sentence. He takes a deep breath before continuing, "for all of it."

"Okay." You still don't open the door wider. "Apology received. Have a good night."

"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Shut me out. I know I fucked up, but —" He runs his hand through his hair, the water droplets cascading down his skin. You hate that you find it endearing, that even now, even angry and hurt, you're memorising the way the water runs down his temple, the exact shade of misery in his eyes. "Can we talk? Please?"

The 'please' is what does you in. You've never heard Bucky Barnes say please about anything, the sheer novelty of it makes you hesitate just long enough for him to see the weakness in your armor. "Five minutes," you tell him, stepping back.

You close the door behind him as he enters. When you turn around, he's closer than you expected, your back hitting the door with the need to put distance between you both. "You said you wanted to talk," you remind him, voice breathier than you'd like.

"I can't stop thinking about it." His gaze drops from your eyes to your lips. "About kissing you. About how you tasted. About the sound you made when —"

Feigning indifference seems like the only way out of this. "Okay." You try to sound unaffected, like your pulse isn't racing, like you haven't been thinking about it too. Obsessively, unhealthily, to the point where you can't focus on anything else. "So you've been thinking about it."

"That's not okay."

"No?" You raise an eyebrow, daring him. "Sounds like a you problem."

Bucky takes a step closer, trapping you between him and the door, the distance feeling anything but threatening, not having felt this alive in seven days. "I've been trying to do the right thing. I know that sounds like garbage from where you're standing."

"It does have that smell."

His lips curve into a smile. You wish you were immune to that, to his smile, to him. His hand comes up, hovering near your waist but not quite touching. "Your dad trusts me. He's trusted me for years. And here I am, showing up at his daughter's apartment, thinking things I've got no business thinking."

"What kind of things?" 

"Don't ask me that."

"Why not?" You're goading him, and you both know it. "Afraid you'll tell me the truth?"

His hand finally makes contact, just a light touch on your hip, just over the fabric of your top. "I've thought about you in every room of this apartment. I've thought about you when I shouldn't, in ways I definitely shouldn't. I've tried to stop, and I can't, and it's driving me out of my mind."

"You should suffer a little. You left me standing in my kitchen like what happened meant nothing."

"It meant everything." His other hand finds your waist, both of them spanning your hips, and you wish you weren't wearing anything, just so you could feel his hands on your skin. "That's the problem. If it meant nothing, I could've walked away and stayed away. But it meant everything. I still tried to stay away — tried to do the right thing, but here I am."

His breath comes out hard, he's so close you can clearly see the flecks of gray in his blue iries, which are turning black by the moment. You can smell the rain on him, soaked strands falling in front of his face, begging to be brushed away from his eyes.

"Stop calling me kid," you tell him.

Bucky's hands tighten on your hips. "I didn't call you that tonight."

"Not tonight. In general."

Bucky doesn't respond, but his hands move a fraction, the metal in his arm grazing your skin, cool even through your thin tank top.

"Say my name."

He hesitates like the word might burn him. You watch him struggle with it, something like pain or hurt flickering across his face before he utters, "sweetheart."

"That's not my name."

"Please." His voice is rough, pleading. 

"Say it, Bucky."

"Please don't make me."

The vulnerability in it catches you off-guard. "Why not?"

"Once I say it, that's it. I can't take it back. Can't pretend this is something I can walk away from."

"So you do want to walk away still?"

So soft, so fragile, your name leaves his mouth. It sounds different in his voice, shaped by his accent, rough with want. You've heard your name a thousand times but never like this.

"Was that so hard?" Your own voice is softer now, your hands somehow having found their way to his chest, fingers curling into the fabric of his jacket.

"Yes." All that want he's been trying to bury, is written across his face in sharp relief. His eyes are almost black, pupils blown wide, grip on your hips tight enough to bruise. "You have no idea how hard it is."

"Saying my name is hard?"

"Saying your name while I've been watching you, wanting you, knowing I shouldn't touch you. That's hard."

"You want me?" The question comes out barely above a whisper.

"Don't ask me that." It sounds like it's being dragged out of him. "Please."

"Why not?"

"You know why."

"No, I don't."

Bucky makes a sound that just might be the frustration in him seeping through, but his eyes are full of want. "Yes. Fuck, yes, I want you. I want you so much it feels like it's killing me. Happy now?"

"Not yet," you tell him befote smashing your lips into his. Anything but gentle, absolutely no testing the waters thing he did the first time. This is want distilled into action, six years of waiting and pretending all combusting at once, every fantasy you've ever had, every late-night thought you've tried to suppress, finally made real. Your hands fist in his damp hair, tightening his grip on your hips, bruising. When you bite his lower lip, he groans into your mouth like you've wounded him.

"We shouldn't," he speaks against your lips, but he's doesn't pull away, not even close. "Your dad —"

"Is not here." You pull back just enough to look at him. "Do you want to stop?"

Bucky looks at you like you're asking him to cut off his other arm. "No."

"Then stop talking about my dad while you're kissing me."

That startles a brief laugh out of him. Without wasting another second, he's kissing you again, walking you backward through your apartment. You're vaguely aware of furniture and doorways, of his jacket hitting the floor somewhere, of your ice cream forgotten on the counter. None of it matters as much as the slide of his tongue against yours, the taste of him, the way his hands are mapping your waist like he's memorizing you.

When the backs of your knees hit the couch, you try to pull him down with you, but Bucky resists. His hands find your hips, steering you around until you're standing and he's sitting, thighs spread wide to make room for you between them. The position puts you above him, taller for once. On his face, theres a crack in the armor where you can see straight through to the want underneath.

He looks up at you, and you've never seen him like this. Vulnerable doesn't seem like the right word for Bucky Barnes, but it's close. It's in the way his hands rest on your hips, loose enough that you could step away if you wanted. In the tilt of his head, exposing his throat, how he's letting you see him want you without the usual defenses. It makes you feel invincible and terrified both.

"Still time," he says.

"For what?"

"For you to tell me to leave."

You reach down, fingers sliding into his hair. The strands are cool and wet against your palm. When you drag your nails lightly against his scalp, his eyes flutter close. "I don't want you to leave."

Bucky leans forward, resting his forehead against your stomach. The intimacy of it steals whatever breath you have left. His hands tighten on your hips, thumbs stroking small circles through your tank top, the warmth of his breath you can feel through the thin fabric.

"Should've done this right," he mutters into your stomach. "Should've taken you to dinner. Somewhere nice. Not just shown up at your door like some —" he stops, breathing into you, the warm breath wet against your skin even through the flimsy cloth. 

"Like some what?" You prod. 

"I don't know. Obsessed asshole with no self-control."

That makes you laugh, earning a smile from him that you feel against your stomach. "I don't want dinner," you say. 

"You should want dinner. You should want the whole thing — flowers, romance, somebody who isn't —" He sighs, not able to finish what he was going to say. If he says it, it will be real. 

"Who isn't what?"

"Too old for you. Too —"

"Bucky." You tug his hair until he looks up at you, mouth parted, so gorgeous. "I don't care about any of that."

"You should."

His hair is soft under your touch, your fingers playing with them as you speak. "Well, I don't. And for the record, I hate fancy restaurants. They never give you enough food, and everyone whispers."

His mouth quirks into the fondest of smiles. "That's your objection? Portion sizes and volume?"

"I'm serious. I went to this place once where they served a single scallop on a plate the size of my head. One scallop. I'm supposed to eat one scallop and pretend I'm satisfied?"

"Sounds terrible."

"It was. I stopped at McDonald's on the way home." It had been a date, actually. Some guy from your office who'd taken you where the menu didn't have prices and the portions were insulting. You'd been hungry, bored and wishing the entire time that you were with Bucky instead.

Bucky's hands slide under the hem of your tank top, fingers finding bare skin. "No famcy restaurants where they serve a single scallop. Noted."

His touch almost derails your thoughts, you have to work to keep your voice steady. The rough calluses on his fingers drag against your skin, leaving trails of fire. "Anyway, you're here now. That's worth more than some overpriced shit."

"Is it?" There's doubt clouding his eyes, you can see clearly. 

"Yeah. It is." You just hope he understands how much you mean this. 

His hands move higher, taking your shirt with them, bunching the fabric above your waist. The metal hand is cool against your overheated skin, cold enough to make you gasp. Bucky stops his touch on its tracks. "Is it cold?"

"A little."

He starts to pull back, his touch leaving you becoming a physical thing you feel the loss of. Catching his wrist, you hold the metal hand flat against your stomach. "Don't."

"You sure?"

"I like it." The contrast, the warm flesh on one side, cool metal on the other, makes your skin feel alive. You've thought about his arm before, late at night when you shouldn't. Wondered what the metal would feel like against your skin, wondered if he'd let you touch it, trace the plates. "Feels good."

His grip tightens, both hands spanning your waist now, the slight tremor in his fingers you feel more and more each passing second. Like he's overwhelmed by being allowed to touch you like this. Like he can't quite believe you're real. The next thing you know, Bucky is leaning in, pressing an open-mouthed kiss just above your navel.

The wet heat of his mouth against your skin makes your knees weak, almost wobbling. He does it again, lower this time, tongue tracing a path across your stomach that has you gripping his shoulders for balance. His stubble scrapes your skin, adding another layer of sensation you've never felt. When he bites down gently on your hipbone, a soft gasp leaves you, like there's not enough oxygen in this room for the both of you, especially not with the way he's pressing these kisses. 

The silence while he's kissing your stomach is too much. You need to fill it with something before you combust entirely. "Been thinking about this?" Your voice comes out breathy.

"Yes." Bucky doesn't even attempt to lift his head, continuing his way across your stomach, hands holding you steady.

"How long?"

Bucky's mouth stills against your skin. For a second you think maybe he won't answer, maybe he'll pull back, and this is it. But almost soft as a whisper, his words come. "Long enough to feel ashamed about it."

"How long is that?"

"Remember that barbecue last summer?" His lips brush your navel as he talks. "You were wearing that black top, and you bent over to grab a beer from the cooler? Yeah, I spent the next twenty minutes trying not to stare at your ass."

"That was July."

"I know when it was." His hands slide higher, taking your shirt with them. He pushes the fabric up and over your head, dropping it somewhere behind you, leaving you in just your bra from the waist up. The air feels cold against your exposed skin, but Bucky's gaze is hot enough to burn. "Been drivin' me crazy for months."

You remember that day. Remember catching him staring and thinking you'd imagined it. Apparently, you hadn't. Bucky looks at your bra, but decides against it, pushing it up too, just shoving it out of the way, pulling you down into his lap. The position puts you straddling his thigh, friction of his jeans against your sweats making you acutely aware of how wet you already are. Embarrassingly wet. He's barely touched you and you're already soaked through, probably leaving a damp spot on his jeans. 

Bucky's mouth finds your breast, and whatever coherent thought you had left scatters like startled birds. He sucks your nipple into his mouth, tongue working the sensitive peak. Your hips roll forward involuntarily, the pressure against your clit perfect but not nearly enough, chasing more friction, grinding down on his thigh.

"That's it," he murmurs against your breast, switching to the other side. "Take what you need."

His metal hand cups your neglected breast, thumb brushing over your nipple, the cool touch making you gasp. He seems to like that reaction, doing it again with more pressure. Having him like this, puts all your fantasies to shame, your fingers threading through his hair to hold him close.

You didn't know it could feel like this. This consuming. Every nerve ending in your body is focused on the wet heat of his mouth, the cool press of metal, the friction building between your legs. You're making these small desperate sounds you can't control, hips moving faster now. Bucky groans against your breast like watching you get off on his thigh is the best thing he's ever seen.

"Bucky —" You're close already, wound too tight, and it's almost embarrassing how fast he's gotten you here.

"I know." He bites down gently on your nipple, soothing it with his tongue. "Can feel how wet you are through your sweats. Gonna cum just from this, aren't you?"

The words almost send you over, but before you can, he lifts you off his lap, laying you down on the couch. You barely have time to process the change before he's hooking his fingers into your waistband, dragging both your sweats and underwear down your legs in one smooth motion. Your bra which was previously pushed atop your breasts, is discarded too, and you're naked. Completely naked while he's still fully dressed, and somehow that makes this hotter. There's this moment where neither of you moves, stuck in a limbo, where he just looks at you, sprawled across your couch. You watch him take in every inch of exposed skin. You watch him watch you. 

"Jesus," he breathes.

"Are you just gonna stare, or —"

Bucky kisses you, cutting off whatever sarcastic remark you were about to make, mouth insistent, tongue tasting yours. When he pulls back, you try to follow, chasing him, but he's moving down your body.

He kisses your jaw, your throat, the hollow at the base of your neck where your pulse is racing. You wonder if he can feel how fast your heart is beating, if he knows what he does to you. He takes his time with your breasts again, like he can't quite believe he gets to touch them. His mouth blazes a trail down your sternum, mapping the soft plane of your stomach with lips, teeth and tongue.

When he reaches your navel, his tongue dips inside, circling, your back bows of the couch in response. "Bucky, please —"

"Patience. Wanna look at you first." His hands are on your thighs, pushing them apart. The first brush of cool air against your wet core makes you shudder. You should be self-conscious about this, spread open for him, the position in itself making you vulnerable, but the way he's looking at you makes you feel like a goddamn masterpiece, killing any embarrassment before it takes root. 

His finger traces your slit, so light it's almost not there, and you try to cant your hips up for more pressure. Bucky's metal hand presses down on your lower stomach, holding you still.

"Stay," he says, like you're a misbehaving dog and not someone who's writhing for breath beneath him. It's not quite a command but close enough to make you clench around nothing. 

Bucky explores you with devastating thoroughness, tracing the shape of you with one finger, learning what makes you gasp and what makes you whimper. He spreads you open with two fingers, just looking. "She's so pretty," he murmurs, almost to himself. "So fucking pretty."

He leans down to lick a stripe up your center, tongue flat and broad, and you forget how to breathe. Even the first touch of his mouth is too much, when you're already so worked up, so close from grinding on his thigh. The wet heat of his tongue against your clit makes you cry out, not even embarrassed about how loud you are. Let the neighbors hear. Let the whole building know. He seems encouraged by the sound, doing it again with more pressure. He eats you out like it's the only thing he wants to be doing. Like he could spend hours between your legs and die happy. His tongue works your clit in slow circles, alternating between broad strokes and focused attention that has you squirming. When he closes his lips around the sensitive bud and sucks, you nearly come off the couch entirely. "Oh god — Bucky —"

He slides one finger inside you while his mouth stays focused on your clit. Your fingers on his hair tug them harder with each pass of his tongue, almost scaring you with how tight you're pulling and whether you're hurting him. You might actually rip his hair out, but you can't bring yourself to care because it feels too good. None of that even seems to cross his mind as his finger curls, finding that spot inside you that makes your whole body tense. He works it mercilessly while his tongue keeps that same steady rhythm.

You're pretty sure you're babbling now, saying his name and god and please in an endless stream, nails of your one hand — the one not currently buried in his hair — grasping his flesh shoulder, hard enough that it has to hurt. Again, Bucky doesn't seem to care. If anything, he doubles down, adding a second finger and increasing the pressure of his tongue. He's going to ruin you for anyone else. Not that there's ever been anyone else to compare with, but after this, you're done for.

You can feel the release gathering in the clench of your thighs, in the way every muscle in your body goes tight. Bucky seems to sense how close you are, his free hand gripping your hip to hold you steady as he keeps that relentless pace. "C'mon," he says against your clit, the vibration of his voice sending shockwaves through you. "Let me taste it."

The orgasm crashes over you, your whole body seizing as pleasure tears through you. With your hands, it's never been like this. Never this intense, never this all-consuming. This feels like you're coming apart and Bucky's the only thing holding you together. You're dimly aware of crying out his name, your thighs trying to close around his head, the way your inner walls clenched rhythmically around his fingers. Bucky works you through it, tongue gentling but never stopping, drawing out every last aftershock until you're pushing at his head from oversensitivity.

When he finally pulls back, his chin is glistening. He looks obscene, debauched, like something out of your dirtiest fantasy. The satisfied look on his face would be smug on anyone else. On him it's just honest satisfaction, like getting you off was the highlight of his month. "You good?" His voice is rough.

Words seem far away right now, you can barely remember your own name. You just nod, boneless, wondering if it's possible to die from pleasure.

Bucky crawls up your body, settling his weight on top of you carefully. Even wrecked with want, he's careful not to crush you. When he kisses you slowly, you can taste yourself on his tongue. It feels filthy and intimate at the same time, sending a fresh wave of arousal through you despite having just come. "That was —" You still can't form complete sentences. "You're really good at that."

He grins against your mouth. "Yeah?"

"Don't let it go to your head."

"Too late." Bucky is smiling, you realize this might be the most relaxed you've ever seen him. Happy. He looks happy. When was the last time you saw him look happy? "You have no idea how long I've wanted to do that."

"Since July, apparently."

His thumb traces your lower lip, smearing spit. "July's when I stopped being able to pretend."

"What changed?"

"You looked at me." He says it simply, like it explains everything. "Just me. After that, I couldn't pretend anymore that I didn't want you looking at me like that all the time."

You've been looking at him since the day you knew him. You don't tell him that, those demons can stay where they lay. You pull him down into another kiss, slower this time, trading breath and heat. When you finally break apart, you can feel how hard he is against your hip, still fully clothed and probably painfully uncomfortable.

"Your turn," you tell him, reaching for his belt. Bucky catches your wrist, slowing you down, thumb stroking across your radial pulse, eyes pleading, saying everything his mouth can't. The gentle touch is at odds with the hunger in his gaze. You feel your pulse jumping under his fingers, giving away how badly you want this.

"I want to," your voice is barely a whisper. You need him to know, to understand that this isn't one-sided, that you've been wanting this just as long. That seems to be all the permission he needs. He releases your wrist and lets you work his belt open, the metal buckle clinking as you pull it free. Your fingers are shaking slightly, adrenaline and want making them clumsy. His jeans follow, while he watches with those hooded eyes, like this is some kind of religious experience.

When you get his shirt off, you take a moment to just look. God, he's a masterpiece. You've seen him shirtless before, but never like this. Never laid out for you, never yours to touch. There are scars you knew about, the ones you've seen at pool parties and barbecues, the ones your dad mentioned in passing when he thought you weren't listening. But there are others you didn't know, smaller ones scattered across his ribs and chest, a puckered bullet wound near his collarbone. Each one tells a story he's never shared, pain he's survived, and you want to learn every single one. The place where metal meets flesh is a work of terrible artistry, plates and skin fused in ways that probably hurt more than he'll ever admit.

You lean in and press your lips to his shoulder, right where metal becomes man. Bucky goes very still. Like he's holding his breath, waiting for you to recoil, to change your mind. "You don't have to do that."

You don't respond him with words, just another kiss to the seam, the metal cool under your lips, then lower, across his chest, the skin warm, the contrast intoxicating.You work your way down his body, following the trail of dark hair that disappears beneath his boxers, wanting to map every inch of him with your mouth, memorize the way he tastes. Bucky's hand leaps to tangle in your hair, gentle but insistent nonetheless, pulling you back up. 

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. But if you put your mouth on me right now, this is gonna be over embarrassingly fast," he answers. The admission goes to your heart and cunt at the same time, the idea that you affect him that much doing things to you. 

That makes you pause, a laugh threatening to bubble out of you, but you keep it contained. "How fast we talking?"

"Thirty seconds, maybe." He doesn't look embarrassed about the admission, though there's a slight red tinge to the tip of his ears. That blush, that tiny hint of vulnerability, makes you want him even more. "I've been half-hard since I kissed you in the doorway, and I've been thinking about this for months. So unless you want me coming down your throat before we even get to the good part, you're gonna have to wait."

The bluntness of it sends heat racing through you, right between your legs, warmth spreading over the apples of your cheeks. Glancing down to not meet his eyes, you're met with the unevenness of this situation, suddenly very aware that you're naked while he's still got his boxer briefs on. "That's not fair."

Bucky manoeuvres you, hands on your hips, guiding you back down to the couch with a gentleness that contradicts his size. "Life ain't fair, sweetheart." 

Bucky's body looms above you as he settles between your thighs. The breadth of his shoulders blocks out the light from the lamp, casting shadows across his face that make him look almost dangerous, but he's soft to you. You watch him shove his boxers down, cock springing free, curved slightly towards his stomach, thick and flushed, bead of precum spilling over the tip. It's bigger than you expected, thicker, and for a moment anxiety spikes through your arousal. His flesh hand wraps around himself, working his cock, while the metal one is braced against the couch, framing your head. And you realise this is quite possibly the hottest thing you've ever seen.

"Like what you see?" You'd assume it was asked out of cockiness if you didn't know him better. You know him better, and there's genuine curiosity in his question, mixed with almost boyish shyness. 

"You already know the answer to that."

"Maybe I wanna hear you say it."

"You're fishing for compliments now?"

"Is it working?"

"Yes," you admit, earning a bright eyed and genuine smile from him,transforming his whole face, making him look younger, happier, and you want to be the reason he smiles like that forever. "You're gorgeous, okay? You're so hot it's actually annoying."

"Annoying?"

"Yeah. You walk around being all broody and hot, and I'm supposed to just — what? Pretend I don't notice?"

"You can notice me all you want, sweet girl."

Sweet girl. You like the sound of it, somehow much more intimate that anything he's ever called you. It's not really an accomplishment because all he's called you before is 'kid'. 

Bucky laughs, a sound you want to bottle up and listen when your days get dark. His fingers are between your legs again, two of them sliding inside easily, thanks to your orgasm from earlier, still wet, still open. But the stretch makes you gasp anyway, an open-mouthed silent cry, that he swallows for himself with a kiss. He works them slowly, watching your face, conflict playing across his features. Want versus restraint. Need versus caution.

"You're so tight," he mutters, almost to himself, fingers pumping in and out. Each slick sound makes your face burn, embarrassingly loud evidence of how much you want this. "Gonna have to take my time with you."

"I can take it," you tell him, voice fracturing with need, the ache to be filled by him. His cock stands proud against his abdomen, jerking with every motion of his fingers, taunting you. You want to feel the weight of him inside you, splitting you open, claiming you completely.

"I know you can." He curls his fingers, finding that spot inside you that makes your back arch, and does it again just to watch you squirm. "But I'm not gonna hurt you. Not if I can help it."

He leans down to kiss you, slower this time, thorough, his tongue plunging into your mouth, remnants of your own juices lingering, while his fingers keep that steady rhythm. You're climbing toward another orgasm already, your body wound tight and responsive. Bucky breaks the kiss, only to pepper a few more on your jaw, the corner of your mouth, breath coming in hot. 

"Have you taken cock before?"

The question catches you off-guard, the blatant crudeness of it. Stilling beneath him, you will your breath to come, his fingers slowing on your cunt not being of much help. 

"Baby." His free hand comes up to cup your face. The tenderness in the gesture makes your eyes sting. "I need to know. Need to know how careful I gotta be."

The truth sits in your throat, heavy as a stone. You could lie, tell him you've done this a dozen times, that you're experienced and worldly and this is no big deal. But lying to Bucky feels wrong, feels like starting this thing between you on a foundation of sand.The way he's looking at you, open and honest, worry lines framing his face, also makes it impossible. "No," you finally whisper.

His fingers stop moving, just frozen inside you while he stares at you with an expression you can't quite read. Shock. Concern. Fear? "What?"

"No. I haven't."

Bucky starts to pull his fingers out, a pained expression on his face, like the knowledge of it physically hurts him. "Jesus Christ. You should've — I wouldn't have—"

No, no. He can't do that. You catch his wrist, holding his hand in place. "Don't."

"We can't —"

"Yes, we can." You roll your hips, taking his fingers deeper, and watch his eyes go dark, control slipping. "I want this. I want you."

"Your first time shouldn't be — It should be special. Someone who —"

"Someone who what? Takes me to a fancy restaurant and serves me one scallop?" You're babbling now, words tumbling out, desperate to keep him in. "I don't want that. I want you. This is special."

"I'm too old for you. Too fucked up. Your dad's gonna —"

"I don't care about my dad right now." You tighten your grip on his wrist, needing him to see that this isn't some impulsive decision. "I care about you. And I'm not some delicate flower you're gonna break. I can take you."

Bucky looks at you like you've wounded him, like the trust you're placing in him is almost too much to bear. You can see the war happening behind his eyes, and you hope he loses, you hope the walls he'd erected within the past twenty seconds crumble and he comes back to you. "You're all I want, Buck," you press. 

A long sigh leaves him, but finally he says, "you tell me if it's too much." The words sound torn from him, reluctant but resolute. "The second it's too much, you tell me and we stop. Understand?"

"Yes."

"Say it."

"If it's too much, I'll tell you." You pull him down into a kiss, teeth claiming his lips. You bite down, tasting copper, needing him to feel something, anything. "Now stop treating me like I'm made of glass and fuck me already."

That startles a laugh out of him. You wrap your fingers around his length, almost pulling him by his dick, he doesn't seem to care though. The skin is hot and silky under your palm, cock twitching in your grip, precum leaking from the tip. Bucky pulls his fingers free, positioning himself at your entrance. The blunt head of his cock presses against you, even that initial pressure making you tense. "Breathe," he instructs. "Just breathe for me, sweetheart."

You force your muscles to relax, and he pushes in. Just the tip at first, just enough to make you gasp at the stretch of it. It's immediately more than his fingers, wider and so overwhelming you forget how to think in complete sentences.

Bucky freezes, his hard length stuffing you halfway. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Just — a lot."

"I know, sweet girl." His metal hand comes up to cup your face with a gentleness, it in itself bringing you to tears, cool metal against your overheated cheek grounding, keeping you anchored. "We go slow. As slow as you need."

He works himself in gradually, stopping every time you tense, giving you time to ease yourself. It's torturous, this slow invasion, your body struggling to accommodate his size. But his words keep you company, praise, reassurance, sometimes filthy little things he'd want to do once you get used to this. Things about how he'll fuck you in every room of this apartment, how he'll bend you over the kitchen counter, how he'll wake you up with his cock inside you. About how good you're doing, how tight you are, how perfect you feel. When he's about halfway in, tears fully start leaking from the corners of your eyes. You don't think it's from the pain, just from the overwhelming fullness of it, the sensation of being split open, claimed and filled so completely there's no room for anything else. 

Bucky immediately senses the tears and stops, jaw clenching with the restraint of holding himself still above you, trembling with the effort of not moving. "Too much?"

"No." Back of your hand rushes to wipe your eyes impatiently, frustrated that your body's betraying you like this, showing weakness when you want to be strong for him. "Don't stop. Please don't stop."

"You're crying."

"I know I'm crying. It doesn't mean —" You roll your hips, to show him that you can take him deeper, that these are good tears, from pleasure alone and nothing else. At another roll of your hips, Bucky groans. "See? I can take it."

Bucky stays still, his hand finding your lower stomach, pressing down gently. The added pressure makes everything more intense, even fuller. "Can feel myself inside you," he mutters, almost wonderstruck. "Right here. Can you feel it?"

"What?" You're barely coherent, too overwhelmed to process what he's saying. You think he's trying to distract you, the palm on your abdomen pulls you enough from whatever discomfort you might feel from your first time. You welcome it. 

Bucky takes your hand and presses it against your lower stomach, right where his hand was. You can feel it, feel the solid presence of him inside you, the way your body's stretched around him. "Oh my god." The realization is visceral and overwhelming. "That's — you're —"

"Yeah. That's me, fillin' you up, sweetheart." Sounding wrecked, Bucky pushes the rest of the way in. The slide of it, the final inch that seats him fully inside you, makes you both freeze. You just lie there connected, trying to adjust to the reality of this. Through hooded eyes, you look at him. He's focused, jaw tightening as his gaze is fixed on the way your cunt swallows him whole. 

"You okay?" His eyes tear from your place of union reluctantly to look into yours. 

"Ask me that one more time and I'm gonna hit you."

That makes him laugh, the movement jostling where you're joined, making you clench around him involuntarily.

"Can you —" You shift your hips experimentally. "Can you move? Please?"

"Yeah." He pulls out slowly, so slowly that you can feel every ridge and vein, before he pushes back in just as carefully. The slide is easier now, your body adjusting, learning to take him. "This okay?"

"More." You're chasing the friction, hips canting up to meet him. "I need more."

Bucky is so careful, watching your face for any sign of discomfort. But when you urge him on with hands, hips and broken pleas, his control starts to slip gradually. The thrusts get deeper, the couch creaking beneath you, until you're making sounds you didn't know you were capable of.

It's never this good when you're alone. Bucky seems to have woken up your body from a slumber you didn't know it was in. Every sensation is not only new but also heightened. 

"So fucking tight," he groans, his hand pressed to your belly again. "Can feel my cock moving inside you. You're takin' me so well, sweetheart. Look at you."

You can't look at anything except him, his jaw is clenched with effort, pupils blown so wide there's no blue remaining, just black, the flush spreading across his chest. The still slightly damp hair falling in front of his face, but he makes no effort in moving it off, the salt and pepper stubble that scratches your cheek everytime he pushes forward, everytime his pelvis meets yours. He's gorgeous like this, desperate and wanting. 

"Bucky —" You're climbing again already, wound too tight to last much longer. "I'm gonna —"

"I know, baby." His thumb finds your clit, circling with devastating precision. "Can feel you getting tighter. Squeezin' me — fuck —"

The added stimulation is almost too much. You're right on the edge, balanced on that knife-point between pleasure and too much. Already at the verge of losing, made worse by Bucky leaning down to suck a mark into your neck while his hips keep that relentless rhythm. "Wanna fill you up," he mutters against your throat. "Wanna fuck you full of my cum. Wanna fuck a baby into you."

"Yes — Please —" You are completely disconnected from your mouth, it being a separate thing only remembering words that are his name, yes and please. 

"Gonna make sure it takes." His thrusts get erratic, control fraying. "Gonna keep you full of me until your belly swells. Until everyone can see what we've been doing."

The image he's painting is filthy and visceral. Your hands fly to his hair, gripping tight, verge of telling him yes to everything when he keeps going. This is not just distraction anymore, the farthest part of your brain whispers.

"Think about it," he groans, hand spanning your stomach again. "You round and full with my kid. These perfect tits getting bigger." His thumb presses harder on your clit, while he bends to take one nipple into his lips, neck straining. "So full of milk you'd need me to help you, need my mouth on you. They'd be so heavy, baby."

That's what sends you over. The orgasm tears through you, whole body seizing as pleasure obliterates thought, ears ringing, not even hearing the way you scream his name. Your inner walls clamp down on him so hard, he curses, loses his rhythm, your nails digging into his shoulders hard enough to leave marks.

Bucky fucks you through it, chasing his own release. "That's it. Milk my cock. Show me how much you want it. Want me to breed you properly —"

He comes with your name on his lips, hips grinding against yours as he spills inside you. The warmth of it, the sheer volume is startling, pulling soft noises from your wrung out body. You can feel it coating your walls, filling you up exactly like he promised, marking you from the inside out. 

Boneless like you, Bucky balances himself on top of you, forearms braced against the couch, not pulling out. You feel his cock twitching inside you, spurting the remnants of his release, and feel the wet slide of cum down your inner thighs. Through the haze of your orgasm, something clicks into place. The way he'd been fixated on your stomach from the beginning, how his hands always found their way there, pressing, holding and claiming. The breeding talk that seemed to come so naturally to him. He'd been obsessed with it, with your stomach, with the idea of filling you up, you'd just been too overwhelmed to notice.

"You're obsessed with my stomach," you say, still trying to catch your breath.

Bucky lifts his head to look at you, and there's no embarrassment in his expression. If anything, there's pride there, satisfaction. "Yeah. Have been since you wore crop tops all summer."

"All summer?"

"I'm not proud of it." But he's smiling slightly, thumb stroking across your stomach where he's softening inside you. "Couldn't stop thinking about marking you here. Putting my hands on you. Making you mine in every way that matters."

The possessiveness in his tone, the raw need, stirs something primal in you, that wants to be his. The fact that this is your first time ever doesn't concern you, just makes you feel wanted and claimed in the best possible way.

He finally pulls out, and you both wince at the sensitivity. The slide of him leaving you feels like a loss, an ache of emptiness. "Did I hurt you?"

"No." You cup his face, forcing him to look at you. Those worry lines are back, you want to smooth them away. "That was perfect. You were perfect." You kiss him softly. "I'm fine. Better than fine."

He still looks unconvinced, but before he can spiral into guilt, you pull him down on top of you. His weight is comforting rather than crushing, and you wrap your arms around him, holding him close. His arms band around you, face buried in your neck. 

For a while, he stays where you put him, his body heavy over yours, warm and shaking in small, leftover ways he would probably deny if you mentioned them. His face remains tucked in your neck like he can hide there from every terrible, responsible thought trying to crawl back into his head. You can feel the guilt gathering anyway. It keeps making itself known in the careful way he holds his weight off you, the tiny pauses before his mouth touches your skin, the way his arms tighten whenever you shift. The guilt doesn't get to settle in though, because you thread your fingers through his hair and tug gently, pulling him back to look at you. "Stop thinking so loud."

"I'm not —"

"You are." Your thumb traces the crease between his brows. "I can hear it from here."

Bucky huffs a laugh, pressing a kiss to your collarbone before starting a slow path downward. His lips drag across your sternum, then lower, mapping ribs and soft flesh. Each kiss is soft and slow, like he's got all the time in the world to learn what makes you sigh. When he reaches your navel, his tongue dips in the same way it did earlier, circling, and your hips twitch involuntarily.

"Stay still," he murmurs against your skin, quiet want in his tone. His mouth continues lower, across the plane of your stomach, and this is where he lingers. Open-mouthed kisses pressed to skin that's still flushed and overheated, his stubble scraping in ways that make you squirm. Both hands splay across your belly, spanning the width of it, metal and flesh holding you like something precious. He's almost worshipful about it, pressing his lips just below your navel and staying there, breathing you in.

"What are you doing?" Your voice comes out soft.

"Thinkin' about how good you'd look." His thumb strokes back and forth across your stomach. "Round and full. Wouldn't be able to keep my hands off you."

Bucky's orgasm doesn't seem slow him down, he's only edging you towards the start of another one, the words sending signals straight to your core. "You already can't keep your hands off me."

Bucky laughs as he presses another kiss lower, then another, working his way down until he's kneeling between your spread thighs. 

You're about to pull him up, tell him you're still not recovered, but Bucky's not looking at your face anymore. His gaze is fixed between your legs, watching as his cum starts to leak out of you, painting your inner thighs white. "Fuck," he breathes, his fingers gathering the mess and pushing it back inside you. "Can't waste it," he mutters, almost to himself, two fingers pressing deep, pushing his release back where it belongs. "Gotta make sure it takes. Gotta keep you full."

You're boneless, can't do anything but lie there and let him have this strange, filthy little ritual, watching through dazed eyes. The room smells like rain and sex. Your couch is absolutely never recovering, and maybe neither are you. He keeps his fingers inside you with that focused, almost frightening devotion, pushing the mess back where he thinks it belongs, one open-mouthed kiss landing on your lower stomach as he does it.

You reach down and catch his wrist, stilling his hand. "Bucky. I'm not going anywhere. It's not going to leak out in the next five seconds."

He looks up at you, a bashfulness in his face you've never seen on him before, caught doing exactly what he wants with zero shame left to hide behind. "I know. I just —" He trails off, fingers still buried inside you.

"You just what?"

"Like seeing it," he admits. "Like knowing I put it there."

The honesty of it makes you want the next round desperately, and before that thought could take root, you tug on his wrist, pulling him towards you. He withdraws his fingers reluctantly, wiping them on his discarded shirt before crawling up your body. When he settles next to you on the couch, you turn into him, tucking yourself against his chest. His arm comes around you, metal hand cool against your overheated skin.

"So that happened."

"Yeah. That happened." His lips and hands keep mapping your body in small increments, like he's making up for lost time, like he doesn't want to let you go. 

The silence stretches. You count his heartbeats — twelve, fifteen, twenty — before he eventually says, "your dad's gonna kill me."

"Probably." You trace patterns on his chest with one finger, following old scars, the raised tissue telling stories he won't. "But at least you'll die happy."

"Small comfort."

"I could tell him it was my idea," you supply. 

"That'll make it worse. Then he'll kill me for not having more self-control." He catches your hand, stilling your wandering fingers mid-trace. "He trusts me. Trusted me with you. And I just —"

"Fell in love with me?"

The words shatter between you. You've never said them out loud before, never put a name to this thing that's been building since you were nineteen. Bucky goes very still at that, body stopping everything, even breathing. "What?"

"That's what this is, right?" You prop yourself up on one elbow to look at him. "Because if this is just some — I don't know, some itch you needed to scratch, you should probably tell me now before I —"

"It's not." He cuts you off urgently. "It's not that. It's —" The struggle plays out on his face, words getting stuck somewhere between his chest and his throat.

"It's what?"

"It's me being stupid in love with you for the past six months and trying real hard not to be," he finally says. The confession comes out rough, like it's been dragged from deep inside him. "It's me seeing you and forgetting how to be a person. It's me lying awake at 3 AM thinking about your laugh. It's — fuck, I don't know. I'm not good at this."

"Doin' fine so far," you tell him softly.

"I'm old. You just graduated college a few years ago. Your dad's my best friend. I got no business —"

"Bucky." You cup his face, forcing him to look at you, meet your eyes, the intensity in them hopefully squashing any lingering doubts. His eyes do that thing where they won't hold yours for more than two seconds, darting away like he's afraid of what you'll see if he stays. "I'm twenty five. I have a job, an apartment, a 401k that I don't understand but I have one. I'm not some kid you're taking advantage of."

"I know that. I do. But —"

"But what?"

"But I've been to war. I've killed people. I got nightmares that wake me up screaming and a metal arm because I got fucked up and — You should want someone normal. Someone who doesn't have to check the exits in every room and who doesn't flinch at loud noises."

You think about all the times you've watched him scan a room, cataloging threats that aren't there. How he never sits with his back to a door. How he jumped that time your neighbor dropped a toolbox in the hallway. "Should I? Is that what I should want?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I don't." You lean in and kiss him before he can argue, or state reasons why this shouldn't happen. You continueto speak against his mouth, "I want you. Nightmares, metal arm, all of it. I want you at 3 AM when you can't sleep. I want you checking exits. I want all the parts you think are too broken to love."

A frustrated sound leaves him, sounds like a laugh but could easily be anything else. "You're gonna regret this."

"Let me worry about that."

"When your dad finds out —"

"When my dad finds out, we'll deal with it. Together." You settle back against his chest, listening to his heartbeat, its jumping out of his ribs. "Besides, he likes you better than me anyway. I'm pretty sure if it came down to it, he'd keep you and disown me."

That actually makes him laugh. "That's not true."

"It absolutely is. You fixed his transmission. I can't even check my own oil."

"I'll teach you."

"See? This is why he likes you better." You press a kiss to his sternum. "Useful."

"That's me. Useful." You can hear the smile in his voice now, the tension finally bleeding out of him.

"Among other things." Your hand drifts lower, fingers trailing down his stomach.

He catches your wrist, halting its path. "Again? Already?"

"What? You get to be obsessed with my stomach but I can't appreciate yours?"

"I don't —" He stops when you look up at him. Your expression must give away exactly what you're thinking, Bucky's jaw tightens, Adam's apple bobbing on a hard swallow. "Okay, yeah. I'm obsessed with your stomach. Happy?"

"Very." You kiss his jaw. It's hard to keep your hands to yourself when he's laid out beside you like a Greek statue taunting you. "For the record, I'm obsessed with your arms. Both of them. And your shoulders. And this thing you do where you bite your lip when you're concentrating."

"I don't do that."

"You absolutely do. You did it like three times while you were trying to get my bra off."

"I was nervous," he admits. There's a pink tinge creeping up his neck, faint but visible. "Kept thinking you'd realize this was a mistake and change your mind."

"Not a mistake." You tilt your head up to look at him properly. "Best decision I ever made, actually. Well, second best. First best was wearing that black crop top to the barbecue."

He groans. "Don't remind me. I had to hide in the garage for twenty minutes."

"Why?"

"Why do you think?" He shifts, and you feel the evidence of why pressing against your hip. "You bent over to grab a beer and I thought I was gonna die right there."

"Poor baby. Must've been so hard for you." You're not even a little bit sorry. 

"Not funny."

"It's hilarious." You kiss him again, deeper this time. His tongue slides against yours lazily, like you have all the time in the world. When you pull back, his eyes are dark again. "Also, we should probably move to the bedroom. This couch isn't big enough for both of us."

"Can you walk?"

Good question. Your legs feel like overcooked pasta, your body wrung out and remade into someone new. "I — Maybe?"

Bucky sits up, taking you with him, and before you can protest he's scooping you up. "I got you."

"I can walk," you insist, even as you're wrapping your arms around his neck. The automatic way your body curls into him feels like muscle memory you haven't earned yet.

"Sure you can." He's heading down the hallway. "But let me do this."

"Such a hardship, carrying me around naked."

"The worst." He's grinning, and when he lays you down on your bed, carefully, like you're precious cargo. He stands there for a second, just looking at you sprawled across your sheets. You should feel exposed — you are exposed, completely bare under his gaze — but the way he's looking at you kills the urge to cover up.

"What?" you ask.

"Nothing. Just —" He shakes his head. "Can't believe this is real."

"Want me to pinch you?"

"Smart ass." He crawls onto the bed, settling beside you and pulling the blanket over both of you. You curl into him automatically, throwing one leg over his hip, and he makes this satisfied sound in his throat. Out of content, maybe. Or possession. Hard to tell the difference.

"Gonna stay?" you ask, even though you already know the answer.

"Yeah." His arm tightens around you. "If that's okay."

"More than okay." You press your face into his neck, breathing him in. He smells like yours. "Bucky?"

"Hmm?"

"I love you too. Just so you know."

For three full seconds, he doesn't move. Doesn't even breathe if you're being honest, his ribs don't move. You're about to take it back, pretend you were joking, anything to break the awful stillness — "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Have for a while now. Since before the barbecue, even. Maybe since I was nineteen and saw you sitting at my dad's table looking all broody and tragic."

"I wasn't broody."

"You were absolutely broody. You still are. It's annoyingly attractive."

He huffs a laugh against your hair, the warmth spreading to your neck, raising goosebumps. "Attractive, huh?"

You bite his shoulder lightly, teeth scraping enough skin to make him hiss slightly. "Everything about you is attractive."

"Everything else like what?"

"You don't cut your hair unless it bothers you, until it falls over your face and blocks your vision, like now. You like it when I ask you things, when I need help… I think it makes you feel wanted, you don't know that I always want you." Your mind goes to your windowsill. "You always fill the bird feeder, even if I forget." 

"You noticed all that?"

"I've been studying you for six years, Barnes. I could talk about you in my sleep."

"That's — That's a little creepy, actually."

"Says the man who just spent ten minutes trying to plug me up with his cum."

A soft laugh vibrates from him as his fingers trace idle patterns on your hip. "Go to sleep, sweetheart."

There are a hundred things you could say. Practical things about what happens now, how this changes everything, whether he'll still come over for coffee on Saturday mornings with your dad or if this makes it weird. But your eyes are heavy, body sated and wrung out, not enough energy to keep the conversation going, even if you so badly want to.

"Buck?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't leave before I wake up."

"Not going anywhere. Not anymore, sweet girl." A soft lingering kiss to your forehead is all you remember, the ghost of its touch following you to dreamland. 

MY MASTERLIST!

EXTRAS. what can i say i love the concept of dbf bucky, i have like 15 more dbf pwp in mind lmao… also no taglist bc this is queued.

[godmadeaterribleerror]

good 4 u

✦Bucky Masterlist - Main Masterlist - Read on aO3!✦

✦summary: you've got a no good boyfreind. lucky bucky's here, to show you what you deserve✦

✦warnings/tags: bucky barnes x female!reader, enemies to lovers, emotional angst, everyone's bad at feelings, cheating (not by bucky, it's deserved) fluff, big porn level smut (stripping, finger sucking, dirty talk, possessive sex, praise kink, teasing, fingering, light brat taming, softdom!bucky, pussy spanking, dumbification, making out, sensitive reader, manhandling, bucky gets nasty, blowjobs, body worship, oral f!reciving overstimulation, mean!bucky, degradation kink, big dick bucky, creampie, he fucks like a machine), no use of y/n, no descrption of reader✦

✦wc: 8.6k✦

✦Author's Note: request! oh to be yearned after by bucky barnes in a kinda toxic but really hot way✦

“What the fuck is his problem?”

You don’t have to look, to figure out who your boyfriend is talking about. You can feel his glare from across the room, burning over your skin like a brand, making your leg bounce and your fingers pick restlessly at the label on your drink.

Bucky Barnes.

He always stares at you. It doesn’t matter if you’re hanging out at Steve’s place—technically Bucky’s place as well, but you refuse to give him any sort of credit about that—or getting coffee, or at the movies, or here, in another bar on a Friday night, trying to wash the week down with a drink, Bucky stares at you like he’s trying to kill you. It’s the kind of stare you’d find creepy from anyone else. A knit brow and heavy breathing, like just the sight of you makes him want to rip his head off. You glare back when you can, but tonight, you’re determined to ignore it. Ignore him.

Bucky can be as pretty and charming as he wants, he’s not getting a rise out of you. Not one that he can see, at least. When you got to the bar, he drawled your name and teased you about your drink, but you just grabbed your boyfriend’s hand and dragged him across the room without a look over your shoulder.

Maybe one look.

One look that Brock didn’t have to see, because he’s always accusing you and Bucky of having something. You’ve tried to explain to him that whatever something he thinks exists between you and Barnes is just the negative space of pure fucking loathing, but he doesn’t listen. He never listens.

“Barnes wants to fuck you,” he’d muttered last week, after you got home, and you’d rolled your eyes.

“Bucky does not want to fuck me, he can barely stand to be in the same room as me-“

“Because he wants to fuck you,” Brock has snapped. “I don’t want you hanging around him alone.”

You’d scoffed. “That’s- We’re friends-“

“Thought he hated you-“

“He does. But- It’s complicated.”

And it was. Bucky was Steve’s best friend, and Steve was your work husband, and Natasha was your best friend, and Steve’s actual girlfriend, and Bucky’s work wife, and Sam was Bucky’s other best friend and work husband, and your best friend—you’d even lived together, in college, which Brock never seemed to understand the concept of—and Steve’s business partner, which made him your boss, but you Nat’s and Bucky’s  boss, and it was a tangled mess of relationships and years of history that became impossible to unweave. You and Bucky were friends because if you weren’t, you were enemies, and that always hurt right under your ribs in a way you never wanted to acknowledge.

Bucky wasn’t a bad guy. He was a stubborn ass sometimes, and he stared a lot, and got kind of judgey about stupid things, but so did you. The first time you met, you’d just stared at each other for—according to Natasha—five straight minutes. Once you’d been at some stupid charity gala, and you’d spent the whole time gossiping in the corner about the old, rich assholes who needed a party to give their endless money to a good cause. You’d thought that you were friends. Really friends. Friends that could’ve been something more, if he’d asked you to be.

But he hadn’t. He never had. And you’d started to butt heads more, and he didn’t ask if you were good like he used to. He avoided you at the stupid parties and didn’t ask your opinion about small things. He didn’t wait for you to go to lunch, or sit with you when you had to stay late, and suddenly the friendship had slipped through your fingers, because it had been so fast you hadn’t been given time to realize you were supposed to hold on.

Some days you wonder what you did, and you want to strangle the answer out of his pretty, thick head. You thought you’d been good. You’d really thought you’d been good, and then he’d just gone and decided that you weren’t. That there was something about you he just couldn’t stand, and you never get to know what it was.

So if he wanted to play the hating game, you’d play it, and you’d win. You ignored him almost every day, only sneering back when you had a comment that you knew would land like a headshot.

“You look comfortable,” he’d muttered last week at Nat’s, and you’d shot him a glare.

Bucky’s mouth had twitched, as you’d just stared at him. He always seemed to enjoy making you want to kill him. You hope he also enjoyed it, when you actually killed him.

“No boyfriend tonight, huh?” He’d smirked, and you swallowed on your venom. “What, he off fucking strippers again?”

Your lip had curled. You’d just kept glaring, and Bucky had laughed.

“Don’t give me that look, doll. It’s not your fault you can’t keep him satisfied-“

“I keep him satisfied,” you’d snapped, your patience finally fraying.

And Bucky had given you a strange, tired look. It was sharp around the edges, but dull everywhere else. Almost cold. Almost exhausted.

“I bet you do,” he’d muttered, and you’d snapped.

“At least I have someone to satisfy, Barnes,” you’d hissed. “No one can even put up with you for a one night stand.”

Bucky had flinched, and the knot in your gut had been immediate. You told yourself you liked the second his armor shattered slightly. You liked the win. You told yourself over and over, that it was fine, because he struck first.

But your body hadn’t learned the lesson. And it felt wrong to be in your skin, whenever Bucky made that broken, vulnerable face. Like he’d almost forgotten how cruel you could be. Like he’d cared at all, that you’d struck back.

He didn’t. You reminded yourself that he didn’t. It was complicated, because it needed to be, for the sake of explaining to Brock. But to you, it was really, painfully simple.

You’d been in a small, blooming love with Bucky. He’d recoiled and poured hatred on you like pesticide, and your loved had curled and shriveled, but never fully died. You think there might be something wrong with you, that you can harbor feelings for a man who brings you nothing but storms. You gave up on trying to understand it a long time ago. Maybe, one day, you’ll tell your therapist. You’re really hoping the love just dies first. It’s humiliating enough to feel it, let alone say it aloud.

Brock demanded he come with you tonight. To keep an eye on Barnes. You didn’t fight him, because fights with Brock aren’t something you win. He was a relationship you started before Bucky, that had been on and off and on and off for years. In the sacred months where Bucky had liked you, Brock had been off on some work trip in Germany. He’d gotten back right when Bucky had decided to hate you, and you’d been a raw, vulnerable creature, just crawling on the beach for a new shell to call home. Brock had been there. He’d been a tight fight, and the love you’d felt for him had soured from the joy of Bucky, but you’d just needed something. And Brock had been asking you to be exclusive for years. So you’d finally just… given in.

It’s not a dream relationship. Sometimes you worry you’re going to marry him and have his babies, and he’d make such ugly babies. You don’t want them. You don’t really see another way.

You wouldn’t mind having Bucky’s babies. That’s not a very productive thought to have.

“He always stare this much?” Brock asks, and you shrug.

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“Yeah?” Brock snaps. “Or maybe. Can’t be both, sweetheart.”

“Yeah and maybe,” you mutter. “I don’t know.”

“Either he stares or he doesn’t-“

“He stares, I just don’t know what’s this much-“

“Then you should start paying fucking attention.”

You sigh, and give Brock a tight smile. His lip curls, and his eyes narrow, and you fight the urge to flinch away.

Bucky hates you. Your boyfriend doesn’t seem to like you all that much either. He won’t let Nat sit with you, and he certainly won’t let Sam sit with you, so now you’re just fucking here. At the crowded bar, all but alone, even with half a dozen worried or hateful eyes on you. You only give yourself eyes for your drink.

At least you have your drink.

You’re smiling. Laughing. Lighting up the whole bar from your little corner, and Bucky’s stuck over here in the dark.

He wants to drink until he can’t anything but your face and a whole blur of colors, but he got stuck being one of the drivers. He wants to go over and sock your stupid boyfriend in the face, but that would lead to a bigger conversation he knows you don’t want to have. This is a grave he dug for himself, but it didn’t even work right. He was supposed to bury himself alive and forget about you, high above him, brighter than the sun and prettier than the sky.

Instead he’s just lying in the dirt, six feet down, only able to watch you orbit around him like an angel. It’s hell. It’s torture. It’s exactly what he fucking deserves.

“You’re sulking again,” Steve says casually, and Bucky grunts.

“So?”

“It’s bringing everyone down, Buck-“

“They’re fine.”

Steve sighs. He does that a lot, when it comes to you and Bucky. He sighed when Bucky told him that he’d fallen in love with you. He sighed when Bucky decided you deserved better and started to push you away. He sighed when Bucky would lock himself on the fire escape for hours after parties, smoking and staring out at the city skyline until the wind was threatening to bite his skin off, and he had to be dragged inside.

Bucky knows Steve thinks he’s an idiot. Hell, most days Bucky thinks he’s an idiot. There isn’t a moment that passes where he doesn’t want to go back and suck up the fear, take the gamble, and just tell you he’d fallen for you. Hard enough to break the sound barrier, hard enough to snap him in half before he even hit the bottom, hard enough that he was never going to be able to climb his way back up. But he’s a veteran with a missing arm and a pile of baggage he can’t even shoulder some days. You’d looked at him like he was something good. You’d looked at him like you thought it could’ve been easy, to fall right back.

And Bucky couldn’t have that.

The only thing worse than never having you would’ve been having you, and breaking you. Letting you down. Letting you love him, then letting you realize how wrong you were, to bother to try. So he’d pushed you away.

Steve said that didn’t give him the right to sulk about it all the time. Steve was probably right, but Bucky sulked anyway. It was all he had, now.

That, and hating your stupid fucking boyfriend.

Brock. Dumb name. Sounded like rock. Bucky had a better name. He’d even let you call him James, like you used to. You’re the only person that ever made Bucky sound like an insult instead of a marker of affection. He wants to go back to being James, just for you. But he can’t. Because of Brock.

“What does she even see in him,” he mutters, and Steve sighs. Again.

“I don’t know, but-“

“He’s not that good looking,” Bucky narrows his eyes at Brock. Leaning over the table. Grabbing your arm. Bucky should be the one touching you. “His dick is probably small.”

“I- Uh- Yeah, sure-“

“She deserves better-“

“Better like you?”

That makes Bucky’s head snap to the side. Steve doesn’t even blink, his brows raised in almost mocking gentleness. It pisses Bucky off sometimes, how he’s not allowed to be pissed at Steve.

“You know she’s with him because he asked her, right?” Steve says, and Bucky scowls.

“That’s not- I- He doesn’t treat her right-“

“And you do?”

Bucky tastes bile. Steve still doesn’t back down, just giving Bucky that sympathetic puppy look, and Bucky wonders if he digs himself another foot down, Steve will do him a favor and bury him alive.

“You could just- Talk to her,” Steve murmurs, and Bucky snorts.

“She doesn’t care what I gotta say, Stevie-“

“Because you made her think you don’t care at all.”

“I don’t care,” Bucky snaps, louder than he means to, and Steve gives him an unimpressed look. Bucky scowls and turns back to his drink. “Shut up.”

“I didn’t say a thing-“

“You’re thinkin’. I can hear it.”

Steve sighs. Bucky’s going to shove a fist into his mouth, to get him to stop. “I’m just saying, Buck,” Steve murmurs. “Nat thought she was finally going to get over Brock. Before you decided to be an ass to her all the time.”

Bucky scoffs, then pauses. He didn’t actually understand what that meant. It sounded like it meant something important, something he was really supposed to understand, but for the life of him, he can’t work out why. He turns back to Steve with a frown, ready to ask what the hell that meant, but the words are drowned in aloud smash from across the bar.

Bucky’s attention snaps to the side in a second, his body realizing what’s happening before his brain. He’s on his feet when Brock shouts at you, and walking when you shove Brock. He almost breaks into a sprint, when he sees Brock’s hand curl into a fist. It only gets slammed on the table, but Bucky’s heart still threatens to burst through his throat. The bar is crowded. Too crowded. It’s taking him too long to get to you, and Brock shouts something, and you scream something back, and some lady tries to grab Bucky to flirt, but he shoulders her off.

He almost loses you in the chaos. A door slams, and he’s not sure if it’s you or Brock. He looks around for Nat—wherever you went, she’ll be there too—but can’t find her. He stumbles to the table, and his mouth goes dry.

You’re not hurt, but you’re crying. You’re crouching against the wall, Nat petting your head and trying to calm you down. Brock is nowhere to be found. Smart move, Bucky thinks. He was seconds from getting his face knocked in.

“What the hell happened?” He grunts to Nat, kneeling in front of you.

She shakes her head, lips in a thin line. “I’m not sure. They started fighting, Brock smashed a glass, then just- Fucked off, I guess.”

“What’d they fight about-“

“She won’t tell me,” Nat sighs, and you glare at her under gorgeous, wet lashes.

“I’m right here,” you snap, and Nat gives you an apologetic smile.

“I know, but- You won’t tell me.”

You sniff, glancing over to Bucky, then down to the floor. “I don’t want to talk about it,” you mutter, and Nat murmurs your name.

“Was it-“

“Yeah.”

Nat scowls, and Bucky feels like he’s being left out of something.

“Nat, I-“ You grab her wrist, voice small and pleading. “I just want to go home.”

Natasha’s throat bobs, but she nods. Bucky frowns. Nat’s been drinking. Everyone’s been drinking except you and him, and he doesn’t think you should be driving when you can’t even get off the floor.

“I’ll take her,” he mutters, and you shoot him a poisoned glare.

“No.”

“Listen, kid, I’m offering to help-“

“I don’t want your help,” you sneer, and Bucky sighs. He deserves that. He knows he does. Doesn’t make it any easier or sweeter to swallow.

Natasha mutters your name, watching Bucky from the corner of her eye. “It’s either him, or an uber-“

“Uber,” you say immediately, and Nat gives you a flat look.

“That wasn’t a real option. You’re going with Bucky.”

You pout, inching away from him, and Bucky’s face burns. He stares at his hands, trying to pretend he can’t hear your whispers. Trying to pretend they don’t cut into a sensitive, raw, needy part of his heart that no amount of self-inflicted burns has ever been able to steel.

“I don’t want to go with Bucky,” you hiss at Nat, and Nat just shrugs.

“I don’t want you to be alone right now-“

“Then you get in the Uber with me.” Your voice is small. Almost pleading. It breaks Bucky’s heart.

Nat shakes her head, voice gentle, as if you’re a wounded animal. “Bucky will drop you at my place, alright? I just have to take care of something first.”

Your nose wrinkles, but you agree. Bucky doesn’t think you’re happy about it. He can almost feel the disdain emitting from your body like radiation, as Nat helps you to Bucky’s car. He decides not to tell you that Nat’s thing is probably hunting down Brock and killing him. Bucky would join her, if he didn’t have to deal with you. He doesn’t think there’s anything more noble. His worry is devotion. It’s a shame you’re blinder than a real god, to see it.

The drive is dead quiet. Bucky glances at the radio every few minutes, but loses the debate with him over and over to turn it on. He doesn’t want you to hate his taste in music.

You curl up against the window, as far away from him as you can get without jumping onto the freeway. Bucky drums his fingers on the wheel to fill the silence. Your breathing has steadied from short, shallow gasps, but he can still hear you sniffle every few seconds. It makes his vision line with red, and he knows he’s the worst kind of hypocrite, but knowing never helped anyone. He doesn’t understand, how Brock could treat you so horribly. He doesn’t understand how you—beautiful, smart, sweet but unwavering and sharp—could tolerate it.

Bucky parks the car outside of Nat’s. You don’t move, and he wishes he could build the anger to make you. But you smell like vanilla and something summery, and you look like an angel in the streetlights, and all he can feel is bubbling red and green. It spills out of his mouth like vomit, before he can garner the will and kindness to shove it down.

“What do you see in him,” Bucky mutters, and you look over with a frown.

You stare at him. Bucky stares back. He loves it when you do that. It’s a little off-putting, but he thinks he can tell you the truth with his eyes. He’s not sure, though, if you ever see it.

“He’s good to me,” you mutter finally, and Bucky snorts. “He is, don’t- Don’t fucking make that face-“

“I’m not makin’ a face-“

“You are,” you point at him, eyes narrowed, voice cold. “He is good to me, Bucky.”

Bucky raises his brows. It only seems to work you up more.

“Fuck you,” you spit. “Brock loves me, he- He’s- You just don’t see the side of him that I do-“

“I don’t think he’s got enough sides to hide anything, doll,” Bucky drawls, and you scowl.

“You’re just jealous.”

Bucky recoils, fingers tightening on the wheel. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he grunts, and you roll your eyes.

“Fuck off, it’s so obvious-“

Bucky mutters your name in warning, but you just keep going.

“You’re jealous that someone like me could have a partner that loves them, when you’re alone. But guess what, Bucky,” you lean forward, words spitting over Bucky’s slack face. “You’re going to die alone, and I’m not, so fuck you.”

You push the door open, and storm out onto the street. Bucky’s frozen in the drivers seat for a second, a faint ringing in his ears. You’re right. You’re right, and it’s his fault. Not about Brock—that piece of shit isn’t capable of love, even for someone as perfect as you—but- But-

He’s moving before he can think about why. Shoving his way out of the car and shouting your name, chasing you up the sidewalk like a madman. You ignore him. Of course you do. It’s what he’s fucking earned.

“Just- Wait-“ He catches your wrist. You yank it away.

“Leave me alone, Bucky-“

“No, I got somethin’ I wanna say-“

“Well I don’t want to hear it-“

“I know, I know, just-“

“No!” You scream, round on him with a pointed finger, and Bucky feels something split right down his chest at the tears in your eyes. “No, I don’t want to fucking- I- You don’t get to tell me anything about- About anything. This is your fault, your-“

You cut yourself off, and Bucky blinks, leaning back. “My fault?” He laughs in disbelief, when you nod, not meeting his eyes. “How the hell is it my fault?”

You wrap your arms over your stomach, gaze fixed firmly on your shoes. “Brock thinks you want to fuck me,” you mumble, and Bucky’s heart falters in his chest. “That’s what the- The stupid fight way about, alright? And he thinks I shouldn’t be around you anymore, because of it.”

Bucky gapes at you. He’s trying to think of a way to ask that isn’t selfish. He can’t come up with it. “But you’re not going to listen to him, right?”

You shrug. “It’s not like you like being around me,” you mumble, and Bucky’s hands fists.

“That’s not the fuckin’ point, doll-“

“Isn’t it?” You give him a tired look. “Don’t you want me to just- Just go away? Aren’t you fucking happy, that you’re never going to have to deal with me again?”

Bucky’s throat his too tight to speak. This is a walking nightmare, but he can’t seem to wake up. You’re right. This is the part he’s supposed to want, where you bury him and he never has to see you’re beauty and wonder what if. But he’s selfish. He’s too fucking selfish, and he doesn’t want the sun to go away. He can’t lose you. Not like this, not when you seem to have halfway lost yourself.

You give him a prompting glare, tipping up your chin when he’s been silent too long. He swallows. His fingers flex, and he works his jaw until he can speak.

“Don’t,” he rasps, watching you under hooded eyes. “Don’t go away.”

You laugh, but it doesn’t sound read. “Don’t do that, Bucky, don’t act like you care-“

“I do care-“

“No.” You point at him, face tight. “No, you don’t- You don’t-“

Bucky catches your hand, and you immediately go quiet. He takes a small step forward. You don’t take a step back.

“I care,” he croaks, squeezing your hand once. “I care, doll. I- I’ve always cared, I-“

He moves to his knees. You stare down at him, like you’re not sure what you’re supposed to do. Bucky doesn’t need you to do anything. He only prays at the only alter he knows—your feet—that you’ll listen.

“I love you,” he whispers, and your mouth falls open.

“Bucky…”

“I know I’ve been a dick,” he rasps. “I know, and I- I don’t expect you to forgive me, or say anything back. If you wanna slap me, I’ll let you. I’ll let you do anything, doll, just- Please don’t listen to him.” Bucky swallows, daring to wrap a hand around the back of your thighs, silently begging you to stay. “If he’s told you no one else is gonna love you, he’s dead wrong. If you’re letting him tell you what to do ‘cause you think it’s the only way to make him stay, let him fucking leave. You deserve better. You’ve always deserved better. Than-“ His words catch, painful in his throat. “Than me. But also than him. You deserve better.”

He digs his fingers into your soft skin, and you swallow, blinking down at him with soft, glossy eyes.

“I love you,” Bucky echoes like a prayer. “I swear I love you, doll. And I really don’t expect nothing, but- Please.”

You straighten up, and Bucky tries not to flinch when you cup his cheek. Your hand is so warm, so soft. He doesn’t deserve the touch.

“Bucky,” you murmur. “Stand up.”

He blinks at you, then scrambles to his feet. Your mouth twitches. He thinks that’s a good sign.

You stand barely an inch apart, staring into each others eyes. Bucky lets every bit of himself crumble away, until the only thing left for you to see is his love. You let out a sharp breath, and glance to his parted lips.

“You mean it?” You whisper, and he nods in a heartbeat.

“With everything I got.”

You laugh, soft and nervous, and meet his gaze again. “But- You were such an asshole- I thought you hated me.”

“Never,” he whispers. “I- I mean- I was an asshole, but I never hated you doll, ever. I just- I kinda loved you too much, and I’m an idiot-“

Bucky’s voice dies easily, when you push up and press a small kiss to his lips. His hands twitch to catch you, but he holds them back. Not daring to move. Not daring to let this fall apart. Your lips are so soft, and you taste like that sugary drink you’d been nursing, and he thinks he might have just taken a hit of a drug he’s never going to kick.

He’s panting, when you pull away. You smile at him, shy and gorgeous, brows raised in challenge, and he laughs like a ruined man. He dives back down, grabbing your face between his hands and kissing you hard. Kissing you the way he dreamed, your lips molding together and body arching up to his touch, your tongue darting over his lip before he squeezes your jaw, and you open for him with a moan.  He chuckles and spits into your mouth, wrapping an arm around your waist. You scratch his neck and press back with twice the force, dragging a low groan from his chest.

Bucky yanks himself back, and you stare at each other, flushed and panting. You find it in you to speak first. Bucky’s not surprised.

“You love me?” You demand, and he nods.

“All the time.”

You nod, and he thinks he’s got the kind of luck they talk about in kings.

“Good,” you mutter, straightening the collar of his shirt before fixing him with that enchanting, dangerous stare. “Prove it.”

Bucky smiles, and presses a harsh but loving kiss to your lips. You really have no fucking idea.

Proving it is going to be the easy part.

You’ve had dreams about this. So many dreams that living through it takes a lot of convincing, for you to believe it’s reality. You think, through the power of Bucky’s hands and lips, you’re going to get there.

You kissed and stumbled into Nat’s house with your hands roaming and feet tripping over everything but each other. Bucky had ripped your shirt over your head and kicked the door behind him, letting his searing mouth wander over your jaw, your cheeks, your nose and back to your lips. You’d pulled the buckle of his jeans while he made quick work of your bra, using the straps to pull you right back against his chest before tossing it the same way as your shirt.

“Look at you,” he’d muttered, palming your breast with an air of awe to his every word. “Prettiest thing I’ve ever fuckin’ seen.”

You’d flushed and kissed him before he could say any more nice things. They were already making your heart soft and prone to forgiveness. The kind you were trying to make him earn, even if he was probably about to get it for free.

Bucky slid his hand around the back of your neck and kissed you like it was a movie. You’d melted into him, clinging to the hooks of his jeans and letting him angle your face further back. You’d tugged him closer and he’d grunted, wrapping his full bicep around your neck and sliding his hand on your breast down your side. He’d cupped your ass and squeezed it before dipping his fingers under your waistband, pulling it back and forth as he dragged his tongue over your lower lip.

“Wanna take care of you,” he’d muttered, like he was speaking to himself. “You gonna let me take care of you?

“Ye- Yeah,” you breathe, nails digging into his wrist. You’re trying to stay steady. You’re not sure it’s working, with how the room is spinning and your skin is getting heated. “Yes, please.”

Bucky chuckles, dragging his thumb over your lower lip. Your mouth falls open with a tiny gasp, and his brows furrow tight. He slides the pad of his finger between your lips, and you flick your tongue against it. Your eyes droop, and your head tips back as you start to suck on him. Bucky groans, his fingers digging into your hips.

“Jesus,” he rasps. “Always knew you’d be the death of me, doll.”

You coo, and Bucky’s nostrils flare. His hand drifts further down your back, hooking on your bottoms and pulling them with him. You make another soft, humming sound, smiling at him around his thumb, and his throat bobs.

“That’s it,” he rasps. “Just like that, nice and easy.”

Your bottoms fall to the floor, leaving you in only your panties. Bucky glances down, his tongue darting over his lips, and then looks right back to you. He pulls his thumb away, cups the back of your head, and pulls your face back for him to kiss. You moan against his mouth and he groans, pressing over you until there’s no space for anything else left. It’s all just Bucky, everywhere around you and so warm you start to get dizzy. You almost don’t know what to do with yourself, yanking at his shirt and trying to meet every kiss, but it’s hard. Bucky’s demanding, and you’ve wanted this for too long. Just his hands on your bare skin are better than anyone else being inside of you. It’s really unfair.

Bucky cups your pussy when your back hits the wall, and you mewl. He leans back to watch your hips roll against his hand, his eyes going fully dark and a low, rumbling grunt falling from his lips.

“Fuck, baby,” he rubs his hand back and forth, a sweet, lewd sound filling the room. “This wet, just for me?”

You nod a little shamefully, watching him under fluttering lashes. He pulls on the fabric of your panties and snaps it against your cunt, making you buck up with a squeak. Bucky chuckles and rubs over the hurt, leaning down until your lips are brushing together.

“You want me to play nice?” He whispers. “Or fuck you like I’ve been dreamin’ about.”

You blink at him, mouth hanging open and face burning. It’s hard to think, with the drag of his rough, gentle hand against your cunt. For a little while you just stare at him helplessly, and Bucky takes a small mercy, snapping your panties back against your pussy, shocking your heartbeat enough to make you think.

Like he’s been dreaming. You’ve been dreaming too. Holding fantasies about Bucky giving it to you just how you want, walking that thin line you never trusted Brock to balance on. But you trust Bucky. Your Bucky, before the whole mess. The Bucky you can see so clearly now, features shining with affection as he watches you already start to come apart.

“That,” you say, small but certain. “Do- Do it like that.”

Bucky pauses. “Like-“

“How you want,” you whisper, and he goes still.

Bucky scans over your face for an ounce of hesitation. You don’t have any, so you hold his gaze.

He lets out a rough, broken breath. “You sure-“

You press up and kiss him hard. He gets the idea.

Bucky rips your panties off like they’re made of paper, drops one arm under your thighs, and picks you up with barely a grunt. You squeal and try to push away on instinct, but he’s strong. Stronger than you thought, and you’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time ogling his muscles. He slams his mouth over yours for a brief, hungry kiss, spits down your throat, and tosses you right over his shoulder.

“Bucky-“

“Shh,” he slaps your ass and you squeak again, dropping your face right into his shoulder. He squeezes over the pleasurable sting then starts to walk, keeping you steady over him.

“Where- Where are we going?” You try to push up to see over his shoulder. Bucky lands another spank on your ass, and you fall right back down with a whine. “James- Shit-“

He’s dragging his fingers over your sopping wet cunt, smearing the mess everywhere he can, humming while he walks. Your thighs clench, but that only seems to give him easier access, and you whine.

“Bu- Bucky-“

“Ah,” Bucky slaps your pussy, and you muffle your moan against his body. “That’s not what I want to hear, doll.”

You swallow and shake your head, bunching his shirt between your trembling fingers. Bucky spanks your pussy again and it clenches around nothing. His thumb drifts, teasing over your clit in tiny brushes, back and forth and back and forth. You whimper, but he just hums, dragging two fingers through the mess between your thighs, before returning to your swollen little button.

“Come on,” he coos, encouraging and mocking all at once. “Use your words for me.”

You can’t. You muffle another moan in Bucky’s shoulder, writhing best you can in his iron grip. Bucky hums like this is casual, like he’s not already taking you apart with the lightest of touches. A door creaks open, and you barely have time to recognize the carpet of Nat’s guest room before you’re being tossed down onto the bed.

You bounce slightly, and Bucky catches your ankles, dragging you right to the edge of the mattress. You stare at him, mouth hanging open, completely unsure what to do with yourself. His lips twitch and he lowers down, pressing a gently, loving kiss to your lips. You arch up and he rubs your thighs, easing you down into his touch. You slump forward, running your fingers through his hair, and he makes a low, satisfied sound from the back of his throat.

Bucky traces his hand a little higher up your thigh, and you try not to buck into his touch. It’s not very successful, and he smiles against your lips, pinching your upper thigh. You whimper and turn your head, trying to save useless face. Bucky chuckles, sucking a small mark under your throat, then flicking his tongue against the sensitive skin.

“James…” You moan, and he goes still. You turn nervously, worried you somehow, already, ruined it. “Bucky?”

His throat bobs. He grabs your chins between two fingers, eyes boring through you, like he can see all your hazy, love-colored thoughts.

“Buck-“

“James,” he mutters, dragging his thumb over your swollen lip. “Keep callin’ me James, doll.”

You nod, a faint flush burning your cheeks. It’s not even from the way he’s touching you. Not right now. James isn’t a name Bucky lets anyone use. You used to, but then he started pushing you, and you didn’t want to lose that last sacred closeness, of being allowed to use his nickname. But if James is what he wants. He’ll get it. You’ll give him almost anything, right now.

“James,” you breathe, and Bucky’s throat bobs. He leans down for another, slower kiss. You close your eyes and let him control the depth, the unmeasured but drizzle passion like honey. When he pulls away you’re breathless, and he’s on his knees.

Naked and on his knees.

You make a tiny sound, gaping shamelessly at his cock. It’s thick and heavy looking, leaking with pre-cum and probably more than you can take. But you want to try. You want to drool around it in every possible way, looking up and Bucky and getting that faint, affectionate smile.

“You seein’ something you like?” Bucky teases, and you give him a hopeless, embarrassed look. He chuckles and grabs himself, stroking slowly and holding your gaze. “You want it bad, huh,” he mutters, smearing some drool over your cheek. “He ain’t been fuckin’ your right, either. Left you so needy for so long, you get all quiet just seeing a real cock?”

Your face is on fire, but your core is throbbing and aching. You drop your brow against Bucky’s, fixated on his fist, pumping that massive dick.

“Spit on it,” Bucky grunts, and you obey thoughtless, letting some of your need fall from your lips to Bucky’s shining cock. He groans and smashes his lips over yours, his hand pumping faster until he’s groaning your name against your lips.

Then he pulls back, lets go of himself, and just stares at your slack, desperate expression. You swallow, and his lips curve into a faint, starved smile.

“You need to be treated like a whore, huh,” he mutters. “Fucked like a toy ‘till you remember how nice it is, to have my attention.”

Oh, God. Your thighs try to press together. Bucky shoves them apart, using his thumb to part your puffy, swollen pussy lips.

“Pretty little thing,” he mutters, pressing over your clit before dragging his thumb back down. “Don’t worry, baby, I’ll fuck you right. Gonna open you up,” he presses his thumb hard against your entrance, smirking at your tiny sound. “Then give you exactly what you need. That sound good?”

“Ye- Yeah,” you manage to babble, remembering his thing about words. “Yes, please.”

Bucky smiles, and presses a quick kiss to your lips. “Good girl.”

You whine, and Bucky doesn’t waste time. He sinks fully down, kissing over your tummy as he shoves your legs fully apart. You watch him, breathing ragged, and weave your fingers through his hair for balance. He kisses the inside of one thigh, then the other. Nips at the sensitive skin, then flicks his tongue over the hurt before kissing it again. He takes his time, kissing all around your cunt, but never letting his mouth go where you really fucking need.

“James,” you whine, tugging on his hair. “Don’t- Don’t tease.”

He chuckles, his lips brushing right against your clit. You squirm, but he holds your thighs down and gives you a stern look.

“I’ll tease you all I fuckin’ want, babydoll,” he mutters, giving the quickest, lightest kiss to your clit. “You’re too pretty and reactive not to play with.”

You whimper, unable to come up with a response that isn’t a fuck you. As fun as it would be to push his buttons and find out just what punishment under Bucky’s attention is—being dragged over his lap, forced to sit on his cock until you’re drooling, brought right up to the edge over and over but never being allowed to fall—you’re too desperate right now. You might cum just from looking at him, it’s been so long, and he seems to know it.

“Needy pussy,” he mutters, tracing his thumb in circles around your clit. “Gonna take real good care of you, pretty girl.”

You mewl because god help you, you really believe him. Bucky pulls back the hood of your clit, blows on it in a way that makes your whole body seize up, then presses a long, slow kiss to the bundle of nerves.

“Fuck- James- James-“

“I know,” he coos, tongue flicking against your pulsing cunt. “Such a greedy fuckin’ girl, can’t even wait for me.” He kisses your clit again, making out with it until you’re panting and struggling to sit up. “Lucky I’m feelin’ generous,” he mutters, and whatever restraint he’d been pretending to have was gone.

Bucky shoves his face into your pussy, his beard scraping your thighs and his tongue licking a long, rough stripe up your core until it hits your clit, swirls, and  dives back down. Plunging in and out of your dripping hole before repeating the lick, playing with your clit more and more every time. Thick hands keep your legs spread when you start to get restless, but he lets you buck freely up into his mouth. He seems to enjoy it, how you pull on his hair and cry his name. If anything, his mouth just works harder against you, tongue flicking against your clit in rapid, tiny strokes that send you into a frenzy.

You fall back with a sob, grinding up and craning your neck to try and keep watching him. It’s a beautiful sight, Bucky drowning himself between your thighs. He winks at you, pressing his tongue flat over your entrance, and you fall back with a moan. You’re getting there fast. It would be embarrassing, with anyone but Bucky. He just kisses your thigh and bumps his nose against your clit, muttering you’re close against your skin before diving right back in.

“Bu- Bucky-“ You grab at the sheets, your pussy throbbing like a ticking bomb before an explosion. “Bucky- I- I’m gonna-“

His teeth graze your clit, and he wraps his lips tight around the nub, sucking on it hard. You scream as your vision goes white, your hips flying off the bed, but Bucky doesn’t stop. He lets wraps his arms around each thigh, shoves your legs close around his head, and keeps sucking on your clit, it starts to get all tingly and numb in the best way. It’s almost like he’s tickling it with his tongue, the pressure of his mouth perfect and unbearable, your eyes rolling back in your head as you writhe.

“Oh- Oh my god-“ You sob, pushing at his head. “Bucky- I- I can’t, please-“

He kisses your clit a little more gently, spanks your pussy, and gives you a stern look. “Yes, you can.”

It doesn’t seem to be something that’s up for argument. 

Bucky keeps you pinned to his face, sucking and sucking and sucking, no real care for what else you do. You cry and pull at the sheets, trying and climb away with no avail, and end up rolling onto your stomach, your face pressed into the sheets. Bucky still stays locked against your pussy, the feeling only intensifying when he’s beneath you. You’re all but sitting on his face, grinding you cunt down onto his jaw, sobbing into the sheets as your body becomes taut and wired and ready to snap.

A second orgasm rolls over you like a thunderstorm. Wet and loud and hot. You gush against Bucky’s face, tears starting to stream down your face from the overstimulation. You haven’t even had one proper orgasm in… longer than you want to admit. Brock never really gave you anything more than a shiver, and your patience in your own body was limited to a vibrator and ten minutes before a dull, anti-climatic orgasm that didn’t feel like much, but still made you too sensitive to keep going. Bucky just pulled two out of you, with his mouth alone.

He pulls back when you’re trembling, leaving a last, gentle kiss over your clit.

“Best fuckin’ pussy I’ve ever tasted,” he mutters, giving it one more spank before he starts to crawl over your body. “Coulda died there, doll, I swear.”

He laughs to himself, and you whimper against the sheets. Bucky pauses, caging you against the mattress with massive arms, and slowly rolls you over onto your back. You stare up at him, starry-eyed and spent, and his mouth twitches down.

“You alright?” He murmurs, brushing the hair from your face. You nod, and he doesn’t look convinced. “Are you-“

“Bucky,” you whisper, and his throat bobs. “If you don’t fuck me, I’m leaving.”

He laughs, throaty and dry, and ducks back down to give you another, slower kiss. One hand slides down your body, palming at your breast, rolling a nipple between his fingers between pinching gently. Bucky smiles, at the tiny whine it pulls out of you.

“Could spend forever here,” he mutters. “Givin’ every single part of you the attention it deserves. Sucking on these tits while you ride my thigh. Bending you over and opening up that cunt with just my hands, just playing with your ass until you’re drippin’ on my lap.” He groans, his cock twitching against your thigh. “You’re so fuckin’ beautiful, babydoll. You got no idea.”

You hum, the tears on your cheeks shiner than before. He means it. Whatever doubts you’d had before fade, because you’re sure. Bucky means it.

He settles himself fully between your legs, the more aggressive, dominant mask seeming to fracture, like light splitting through the clouds. Always there, even when he pretends. Coming out when you most  need to see it.

“Gonna go right in,” he mutters, mostly to himself. “Opened you up real good. Shouldn’t even hurt.”

You hum, pressing your face against his neck. Bucky rubs his cock against your cunt slowly, covering himself in your arousal before tapping his head against your clit—almost ceremoniously, like paying homage—and notching himself against your entrance.

The stretch isn’t as bad as you thought it would be. Bucky’s still big, so big you can feel it in your throat, so big you don’t think you’ve ever been this full, but he’d prepped you so well, it’s just a faint burn before it molds into pleasure. Bucky’s warm breath fans over the top of your neck as he watches your pussy mold around his cock. He moans something like your name against your skin, and you wrap your arms tight around his head.

“Feels so good,” you moan as he pushes further in. “So- So good.”

Bucky grunts, and you whimper as he bottoms out, balls pressed tight to your ass.

For a few moments, neither of you move. Bucky looks up at you with a wrecked expression you can feel in your chest, and you give him a faint, nervous smile.

“You know I love you too, right?” You say, because it’s the only thing you can think.

Bucky’s throat bobs. He doesn’t seem to have any words, and gives you a slow, romantic kiss. He rolls his hips experimentally, and you gasp against his lips. He’s curved in a way that presses right up against your g-spot, and it’s almost like a massage. You clench down, and Bucky grunts, but he repeats the motion anyway.

“James- Ooooh-“ Your eyes roll back, and Bucky sucks and kisses over your jaw, grinding his cock right against that soft, gooey spot. “Fuck- James-“

Bucky makes a deep, almost feral sound, and starts to move faster. Shallow, brutal thrusts that split you right open. You grab his bicep for dear life, and he watchers your every reaction with a sharp attention. You mewl when he does a swivel move, almost flying off the bed, and he pins you down with a hand splayed over your stomach.

“Feel that?” He grunts, pulling all the way out before slamming back in. “You fuckin’ feel that, babydoll? How good we feel together? Greedy little pussy, swallowin’ my cock up like the whore you are- Fuck-“

Bucky falls back over you, kissing you with spit and teeth and brutal force. You wrap your arms around your neck, moaning loud and shameless as he picks up his pace. Small, measured thrusts turn into the bed creaking, Bucky’s cock drilling into your pussy like he’s trying to knock every thought from your head. It’s working. You’re a drooling, wound up mess below him, and he grins against your lips.

“That’s my girl,” he mocks. “Smart head so fuckin’ empty, when I got you on my cock. No one else makes you feel like this, do they?”

You don’t answer—you can’t—and Bucky smacks your clit.

“Do they?”

You shake your head, babbling out a pathetic half-answer. “N- No-“

“Who fucks you right?” Bucky demands, words harsh but touch gentle when he grabs your jaw.

“You.” Tears start to fall down your cheeks again. “You, Bucky- Please-“

You moan as he hits that spot again, and Bucky groans, dropping down to kiss the tears away, then mold his lips back over yours.

“Damn right, me,” he grunts, skin slapping against skin, the wet, sinful sound of him bullying into your cunt almost drowning out the words. “My fuckin’ girl.”

Bucky leans up, and you almost cry for him before you realize what he’s doing. Bucky grabs your knees with one arm and presses them up to your chest, leaning down to kiss you as he fucks you deeper into the mattress. The angle is deeper like this. You can feel it everywhere, from your toes to your lips. You make a strangled, undignified sound when Bucky’s thumb returns to your clit, rubbing in slow, tight circles.

“Cum with me, babydoll,” he grunts, kissing your calf and rutting into your drooling, pulsing cunt. “Come one, wanna fill you up, pump this pussy up ‘till everyone knows, just-“ He groans. “Gimme just one more.”

You don’t know where it comes from. You didn’t think you had it in you, but Bucky manages to pull it out. A third orgasm, slower and longer than the last too. Hotter, as well. Pooling in your gut before flooding out of your cunt. Down your thighs and over Bucky’s cock as you flutter and he doubles over with a roar.

You’re not sure what’s Bucky’s cum and what’s yours. There’s just wet stickiness, filling you up everywhere until your eyes are unfocused and your body is twitching. Bucky kisses you through the orgasms, fucking shallowly into your pussy like he can’t help himself. When you both ease down, you’re blinking at the ceiling with heavy eyes and a warm feeling blooming back into your chest. Free and light and easy, in a way you never expected yourself to have.

This is going to be a mess in the morning. Right now, you don’t really care.

“I guess Brock was right,” you muse. “You did want to sleep with me.”

Bucky sits up with a glare. “Don’t say that when I’m still inside of you.”

You giggle, reaching up to brush some hair from his brow. His gaze softens and he catches your hand, pressing a gentle kiss to your knuckles.

“Do you believe me?” He mutters, and it’s small and worried. As if, after that, you’d somehow ever let him get away again.

“Yeah,” you smile, and his shoulders slump in relief.

“Thank god-“

“But,” you squeeze his hand. “I think you should keep proving it.”

Bucky chuckles, giving you an amused look before dropping his face right back into your boobs. You beam at the ceiling and pet the top of his head, neither of you in a rush to clean up. You probably should. You really should. Bucky seems to realize why at the same moment you do.

“Nat’s gonna kill us,” he groans, and you snort.

“Yeah. You.”

Bucky props his chin on your chest. “You too-“

“No,” you shake your head. “I’m her favorite.”

“That’s-“ Bucky sighs, and drops his face back down. “Yeah.”

You laugh, and he grins against your boob.

“Worth it,” he mutters, and you smile like a fool.

Because yeah. It was.   

✦End note: sometimes... cheating is okay!✦

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[goldiwrites]

crushcrushcrush

pairing: roommate!bucky barnes x female!reader

summary: it was unrequited love at first sight when you met bucky barnes. having a crush on him—your roommate—is hard enough, but hearing him fuck through your shared wall? that almost kills you.

warnings: 18+ MDNI, modern au, lots of plot, fluff, angst, sloooow burn, anxious!reader, kinda insecure!reader, reader works at a bar, cap’s quartet roommates (romanogers !!), swearing, drinking, weed mentions, idiots in love they just don't know it, oblivious!reader (i love her your honour), yearningggg, jealousy, reader crashes tf outttt, miscommunication, one (1) argument, love confessions, pet names (sweetheart, angel, doll, pretty girl), detailed explicit smut, slight dom!bucky, dirty talk, teasingggg, grinding, munch!bucky, oral (f!receiving), fingering, dacryphilia, pussy pronouns, small inspection kink, praise kink, unprotected pnv (don’t do this, friends), missionary, mating press, multiple orgasms, brief sub space, mention of f & m masturbation, happy ending, no use of y/n, reader wears a dress, no physical descriptions of reader, reader's pov, kinda dramatic, briefly proofread, this is not your typical roommate!bucky fic !!

word count: 20.6k (apparently i have this condition where i can't write a short fic)

authors note: i am actually the leader of the 'having debilitating crushes on your roommate' club so... thank you to my gorgeous, stunning, one of a kind beta reader @phoenix-in-writing 🫶 yes, i did use some off campus characters as reader's coworkers - there's no subplot with them, they just suited the vibe 😎 likes, reblogs, and comments are very much appreciated (and feed my validation kink)

you are responsible for your own media consumption. don’t like? don’t read

song inspo: crushcrushcrush - paramore & boyfriend - best coast

divider credits: line dividers by @/omi-resources, heart divider by @/strangergraphics

masterlist

Nothing compares to a quiet evening alone Just the one, two, I was just counting on That never happens, I guess I'm dreaming again Let's be more than, more than this

You knew from the moment you stepped into the Brooklyn brownstone that you were royally fucked. 

Ruffled, sleep mussed, dark brown hair. Slightly squinted, soft, deep blue eyes. A white sleep shirt that loosely clung to the hard ridges of a muscled body. Grey sweatpants that hung dangerously low and showed the shape of him if you stared longer than was appropriate.

And, god, the low, husky voice that you could feel rumble through your body from metres away. The slender, strong, veiny hands that didn't hesitate to grab the box slipping from yours. The pink lips that stretched into an easy smile, pearly white teeth dazzling and rendering you speechless for a minute.

The heat that crawled up your back was instant—your body reacting to your new roommate before you even knew his name.

Attractive men existed, you knew that. The bar you worked at had handfuls of them come in every night, some that even flashed you a flirty smile with interest in their eyes. But you didn't live with any of them—you didn't see them when they were half-awake, their rough edges softened by sleep and early morning light.

He introduced himself as James Barnes, but he requested you call him Bucky—"only my ma calls me James"—, and mentioned he worked as a physiotherapist at the VA.

He was quick to put the box in your new room, running out to the curb to grab the rest of your belongings from the rental van. You stood near the entrance, frozen in shock. Words failed you, your brain failed you—the only thing you could think about was the shift of his back muscles beneath his shirt as he hauled boxes through the door. It was an intoxicating sight, one you didn't even know would affect you.

You quickly came to learn that the problem was Bucky—everything he did had an intoxicating effect on you.

The smile he flashed you as he handed you your morning coffee, the wink he tossed your way when he took your side in your weekly movie night debate with Sam, his laughs that you could hear through your shared wall when he gamed with his friends.

His laughter was one of the most intoxicating things about him. There were the low, deep huffs when he was tired. The louder, harsher ones when he was caught by surprise. Then your favourite—the long, slightly breathless giggles that crinkled the corner of his eyes and had his nose scrunching. Every time you were blessed with them, you could only think about how cute he looked. It made him even more attractive, and you even more infatuated.

When your friend and roommate said that she was going to move into her partner's apartment once your lease was up, the first thing you felt was dread. You didn't know anyone who was looking for a room, nor did you know anyone who was looking for a roommate. The last thing you wanted was to move in with a stranger—having already lived with complete strangers in the past you could not say it was a pleasant experience. Your friend—an absolute angel—was quick to tell you that a coworker at her law firm was looking for a roommate, and she assured you that Nat would not break into your room and steal your jewellery like your first ever roommate did.

While you weren't exactly ecstatic to move in with four best friends, Nat had quickly won you over when you met for coffee. You sat down feeling like a complete contrast to her—sporting an old sweatshirt over your sweaty work uniform while she was in a creaseless emerald pantsuit. But she made you feel completely at ease—offering up embarrassing college stories about her and the guys, asking you about yourself and actually seeming interested, talking about the brownstone with so much adoration in her voice you couldn't help but love it already.

You felt awkward living with the close knit friends at first—shuffling on your feet as the four of them lounged on the couches, pulling at the loose threads on your sweater as you sat and listened to them bicker.

Fortunately, it didn't take long for you to find your place in the group. Sam played a big part—his teasing and infectious personality making you feel at home within a week. He didn't let you retreat into yourself; he pestered you with a mix of random and personal questions—"what extinct animal do you most identify with" followed by "what was your first heartbreak"—, teased you about your cooking (to which he always stole a mouthful), and was just warm—and yeah, slightly chaotic.

Nat and Steve quickly became one of your favourite couples. They weren't heavy on the PDA—unless red wine was involved—and they balanced each other out perfectly. She was loud, he was quiet. After a few too many on a night out she was ready to start a fight with any asshole who dared to look her way, and he was there to gently steer her away by the shoulders and remind her it wasn't worth ruining her fresh manicure.

Despite having some opposite traits, they were both incredibly kind and comforting people—truly living up to their titles of being the household's mom and dad. Nat was there for you after your gruelling shifts, holding either a glass of wine or mug of hot chocolate. Steve was the one knocking on your door with a bowl of soup and bag of medicine when you had the flu.

And then there was Bucky. He was just as kind, a good middle between Sam's chaotic nature and Steve's quiet one, and he made you feel seen.

Uncomfortably so.

He was the one next to you during social gatherings, gently nudging his shoulder against yours in a silent check in. He was the one suggesting fresh air when your breathing picked up incrementally. He was the one staring at you like he was captivated, sitting forward as you rambled about your niche interests.

Bucky noticed you, paid attention to you, like no one else had in your life.

He remembered what mugs you liked, making sure to use one of them when he made you both coffee—he remembered that too, the way you liked your coffee made. He bought you more body wash when you complained about running out but not having time to go to the shop before your shift. He sat next to you as you rewatched your comfort shows for the fifth time, asking questions like he was genuinely interested—a welcome contrast to Sam's mocking comments.

Each day he was in your life, looking at you like you were worth knowing, was just another day you fell deeper.

And then there were the moments. There weren't many, only a handful, but they were burned into your memory.

The first was when you came back after brunch with old friends, wearing a white sundress that made you feel pretty.

Bucky was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter while eating an apple. You smiled in greeting as you walked in, grabbing a glass to fill with water. You sneaked a side glance at him like you always do when he's in the same room as you, catching his eyes already on you—drifting from the bottom of your dress up to your chest. You watched his adam's apple bob in his throat as he swallowed.

"That's a nice dress, sweetheart."

Goosebumps erupted across your skin at his low drawl, a warmth spreading in your core from the pet name. He had never called you that before.

He pushed off the counter and walked out of the kitchen, acting like those five words hadn't changed your whole day—your whole life.

Where once you thought the dress was pretty, you now saw it as a lifeline—tethering you to the hope that Bucky might just like you back. You found reasons to wear it more often; making an effort to hang out in the common spaces when you came back home wearing it, delaying changing into your comfortable clothes because Bucky wasn't home yet and you wanted him to see it. To see you.

The second moment was when the five of you were at a birthday party for one of Sam's army buddies.

Nat and Steve had left after only being there for half an hour—Nat giggling to you on their way out, telling you and the boys to hold off on coming back home for a couple of hours. Sam was in the lounge with a large crowd hanging on to his every word as he retold his war hero stories— to which Bucky was quick to throw you a look, raising his hands to mimic being strangled, making you laugh and receive dagger eyes from Sam.

The two of you made your way outside towards the game of beer pong being set up. Bucky was quick to accept their offer to join in and that's how you found yourself standing opposite him, a sticky fold out table between you—the ping pong ball in your hand shaking, your breath catching as his lips tilted into a smirk. His eyes were as dark as the sky, the moonlight making them twinkle with their own constellations—staring straight into yours with a silent challenge, daring you to miss your next shot. His tongue sweeping over his bottom lip stole your attention and your hand faltered, the ball almost dropping out of your grip.

"You got this, sweetheart."

Time slowed down as the ball left your hand, your eyes watching it sail through the crisp night air while Bucky watched you. It dropped to the table with a pathetic, dull tock—inches away from any of the red solo cups. Bucky's smile grew even more lopsided, his eyes gleaming with mirth.

"Better luck next time, angel."

What the fuck was with him calling you these stupid, heart stuttering, knee trembling pet names?

Your beer pong partner was quick to brush off your missed shot, chuckling at your flustered expression and offering to help you with your stance. The game continued with you almost missing every shot, your partner guiding you with hands on your hips in the hopes of you sinking a cup. His arms wrapped around your waist when you made your first successful shot, but it wasn't his attention that had your mind clouding—you couldn't even say it was the alcohol flowing through your veins. No, it was the look of pride on Bucky's face that had you freezing, everything else around you fading away until all that remained was shining midnight eyes and curved pink lips.

God, how you wished the arms around your waist were his.

The guys you were playing with retreated inside after the game ended, with your partner telling you to find him before you left, throwing you an easy smile over his shoulder.

Bucky and you lingered in the fresh air, slowly walking towards the backdoor, your bare arm brushing against his denim jacket with every step. Music and laughter trickled out of the open windows, the noise softening in the cool breeze before it reached you. Despite the calm, you felt your body vibrate with a persistent buzz—Bucky's close proximity and the beer you downed making it hard to find the line between your feelings and reality.

"You do realise he was flirting with you, right?" Bucky's voice broke the silence. You turned your head to find him already gazing at you—soft eyes a contradiction to his clenched jaw.

You scoffed, looking at him like he'd grown another head. "What, no he wasn't."

"Uh yeah, he definitely was. The 'let me fix your stance' play is the oldest trick in the book and has a pretty decent success rate." He chuckled softly, shaking his head with an uptick of a smile. "Not with you, though." He paused, giving you a teasing wink. "I'll keep that in mind."

The wink had your body flushing with heat, the words I'll keep that in mind burrowing into your lovesick heart and amplifying the buzzing. Your words stumbled on their way out."Th-there's no way he was flirting with me—he's way out of my league."

Bucky stopped in his tracks, turning to face you fully with a deep crease between his eyebrows. The gentle breeze swept a strand of hair over his face, your hand twitching with the need to brush it behind his ear.

His voice dropped low, the teasing tone subduing. "What are you on about? Tell me you know that's not true, doll."

You crossed your arms over your chest, feeling exposed and vulnerable under the intimacy of the dark sky. You shivered, not just from the cooling wind caressing your bare arms. You gave a small shrug in response.

Bucky started to take his jacket off, exposing the black t-shirt that hugged his biceps a little too tight for your sanity. "While I don't believe in the whole people being in different leagues thing, I can confidently say you are so far out of his league you're on a whole nother planet."

"…Are you saying I'm an alien?"

"If the shoe fits," Bucky responded, a fraction of his seriousness easing into a cheeky smile. He draped his jacket over your shoulders, his thumbs brushing the sides of your neck as he fixed the collar—another shiver running down your spine from his faint touch. The warm, rich scent of his cologne and him wrapped around you and dragged you under—the scent that you now associated with home.

Bucky's eyes met yours, the starlit blue swirling with something you couldn't quite decipher. His hands moved from the collar of his jacket to the hem, fingers toying with the rough fabric. "No, what I'm trying to say is that you're—" he licked his lips, trying to find the right words. "Any guy would be lucky to have you, but I don't think anyone is deserving of you."

Your brain short-circuited, the haze of rose coloured glasses starting to fall over your eyes—threatening to distort the Bucky in front of you with the one you stayed up late daydreaming about.

You found a smaller version of your voice. "I…I'm not that special, Buck."

He tugged on the hem, the force pulling the jacket tighter around your shoulders. "No? Then why are you the only person—other than Steve—that I let call me Buck?"

You stared at him, unblinking. You didn't realise other people didn't call him Buck—the nickname just slipped from your lips so naturally after the first month of living with him.

"One of these days, I'm going to make you see yourself how I do."

He leaned in, brushing the faintest of kisses on your forehead—the mere ghost of his lips burning your skin, eliciting a cascade of sparks to run down your body. He stepped back, stuffing his hands in his pockets and tilted his head towards the door.

"Let's get back inside before Sam tells everyone about the time he had to save you from a raccoon."

"He had very sinister looking eyes!" You cried indignantly. "And I was really stoned—remind me to never have one of Nat's brownies ever again."

The third moment happened during your bar's weekly quiz night.

The four of them were in their usual booth for the night—the one Sam demanded you reserve for them ever since you mentioned your work had a quiz night on Tuesdays. Nat and Steve were sitting on one side, each nursing a pint of craft beer, with Sam and Bucky sitting opposite them—the latter half hanging out of the booth with his hand raised in a beckoning gesture, shooting you one of those irresistible half smiles that made the butterflies in your stomach flutter.

You rolled your eyes at him, knowing exactly what he wanted—but you couldn't stay away from that smile, even if it was starting to get you in trouble at work.

You walked over to them, pocketing your pen and notepad before stopping next to Bucky, your eyebrows raised and arms folded.

"What do you want now?"

"Can I please place an order for the answer to question five?" Bucky held the quiz sheet up to you, pointing at the blank space next to number five like it was a menu. "Oh, and question eight." His smile evolved into a endearing grin, your heart aching traitorously at the sight.

"No."

The smile dropped a fraction, not expecting you to say no to his charm. "C'mon, you're the one here who knows niche pop culture the best—even Sam is stumped. I know you know the answers."

You nodded, looking at the sheet in his hand before his puppy dog eyes made you crumble. "You're right, I do. I'm not giving them to you, though."

"I thought I was your favourite." His voice dropped like he was genuinely upset, but his twitching cheeks gave away the smile he was suppressing. Sam scoffed next to him, Nat and Steve exchanged a knowing look. You ignored them.

Bucky put the sheet on the table, patting it softly like he was about to make a deal. "How 'bout this—I'll make you dinner for a week." He carefully watched your face, trying to find a crack in your resistance. "Two weeks."

You sighed, dropping your arms to your sides. "Bucky, the prize is only a fifty dollar bar tab."

Bucky shook his head. "It's not about the prize, it's about the glory of winning four weeks in a row." He squinted his eyes, tilting his head in the way you knew meant he was thinking—probably something stupid, too. "Wait—is there another prize for that?"

You scoffed, tempted to hit him with your notepad. "Yeah, you get put on the no entry list."

Nat and Steve snickered at Bucky's clearly offended face, and you bit your lip to hold back your smile—he looked too cute, it was tugging at your heart strings.

"Besides," you continued, "you only won them because you cheated."

He raised his hands in mock defence. "Hey, not my fault the pretty waitress was more than willing."

Sam choked on his beer, spluttering a mouthful onto the table. Your eyebrows skyrocketed, heat rushing to your cheeks and ears at his choice of words.

Bucky's cheeks lit up red and he ran a hand through his hair. "No—wait, I didn't—that wasn't what I meant." He nervously chuckled. "What I meant was that you're more than willing to help—help us…" He trailed off, turning and shooting Steve a look.

Some of the tension left your shoulders, along with some of the hope you always carried that Bucky liked you more than a friend. You cleared your throat, your heart rate struggling to slow down after 'pretty waitress'.

"Maybe I've grown a conscience." You looked slightly to your left, your eyes flicking to your manager standing at the end of the bar, narrowing her eyes at you.

Bucky chuckled softly, his confidence back even with his cheeks still glowing. He crossed his arms on the table, leaning towards you. "Are we gettin' you in trouble, sweetheart?"

"There's no we in this, Barnes. It's all you." Nat interjected, pointing a perfectly manicured finger at him. He gave her a dismissive wave, his eyes still looking at you expectantly.

"She said if you win one more time then she's going to put me on the bar for quiz nights—something about testing a theory…" You admitted quietly. You watched his blue eyes soften, his previous amusement dissipating.

"Well, we can't have that happening." He said, serious. "I would stop coming to quiz night."

"Yeah, right." Sam muttered into his beer.

"You'd be on the no entry list anyways, Buck." You said to Bucky, your tone lilting jokingly.

He tilted his head, the right side of his mouth twitching, his eyes looking like a sky full of secrets.

"You wouldn't do that to me, doll. You like me too much."

Your stomach dropped at his low voice, his words piercing right into the chamber of your heart he had unknowingly etched his name on. A breath got stuck in your throat, your usual witty banter getting lost in the sea of thoughts that only screamed his name.

Like an angel pulling you from a seizing riptide, your managers voice called out your name—saving you from saying something stupid, something that exposed how you had gone past the boundary of like six months ago, stepping into a dangerous territory that could tear you apart.

"Duty calls," you laughed out breathlessly, pointing a thumb over your shoulder. You turned on your heels and walked away like you were on fire.

Sam's low mutter made its way to you through the hum of soft pop music and chatter. "Get a room already, for fuck's sake."

Your shoe scuffed on the hardwood floor, your feet almost tripping over each other. You caught your balance—narrowly avoiding falling and making a fool of yourself in front of the guy you're hopelessly in love with.

You reached your manager waiting at the end of the bar, overcome with the desire to kiss her in gratitude.

"I need you to cover the bar while Dean has a smoke. He'll be ten minutes, tops."

You nodded your okay, used to covering the bar for your coworkers breaks. "Unless a pretty girl walks past, then he'll be at least thirty."

Your manager hummed in agreement. "Remind me to dock his pay for pulling that shit on Saturday. Boy gets enough tips from his flirting to make up for it."

You exchanged a small laugh, walking around her to go behind the bar. She touched your forearm as you passed, stopping you with a gentle touch.

"Word of advice?" She started, voice a little quieter. "Don't screw the crew."

You stared at her with furrowed brows, confused. "What? I would never sleep with Dean, that's just—ew, who knows how many untreated diseases he has." You visibly shuddered your disgust at the idea of hooking up with your coworker who was always chasing tail.

She nodded her head in the direction you came from. "They're your roommates, right?" You nodded slowly. "Hon, you look at him like you can't decide whether you want to run in the opposite direction or get on your knees."

Heat rose beneath your skin, your body freezing in mortification. You gaped at her, your mouth opening and closing until you pushed out a forced laugh.

"What—you're—that's ridiculous. You should get your eyes checked because that's, like," you laughed nervously, panic starting to burn through your rib cage, "he's like…a brother to me?" You phrased it like a question, your voice rising uncharacteristically high at the end.

She gave you a deadpan look, not buying a lick of your bullshit. Your shoulders dropped in defeat, your teeth starting to tear at your inner cheek.

"Is it…am I really that obvious?"

She sighed, her hand on your arm giving a reassuring squeeze. "I've worked with you long enough to know when someone is making you uncomfortable, when you're seconds away from exploding at a condescending customer, or when you want to jump over the bar and climb a guy like a tree." She paused for a second, pursuing her lips in thought. "Funnily enough, they all looked like him."

She let go of your arm, nodding towards the bar. "Now, stop thinking about fucking your roommate and get to work. I'm pretty sure table seven just ordered six espresso martini's." She gave your ass a friendly swat, pushing you behind the bar and making you throw your head back with a startled laugh.

You grabbed the docket from the POS printer, seeing an order for five espresso martini's and one spicy mango margarita. You walked down to the cocktail section, hands moving on autopilot as you prepared the margarita first.

Your eyes flicked up out of habit, your attention drawing towards the booth your roommates had practically scratched their names into—finding a pair of piercing blue eyes already gazing at you. The tequila bottle in your hand shook.

Don't screw the crew.

The last moment occurred during a typical movie night, where yours and Sam's raised voices warranted a domestic disturbance call from your neighbours.

"Oh my god, we are not watching Top Gun for the third time this month!" You exclaimed exasperatedly, throwing your head back against the couch with a groan.

Sam scoffed from his spot sprawled on his stupidly large beanbag—the one you're fairly certain is a dog bed for a Great Dane. "Oh, like your suggestions are any better? You made us sit through a fucking Twilight marathon a couple weeks ago! That's precious time I'll never get back."

You glared at him. "That's bullshit, Wilson—I didn't make you do anything. You chose to sit in that exact same spot and watch all five movies." A mocking smile twitched your lips. "And, if I remember correctly, you were the one asking me to pause the movie while you went to get more snacks."

Sam shook his head adamantly. "No, what's bullshit is your taste in movies—I only sat through it so you wouldn't feel bad!"

Nat and Steve were cuddled up on the couch perpendicular to you, their eyes darting back and forth between you and Sam like they were watching a tennis match. Bucky was sitting on the other end of the couch you were on, legs spread wide with a soda in one hand—his eyes shooting daggers at Sam.

You let out a harsh laugh. "Oh, really? So you crying when you thought Carlisle was dead was just you not wanting me to feel bad?"

"Yes!" Sam yelled, throwing his hands up in the air. Then he paused, processing what you just said. "Wait, no—there was no crying! I just acted sad for your benefit."

You opened your mouth to refute his statement when a deep, husky voice rumbled out from next to you.

"Sam," Bucky started, tone low and final, "stop lying, I saw you wiping your eyes." He continued glaring at Sam, his shoulders more tense than they were a minute ago. "Apologise to her so we can move on."

Sam looked at him like he had lost his mind. "Apologise? What the fuck do I have to apologise for?"

Bucky nodded towards you, darkened blue eyes still narrowed at Sam menacingly. "You said her taste in movies was bullshit. Apologise."

You were suddenly speechless—not sure how your usual movie night bickering with Sam led to Bucky being so…commanding. Protective.

You looked over to the other couch, catching Nat's eye—her mouth overtaken by a knowing smile. Your eyes darted to Steve next to her, his cheeks tinted pink and eyes squinted as he looked at his best friend—a sly smile partially hidden by the can he brought to his lips.

Sam shook his head with a disbelieving laugh, grabbing the TV remote off the coffee table.

Bucky reached out a long leg, giving Sam's beanbag a firm kick. "Now."

"Jesus," Sam dragged out, "chill out, man." He turned to you with a sigh, brown eyes glinting as he gave you his best puppy dog expression. "I am truly sorry for calling your movie taste bullshit. I will gladly sit through ten Twilight marathons if that's what you want."

He turned to Bucky with a smug grin. "There, I apologised to your girl. You happy now?"

A breath hitched in your throat, your brain freezing and going offline.

Your girl.

Said so easily, so naturally. Like it was a fact and not a mocking taunt.

Goosebumps prickled across your skin, a pleased shiver running through you at the thought of being Bucky's girl.

Bucky glared at Sam, the apples of his cheeks dusting pink. "Very." He said before leaning forward and snatching the remote out of Sam's hand. He turned to you, cheeks still flushed but eyes considerably softer. "What do you want to watch, doll?"

"…Shrek 2."

Groans erupted from three of your roommates, the fourth keeping his eyes on you while he shook his head with a fond laugh—the one that showed his pearlescent teeth and crinkled his eyes. The one that was your damnation, sentencing you to a life of yearning and false hope.

"It's the soundtrack, right?"

You nodded eagerly, a bright smile making your cheeks ache. "I knew you would get me, Buck."

You faintly heard a fake gagging sound come from the nuisance being swallowed by a beanbag, but you couldn't care less. Not when Bucky was looking at you like you were an astronomical phenomenon.

Condensation beaded glasses stained the wooden tabletop, chewed paper straws slowly disintegrating in melted ice. A half eaten bowl of fries grew stale in the middle of the table—your manager's attempt to get some food in her staff while they abused the (prepaid) leftover function alcohol, yourself included. The disco ball was still spinning, sending a thousand shards of light dancing throughout the empty bar, while an ABBA track murmured softly beneath laughter and gossip.

"I'm telling you," Dean said, spreading his arms over the back of the booth, "the ladies can't get enough of me."

The booth packed full of your coworkers vibrated with long groans, someone to your left loudly booing and your manager threatening to throw her gin and tonic in his face. You shoved his arm off the seat behind you, earning yourself a pinch to your cheek as his arm retreated.

"I'm serious!" Dean continued, pulling his phone out of his jean's pocket. "One of them even left a review about me last week—hold up, I'll get it." He squinted against the glowing light from his screen, bringing up the bar's google page to show everyone.

"Here it is—last Saturday: bartender was cute, would drink here again. Five stars." He leaned back in the booth with a smug smile, barely reacting when your manager ripped his phone out of his hand.

"Did you see who left the review, dingus?" She asked him, her mocking smirk overpowering his. "I don't know about you, but I don't know any ladies who go by the name James." She waved the phone in his face before going back to reading the review.

Dean recovered quickly, holding his hands up with a shrug. "I'm not opposed to having male admirers—they're some of my biggest tips."

You snorted a laugh. "Oh, I bet they are."

The table dissolved into laughter around you, the liquor and line cook's joint lowering everyone's inhibitions.

Your manager looked up from the phone at you, her eyes lighting up. "Weren't you also working on the bar last Saturday?"

You took a sip of your drink, lifting a shoulder in a half-shrug. "I think so? Was that the night we had two bachelorette parties come in?"

"Yeah, we ran out of cold brew because of them." Dean said. "I set a new record for how many numbers I could get in one night."

You rolled your eyes, choosing to ignore him like everyone else at the table. "Yeah, I was definitely on the bar—my arms are still aching from shaking espresso martini's all night."

Your manager leaned forward, her glassy eyes glinting at you teasingly. "I think this review is about you," she said in a sing-song tone.

You couldn't help but feel a little giddy at someone leaving you a review calling you cute, even if they were most likely stumbling drunk.

Allie—your fellow waitress who was sitting on the other side of Dean—grabbed the phone and read the review herself, scrolling on the screen with her eyes growing wider until a delighted gasp left her.

She looked at you with a beaming smile. "This James guy has been leaving reviews about you for months."

"What?"

She nodded eagerly, a small squeal leaving her. "This is so good, nothing this exciting ever happens here!" She was almost bouncing in her seat as she looked back at the phone, her excitement shaking the booth. "Okay, this one is from Valentines Day: waitress's frown is cute, I still should've bought her flowers." She fell back against the booth seat, clutching the phone to her chest with a dreamy sigh.

Your heart stuttered, the tipsy fog in your head clouding further. "That's—it doesn't say my name…" you trailed off with a nervous laugh. "It could be about any of the waitresses."

Your manager snorted. "We called you sourpuss the whole shift, you wouldn't stop frowning."

Before you could start your rant about how Valentine's Day is just another highly commercialised holiday and people shouldn't need a specific day of the year to celebrate love, Allie started reading out another review.

"This one is from four months ago: come to this bar if you want to see a real-life angel."

Dean groaned, "that's so fucking cheesy." He turned to look at you, "I hope you're not falling for this shit."

"We don't even know if it's about me!"

"I think it's cute," the new waitress piped in from the other end of the booth. "You've got a secret admirer."

"More like a stalker." One of the line cooks mumbled.

"Oh," Allie gasped, "this man has it bad. These are borderline love confessions." She reached past Dean, handing you his phone with the review page still open.

You hesitantly grabbed the phone from her, your heart beating rapidly in your chest. There's no way some guy was leaving these reviews about you…right? That just seems insane, like something out of a romcom. Or something that will end with a restraining order and you moving states away.

The phone faintly trembled in your unsteady hands, your eyes narrowing against the screen's bright glare.

James B.

★★★★★ a month ago

Wars were started over smiles less beautiful than hers.

Oh.

That's maybe the most romantic thing anyone has ever said about you.

You don't know if it's about you.

You exhaled shakily, shrugging nonchalantly as you handed the phone back to Dean. "He could be talking about any of the waitresses." You repeated your earlier statement. And then for good measure—"It's hardly a compliment—wars are started over literally anything."

Allie looked at you with wide eyes, bringing her hands up and shaking them in a strangling motion.

"Do you know anyone called James?" Your manager probed, clearly invested.

"No." You answered, ignoring the dull, tingling sensation at the back of your head. "No one significant."

"Well, even if he does turn out to be a stalker, at least he boosted our ratings."

Over the next few weeks, your coworkers had made it their personal mission to find out the identity of James B. Your manager had the brilliant idea to set up a weekly bar tab giveaway—for people to be in the draw they just needed to put their business card in a jar on the bar. What your customers didn't know was that every Friday after close, Allie and Dean were emptying the jar not to find a lucky winner but to look for any cards with the name James B.

It turned out there were a few more James B.'s than they were expecting, and there were no other parameters to narrow down their search. And much to their chagrin, you didn't recognise any of their names.

"Wait!" Dean exclaimed, holding a finger in the air. "Why don't we just reply to one of his reviews?"

"Oh," Allie said, leaning forward in her chair, "that's actually kind of smart. Maybe we could say we have a thank you gift for our number one fan?"

"Or we could just ask who he is."

Something about that made you uneasy.

After the night you all first discovered the reviews, Allie had drawn up a timeline of them which revealed this James guy had been leaving reviews for a year. And while they never mentioned your name, everyone knew they were about you—but you didn't want to believe that; it felt absolutely insane.

Majority of the reviews were brief and mundane, similar to the first one Dean saw. But a few of them…they read like poetry, like the pages out of someone's journal. They mentioned your smile, how your laugh could cure any ailment, that being in your presence was like witnessing a supernova.

It was beautiful and terrifying.

And every day it was looking more like a stalker than someone you knew—you didn't want to give him attention in fear that it could evolve from something harmless to dangerous.

"Already tried that," your manager sighed next to you. "He didn't reply."

Something in the atmosphere felt off when you shouldered the brownstone's front door open with a heavy sigh. It was well past midnight on a Saturday, and the soft murmuring you would usually hear coming from the lounge—Sam had a habit of passing out in front of the TV on Saturday night's—was nonexistent. You didn't think much of it, your mind single-focused on needing a scolding hot shower to wash away the ten hour bar shift.

Your work uniform was drenched and sticking to you uncomfortably, a crust of sugary cocktails and beer lining your skin. It had been one disaster after another—the beer keg soaking you as you tried to tap it, the cocktail shaker exploding in your hands, the new waitress who failed to call out "behind" and you ended up covered in a customers chili cheese fries.

You welcomed the boiling water, scrubbing your skin until it was red and raw. Visible steam swirled from your body even after you retreated into your room, and only then did some of the tension ease from your shoulders. Your fatigue ran bone deep—it felt like you were dragging your feet through mud as you slowly started your nighttime routine.

A noise cut through the eerily silent night, soft and faint, but an unmistakable echo from the room next to yours. It made you pause, your eyebrows drawing together. Then more noise followed, three breathy high pitched moans that the wall separating your rooms failed to drown out. A hot realisation curdled your stomach, rising through your body until it settled in your chest and throat—a tight, unrelenting fist clenching and making it harder to breathe.

Bucky had company.

Your ears zeroed in on the noises against your wishes. The last thing you wanted was to hear the guy you had a debilitating crush on fuck someone else. And yet, you stood frozen—your towel still wrapped around you, water dripping onto the floor, heart trying to beat out of your chest. Your nervous system had entered fight or flight mode, triggered by the sounds of another woman's pleasure.

Sweat started to line your back, your hands trembling where they were clutching the towel, chest stuttering as your breaths turned sharp and quick.

The moans grew in volume and soft thuds reverberated against the wall—then, a faint low murmuring graced your ears. A deep voice you would recognise anywhere, that you had heard through the wall plenty of times during your one year living there.

You snapped out of your shock, ripping open your work bag to find your headphones. Your phone shook in your hands as you searched for 'calming' playlists, your thumb jabbing violently at the first result. You turned the volume up loud enough to vibrate your eardrums, but the damage was already done.

You paced the length of your room, clenching and unclenching your fists in an effort to calm down—to will your racing heartbeat to slow, to tamp down the spiralling thoughts that made you feel like you were drowning.

You got ready for bed in a blur, trying to stay as quiet as possible with your heart beating wildly in your throat. The exhaustion that had your bones aching after your shift was lingering, but had been overwhelmed by the adrenaline surging through your veins. You laid in your bed, trying to concentrate on your breathing.

Inhale. One, two, three, four.

Hold. One, two—

It didn't sound like she was faking it.

The breath rushed out of you quickly.

You squeezed your eyes shut tight, clenching your fists and trying to focus on the sensation.

Inhale. One, two, three—

Bucky's bed is pressed up against your shared wall.

You grabbed the pillow next to you and pressed it against your face, something between a pained whimper and frustrated groan leaving your throat.

Did he like to talk? Was he whispering dirty things in her ear, telling her how good she felt, how much he wanted her? Did she get to hear him moan and whimper?

The music in your ears had become irritating, overstimulating you even more. But there was no way in hell you were taking your headphones off—your heart was already broken enough.

Did he call her sweetheart, too?

You slept for two hours, maybe three if you were being generous. The exhaustion won out against the anxiety around two am, only for you to jerk awake two hours later when the same noises echoed through the wall. At some point in the night your headphones had slipped off and you were defenceless against the noises your body had already filed as a threat.

Your nervous system reacted as if you were being hunted down by a lion, not overhearing your roommate-slash-crush have sex. It was a horrible way to wake up—your body pumping full of adrenaline and cortisol before you even took a deep breath.

The headphones went back on a second too late—leaving a scratched record of giggles looping through your head that the music couldn't drown out. One giggle that you knew well, that had you beaming with pride whenever you coaxed it out of him.

A silent tear slid down towards your ear, disappearing into your hairline as you stared at the ceiling.

Hours passed before it felt safe for you take the headphones off, and even then anxiety gripped your chest whenever you thought about leaving your room. Everything that had once felt safe, had once felt like your solace, now felt like a prison.

You knew you were being dramatic, knew that your jealousy and hurt was unreasonable. Bucky wasn't yours, he would never be yours—you knew that, you'd always known that. But that's the thing with crushes—they are irrational, uncontrollable beasts that mistake kindness for attraction, that disguise inevitable heartbreak as fluttering butterflies.

Opening your bedroom door slowly, you saw the flash of a towel dart into Bucky's room—two faint sets of giggles sounding behind the closed door, slicing into your aching heart. Heat burst behind your eyes and you willed the tears to stay at bay—at least until the shower could drown out your sobs.

You sat on the floor of the shower, staring at the wall while hot water rained down on you, each drop feeling like a knife piercing your skin. You sat there, unblinking, as your vision blurred—the water washing away your endless tears. You sat there as the shower stream changed from a burning fire to an icy bite, your body shivering but unmoving.

Nat's banging on the door about rising water prices snapped you out of your dissociative daze.

"Bucky! Oh, fuck—don't stop, please—"

"Yeah? You like that?"

"Yes—god, so much!"

"You feel so good, baby."

Thump, thump, thump.

You had taken your headphones off for half a minute while getting changed. All it took was thirty seconds for tears to swell in your eyes and a silent scream to claw at your throat.

It had been four weeks since you first heard them. Four weeks of knowing your crush was fucking someone else less than three metres from your bed. Four weeks of debilitating anxiety and heartache consuming you until there was nothing left to take.

You knew their routine; she came over every Wednesday and Saturday, always after ten pm. Depending on your roster for the week, sometimes you were home when she came over—subjected to hearing Bucky's low baritone greet her at the door, their footsteps padding down the hall past your room, the soft click of his door closing and the giggles that followed.

You fucking hated giggles.

By the end of the second week, you had put in a request to work the closing shift every Wednesday and Saturday. The tightness in your chest and churning in your stomach never faded, but you took some comfort in knowing you would only be in the same house as her for a few hours. You hadn't met her—you didn't even know her name—but you were envious of a faceless woman, a voice you heard in the dark, because she had the one thing you wanted but could never have.

No one brought her up—there were no casual chats between the boys, no probing questions from Nat. Apart from the first time, she was out of the house by six am—narrowly avoiding Sam and Steve leaving for their morning run. You weren't even sure they knew she existed—not until Nat gave you a sympathetic smile over a glass of wine, confirming that they did in fact know without uttering a word.

The usual nights the five of you spent together continued as normal. Or, at least as normal as you could manage. The space between you and Bucky grew—he stopped trying to charm quiz answers out of you, and you hugged the arm of the couch like it was a life preserver during movie night. The soft conversations over morning coffee ceased to exist, the nights of you two reading together in the lounge just a hazy memory.

The distance made your heart yearn for him while his proximity made your nervous system overload. It was a push and pull that sucked the life out of you, exhausting you until you were a shell of who you used to be.

When Sam asked you what your first heartbreak was you instantly thought of Liam Turner from the sixth grade. He was the classic class clown that both charmed and annoyed all the girls in your grade. He sat next to you during History and English, always pestering you for help and trying to make you his partner in crime. You did what any smitten eleven year old girl would do—you handed him a note. It was simple, you didn't even write your name—just "do you like me" with tick boxes for yes and no. You handed it to him before recess and watched with bated breath as he ran to his group of friends, watched as all of them turned to you and fell into hysterics. You crashed into your mom's arms once you got home from school, sobs wracking your body as you felt like you were going to die from the crushing sensation in your chest.

What you felt that day wasn't even a drop in the agony that consumed you when you walked into the lounge for movie night.

"You're late!" Nat yelled, her voice travelling down the hall as you rushed through the front door.

"I know, I know," you yelled back, heading for your room and changing out of your work clothes in record time. You made your way towards the lounge once in comfy clothes. "The health inspector would not stop asking me questions, no matter how many times I told him I'm not the—"

Your feet and words came to a halt once you reached the doorway to the lounge, your heart dropping to the floor and shattering into a million pieces.

Because there she was—sitting in your usual spot with her feet resting on Bucky's lap, one of his hands engulfing her ankles.

She was beautiful. And the complete opposite to you in every way possible. From the texture and colour of her hair to the shape of her body. From the clothing and jewellery she wore to the colour of her eyes.

The two of you weren't even comparable—you were from completely different planets, different universes.

It hit like a sucker punch. You weren't his type, not even close.

You're a fucking fool.

She smiled brightly at you, the white of her teeth glaring. You faintly heard her great you through the ringing in your ears, offering you her name. You managed a meek hi in response, dragging your wide eyes away from her over to the other couch.

Big mistake.

Nat and Steve were already looking at you with pity in their eyes, a silent "are you okay?" written all over their faces. Nat scooted closer to Steve, tilting her head towards the small open spot next to her on the couch. You knew the second you sat next to them that her comforting presence would wrap around you and tear away the last of your fraying composure. So, you did something you had never done before.

"Move it, bird brain." You muttered to Sam, squatting down next to his beanbag and shoving his shoulder to make room for you.

"You ever tried not being bossy?" He grumbled in reply, shuffling to the right so you could collapse down next to him.

Normally you would respond with something just as snarky. But that required mental energy that you did not possess—energy that was being drained with each passing second she sat behind you.

You settled into the beanbag, the rustling of polystyrene beads filling the quiet room. You tried to take calming breaths as subtly as possible, the blood from your broken heart clogging your throat and lungs.

"We're watching Interstellar tonight," Nat spoke softly. "Steve's pick."

You hummed, keeping your eyes glued to the TV screen as Steve navigated through the streaming app.

Sam stiffened next to you, turning to you with a peculiar look on his face. "What? You got nothing to say to that?"

You sighed. "Every white guy's number one film on letterboxd. Try being less predictable next time, Rogers." You said in a flat monotone.

A deep, breathy chuckle sounded behind you, and it took all of your diminishing willpower to not turn and get a glimpse of the soft smile that haunted your dreams.

You tried your best to focus on the movie, you really did. You tried to focus on the press of Sam's shoulder against yours, something tangible to keep you grounded. But nothing could distract you from the soft murmuring behind you, the sound of her giggles as Bucky provided commentary throughout the movie. It was something that you normally didn't mind, something you indulged in, even. Not tonight. Thirty minutes into the movie, your eye had developed a constant twitch from suppressing the urge to turn around and tell them to shut the fuck up.

At one point Sam's hand had fallen over both of yours, stopping you from picking at your bleeding hangnails. You didn't even notice the sting from the exposed wounds—too preoccupied with gnawing on the inside of your cheeks.

You walked into your shift the next day with another request.

You clocked into your shift on Tuesday afternoon with a sinking pit in your stomach. A feeling that you had become accustomed to over the last couple months, a feeling that had you walking the scenic route home at night, delaying your arrival. It was the feeling that you had started associating with home, along with the ache in your chest.

You loved quiz night—you loved seeing what stupid team names people came up with, loved judging them when they got such an obvious answer wrong. Once upon a time, you had loved seeing Bucky's handsome face sitting in your section, waving you over with an up to no good smile stretching his lips. Now, it all felt like a taunt.

Nothing was out of the ordinary—the opening shift said it had been quiet as usual, there had been a couple bookings from newcomers for quiz night, and the tabby cat that wandered the block came in to say hi.

And then, she walked in. Strolling in behind Nat and Steve, her arm looped through one of Bucky's, flashing you a kind smile as they made their way to their usual booth. In your section.

You wanted to scream. Cry. Jump into the East River.

The bar had become your safe place—which honestly sounded crazy, you hated half of the customers. But your home hadn't felt like your home since she walked through the door. And now she was in the one place that hadn't been tarnished.

She was nice, you knew she was. But she was a constant reminder that your heart belonged to a man who never looked at you twice.

You rushed over to Allie who was standing at the bar waiting for Dean to finish garnishing cocktails.

"I need you to swap sections with me—please." You said in a frantic breath.

She turned to you, her face already telling you her answer. "Hell no! I've got two tables of big tipper's—I am not giving that away."

Dean leaned his elbows on the bar. "I'll swap with you."

Your head whipped to him at a comical speed, your wide eyes meeting his unbothered grin. "…But you hate working the floor."

He nodded towards one of your tables—one of the newcomer bookings, a booth full of girls in their early twenties. A few of them were already looking over at your trio—more specifically, looking at Dean. You turned back in time to see him flash them a wink.

Your chest deflated with a relieved breath. "This is the only time I am ever going to be grateful for you being such a dog."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"It wasn't." You and Allie said at the same time, matching deadpan expressions on your faces.

Allie turned to you, squinting suspiciously. "Why do you want to swap?"

You shrugged, looking at her forehead to avoid eye contact. "Just felt like a change."

"You said please—pretty desperately, too. It was kinda hot." Dean piped in.

You glared at him, choosing not to acknowledge his comment. You turned back to Allie looking at you expectantly. "Variety is the spice of life?"

She hummed disbelievingly. "Mhm, sure. We'll talk later."

Working the bar brought you no reprieve; every time you walked to the cocktail station, they were in your direct eyeline. Every time you poured a cosmo, shook a lemon drop, garnished a mojito, you could hear them laughing. You watched how she fit in like the missing puzzle piece, her body slotting perfectly under Bucky's arm—like that's where she belonged. You watched your roommates welcome her in with open arms and crying laughter, the realisation hitting you that she replaced the temporary hole your absence had opened.

Your knees were shaking while you closed up the bar, your hands scrubbing the beer grates with an urgency that was cause for concern.

"Hey, hey, woah that's—" Dean came up next to you, his hands gently clasping your wrists. "That's enough," he said, uncharacteristically gentle, "your hands are bleeding." He brought your hands up, your unfocused eyes seeing spots of red raised on your knuckles.

"Oh."

"Yeah, oh. What's up with you today?"

Dean led you away from the bar, grabbing a first aid kit on your way over to where your manager and Allie were sitting, working through the next week's orders. He pushed you into a chair, stepping back with an awkward pat to your head.

"I'm sensing that this is a girl talk so I'm just gonna finish closing the bar."

The two women turned to you with concern painting their faces. Allie glanced down at your hands and opened the first aid kit, pulling out supplies to treat the cuts. Neither of them spoke while she tended to your hands, watching your face closely.

"These aren't too bad, just scrapes." She said softly, packing the kit back up and sitting it out of the way. She clasped your hands lightly, her thumbs rubbing soothing circles on the back of your hands. "What's going on, sweetie?"

You looked up from where you had been staring at the table, seeing her eyes and your manager's shining with worry. A silent tear slipped from your eye, leaving a damp path in it's wake.

"Whose kneecaps are we busting?" Your manager demanded.

That broke you.

Your shoulders started shaking, your throat closing in on itself in the form of a sob. Your heart escaped from your chest cavity, rising up like bile. Your vision was completely blurred, hot tears taking your eyes hostage. You caved in on yourself, wrapping your arms around your body as your frame trembled like a leaf.

You couldn't even feel embarrassed about bawling like a baby in front of your coworkers, the pain you had been sheltering for months overruling any other emotion. Allie wrapped her arms around you, pulling you into her warmth and making you cry harder. Your manager placed a gentle hand on your shoulder, her thumb rubbing calming patterns as they both whispered words of comfort to you.

You gasped for breath, trying to get some air past the ball in your throat. "I-It's so—" your words broke with a hiccup, "it's so fucking stupid." You rushed out. "We were never—ugh!" You wiped at your cheeks furiously, willing the tears to stop. You gulped down a deep breath, trying to focus on the comforting touches and not the agony vibrating every cell in your body.

"We were never anything. God, I'm sobbing over a guy that—he was only being nice, and I made it into something it wasn't." You garbled out, the brine of tears lining your lips.

You opened up to them, telling them about how deeply you fell for Bucky in between sobs. How you felt like a goddamn fool, your lovesick heart reading into things and mistaking your strictly platonic relationship as something else entirely. You told them how you hate going home most nights, finding it harder to breathe the closer you got to the brownstone. You admitted to them that it's not just jealousy over him with another girl, it's something deeper—the fear that you've been replaced, that he doesn't need you anymore.

"…my sleep is fucked, I'm on high alert every second I'm home—I don't feel safe in my own home. Which—I know, it sounds so fucking dramatic. But it's like she's seeped into every crack, changing the foundations I built over a year ago. Now she's turning up here—on fucking quiz night, my night—and I just can't escape." You finished with a deep breath, feeling drained from your emotional monologue.

Allie, who had kept her arms wrapped around you throughout your rambling, lifted her head and looked at you with a mix of understanding and sympathy. "That's why you wanted to swap sections, because she was here." You nodded meekly.

She sighed and sat back in her chair. "Give me a couple days to clear out my spare room. You need it more than I need a second closet."

Before you could start sobbing over her offer a muscular arm reached in front of you, depositing a vodka cranberry onto the table.

Dean's voice rumbled behind you. "If it makes you feel any better, I've wanted to sleep with you since my first shift."

"Dean," both women next to you hissed. You turned to look at him, catching that easy-going smile of his and you started laughing—the first genuine one in weeks.

Thursday 6:18pm

Nat: Hey, you working late tonight? The boys are getting restless, Sam is threatening to watch Top Gun if you're not home in 10…

You: shit i forgot to tell you i'm working thursday nights now! sam can watch whatever mediocre garbage he wants :-)

Nat: We can change movie night to another night! Maybe Sunday? Whatever works for you x

You: don't worry about it, thursdays work for everyone else!

Nat: Is everything ok? I feel like I hardly see you anymore :(

You: aw i'm sorry natty :-( just been picking more shifts up at work - boss has me training the newbies! promise we'll have a wine night soon xx

"I'm moving out."

It was the Sunday after that fateful quiz night, the sun beating down on your four roommates as they laid out in the backyard. Sam was going on about some barbeque he had been invited to—telling the other three that if they behaved he would let them join him. Nat's head was resting on Steve's chest, half asleep while he massaged her scalp. Bucky was lying with a hand behind his head, shirtless, and reading his well-loved copy of The Fellowship of the Ring.

Allie had sent you a photo of her spare room an hour before, a bottle of Tito's sitting on the floor the only thing in the empty room. You couldn't put off telling your roommates any longer, knowing that once you moved out you would start feeling like a human again. You stood in the doorway, arms tight across your body—fearing for their reactions.

Sam stopped talking abruptly, Nat jolted awake and sat up from Steve's chest, Bucky slowly lowered his book to his chest. Nat was the first to speak.

"What?" She asked softly.

You started to shuffle your feet, looking around the backyard—at the fairy lights that flickered like dying stars, the small veggie patch Steve cared for like it was his child—avoiding eye contact with them. "You remember Allie from the bar? We've gotten really close these past few months and she was looking for a roommate—kinda felt like a no-brainer, y'know?"

You finally looked at them, your heart beat rattling your jaw. Sam looked speechless, his face frozen in confusion. Nat was looking at you with that assessing gaze, her eyes squinting like she knew something else was going on. Steve nodded his head solemnly, his features pulled into a frown that looked out of place on him. Bucky had abandoned his book completely, sitting upright with his pretty lips downturned, his sunglasses hiding whatever emotions swam in his cerulean depths.

"I can sort out getting the room filled—can probably pay double rent if necessary—"

"I'll handle it." Bucky cut you off, his tone gruff and curt.

You wrung your hands together, hating being under the spotlight of your roommate's attention. "Are you sure? It's a bit late notice so it might be hard to—"

That same curtness cut you off again,"I said I'll handle it, didn't I?"

He probably wanted his girlfriend to move in.

Your three other roommates momentarily directed their bewildered stares to him, just as surprised as you at his bluntness. Just like Steve frowning, this was out of character for him. You could feel his eyes glaring holes into you through his sunglasses.

Nat shook her head at his attitude, turning her attention back to you. "I didn't know you wanted to move out."

Okay, time for the lies—just like you practiced in the mirror.

"It's not about wanting to move out," you started softly, "it's just something that naturally unfolded. Her landlord upped her rent last month and she can't afford it on her own anymore." Steve and Sam nodded along, while Nat was looking at you with that unwavering stare. You didn't even want to glance at Bucky. "She jokingly asked me over drinks a couple weeks ago if I was looking and after thinking on it, I think it's the best choice for me. It's closer to work, cheaper than what I currently pay and, as I said, we've become really good friends."

Nat continued squinting her eyes at you, watching as you fidgeted with your fingers—your tell that you would rather be anywhere else.

"Okay," she acquiesced. "When are you moving? We'll throw a little goodbye party."

"Great idea," Sam mumbled.

"Sometime in the next week." Everyone's eyebrows shot up at that. "And that's not necessary—I'd prefer it if you didn't do anything; it's not like I'm leaving the city, I'll only be a few blocks away."

Steve recovered from the brief shock at how soon you were leaving them. "Let us know what day and time, we'll help you move your stuff."

"I appreciate the help, really I do, but my coworkers have already offered—we have Dean to do all the heavy lifting."

That made Bucky stir, standing up with a scoff and arms folded across his chest. "Did you think about us at all? Sounds like you can't wait to get away from here."

You froze, the ice running through your veins equal to the frost in his tone. "That's not—I didn't want to bother you—"

"How can you think you bother us after all this time?" He asked, the frost melting into water—revealing something that trembled close to desperation.

"Bucky," Nat warned.

"I just don't understand," He snapped, shaking his head and walking towards where you were stuck in the doorway. He paused in front of you, his sun slicked chest making your heart gallop. You kept your eyes on his chin—locking on the clef still visible through heavy stubble, resisting the desire to glance at his naked chest, or worse, look into his eyes. "Mind letting me through?" He muttered lowly, his frame now blocking you from the sun. You ducked your head, pressing your back to the doorframe to give him space.

"Buck—"

"Not now, Steve." He bit out, your body absorbing the heat radiating from him as he brushed past you. You stood still, head tilted to the floor until you heard his door slam closed.

"Well, that was…" Steve started, his uneasy chuckle filling the heavy atmosphere.

The shock of his attitude left you dazed. You expected some blow back from Nat—she could read you like her favourite book, knowing the emotions you held within yourself better than you did. You expected—hoped, really—that they might be a little down about your departure, but Bucky acting like this wasn't even in your realm of possibility.

"What was that about?" You muttered to yourself.

Sam stood up with a huff, grabbing a beer from the cooler near the table. "Fucking idiots, the pair of you."

You timed the move for the following Wednesday, not wanting to risk another night of hearing what you had labelled your own personal torture. You had been working nights since Sunday, avoiding any interactions with your roommates. The vibe in the brownstone felt off, the air tasting stale even when you were the only one home. Nat had been texting you for updates, apologising for Bucky's strange behaviour, and assuring you your friendship with her wouldn't slip away after you were gone. Sam continued to send you memes—he had an affinity for the gradient instagram reels—and Steve saved you the best strawberries from his garden, hiding them in the fridge for you.

Bucky was radio silent.

Tuesday 5:36pm

Nat: Just spoke to Allie - apparently you're not working quiz night anymore?? What's going on?

You: we thought the new waitress should work it for a bit! good experience :-)

Nat: You should come join us then! We would be unstoppable with you on our team xx

You: maybe another time? don't want the other teams to think you have an unfair advantage lol

Nat: Fuck what they think. We miss you! Movie night was not the same without you last week :(

A month passed before you saw Bucky again.

You had been texting Nat on and off, feeling an awful reluctance to seeing her. It had nothing to do with Nat and everything to do with you continuing to avoid the problem—your feelings. Because you still thought about him, religiously so. You hated yourself for it—hated your brain conjuring up scenarios of him and her, replaying the happiness that glowed on his face the couple of times you saw them together.

Your sleep had improved, at least. There was no anxiety constricting your chest when you walked home, no fear for what you might hear through the walls. Allie encouraged you to cry it out on the bathroom floor, over tubs of ice cream on the couch. While it was horrible to address and to actually feel the heartbreak instead of intellectualising it, you had to admit you did feel lighter. It was a weight off your chest for someone else to know your secret, to let you speak about the pain and not forcing you to move on.

Your manager was quick to approve your request to work the day shifts—asking if you wanted to get your managers license, to be her dependable day shift manager. You were elated to have something else to focus on, and the pay rise wasn't bad either. Working the days also meant you weren't there in case your old roommate's called in for a drink on their way home from work.

But you knew your luck was going to run out some day soon.

It was on a quintessential late summer evening—the kind where the sun was low enough to shine through the tree canopy, casting the ground in a scene of dancing light and shadows. Gravel crunched beneath your shoes as you ambled through Prospect Park, listening to the harmony of kids laughter, dogs barking, and a busker playing guitar. Walking through the park lengthened your journey home by twenty minutes, but on a day like this it was hard to resist.

You heard him before you saw him, too lost in appreciating the world around you to notice him strolling towards you on his trek home. He called out your name softly, hesitantly. And you would recognise that husky baritone even if you were locked in a soundproof pool drowning underwater.

Your gaze ripped away from watching a pair of swans glide along the shimmering lake, your heart jumping into your throat as you saw Bucky a few metres in front of you. He was wearing his gym clothes, the black compression top clinging to his chest with light patches of sweat. His hair was tied back in a small bun, a few strands stuck to his dewy forehead and your fingers twitched to brush them back. Soft sapphire eyes roamed the valleys of your face, his shoulders dropping with an almost relieved sigh.

You hated how your body heated under his watchful gaze in an instant—hated that he still had control over you and he didn't even know it.

"Hey," he said quietly, a small smile tugging his lips. He hesitated for a moment, doubt flickering across his face before he shook his head and stepped closer, lifting an arm and placing his hand between your shoulder blades to pull you into his embrace.

A startled gasp escaped you at the contact, blood pulsing in your ears as his warmth enveloped you. His other arm wrapped around your waist, his hand resting on the small of your back to pull you in closer. Your traitorous body relaxed in his hold, the heady scent of sandalwood, spice, and his sweat clouding your mind.

Fuck him for always smelling so irresistible.

"Hi." You murmured, muffled by his shirt. You kept your arms at your sides, knowing that if you felt his body beneath your hands you would backtrack all the progress you had made over the past month. You could already feel yourself slipping—comparing being in his arms again to lying in front of the fireplace while rain pelted the windows and thunder clapped outside. The feeling of being warm and safe despite a raging storm.

He rested his chin on your head, his chest expanding underneath your cheek as he inhaled deeply. The hand between your shoulders flexed, pushing you further into him. His chest rumbled below you and you felt his words more than heard them. "Missed you."

You stepped back quickly, stumbling out of his embrace. His brows pinched together and his lips turned down with a frown. He took a small step back and cleared his throat, a muscle flexing in his jaw as he stuffed his hands in his pockets.

"I—uh—how, how have you been?"

You folded your arms across you chest, focusing on the light freckle on his neck. "I've been okay."

"That's good, great. I—we've missed you." His throat bobbed as he swallowed hard and his voice dropped lower, softer . "Place isn't the same without you."

You had to leave before you did something foolish—before you dropped to your knees and pleaded for an ounce of his affection.

You cleared your throat, trying to rid the sudden emotion clogging it. "How have you been? How's the new roommate?"

Bucky's eyes flicked away from you, a hand leaving his pocket to rub the back of his neck. "Fine—they're fine." Splotches of red coloured his cheeks. "They don't compare to you, though."

What the fuck did that mean?

"Um—okay, well, that's good? I should—"

"Listen," Bucky interrupted you before you could flee from the increasingly awkward encounter. He stepped closer, his eyes locked on the gravel lining the earth. "I—I want to apologise for my behaviour, when you told us you were leaving." He looked up at you, remorse and distress bleeding from him so viscerally you could almost grab it. "I was in shock, I think—it doesn't really matter, I'm not trying to excuse it. I just wanted you to know that I really am sorry and you didn't deserve that." He closed the distance between you more, hands raising towards you before they dropped to his sides. "I—um, I would hate for that to be the reason you haven't come 'round—if you felt uncomfortable because of me."

It was resting on the tip of your tongue, the truth. It was begging to spill out, to tell Bucky that you were uncomfortable because of him but not for the reason he believed. You could handle a little attitude—what you couldn't handle was hearing the guy you're in love with treat another woman the way you had fantasised about since the day you met him.

Grateful for the fact you had been getting enough sleep to keep a grasp on your filter, you accepted his olive branch instead of starting a confessional. "Thank you, Bucky." You looked into his eyes, trying to express your sincereness. "I appreciate it, really."

Hope flared bright across his face. "So, wanna join us next Thursday? Your pick—I'll tell Sam to keep his comments to himself."

Guilt curdled your gut. "Thank you for the offer, but I can't make it, sorry. I already have plans."

If sitting in front of the TV watching New Girl and doomscrolling on your phone constituted as plans.

And just like that, the flame was extinguished. "Oh."

You interrupted before he could say more. "It was good seeing you, Bucky, but I have to get going." You stepped around him to continue home, giving him a small wave goodbye before focusing forward—walking brisker than the tranquil evening called for, your shoulders too tense for the serene landscape.

"Bye," he murmured, the sound drifting towards you with the light breeze.

You kept your head straight forward the rest of the walk home.

You expected the text from Nat the next day, knowing that Bucky would've told your former roommates that he ran into you. She demanded you meet for brunch at your earliest convenience, and given that it was Saturday and you had no plans you couldn't deny her any longer.

You were sitting on the couch putting on your shoes when Allie burst through the front door, her hands full of bags from the morning market and mouth stuffed with cake from the pâtisserie around the corner.

"Oh my god," you heard her mumble around frosting and sponge. "Guess what I just found out."

"Apparently not what decent manners are. Swallow before you talk."

A mop of floppy blonde hair appeared in your doorway. "That's what he said."

You rolled your eyes as Dean sauntered in with a wolfish grin, closing the door behind him. "What the hell are you doing here?" You shot wide eyes at Allie, wordlessly demanding an explanation.

She took your advice and swallowed before speaking again. "I ran into him at the market—he has an update on James B!"

A mix of anticipation and dread made your morning coffee stir. "I thought he stopped leaving reviews?"

Dean collapsed next to you, eyeing the dress you were wearing with approval. "You dress up for me, angel?"

You shoved his shoulder. "Not in a million years. What's the update, dumbass?"

He pulled his phone out with a sigh. "He left a review last night—don't look at me like that, I set up notifications for this very reason." He tapped on his phone before handing it to you, the screen displaying the latest review.

James B.

★★★★★ 13 hours ago

Quiz night isn't the same without her. Nothing is.

Your heart rate picked up, sweat gathering at the back of your knees.

What the fuck?

"But last night wasn't quiz night?" Was the only thing your dumbfounded mind could vocalise.

"I mean, yeah, but you're missing the point!" Allie interjected, standing behind the couch and leaning her head down to read the review. "Now we know he's a quiz night regular! That narrows the search pool down so much."

"Ooo, what if it's one of the old dockmen?" Dean giddily queried.

"They do normally sit in your section—or, well, what used to be your section." Allie supplied, wandering back to your kitchen to put away whatever trendy new chutney she bought from the market.

Your eyes followed her, catching sight of the clock hanging on the wall. "Shit—I'm going to be late." You jumped off the couch, frantically grabbing your phone and shoulder bag. "We can theorise more later, Nat is going to murder me for being late."

"Bye, honey!" Dean yelled as you ran out the door—stopping for a second to throw him the middle finger.

Nat was sitting at a table towards the back of the cafe, her crimson hair a stark contrast to the soft pastel interior. The atmosphere was buzzing and lively—every table occupied, with laughter and heavenly aromas wafting out the open door. It was the go to brunch spot for Brooklyn natives, it's covered outdoor courtyard an enticing location on a warm summer's morning—you were surprised Nat even managed to score a table.

Her face lit up once she saw you, standing to welcome you with a hug. "One more minute and I would've thought you were ghosting me."

You hugged her just as tight, the smell of her perfume relaxing your shoulders and making your heart clench—you shouldn't have gone this long without seeing her. "God, I know, I'm sorry. Allie came home with gossip before I could make my escape."

You both pulled away and sat down, reading the menu like you hadn't looked at it online on your walk over.

"Gossip? Anything interesting?" Nat asked, wiggling her eyebrows.

You let out a deep sigh. "It's a long story. One that's better told over a bottle of wine."

"Okay, now I am beyond intrigued—you better not leave me hanging for another month." She shot you a small glare, the smile on her face lessening it's sharpness.

The waitress came over and took your orders before the two of you fell into easy conversation. She updated you on what trouble the boys—Sam—had gotten into, and you told her about the time you and Allie were locked out in your pyjamas and tried to scale the fire escape. Neither of you broached the subject of why you moved out, but it was lingering in the air—in the soft way Nat said Bucky's name. Throughout the hour you spent chatting you noticed she didn't mention their new roommate once, and the curiosity was making you restless.

"So, how's the new roommate, really? Bucky didn't say much about them."

An out of place nervous hesitation tightened Nat's face, her eyes darting between yours as she bit her lip. After a tense few seconds her shoulders dropped with a sigh.

"Honey, there is no new roommate."

You reared back, your eyebrows furrowing in confusion. "What? But Bucky said yesterday—he said they were fine."

"Of course he did," she muttered under her breath, pinching the bridge of her nose. She looked at you with a huff. "The room is empty. Bucky…he's been paying for it."

"What?" You nearly exclaimed, your body temperature rising.

"Look, I don't know why he didn't tell you the truth—I honestly don't know what goes on in his mind, he has made some terrible choices the last few months." She placed a gentle hand on top of yours, her tone softening. "Choices that had you leaving us."

"I don't understand." You muttered quietly.

"I probably shouldn't be the one to tell you this, but—Steve and him were drinking after work last week and he admitted he's paying for the room—saving it in case you want to come back."

Shock rendered you speechless—frustration climbing up from your gut, opening the partially healed scars seared into your heart. Confusion, irritation, and heartache swirled together until they formed one emotion—anger.

Your hands balled into fists, your clenched teeth making your jaw ache. "I'm sorry, what?" You bit out.

You barely noticed the smirk twitching her lips, red starting to blur your vision. "Sam and Steve are out fishing today—he's home alone if you want to go bite his head off."

You didn't need to be told twice, the red-hot fury bringing you to your feet quickly. You grabbed your stuff with urgency, your hands already starting to shake.

"Brunch is my shout—go knock some sense into him."

It took you less than ten minutes to reach the brownstone, outrage powering your legs with a speed you didn't know you were capable of. The fresh air did nothing to calm you down—you were too consumed by the memories from the past year, the heartache you endured, your utter confusion at Nat's revelation.

Your fist pounded on the wooden door, not stopping until it swung open to reveal a puzzled Bucky.

His eyes widened at the sight of you, pink lips stretching into a knee trembling smile. Your dress caught his attention, his smile freezing as blue eyes trailed down and back up your body.

He cleared his throat before speaking. "What are you doin' here, doll?"

"Don't fucking call me that," you seethed, pushing him out of your way to storm inside. You barged down the familiar path to your old room, ignoring Bucky as he called out your name behind you.

You opened the door to find the room exactly how you left it—empty. You whipped around to see Bucky standing a few feet behind you, looking down at the ground with a hand rubbing his neck and a fire overtaking his cheeks.

"Why the fuck are you paying for an empty room? No, better yet, why did you lie to me about it?" You loudly demanded, just shy of shouting.

He stumbled over his words, looking up to see you with your eyebrows raised, arms folded across your chest, hip jutted out—the perfect picture of barely contained rage.

"Well, I—you see, it's—" he dragged a hand through his hair, blowing out a breath. "It's complicated?"

"Yeah, no shit. You were so pissy about me moving—it makes no sense! Just tell me the truth for once, Bucky!" Your voice raised higher, your hands flying around as the confusion and aggravation took hold of you.

Bucky's own frustration started to seep through, the volume of his voice a notch below yours. "I was upset because you were leaving—and you didn't seem to care about us, just running straight to Dean for help!"

He was upset? He had no fucking right to be upset.

Hot, frustrated tears flooded your eyes without your permission. "I left because of you, Bucky! No one else, just you." You stepped toward him, pushing a finger into his ridiculously sturdy chest. "And I didn't run to Dean! He offered to help after he watched me have a fucking breakdown over you."

His glistening eyes stared into yours, his eyebrows drawn upwards in distress. "…What?"

A crack had fractured the dam keeping you contained, your pent up thoughts and feelings crashing through and destroying the concrete barrier.

"Every fucking day I came home feeling like my world—my heart—was being torn apart—" your voice cracked and you turned around, starting to pace the length of your old room. "And I know, I fucking know, it's not your fault—that my delusional mind and hopeless romantic heart are to blame for reading into things that weren't there, for creating a fantasy of you—of us."

You wiped away your flowing tears, sniffling as you tried to catch your breath. "But now, you expect me to, what—feel bad for leaving? I was barely human." You let out a wet, humourless laugh.

"What are you talking about?!" He demanded desperately, his face shining with frustration and something akin to hope.

"I'm talking about the goddamn walls, Bucky! I don't know if you know but they're pretty fucking thin! And every Wednesday and Saturday night I heard you and her—I heard the guy I was obsessed with fucking somebody else and it killed me."

"I only started seeing her to get you out of my head!" Both his hands found their way to his hair, tugging the dark strands in frustration. "And maybe I wanted to make you jealous—which I know is a terrible—"

You closed the distance between you in two quick strides, reaching out to shove his chest. "Jealous? You wanted to make me jealous?!" You seethed out, your fists hitting his chest as your vision blurred. "Are you blind?! Everyone could see how infatuated I was with you." Your hits lost their strength, your cheeks growing even more wet.

"Hey," Bucky whispered softly, his hands gently encircling your wrists and his thumbs rubbing tender patterns on your radial pulse. "Breathe for me."

"No," you stubbornly whispered back, despite your panting breaths slowing to match his. You drew in staggering breaths, finally noticing how hard your heart was beating—your body shaking with every thump. Your fists unfurled, your palms resting flat on his broad chest—the fast pounding of his heart a near match to yours.

He let go of your wrists, his hands cupping your face delicately. He wiped your tears away with such care it made your heart ache. Your vision cleared enough to focus on his face, seeing his eyes shining with their own tears.

"I think we're both a bit blind, sweetheart. Everyone can see how smitten I am with you." He rested his forehead against yours, the space around you two growing charged in the aftermath of your anger. "Sam gives me shit about it every day." His breathy laugh ghosted your lips, leaving tingles in it's wake. His voice dropped low, "I'm so fucking in love with you I was leaving reviews about you like some—like a hopeless sap, hoping you would realise it was me."

His confession of love flew over your head, incredulity controlling your mind. "That was you?!" You gasped, pushing his chest lightly. "I thought I had a stalker, you idiot."

The memory of the night you and Allie read all the reviews ran through your head, remembering the disturbingly romantic details written; remembering the reviews you secretly reread like a guilty pleasure, going to sleep with a giddy smile and fluttering butterflies because someone was noticing you.

"That's all you took from that?" He shook his head minutely, one of his hands brushing down your back to cradle your waist. "I'm trying to tell you I'm in love with you here."

You stepped out of his embrace, your mind still picking through all the small details. "But—the first review was, like—" you started to pace again, your hands resting atop your head. "It was well over a year ago!" Your voice raised again, recalling how horrible you felt only a month ago—the heartbreak you could've avoided. "Why did you never say anything?!"

"Because I was scared!" His voice raised to meet yours. "I didn't want to ruin things and lose you forever!"

"Yeah, well look at how that turned out!" You gestured wildly to the empty room.

"Why are we shouting again?" Bucky walked towards you, reaching for your hands. You were both breathing heavily, the sound of your pants echoing in the emptiness as your chests heaved up and down.

"Because I'm mad at you." You finally met his eyes, the blue bleeding with regret and sorrow. Your voice dropped lower, timidness starting to creep in. "You…you broke my heart, Buck."

He gripped your hands tighter, raising one to rest on his chest—right above his heart. "I am going to spend every day until I die trying to make it up to you." His remorse polluted the air around you, tears welling in your eyes once again—this time from the pain clouding his. "If you'll let me."

"That's a bit dramatic," you mumbled, sniffling lightly. "Until you're fifty is fine."

He laughed, wet and husky. He let go of your hands to cup your face again, smoothing his thumbs along your cheekbones. Your breath hitched at the touch, the pain in your system being diluted by the drug that is Bucky.

He leaned in closer, his eyes darting between yours and your lips. "I'm gonna kiss you now, okay?"

You managed a small nod before his lips were on yours—desperate and aching, stealing the breath from your lungs. One of his hands shifted to the back of your neck, tilting your head to kiss you deeper. Your hands found his chest again, fisting his shirt and causing a groan to sound in the back of his throat. He took control of the kiss with no complaint from you—happily letting him suck your bottom lip before nipping it, opening for him when his tongue grazed your lips.

The first touch of his tongue against yours had fire scorching down your body, the intensity of his kisses settling in your gut and awakening the need you've had for him for over a year.

The annoying human need for air had you pulling away from his lips, gasping as you tried to catch your breath. His stubble scratched your skin as he trailed kisses along your jaw, tilting your head to reach the sensitive spot below your ear. He gave it a soft experimental kiss, his tongue darting out and drawing a small whine from you.

His chest rumbled beneath your hands. "You talk about the walls being thin—trust me, I know." He stepped forward, his fingers dancing down your sides to grasp your hips, backing you into the wall. "I know you like to beg, what pretty sounds you make when you're about to come." He trailed his nose back along your jaw and down the other side of your neck, nestling into the crook and sniffing deeply with a small moan.

"Wh-what? I haven't—I never brought anyone home." You stuttered out, head starting to feel heavy from the lust fogging it.

"No, but you still have needs, don't you?" He let out a small chuckle, trailing feather-light kisses along your collarbone. "You thought you were alone, thought it didn't matter how loud you let yourself be." He pulled back, bringing a hand up to brush his fingers along your cheek, making their way down your neck. Onyx eyes met yours—a shiver racing down your spine at the barely contained hunger in them. "I came home with a migraine and you were so wrapped up in pleasure you didn't even hear me—but I heard you. And shit, doll, the noises you made cured my migraine faster than any pain meds ever have." He dropped his forehead to yours, his breath fanning your lips. "I had to fuck my fist three times that night. I replayed every little whimper, moan, every gasp of please until it drove me insane."

A gasp escaped you at his admission, heat rolling through your body—a mix of embarrassment and hunger swirling in your core.

"And then, like it was the universe's sole purpose to bring me to my knees, you walked in the next day wearing this dress." His fingers drifted to the neckline of your dress, toying with it as your breasts moved rapidly beneath. "Looking like a fucking angel sent here to torture me. Like sin wrapped in white lace. I had to leave before I dropped to my knees and begged for a taste—to let me worship you."

Your heart was trying to beat out of your chest, the throbbing in your core escalating with every word he murmured into your lips.

"You kept on wearing it, and I had to pretend like I wasn't replaying those sounds every time I saw you—like my dick wasn't rock hard at just a glimpse of this fucking dress." The hand on your neckline travelled down to the line of lace below your breasts—his thumb stroking along it making your breath stutter and nipples harden. "I had to do something, I felt like I was going insane. I started seeing her to get you out of my head—didn't fucking work now, did it?"

The mention of her cut through the Bucky induced haze, and you hesitated—needing clarification before you could let him consume you.

"Are you still seeing her?" You whispered.

"Fuck no, we were strictly casual. I broke it off the day you left."

Your head reared back an inch, hitting the wall lightly. "You know that doesn't make me feel better, right? That you only wanted to sleep with her because I was in the next room."

Both his hands gripped your waist, squeezing gently. "Okay, that—that wasn't what I was trying to get at." He lifted his head to stare into your eyes. "What I meant was that you leaving really showed how much of an idiot I'd been, wasting my time with her when you were right next door."

"Why didn't you reach out, then?"

He shrugged, his eyes darting away nervously. "I didn't think I had a right to. I wasn't exactly proud of how I acted the last time we spoke."

You saw Bucky almost every day for over a year—you knew he didn't get outwardly nervous often, and you knew when he was being vulnerable and honest. The Bucky in front of you wasn't lying—you could tell he was genuinely worried he'd messed everything up.

You relented with a sigh, lacing your hands around his neck. "I think it's time you start making it up to me."

"Gladly," he said before pulling you into him and kissing you deeply. He pressed his hips against yours, pushing you harder into the wall. You gasped at the feeling of his bulge against your stomach, your core trembling and aching in anticipation.

The pace of the kiss picked up, Bucky's tongue licking into your mouth with a deep moan. His grip on your hips tightened and he spun you around, walking you backwards towards his room without removing his mouth from yours.

He kicked the door shut behind him, leading you towards his bed with his hands drifting down to squeeze your ass. You broke away with a moan, your lips swollen and chin tender from his stubble.

"Sit down for me, sweetheart." Bucky rasped out. You quickly obliged—your need for him making you ready to do anything he said.

He kneeled on the floor in front of you, slowly taking your shoes off. His hands trailed up your bare legs, stopping when they reached the hem of your dress.

He pressed a soft kiss to your knee. "You gonna let me make you feel good?" He mumbled into your skin.

You nodded rapidly, your hands clenching his sheets in desperation.

He clicked his tongue. "I need words, angel."

"Yes, Bucky—please. Please touch me," you gasped out, the sight of him on his knees robbing your intelligence.

His mouth tilted into a smirk, his eyes gleaming. "There you go with that begging again."

He clasped your knees, spreading your legs open. His breath tickled the sensitive skin on your inner thighs, goosebumps erupting and surging up to your core. He pressed light kisses along one thigh, stopping when he got to your dress and switching to the other.

You could feel slick leaking out of your cunt, your clit pulsing from the lack of attention.

"Buck, stop teasing, please." You whined softly, lifting a hand to push the hair away from his eyes. He nuzzled into your hand, turning to press a kiss into your palm. Your hand vibrated as he hummed low.

He grasped the hem of your dress, lifting it slowly up to your hips. "Lean back f'me."

You leaned back on your elbows, your body trembling with need as his hands scorched paths up your thighs.

He let out a low groan once your dress was up past your hips—revealing your soaked panties to him. His eyes locked onto them, his pupils dilating until only a sliver of blue remained.

"All this from a little kissing?" He brushed a thumb along the wet patch, grazing your clit. Your head fell back with a loud gasp, your hips twitching towards his touch.

"Sensitive," he mumbled. His hand moved, tracing the edge of your panties—you were sure he could feel the heartbeat pulsing in your core. "How long has it been?"

You lifted your head up, looking into his dark eyes—the desire in them reflecting your own. "Since before I—"

You cut yourself off with a soft moan, your body jerking as Bucky pressed his thumb to your clit through your underwear—circling it with a steady pressure.

"What was that?" He asked smugly.

Your chest heaved as you tried to wade through the sensations buzzing through you. "Since before I moved in," you rushed out quickly, another moan escaping you at the feeling of his touch directly on your pussy—his hand slipping underneath the wet fabric.

"Fuck," he breathed out through clenched teeth. He grabbed the waistband of your panties and pulled them down your legs quickly. He groaned out looking at your exposed cunt, and you tried to close your legs on instinct.

He gripped your thighs to stop them from closing. "None of that," he growled out lowly. "Let me look at her."

His hands trailed up your thighs until they reached your bare hips, yanking you closer to the edge of the bed. You fell onto your back softly, your breath shaking from the impact.

He pulled your lips apart and moaned loudly. "She's fucking dripping, sweetheart."

You clenched at his words, his teasing leaving you aching and squirming. He chuckled and pressed a soft kiss millimetres away from where you needed him most. He breathed you in deeply making your hips buck up with a needy whine.

"Bucky, please."

He dragged a single finger from entrance to clit, pulling it back with a string of your arousal connecting the two of you. You sighed at the small touch, opening your eyes to see Bucky suck the tip of his finger.

He groaned at your taste, hands grabbing the back of your thighs to push your legs back and spread you wider.

"Gonna make her feel so good, pretty girl." He slurred out, his lips trailing a path of fire up to your core. "Be a good girl and make those noises for me again."

He dove in, licking the same path as his finger. His groan vibrated through you and your hands flew to his hair, gripping the strands as you gasped.

"Taste so fucking good," he mumbled before latching onto your clit. He sucked gently, circling the nub with his tongue. You rewarded him with a tug to his hair and a shaky moan.

He picked up the pace, moaning as he went from tasting you to devouring. He thrusted his tongue into you, lapping up everything he could. The room filled with the lewd sounds of your slick and his saliva coating your pussy—with your unabashed moans and gasps bouncing off the walls.

He pulled away from you, his chin and beard glistening. "That's it, pretty. Being such a good girl." You whined at the praise, using your hold on his hair to push his face back into you.

Your hips rocked against his face, the flame in your core growing fast. He moved an arm to your hips, holding them down to keep you still. He sucked your clit harshly, your back arching at the pleasure he was unleashing on you. You gasped out his name as your orgasm built rapidly.

"Fuck, Bucky—right there! Please, I'm gonna—" you cut off with a loud moan, your body jolting from him lightly biting your clit. Stars started to dot your vision as he continued to feast on you like a starved man—like you were his first sip of water after wandering the desert.

The knot in your core clenched tight before it unravelled, Bucky's groans vibrating through you pushing you over the edge. You came with a cry, your hands yanking his hair hard. A blissful fire spread throughout you, making your toes curl and head float.

Bucky drank up your release, prolonging your high until you were shaking and trying to push his head away. He relented, moving back to kiss and nip your inner thighs. Your heavy panting filled the room, your pussy twitching as you came down.

You propped yourself up on weak elbows, your droopy eyes meeting his glazed, pussy drunk ones.

"You're so fucking beautiful," he whispered reverently. He moved back in closer, his breath fanning your cunt making you clench around nothing. "Another one."

He slowly licked at your hole, leaving your overstimulated clit throbbing painfully. Your arms gave out, a whimper crawling up your throat. You brought a hand up to your chest, squeezing a breast over your dress—trying to relieve the ache in them.

"Fuck, look at you," Bucky cooed, pulling away from you to stand up. "As much as I love this dress, I think you'll look even more beautiful without it."

You nodded, sitting up slightly so he could pull it over your head. Your eyes were level with his crotch, seeing the large bulge tenting his pants—your mouth salivating already. Once your dress was off you reached a hand out, palming his hard dick over his pants. You gasped at the heavy feel of him, your walls clenching at the thought of him stretching you open.

His head rolled back with a moan, a hand catching your wrist to stop your movements. "Not right now." You let out a displeased whine and his mouth twitched with a smirk. "Later, promise. Lay back down so I can worship you."

He grasped the back of his shirt and pulled it over his head, leaving you to gape at his insane torso. You had seen it before but you always adverted your eyes quickly, scared of getting caught staring. Now, you could stare and touch all you wanted.

You leaned up to run a hand over his bare chest, his body scorching beneath your skin. You trailed a finger down the hard ridges lining his body, a thrill running through you as his muscles rippled and breath stuttered. Your mouth found his pecks, lathering them in wet kisses while your hand teased the waistband of his pants. He grasped your chin, jerking your head up to look at him. His jaw was tense and eyebrows furrowed, a slight darkness shadowing his face.

He leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on your lips. "What did I just say, sweetheart?" He mumbled, his tone laced with warning.

Before you could reply, his hands grasped your waist and pushed you up the bed until your head met his pillow. He crawled on top of you, kissing your neck.

"Thought you were gonna be a good girl." He mumbled, biting the spot below your ear and making you gasp. He pulled on one of your bra straps, letting it snap back onto your skin. You gasped louder at the small stinging sensation, the slight pain dousing your core in gasoline.

"Please, I am—I will be. M'sorry." You whimpered out, tilting your head back as he continued his assault on your neck.

He hummed in response, sucking on your pulse point before trailing lower—his stubble scraping the top of your breasts. He reached a hand behind your back, unclasping your bra with ease before pulling the straps down your arms slowly.

Your nipples hardened more once exposed to the cool air, begging for Bucky's attention. He lavished your breasts in kisses, covering every inch of skin with his spit. One of your hands clutched onto his bicep while the other wound into his hair again. He continued to avoid your nipples and you squirmed underneath him, trying to move his head to where you wanted him.

He relented, licking a nipple before sucking it into his mouth. You moaned from the relief and the zaps of pleasure racing down your torso. He pinched your abandoned nipple, rolling it between his thumb and finger as he bit down on the other one. You arched off the bed with a loud whine, the pain and pleasure morphing into one. He switched nipples, dolling out the same sweet torture with moans lodged in his throat.

Once both your nipples were raw and aching he kissed down your abdomen, hands clutching your hips as his mouth worshipped your stomach. You giggled at his beard tickling your sensitive skin and he lifted his head, his blown out eyes meeting yours with a soft—almost unbelieving—smile.

"You're breathtaking," he whispered. "And you're all mine, yeah?"

"Yes, Buck. Only yours."

He hummed in approval, pressing a light kiss to your hip. "Good. 'Cause I'm yours, angel. I'm sorry it took so long for me to say."

He moved back down to where you were dripping onto his sheets, your body wound tight from your first orgasm and his teasing. He licked into you without hesitation, drawing out loud noises from you as he sucked your sensitive clit.

"You're so wet—wanna live between these thighs, doll."

A hand left your hip to poke at your entrance, one finger sliding in easily before your walls squeezed at the intrusion. He pumped it in and out slowly until you were begging for more. A second slipped in, both of them curling upwards and grazing the spot that had you arching off the bed with a sound you'd never made before.

He lifted his head up, praising you for how good you were being—telling you how pretty you sounded. His mouth descended on your clit again and his fingers picked up their pace.

Your head rolled around on his pillow, the dual stimulation to your pussy making a heat rush through you like you'd never experienced with anyone else. You could feel how he was paying attention to you, altering his movements to gauge what sounds he could pull out of you—getting to know what you liked.

The ball tightened faster than the first time, your body edging on being overstimulated. Both your hands were fisting the sheets, your hips grinding against Bucky's face and fucking his fingers—the obscene squelch of your pussy soaking his hand mixing with your moans and gasps.

"Let me come—please. Been s'good for you, Buck—"

You know you didn't need his permission to come, but begging and submitting to him felt so good. Your own words pulled the coil in your core tighter—his resounding moan shaking through you telling you how much they affected him too.

A third finger joined in and you clenched down hard, the stretch almost throwing you off the cliff. They curled into your spot over and over, his other hand moving to push down on your lower stomach—causing something between a moan and squeal to leave you.

"Course you can come for me, sweetheart. I want nothing more than this sweet pussy drenching me."

With one last curl of his fingers and suck to your clit, your body started to shake, the ball bursting and sending waves crashing through you. Your eyes rolled back and your ears started ringing, deaf to the borderline animalistic noises you were letting out. You clamped down on his fingers hard, your juices gushing out and coating his hand—dripping and staining his sheets.

Your head was up in the clouds, cotton filling the space your brain used to be. You briefly registered his mouth leaving your overstimulated and raw nub, his fingers still moving slowly as you floated through your high. Small, gentle kisses across your cheeks, nose, and eyelids had you giggling breathlessly. Your body felt heavy, your eyelids struggling to open.

"You doin' okay?" Bucky whispered into your temple, peppering more light kisses to your forehead. You hummed softly.

"Need'a minute," you slurred out.

His fingers slowed and then left you, a whine slipping past your lips at the emptiness. You felt a hand rubbing soothing circles onto your scalp, your body turning towards his warmth. You slowly opened your eyes to find him staring at you, electric blue lazily roaming around your face.

"Hi," you whispered, lifting a heavy hand to push hair behind his ear. He grabbed your hand and covered it in soft kisses, his eyes never leaving yours.

"Hi. How you feeling?"

You leaned in, nuzzling your nose against his. "Good—really good," you muttered before kissing him softly. Your hand weaved into his hair, pulling him in as your kiss grew more passionate.

One of his hands cradled your jaw and the other spanned the small of your back, pushing you into his bulge. You bit his lip teasingly, revelling in his body shuddering and drinking down the moan he let free.

You grinded your hips against his—gasping and whimpering at the rough fabric of his pants dragging against your oversensitive pussy. He responded in kind, rutting his bulge into you with a groan.

"Want you inside of me," you mumbled into his lips, throwing a leg over his to roll your hips harder.

"Fuck—okay," he breathed out. He pulled away to reach for his bedside drawer but your hand on his chest stopped him.

"Are you clean?"

His eyes widened and he nodded dumbly. "I got tested the other week—wait, I'll show you." He reached for his phone but you stopped him with a giggle.

"I believe you. I'm clean—obviously. And on birth control."

His eyes almost bulged out of their sockets, pupils dilating until they physically couldn't anymore.

"Are you sure?" He gripped your face in his hands, eyes darting between yours. "I only used condoms with her so I understand—"

That fact pleased you absurdly, your hand trailing down his chest to his groin—squeezing his heavy bulge. "I'm sure. Wanna feel you, all of you."

He pulled you into a searing kiss, rolling you onto your back and hovering over you. Your mouth moved against his eagerly, both your hands on his waistband to unbotton and unzip his pants. You reached a hand into his boxers, a gasp leaping out as you wrapped your hand around him—his cock throbbing and big. You briefly worried about the limp you'll have later.

He panted above you, his eyes closing as you stroked him slowly. You could feel his boxers damp with pre-cum, beads of it dripping from his tip. You brushed your thumb over it and he moaned gutturally, eyes opening as you pulled your hand out. You kept eye contact with him as you brought your thumb up to your lips, licking his pre-cum before sucking it into your mouth with a satisfied moan.

He pulled your thumb out, tracing his own along your lip before you sucked on it—twirling your tongue around it.

"You're gonna be the fucking death of me, angel." He groaned out.

He pushed away to pull his pants and boxers off, throwing them behind him carelessly. Your eyes zeroed in on his cock standing proud—your mouth somehow simultaneously drying up and drooling at the sight. He was the biggest you'd ever seen—long and thick, the tip flushed red with his need. Your knees fell apart on instinct, the fire building up just looking at him.

"Wanna take a picture?" He teased.

"Another time," you whispered, surging up to grab his shoulders and pull him back on top of you.

He chuckled into your mouth before it dissolved into a moan, your hips bucking up and smearing his cock with your slick.

He grabbed your hips, pulling them up slightly as he settled between your legs. You both broke off from the kiss with matching gasps, the feel of him sliding along your slit making you both dizzy. His tip bumped into your clit with each glide, whimpers echoing from your chest as you twitched from the stimulation.

"You're so fucking pretty," he mumbled, dropping his head to kiss and nip along your neck.

"Please," you whined, your hips rocking without thought.

He pulled back and looked down between you, groaning at his dick already glistening with you. He wrapped a hand around himself, tapping his head against your clit a few times. You squealed, starting to feel dizzy with desire. He shushed you gently, dragging a thumb along your cheekbone before positioning himself at your entrance.

His eyes met yours as he pushed in slowly, the intensity in them making you choke up. It had never felt like this before—never felt so passionate, adoring. It made everything feel elevated—your nerve endings singing with pleasure wherever he touched you.

You clenched down on him instinctively, your walls stretching around just the tip. Your chest heaved as you tried to relax—you weren't in pain, it just felt so fucking good.

"Be a good girl and let me in," he whispered, leaning forward to kiss you.

Your legs opened wider for him, your core relaxing to let him push in further. Moans and gasps filled the air around you as he thrust slowly, sinking until he reached the hilt.

The breath knocked out of you, the feeling of him filling you completely making your head rush. He moved slowly at first, small thrusts to get you accommodated before pulling back until just the tip was inside. He sank home with deep moans, his cock pushing against your spot with every thrust.

You wrapped your legs around his waist making him reach deeper inside you. He picked up his pace, his hips meeting yours with soft slaps.

"You feel so good—oh, fuck!" He exclaimed as you clenched down on him.

"Harder, please." You moaned out, scratching your nails down his chest.

"Yeah? My pretty girl—my little angel—likes it rough?"

You nodded deliriously, the tension in your core sizzling with every thrust.

He sat up, bringing your hips with him. He held them up and delivered harsh thrusts—each one expelling a gasp out of you. Your legs tightened around him, his strength pushing you up the bed.

The headboard knocked against the wall, adding to the symphony of moans, whimpers, skin slapping that was already deafening the room. Each sound had you soaring higher, each thrust kissing your cervix sending a shock through you.

Bucky removed your legs from his waist, clutching your thighs to push them towards your chest. Your wide eyes met his with a gasp, the change in position igniting a roaring fire everywhere. He dropped forward slowly, pushing into you so far you swear you could feel him in your throat.

He groaned into your ear. "This is—god, you're made for me."

His thrusts resumed their previous pace, your mouth falling open in a silent scream. Sweat beaded along his hairline from the exertion, his hair sticking to his temples—and he looked so beautiful, your eyes started to well with tears.

Everything rushed through you in an overwhelming burst—the heartache you suffered, the months of yearning and uncertainty, how much you loved him. How much he loved you.

Tears fell from your eyes as the sensations built higher and you grasped his face, pulling his forehead to yours. Your gentle kiss to his lips was a stark contrast to his cock drilling into you.

"I love you," you whispered, your words breaking on a sob of pleasure.

His hips stuttered, his eyes squeezing tightly. "You can't say that again or I'll blow my load." You laughed at his clear struggle to hold back, making him groan as you squeezed him tighter.

He continued his thrusts, wiping a thumb under your eye to catch your tears. "This is the only time I'm gonna make you cry from now on, yeah? Only gonna make you sob cause I'm fucking you so good."

You nodded, letting out little "uh-huh"'s as you climbed higher and higher.

"Play with your clit, sweetheart." Bucky rasped out.

Your hand snuck between your bodies to press circles around your clit—your back arching with a whine. Tears continued to track down your temples, wetting the pillow below you.

"Fill me up, please," you managed to get out between whimpers and sobs. Bucky's grip on your thighs tightened, surely leaving marks for you to admire over the next few days.

"Come with me," Bucky moaned, pressing a scorching kiss to your lips as his thrusts grew sloppy. You tensed below him, your body locking up before pure ecstasy barrelled through you. You came with a scream of his name, clenching down on his cock to keep him trapped. Your vision faded to white, your body trembling and pulsing.

Bucky groaned out your name as his orgasm rushed through him, his cock throbbing and pulsing inside you as he filled you completely with cum.

He collapsed on top of you, his sweaty chest heaving against yours. He slowly lowered your legs then wrapped his arms around your waist, nuzzling into your neck.

You laid there for a few minutes, the both of you gradually coming back down to earth. He pulled out of you slowly, the both of you groaning at the feeling. A mix of your releases dripped out of you, coating your ass and staining the sheets.

"Stay right here," Bucky said before giving you a chaste kiss, pulling his boxers on to run to the bathroom. He came back with a wet towel, sitting on the bed next to you to clean you up with gentle, reverent touches.

He climbed behind you, pulling you into his strong chest—a satisfied rumble vibrating your back. He kissed the back of your head, trailing towards your ear and giving your lobe a gentle bite.

"I love you too."

"When can we move your stuff back in?"

Bucky and you were still lying on his bed, basking in the warmth of each other as the afternoon sun trickled through his half closed curtains.

You turned in his arms, slinging a leg over his and booping his nose. "I think we should go on a couple dates before I move in with you."

His nose and eyes scrunched with that laugh you first fell in love with. "Oh, is that right?"

"Living together before you've even bought me flowers? Sounds a bit rash to me."

"I'll buy you a whole flower shop," he mumbled, his fingers tracing patterns on your bare hip. "Well, maybe not right away—I am paying for two rooms, y'know. Would be nice to be able to buy groceries next month."

You laughed softly, poking his bare chest. "Yeah, and whose fault is that again?"

He grumbled something unintelligible, hiding his face in your neck to lavish you in more kisses.

Wars were started over smiles less beautiful than hers.

The reminder of his reviews about you flourished in your mind, prompting you to pull his head away from your neck.

"So, you're James B? This whole time?"

His face bloomed red, a huff leaving him before he nervously licked his lips. "Yeah…"

"Why? Why start leaving them in the first place, why didn't you tell me?"

He shrugged slightly, lifting a hand to trace the lines of your face. "We were at the bar drinking, and some guy nearby pointed to you and said ratings must be higher with you working there. And—I don't know, I guess I was drunk enough to agree and then…it just happened?"

You furrowed your brows at him. "Why not just write in a journal?"

"Trust me, I was already doing that." He laughed softly, his eyes glowing. "I guess, in a weird way, I was telling you how I felt without actually telling you. Stupid, I know."

Warmth started to spread from your chest. "It took us ages to even notice the reviews—we only realised they were there because Dean assumed one was about him."

Bucky tensed under your hands. "Fucking Dean," he muttered.

"…Are you jealous?"

The blush on his cheeks grew, his eyes avoiding yours. "He was always staring at you, and you laughed with him like—like you did with me. I thought there was something goin' on."

Is it bad that him being jealous is turning you on?

"You have nothing to worry about, Dean is a gross womaniser who I only see as an annoying brother." You pushed at Bucky's chest, making him lie on his back as you straddled his hips. You pressed kisses along his chest, your hips slowly rocking against his. "He did tell me he wanted to sleep with me, though."

Bucky's hands grasped your hips harder, his face turning stormy. "I don't wanna hear you talkin' about another guy when you're on top of me, doll." He muttered low.

You leaned in to kiss him, your hips moving faster and drawing gasps out of the both of you—his dick already half hard under you. "You're so hot when you're jealous."

The sound of the front door opening had you both freezing—your former roommate's laughter drifting down the hall.

"Get dressed, lovebirds!" Sam's voice rang out. "We've got fish to fry!"

a/n: thank you to this pic on pinterest that inspired half the plot (i couldn't get the ho to fit into a moodboard 😔) yes, team, reader should’ve made bucky grovel HOWEVER high emotion tension filled make up sex is hot 🫦 bro is buying her flowers and taking her on dates every day for the rest of their lives 😌

[sheriff-bodecker]

steel and vibranium

pairing: bucky barnes x f!reader

warnings: 18+ MDNI, smut, pwp, straight porn, missionary, d/s dynamics, softdom!bucky, sub!reader, slight brat!reader, slight dumbification, oral fixation, sweat/spit/teeth kink (idk maybe lol), the aftercare is fucking again, creampie, bucky has a bush . . .

word count: 1.8k

a/n: this is me trying to get some requests finished :") i have a whole bunch, some of which i accidentally turned into long fics, some i hate the things i wrote and am trying to start again and some im figuring out, but this one came to me when i woke up horny for bucky barnes lol thank you anon for the request !! <3

masterlist || navigation

The mattress creaks and the frame knocks into the wall, chipping the paint, denting the wood where the two meet.

Forehead to forehead, sweat accumulating with torrid breaths and aching muscles, Bucky's hips caught to yours. Pressing, slamming, holding down as he clenches his glutes and humps, elongating the pleasure, taunting.

But the light chime of his tags kept ringing. They keep batting across your chest, cold and moist, patting your chin and dragging across your skin when you were right there.

It was just as your legs fell open, knees laying up as his dick dragged in and out, and he willed his noises to stay at a minimum, when the tags flittered to the dip of your neck. Your lips parted, sighing, rolling your eyes as it tap tap tap's and sings against your hot skin. You move, careful not to ruin the precision, pressing the chain against his peck, holding them firm to his chest.

At first, Bucky almost sat up, almost paused to ask if you were okay — pushing at his sternum, brows taut and eyes glassy, whining with every breath. Instead he pushed deeper, metal fingers drawing up your body until they held your jaw, squeezing your cheeks, making you look into his eyes.

"What's the matter?" His breath sticks to your face, bumping his nose to yours. "Pushin' me away? C'mon, speak to me."

You can't. That's the problem. It feels like with each pull and push, each pulse around his cock, and every kiss his tip grants your cervix, he drives all linguistic knowledge out of your brain, spilling it from your lips in garbled nonsense and breathy moans.

A whiney hum spills out as you tighten your lips into a line, keeping your jaw firm. You lean back into the pillow, shutting your eyes trying to find any semblance of words, but his hips keep moving. Slower now, yet still as effective, still holding you rigid and perfectly, and tauntingly precise. Rutting the length of himself inside of you while the fuzz of hair that littered the base kept grazing your clit. It isn't until one hand claws at the meat of his shoulder, and the other, the hand that pushed at the chain, leaving tiny dents in it's wake, fisted at the metal.

It clinks as the tags stay dangling from your palm, bumping to and fro.

"Oh, sweetheart," Bucky soothes, the warm metal of his thumb strokes against your bottom lip, slicked with spit and salty with sweat. "We're they botherin' you?"

You nod quickly, leaving a sharp smile on his face, dipping down to leave gentle kisses against your jaw.

"My smart girl," you keen into the praise, leaning deeper into his hand, letting his voice rasp and vibrate into your skin, leaving more room for him to lick and kiss. "Thought you wanted me to stop."

Ardently, you shake your head, ruffling your hair into the pillow behind you.

"No, no stopping. 'M not gonna stop." And he doesn't. His flesh hand replaces your own around the tags and he slots them between his teeth.

Salt and iron cover his tongue, sweat that had dripped from his down body, and your own that had mixed in as it had laid against your own skin, or tapped annoyingly your neck. It makes a dull sound as they sat firmly between his teeth, braced to the side, just where his molars start and his canines dig into the printed letters of his name.

It shouldn't be hot.

The sight of his mouth full, his teeth bared, carrying something precious with an iron grip of his jaw, made your walls pulse. You almost wanted to swap it out, to reach up and take the tags in your own mouth, enveloped in the debauched taste of century old metal, skin and spit.

But its hedonic. You love how he looks. Skin slick, chest heaving, drool already pooling at the edges of the tags, at the corner of his mouth right where his lips met. Animalistic in a way.

"There we go, there we go," his speech muffled, yet still affirmative and firm as he brings back the pace. Making your head drop back and mouth hang open on a gasp, arching your back. The warmth of his palm glides up your torso, leaving goosebumps as he drags up and down, before pulling your leg up by the thigh to latch onto his waist and holding you firmly at the hip. All while holding himself up on his forearm, vibranium fingers holding the top of your head reassuringly, grazing his thumb on your hairline.

He hums, unable to speak with his mouth full, unable to gather the spit about to fall. Your hands claw at the contorting muscles of his shoulder blades, moving to capture his hair between your fingers.

The tug you force has him stuttering, hips pressing to your own, the hair surrounding his base tickles again, right against your nub.

"Oh—fuck," you breathe out, jaw slack and tight all at once, the light feeling of release easing up your back as your thighs begin to tingle and tremble around his torso. "Bucky… Bucky, please."

The rivulets of spit drop, coating your neck and chin, and he follows them down until his hot, wet breath finds your temple. His chest caves with each inhale, keeping his hips up, holding down the pace that has you throbbing up his shaft, your nails digging into his shoulder and thighs shaking. He can feel the ring around the root of him, creamy and white, mixed in with the dark patch of hair.

The tags tinkle dully, let go from the cell of his teeth to lay wet next to your neck. You pay no mind to the slurping sound of him gathering spit from his lips; only staying in the blissed out haze of Bucky's body atop of yours and his pretty cock slapping in and out of you.

"C'mon, c'mon…" he repeats like a mantra, whispering under his breath, heated on the shell of your ear. "You got it, fuck, you feel so good. Wanna cum—cum inside of you, wanna push it in deep, n'keep fuckin' it in… Please, please, please…"

As your nails print crescents into his skin, your mouth holds a jumble of 'yes's to his shoulder. Balm and torrid to the meat of his shoulder, your body locks and a sweet ache begins to release around the stretch of him. Your lips press to his collarbone, muffling the shudders and whines and gasps that release as he fucks you through it, wet slaps and mumbled grunts chorusing together while you jolt and pulse.

It isn't long until he follows through, finishing deep inside, pressing and holding himself as his cock twitches with each spurt of cum. As if awoken from his daze, he keeps his hips moving.

Splatterings of white coat both of your pelvises and thighs, shuddering with overstimulation, muscles limp from overexertion, eyes half lidded and lips parted and red.

Bucky slowed himself as your jerking lessened and your teeth bared to hiss at the mild pain, and his dick softened. He watched, holding himself up with his knuckles to the pillow, guiding the softer limb to stay inside of your full warmth, uncaring about the mess that now coats his fingers — absentmindedly licking them off like candy residue.

Sighs and soft groans alike leave you both as he slips out. Your nails caress his torso, gliding gently up the red marks you printed on his back, down to the sensitive muscles of his ass, making him twitch and press his hips to yours again with a stifled laugh to your jaw.

"Careful, might get hard again before I can clean you up." He kisses and breathes you in, holding you into his body as your fingers hold their gentle rhythm.

You huff a lazy version of a laugh, nosing against the sweet smell of sweat where his neck meets his shoulder.

"Oh no, how awful," You croak sarcastically. The weakness in your voice makes you both laugh fully, rumbling chests pressed against one another, cheeks tight with smiles, and eyes watching with warm fragments. After a short moment of silence, of lungs catching up, you follow down the column of his neck to where his dog tags laid lopsided on your chest, and hummed. "I liked that thing you did."

"'That thing'?" He pressed, smirking, lowering his voice. "I've got many things goin' for me, sweetheart, be specific."

Another laugh breaks, crinkling your eyes at the corners, playfully pushing at his chest.

"That dog tag thing, you know, putting them in your mouth."

"You liked that?"

You nodded, fervently. "Uh-huh. Very much."

His lips move into a soft smile, catching the slick metal cards between his fingers to bring them up.

"That so?" He teases quietly, dragging them across your bottom lip, leaving the dewy residue to sit, sliding them just between the seam of your lips only to jut it out with a pop. "Maybe next time you can hold them for me?"

With your tongue poking out, you get a taste of the flavour that pooled alongside Bucky's own tongue. Musky and sour, tangy with body heat. And with a soft press on your thigh, you know that you're under a limit.

"Next time meaning five minutes?" You prod, tilting your head innocently. "Haven't even gotten cleaned up and it seems like little Sergeant Barnes is reporting for duty."

With a tut, he holds your chin, shaking his head. "Nuh-uh, fuck that and your smart mouth. Open wide, hold tight."

You obey and bite down as he slots the tags between your teeth, tugging at the chain twice to test out your grip. You scrunch your nose and furrow your brows, playfully pulling back at the chain. The grotesque brackishness of the tester you got grips you fully and drips down your throat.

"'Little Sergeant Barnes'," he repeats, sitting up as far as he could to grab ahold on himself. Sticky, wet and just as hard as before. He strokes himself, groaning as he fists tighter at his ruddy tip, coaxing a pearl of precum. Defiantly, he taps his heaviness on your clit. "Keep that up and making sure every inch of you aches with me the next day, understood?"

A giggle bubbles up before you could force it down. He slaps his cock against your clit again, holding and coating it down and between your lips, still creamy and dripping his own release, bullying your button with his tip. Your whine is muffled between your teeth as you bear them down.

"Understood?" He pushes, voice firmer, harsher, and you nod, heart racing, ribs already quivering. The sounds of your joint bodies squelch louder and louder, as your head lays dizzier and dizzier, but his voice whispers so soft and the way he terrorises and hounds your insides brings stars to the corners of your eyes.

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© 2026 sheriff-bodecker

[blowingbarnes]

Should've Kissed You Anyway

➴ PAIRING: Brother's Best Friend!Bucky x Reader ➴ WC: 6k ➴ WARNINGS: friends to lovers, reader is 18, bucky is 20, college!bucky, romanogers, SMUT (p in v, protected sex for once, fingering, dry humping, car sex, virginity/virginity loss, BCB (big cock bucky), pussyjob if you squint really hard) yearning, j*hn w*lker is a dick, miscommunication, YEARNING, slow burn but not but super slow burn?, excessive use of eye rolls, he's down bad, tooth rotting fluff, open ending. ➴ SUMMARY: Your prom date ditches you, and Bucky, ever the gentlemen, offers to take you. He gives you the full senior prom experience even though he's your brother's best friend and your crush for the past decade. +fran: I wrote this with greasy hair, after work, before a shower. apparently I reach a flow state when I'm feral. this is my baby and I love this fic so much please for the love of all that is holy, tell me what you think. can be read alone, it will have sequels tho. ⤷ songs/playlist for this: there she goes - the la's, always everywhere - charli xcx, ruin the friendship - taylor swift, back to friends - sombr more

The Rogers' backyard was, for all intents and purposes, the hottest wedding venue in town. 

At least if anyone asked nine-year-old you and 11-year-old Bucky, as much was true. 

The cracked sidewalk leading to the clothesline was the aisle, peony and dandelion flower beds were the decorations. The old apple tree was the altar at which Steve stood taller on an upside down wooden crate, one of your father's old dress shirts over his shoulders to pretend he was a preist, or a pope, or some sort of higher entity able to witness this whole thing. 

Bucky had one of your dad's suit jackets on, the navy fabric completely swallowing his frame, overlapping at the front and masking the Yankees jersey he had on, and all the dirt and grass stains on it. 

You had a pillowcase that definitely needed to be in the hamper for laundry day pinned to your hair with your favorite hair clips, of a little crystal blue butterfly. 

"Everybody be quiet," Steve announced, nose high up in the air like he was presenting a case to the Supreme Court. "This is serious business."

"It is serious business," you agreed immediately, failing to bite back a grin, missing your top right canine tooth.

One that Bucky held your hand the whole time so you'd let Steve run away with the string and pull it out. 

"We are gathered here today because Bucky and my sister wanted to play wedding instead of baseball."

"You said you'd play too!" you accused. 

Steve ignored and just kept going. "Now, Bucky Barnes." He cleared his throat, trying to make his voice lower. "Do you promise to be nice to her forever, always save her a seat to watch fireworks on my birthday, and never eat the last s'more?"

Bucky rolled his eyes, his dimple coming out as he smiled wth the side of his mouth. "Yeah," he said simply. "I promise."

You raised your brow, mock-scolding him. "You're supposed to say I do."

"Okay, yes," Your heart did an odd flip. "I do."

Steve then turned to you next. "And do you promise to be nice to Bucky forever, not tell Mrs. Barnes when he sneaks cookies before dinner, and always let him have the red Popsicle if there's only one left?"

"But they're the best ones!" You whined. 

Steve sighed, ever the dramatic, looking at Bucky with fake sorrow. "Okay, then I guess you don't love him as much as—"

That set panic in your little heart. "I do! I do!" His face changed immediately, and Bucky smiled at you. 

The kind of smile that always made you feel like maybe the sun shined a little brighter on your side of the street than everybody else's.

Steve smiled, as if everything was back on track. "Now, for the rings."

Bucky dug into his pocket and produced two dandelions he'd twisted into little circles. Your eyes widened. "You made those?"

He nodded, brown hair bouncing up and down his head with the gesture. "Took me forever, but they're your favorites."

He held one carefully between his fingers before sliding it onto yours with all the concentration in the world.

"You made me a flower ring." Your grin stretched so wide your cheeks hurt.

Bucky shrugged. "Yeah."

Steve interrupted your thoughts, "Okay, okay. By the power in this vest… or in me, whatever they say in movies, you are now married." He pointed at Bucky. "No cooties." Then at you. "And don't make him play tea party every day."

Your stomach did that weird fluttery thing it always did around Bucky Barnes. It did the same thing when you rode rollercoasters, felt like it was gonna fly away and take you with it. 

"You may now high-five the bride." Steve announced, stepping down from the crate. 

Bucky extended his pinky towards you, "We'll be best friends forever."

"No take-backs." You smiled, wrapping your pinky around his.

TEN YEARS LATER

As time passed, you grew up. You got new interests, all of you got new friends, and the found family you had just seemed to get bigger. Of course, you weren't as close with Bucky anymore, no college sophomore wants to hang out constantly with his best friend's kid sister.

It's kind of uncool.

The house was loud in that familiar, comfortable way—the kind of loud that doesn’t feel chaotic so much as lived-in. Every sound has a place. Every voice belongs. Bucky, as much as he isn't family by blood, grew up running up and down these stairs the same you and Steve did, as Steve did in his house. 

Both of your moms were best friends since diapers, and it was only fate that Bucky and Steve were too. 

The kitchen doorway had his height and age and name scratched on it just the same as it did yours, he knew that house in the dark just as much as Steve, trying to sneak around to get snacks during late nights playing video games. 

Controller clicks. Steve muttering under his breath. Bucky’s low laugh every time he wins—because of course he’s winning.

“Dude, you’re cheating,” Steve groans, tossing his controller down for a second.

“I’m just better than you,” Bucky shoots back easily, stretched out on the couch like he owns the place, long legs kicked up, completely at home.

He always is.

Him and Steve drove back home from their Sophomore college parties for your graduation weekend, still half-running on energy drinks and bad decisions from the night before, which just happened to fall in the same one as your prom, only separated by three days. 

They could hear your speaker booming in your bathroom while you got ready with your two best friends, Yelena and Kate, and Natasha, Steve's girlfriend, helped you with your makeup. 

It was a mix of Megan Thee Stallion playing and giggles coming from the three of you, your two best friends gushing over their dates.

Makeup scattered across the counter. Curling iron plugged in and dangerously close to knocking something over. Dresses half-hanging, half-draped over the shower rod.

And Natasha’s laugh, warmer, older, threaded through all of it as she tried to keep things somewhat under control.

Kate is perched on the edge of the tub, kicking her heels against the porcelain. Yelena is leaning into the mirror, fixing her lip gloss with unnecessary intensity.

And you—

You’re standing between them, half-finished, dress still unzipped, hair clipped up, trying to decide if you feel as good as you’re supposed to.

“Okay, no—seriously,” Kate says, pointing at you like she’s making a case in court. “John is going to lose his mind.”

Yelena hums in agreement. “He already looks at you like he has no thoughts.”

You laugh, a little breathy. “That’s not even true.”

“It is completely true,” Kate insists.

“You’re just saying that.”

“We are not just saying that,” Yelena shoots back.

Natasha, standing behind you, gently brushes powder along your cheek, more focused than the rest of them—but she’s listening. And she notices there's a sparkle in your eye that's missing when John's the subject. 

He's nice, he's good looking, he's captain of your football team, maybe he has some anger issues with other guys, but all in all he's a solid boyfriend. He's just not—

“Alright,” Natasha says finally, pulling you from your thoughts, lightening her tone again. “Turn around. Let me see the full thing.”

You do as she asks, and she takes in her work of art, your hopeful eyes, and the soft blownout curls of your hair framing your face. 

"Perfect!"

Careful with your steps as she reaches for the zipper, pulling it up your back slowly, sealing you into the dress, into the night, into everything that’s supposed to happen.

A knock sounds on the bathroom door. "You girls alive in there?" Steve calls. "Or did the hairspray fumes get you?"

"We're decent!" Natasha calls back.

Steve pokes his head in for a second. "Oh."

You raise an eyebrow. "Oh?"

His expression shifts immediately into something resembling offense. "What happened to my little sister?"

"Oh my God." You snorted. 

Steve's broad frame now came into full view in the tiny bathroom as he stood on the dorway. "Who is this grown woman and where did she put the gremlin that used to steal my fries?"

You rolled you eyes. "I'll still steal your fries."

He shakes his head. "You look beautiful, Bug."

Your expression softens. "Thanks, Stevie."

As Pietro and Bob scrolled their phones impatiently at the bottom of the stairs, making small talk with Steve and Bucky, you were almost wearing a path into the carpeted floor of your bedroom.

Seconds after he was supposed to arrive with the other two, he texted you some shitty excuse as to why he was taking Olivia, his ex, to prom instead. 

“I was gonna explain,” John says finally, like that makes it better.

You let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “Explain what? That you’re ditching me the night of prom?”

“I’m not ditching you,” he says quickly, defensive already. “It’s just—Olivia asked me to go with her and it’s complicated.”

“Complicated?” you repeat, your grip tightening around your phone. “John, it’s prom. We’ve had this planned for weeks.”

“I know, I know,” he says, exhaling like you’re the one making this difficult. “But she’s going through stuff right now and I don’t wanna make things worse.”

Your chest tightens. “So you thought canceling on me last minute wouldn’t make things worse?”

“That’s not what I said.”

You huffed. “That’s exactly what you’re doing.”

He goes quiet again for a second, and you can practically hear him thinking—calculating—trying to figure out how to spin it in a way that makes him look less like the bad guy.

“Look,” he says finally, voice shifting into something more controlled, “you’re gonna have fun no matter what. You’ve got your friends, it’s not like you’ll be alone.”

The words hit harder than anything else he’s said.

Because they’re so easy for him. So dismissive.

“So that’s it?” you ask, quieter now, but it wavers anyway. “You just—drop me and go with her, and I’m supposed to be fine with that?”

“I’m not dropping you,” he insists again, frustration creeping in. “It’s one night.”

“It’s prom,” you snap, the word catching in your throat. “It’s not just some random thing, John.”

“Why are you making this such a big deal?” he shoots back.

That’s what does it.

Your eyes sting, tears blurring your vision as you shake your head even though he can’t see it. “I’m making it a big deal?” you echo. “You’re the one who decided, what, an hour before we’re supposed to leave, that I don’t matter as much as your ex?”

“It’s not like that,” he says, sharper now. “You’re twisting it.”

“I’m not twisting anything,” you say, your voice breaking despite your best effort to keep it steady. “You just told me exactly where I stand.”

He exhales, long and annoyed, like he’s already over the conversation. “You’re being dramatic. The words land like a slap. And for a second, you can’t even respond.

“Okay,” you say finally, and your voice is quieter now, but steadier in a way that feels final. “Okay. Go with her.”

“—See? That’s all I’m saying, it’s not that—”

“No,” you cut him off, shaking your head again, even though he still can’t see you. “I get it now.”

There’s a shift on his end, like he didn’t expect that. “Wait—”

“Have fun at prom, John.”

And before he can say anything else, you hang up.

The silence that follows is immediate and heavy, pressing in around you as you stare at your reflection, your chest rising and falling too fast, your phone still clutched in your hand.

For a second, you just stand there. And then your face crumples, and the tears come before you can stop them. 

Great. You think. An hour of Natasha's hard work gone in two seconds. 

You ripped a couple squares of toiled paper off of the roll, trying to dab away the tears when a knock interrupted you. You didn't even have time to tell whoever it was to leave you alone, the door opened anyway. 

And of course it was Bucky. 

"Hey, Walker finally—" Then he saw your face. The red rimmed eyes, the puffy nose and lips, he'd recognize your crying face if he was in a dark room blindfolded and you were three states away. "What happened?"

His voice wasn't panicked our loud, just immediate. 

"Apparently my boyfriend had a better offer." You said with a humorless laugh, fiddling with the corner of the tissue. 

His expression then changed to confusion, then disbelief, then anger. "He did what?"

Your eyes stayed on the paper, humiliated. "He took his ex to prom instead." It sounds ridiculous out loud. Embarrassing. "I know it's stupid—"

He shook his head. "It's not stupid."

You shrugged one shoulder anyway. "It kind of is."

"It kind of isn't." Bucky insisted. 

Your laugh broke apart into another shaky breath. "He said I was being dramatic." Your voice was small, like a small part of you almost believed John. 

"No the fuck he didn't." Bucky's voice, on the contrary, sounded like he was about to make sure John was in three zipcodes at the same time.

You wiped at your face furiously. "Can we not do the whole protective older brother routine thing right now? Steve's probably already planning a felony downstairs."

Bucky nodded, as if agreeing that yes, Steve should be planning felonies. "Good."

Despite yourself, a tiny laugh escapes you. "Bucky."

"I'm serious." He took the couple steps needed to lean back against the sink, back to the mirror, while you faced it. The familiar weight of him beside you settled something in your chest. "You know what I think?" he asks.

You sniffled. "What?"

"I think he's an idiot."

You snort. "Very eloquent."

"You spent weeks excited about tonight." You shrug. "You talked about your dress for months." A smaller shrug, your head shaking like you agreed with him three weeks was a little excessive. "And some guy decides at the last second that he doesn't feel like showing up?"

His eyes looked for yours, and he continued once you met his gaze. "That's his loss." 

Downstairs someone was shouting something about finding the car keys. "I just feel stupid."

His brows furrowed immediatelly. "Why?"

"Because I was excited." The words came out smaller than you meant them to. "I really thought tonight was gonna be special."

Bucky's expression softens. "It still can be."

You laughed weakly. "My date literally dumped me an hour before prom."

"Okay." He says, like the solutions is obvious. Like a dragon staring you in the face. 

You were confused. "Okay?"

"Okay." He stands up straight. "Counterpoint." You raise an eyebrow. "I've seen enough terrible teen movies to know where this goes." Despite yourself, curiosity wins.

"Oh yeah?"

"Oh yeah." He nodded, and started counting on his fingers. "Option one: you go with your friends and have an incredible time."

"Mm." An amused smile played on your lips. 

He continued. "Option two: Steve commits a crime."

You smiled widened. "Likely."

"Or a secret, better option three—"

You quirked a brow. "There are three options?"

Bucky rolled his eyes playfully. "There are always three options." You gestured for him to continue and he grinned. "Option three: some devastatingly handsome college sophomore heroically steps in and saves prom."

You stared at him in disbelief. "Bucky Barnes."

"What?" 

"You are not asking me to prom."

"Why not?"

"Because that's ridiculous." You stammered. "You're a college guy and it's gonna be a bunch of drunk high school seniors and—"

"Seems pretty straightforward to me."

You crossed your arms over your chest, the action making your breasts stand out more, and Bucky had to hold back from looking briefly. "You drove eight hours home from college."

"Correct."

"You haven't slept." Another excuse.

"Also correct."

Truth is… You didn't trust yourself not to ruin your friendship, and Steve's, with Bucky as your date. Yes it was a childhood crush, yes it was stupid, yes he only saw you as a little sister, but for some reason every time you smelled sandalwood and listened to divorced dad rock, your stomach did the same fucking thing it always did.

It flipped. 

"I'm serious." The grin on his face faded into something gentler. "You shouldn't miss your prom because some idiot couldn't see what was standing right in front of him."

Your throat tightens. "I don't want a pity Bucky Barnes date."

"I wouldn't dream of it." Bucky shook his head. "I want to go to a high school prom sleep deprived, listen to bad music, and drink shitty punch."

You pretended to think about it. "I want milkshake and fries from Juniper's after."

Bucky got down on his knees dramatically, clutching his hands together, play-begging. "Please, let me spend my hard earned student loans on a malted brownie shake for you, m'lady."

You signed, as if you weren't blushing seven shades of red at the moment, all hidden by Natasha's foundation. "I suppose."

After Nat talked Steve down from whatever Law Abiding Citizen crap he was gonna pull, Bucky borrowed one of your dad's suits while you touched up your makeup, and off into his jeep you went. 

Bucky lingered back as he watched you walk to the old car excitedly, Natasha stopping right beside him as your friends walked to their cars, watching you get twirled by Kate. 

Bucky noticed Natasha staring at him and raised a brow in question. "What?"

She gave a noncommittal noise. "Nothing."

"Romanoff." Bucky scoffed.

She put her hands up in surrender. "I didn't say anything."

"You've got the face."

Now it was her turn to raise a brow, trying to bite back a grin. "What face?"

Bucky rolled his eyes. "The face where you've figured something out before everyone else."

Nat shrugged her shoulders. "I always figure something out before everyone, Bucky." Tapping him on the shoulder and turning arounfd to go inside. 

The prom commitee worked very hard to make sure the night looked exactly like every movie promised it would.

String lights draped from the ceiling of the gymnasium like stars somebody had caught and hung overhead. Balloons clustered in the corners. A photo booth occupied one wall. The basketball hoops had been disguised beneath enough tulle and fairy lights to fool almost everyone.

Turns out, getting ditched by John Walker was the best thing that ever happened to your prom night. You didn't even notice when Olivia was cryingin the bathroom because she caught him making out with someone else. 

No. 

You were too busy slow dancing with Bucky Barnes.

When the first chorus of the song came on, he held out his hand. "May I have this dance?"

You rolled your eyes. "You're such a dork."

"Tick tock, Rogers." He wiggled his fingers impatiently.

You took his hand as if it didn't make your fingers go numb with excitement, and Bucky quickly nestled a hand on your low back, your forehead to the side of his jaw. 

"You know," Bucky said after a minute, "this is definitely better than my prom when I was your age."

"Okay, grandpa." You laughed softly. "What happened at your senior prom?"

"My date spent forty-five minutes crying in the bathroom because her friend wore the same shoes she did."

You clicked your tongue. "That's tragic."

"It was devastating." Bucky agreed, nodding his head, laughing softly. 

You nudged his jaw. "I'll try to hold it together."

"I appreciate that."

A moment passed, then another, and you spoke up. "Thank you for doing this for me."

"Anytime." He let out a soft breath, leaning back the slightest bit so he could look at you. "You do look beautiful, I mean it."

Thank fuck for Natasha's foundation, powder, and concealer for hiding your flush. "Thank you, Bucky." Oh how you wished you hadn't looked into his pretty eyes, reflecting the lights off of the mirrorball back onto the dancefloor. 

The ten seconds seemed to stretch an entire decade. Somehow Bucky's face getting closer and closer to yours, eyes switching from your lips back to your eyes and to your lips again. 

Oh my God, holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, he's gonna—

"Hey." The word cut through the moment like broken glass. Fucking John Walker. King of never in the history of the world reading anything. Specialy the fucking room. "Can we talk?"

Bucky's hand tightened around your waist, "What do you want, John? Olivia is probably looking for you."

"C'mon, baby, you're not gonna throw our relationship away over one bad call, are you?" He was seriously trying to play this off. "I made a mistake." His hand reached for you but you stepped away. 

"I'm not your baby."

He scoffed. "Aw, c'mon." And tried again. 

This time, Bucky got between you two. "She's done, Walker. Walk away."

Now John got… Defensive. "This isn't any of your business."

Bucky clicked his tongue. "She kind of is." The words slipped out before he could stop them.

The air stood still for a minute before the football bros came to get John, leaving you and Bucky with the weight of unsaid words and unspoken looks. 

Juniper's was closed by the time you finally left prom.

Not closed enough to stop Bucky from leaning halfway out of the driver's side window and convincing one of the employees locking up to sell him two milkshakes and an order of fries out of pure pity.

It wasn't until you were stargazing in his jeep with soft music from his Spotify mixing with the crickets hiding in the grass that your heart settled again. 

You were in the passenger seat, your burger already eaten, just finishing your delicious fries and your milkshake with Bucky in the same predicament in the driver's seat. 

Now the two of you sat on the hood of his Jeep in the empty parking lot overlooking the river, the New York spring air cool enough that your bare shoulders prickled every time the wind picked up.

Without a word, Bucky shrugged off his suit jacket and draped it over your shoulders. You blushed. "Thanks."

He shrugged. "'M not using it."

"You literally had it on 30 seconds ago." You rolled your eyes. Bucky just muttered details between a mouthful of fries. 

"You know," you said eventually, "this wasn't exactly how I pictured prom going."

Bucky laughed quietly. "No?"

"I don't know. There was significantly less public humiliation in the original draft." You laughed softly. "But I like this version better."

Bucky nodded. "I had fun."

You looked over. "Yeah?" Hopeful little edge in your voice giving you away to anyone that knew you remotely well. 

"Yeah." His expression softened. "Got to dance with a pretty girl."

Heat climbed into your cheeks immediately. "You flirt with everybody." You rolled your eyes. 

Bucky made an offended expression, clutching his chest. "I absolutely do not."

"You absolutely do." You lolled you head to the side, raising a brow to make your point. He laughed.

God, you loved his laugh. Always had. The thought came and went so quickly you almost didn't notice it.

Your eyes drifted back toward the sky. "You know what this reminds me of?"

"Hm?" He lifted his eyes from the milkshake cup he was trying to get every last bit out of. 

"The meteor shower."

Bucky smiled immediately. "Oh man."

You grinned. "You remember?"

"Remember?" Bucky chuckled. "I had baseball tryouts the next day and I was up all night to make sure you didn't miss it."

It stopped you dead in your tracks. He did what? "No, you didn't. Your mom came and woke us up."

Bucky nodded. "Yeah, because I woke her up. I was outside waiting for it while you and Steve snoozed it off. Played like shit the next morning." He continued. "You had the date circled on the calendar."

Your brow furrowed. "I did?"

He nodded. "You drew stars around it."

"Oh my God."

Bucky chuckled, his own head lolling to the side on the head rest to look at you. "You made Steve and I promise we wouldn't stay up late the night before because we had to be rested."

You buried your face in your hands. "That sounds insufferable."

"It was kinda cute." He smiled at you like he always did, and your heart promptly forgot how to function. Bucky, meanwhile, was blissfully unaware of the devastation he'd just caused.

Trying so desperately to change the subject to something that wouldn't make you tear up or your heart jump, you fiddled with your milkshake, taking a sip and making a face. "You know, I think this thing is eighty percent whipped cream."

Bucky grinned. "I can see that, it's all over your face." His left thumb came up to wipe down the leftover shake on the corner of your mouth, and it lingered just a second too long. 

For a second, or three years, the world felt like it stilled. A moment frozen in a snow globe to be forever replayed. 

Neither of you moved, not entirely sure how to. Suddenly Bucky was very close, close enough to see the tiny scar in his eyebrow from falling off his bike when he was fourteen, to count the freckles dusting across his nose, enough that you could feel your heartbeat somewhere in your throat.

His eyes flicked down to your mouth, then back up, and your heart and lungs stumbled over themselves. 

His hand lowered slowly, resting on your thigh. The night around you seemed quieter somehow. Smaller, as if the entire world had narrowed down to the space between you.

"Buck..." His name came out softer than you intended.

His expression shifted into something you'd never seen directed at you before. "If you don't want—"

And then your body moved forward on instinct, your brain a mess of fuzzy TV static, and when you came back to your body, your lips were on his.

Not because you were brave or even confident, just mostly because if you let him finish that sentence you thought your heart might actually explode.

For one terrifying second you were convinced you'd made the biggest mistake of your life. Then you felt the warmth of his hand on your cheek, pulling you closer and deepening the kiss as his tongue slipped past your lips.

The kind of kiss that felt less like fireworks and more like coming home after a very long trip.

One of your hands quickly found the nape of his neck, gently scratching your manicured nails against his scalp. He whined against your lips, hand drifting to your waist, and just as much as he pulled you onto his lap, you climbed over the console to him, food wrappers forgotten on the floor. 

You shrugged the suit jacket off, accidentally honking the horn with your butt in the process, and Bucky's hands rubbed up and down your thighs as you rocked your hips against him, feeling the heat of him against the suit pants. 

Your hands dropped from his shoulders down to his arms, then forearms, directing him to paw at the zipper on the back of your dress.

That made him pull away, looking for your eyes. "Are you—"

You could not have nodded more feverishly if you were a damn bobblehead.

Bucky needed no further incentive, he made quick work of the zipper, excitement bubbling in your stomach like freshly popped champagne while he peppered kisses along your jawline and neck. 

The now bothersome fabric of the dress fell to your waist as you worked on the buttons of his shirt, hands moving to his belt and pants after.

He kissed you again, deeper as his hand snuck under the hem of your dress to find the wet spot on your panties. 

You moaned against his mouth, your own hand finding its way inside of his boxers. You broke the kiss, gasping for air.

"Is this— I mean— okay?" It was hushed and murured against his lips as you stroked his length. "I've never— oh!"

You got rudely interrupted by Bucky's index and middle fingers rubbing your sensitive clit over the blue cotton of your panties.

He nodded against you, "Y-yeah, you're— fuck— you're doing so good."

His hips bucked up against you, and the second he slipped out of his pants with your movements his hand left your core and now were both squeezing your ass.

Bucky brought you flush against him, the angry red tip of him begging for friction found it when you started to dry hump him through your underwear, gasping into his mouth every time it nudged your clit.

"Bucky, please…" He couldn't not give you what you wanted, right? "I can't take it." Not when you begged this pretty.

He nodded against you, "I know, baby." And his right hand went under your dress, behind you, and pulled your panties to the side. "I know."

The second his bare cock made contact with your wet slit, he hissed, and a lightbulb went off in his head.

Condom.

He did not trust himself to pull out. Not of you. "Condom." His voice was almost distant to you, like it hadn't crossed your mind to use protection. Not with Bucky, anyway. He'd never hurt you, he was your—

"I—" You were dazed, lost and drunk in the scent and thought and feel of him. "My purse."

His hands let you go and you leaned over the seat to grab your purse from the backseat, your ass right beside Bucky's head. 

Of course he took advantage of that fully pull your panties down, now that you had the leg space. 

You sat back down on top of him with a little huff, trembling hands fumbling with the wrapper.

Bucky hissed as you rolled it down on him, and one of his hands lined himself up with your entrance.

As you sank down on him, you thought maybe you should've thought twice about it. I mean, you knew he was packing, you walked in on him changing one time a couple years ago, there was no way you could—

"Hey," Bucky's voice brought you back from your spiral. "Look at me." Beautiful cerulean eyes stared up at you like the moonlight was made to bounce off them specifically. "Breathe."

His other hand brushed your hair away from your face, just as the hand that was holding his shaft traveled up, thumb finding your clit rubbing soothing circles on it.

"Just take it slow." Your eyes fluttered closed. 

"How do you not get knocked over hauling this thing around?" That brought a chuckle out of him, landing straight onto the skin of your neck. "Oh, God..."

You rocked yourself back and forth, until he was fully inside of you, your lips touching the light hair at the base. 

Bucky kissed all over your face, his thumb never stopping its work. "You're doing so good, baby."

"Feels full." He laughed softly. squeezing your waist and helping guide you into a rhythm. "Feels good."

"Yeah?" Hushed and right by your ear, you felt like drowning and the happiest person alive at the same time. "You're so tight," He continued. "So warm."

You whined against his lips, the vibration going all the way down to his core.

He moved you up and down his cock, listening to the obscene wet squelch each time you sat up and sank back down on him, and each time it dawned on him what was actually happening, he got louder.

Bolder.

He bounced you on his length, hissing each time, you squeezed around him. "Feel good, Buck. Hah!"

It surprisingly didn't take long for Bucky to have you right at the edge, not as long as people online led you to believe losing your virginity would feel like. "Can feel you fluttering." His thumb worked faster.

"Wanna come, Bucky." You whined, kissing him, and pulling away with his bottom lip between your teeth, "Can I?"

He hissed, the question making it hard for him to not blow his load right then and there. "F'course you can, pretty girl, c'mon."

Your release felt like a million meteors hitting you at once. Like Earth came apart and got put together all in the same breath. 

It felt entirely different, better, than when you tried to do it on your own. And your orgasm triggered Bucky's, waves of pleasure milking rope after rope of cum from him into the unworthy latex of the condom. 

For what it felt like forever for the milionth time that night, neither of you spoke. Your breaths and the crickets were the only sounds. 

It was quiet after. 

Just… quiet.

The kind that only existed when two people had known each other so long that silence wasn't something to fill. Starts lit up the sky that was now your ceiling, and Bucky had taken the condom off and tied it, throwing it inside of the trash with the fry bag and the milkshake cups.

For once in his life, James Buchanan Barnes appeared to be completely out of words.

Which was concerning.

You smiled a little, back in the passenger seat with the suit jacket around your chilly shoulders. "What?"

He glanced over. "Hm?"

"You're thinking too loud." That got a laugh out of him. A quiet one, but still a laugh. "Sorry."

A beat of silence, then another. "I don't want this to ruin anything."

Your smile faltered slightly.

Of course, you thought. Of course he doesn't feel that way about you, why would he—

"Oh, Buck." You faked a smile as his eyes met yours. "We'll be okay."

A sheepish, hopeful look hit his face. "Yeah?"

"Of course." You nodded and reached over and laced your pinky with his. "We're us."

His expression softened when he looked down at your joined fingers. "We're us," he echoed.

You smiled. "We survived Steve's bowl cut phase." You listed off. "The great Thanksgiving mashed potato incident."

"Traumatic." He chuckled.

"The time I accidentally backed your Jeep into Mrs. Russo's mailbox." You continued. 

He scolded you playfully. "You still owe me for emotional damages."

You laughed softly. "We'll be best friends forever."

The words came so naturally, so easily. The same words you'd said years before ona hot day beneath a tree. A pinky promise.

Forever.

Beside you, Bucky went quiet. Of course she wouldn't want anything to do with you, you're her brother's best friend. That shit only works in mov— "Right." His eyes dropped for a moment. "Friends."

Your stomach twisted at the word for the first time in your life. Because why did that sound disappointing?

Why did it sound like something had slipped through your fingers without you realizing you were holding it?

a little bit of fran in your life: okay did we like it??????? it was meant to read like a first chapter but also a standalone in case you wanted to just be done with it. yippieeeeeeee [i reserve all the rights to this fic EXCEPT THE CHARACTERS bc this fic is my baby do nawt make it into a movie without asking me to direct it]

⤷ masterlist

💌 permanent freaks taglist: @chateaubarnes @houseofhyde @heldbybarnes @iamthatonefangirl @superbassbuck @its-in-the-woods @wildflowersandvibranium @unificsation @flockoff-featherface @54nboo @earthsmightiestbenders @winterdecember18 @juniebjonesin @barnesonly @bckyslover @buckyfmd @starfire-irl @tw1sters @pinksplace @artficlly @daddysbitchybaby @globetrotter28 @epiphanyrogers @famoushoshi @avgdestitute @blobfishlol @buckysdecaflove @buckybsdoll @allthingswickedpodcast

fic taglist: @starspangledspanks @mwahforbucky @allofffmypeaches @ryk-mt @bees-library3 @chocolatemilkshakex @squishyfruitloop

[godmadeaterribleerror]

give me fever

✦Bucky Masterlist - Main Masterlist - Read on aO3!✦

✦summary: you and Bucky hate each other, so it's not unusual for him to act cold around you. but this is differant. this is... feral. and you're starting to wonder what's wrong✦

✦warnings/tags: bucky barnes x female!reader, enemies to lovers, ragebating Bucky Barnes, emotional angst, everyone's bad at feelings, fluff, sex pollen, sex pollen level smut, a little plot for the porn (dry humping, manhandling, bucky's feral, emotional sex, dry orgasm, truly foul dirty talk, hyperspermia, pussy eating like crazy, fingering, dumbification, dirty talk, sensitive reader, finger sucking, bucky gets nasty, body worship, overstimulation, sex pollen stamnia, mean!bucky, oral f!recieving, begging, praise kink, monster dick bucky, he fucks like a machine, breeding kink), no use of y/n, no descrption of reader✦

✦wc: 11.1k✦

✦Author's Note: i'm so normal about sex pollen✦

It doesn’t bother you. If you tell yourself enough, you’re really going to believe that it doesn’t bother you.

But he’s everywhere. 

There isn’t a corner of the damn building without Bucky Barnes. You go to the kitchen and he’s there making a sandwich, watching you move around the counter like he thinks you’re going to bite him. In the gym he’s at the weights and the punching bags, and you try to ignore him but he grunts and moans and you think he’s doing it on purpose. the living area he takes over the TV and watches whatever he wants to catch up with the times. No matter how politely you ask him to switch to something else, he always tells you to just wait. Then you try, but he’s spread out on the couch until your knees have to bump, and your face gets all hot, and you have to stomp away before you start acting on all your stupid thoughts.

Because it’s not just Bucky’s eternal presence and stubbornness and smirking that burrows under your skin. It’s that you like it.

That when you’re next to him on the couch, all you can think about is that place where your body’s connect. He’s warm. Tall and warm. Your skin tingles at the contact point, and whenever he shifts it’s like you’re being shot up with a drug.

“You’re squirmy.” He grumbles, glaring at you in the dark. “No one ever teach you to sit still?”

You stick your tongue out. “No one ever teach you to mind your own business?”

“Hard to mind my business when you’re movin’ all the cushions, doll-“

“Then go sit somewhere else, robot man.”

Bucky’s jaw twitches. “I’m not a robot.”

“Uh huh.”

“I’m not-“

“You act like one.” You snap, and Bucky closes his eyes. Like he’s fucking praying.

“I was here first.” He mutters. You don’t balk.

“Congratulations.”

You hold his glare, and Bucky lets out a heavy breath through his nose. He narrows his eyes, tongue flicking over his lips. His full lips. Pretty and chapped, but in the perfect, soft way-

Get a fucking grip.

“There’s a chair over there.” You point across the room, sinking back into the cushions. “Go sit in it, if I’m so squirmy.”

Bucky scowls, and opens his mouth, but whatever jab he’s got for you, you don’t want to hear it. You reach over and unpause the movie—probably another one of Sam’s this is what you gotta catch up on, Barnes suggestions, because there’s no way Bucky picked out the Goonies himself—and fix your glower on the TV screen. You hate this movie. You’re going to watch it all the way through, just to show Bucky that he doesn’t bother you.

You spread your own legs wide, too. If men are allowed to do it, so are you. Bucky grunts as your knee pushes over his thigh, and you smirk at the TV.

It has nothing to do with the thick muscle you can feel under his sweatpants, that you keep your legs like that for the rest of the night. Bucky’s fingers flex a few times, and brush over the inner curve of your knee and the top of your thigh, like he’s thinking about just shoving you away. At one point, you hear him grunt, and look over with mockingly raised brows.

“Everything okay?” You almost simper, and he grunts and nods.

That’s all you get. Bucky fixes his anger on the movie, you win this round, and you get to be close to him without thinking about it.

You’ll think about it later. In the comfort of your own bedroom, you’ll think about it and think about it and think about it all night. You’ll think about it until your wrist hurts. But Bucky doesn’t get to know that.

As far as he needs to be concerned, you never spare him a second thought. It’s all he spares you. And you’re not going to be the pathetic girl who falls for someone who only thinks of her as a buzzing gnat around his head. Who worships the ground of a man who would step on her like a flower into concrete, not because he was seeking to hurt, but just because he didn’t notice you were there at all.

Although Bucky does seem to notice where you are.

The farmer does like to keep track of pests in his crops.

“You skipped the mission briefing.” Bucky grunts in the morning, glaring at you over a cup of coffee.

Something soft in you swells like a prodded bruise. He noticed where you were.

You ignore it in favor of flipping him off.

“I was busy.”

“Too busy for your job?”

“It’s not my job-“

“Your name was on the roster.” Bucky slams the folder down on the table, and your lips twitch.

“Have you been carrying that around all day?”

“That doesn’t matter-“

“Yes, it really does-“

Bucky hisses your name. There’s a fury under his tone, that makes your mouth snap shut. If he notices, he doesn’t say anything.

“You need to be there, Steve was talkin’ about safety shit, and if you don’t know it you could get killed-“

“I know how mission briefing work, I’ve been here longer than you have-“

“Really? ‘Cause you don’t act like it-“

“I don’t act like it?” You snort. “Last I checked I’m ranked higher than you, Sargent.” You raise your chin, letting your lips curl. “Which is why I’m allowed to defer missions, and you’re not.”

Bucky blinks, recoiling slightly. “Defer? What, you-“

“I’m skipping.” You shrug, grabbing an apple from the counter. “And if I’m skipping, I don’t need to be at the briefing. But thanks for checking on me, dad.”

Bucky’s eyes narrow. You expect him to snap something about experience and you not being responsible enough or needing to care more.

But instead his fists curl and uncurl at his side. His nostrils flare. He grabs the counter, his scowl burning right through you. You take a large bite of your apple, and his gaze darts down. Juice drips down your chin, and you wipe it off with light fingers. That only seems to make him angrier.

“Why’re you skipping.”

You shrug. You should say none of your business. But part of you is childish. A very big, loud part that wants him to react to something you know he isn’t actually going to care about.

“I have a date.”

“A what.” It’s not a full reaction. He’s mostly staring at you like he didn’t understand the word. Maybe they called it something different in the 40s.

“A date?” You roll your eyes, a little meaner than you mean to be. He always bring that out in you, though.

Bucky always brings everything out in you. It’s incredibly annoying.

“You know.” You push mockingly. “Where you go out with someone. And flirt like people, instead of robots.”

“Robots flirt.” Bucky grunts, and you snort.

“Yeah, but they don’t have sex-“

The counter cracks. It’s loud, echoing through the kitchen. You start and twitch, and Bucky blinks at his metal hand, like he’s just as surprised as you are. He looks back to you, shakes his head, and takes a large step back.

“What’s-“

“Steve’s callin’ me.” He mutters, and you blink.

“No, he’s not-“

“Have fun.” Bucky ignores you. His words sound pushed through his teeth. “On your human date.”

Then he’s gone.

And you’re left in the kitchen with your apple and a cracked counter, staring at where he’d vanished through the door. You don’t care about the date.

You just need to know what the fuck that was.

There’s a part of you that feels bad, for the man Natasha set you up with. She’d picked him out specifically because he had a vague resemblance to Bucky—because you’ve never told her your secret, but you didn’t need to, she’s Natasha—but it wasn’t enough.

He didn’t have the underlying accent, or the gleam in his eyes. You made a sharper edged joke, and he just laughed. He didn’t spar. He didn’t push your buttons in a way that made you light up. He just smiled at you all night—wrong smile, too—and then didn’t pay. Bucky would’ve paid.

You have no evidence of that. It’s just a feeling, that comes from how he still opens doors for you, even when you’re at each other’s throats. All polite and handsome and insufferable. You hate him.

And there’s not a single point during the night, where you’re not thinking about him.

“We should do this again.” The Date—you’ve forgotten his name, and it’s certainly not a good time to ask—says at the end of the night.

You’re shivering. Bucky would’ve offered you his jacket. He did once, on a mission in the Andes. You got all cold and he rolled his eyes and muttered that he told you to bring another layer, but still gave you his jacket all the same. This man is just grinning at you after not calling you a cab and saying he wanted to stand outside in the misty, chilly night. He said he wanted fresh air, and now your freezing, and he thinks he’s getting a second date.

At the very least, you feel a little less guilty about only thinking of Bucky and the mission the whole time. He deserved it.

“Sure.” You smile, because even with superstrength, it’s easier to tell a man yes and then vanish than it is to deny them to their face. “Have a good night.”

He tries to hug you. Your phone buzzes, and you duck away to check it.

The mission is over.

Two days early.

Your jaw tightens.

Most people would think that a job being done early is a good thing. That it means the team was just so focused and coordinated that they sped through every single step, and ended in a total victory. But you’ve been on this job too long. Early mission conclusions only ever happen for one reason.

Something went wrong, and they have to come back.

You rush back to the compound with barely a goodnight to the Date. It’s mostly because you forget, in the blur of worry. You’d skimmed the mission files before they left, just to make sure it wasn’t anything too dangerous. Bucky had been mad about you not going with them. Maybe he’d thought they’d need the hands, but it had just looked like a retrieval mission. Old Hydra facility with some data Tony wanted. Nothing too hard.

But they’re back early.

And if someone’s hurt, you could’ve stopped it. You could’ve been there, instead of on that stupid fucking date. Which also means that Bucky was right, and that’s incredibly annoying. He’s going to weild it over your head, and the mocking is going to turn you on more, and you’ll have earned it which isn’t going to help anything at all. 

You get back to the compound, and it’s not in lockdown. There aren’t med staff flooding the grounds or emergency sirens blaring. You go right to the hanger, and find that it’s already been cleared out. The jet isn’t being quarantined.

Maybe they really did just… Finish early.

You’re heading back to your room when you slam right into them.

Steve and Bucky, standing in the middle of the hall, arguing in hushed voices.

“You need to go, Buck-“

“I’m fine-“

“No, you’re not. You can lie to the docs, don’t lie to me-“

“I ain’t lyin’, I’m fine-“

Your too lost in your own head, barely even hearing what they’re saying. You barrel straight into Bucky’s back.

He goes rigid. You stumble a little, and he grabs your upper arm.

His hand is hot.

Not sexy hot—although it’s also that—but literally, physically hot. Almost searing, against your shivering skin. You look up at him, and swallow.

He’s flushed. There’s sweat clinging to his brow, and an exhausted shadow over his features. His eyes are so blown out they’re almost fully black. You blink at him, and his mouth falls open in a ragged pant.

“Hi.” You whisper.

His throat bobs. “You’re back.”

“I- I got the alert.” You glance over to Steve, who’s gone oddly pale. “Did the mission go okay? It was fine that I wasn’t there, right-“

“Yep!” Steve almost shouts, and you blink. “I mean- We were all good. Wish you were there, we all missed you, but- We were fine. Right, Buck?” Steve grabs Bucky’s shoulder. “We were all good.”

Bucky doesn’t look away from you for a single second. He grunts, and his grip tightens on your arm.

“Let go.” Steve mutters, and Bucky shoots him a glare.

He releases you like you burned him, then wipes his hand on his pants. You scowl. He was the one touching you.

“I was gonna.” He grumbles, and Steve sighs.

“I know, but-“ You get a weary look. Like Steve doesn’t want you to hear their conversation. “I think- You know what I think-“

“Steve-“ Bucky cuts himself off with a groan, running a hand over his face.

He still hasn’t looked away from you. Or moved that far out of your proximity.

“I’m fine.” He says, low and under his breath. You’re rooted to the ground under his gaze, unsure what you could even think of to say. “It’s- I’m fine.”

Steve’s lips press in a thin line. Bucky takes a large, jerking step back. Like he’s dragging himself away.

“How was your date?” He grunts.

“Bucky-“

“I’m just askin’ a question.” He snaps, still not sparing Steve a look.

The attention is getting to be too much. Bucky is looking at you like he wants to eat you alive, and it’s making your body almost buzz in anticipation. You want to jump on him and feel those hot hands all over your body. His nostrils flare like he can smell your arousal. If he can, you might jump off a bridge.

You hope he’d catch you, then fuck you until your can’t even walk.

Get a fucking grip.

“Bad.” You cross your arms over your chest, trying to keep your heart from bursting out of your chest. “He sucked.”

And that’s the kind of thing Bucky would usually mock you for. Skipping a mission just for a bad date.

But a low, rumbling growl falls from his chest. His tongue darts over his lips. He takes a half-step forward, and you lean in to the gravity of his stare.

“We have debriefing!” Steve shouts, grabbing the collar of Bucky’s suit. “Bye!”

Before you can even register it, Steve’s dragging Bucky down the hall. You swear you hear another feral noise, and a crash after they turn the corner.

Something had to have happened on the mission. You just have no fucking clue what.

Bucky’s only been acting stranger. You’d pretend it didn’t bother you, if you could get away from it for a single fucking second.

You walk through the compound, and he’s somehow more everywhere than he was before. Around every corner, in the library, on the grounds, even in the control room while you’re going through the mission files.

“What’re you doin’.” He grunts, and you sigh.

You’re not surprised he’s there. It’s the fifth time today that he’s snuck up on you.

“I’m going through the reports on the mission.” You drawl. “Don’t you have better things to do than follow me around?”

Bucky grunts. It seems to be a no. You roll your eyes and go back to poking through the system. It’s hard to pretend that you can’t feel his presence behind you. There’s heat almost rolling from his body, and thick, spicy and musky scent that’s filling the room. It’s making you a little dizzy. It’s all you can do, not to look back at him.

That would be dangerous. He probably still looks feverish and animalistic. You might moan.

You find the files for the mission, and try to open them. Big, read access denied, contact your handler for permission to these files flashes over your screen. Your mouth falls open, and you whip back to glare at Bucky before you can think about it.

Mistake. Just like you’d thought, big mistake.

He looks even worse and better than you thought. He’s wearing just a t-shirt and sweats, and they’re clinging to his sweaty body. His eyes are hooded and his lips are parted. His attention is so wholly fixed on you that it almost makes you fall out of your chair. You almost forget you’re annoyed with him. Every single nerve in your body is alight, and your fingers are itching to comb through his sweaty hair.

You somehow—just barely—fight it.

“Why can’t I access these files.”

Bucky leans over you, his nostrils flaring. If you reach up, you could trace the stubbled line of his jaw. It’s hard to maintain your glare.

“Barnes-“

“You weren’t on the mission.” He mutters. “Not your files to see.”

You scowl. “I can access the files of every other mission I was on-“

“Steve should change that.”

God, you wish he wasn’t so pretty. It would be easier to think about punching him.

“I know something happened out there.” You hiss, sitting up a little taller. “You can’t hide it from me. I’ll figure it out.”

Bucky chuckles. It’s a low, raspy sound that runs through your body, making you shiver.

“Sure, doll. Have fun with that.”

You shoot to your feet, and Bucky lurches back. Another one of those deep, rumbling growls rolls from his chest, and for a second you think he’s going to pounce on you.

And then you blink, and he’s gone. Leaving you with only that hazy smell, and desire rolling through your veins.

You wish that was the extent of it, but it’s barely the start. And it only gets worse.

Bucky doesn’t do his movie nights anymore, which means you get the TV all to yourself. You watch what you want, and try not to look at the spot next to you. Where your body feels like he’s supposed to be. You stretch out your legs, but they ache strangely without his touch. You get more restless without him. Around midnight, you shuffle to the kitchen, hoping one of those soothingherb thingys that Wanda says help with her nightmares will be there.

Instead, you find Bucky. 

He’s drinking a glass of ice, with a little bit of water. He freezes when he sees you, and moves further behind the counter.

You sigh. You’re too tired to fight him.

“Can’t sleep?” You mumble.

He just nods.

You sigh, and walk over the cupboard.

“You want hot chocolate?”

A grunt. Better than silence. You make two mugs, one for you, one for Bucky.

And maybe it’s just that you’re really starting to worry, but you don’t bother pretending to hate him. Your fingers brush when you pass him his mug, and his body seizes like you shocked him, but you just offer a tiny smile.

His mouth falls open. He stares at you like he’s spent years only looking at the muddier reflection of stars in the water, and has finally thought just to tilt his head up. You let out a small, shaking breath. He’s still burning up. You can feel it from your place a foot away. But you don’t dare to push it.

Not when he’s looking at you like this. The way you’d always, secretly and shamefully, dreamed he would.

“I’m watching Star Wars.” You mumble. “You wanna…”

You trail off, and Bucky’s throat bobs.

He nods again. A new tendril of worry blooms, overlapping with the growing tangle of them in your gut. He might not be able to speak.

But he follows you to the living area, and takes his place on the couch. His knee pushes against yours. He’s breathing awfully shallow, but you’re a selfish coward that wants him close, so you don’t mention it.

You barely pay attention to the movie. All you can focus on is Bucky at your side. How he doesn’t even seem to be sparing the TV a glance. He’s not really touching you, save for that place where your thighs are always pushed together, but every time you shift he grabs your knee. You blink at him, and his throat just bobs. He still hasn’t said a word. You’re afraid that when he does, it will break this fragile illusion.

That he wants to be here.

Near you.

He passes out near the end of the movie. His head falls against your shoulder and his body goes limp, almost a blanket over yours. You don’t move, just staring at a lit up, black screen. He looks more peaceful than you’ve ever seen. His fever isn’t breaking, but it does seem to be easing. You run your fingers through his hair, and he makes a low sound like a purr.

Then he takes a deep inhale, right against the crook of your neck, and a different noise leaves him.

It’s almost a moan.

You swallow. Suddenly you need to move. You don’t know what’s going on with him, but this can’t be what he actually wants. To be asleep almost in your arms, purring and moaning. That’s not a part of him you get to have.

But when you try to move, his grip around you tightens.

You feel almost sick.

It takes almost an hour, to roll off the couch without him pulling you back. When you’re free, you still cover him in a blanket and press a hand to his brow. Just to check. You can’t really help it.

His fever is building again.

You wish he would just tell you what was wrong. Even if he thinks you hate him, he can’t think you wouldn’t care enough to help.

When you start to walk away, he moans again. You could swear it sounded a little like your name.

You force yourself to go to bed. You’re not sure if you want him to remember in the morning.

If anything, you just pray he gets better. It’s hard to hide your undying care for him, when he’s in pain. Impossible to ignore how much it bothers you, that he’s hurting. ‘

But it is Bucky.

And he’s never going to make anything that easy.

You walk out of your room in the morning, and he’s right there. Lingering in the hallway, staring at you with those blown-out eyes, working his jaw like he’s trying to bite his own tongue off.

“Hi.” You say lamely.

He stumbles back like you punched him. “You- You’re-“

“Bucky, are you-“

“’M fine.” He says it mostly to himself again. There’s sweat gathering on his brow and bags under his eyes.

You’re not going to tell him, but you’re getting worried. This is the third morning in a row you’ve found him here. The first night you asked if he’d slept there, and he’d scowled and stomped away.

But from the look of him, you don’t think he’s been sleeping at all.

“Do you need something?” You ask. You sound soft, but you can’t help it. The worse he looks, the more your heart tightens. “I can call Steve-“

“Don’t get Steve.” He steps back. The same jerked movement from the first night. It’s the only way he’s been moving around you, lately. “I’m fine.”

You give him a doubtful look. His tongue flicks over his lips. You take a step forward, and he takes another step back. Like you’ve got a polarity field around you. Like he can’t even stand to breathe the same air.

And yet he’s here. Outside your door, and breathing through his mouth like an animal.

“Bucky-“

“Don’t.” He shakes his head, stumbling another step back. “Just- Don’t.”

You swallow, and don’t give chase when he walks away. Jogs away. He yanks himself away, then runs like he thinks you’re going to catch him and drag him back. You won’t.

But you do go right to Steve.

“What happened on the mission.”

Steve flinches, gagging on his sandwich. You’re glaring down at him with your hands on your hips, and you think he knows his little charming smile isn’t going to work on you here. That doesn’t seem to stop him from trying anyway.

“Hey, um- Do you want a cookie-“

“Steven.” You hiss, and he swallows. “What happened.”

Steve winces, avoiding your gaze. “I’m not supposed to tell you.”’

“What do you mean you’re not supposed to tell me-“

“I mean I- I can.” He mutters. “But then Bucky will kill me. And I don’t want Bucky to kill me.”

You scowl. “Tough shit, because guess who’s going to kill you if you don’t tell me?”

Steve sighs. “Is it you?”

“Yep.”

He stares at his sandwich, like it’s somehow going to get him out of this situation. You wait for him to realize it won’t. You have plenty of time.

“I’m really not supposed to tell you-“

“I really don’t care.”

“Well- You will.” Steve looks up with a sad little puppy eyes.

You don’t have the same reservations about punching him in the face, that you have with Bucky. He’s basically asking for it right now.

“Steven, I swear to fucking God-“

“I can’t tell you.” He cuts you off with a shake of his head, and you scoff.

“No, you just won’t tell me-“

“That’s not- I can’t, okay? Please stop asking me to-“

“Why, because Bucky doesn’t want you to?” You leer. “Because last I checked, you’re the Captain. And if Bucky is your friend, you should be telling his teammates he’s in danger so they can help-“

“That’s the problem!” Steve shouts, and you blink. “You- Look, you’re going to want to help, and I can’t let you.”

“You can’t let me help?” You echo, and Steve winces.

“I know how it sounds-“

“Do you? Because what I’m fucking hearing that your best friend is in danger, and you won’t let me fucking help-“

“Why do you even want to help?” Steve fixes you with a pointed look. “All you ever do is complain about Bucky and how he’s annoying you. I would’ve thought you didn’t care.”

You narrow your eyes, and Steve raises his brows. You know what he’s doing. Smug fucking asshole. 

“That won’t work on me.” You grunt, and he shrugs.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Steve-“

“But,” he says causally. “If I did, I’d say that’s why I can’t tell you. And you know that.”

You hate it when he speaks in riddles. Like you’re just supposed to read between the lines when your brain is fogged with worry about Bucky.

“I- I don’t-“ You let out a slow breath, looking down to your shoes. Heat is flooding your cheeks. It’s annoying. “It’s not- I’m just- Please.”

Your voice cracks suddenly. You’ve been losing more sleep over this than you’re ever going to tell anyone. You almost feel ill with it—like the worry is an infection, knotting up your stomach and making your heart pick up—but that might just literal exhaustion. Something happened. No one will tell you what. It’s making you feel useless and hopeless and torn up to tiny, useless shreds.

“Bucky.” You say slowly. “Is- He’s not okay. I know he’s not okay.” You force yourself to meet Steve’s gaze. “Just- Lie to me and say he’s fine, and fix it, or tell me and let me help. But I- I can’t just-“

You don’t even know how to finish the sentence. There’s a burning feeling behind your eyes and a lump in your throat. You’re so worried. Worried this is something that’s going to kill him, and you’re going to lose him forever.

And there’s pity, in Steve’s gaze. It’s enough to make him break, his voice softening completely.

“Alright.” He murmurs. “But- You can’t tell him I told you.”

You nod quickly. “I’ll say I just got into the files, or- Something- Please.”

Steve sighs. “Okay. Okay.” He shakes his head. “It was on the mission. Bucky was distracted the whole time, and when we got jumped he wasn’t being controlled with his punches. He swag to hard on an Hydra agent. Knocked them back into some vials, and- Well they burst. All over both of them. We put the agent in containment, but he was displaying worse symptoms. Bucky- I think it’s the serum, or just… Bucky. But he’s been controlling it better.” Steve grimaces. “But that doesn’t mean he’s not still knocked up with stuff.”

You nod slowly. That’s not that bad.

But Steve didn’t want you to know for a reason.

“What are the symptoms?”

Steve won’t meet your gaze. “Fever. Nausea. Hormone flares. Um- Increased… libido.”

Your eyes widen, your mouth falling open. “What.”

“Hydra makes some weird stuff. Tony thinks this was, um- A breeding drug. We don’t know why they were developing it, but- There’s no other name.” Steve’s nose wrinkles. “The agent- His cell is disgusting.”

“But- Bucky-“

“I told you, he says he’s got it under control.” Steve shrugs, but doesn’t really sound like he’s convinced himself. “The agent has been, ah… begging for anyone. Bucky doesn’t have the same liberty with what will help. He says it’s going to pass, and he’ll be fine.”

“And will it?” You breathe. “Pass?”

Steve shrugs. “It did for the agent.”

“Before or after the mating?”

Steve’s silence is an answer. You swear under your breath.

“Why wouldn’t you tell me this, Steve? We- We need to get him to someone, this could fucking kill him-“

“I know that!” Steve snaps. “I know that just as well as you do! As he does! But- Jesus.” He shakes his head. “He won’t take anyone. He’ll only- Well- You know.”

“I know? I don’t fucking know, none of you have been telling me shit-“

Steve says your name plainly. You blink.

“What-“

“Nothing. Just- Why do you think he’s been lingering around you?”

You stare at him. He raises his brows, and you swallow.

“Steve-“

“I didn’t say anything-“

“Yes, you did-“

“Nope.”

You press your lips in a tight line. He can’t mean what you think he means. That would be to easy. Too good. “Bucky- He doesn’t- That’s not how he feels about me.”

Please don’t say it is. It’s not fair if you’re lying.

“Funny.” Steve shrugs. “He says the same thing about you.”

This is a bad idea.

Bucky hasn’t left his room in a day. You’d spent all of last night replaying your conversation with Steve, trying to pick it apart for a single reason he didn’t mean what you thought he did. What you hoped he did. What you’d always hoped for, only in the dead of night where no one would ever find out.

But it didn’t matter how you turned or picked at Steve’s words. There was only one conclusion. The beautiful, horrible one that you can’t even fully wrap your head around. It would mean you spent years hating him for no reason. Year thinking about kissing his stupid face, when you could’ve been actually kissing him. If Steve’s right, you’re going to kill Bucky.

After you fix this for him.

If Steve means what you think, you can fix this for him. He just has to let you.

Which is why this is a horrible idea. If Bucky turns you down, you’re going to have to quit your job and change your name and  move to Indonesia.

But if he doesn’t turn you down…

You steel yourself and knock on Bucky’s door. It’s worth the risk, just for him. Always just for him.

“Fuck off, Stevie-“

“I’m not Steve!” You call, and for a second there’s no response. 

Then there’s a muffled banging, and you almost fall forward when Bucky yanks the door open.

He looks even worse than before. And better. And hotter, and oh God, your knees are already weak.

His shirt is gone, and his broad, muscled chest is shining with sweat. His hair flops over his eyes, mussed up and soft looking. He’s breathing through his nose, even as his swollen mouth hangs open. His metal fist is curled against the door, making the wood crack under his fingers. Standing through his sweatpants is the long, proud outline of his cock.

You swallow, your mouth watering. Bucky says your name, and you can’t tell if it’s supposed to be a plea or a prayer.

“You shouldn’t be here-“

“Steve said you need me.”

You stare at each other. Bucky’s tongue flicks out, and you chew on your lower lip. This is it. If he turns you down, you’ll walk away and live. A new life, across the world. You’ve never been to Indonesia, but you hear they have good food and community, and you’re sure you’ll be able to fit right in over time, and if you don’t at least Bucky will never find you to make you relive this humiliation, because it’s been almost two full minutes and he hasn’t said anything, so you should probably pull out your phone and start researching Indonesian names-

“Steve shouldn’t have told you anything.” Bucky growls, and you swallow.

“I- I made him.”

He sighs. You could swear his dick twitches. “Of course you did.”

“I was worried about you-“

“You don’t have to be, doll. I’m-“

“If you say I’m fine, I’m going to fucking punch you.”

Bucky scowls. You scowl harder. You have a feeling neither of you are going to back down.

“You’re sick.” You say plainly, and Bucky lets out a sharp exhale through his nose.

“Maybe. But it’s not the kinda sick you can help with-“

“Steve says it’s the kind of sick only I can help with.”

He’s silent again. You risk a tiny step forward, and he takes one back, muttering your name. It’s a warning. A plea.

“Don’t do this.” He mutters, fists balled at his side. “Not outta pity, not for me-“

“It’s not pity.” You stop in his doorway, making your voice soft. “I want to help, Bucky. Let me help.”

He shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “No, you- You just- You don’t feel like that for me-“

“You don’t feel like that for me.” You breathe, and Bucky’s body locks up.

“Who says?”

“You’re an ass to me-“

“You’re an ass to me.”

“I don’t mean to be.” You whisper. “I- I don’t- I’m not good at… You know.”

Bucky’s throat bobs. He still doesn’t move.

“Me neither.”

You nod. “But…”

“Yeah.” He swallows. “Yeah. I do.”

You take a deep breath. His whole room is filled with that musky, spicy smell. The heat is almost rolling off his body.

“Please ask me to help.” You don’t bother to hide the desperation in your voice. He needs to know that you mean it. “I- I want to, Bucky, I want you so bad-“

Bucky muffles your pleas, crashing forward and pressing his mouth over yours.

It’s not the soft, loving kiss of your fantasies. It’s rough and desperate, the kiss of a man finally letting his leash snap. He grabs your neck and scrunches his fingers in your hair, dragging a moan from the back of your throat. It turns into a hungry cry, when he pushes his tongue between your lips. Your knees wobble from the bruising force of it. You grab his shirt for balance, scrunching the fabric between your fingers.

Bucky grunts, pressing further over you. One arm drops to wrap around your waist, and the other slide up to cradle the back of your head. The touch his shockingly gentle, for the demanding way he’s almost eating your kisses. You’re standing nowhere near a wall, but he’s caged you all the same. There’s nothing to do but feel the way his cool, metal fingers dig into your hips, and the unrelenting heat of his mouth.

You kiss until your breathing is ragged. He tastes like mint and salt, and it’s a little addictive. Even after you’re light-headed and whimpering, Bucky sucks on your lower lip and takes just a little more. You whimper, gasping for air that he doesn’t seem to need. He tugs on your hair, forcing you to tip your neck back, and he plants open, hungry kisses over every place he can reach.

“You gotta be sure.” He murmurs against your skin. “Tell me you’re sure, doll, ‘cause- I don’t think I can go easy.”

And oh God, isn’t that lovey thought. Bucky not going easy. Combined with his tongue flicking over a pulse point, you almost fall over from the pure thought of it.

But he’s asking real permission. His hold on your hip is getting tighter, and his shoulders are squared and tense. He’s keeping himself from taking what he really wants, until you give him total permission.

You didn’t know you could want him more.

“I- Oh-“ Your eyes flutter, as he nips on sensitive skin under your jaw before kissing away the hurt. “I’m sure, Bucky, I- I don’t want you to go easy.”

For some reason, that only makes him more tense. He takes an uneven breath, pressing his brow against your head and almost pulling you off your feet as he hugs you tighter. You wait, slowly wrapping your arms around him and dragging your nails soothingly over the nape of his neck.

Bucky draws himself back, his expression unreadable as he scans over your face. You offer him a tiny, nervous smile, and he lets out a shaky laugh.

“You- You got no idea, do you?”

Your face falls to a pout. “I have a lot of ideas-“

“No, you don’t.” He drops his brow over yours. “You got no fuckin’ clue, what you do to me.”

And your brain stalls. It gets all gooey and soft, as you just blink up at him. You’re already on unsteady legs. You never thought he’d catch you if you fell, but with the way Bucky’s looking at you right now, you think he’d dive off a cliff to be at your side.

“Bucky…” You breathe, and he drops his forehead against yours. Your noses bump. His gaze darts between your lips and eyes, and you think you might be burning alive.

“You smell so good.” He mutters, before leaning down to press a soft, sweet kiss to your lips. “Taste better than I imagined.”

“You-“ You almost whimper, when he pulls away. “You imagined?”

He chuckles, kissing just your upper lip. You’re already putty under his hands, and you might turn to just a steam of desire if he doesn’t stop kissing you so softly.

“Didn’t you?”

You nod, and Bucky’s lips twitch.

“Bet I imagined more.”

And you doubt that, but Bucky’s kissing you again before you can tell him that you imagined so much it scared you sometimes. The way you were sure that you’d never be able to recover, from an addiction to a drug you’d never even taken.

You’re certainly never going to recover now. Kissing Bucky is even better than you’d let yourself dream about. His lips are just as soft as you thought. Even with the way he’s holding himself back, his touch is possessive. He traces your sides like he’s trying to memorize them, and kisses you the same way.

“Got no idea what I’m gonna do to, either.” He rasps against your lips. “If you let me, doll… You shouldn’t- But-“ He groans, pushing his nose into your cheek, kissing over the slope of your jaw. “Fuck, I want you to.”

You want him to. You want to feel those sloppy, devout kisses everywhere, to get that infernal tongue between your legs. His cock is almost bursting through his sweats, protruding into your thigh. He’d be heavy on your tongue, and split you better than the toys that you’ve used in his place before. The ache in your core throbs from just the idea, and you can feel your heart trying to burst all out of your throat with confession of desire and adoration. But you’re not sure if he’s going to believe them.

“Tell me.” You whisper. “Tell me what you’ve dreamed about doing to me.”

Bucky pulls back, and you worry you’ve stepped on an invisible landmine. That you’re going to be shoved out of the room, the door slammed in your face instead of behind you, locking you out of the room you’ve longer to be in since you met him. Bucky stares at you. You open your mouth to apologize and take it back, but he loves to move faster than your lustdrunk mind can understand.

You squeal as he walks you backward, but not out of the room. He kicks his door shut as you pass it. It slams, right as Bucky pins you between against the wall. He kisses you before you can protest or ask questions, and keeps going until you’re squirming against him and unsure if you should pull him closer or push him away. His kisses wander your cheeks, over your nose and hairline and back down to your ear.

“I wanted you just like this.” He chokes out, and your swallow. He sounds wrecked, and you’re not even kissing anymore. “Wanted you everywhere. Would see you in a meetin’ and think about bending you over the table. You’d get under me on the training mats and I’d wanna get in a headlock between your legs. Bet you taste so good.”

He shudders, pressing his face into the crook of your neck. His dick has shifted to push right near your core, and it’s almost too much pressure, while not being nearly enough.

“Would sit next to you on the plane and think about gettin’ on my knees.” He rasps, beard ticking against your skin. “Worshipping your pussy like it deserves. Makin’ you- Fuck- Call my name-“

Bucky moans, his hips jerking forward. A tiny moan escapes your lips, and Bucky almost whines and does it again. You don’t think he can help it.

“Wanted to stuff your pretty little lips with my cock.” He thrusts again, his whole weight almost collapses over your body. “You’d get all mouthy and I- I jerk off to the idea of puttin’ you over my knee or gettin’ you lying in my bed. I’d- I’d fuck you so nice, doll, I swear I’d be good, but- Fuuuck-“

He’s rutting between your thighs, and seems to forget the story he’s supposed to be telling you in favor of sucking on your neck. You whimper, pushing your hand between your bodies. Not to stop him—never to stop him—but to wrap your fingers around his cock through his sweats.

Bucky moans, his voice breaking with raw, starved relief. You try to pull him back to kiss him, but he just wraps closer around you. He’s almost shaking. You think he’s trying not to fuck your hand.

You can’t have that.

“It’s okay.” You drag your fingers over the line of his cock, and he whimpers against your neck. “I- I’ve thought about it too.”

Bucky slams forward, and you smile at the air.

“Wanted you to shove me down and fuck me stupid. Wanted to ride you until I passed out. I bought a dildo, baby, just to pretend it was you.”

You use your free hand to pet the back of his head, slowly sliding his sweats down to give yourself better access. Bucky’s thick and heavy in your hand. Your fingers don’t even come close to wrapping fully around, and whenever your nails graze his balls, he bucks forward with a strangled moan.

“Wasn’t as big.” You breathe, stroking his dick in long, tight motion. “You’re so big, Bucky, I don’t think it’s gonna fit.”

He grunts, his teeth grazing your neck. “Gonna- Fuck-“

You squeeze him at the base, and he doubles over. He’s almost fully collapsed against you. You want to feel him come apart.

“Gonna make it fit.” He hisses in your ear, and you hum.

“How?”

“Open you up.” He mutters, words slurred like he’s drunk. “Get you all over me, doll- Wanna watch you cum over and over and- God-“

His dick is twitching, and you giggle. He’s working himself up.

“You think this is funny?” He rasps.

You smile, swiping your thumb over the weeping slit of his dick. “A little. You wanna make me cum but you won’t even touch me.”

He makes an annoyed sound, and tries to push off of you. You tug his cock a little harder, and he falls back over with a moan. You giggle again.

“You- You’re a fuckin’ brat-“

“I’m helping you, Barnes.” You whisper in his ear.

He chuckles, and the sound rolls through your body. “Helpin’ me would be sitting on my face- Fuck-“

Bucky’s whole body shakes, when you squeeze him one last time, and his control slip. You pet him through his orgasm, unsure if you want him to notice how you press your legs tighter to try and get more stains of his cum. He pants and groans against your skin, his lips latching back around that one bruise he seems to be obsessed with.

There’s so much cum. Bucky grinds into your fist, and it just keeps coming and coming and coming until your fingers are sticky and drenched. The idea of him doing that inside you is almost a little terrifying. You’ve never wanted anything more.

A choked sound like your name comes out, muffled against your skin. You smile, leaning back to try and meet his gaze.

Bucky seems to need a second. You hope you didn’t already wear him out.

“You okay?” You whisper, and he tenses.

Bucky pulls back, and your pulse picks up into a drum.

Whatever he’d been before, it had been tame compared to this. His jaw is clenched, his attention fixed on you like a predator. His chest heaves, his hands limp at his side. You swallow, feeling a lot smaller than you did a second ago.

You can’t stop yourself from looking down. It only makes things worse.

He’s bigger than he felt. His cum is dripping down his thigh, and it’s barely been a minute, but he’s already getting hard again. You drag your eyes up the expanse of his chest—all flushed skin and muscle—and realize he hasn’t stopped staring at you. You lick your lips. He mimics the movement.

“It won’t fit.” You says again, but your tone has lost all the teasing mockery of before.

And Bucky’s smirk is dangerous. A thrill rushes through you at the sight of it. You’ve gotten exactly what you wanted.

“Gonna make it fit.” He growls.

You yelp, as he grabs your wrist and yanks you forward. You don’t even slam into his chest before he’s lifting you off the ground with another mind numbing kiss. It’s a distraction. You know that. You don’t really care, though, returning it in a second.

Bucky carries you like you’re a doll, your knees bent like some princess and his warmer arm locked around your waist. He leans over, lowering you to the mattress with a shocking care. For a second you’re fully lost in him. The gentle motion of his lips over yours, the way his hands wander and map your body as he settles you into the mattress.

“So soft.” He mutters. “All that bite, doll, but I knew you’d be so fuckin’ soft for me.”

You’d like to protest, and say that you’re not soft. But Bucky’s kisses are making your head spin, and no single, clear word can make it out of the daze. All you manage is a high, long whine.

Bucky chuckles. His hand pushes under your shirt, almost tickling over your sides.

“You like that?” He tease, his knuckles tracing over the underside of your boobs. “You like bein’ my sweet girl?”

You are not sweet. You try to snap that, but it mostly just comes out a feral grumble. You don’t know how he’s the one with a sound mind right now. You’re not under a sex drug.

You’re just under Bucky. Where it’s very, very warm, and sticky, and nice. His cum is dripping over your clothed core and midriff. You shiver as it hits bare skin, and Bucky smirks against your lips.

“Say it and I give you more.” He rasps. “Say you like it.”

And it’s a game. You know that you like it. He does too. But he’s poking and teasing you, trying to get you spar with him. To get you to play.

So you glare at him when he leans back, spreading your legs wider at the same time. You keep your mouth stubbornly shut.

Bucky grins. He traces the curve of your hips with massive hands, his thumb angling to smear his cum over your navel.

“Look at you.” He mocks. “Beggin’ for me and then can’t even admit she likes it.”

You wrinkle your nose, turning up your chin. Bucky smacks your inner thigh, then rubs his metal palm right over your pussy. The sudden sting then harsh pleasure make your hips push off the bed with a cry. Bucky takes his hand away to splay it on your abdomen, shoving you back down.

“You like gettin’ tossed around, too?” He laughs, and heat floods right to your core. “I’ll toss you around, baby. Make you into a nice little cockslut for me, even let you put my in that pretty mouth.”

He grabs your jaw, and you part your lips in a second. Bucky groans, his cock getting impossibly harder.

“Already listen so well.” He mutters, teasing his two forefingers over your mouth. “Just can admit you fuckin’ love it, do you? Can’t be a good girl and tell the truth.”

You narrow your eyes in defiance, and pretend to bite down on his fingers. It’s not a real bite. Just teeth grazing knuckles. But Bucky understands what it means.

Permission to go further.

His eyes gleam. His cock is already leaking with pre-cum.

“Alright, babydoll.” He rubs your thighs, a dangerous smile playing on his lips. “Have it your way.”

In a single second, Bucky rips off your clothing like it’s paper. You barely have time to feel the cold of the air before he’s grabbing your waist, flipping you onto your stomach, and dragging your ass up in the air. You yelp, fisting your hands in the sheets, and try to twist and see where he is.

A dazed part of your brain that doesn’t remember his hands on your hips sees no one behind you, and almost freaks out.

Then the first stroke of Bucky’s tongue hits your pussy, and you collapse fully into the sheets.

“Oh my-“ Your eyes roll back, as he teases the very tip of his tongue around your clit before dragging it through your folds. “Oh my God-“

“Sensitive fuckin’ pussy.” Bucky muses, and you feel the stubble of his cheek pressing against you thigh. “Barely even touching it. Wonder if I-“

 His thumb drags circles just around your clit, and you squeak. He kisses the curve of your ass, going a little fast. You whine trying to drag your own ass in circles to match his motions. You can’t see him. Can’t know if you’re doing well outside of his lips tracing your thigh, and the pleased hums against your skin.

Bucky jerks his thumb suddenly to the side, pushing directly over your clit. You scream, your knees sliding back. Bucky grabs them and pushes them back up, fully exposing your pussy to the air.

“Look at you.” His breath is warm, over that most sensitive spot. “Bet I don’t even need to fuckin’ prep you. You’re so wet, you’d just…”

He makes a deep, rumbling sound, and you almost sob as he drags his tongue right back between your puffed pussy lips. You clench around nothing, his stubbled scraping your clit. Bucky angles his face, letting his tongue flick over your clit. It goes back and forth and back and forth, toying with it before pressing flat. He sucks, hard like a lollipop, and you almost sob into the mattress.

“Sweet.” Bucky whispers, his metal arm wrapping around your legs. “So fuckin’ sweet.”

“Bu- Bucky-“

“Shhh.” He kisses right over your pussy. “Wanna taste, pretty girl. I gotta fuckin’-“ He moans, and the vibration shoots right up your spine. “Gotta taste-“

Bucky presses his face fully into your cunt, and the sound that leaves you almost isn’t human.

He’s good at this. So good at this. It’s a little unfair. Your mouth can’t do anything but hang uselessly open, as Bucky works his jaw against you. He eats you like he’s starved for it. Like he’s a man that wants to drown of an insatiable thirst.

Two hands hold you up in the air, as his tongue plunges ruthlessly in and out of your cunt. You keen, trying to push further back, and the warmer hand wraps up to your spine and shoves your stomach down. It’s a tighter fit like this. Bucky drags his tongue around, and it hits every sensitive area. His beard tickles and scratches, and cold fingers tease your skin.

You get more and more sensitive, with every flick and suck and groan. You’re so wet it’s almost drooling down your legs, mixing with the stains of cum he’d gathered from your midriff and smeared over your legs. The dual heat with his cold hand makes all your nerves stand on end. You pussy clenches again, and Bucky chuckles.

“That’s right.” He mutters, making out with your clit as you gasp for air into the bed. “That’s it, baby, you’re already lettin’ go, aren’t you.”

You whine, and Bucky nips at your ass.

“Aren’t you?”

“Ye- Yes.” You mumble. “’S good, Bucky- So good-“

“I know.” He grunts, pressing his cold, metal thumb down into your clit. “Fuck, baby, I know.”

You whimper, and Bucky starts up on your dripping pussy again. He’s lapping at it, pushing his tongue into your tight hole as he plays with your clit, and white lines your vision.

“I- I’m gonna- Fuck- Bucky-“ You scratch at the sheets. “I’m gonna- Oh God-“

He smacks your clit, spits onto your pussy, and resumes with double the effort. You cry his name, as your orgasm wracks your body. You can feel yourself seizing around him, twitching and writhing in his tight grip as your vision lines with white.

And Bucky doesn’t stop. You’re making a mess all over his face, and he’s rising up, but it’s just pushing you further into the mattress. You whimper, your cunt too sensitive, but he doesn’t even come up for air.

“Shit- Bucky- Oh- Ohhhhh-“

The ache quickly fades into pleasure again. Blinging pleasure that’s just on the wrong side of too much, but pleasure all the same. You squeal, and Bucky just moans against your cunt.

Then you hear it. The slam of his fist against his cock.

He’s jerking off while he eats you out.  He’s fucking himself so hard you can hear it, hear the slap of skin, feel all his little moans and grunts right against your pussy, and the thought sends you right over the edge again.

Bucky moans louder, as you cum on his tongue. Just like before, it seems to make him more and more feral. You have a feeling what lucidity that let him tease you before is gone. He’s eating you out the same way he’s kissed you, with rough lips and a fervor that’s almost animalistic. You’re boneless and whimpering into the sheets, taking it over and over as Bucky just keeps working his mouth against your cunt, and fucking his hand.

Then, suddenly, he’s gone. You whine from the lose, trying to roll over and look at him, but he just shoves you back down with a growl. The sound of his hand is getting faster and faster, and a hot weight drops over your back. Bucky presses his face into your neck, and takes a deep breath. You whimper, and he groans. His hips must be rocking, with how the bed is shaking.

“Smells good.” He rasps. “Gonna- Fuck-“

Bucky snaps back up, and you feel him cum more than you even hear it. Hot ropes spurt over your ass and back, seeping down the back off your thighs and into your pussy. You moan at the sensation, pushing back on trembling hands. There’s always just more of it, until you’re so marked up with him you’re sure you’ll never be able to wash it off.

You don’t want to.

With how Bucky grabs your hips and spreads the stain over your skin, you don’t think he does either.

“Shit.” He breathes out, and you hum in agreement. “Gotta- Flip for me, c’mon-“

Bucky helps you roll over. His touches are gentle again, but the gleam in his eyes hasn’t faded. You blink at him, flat on your back with your legs spread. Bucky traces the lips of your cunt, then slowly pushes two fingers inside you. Fucking his cum back into your tight hole. You mewl, eyes fluttering. Your head tosses back, and Bucky smiles

“Good girl.” He coos.

You try not get all gooey and weak just from the praise. Bucky laughs, and you think you might’ve failed.

“Strangling my fingers, doll.” He teases, pulling them right out.

You whimper. You’re too wet and ready not to take something. It’s really not fair to make you wait.

“I know.” He kisses your brow, voice rough. “Trust me, I fuckin’ know. You just gotta tell me you like it, then-“ His cock drags between your folds, and you keen. “All yours.”

You blink at him, opening your mouth to comply.

But you’re at an advantage.

Bucky’s hard again. His body is wound so tight above you, and his every word is thick. Like it’s an effort to speak. He’s still trying to fight against the drug running through his veins.

You want him to give in.

So you close your mouth, and give him a defiant glare.

Bucky growls again, and there’s no more teasing.

His mouth pushes over yours, and it’s not a loving kiss. It’s rough and quick, stealing your breath in seconds and distracting you as Bucky grabs your knees and shoves them back. You try to chase his lips, when he pulls away, but he shoves you back down with a grunt.

“Wanna be a brat.” He grunts. “Gonna get fucked like a brat.”

You almost beam. Yes, please.

Bucky folds you under him, your knees pressed to your chest and your cum-stained pussy on full display. He doesn’t waste time, tapping the head of his cock against your clit before slamming right inside. You’re so soaked you take it with only a hitched breath, but that doesn’t mean your eyes don’t roll back.

He hits right against you pelvis, when he bottoms out. His heavy balls sit on your ass, and the stretch of him is just enough pain to heighten the pleasure. Bucky kisses all over your face as he lets you adjust, but your pussy is greedy. He’d prepared you too well. You’re more than ready within seconds.

“Bu- Bucky-“ You gaps out, and he growls against your neck. “Move.”

If he’d told you to wait, you wouldn’t have been surprised.

But the drug seems to have overtaken him again, and all you get is a noise like a snarl against your throat before Bucky draws almost all the way out, and slams back in.

The air is knocked clean from your lungs. This time, he hit right against your g-spot, and your whole body seizes up. Bucky makes a low, deep noise, and repeats the motion. Again, he drives right into that gooey spot deep inside of you. You clench around him, and he doubles over, rutting deep inside of you.

“The- There-“ You whimper, fingers scrambling in the sheets. “Fuck, baby, right there-“

Bucky grunts an agreement, and starts to fuck you into the mattress. The angle is so deep you’re worried he’s going to permanently rearrange your guts. Every slam of his cock into your makes you see heaven, and Bucky pants over your, his eyes locked onto yours as your face contorts with pleasure.

He’s not even fucking you like a brat. He’s fucking you like a doll. He grabs at your limbs and moves them below him like you’re just a sleeve for his dick, and he needs you into just the right spot. One hand fists in your hair, forcing your neck a little up so you can watching your arousal gleam on his cock every time he pulls out. He moans every time he pushes back in, and you watch your cunt swallow his dick whole. A wet, smacking sound filling the room as he drills into you. He bends you even further to kiss over your neck and breasts, his tongue dragging in rhythm with his dick.

You try to clench around him every time he bottoms out, but your head is sort of empty, and now you’re just a drooling pussy around his massive cock, moaning his name and happily milking every bit of pleasure.

“Oh- Oooooh-“ You mewl, smiling like a cockdrunk idiot at the air. “Buuuucky-“

His mouth presses back over yours, and the kiss is strangely soft. His fucking hasn’t slowed or relented, but there’s a care with how his lips move over yours that makes you feel worshipped.

That’s what he’d said he’d do. Worship you. And you can really feel it here.

Bucky draws back, and the hand that had been fisted in your hair moves to your jaw. He squeezes again. You open for him easily, and his lips twitch.

“Good girl.” He coos, even if the words are tighter than before.

He spits into your mouth. You swallow obediantly, and open again when he squeezes your cheeks. Bucky slams forward with a groan, looking like a man wrecked.

“You fuckin’ like it, don’t you-“

“Love it.” You gasp, unable to even think to deny him again. “Love you, Bucky- Oh- Oh my god-“

Bucky makes a ragged, choked sound, and cums almost without warning. Your mouth falls open in a silent scream, as he pumps you full of his release. It feels like even more than before. Like you’re going to burst with how full you are, spurts of it still being forced out as Bucky fucks you through. You’ve never felt so totally claimed, with him all over every inch of your skin. He kisses you and you giggle, dazed and almost high on the feeling.

And he’s not even done.

The period of lucidity between orgasms gets shorter before it gets longer. Bucky’s ability to control himself almost vanishes all together. You get a kiss and broken mumble of your name before you’re being flipped back onto your stomach and fucked from behind. There will be handprints on your ass and thighs in the morning, and the sheets are stained with your drool from how Bucky railed you from behind.

You’re dragged into his lap right after, and he pushes his thumb into your mouth, then ruts up into your gaping cunt. You’re all moans and ditzy smiles by that point. When rolls you back onto your stomach and sits up on his knees, you just take it with moans and giggles and cries of delight.

He hasn’t just ruined you. He’s pulled you apart a million times over, until you’re just a puddle that sings his name.

You don’t even fully realize he’s done, when he kisses pulls out that last time. You whine, and clench around nothing, but expect to get filled right back up.

Then Bucky kisses you, and it’s slow. Savoring and sweet. Romantic. His voice is hoarse, but it’s lost the strained quality. He’s fully teasing again, smiling against your lips.

“So soft.” He coos, rubbing your thoroughly abused pussy with his warm hand.

You writhe, trying to get further and closer at the same time. Bucky chuckles, and kisses the corner of your mouth.

“Jesus, doll. You’d think you were the one that got sex drugged.”

You try to glare at him, but forget why the moment you see his pretty eyes, shining on yours.

They’re blue again.

“You’re back?” You breathe, and Bucky grins.

He ducks down, and presses another quick kiss over your lips.

“I’m back.”

 You’re ordered not to move, while he cleans up. You don’t think you could if you tried. Your body is jelly, everything is sore in the best way, and your head is spinning with too many thoughts of what the fuck happened.

You told Bucky you love him. You told Bucky you love him. You’d never even fully admitted it in your head and he just fucked it right out of you. You said it fast, too fast, he thought you hated him four hours ago and now he must think you’re some kind of freak for just saying you love him.

He makes you drink water and go to the bathroom. Draws you a bath and brings you a snack and changes the sheets. You manage to find the strength to stand out of the tub and dry yourself off, wrapping the towel around your body before shuffling out in the center of his room.

God, he’s so handsome. All tan muscles and scars you want to trace with your tongue. Too bad you fucking blew it, and now you’re never going to get to touch him again-

Bucky turns, and smiles when he sees you. You swallow, bracing for the worst as he crosses the room.

He takes your face between his hands and kisses you. Deep and gentle and maybe he just forgot-

“Love you too.” He says against your lips. “Just- Uh- While we’re saying it.”

Oh.

Or that. That’s nice.

You throw everything you have into kissing him back, but end up tackling him down onto the bed with the sudden surge of strength. Bucky chokes out a laugh in surprise, wrestling you over onto your back with kiss and wandering hands. You giggle, trying to push back, and he nips at the tip of your nose.

Then he pauses, and pulls up with a small, worried frown.

“You’re stayin’ the night, right?”

You almost snort. There’s no getting rid of you now. You’re going to stay forever, and as long as he’ll allow after that.

“Yeah. I’m staying.”

✦End note: this was longer than my college thesis btw. and i. put more effort into it.✦

✦If you like this story, please reblog, share, or leave a comment! <3✦

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[godmadeaterribleerror]

what if he's mine

✦Bucky Masterlist - Main Masterlist - Read on aO3!✦

✦summary: you fell for bucky a long, long while ago. and you think about him, every day and every night. if only you knew that he thought about you too.✦

✦warnings/tags: bucky barnes x female!reader, friends to lovers, light emotional angst, everyone's bad at feelings, fluff, smut, plot and porn mix (dirty talk, use of sex toys , fingering, pussy eating like crazy, fantasization, praise kink, manhandling, perfectly "appropriate" use of bucky's metal arm, nipple play, dumbification, semi-public sex, dry humping, sensitive reader, finger sucking, masturbation, bucky gets nasty, body worship, overstimulation, mean!bucky, oral m!recieving, praise kink, monster dick bucky, he fucks like a machine), no use of y/n, no descrption of reader✦

✦wc: 7.5k✦

✦Author's Note: request! who wouldn't fantasize about bucky barnes?✦

You think you might be a freak.

Compared to everyone else in the building, you’re perfectly normal. On the outside. Where everyone can see. You don’t have any powers, and you’ve never been shot up with serums or infinity stones. You’re a human, with a sharp tongue and shaper brain, pretty features and a charming smile, and absolutely no desire to be anything else.

Tony even asked you once. If you’d consider it. The whole hero thing. You’d laughed and shaken your head. You told him that you’re not that kind of brave. That you prefer to stay behind the scenes, helping with the tech and med services. Tony had laughed with you, and remarked causally that you’d be good at it.

You’d smiled and waved him off. But he was wrong. Because you can’t be normal about anything.

You’re not casual. You’re obsessive, and quietly insane. You don’t become the top of your field like this while being anything else. It’s easy to contain yourself in this kind of work, in it’s order and chaos all at once. There are rules that you to follow, then break, and everyone praises you and you glow like a diamond catching sunlight.

Not absorbing it. Because it passes right through, and it’s never enough, and you get addicted to it. The praise, from these living gods. They all love you, and you bask in it, and then you look at him.

Bucky.

The only one who doesn’t praise you. Who doesn’t treat you like a good dog, bringing them treats and newspapers. When you met him, he barely treated you like anything at all. Tony had introduced you, he’d looked you up and down, shaken your hand, and walked away.

But you.

You’d been a fucking goner.

Bucky’s handsome in the way you used to only see in movies. Your exact type, from the hair to the eyes to the way he carries himself. Silent and in control, kind but not overly nice, polite without expectation. You’d made it two years without developing a crush on anyone. Somehow, surrounded by some of the world’s most handsome men, you’d maintained that tiny sliver of your sanity.

Then there was Bucky. And you lost yourself.

You’re not weird around him. You’re not a stalker, and you’re not that kind of insane. You’re perverted in the privacy of your head, drooling over his massive hands and muscles, but swallowing it before it leaks out of your lips. You don’t react when Tony says his name, save for a traitorous pulse in your cunt.

“You ready to look at his arm?” Tony asks, and you hum.

“Think so. Just maintenance?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Tony sighs. “I’d work on Terminator myself, but Cap says I spend the whole time looking like I want to throat chop him. So,” he shrugs. “Don’t look like you wanna throat chop him.”

You laugh softly, and grab the tools off the bench. It’s not a big deal. You’re the only person besides Tony, in the whole building, who’s qualified to work on Bucky’s arm.

But that means you get to be close to him. Just the thought of it makes your skin hot, your heart buzzing more than thumping, your fingers fidgeting with the straps of your toolkit as you restlessly wait.

Bucky says your name, and your head shoots up. He’s there. He’s right there, and watching you with those careful, beautiful eyes.

“Hi,” you say, and it sounds so pathetically breathless.

Bucky tilts his head. His hair looks soft. You want to run your fingers through it, to pull on it, to feel it tickling over your face as he ruts into your drooling pussy-

He’s staring at you. He must’ve said something that you didn’t hear. Fuck.

“What?”

His lips twitch. Just the smallest movement up, almost impossible to catch. Your heart skips, and you almost miss his words again.

“You the one workin’ on me today?” His voice is low. It rolls through the air like thunder.

You wonder, if there’s any part of him that isn’t addictive.

You’re here for a job. You’re here to give him medical treatment. You plaster a sweet smile on your face, and gesture to the chair. You can be normal about this.

“Tony has bad bedside manner,” you say smoothly, and Bucky chuckles.

God, that’s worse than the smile. It echoes through your chest, and you almost choke on it. How fucking bad you want him.

“He does call me Schwarzeneggerevery time I’m here,” he mutters, crossing the room. “Don’t even know what that means.”

You hum, pretending to look at your tools. He’s sitting down next to you. Your knees are bumping. You’re normal. “Arnold Schwartzinagor. Actor who played the Terminator.”

“Ah.” Bucky pauses. “Sam calls me that, too. It a good movie?”

“It’s fine.” You shrug. “If you like stuff from the 80s.”

“I don’t know things from the 80s.”

You laugh softly, and look up with an apology on your tongue. You find Bucky staring at you, and your breath catches in your throat.

His eyes are so intense, you think they can see right through you. To the lust, pounding in your bloodstream. You have to open your mouth to breathe. Bucky’s eyes flick down. Just tracking a movement. Nothing about you.

You kick yourself internally, and push the casual smile back into place.

“I think you’d like some of it.” You reach for his arm, and Bucky turns it palm up, still staring at you. “I mean, any decade will have it’s ups and downs.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” You run your fingers over the plates of metal, and for a second, forget all about the Bucky attached to them. It’s a beautiful artwork of technology. Overlapping, gold-inlaid, smooth under your fingers. You turn the wrist slowly, and there’s only a faint whir. No clicks. Shuri must be using a muffler, or some kind of fluid that moves the wires instead of gears-

“You want me to go?”

Your head shoots up, a panicked flush spreading over your cheeks. “No- No- I- I’m just-“

Bucky raises his brows, light amusement dancing in his eyes. Your words falter. He’s fucking with you.

“Shut up,” you roll your eyes, and Bucky chuckles again.

God, that sound. It’s going to be the death of you.

“It’s just- It’s amazing technology.” You mumble defensively, and Bucky shrugs.

“I can tell, from the way you’re eye fuckin’ it.”

“Eye fucking.” You shake your head, biting back your smile. “How do you even know what that means?”

“Too much time with Sam.”

“Hm,” you grab your screwdriver, running your hands up the mock muscle—he should be thanking Shuri even more, she didn’t have to give him biceps—looking for a panel. “Tony told me you weren’t going to talk.”

“Tony’s got that bad bedside manner,” Bucky shrugs with his good arm. “You gonna be nicer to me, doll?”

You just hum, ducking your head to hide your flush. Doll. He called you doll.

And Bucky huffs an amused laugh, at your non-answer. But he keeps talking to you. He tells you what Sam’s already gotten him to watch, and what Steve’s trying to get him to watch next, and what Steve’s saving so they can look at it together.

“Is Star Wars any good?” He asks, and you snort.

“Do you like cowboys?”

“I’m neutral.”

“Do you like space?”

“Yeah,” he pauses, then mutters, “I wanted to go to the moon. When I was a kid.”

You look up, and find a faraway look, etched over his handsome features. Your smile softens, and you lower your voice to a whisper, because this feels like a secret. “Yeah?”

Bucky nods, his eyes finding yours again. “I heard we got up there eventually.”

“We did. A few times.” It’s hard to hold his gaze. An unbearable ache is staring to pool between your thighs. “But now there are aliens on earth, so the final frontier is less… Coveted.”

Bucky’s lips twitch. It seems to be the closest he really gets to smiling. You want to see it over, and over, and over again.

“I think you’d like Star Wars.” You’re still whispering. You don’t know why.

“Alright,” Bucky says. And that’s it. He just… Trusts your words.

He asks for you again, next week. Tony claps you on the shoulder and thanks you, because Christ, he stares at me and I feel like I’m under surveillance. You roll your eyes and don’t respond. It doesn’t feel like that when Bucky stares at you, but he also does stare at everyone. So you’re not special. You’re just another person in his line of sight.

“I tried those donuts you were talkin’ about,” he tells you one afternoon, and you hum.

It’s the new routine. Bucky comes for you to work on his arm. You’re normal about it. You talk like people, and his lips twitch, and you feel something press on top of your chest, trying to gnaw your heart right open.

“Liked them,” he adds, staring at you. As always.

You hum, looking at him under your lashes. “Did you have the cookies and cream?”

He nods. “Just like you told me to.”

You smile despite yourself. It’s those small confirmations that he thinks about you, which get you the most. It means you mean something to him. It drives you insane.

“Sam says there are all kinds of ice cream flavors now, too.”

“Sam’s right.”

Bucky sighs. “Hate it when that happens.”

You laugh, a bubbly, pathetic sound that only Bucky pulls out of you. His fingers twitch under your hand, and you glance up.

It would be wise, if you stopped doing that. Every time you find him staring at you, you feel fucking insane.

“You should try cotton candy ice cream,” you murmur. “It’s fucking crazy.”

“That is my favorite kind of thing.”

“I know.”

Bucky’s lips twitch, and your heart almost bursts. “You got a good place? For ice cream?”

You shrug. “The grocery store?”

Bucky grunts, and his fingers twitch again. You focus back on his hand, because you don’t understand why they keep doing that. The rest of the session passes, and Bucky smiles at you before he goes, and you hold onto it like he just handed you a pearl-strung noose. Clutched between your teeth and priceless, but making your breathing short.

The rest of the day always passes in a daze, after you see Bucky. The seconds rush past you in an avalanche, and then you’re in your room, and  you let it take over.

How much you want him. How much you need him.

You lay, flat on your back in bed, and let your thoughts run wild. Bucky’s massive hands, one cool and one burning hand, would wander up your thighs. He’d shove your knees open, and kiss over the sensitive, hidden patches of skin. The stubble he’s been growing would scrape and tickle, as he kissed over your weeping pussy.

“All for me?” He’d murmur, and you’d nod helplessly. “You just walk around, pussy leakin’ because of how bad you need it?”

And you’d whimper. You do. There’s nothing you can do to help it, but save that desire for locked doors and hot, tangled sheets. Your fingers—smaller than Bucky’s, but all you have—rub over the swollen lips of your pussy, spreading your arousal as you picture that it’s Bucky instead. You push one finger in slowly, then a second one because you need them to stretch you like Bucky’s would.

“Messy girl,” he’d coo in your ear, and your back arches. You start to fuck yourself, slow and tentative as your thoughts run wild.

This is what just one of his fingers would feel like. Pumping in and out of you, his palm grinding down on you clit until you’re trembling beneath him. You’d try to push up into his hand, but he’d shove you right back down and kiss over your throat. Licking and nipping and driving you out of your fucking mind.

“Buckyyyy...” You moan at the air, and when you squeeze your eyes shut you can almost feel him.

“There you go, babydoll,” he’d kiss under your ear, his body pressing over yours. Warm and massive, pinning you to the bed, forcing you to just take it. “That’s it. You like that, don’t you. Like fallin’ apart on my fingers.”

You whimper and grab at the sheets. Your wrist aches, and you can’t hit that gooey, wet spot inside you, but god you just need to cum.

“I know,” Bucky would hit deeper. Wet, lewd sounds would fill the room, as he pounded his fingers into you at an unforgiving pace. “I know, sweet girl. C’mon, show me how pretty you are when you cum.”

Your back arches off the bed. Your hand shoots over your mouth as you moan and cry out his name, your thighs shaking and pussy squeezing down on your fingers. You lay there for a while after you’re done, holding the sheets in a vague form of Bucky.

Tomorrow, you’re going to see him again. Maybe just over breakfast, or passing in the hall. But you’ll see him. And you’ll have to look him in the eyes, and pray that he can’t see it just under your features. That all he’d ever need to do it touch your head, and you’d fall to your knees.

You’re devoted to him. He thinks of you as a friend, and he’s not your boss, but he’s boss adject, and there’s nothing about him that’s accessible. There’s no world where this ever goes beyond fantasy.

But god, you’re going to fantasize. You can’t hurt anyone, by just fantasizing.

That’s what you’ll tell yourself over and over, to avoid the guilt.

It’s all just a fantasy.

You‘re perfectly professional about it. It’s not Bucky’s fault that he’s so handsome it feels like you shouldn’t be allowed to look at him. You can keep your desire bottled up, keep in the warmest, wettest pits of your stomach. It can seep out between your thighs when it becomes too much to bare. It can breed into itself and spread up into your heart, festering in the dark. But Bucky will never see it. You’ll be good, and you’ll act sane, and that will be it.

He’s been through too much already, to add your insatiable, ardors devotion to his list of problems.

You’ve developed an easy friendship. That’s all you’ll allow yourself to have, all you let yourself think about in his presence. When you’re working on his arm, you don’t think about those big, cold fingers being buried in your pussy until you’re alone in your room. All your daydreams are trapped in your sheets, and your moans absorbed and locked in your pillowcase.

You think about Bucky pinning you down with a warm, splayed hand on your abdomen. About his smirk, as he bullies three metal fingers into your pussy, forcing a perfect stretch before fucking you like a toy. His cold thumb swiping over your clit, sending shivers through your body. His eyes gleaming and attention burning, as he drags out orgasm after orgasm.

That hand would be like having a personal fuck machine, and he’d act like it until the very end. All taunting and teasing until you were spent and limp below him. Then he’d kiss the corner of your mouth, your cheek, the space between your eyes. He’d coo about what a good girl you were for him, and you’d whimper, your voice lost from screaming his name.

“What’re you thinking about?” Bucky says, sitting next to you at the kitchen counter.

You swallow, and shrug meekly. You never feel small around anyone but him, but you’ve never been this lost in anyone but him. It’s a miracle no one’s noticed, how Bucky shows up and suddenly you’re all flushed cheeks and girly giggles. You might as well be twirling your hair and kicking your feet. It’s pathetic. You can’t stop.

“Nothing?” Bucky pushes a little, and you give him a close-lipped, full smile.

“Nope.”

“You looked like you were thinkin’ about something.”

“I wasn’t.” You look back to the sandwich you’d been working on. Bucky keeps staring at you. He always does. “Nothing going on up here, Barnes.”

Bucky’s lips twitch.

The whole world seems brighter, like he’s just like some holy kind of candle.

“I don’t believe that,” he murmurs, and you shrug.

“You don’t have to.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“Good for you.”

“It is, isn’t it,” he chuckles. “I’m gonna love being right.”

You blink, shooting his a sideways look. “Being… Right?”

“I know you’re thinkin’ about something.” He shrugs. “I’ll figure out what.”

Oh. Under no circumstances can he find out what you’re thinking about. “It’s not anything interesting,” you try lamely, and Bucky smirks.

“Ah. So it’s something.”

“I- That’s-“ You sputter. “Why do you even care-“

“I like knowin’ what you’re thinking,” he shrug. “It’s always interesting.”

You blink at him. For some reason, that makes your throat close up, your eyes burning with embarrassing tears. Your knees are wobbling, and you’re sitting down. You grunt and look back to your sandwich, and Bucky chuckles.

“C’mon. Tell me.” He leans closer. There’s a gravity, from his heat, and it makes you want to just collapse over his chest.

You look at him from the corner of your eye, and you won’t tell him. That’s against the rules. It defeats the purpose.

But god, he’s looking at you. Really looking at you. You can count each shade of blue in his eyes. If you move just an inch, your noses might bump.

“I’m hungry,” you whisper, and Bucky’s brow knits.

He looks down to your sandwich. Then back to you. Adorable confusion flashes over his face. “You should… Uh- Eat.”

You nod, and he clears his throat, leaning back. You wish you could grab the collar of his shirt, and drag him back.

“You ever seen this thing called the Princess Bride?” He asks, not touching any food himself.

Just sitting there. With you. You try not to think about it too much.

You nod, chewing on your sandwich with puffed out cheeks. “’S a really good movie-“

“Chew then swallow, doll.” Bucky’s lips twitch, and you flush and obey.

“It’s a good movie,” you mumble, giving him a sheepish smile. “Sorry.”

Bucky shrugs, his gaze dropping to your mouth. Your breath hitches. You go perfectly still, afraid that if you shift, he’ll look away.

His tongue darts over his lips. He tips his head, his forearm flexes as he curls his fingers, and your breathing gets shallow. Something electric has shifted in the air, and it’s making you dizzy. Bucky reaches up slowly, and if you weren’t rooting in place, you think you’d fall out of your chair.

His thumb wipes the spot right above your lips, and a shock rushes through your body. His nostrils flare, his eyes lock onto yours, and his touch lingers.

When he pulls back, the movement is slow. Controlled. Your tongue flicks out, to lick where his thumb had been. Bucky’s nostrils flare.

There’s something on his thumb. Tiny little breadcrumbs that must’ve been stuck to your cheek from the sauce. Bucky brings the finger up to his mouth, holding your gaze, and sucks the crumbs away. Heat pools in your tummy, and your thighs press together.

Bucky stares at you. You grab the edge of your seat with white  knuckles, trying to keep yourself from falling off.

“Crumbs,” he mutters, and you nod.

“Yeah.”

“I- Uh-“ He coughs, and looks away. Disappointment sinks like a boulder into your stomach.

You don’t know what you expected. Hell, you’ve told yourself what to expect. You’re not allowed to be disappointed by him. You’re not allowed to want anything from him, except for what your head can offer.

“Sam’s been tryin’ to make me watch it,” he mutters, and you blink.

“What?”

“Princess Bride.”

“Oh.” You’re still a little drunk on his proximity. He smells like something rich and spicy, and it’s fogging up your brain. “Cool.”

Bucky nods. “We’re gonna watch it next Friday. In that common room, where Stark makes us do game nights.” He gives you a sideways look. “I never see you at those.”

You shrug. “I’m not an Avenger.”

“Stark says you get invited.”

You do. But that would be a night of drinking and laughing and being closer to Bucky than you can handle, so you usually lock yourself in your room and pretend he’s fucking you stupid.

“You’re invited to movie night, too.” He adds casually, and you swallow.

Movie night. Where Bucky would be near you. In the dark. You can’t go there. You’ll lose your mind.

But he’s looking at you with such dim, cautious light in his eyes. There’s no expectations. Just hope. And it pulls the words out of you before you can stop them.

“Oh- Okay.”

Bucky beams, and that makes it worth it. The risk, that he might brush your hand in the dark and you’ll moan loud enough for everyone to hear.

He reaches up, and wipes a few more breadcrumbs from your cheeks. Time seems to stop, when he touches you. It’s dangerous, and you barely manage not to fall all over him before he pulls away.

“You get messy,” he mutters, and oh, God.

You shouldn’t have said yes. Why the fuck did you say yes. Now you’re going to have to sit next to him, after that.

You get messy. He has no idea.

That night, you end up back in your bed with a vibrator pressed over your panties. It makes the feeling stronger, with the friction of the fabric, and you toss your head back. It’s easier and easier to get lost in the fantasy, lately. The better you know him, the clearer it gets.

You can almost feel his hands, mapping over the curves and soft dips of your body. You can almost smell him.

He mouths at your breast, pinching and rolls your nipple between metal fingers. You make a broken, pathetic sound, and he smirks.

“I know, doll. Too much, isn’t it?”

You whimper, pressing the vibrator down. Bucky hums, his hand wrapping around yours, and your hips jerk when he angles it to shove right against your clit.

“Too much,” he coos, making out with the softness of your breast. “I’m barely even touchin’, and you’re already about to fuckin’ fall apart for me.”

Your eyes roll back, as Bucky starts to guide the vibrator up and down. Your mouth falls open in a long moan, as he grabs your hips and pushes them higher, further exposing your pussy. He bites at your nipple, then turns his attention to the neglected one. You writhe in the sheets, gasping his name, and he smiles.

“Dirty girl.” He pushes your hand back, just enough for him to rip away your panties, exposing your cunt to the cold air. “Look at that, pretty little pussy fuckin’ shining for me.”

You grind down, trying to find friction on the sheets. Bucky pushes the vibrator against your bare pussy, and your eyes roll back in your head. He starts kissing all over your chest, pawing at your breasts and swirling his tongue around you nipples, sending electric shock through your body. He licks the sensitive buds the same way he licked his thumb. Your hips start to roll mindlessly, as the coil in your stomach threatens to snap.

When you cum, it’s with a cry of his name. The coil snaps, and heat floods out of your pussy, all over the vibrator and your hand. Your body convulses with the sheer force of it, and Bucky kisses down. Over your abdomen, your hips, your inner thighs.

“What a mess, baby.” He mocks, before pressing the sweetest kiss to your clit.

You sob, trembling in the sheets, and grab at his hair.

But your hand finds nothing.

Because it’s just another fantasy, kept in the confines of your mind.

Movie night was a bigger mistake than you could’ve ever imagined.

You show up, and it’s just Bucky and Sam. Sitting on opposite ends of the couch, because men are strange creatures.

“Stevie’s on a mission,” Bucky says, staring at you like he’s seeing an angel. Like he didn’t invite you.

There’s an odd rasp to his voice, too. Maybe he’s just tired.

Sam says your name, that signature, I know something that everyone else doesn’t smirk on his face. You don’t think much if it. He always has it, even when he doesn’t know shit.

“Buck told me you’d be comin’. I didn’t believe him.”

“Sam.” Bucky grunts, and Sam shrugs.

“What? I didn’t.” He grins at you. “You never leave your lab-“

“She leaves her lab.” Bucky gives you an apologetic look, but you just laugh.

“No, he’s right. I really don’t.”

Bucky sighs, rolls his eyes, and pats the seat next to him. You smile to yourself, taking a long breath before you move. You’re going to be normal about this. Very, incredibly normal. So normal, they’ll think something’s wrong, because no one’s ever been this normal in history.

You last ten minutes.

The movie starts. You’ve seen it before, but you try to pay attention to every, tiny detail. The only other option is paying attention to Bucky. To the weight of him at your side, the way his knee brushes against yours and his arm is slung over the back of the couch. You’ve never seen him so relaxed and tense, all at once. He’s sunken into the cushions, but whenever you look over, his jaw is tight.

You could swear you catch his gaze, once or twice. If you do, he looks away immediately. And you feel it, that buzzing heat over your skin. But you’re supposed to be watching the movie. He’s supposed to be watching the movie. So you really, really try not to look over.

Bucky’s knee pushes against yours, and you swallow. His fingers trail near your shoulder, and you wrap your arms around your stomach to suppress the shiver. He’s warm. So fucking warm you can feel it, blooming in your core. You shift in your seat, and you’re already wet.

The movie isn’t even a third of the way done.

Bucky’s fingers rest on your shoulder. It’s so light, so casual, you’re not even sure he knows he’s doing it. You take the risk, and turn to fully look at him. He’s gotten even more relaxed, the knit of his brows loosened, pretty pink lips parted as he watches the TV. You want to reach up, and trace the stubble of his jaw. Maybe kiss up the column of his throat, dig your nails into his pecs and make out with that full, perfect mouth.

You let out a tiny sigh. Bucky doesn’t react to it. Too lost in the movie. Not paying you any mind.

And you should look away. You’re not here to Bucky watch.

You turn your head for three whole seconds, before your eyes start to ache. As if they can’t stand not to look at him. You try to resist it, but it plays over and over, on a loop in your brain. The image of him in the dark. The heat from him, almost penetrating under your skin and making you rise up like a balloon. Your head is in the clouds. You have to look at him.

You close your eyes, trying to fight it. Bucky’s hand drops from your shoulder, down to your upper arm, and your breath hitches.

Your eyes shoot open, and Bucky’s right there. Staring at you, with the same intense, focused need that’s clawing at your ribs and up your throat.

He grabs your chin, between strong but gentle fingers. You swallow, letting your gaze trail down his body. His massive chest, torso that looks perfect to hook your legs around, his thick thighs and his crotch.

The bulge, pushing through his sweats. It looks thick. Long and thick, demanding some attention. You look back to Bucky with your best, doe-eyed pout. He smirks, and leans down to kiss you. It’s slow and deep, his tongue swiping over your lower lip before pushing into your mouth. You moan, and Bucky weaves his hair through your hair, tugging slightly. Your second moan is downright pathetic. You grab his thigh, letting your nails brush against the outline of his cock.

Bucky hisses against your lips, and pulls back. You bat your lashes at him, and his lips twitch.

“Messy girl,” he mutters, before pressing a sweeter, mocking kiss to your lips.

He pulls away too quickly, but before you can give chase, you’re lost in a daze. Bucky’s pulling down his pants, taking his boxers with him. His cock springs free, thick and veiny, massive even in his own hand. He strokes himself slowly, giving you a prompting, amused look. You swallow, licking your lips.

“C’mon, doll,” he beckons. “Show me what you can do.”

Almost in a trance, you nod. Bucky’s eyes darken, as you crawl over his lap. You move his hand away, and fist his cock in one hand. He grabs the back of your neck, not to push, but for balance. A low, guttural sound rolls through his chest as you start to pump him, and you smile to yourself.

He really is perfect. A heavy, certain weight in your hand, jumping slightly whenever you squeeze him near the base. You shift back on your knees, using your other hand to massage his balls. He hisses, his grip tightening on your neck, and you smile. 

When you look at him, there’s nothing but pure devotion in his gaze. You squeeze again, then pick up your pace, and he groans out your name.

You kiss him, pushing his head back against the couch cushions. He grunts, but lets you guide him. As if he knows that it’s all just a show, before you let him fuck your face like an animal.

“Relax, baby,” you breathe against his lips.

Bucky lets out a deep, rough laugh. “Little hard to do that right now.”

You giggle, swiping your thumb over the slit of his cock. “Is it? Hard?”

Bucky groans, and deepens the kiss. You slide off of him, before he can just grab your hips, pick you up, and sit you on his dick.

You move back, lowering down to your stomach so you’re eye level with his dick. He’s pulsing in your hands, trying to hold himself back. You don’t want him to. You want him to cum everywhere. Down your throat and over your face and tits, claiming you in one of the most primal ways possible.

“Doll…” Bucky rasps, and you look up at him under hooded eyes. He’s a wrecked. Bulging muscles and sweat, slicking on his brow. “Don’t tease- Jesus-“

You wrap your mouth around him, and take him as deep as you can go. He bumps against the back of your throat, but you suppress your gag reflex, relaxing to try and get even more. Your nose brushes against the hair at base of him. Your tongue presses flat against Bucky’s shaft, your fingers still working his balls, and he fists his hand in your hair.

“So- So fuckin’ warm-“ He chokes out. “Holy- You’re somethin’, sweetheart- God-“

You hum, and Bucky’s hips jerk up. He stutters out an apology, but you just moan again. He tries to pull you off, muttering more apologies, and you dig your nails into his thigh. You want it. You want him to use you.

He gets it, after a moment. His grip on your hair tightens. He starts slow, jerking his hips up as he pushes you a little further down, before yanking you back. You moan around his cock, drool falling from your swallow lips. Your eyes roll back. He’s using you, god, he’s using you, and it’s the best fucking thing in the world.

Bucky fucks your face like a fleshlight, and you grind your ass up against nothing. He hits the back of your throat, over and over, salty and heavy on your tongue. The sounds he makes are beautiful and sinful, and-

“Something on my face, doll?”

You blink, and Bucky’s cock isn’t in your mouth anymore. You smack your lips, trying to find it. Bucky frowns at you, the light of the movie making him even more, impossibly handsome. Sam ignores you both, popcorn stuffed in his mouth.

Bucky looks worried. He said something.

“Hm?”

“You were, you were- Uh-“ He clears his throat, then shakes his head. “Never mind.”

He looks back to the TV, and your face burns. His thigh is pressed right against yours. You can swear, when you lick your lips, you can still taste his dick.

You’re so, so fucked.

It only gets worse.

Eating breakfast becomes a trial, because Bucky is always there, and you’re always thinking about his fingers while he eats. How they’d feel stuffed down your throat, gripping your hips, scissoring deep inside of you. He wipes cream cheese off your cheek, and you almost moan.

“You feelin’ alright?” Bucky says, always so caring and worried, and you nod weakly.

“Yeah. Just- Just tired.”

He looks at you like he doesn’t believe you, but lets it go. If you were smarter, you’d be avoiding him. But you’re not. And you still have to work with him, anyway. It makes avoiding him rather impossible.

For a while you cling onto the idea that work would be sacred. That while Bucky’s in your office and you’re examining his arm, it’s purely professional. Not a single dirty thought.

You last about a week, with that one.  Bucky startles you walking in. You trip, and he catches you around your waist.

“Careful,” he smiles down at you, all handsome and stupid.

“Uh huh,” you breathe out, and you could’ve sworn a flood gushed out between your legs.

Bucky’s nostrils had flared, and he’d helped you up to your seat. You’d already had the new fantasy, blooming in your mind like the little fucking pervert that you were. You’d tried to shove it down, swaying in the middle of the room, but then you’d looked at him. Sitting with his legs spread in your chair. And you’d been lost.

You imagined climbing into his lap. His arm wrapping around you as you sat down on his cock, grinding slowly, lashes flutters as he kneaded and pulled at your hips and breasts. He’d stand up, taking you with him like you weighed nothing, and pin you to the wall. One arm would stay around you, holding you in place as his mouth started to explore your dripping cunt.

His tongue would work you open, pushing in and out of your pussy. He would’ve already cum inside of you, and every stroke of his tongue would send a wave of your mixed arousals over his beard. You’d watch him, moaning his name, and his thumb would bully and flick and tease your clit, until your were dazed and gasping for air and-

Bucky says your name, and you could slap yourself. This is getting out of hand.

“Sorry,” you mumble, sitting next to him. He smiles at you, so kind.

Always so kind.

“You’ve been kinda out of it, lately.” His words are casual. You still daydream about shooting yourself and running away.

“Just getting lost in thought,” you murmur, and he hums.

“Anything I can help with?”

You shake your head, because if you speak you’ll start begging. Please, please, please, he’s the only one who can help you, you’re going insane with how much you need him, and he could save you, he could really save you-

“Movin’ usually helps me.” He offers softly. You almost don’t hear him. “Y’know. Using my body. Remembering that it’s mine.”

“Yeah?” You say softly, cleaning the panel near his shoulder. He looks at you, and you risk looking back.

You can’t read that expression. You’re not sure you want to.

“Yeah,” he mutters. His gaze might flick down to your lips, but you don’t trust your own mind anymore. “You wanna try it with me? I head to that gym in the basement every night. It ain’t bad.”

And you should say no, but you can’t help it. You nod, and Bucky’s lips twitch, and God, what you won’t do just so he smiles.

You will torture yourself, apparently. Bucky’s too hot to be allowed in a gym. Wearing a tank top that shows off his massive arms, smiling at you all lazy, in the way that’s more of a guard than the slip that you always crave, but a smile all the same.

First, you try walking on the treadmill and just watching him the mirror. He’s lifting weights, and his arms, they should be classified as weapons. You want those biceps keeping you in a head lock, against his chest or at his side. Keeping you still, while his cock pounds relentlessly into your pussy.

Bucky meets your gaze in the mirror. His lips twitch, and you look away, face burning.

You feel him, more than you see him coming over. The gravity of his presence, you think you’d be able to feel him blindfolded and dropped in a crowd of a million people.

“Come on,” he offers you a hand. “Lemme show you something.”

And you can’t say no to him. You really should learn how.

Because the something is training. Wrestling. Throwing fucking punches and trying to get the other down.

“Bucky, I can’t-“

“Yeah, you can.” He raises his fists, nodding to your own. “Up, doll.”

You sigh, raising them slowly. “You’re going to kick my ass-“

“I am. And then you’re going to get better.”

You scoff—he’s ridiculous—but listen. Bucky smirks, and lunges. You yelp and try to scramble away, but he’s too fast. You’re pinned under him in seconds, whacking at his arms and wiggling.

“Bucky- Get off-“

He laughs, standing up with a proud grin. You’ve never seen him so relaxed, so confident. It makes you hornier than you ever could’ve imagined.

He’d been over you. Everywhere over you. Pinning you down and manhandling you, and- Oh God-‘

“Up,” he beckons, and you swallow.

“I- I don’t know-“

“Yeah, you do.” He gives you a playful smile. “Get up.”

You sigh, and scramble to your feet. Bucky raises his fists again. You narrow your eyes, and match.

He chuckles. “Getting competitive?”

You shrug. “You wanted me to.”

Something flashes in his eyes. You’re not sure how to read into it.

“Damn right I do,” his voice is lower. You’re not imagining that.

You don’t get time to think about it, before he’s moving again. You hold your own exactly a second longer than before, but it ends the exact same way. You, pinned under Bucky’s broad, strong body. His face is pressed near your breasts, his fingers digging into your hips, his legs shoving yours apart to stop you from flailing around.

It goes on longer than it shoulder. This strange game that you like playing more than you should. Bucky starts trying to properly get you to throw a punch, but he gives up fast. Soon you’re more play wrestling than doing anything else. You’re giggly and dazed, charging at him like a bull, and he acts as bored and collected as always, but you can see the amusement dancing in his eyes, every time you try to climb him like a tree.

Then something shifts.

He gets you beneath him, and you try to shove at his chest. He catches your wrists and pins them up over your head. Your breath hitches, and he blinks. His hips drop against yours, and you can feel it. The bulge of his cock, pressing into your core.

He’s hard.

Not fully, but enough. Enough that you can imagine every ridged and curve of him, sliding between the puffy lips of your pussy. Your thighs clench, and Bucky grunts, rutting forward.

You both freeze, and your eyes lock. It’s one of those seconds, where you just stare hopelessly at each other. You almost apologize, but your tongue is limp. Bucky’s face is redder than you’ve ever seen it. His cock twitches in his pants.

And this isn’t a dream or fantasy. Bucky mutters your name, and it’s so real you think your heart might pound of your chest.

Bucky moves first. He clears his throat and moves to his feet.

“Better.” He offers you a hand. “That was…”

He trails off. You stare at each other, lost for words.

Bucky turns, and leaves without another word. You sway in the center of the room, breathing shallow, head spinning.

What the fuck just happened.

Bucky kisses up your spine, his mouth hot and possessive. His tongue flicks against your neck, and his fingers dig into your hips. He drags your ass up in the air and you mewl, pressing your face into the sheets.

“Ah,” he scolds, slapping your soaked, swollen pussy. “Lemme hear you, doll.”

You turn your head, moaning loud and shamelessly. Bucky chuckles, kissing a soft spot on your neck.

“That’s it,” he murmurs, notching his cock against your entrance. “Good girl.”

You coo like a baby bird, flushed and dazed. He’s big, so big that it almost hurts. He doubles over you with a groan, pressing his face into your shoulder as he slowly pushes every inch inside of you. The stretch burns in the best way, and you clench down around him.

Bucky hisses, hips jerking forward. “Careful,” he grunts. “Gonna strangle me.”

“S- Sorry-“

“No,” Bucky leans down, kissing the corner of your mouth. “Nothin’ to apologize for. Just gotta relax, babydoll. Lemme do the rest.”

You hum, and take a deep breath. You’re grounded, in the feeling of Bucky everywhere. His warmer arm wraps around your neck, forcing you up enough for his lips to trail open kisses over your face.  

“That’s my girl,” he mutters against your ear, bottoming fully out. “That’s it. Just take it for me, just like that.”

You mewl, pushing your ass back up, then crying out with delight as Bucky pulls out, and slams back in. He’s met with no resistance, from how your pussy is gushing out with every thrust, every touch, every hot kiss.

But there’s nothing else to be expected. Not with how Bucky’s using you, how worshipful his every touch and kiss is, all while he fucks into you so hard you think the bed is going to break. His breath is hot on your back, the head of his cock drill against that one, gooey spot deep inside you. His cold arm locks around your middle, and his fingers tease and graze over your clit. Rubbing in tight little circles, making your eyes roll back in your head.

Bucky grunts, hauling you up so you’re pressed against his chest. You’re pinned down on his cock now, wet and warm and tight. So fucking tight that it pulls a low, rumbling moan from his chest. His hips slam up in a barely controlled rhythm, chasing more of your heat. You’re limp in his arms. Dazed and smiling like you’re drunk. Bucky uses his arm around your neck to push your head further back, and you have the nerve to fucking giggle.

You’re so beautiful like this that he almost cums right there. Fluttering lashes and the sweetest sounds, you pussy milking him like a machine. He kisses you because he can’t help it, and you hum happily, grinding your ass down into him.

He needs you to cum first. He gropes at your clit, letting his fingers fumble for a second to work you up into a teased, messy frenzy, before he pushes down and rubs in a steady, unyielding rhythm. You cry out his name, squeezing down so hard on his cock, and Bucky buries his face in your neck.

He cums, so hard that his vision goes white. Thick ropes of cum spurt over his hand, squeezing hard at the base of his cock.

It’s not as warm as you’d be, he thinks.

And he thinks. All the time, Bucky just thinks about you. About how you’d feel, molding around him. About how you’d sound right in his ear, how you’d get smiley and drool, and he’s feed you his fingers just so you have something to do with that pretty mouth. You’d moan around them, and he’d thrust up into you so hard he’d knock the damn worries out of your head.

It’s his favorite time of the day, this. Your rooms are closer than you seem to think, or you just forget how good his hearing is.

And every night, right before bed, he gets to settle into the mattress and beat his cock into his hand, listening to you moan and call his name. He’d never tell you. You deserve better, than a broken robot like him. He counts himself lucky he even gets to be your friend, because he’s a man well practiced at restraint. At not getting what he wants.

But this space, where no one can see, he allows himself things. He allows himself you.

But only ever in his head.

✦End note: this might be one of my fave bucky fics i just got to be soooo horny with it✦

✦If you like this story, please reblog, share, or leave a comment! <3✦

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[yearningforsolitude]

fwb with ryland but he falls hard

he pushes it down, tries not to make it too complicated. the two of you agreed on something casual, something to blow off steam when life gets too stressful, but god does he want to make it complicated. he wants to love you—he already does—and be able to show it.

he so badly wants to hold you afterwards, to kiss your temple and tuck you up under his arm and into his chest. grab dinner with you in the evening and hold your hand as you walk to the restaurant together. hear the rhythm of your heartbeat when he presses his ear to your chest. open your car door for you and never let you pump your own gas. run his fingers through your hair and press kisses against your knuckles. wake up to your awful bed head and morning breath and still kiss you silly anyway. make funny faces at you in the mirror just to make you laugh while the two of you are brushing your teeth. know your coffee order by heart and surprise you with it. listen to you tell him your secrets and pinky promise you that he will never tell another soul.

sometimes his body aches with how badly he wants you.

but he can’t have you that way, that would be too complicated. so he settles.

instead, he fucks you in the backseat of your car after you text him that you’ve had a particularly rough day and need him. he presses your little pink vibrator to your clit and watches you squirm. he fucks you with his fingers and licks them clean after he’s made you cum all over them. he circles back to that pretty picture you sent him of you in the blue lingerie he likes when he jerks off. his fingers press light bruises into your skin as he guides your hips while you ride him. he asks you to suck him off and you let him cum down your throat. he sticks his fingers in your mouth to give you something to focus on when he’s already made you cum too many times but is working you towards another one. he grunts into your mouth and you swallow the sound down when he cums inside of you.

loving you and truly showing it would be too complicated, so ryland grace will take what he can get.

[pensationalwriting]

Novice.

Ryland Grace x virgin!female!reader. 9407 words. Explicit.

AO3 link.

You let slip you've never had sex, or ever even been on a date. Ryland Grace is a very intelligent, very attractive biologist 15 years your senior. You don't expect him to offer to help.

I have no excuses and I seek no apologies. "I'll just knock out this 2k idea I have and then I'll get back to part 2 of pressurised." Well here we are two weeks and 9k later. whoops.

This one fought me quite a bit ngl it didn't flow out of me well. i haven't even edited the last 1000 words but I needed to get it out and up goddamnit the idea was there and I had to see it through (tell me if there are any typos).

Heavily leaning on my own experience of realising sex can feel really good, actually, here.

“...and the results have come out wrong again and the whole premise of this experiment is flawed and the entire earth is going to freeze to death and I am going to deserve my fate of dying a virgin for being an abject failure!”

All things considered up until this point you were doing well aboard Stratt’s Vat. You had risen to the challenge magnificently when plucked straight out of your university lab, working on your second post-grad thesis, and placed into the heart of the world’s best scientific minds trying to build something which would save the world. After all, this was why you pushed yourself to be the youngest doctorate in your university’s history. To make an impact, to do something that mattered.

But having a knack for navigating the rigour of academia did not necessarily mean you had the instinct to keep pushing until you got something correct. If your experiments failed like this before you would have written a fascinating paper about what you learned from the dying astrophage and resigned the rest to the next study, the next funding round, and have six months to consider how to redo it. That wasn’t an option here. You had to test how to keep the little buggers alive in the fuel tanks, and that was proving difficult. They simply did not like something about the way the tanks were being put together and it was driving you mad not being able to work out why for the last week. The current rate of dying off (by about ten percent) would doom the mission completely, and then no one would be saved.

So your little outburst was not that extreme, you would like to think. Not really.

And yet as soon as you finished speaking you buried your head in your hands. Doctor Ryland Grace was the world’s leading expert in astrophage biology and had spent the last day trying to help you understand why these results were failing. He had been buzzing about the various labs since you arrived, leading talks and meetings and helping organise all astrophage-based research for Stratt. The man was kind, dorky, fiercely intelligent, and actually kind of hot. It was unfair he got to be all those things at once, quite frankly.

Still, he certainly didn’t deserve your loud breakdown. When you prized your hands away from your face and dared to look at him, the man was staring at you with a puzzled look, hair sticking up where he had been running his hands through it staring at the computer screen.

“You’re a virgin?” he muttered, face confused, then his eyes widened and he immediately scrambled to cover himself. “Wait. I’m sorry, that’s entirely inappropriate. You do not need to answer that. I didn’t mean to cross any lines or make you uncomfortable at all I was just... surprised.”

His obvious stammering embarrassment helped quell your own. It was kind of cute?

You raised an eyebrow at him. “Surprised?”

He turned quite red and looked down at the microscope in front of him, adjusting the wheel with one hand when he said, “Well, you’re a very attractive woman. I’m just surprised no one has tried to, uh, make any advances.”

You laughed but there was a bitterness to it. “Most of the boys at university with me were scared shitless of a girl outperforming them with ease. And for the few who did try, I turned them down. You don’t get to being the youngest doctorate in Edinburgh's history by getting distracted by romance.”

He looked at you curiously, head tilting. “So you didn’t date at all at college, university?”

Now the cat was out of the bag, you did not feel too humbled to admit the rest. Ryland Grace was not being mean or judgemental or teasing you about anything, he seemed curious in a genuine way.

“I've never even been on a proper date.” You admitted. “And now my devotion to academia had earned me a ticket to a Chinese aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean where I’m about to doom humanity by not being able to keep these bloody microbes alive.”

Okay, so maybe that was laying it on a little thick. You gave him a shrug and a smile to make it clear you knew you were being melodramatic.

Ryland raised an eyebrow but you could see the amusement in his face. He stepped closer to you and put his hands on his hips. “Do you perhaps need a hug?”

You laughed. “Probably.”

To your surprise he stepped round the desk towards you, and when he held out his arms for a hug you only hesitated for a moment before stepping in. It was only brief, a single squeeze before being released, but that moment of warm grounding as his arms wrapped around you was like a life raft. Gods, you really had needed that.

The man even smelled good. How unfair.

“This mission gets to all of us.” He said as he stepped back. “The pressure is ridiculous. If you need help, Stratt can have 10 more people in here to help in under fifteen minutes. You just need to accept that you need the help and ask for it.”

You huffed. “That’s the hard part.”

He grinned. “I know. But this is bigger than pride. Believe me, I threw my toys out the pram when we found out the astrophage were water based. But we are doing important work here, don’t let it get you down.”

You took a deep breath and sighed as you started clearing up your last failed experiment.  “It just makes me wonder what it was all for sometimes, you know? Like it kind of stings on a personal level to feel like you might die without ever really living.”

Doctor Grace nodded thoughtfully. “I get why it might feel that way. But the work we are doing here is objectively the most worthy thing you can dedicate your time to.”

He stepped up to help you clean away the experiment, and the two of your worked together in comfortable, companionable silence.

It was not until the next experiment was running that he lent back against the bench next to you, hand tapping on the edge of the table as he looked you up and down.

“I was wondering if...” he paused and swallowed before speaking again. “Do you wanna go on a date with me? It doesn’t have to really mean anything if you don’t want it to. And I can’t offer you anything beyond what the canteen is serving here so it will probably just be whatever bad mystery meat they are serving over rice, but, I don’t know, it might be nice?”

You froze when he started speaking, wondering if you had heard him correctly. Surely Doctor Ryland Grace was not interested in you? But as he pushed his glasses up gingerly and carried on babbling you realised he was genuinely nervous about your response.

Okay, so two options. Either he felt sorry for you and this was a pity date, or he was one of those male territorial weirdos who thinks it’s really hot to try and fuck someone no one else has. But the first of those was harmless, and the second only mattered if you took him to bed, which you weren’t planning on doing after one date. You could go on a singular date without sleeping with him and by the end of that it would be clear which option was correct.

And really, what else was there for you on an aircraft carrier full of dour military personnel and serious scientists? Why not live a little and let the hot man take you on a date?

“Sure.” You agreed. “That would be nice.”

He looked up at you from behind his dorky glasses and a smile spread across his face. Shy at first, but then a smirk, and then he was beaming. It was beautiful to watch. “Well then, what are you doing, uh, tomorrow night? It’ll be Saturday.”

The corner of your mouth quirked up. “You know damn well we'll both be working in this lab until dinner time.”

He nodded. “Work until six, go change, and then meet down at the canteen for seven?”

The smile spread wider across your face, matching his.

“It’s a date.”

He had been beaming the rest of that day in the lab. And very cheerful all of Saturday too, making cheesy jokes and looking for your reaction or catching eye contact with you and smiling. It was, quite frankly, adorable. And now that he had opened that door, you caught yourself staring at him more too. He really was very attractive, and it was sort of unbelievable that he was willing to go on a date with you.

Even though you still suspected it was out of pity, it was a nice gesture. You appreciated it massively.

Halfway through the Saturday the day got significantly better when you were able to isolate a problem with the waste disposal with the burnt up astrophage in the spin drives, which fixed your issue. It was not that the astrophage were dying off in the tank, it was that there was a problem with cross contamination in the incoming feed versus the outgoing. Live astrophage were escaping and their used-up counterparts were being thrown back into the fuel tanks. A poor engineering mistake not on your head, which could now be fixed by a different team.

When you realised you slumped back against the bench in the lab with relief. Ryland had pressed you for all the details and made you walk him through it. When you had shown your process and findings he smiled triumphantly and gave you a hug. He even wrote up the findings for you and passed them to Stratt, meaning you did not have to interact with the terrifying woman.

When six rolled around you said goodbye and sloped off down to your dorm. A quick shower, some of the handful of make-up you’d brought with you and the nicest blouse you owned, though most of the clothes you had brought skewed more professional work wear than date. You settled for showing one button’s more cleavage than you would in a professional setting.

When you arrived down at the canteen he was waiting by the doorway, stood on his phone. He had changed as well, and while still looking nerdy and dishevelled his shirt at least had a collar. It suited him, this kind of smart-casual wear.

“So.” You said as you sidled up to him. “How does this normally work?”

Ryland gave you a grin as he put his phone away. “Well, normally your date would drive you somewhere, but I don’t drive and we’re on a boat, so quite frankly how this normally works is out the window already.”

You narrowed your eyes. “You mean you don’t have a romantic jet-ski on hand to take me to a private island?”

He mockingly knocked the side of his own head with a palm. “I didn’t even think of that!”

“You’ll have to up your game if there’s to be a second date.”

He grinned. “Moments in and you’re already considering a second date? That’s better than my usual track record.”

You snorted a laugh. “Come on, I’m hungry.”

The two of you queued for food and spoke at length about the quality of the canteen food vs other places you had been. Ryland told you about the school canteen and you were fascinated to learn about his life as a teacher, asking questions and listening intently when he described the effort he put into his classroom and making it as fun as possible for the kids. God he looked attractive when he was describing his love of it. Then the conversation turned to how awful the food had been in your university halls and he eyed you thoughtfully.

“It’s very impressive, your academic record.” He said. “I don’t know if I’ve ever said it outright, but the thesis you wrote at nineteen was really groundbreaking.”

You felt the blush creep up your cheeks. “Well yes, I am glad that worked out. I guess I just had the correct idea for an original research question at the right time for the field, you know?”

He shook his head. “It’s not just that. It’s the determination, forethought and skill to navigate academia and see the project through. I had lots of clever ideas when I was in academia, but I was an arrogant ass who spoke out of turn and offended people with how correct I had to be all the time.”

That surprised you. It was nothing like the man you had spent the last few days with.

“I’m sure you weren’t that bad.” You said agreeably.

“Oh no, I was.” Ryland shook his head. “Got kicked out for it, in the end. But ten years of working with kids will humble you. I’ve had to lean to be patient with them, take my ego out of the equation if I actually want to teach them and have them understand.”

“Well, we all learn our lessons at different speeds. I was academically smart, but here I am in my mid-twenties with the life experience of a fifteen-year-old. You can’t be meaningfully building every skill at all times, you know?”

“Exactly.” Ryland smiled. “So you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. I do want to know how you got to the root of that chlorophyll issue though, how did the photosynthesis proposal come together?”

Explaining your work was surprisingly gratifying. Ryland was a good biologist. He listened. He understood. He asked interesting questions. And by the time you had finished eating you had let some of the tension you had carried into the room with you go.

“It’s getting a little busy in here.” You noted, watching the tables fill up. “Do you want to go up to the bar? I’d love to hear more about your doctoral thesis.”

And that was how you found yourself in the bar an hour and a half later, a drink and a half under your belt to give yourself some liquid courage, finally able to broach what you had been wondering all evening.

“So,” You said, putting you glass down on the table. “Grace.”

“Pretty sure you can call me Ryland at this point.” He looked over his glasses at you and you pretended it didn’t do weird things to your stomach with how hot it was.

“Ryland.” Your gaze darted nervously away before coming back to him. “I have had a very lovely evening. But I have to ask, why did you feel the need to give me the pity date?”

His eyes widened, and his face flashed through a series of emotions. “Oh no I didn’t- I mean, that’s not what this was at all. I didn’t mean it like that.”

Huh. You had ruled out sociopathy at this point, so it seemed the only other option. Unless…

“So you are actually into me?”

The man looked like he would rather take a physical dissection than the emotional one you were giving him. But he swallowed and, looking at the table, said “I mean, you are a very attractive woman so… yeah?”

A surprised laugh burst from you, one which you quickly tried to shut down. He looked up confused and seemingly unsure he should be offended, but you waved it off. “I’m just really surprised that you would be interested in me. You’re fifteen years older than me, the leading scientist in your field, you’re so talented, and funny, and hot it just doesn’t make sense why you’d be into someone like me.”

When you dared to take a look at him his jaw was hanging open slightly, and he looked deeply flushed with embarrassment.

“I think you overplay my talent by a significant margin.” He said dryly. “Besides, you’re all of those things too? You’ve proven fiercely competent in the last week and you’re great to talk to. I’ve had the best evening I’ve had in a long time, actually.”

It was real then. This man was actually into you, this was not just a pity thing. Wow.

There was a charged moment in the air where you weren’t sure what to say. The idea that the man was genuinely into you was still baffling, but if it was true then a whole world of possibilities had just opened up which you had no idea how to approach.

And why shouldn’t you? He had been kind and respectful all evening. It was time to be less respectful.

It was the boldest step of your life to say, “Well I don’t see why it should stop here. Do you want to come back to my cabin?”

You saw his eyes widen, and the blush creep up his cheeks, and then the blink and the correction of his own face. “I-, I mean. You know I don’t… expect anything from you, right? In return for the date? You are under no obligation to invite me anywhere or offer me anything.”

Your heart soared, affirming your choice. “I know. But I don’t want all the people in this bar watching when I ask if I can kiss you.”

It was a delight to see the slack-jawed shock on his face at your forwardness. You let yourself grin and he caught himself and mirrored it, slamming the end of his own drink and rising and offering to take your arm.

“Well then, My Lady, may I offer to escort you to your quarters.” He teased, in a mock-old-timey voice.

The giggle rose in your throat unbidden as you replied, “Why yes, Doctor Grace, that would be most delightful.”

Looping your arm through his you felt the warmth of his own skin through his shirt sleeve and leaned in a little, looking up to give him a grin. He met it with a welcoming, conspiratorial one of his own as he led you out of the bar and down to the cabins.

“Where are you, in terms of cabins?” he asked in a murmur.

“Deck four yellow quarter.”

“Aren’t those shared rooms?”

“Yeah.” You sighed. “My roommate is a Korean Sargent who speaks minimal English, but she’s on shift until midnight most nights so the room should be ours for a little while.”

Ryland glanced at his watch. “Gosh it’s late, that’s only an hour away now. I’ve got my own cabin so I’m happy if we go back to mine, so we don’t have to worry? Unless of course you want the excuse to kick me out.” He seemed to stumble over himself in his haste to backtrack. “I don’t want to presume staying any longer, obviously, and if you come back to mine you are under no obligation to stay a minute longer than you want-“

“Ryland.” You cut him off. “Your room would be lovely, thank you.”

He blushed and ran a hand through his hair. “In that case, uh, we’re headed down this way.”

He led you down to his floor and talked quietly the whole way, finding small talk about the shifts of the military personnel on board and the way things were organised. You played along, but anticipation and nerves were bubbling in your gut. What did you want from him? Definitely to kiss him. Beyond that? How far were you willing to go? You weren’t really sure.

Those nerves were reaching a fever pitch as you got to his room. Ryland opened the door and ushered you in with a hand on the small of your back which made your stomach flutter. The room itself was small, with piles of paperwork sort-of-organised on the small desk and dirty washing in a sort-of-neat pile on the floor.

The door closed behind you. You turned to face him and you felt the beginnings of the anxiety starting to paralyse you. Wondering what to say, how to initiate what might come next. But he surprised you by bringing his hands up to cup your face and kissing you right away.

It was wonderful. It was very gentle, and soft, and brief. You melted into it, eyes fluttering closed and suspending yourself in the moment, before breaking away with a smile spreading unbidden across your features along with a fierce blush you could feel.

He was looking at you with a softness, reaching up and tucking a stray strand of hair behind your ear. You stepped closer and tentatively brought a hand to rest on his chest as you went for another kiss.

This one was more in every way. The gentle softness was replaced with a desire stirring from within, pressing your lips firmly against his to show what you wanted, moving them passionately and letting out a little noise of want. You were delighted when he reciprocated, tilting his head to deepen the kiss.

It had been a long time since you had made out with anyone. A few awkward encounters round the back of the bike sheds at school. This was different. Grace did not have the cocky-but-terrible kisses of a teenage boy. He made out with you like it was a dessert he was savouring, a confident taking of something he planned to enjoy.

And it was effortless, the way one of his hands came to rest on your waist, and how the other cupped your jaw. How you rose on your toes to give more and in return received a surprised but very satisfied noise from him, prompting his mouth to slide open and for the kisses to get dirtier, messier, more intense, and somehow still not feel like there was any rush or urgency.

His hand slid down to meet the other at your waist. Then they moved together to grab your hips and pull your body in close. It was just a taste of being manhandled and it had your breath hitching with delight.

By the time you broke apart your body was on fire in a way you had never experienced with someone else. And looking up, there was a spark of something which had crept into his blue eyes too. No one had ever looked at you with real hunger before. The reaction it caused in your body was something you would be fascinated to examine in closer detail. To file away the sudden awareness of the weight of your own breasts and the heat between your legs, how a few minutes of making out could light your whole being up like this. God it was intoxicating.

Ryland took your hand and guided you to sit on the edge of the bed. As he lowered himself in front of you, you hoped this was about to become more heated, but to your chagrin his blue eyes just softly searched your face and asked, “Tell me what you have done.”

He was knelt down on the floor in front of you and on his knees your head was a fraction higher than his own. You realised he had put you in a higher position to ask you the potentially embarrassing question. It still did not stop the embarrassment clawing its way up your throat. You looked away from him shyly.

“Hey, it’s okay.” His voice was soft. “I just want to know, if I start running my hands over your clothes will it be the first time anyone has ever done that? Or have you had partners you’ve gotten off with but just not gone ‘all the way’” he used air quotes.

Closing your eyes to answer felt less embarrassing. “I uh, had a boyfriend for like two months in senior school. I got him off a couple of times with my hand, it didn’t take much. He awkwardly squeezed my tits and stuck his hands down my pants a couple of times but didn’t really, uh, achieve anything.”

When you opened your eyes Grace’s mouth was quirking up, an amused crinkle in the corner of his eyes. “Sounds like a teenage boyfriend all-right. Thank you for telling me.” He pressed a kiss to your forehead, then crowded in to kiss you deeply again. “Why don’t we just take this at a leisurely pace, and you tell me when you want to stop for tonight, okay? Again, no expectation. Is that alright?”

“Yes.” You breathed, unaware you needed to hear that until he said it.

“And don’t be afraid to stop me if we’re mid… anything.” He reached up and cupped your face with his hand. “Don’t continue anything in discomfort because you think it will make me happy, alright? I already got to make out with a very hot woman tonight, I’m, frankly, overjoyed.”

You broke into a giggle and leaned forward to bring your mouth to his again, enthusiastic, messy, and a bit sloppy. He met it in kind, bringing his hands confidently to the top of your thighs and making your whole-body shudder. The more the evening went on, the less nervous he seemed to be. Like the reality of seeing you nervous made him braver. It was really hot.

After a long few minutes of making out you began to run your hands up and down his muscled arms and across his broad shoulders. You felt around his neck and ran a hand through his hair, making him moan into your mouth. It felt incredible to pull that sound out of him. You did it again, just to hear it. He responded in kind with a smile against your lips you could feel.

You wanted more.

And so you let your legs fall open and pulled him in flush against your body where he was still on his knees. He leant back and tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, searching your face, and his eyes went wide when your fingers started on the buttons of his shirt.

“Is this okay?” you whispered as you moved down the line of them.

“More than. You can do whatever you want with me.” He answered, a little too quickly. You grinned and popped the last button out, opening his shirt. Your jaw dropped as he shrugged it off his shoulders.

“How are you this ripped?” you blurted. “I’ve never seen you outside the lab.”

“Good genetics and gym visits when I can’t sleep.” He pushed in to kiss you again as his hands slid from your thighs, over your hips, up your waist and came to the buttons of your own blouse. “Can I?”

You nodded enthusiastically as he undid the fiddly little buttons on your blouse. “You look great in this by the way.” He added. “Was it really obvious I was staring at your cleavage all night?”

“No you were pretty subtle on that one, actually.” You admitted, though the idea that he had been staring did make you feel very good about yourself.

“Damnit, shouldn’t have said anything.” He joked before he reached the bottom of your shirt and you shrugged it off. You had the delightful experience of watching Ryland’s eyes go wide at the sight of your laciest bra, the one with the push up which really made the girls look good.

He seemed to hover in a trance for a moment. You smiled and took his wrists, placing his hands on your breasts in encouragement. He let out a groan and squeezed, which felt really, really good.

“Tell me what you’re thinking.” He murmured between kisses, checking in.

You hesitated only a moment before being honest. “That your hands feel amazing on me and I want them everywhere.”

“Everywhere?” he smirked.

“Everywhere.” You affirmed.

And then his hands were sliding down over your waist and hips, squeezing there before running down your thighs and all the way back up again. Except instead of your breasts, this time his hands slid around your back and your bra was unclipped in a single motion. It was pulled off one shoulder, then the other, then just as you started to feel self-conscious Grace moved to kiss along your jaw, down your neck, along your collarbone. By the time the bra fell away his mouth was there, soft kisses along the swell of your breast.

He cupped your other breast with his hand and brushed a thumb over the nipple. You knew you liked to play with them during your own alone time but were completely unprepared for the rush of sensation that tweak from someone else sent shooting between your legs.

“Ryland.” You gasped his name as he took the tip of your other breast into his mouth and did something equally arousing with his tongue. Your arousal was instantly dialled up to ten and you were suddenly away of how wet you must be.

When he pulled away the smug look on his face was beautiful. “I can give you more of that, sweetheart.”

And then he set about worshipping your chest with his mouth, taking his time to kiss around the area thoroughly and see what motions drew the best breathy noises from you. While he did so his hands continued to run all over your body, even snaking up into your hair and experimentally grabbing a handful. When this made you whine and writhe he chuckled against your skin and started trailing his kisses lower.

By the time he was at your belt, you were desperate for friction. Screw not sleeping with him after one date. You wanted more.

“May I?” he murmured, mouth against the leather of your belt.

“Yes, please.”

He made quick work of your jeans, ditching them. The laciest underwear you owned hid very little, and the hunger in his eyes as he looked between your legs sent another thrill of sensation down there, even as the hesitant flutter of your heart thundered in your chest.

Ryland pressed a soft kiss to the inside of your knee, then slowly moved those kisses up the inside of your thigh, the brush of his stubble a new sensation you did not know how to categorise. When he got close to the crease of your thigh the sensation disappeared, and suddenly he was at the other knee, kissing up towards the centre slowly again.

You propped yourself up on your elbows to watch him. He had closed his eyes, concentration on the feel of your skin under his lips, but as you shifted he opened them at looked straight at you, blue and piercing.

And he maintained eye contact as he slowly, so very slowly so that you had time to object if you wanted to, brought his mouth to press a kiss to your centre through the underwear.

The noise which came out of your throat was unauthorized and undignified. A smile spread across his face in return, and he brought his hands up to the waistband of your underwear, grabbing and then pausing, looking at you for permission.

You nodded frantically.

With a smile he slid your underwear off, and then you were exposed to him, his face inches from you.

A thrill of fear went through you. This was completely new. This was scary. You were nervous. But the way he had touched you was amazing and while the vulnerability was scary Ryland was not. You still felt safe with him. The logical part of your brain reasoned that you were probably too nervous to be able to orgasm, but you still wanted to find out if he could make you feel good.

He started with his fingers, featherlight touches through your folds. You inhaled sharply when he first touched you but that quickly settled into shaky breathing as he moved his touches up and down, not explicitly trying to pleasure but getting you used to the sensation of being touched there by someone else.

“How are you feeling?” he checked in.

“Nervous.” You admitted, “But excited.”

“Good.” He murmured. His fingers slid down to your entrance and traced lightly around it. Oh god now you were conscious for the first time in your life of feeling empty and wanting something inside you. Your hips squirmed in response and he steadied them with a flat hand on your lower stomach, which also did something for you that you would never have realised did something for you without him doing it.

After a few moments his fingers traced back up your slit, and with no guesswork whatsoever he gave one confident flick of your clit.

“Ryland.” You gasped, head falling back, feeling dizzy with want as you stared at the ceiling.

“Yes?” you heard the smugness in his voice.

“More.”

And then his finger pressed on your clit firmly, experimenting with different movements and pressures while he found what you reacted best to. Glancing at him found him watching you with the same measured concentration and infinitesimally small frown he usually had over a microscope. Watching. Learning.

When he found a motion which made you cry out and arch you back off the bed he grinned and proceeded to do it over and over. Fuck the notion you might be too nervous to finish, this was incredible. Could he come and do it every night?

It was not long before the familiar build started between your legs.

“Ryland,” your breath hitched on his name, “I’m getting close, I might…”

You were still staring at the white ceiling of the cabin, but heard the heat in his tone as he spoke in a voice you had not heard him deploy yet, “That’s it, relax. Let go for me.”

He slid his spare hand up to tweak the tip of your breast, his mouth pressing kisses to the inside of your thighs while his finger worked you.

And then the wave was crashing over you, and you were arching up and crying out, and everything went fuzzy. Your ears rang. Your vision went. Every sensation aside from the wave crashing over you disappeared.

Letting go for someone else was a very different experience to getting yourself off, and good god was it so much more intense. When your brain caught up with the boneless pleasure in your body Ryland was kissing his way back up your chest before climbing onto the bed next to you and scooping you into his arms.

“How was that, was that good?” he murmured. A real question in his eyes, like he wanted to know if it went quite as well as he suspected it did.

You let out a breathy laugh. “That was amazing. Thank you.”

He pressed a kiss to the side of your head and you melted into him, catching your breath. After a couple of moments, you rolled over and administered a long, relaxed kiss to his mouth, making it clear exactly how much you enjoyed that.

He was lazily lying back, looking at you with a spark of desire in his eyes, but making no move to act on it. You suspected that if you said goodbye and went back to your own cabin he would not push you for anymore.

But he had proven himself trustworthy. And caring. And sexy. And into you. So why not push to overturn the comment which started this whole debacle?

“Why don’t we take this further?” You tried to sound sexy, but heard the nerves bleed through.

He hesitated, catching your tone, then made a show of shrugging it off. “I’m happy if you want to stop here.”

Your breath caught in your throat a little. Would he actually be happy? Or would he look like a kicked puppy if you told him no, just saying it to take the pressure off you?

“Grace, do you want me to touch you?” you asked dryly, raising one eyebrow and bringing your hands to your hips.

His façade crumbled and he let out a sharp laugh as he turned red and admitted. “Oh believe me, I want you to touch me very badly.”

“Then let’s continue.” You said confidently, before your voice dropped and added. “Just uh, let me know what you like?”

He sat up, reaching forward and pressing a long, slow kiss to your mouth. “Of course.”

The man did not release you and let you begin experimenting straight away. He took his time making out with you again, his hands running up and down your naked body from your thighs to hips to waist and back again. Immediately the thrill of being touched relit a spark in your core and you gave a warm “Mhmm” into the kiss.

Before you lost the threat of where you were intending to go next, your kisses trailed around his strong jaw and down his neck, your hands moving to explore his torso. Ryland’s breathing became heavy but otherwise he was holding still, letting you learn him. When your mouth closed over one of his nipples, he let out a small whine, and when your hand reached for his belt he looked down at you with an almost helpless expression.

“Yes, please.” He breathed, and you fumbled with the belt and zipper. Ryland lifted his hips and helped you kick off his jeans and socks, leaving him in just heavily tented navy boxer briefs.

That bulge was… sizeable. Not like, comically, but certainly more than anything you had handled before. Before you got in your own head about it you helped him remove those non-descript boxer briefs. Then he was naked beneath you.

He was gorgeous. Every part of him. It was frankly unreasonable such a nerd could have all this.

Heart thundering, you tentatively brought your hand to touch the hard length in front of you. He groaned and his head fell back as you ran a finger tip up and down him before tentatively wrapping a hand around, feeling the weight and size of him.

“How do I…?” you trailed off. What angle was best here to move your wrist at? In a way which would be comfortable for him and you?

Ryland blinked for a moment and you saw the moment he realised you needed help guiding through it.

“Here.” He brought his own hand to cover yours. “Grip just like that. Not too tight. Start slow. That’s it.”

He seemed pretty sensitive. It took a couple of attempts, but when you found the right rhythm he choked out a moan and sat back on his elbows.

“Oh my, yes. Like that.”

The praise did something funny in your lower stomach. As did watching him watch your hand move like it was a divine revelation.

You tried speeding up a little, adding more pressure. “Good.” He choked out, voice in a higher pitch than before, almost in the same register as the whine.

Despite the praise opening up doors in your head which had previously been undiscovered, your wrist started to tire. This was not a motion you were used to. No part of you wanted to stop pulling these pretty noises out of him though so you slowed down and shuffled back on the bed, kneeling forward to bring your mouth to him.

“You don’t need to-“ he started, eyes widening, but you pulled back and cut him off again.

“Stop telling me I don’t need to do anything. I know I don’t. I want to try this.” You asserted.

There was a flicker of amusement behind his eyes before he responded.

“Yes ma’am.”

And then your mouth was on his tip. It was sensitive, and he whimpered. Like actually, fully whimpered in a way which immediately rewired your brain chemistry and which you knew immediately would live in your brain for the rest of your life.

But this, it turns out, was also an acquired skill. You opened wider and took more of his length in, leaning it was surprisingly difficult to keep your teeth out of the equation. As you started working your head up and down the gag reflex was all too present and being constantly fought. You were painfully aware your movements were experimental and awkward and unskilled.

But Doctor Ryland Grace was looking at you with a tenderness which was almost embarrassing, and the comments he was murmuring to you between his laboured breaths kept coming.

“Good.”

“Take your time.”

“Careful there it’s sensitive.”

“That’s it.”

“Mmm, more of that please.”

“Oh that’s good.”

He would wince an indrawn breath on occasion when your ability to hide your teeth failed you, but moaned and groaned very prettily when you did something right. His voice vibrated straight through your body and down to your core.

It was a very fun, very educational practical lesson. But after a while your jaw started to hurt too. You pulled back, filing everything you had learnt to redeploy later.

“Everything okay?” His heavy, wide blown eyes came partially back to the room as he checked in with you.

The admission was on your tongue. Clumsy and juvenile. Something which filled you with fear to say even though it was the entire reason to be here.

“I want to have sex. Like, properly.” You blinked and looked away from him to say it aloud. “Can we?”

And then he was sitting up and cupping your face in his large, warm hands and searching your eyes with his own. You saw a penny drop behind his eyes and a flash of disappointment cross his face.

“I’m not sure we can sweetheart.”

The contrast of the nickname shooting desire between your legs and the dismay at his statement was jarring. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t have any condoms.” He admitted. “I did not anticipate getting this far tonight.”

You stopped yourself laughing just a little too late, you saw him track the twist of amusement in your jaw with his own frown.

“What?”

“I agree to go on a date with you, fully admitting I am looking to find someone to fuck before the sun dies, and you don’t think the evening is gonna go there?” you grin.

He huffed out a laugh and fell forward until his head hit your shoulder. “I was intending to be respectful. Three dates at least.” The muffled voice said into your neck.

You sat back, cupping his face now and looking into it. “Well, I want this. And I have the coil in, actually, so I don’t think the condom is an issue.”

Blue eyes widened in hope, then twisted in confusion. “But…” he stopped himself.

“If you’re wondering why I have the coil if I’m a virgin: because it helps balance my hormones. It’s mood regulation.” You hedged.

“I realised just as I said it.” He shrugged. “I will not apologise for my brain not firing on all cylinders right now, there’s a very hot naked woman on my lap who just told me she wants to have sex with me.”

You snorted a laugh and wrapped your arms around him, laughing into his shoulder. He wrapped his around you in return and the two of your fell back onto the bed where your mouths connected again.

There was heat in this one. Promise.

He broke away and rested his forehead against your own. “I’m going to take my time with you. Stretch you with my fingers first.”

You nodded as his hand snaked down between your legs. It skirted over your sensitive clit to pull a gasp from you before finding your entrance again.

“I was worried about the lack of lube for your first time, but you feel pretty wet.” He admitted, one finger slowly pushing in.

You let your eyes flutter closed and focused on the feeling. “You’ve done a damn good job prepping me already. I want this.”

“Good to hear.” He brought a second finger into the equation. He curled them up and in and you almost arched straight off his lap, crying out.

He smiled and pressed a kiss against your temple. “Found it.”

The tone was very smug. It was annoying precisely because he had every right to be.

“My own fingers aren’t as long as yours. I can’t reach there myself.”

“What… here?” and then the infuriating man pressed into that deep spot again.

“Oh fuckkk…”

Letting the noises spill from you freely, your curses descending into nonsensical babbling. He continued to work you with two fingers for a while and then eventually introduced a third.

This one was a stretch. You felt yourself instinctively tense against the intrusion, but his low voice kept murmuring against your ear.

“Relax for me, I’ve got you.”

There was something about the way he said it which had a hypnotic quality to it. You unclenched and relaxed for him almost instinctively, like when you reached a level of pleasure beyond a certain point there was no input from your own brain to even consider disobeying his order.

“Good girl.”

To your absolute mortification the shockwave those words sent thorough your body resulted in very obvious clenching around his fingers as he moved them inside you. There was no way he missed it with how your breath caught in unison. He did not comment on it but you swore he was breathing smugly.

“Okay, I think you’re ready for me.” His voice was still pressed against your temple, voice rumbling through your own chest where you clung to him. “Do you have any strong feelings about what positions you want to try?”

You shook your head. “No. I always imagined lying back but it doesn’t have to be that, does it?”

His fingers were still inside you, keeping you stretched as he murmured “That is the traditional, but if you’re on top you’ll have more control.”

“I’m not sure I’d know what to do with control if it was handed to me.” You admitted. “I’m happy for you to show me the way.”

“Alright then.” Ryland pulled his fingers from you and it made you gasp as he brought them up to his mouth to taste you, licking them clean. Then, he swung round and laid you back on the bed, positioning himself between your legs and coming to his elbows.

He gently brushed the hair back out of your face where you lay back, looking up at him. “Let me know if anything hurts and I’ll stop immediately, okay?”

You nodded. “I will do. It shouldn’t hurt, given how much prep we’ve done.”

He huffed a laugh. “Well, that’s the goal. This should feel good, if it doesn’t, we can try something else.”

You reached up and pressed another kiss to his lips. “Okay.”

And then he was shifting his weight onto one forearm and pressing in close to leave a kiss on the side of your forehead. As he did so, you felt his length brush against your folds.

He did not push in immediately, running the head up and down from your entrance to your clit and back again a few times. It made you hyper-aware of how empty you felt, wanting to feel what it was like to take that inside of you. When he next grazed your entrance you made a needy sound and swirled your hips forwards, trying to feel him inside.

“Alright, okay.” He murmured, and then he was pushing in. Just an inch initially, just to let you acclimatise.

It was an alien sensation, the feeling of being stretched by an intrusion like that. It was terrifying. It was incredible. It did not hurt. It was also the most intimate thing you had ever experienced and therefore definitely the hottest.

“Ryland.” You gasped.

The sound of his name made him groan and his bright eyes flutter closed. “You good? Think you can take some more?”

“Yes.”

He pushed further in, more and more, eye reopening to watch the reactions on your face. The feeling of being stretched intensified. You became aware there were little gasping noises accompanying your laboured breathing but could not quite bring yourself to care. Your hands were grasping at him, his arms, his hair. Something to anchor yourself as you let him give you something so completely new.

And it just kept going. He pressed deeper and deeper. You were starting to wonder if that thing was infinite just as he bottomed out, biting his own lower lip, eyes blown wide.

“You feel amazing.” His voice was thin and desperate. “It’s been a while for me, I forgot how good this feels.”

“Mphm.” You experimented with shifting your hips a little, watching his eyes flutter closed. “It doesn’t hurt. You can move.”

He pressed a kiss to your temple before drawing out slowly and pushing back in again. The flutter of sensation at the friction was a pleasure you had never experienced and it had you gasping. He did it again, and again.

“You can speed up.” You urged him.

He laughed against the side of your head. “I was determined to be gentle with you.”

“Don’t want it. Fuck me, Grace.”

It was bold, for sure. As the words left your mouth you were wondering if you would live to regret them, if going too hard too fast would hurt. But the way he pulled back and looked at you, wide eyed and dishevelled, made it all worth it. Especially when he maintained eye contact and sped his hips into an even, well-paced roll, hitting deep inside you with every thrust.

He was watching your reactions closely. You nodded that you were enjoying and let the little noises escape, giving positive reinforcement in a way which did not require coming up with words.

He let out a groan of his own and repositioned his hips. When he thrust in again he hit that incredible spot he found with his fingers and it made you arch up off the bed. A smile crept across his face as he settled into that position and sped up again, ramming into that spot over and over.

There was something which felt fundamentally good about this. Good as in pleasurable, good as in correct, good as in the ideal way to exist. You were conscious of millions of years of evolution convalescing in your brain as the feeling of a man fucking into you hit some primal pleasure you had never known existed inside you before this moment.

He slowed his pace down almost to stopping. “I won’t last long if we keep that up.” He admitted. “Are there any other positions you want to try?”

You wanted to try everything, eventually. But right now, you wanted one thing.

“No.” you shook your head. “I want to know what it feels like to have you finish inside me.”

The man let out another whimper which bordered on undignified. He hung his head for a moment and took a deep breath before looking back at you.

“Do you think you could finish again?”

You tilted your head in thought. “If you can keep hitting that spot… maybe.”

“Touch yourself.” He suggested.

“What?” your eyes widened. You had not considered touching yourself while he was inside you. It felt almost rude? Like a demonstration that he was not doing enough.

“I can’t touch your clit and keep that angle up.” He reasoned. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get both.”

If you weren’t sweaty and bright red from exertion already you might have been self-conscious about your blush. But you only nodded. “If that’s okay?”

He frowned. “Why wouldn’t it be okay? Mutual pleasure is the goal here, do whatever you need to find it.”

You nodded. He kissed you long and deep and you snuck a hand down between your legs, finding your clit. When you rubbed it and clenched around him he broke off from you with a whine.

Then his hips started rolling again. He angled them again to hit that point and you moaned loudly, letting inhibitions go as you rubbed your clit and chased that feeling. His kisses started trailing along your jaw, down your neck, and across your collarbones while his hips moved.

When his mouth closed over your nipple again, the beginning of the end was in sight.

“Yes.” You gasped. “Keep that up.”

He moaned in agreement as he focused on the movements, his mouth and his hips and the way he was hitting that spot deep inside you driving any remaining nerves or doubts away.

“Ryland, I’m going to- it’s-“

And then you were falling over that cliff again. Having his length inside you as something to clench around felt beyond amazing. It was sort of life-affirming. Your vision blacked out for a second as everything but the waves of pleasure through your person and the strong body you clung to disappeared.

He had clearly been trying to hold out to get you there, as his own release followed seconds later. You were awed to feel his rhythm stutter, his breath catching, and the needy sound pour out of him as his muscles tensed up, releasing himself inside you. His body was strong and there was a faint recognition in the back of your head that he could physically overpower you easily, which was both terrifying and intoxicating. There go those evolutionary instincts again.

Ryland Grace stilled with his head buried in the crook of your neck, still buried inside you, both of you breathing deeply with your chests heaving. After a moment he pulled his head back to look at you, bringing a hand to cup your jaw as he breathlessly checked in.

“You good?”

You could hardly nod more frantically. “I am more than good, that was great.”

He smiled and his eyes crinkled with such fondness it made your heart catch. He saved you the feeling by letting his head fall onto your shoulder for a couple of moments before shuffling and pulling out.

Now that was a weird sensation. You gasped as he pulled free, suddenly able to feel the ache from the stretch and the wetness as his release trickled out of you.

And then he was there with some tissues grabbed from his desk, gently cleaning you up. You winced when he brushed over the soreness and he caught it instantly, brow drawing into a frown.

“You alright?”

You gave him the most reassuring smile you could. “I can feel I’ll be sore in the morning. It’s okay though.”

“I was going to be gentler with you.” He insisted.

Your mouth curled with amusement. “And why would I want that?”

By the time he sorted himself and curled back onto the bed with you, your eyes were feeling heavy, your body blissed out and boneless. It was a surprise when he curled his naked body around you and the rush of oxytocin made you want to whimper.

“I didn’t expect the post-sex cuddling to feel this good.” You admitted.

Ryland laughed and squeezed you tighter with his arms. “It does, doesn’t it? Millions of years of evolution to tell us job well done.”

“And I quite agree.” You mused. You let your eyes fall closed and your head fall to the side, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Thank you. For taking such good care of me.”

He pulled back and looked at you incredulously. “Thank you for trusting me. I know it isn’t always a big deal for everyone, but the way you spoke yesterday made me feel like maybe it was for you, you know?”

Resisting the urge to squirm under his gaze you admitted “It just felt like a big part of life that was missing for me. Now I realise I was probably blowing it out of proportion in my head. It was great, but I’m not a changed woman.”

He huffed. “Sounds like I need to do better next time.”

One of your eyebrows slowly raised. “Next time?”

“One must live in hope.” He said nonchalantly to the ceiling.

You laughed, feeling your whole body shake with it. Against the warmth of his skin it was incredible.

“Can I stay here for a bit?” you asked as your laughter abated.

“Stay as long as you want.” He pressed a kiss to your shoulder. “And let me know if you need anything.”

“Thank you, Ryland.”

He pressed one last kiss to you shoulder before settling back onto the bed and letting the post-sex haze take him.

“Anytime, sweetheart.”

[pontifikado]

[MDNI]

just. Professor!Ryland x TA!Reader + significant age difference. he's in his late thirties — 37 or 38 — and you've just turned 23. a whole decade and then some years.

p!link for visual

Most the time, you forget that Dr. Grace is nearing forty because he's always so cheerful and easy-going. It's why he's so loved by his students. There's nothing better than an educator who genuinely adores what he's doing. His dedication begets an air of youthfulness about him, and makes him seem younger than he really is.

But the lines on his face remind you of his age, and you spot them easily: there, between his soft brows, on his forehead; and some by the corners of his eyes and where his smile appears. they're part of his appeal, and complete the heart-wrenching, knee-buckling ensemble that you have the god-given privilege to behold almost every waking hour of your stay on campus. You even fantasize, as a habit, about how his perfectly tousled, wind-swept hair would feel between your fingers.

Dr. Grace teaches molecular bio — his specialization — to a large class, so that's why he has you. You handle some of the lab sessions and shoulder a portion of what he has to grade per week, but you'd say that your favorite kind of work is when he needs you to review the item pool that he's constructed for the long and final exams.

These instances usually happen when the regular classes have concluded. You find yourself alone with him in the faculty room; you're sitting close enough to catch a whiff of his cologne and the fabric conditioner that he uses for his clothes, and it takes everything from you to keep your focus on the task at hand.

You do what he asks of you, diligently and thoroughly. You give your feedback — which he always wants to hear — and suggest some minimal changes for better item discrimination.

Then you crack a joke; you say you want to try using SPSS for a post-hoc analysis of the test scores. Your heart soars when you get him to laugh. The sound of it echoes into your ears and carves anew the Grace-shaped niche that has already been created into your chest.

He shakes his head. "That's like bringing a sledgehammer to pound a small nail, [name]!"

You reply with an equally witty remark. You had something else in mind for your response, actually, but you hold your tongue. It really isn't appropriate to say aloud. Something about pounding some(one)thing else. Yeah, good call. Keep that in the vault.

The smooth motion of his arm slinking along the backrest of the swivel chair that you're in after his laughter dies down doesn't go unnoticed by you, though. Nor the way that he leans in when you point out a distraction item that he could have worded better. He's driving you crazy and he doesn't even know.

At least that's what you think.

Ryland hasn't been entirely indifferent to you. He practically can't — you're his TA (emphasis on the "his" part), you always work alongside each other. Everything began spiraling inside his head and his heart when he jokingly admitted to himself once that he'd be open to dating you if given the chance.

A week doesn't even pass before he realizes that you're his type: you're intelligent, conscientious, and sensible; and your beauty isn't lost on him either. He just… has to hold back because, well, you're his TA. At least in that respect, you're his. He can live with that.

He's way older than you, too — the mere fact that he's besotted with you fills him with searing guilt, because he thinks that he's not supposed to be staking his claim over you. You're young — you ought to be dating people your age. He has no business wishing that you'd look his way.

Ryland doesn't let that stop him from touching himself at night to the thought of you, however.

The tension begins to simmer and boil through the many catalysts that blaze the trail of your gradual, mutual ignition: the subtle yet not-so-subtle looks and smiles that you share; the ever-growing tally of inside jokes, and the light touches. A hand on your shoulder. Your fingers brushing against the back of his palm. The swish of the tips of your hair against his exposed arm when he rolls up his sleeve during late nights at the lab with you.

He recalibrates the sensitivity of a microscope for you once, while you're caged in his arms. He doesn't ask you to leave. He stands right behind you, towering over you and engulfing you in his presence as he does you a favor. Every hair on the back of your neck rises when he speaks.

"Should be good now," he says. He tilts his head so he can peer into your face over your shoulder. "Wanna give it a look for me?"

You can feel the phantom sensation of his stubble against the skin of your temple. You very nearly forget that you're supposed to look at the live algae on the slide instead of drifting off into Dr. Grace-land.

The universe, as you've learned in your undergraduate general chemistry course, tends toward disorder. Chaos. An expanding balloon will eventually pop. A full kettle on a lit stove will be blowing that whistle once the water inside reaches its boiling point.

And two desire-stricken adults with a common, underlying impetuous nature, will be drawn and pulled towards each other like the opposite poles of a magnet.

That's how you and Dr. Grace end up fucking in the empty bio laboratory at the top most floor of the natural science department, one night when the proverbial tension has bubbled over and overflowed. You're bent over the table — the one he uses for demonstration, and has a large mirror overhead — and he's driving his hips into you at a steady rhythm.

He doesn't undo his dress shirt all the way — just a few buttons unfastened to obtain some leeway — nor did he slip off his slacks. He leaves them undone at the zipper, and he pulls down his boxer briefs enough to free his cock and finally sheath it inside your aching pussy.

You have no time to fully undress. How can you, when the heat has just become too unbearable between you two to stave off and ignore? So you settle for the bare minimum and take off what your dwindling patience allows. Your blouse is on the floor along with your bra. Ryland's tie and tweed jacket soon joins that pile.

You support yourself with your arms on the cool surface of the desk. He isn't going fast, but the feel of him dragging along your walls is making your head spin, thus disabling you from forming any coherent thought. Nothing matters except this. You, and him. Him, inside you; you, wrapped around him. All you can do is subdue your noises and reduce them to soft whines and moans so as not to get caught.

Your legs, still clad in black pantyhose, tremble beneath you from each thrust. The soles of your heels are sliding along erratically over the polished floor. Try as you may to keep them steady, Ryland is two steps ahead: he's got one hand reaching under and between you so he can stroke your clit, and the other holding your chin so you're looking at him while he gifts you with praises. You're falling apart in a thousand pieces all over again.

"Mm, atta girl," Ryland sighs, "taking my cock so, so well, hm? 'Cause n-none of those boys can fuck you as good as I can? Hm?"

You whimper at his provocation. Two fingers slip into your mouth, and you're getting even more wet. You clench around him. You do it again, tighter this time, when he presses the digits onto your tongue. That rips a groan from Ryland's throat.

"F-fuck, sweetheart," he sucks a breath through his teeth. He pauses — he adjusts his angle and resumes, this time hitting squarely that spongy patch of nerves that has your jaw hanging slack. If he wasn't railing you like this, you'd have blushed at the pet name.

Ryland knows what he's done. And you know that he knows what he's doing to you right now because he doesn't change his pace. He wants you to cum. You're already halfway there; you can feel traces of your release dripping down on the floor. The realization makes your cheeks glow red.

You bow your head in defeat, surrendering to the ascent to which Ryland is delivering you.

He's now taken to gripping your waist with the hand previously in your mouth, so he can anchor you better and receive every piston of his hips. You shakily warn Ryland of your impending release. He chuckles, broken and affected.

"Cum right here, on my cock," he says, bending down so he's flush with your back. The fingers on your clit are now drawing tight ovals. "We'll finish up here and I'll take you home, y-yeah?" His lips stamp kisses all over your upper back. He whispers into your ear.

"I'll do to you everything that I've been thinking about since the beginning of this year."

[houseofhyde]

but kiss me & i might... ⤷ jack abbot x nurse!reader ⌇ 23.1k

✶ ― SYNOPSIS. the 5 times jack abbot walks you home + the 1st time you invite him in.

warnings.ᐟ mdni! no use of y/n, night-shift nurse!reader, colleagues to lovers, slow burn, smut (jack pussy pleaser abbot and his big dick, soft dom jack, fingering, piv, unprotected sex, praise, creampie, cum play, cum eating, smothering?, sex against a wall + cowgirl, hair pulling [jack receiving], slight dubcon as they are both tipsy), age gap (reader is early 30s), fluff, pining, longing, workplace romance, mentions of mental health struggles + therapy as consequence of the pittfest tragedy, violence + workplace assault, jack calls the reader kid but it's only as a coping mechanism!!! (he's down bad), one too many references to drop dead by olivia rodrigo, no mentions of jack's late wife or his wedding ring, 1 reference to a scene from the movie fresh. i tried my best to represent jack's life as an amputee as respectfully as possible, deepest apologies if i failed to do so. ᯓ★ hyde's input. wrote most of this in the hospital, boots on the ground journalism. 𓂃✍︎ dt. huge big fat sloppy wet kiss for miss @pinksplace for popping my beta-reader cherry and reassuring me that this was not straight up buns, no hotdog. your friendship means the absolute world to me, the fact you match my freak is just a bonus. and to my cousin @iamthatonefangirl for telling me to watch the pitt back in february, you helped awaken something in me that had been dormant for months. & to me for continuing my tradition of posting a fic on my birthday, finishing this was my present to myself.

follow @houseofjekyll + turn on notifications to know when i post a new fic!

The first time feels like a fluke.

A rare silver lining of good stroked through the grey devastation that was today; after hours of wading through blood and gore, you at last strike gold.

“You heading off too, kid?” Despite the questioning tone in Jack’s voice, you know it’s an order.

He’s staring down at the park bench, eyes hovering over you and how tightly you’re still clutching that fourth can of beer, zoned out and completely oblivious to how everyone else has already packed up for the night and headed home. Not to sleep, no. It’s doubtful any of you will get much sleep, not after the events of today.

Robby had slipped away first, not without sharing a few final words of wisdom aimed at soothing everybody’s aching soul. Javadi followed soon after, abandoning a half-drunken beer as she went racing off to answer her mother’s beck and call. Mateo, Princess and Samira called it quits together, each heading off in different directions. Even Donnie left eventually, the now empty cooler in tow, his wife waiting patiently for him to crawl back to their newlyweds home and into her arms.

Then there were two.

Abbot and you.

Neither of you dared to interrupt the silence that had rolled in, minds too busy swimming in pools of thought, struggling against violent currents and attempting to escape the deep end.

Moonlight crept through the crevices between the branches above, cicadas came together to sing in disjointed harmony, and the world around you both kept moving, completely oblivious to how your own life had come to a halt. Somewhere between waking up to the screech of your pager and rushing through the doors of the PTMC to find it in a state of chaos, different and bloodier than you’d known it to usually be, you had shutdown.

Jack knew better than to force you out of that state.

He saw himself in your blank stares and the bouncing knees, remembered how it felt to be young, bright-eyed, and finally forced to reckon with how brutal this field could be. He didn’t need to ask to know: this had been your first mass casualty event.

Maybe that’s why he sat with you, the passing of time irrelevant, and let you fester in your shock. Let whatever cracks were forming in your heart deepen, because he knew it was the only way they’d be able to solidify. Let you exist on the periphery of life for however long you needed, his own senses fully intact and ready to watch over your body while your mind drifted elsewhere.

Only when he noticed you stifling a yawn did he act.

Jack, conscious of not startling you, moved slowly. Calmly.

He started with his prosthetic, lifting it off the bench and placing it back down onto the ground before safely attaching it. Then his bag, hands rummaging unnecessarily as though to check everything was in place — he’d already checked before leaving the locker room, but he figured another revision and a few more minutes for you to sit with your thoughts couldn’t hurt. Slinging one strap over his right shoulder, he pushed his frame off the wooden bench and came to a stand, the sickly-sweet gravel of his voice perforating the silence at last.

“Hmm?” Your reply is practically nonverbal, a simple hum. Enough to acknowledge the fact he’s spoken, yet not enough to answer his question.

Hazel eyes zero in on your own, observing how they’re tired, blinking just a little bit too lazily. The beer has warmed your cheeks, sped up your heart, and slowed your mind. Dancing on a tightrope between tipsy and inebriated, the last thing Jack is about to do is send you off home alone.

“C’mon,” he gruffs out, prying the can from your hand and laying it to rest on the bench. He replaces the weight of it in your palm with his touch, thick fingers effortlessly engulfing your own. To his delight, you give way easily, rising to a stand as he tugs you up. “Let’s get you home.”

You attempt some version of, “I’m fine.”

Jack pays it no mind.

Instead, he grabs at your familiar pink duffel bag. Something settles in his chest, dark and sickening, at the sight of dirt staining the bottom of the fabric, ruining your usually polished belongings. How apt it seems, a perfect mirror to how today has the left a smudge on you.

You stare at him all of a few seconds, eyes red. There’s no tears in sight, just the remnants of those that have already fallen. Then, when the older man shifts his weight off his right leg, you finally begin walking.

The journey is slow.

Jack’s unsure if you set the pace to accommodate to him or to put off the inevitable of going up to a lonely apartment, where all that work you’ve done to suppress the storm of emotions building inside you will prove useless the moment you step into the quiet of your home, the furthest place from danger and, yet, where all your troubling thoughts will at last catch up to you.

He thinks he’s better off not knowing, chooses to believe you’re doing it for his sake.

Some of your steps are swayed. The sight of your unsteady feet and teetering body are enough to keep his mind alert, fighting off the exhaustion that threatens to find him soon. This was supposed to be his day off, after all. He was supposed to be catching up on sleep right now, not watching over one of his nurses and worrying himself sick with thoughts of how today’s horrors will linger with you for years to come.

It was supposed to be your day off too, after all.

Neither of you should have been at the Pitt.

One man and a weapon had changed that.

You come to a stop abruptly, catching the doctor off guard and sending his solid frame crashing into your back. Before either of you can stumble too far, Jack’s snaking his free arm around your waist and stabilising you against him.

Maybe it’s the warmth of his palm, large and imposing and seeping through the cotton of your top. Maybe it’s the gentleness behind his touch, the way it anchors your feet to the pavement and silently promises that it- he won’t let you fall. Maybe it’s the weight of today finally shaking your unbreakable self, your arms too weak to keep holding you above water for much longer.

The reason doesn’t ultimately matter.

What matters is you’re finally speaking.

“Did you litter?”

Not exactly what Jack expected you to say.

It startles him for a moment, has him forgetting how today was full of horrors and has him wondering, instead, if you recycle.

It shouldn’t be so easy to picture you, bed head and a wrinkled shirt (preferably one that originally belongs to him), huffing and puffing your cheeks while you shoot around his kitchen, bags scattered along the island as you berate him.

Jack, how many times have I told you. Yellow is for plastic and cans, blue is for paper, green is for glass!

And wouldn’t it be so hard for him to fight back a smile, heart bursting with joy? A lovesick fool, happy to be lectured on the complex recycling system if it means having you, half naked, half awake, frowning at him as soon as you notice the shake in his shoulders.

Sorry, sweetheart. Promise it won’t happen again… And his hands finding your waist, pinning you to the marble counter-top so there’s nowhere for you to run from his mouth, trailing molten kisses up the expanse of your neck, lips lingering just to feel the steady thrum of your carotid pulse, physical evidence that you’re real, and here, and in his arms-

The blaring of a horn pulls Jack Abbot back onto the sidewalk.

You’re still in his arms but his lips are far from your neck and the speed of your heart is testament only to the anxiety speeding through your veins.

“Yeah. Maybe. I- I’m not really sure,” try as he might, he can’t remember if he ever moved your can from the bench. Is it still there now, half empty and waiting for its owner to return? “I’m sure someone’ll throw it away.”

Like you can’t dwell on the thought for too long, you move on, and finally say what’s really been troubling you.

“I don’t know if I-” the words catch on your throat, dry from the beer and raw with emotion. “How do I go back?”

Vague, unspecified.

Jack, with years of becoming fluent in you, understands.

“You find a way.” He wishes he could give you something more helpful, more reassuring. All he can offer you is the truth. “It’ll be hard. Different to how it was before.”

“I don’t think I can-” once more, emotions cut you off.

You’re not crying, not yet.

Stubborn as he knows you to be, steadfast in your need to remain strong until the very end. It wounds him in a way that feels a little too deep for a man who should see you as nothing more than a coworker.

Attending physician. Nurse. Colleagues.

Those are the only three words that either of you should use to describe the other. Jack knows, has known so for years. So, why does he keep having to remind himself?

“I don’t think I belong there, Doctor Abbot. You saw it, I froze. I hesitated. You had to ask me twice for the scalpel, and then- We lost him. If I had just- I should have-”

The hand at your midriff finds your shoulder, turns you around, and then his eyes find yours.

“Stop that, now. That man, he was good as gone when he reached us,” it’s a brutal truth but one that needs to be said. Jack knew it then just as much as he knows it now; that red wristband was destined for peeds. “You could have handed me that scalpel at the speed of light, and it wouldn’t have changed a damn thing, okay?”

You take a steadying breath.

It doesn’t work.

Instead, Jack watches it shake right through your frame. Your eyes drift from his own, like if he stares too long, he might catch a glimpse of every self-blaming thought racing through your mind.

“D’you even realise how many lives you helped save today?” The question comes tumbling out before Jack can stop it, some enate part of himself screaming at him to reassure you, to scramble up all the fractured pieces of you and slot them back together. That’s an attending’s job, right? To keep watch over the crew, to take care of the crew. So what if you’re off-the-clock? “One-hundred and six.”

“I only worked on-”

“Doesn’t matter who you personally worked on. Every one, you hear me?” He gives a squeeze of your shoulder, tells himself it’s because he wants to get you to look at him. If the touch happens to ground him too, it’s a coincidence. “Every life we saved tonight, you had a hand in that. You being there mattered, we couldn’t have done it without you.”

The words settle over you like a blanket, wrapping you in warmth and promising you shelter.

They don’t erase the sadness, don’t make it dissolve into a puddle on the ground, left to be forgotten on the dirty surface of the sidewalk. But they do enough to ease the tension between Jack’s brows and to wipe a layer of uncertainty from your eyes.

Then, unable to help himself, Jack adds, “I know I certainly couldn’t. Can barely intubate without my favourite nurse at my side.”

You laugh, slightly.

It eases something in Jack’s chest, nonetheless.

“Doctor Robby says it’s not right for attendings to play favourites.”

Now Jack is the one laughing.

You take the chance to pry your bag from his grasp, throwing the strap over your shoulder. The first act of Goodnight.

“Yeah, well, come to me again when Robby starts taking his own advice.”

There is no grand goodbye between you.

Just an exchange of fractured smiles, a subtle nod of approval from Jack as you take the first step towards the building’s entrance, and the wave of your hand before you turn fully and dash to safety.

Before you can slip through the crack you make in the building’s heavy door, Jack calls out, “I’ll see you tomorrow, kid.”

Once again, not a question. An order.

The second time is all about convenience.

It’s the last night of your monthly seven-days-on, the kind of shift where the hours stretch themselves impossibly thin and it feels like you’re crawling towards the end, a goalpost that keeps moving an inch out of reach each time you start to feel relief. By the time you officially clock out, shooting off towards the locker rooms before Whitaker can ask you to accompany another patient for a CT or Princess can enquire on any night shift gossip, you’ve worked an extra two hours and the bags beneath your eyes feel so heavy, they may as well be dragging by your feet.

Out of your scrubs, back into clothes that only partially carry the sterile stench of bleach and blood, you busy yourself with cramming things into your bag while trying your best to let Mateo’s generosity down softly.

“It’s fine, really,” even you have to admit that you don’t sound as sure as you mean to be. For a moment, you mull it over, imagine the comfort of letting yourself sit back and relax in the passenger seat of Mateo’s car. The sooner you’re home, the sooner your week off can start, right? Still, something within forces you to decline. He lives on the opposite side of the city and, with gas prices rising and his body’s tank running on empty hours before his next shift, the last thing you want to be is a nuisance. “I don’t mind the walk, gives me the chance to decompress.”

Your fellow nurse looks at you with a level of distrust, doubting the reassuring smile you cast his way.

“Are you sure?” Mateo pushes, dragging his tired body along the lockers until he stands behind yours. His curls, freed at last from the constraints of a hair-tie, peek out from the door. “I really don’t mind taking you. I mean, no offence, but you look like you belong on the set of Night of The Living Dead right now. Don’t wanna send you off just to later find out you tripped over air and wound up back here as a patient.”

Slamming your locker shut and giving his shoulder a shove — with no force behind it and doing little to move the man — you roll your eyes, “I’m fine, dingus.”

“Dingus? What are we, five?”

“I don’t know, you tell me. You’re the one treating me like a toddler.”

“Like a toddler-?! I’m trying to be a good Samaritan. A gentleman!” You dodge Mateo’s hand as it reaches for your duffel bag. “Now quit being stubborn and let me make sure you get home safe-”

Everything happens so suddenly, your brain is forced to compartmentalise every action, step by step, as they unravel.

Mateo reaches for the bag, again.

You dodge it, again.

You glide to the left.

You run shoulder-first into a solid wall of warmth.

And there he is. Jack Abbot, freshly changed out of his scrubs. Hair wet from a shower, an overly woodsy scent clinging to damp skin, black t-shirt stretched a little too tightly over his chest. Despite his attempts to scrub the night away, he’s thrown on the same pair of cargo pants he spent the last fourteen hours rushing around in.

You almost want to chastise his stupidity, until you remember you can’t.

Not only is he your colleague, he’s your senior.

What business do you have telling a man like him to do anything?

“I’ll take her home.”

Never a question, always an order.

Unlike weeks ago, world turned upside down and veins full of sickly beer, you have half the mind to turn him down this time. To inch away from where your body collides with his. To reinforce your grip on the pink strap of your bag. To shake your head and offer a polite, though bashful, smile.

“Doctor Abbot, it’s fine, really! You don’t have to offer me a ride, I really do prefer walking-”

“I’m not offering you a ride,” Jack shuts you up with a pointed look, eyebrows jumping as though he’s daring you to shoot him down again. “Car’s in the garage, something’s up with the exhaust. I’m walking your way anyway, may as well let me keep you company.”

The truth is, you’re not sure why you are so hesitant to accept his offer.

Jack is a good guy, and he’s certainly not a stranger.

You’ve known him since you first stepped foot in the emergency room. Younger and brighter, the both of you. Back then, he was still new. Back then, you were still a student. Time passed, as it tends to do; Jack became a trusted figure of authority, you graduated right into the night shift. Brief exchanges of good morning, good night, and how are you? during the shift handovers blossomed into good job, good call, and I need you with me.

Lena likes to tease you, throwing looks over the top of her glasses every time he saunters up to the nurses’ station, raps his knuckles upon the desk and tilts his head towards whatever room he needs you in.

He likes me because I talk to the patients, is typically your explanation while Lena looks at you otherwise. Keeps them busy while he works.

He likes you because you’re a pretty young thing, Lena never fails to retort between answering the every whim of the staff, like the charge nurse she is. Gives those hazel eyes something to ogle.

“C’mon, are you really gonna run away from a disabled vet?” Jack pushes, shooting you that infamous silver-fox smirk. Damn him and those arms, muscles pulled taut as he crosses his hands over his chest, impatiently waiting for you to give in. “What if I stumble and there’s no one there to catch me? That’ll be on you, kid. Think you can handle it on your conscience?”

“Yeah, imagine you come back next week and find out gramps here split his head open on the curb,” Mateo chimes in from the sidelines, only for the amused expression to melt the moment you pin a glare on him. “What? The man made a good point!”

“Yeah, kid,” you barely have the chance to register how swiftly Jack tugs the duffel out of your grip, staking claim over your belongings and securing himself as a guardian to guide you home. “I made a good point. Now, are you gonna keep me waiting? ‘Cause I’d really like to see the tail end of this place at some point today.”

So you let him walk you home.

Steps less swayed, back more stiff, you try your best not to think about the last time you both walked this path. You, drowning in sorrows; him, swimming effortlessly with his head above the water.

The sun is rising slowly, rays of golden warmth kissing over the city. It’s not enough to fight away the bitter chill of winter, sending your hands diving into the pockets of a flimsy coat, reaching for a warmth they never quite find. Beside you, Jack is unshaken, barely bothered by the way his breath reflects back at him with each exhale.

“You did good today,” Jack says today in place of last night, the true mark of what the night shift does to a person’s perception of the world. Daybreak becomes dusk, while dusk becomes sunrise. Where others prepare to start their daily ritual of adhering to capitalism, you’re crawling into bed and giving in to the sweet relief of sleep. “Calmed that kid right down.”

You know immediately who he’s referring to.

James. A sweet baby boy, barely a day past 6 months, running a fever of a hundred and three, and sporting a nasty ear infection.

Understandably, he had been screaming up a storm.

Unfortunately, a certain patient nursing a headache was screaming even louder, profanities that pleaded for someone to Shut that fucking baby up!

Jack had offered to shut the patient up.

You had a more peaceful idea.

“Oh, uh, thanks,” god, you feel pathetic.

Praise is far from something foreign to you. Patients, colleagues, and friends alike are always firing off at you, sweet words that affirm the simple gestures and quiet good you bring into their lives. Whether it’s through fluffing a pillow, aiding in procedures, or gifting out your time freely; praise always worms its way into your ears.

But this is different.

Jack is different.

Every good job, every well done, every thanks, kid; it shoots right through you. Lightning that electrifies you, takes you from a state of near asystole to tachicardic in as little as the few seconds it takes his lips to shape the words. Your cheeks warm, your palms sweat. Words run from you, leaving you to grab at the few you can manage and stumble over half-formed sentences.

Worst of all, you think he knows.

He has to, right?

A man like him has lived through enough — lived long enough — to recognise the tell tale signs of the effect he has on people. Hardly anyone is immune or safe from his charms, from college kids that wind up in a gurney after having a little too much fun with a fake ID, to elderly women rushed in by their panicking children, afraid a bad cough or a sore back could be the sign of something far more sinister in the aging body.

“How did you know it would work?” It takes you an embarrassing amount of time to realise Jack is talking again, head turned to watch as you walk alongside him rather than focusing ahead. “Flipping him over?”

Right.

James.

The crying baby.

Your peaceful idea.

That’s what you’re both talking about.

“Old wives tale,” you finally answer, mind drifting back to the memory of your quick thinking. The screaming baby, the screaming patient. Your hands, gentle as they picked James up. The questioning look from everyone in the room as you flipped the infant over, face down and hovering a few inches off the basinet. And then, silence. No more screaming baby. “My mum used to do it to me, flip me over when she couldn’t get me to stop. It just, y’know, shocks the system. It’s like flipping a switch, turning the baby off.”

“Huh,” somewhere above, a bird chirps, singing a song of good morning. “I’ll have to remember that.”

And then, before you can think any better or question the possible implications, you open your big mouth, “Why? Thinking of stepping into fatherhood?”

Jack gives you the worst possible answer he could have come up with: “No such thing as too late, right?”

“Yeah, maybe. If you’re a man,” you huff. “I, on the other hand, am running out of time on my biological clock as we speak.”

“Then you should get to work on changing that. If you ever need any help with it, I’m always here.”

He says it so casually, like each syllable doesn’t inch you closer to an imaginary ledge.

But his words aren’t what move you to silence.

It’s the imagery they conjure.

Positive tests and hospital visits.

The cold touch of gel on your belly, the warmth of a hand clasping your own.

Sweat rolling off your skin, limbs tangling with yours upon a mattress.

You have to physically shake yourself out of the… Fantasy? Nightmare? Mortifying hell-scape where you’re envisioning what it would be like to let a very handsome attending bend you over and get you pregnant?

“Oh my god,” you half whisper, half yell. “Doctor Abbot, did you just seriously offer-”

“Oh, you’re a pervert!” he has the audacity to exclaim as he swings your bag and bumps it against your thigh, the mischief in his eye the only thing that gives him away. This is Jack, after all, a notorious and shameless flirt. His words didn’t mean anything beyond making you flustered. “I was just offering up my kind and professional aid, as a healthcare provider and an avid champion behind women’s health.”

Head shaking and shoulders bouncing; you’re caught under the influence of Abbot’s charm. Completely unaware of the false sense of safety he’s lured you into, taking you by the hand and dragging you out to sea, waiting until your feet no longer reach the bottom, and then he let’s go, leaving the currents to pull you under…

In simpler words, he asks you the very thing you’ve been avoiding: “How's therapy going?”

“Good. Great. Yeah, I definitely feel a lot… Better. Thanks,” the words taste bitter on your tongue, bursting out of you with an urgency.

Maybe, you figure, if you say it fast enough, there will be no space to doubt it, no time to notice the lie.

“That’s amazing,” he nods curtly, only for that easy-going lilt on his lips to twist into something a little more sinister, a little more interrogative. “Cause when I spoke to Caleb, he said you haven’t been showing up. You wanna pretend you found someone else, or are you gonna tell me why you’re not using the help that’s there?”

You knew this conversation was bound to happen, from the moment Jack referred you to the PTMC’s trauma specialist, high-strung and hell-bent on fast-tracking your progress to mental wellness.

Jack hadn't known about the nightmares.

Or the sickening doubt.

Or the fact you remember every face you treated that day.

Even then, he knew you enough to notice the shift in your demeanour in the days following the Pittfest tragedy. He knew you enough to pull you aside and introduce you to Doctor Jefferson.

Deep inhale, slow exhale. Eyes focused on the pavement ahead, you finally answer, “I just… I don't like it.”

Jack scoffs.

“Nobody likes therapy.”

“It makes me feel… weak. Like I'm not cut out for this.”

You make it to your apartment building sooner than you expect, despite knowing the exact time it takes to trek from your door to the entry of the PTMC.

Any smarter woman would use it as an escape plan, as an excuse to duck out of a conversation that has you shifting weight from one foot onto the other and searching for anything to look at other than the whirlpools of brown that the doctor has pinned on you.

It turns out, you’re not as smart as you think you are, because your feet remain planted on the ground and there’s a feeling hollowing out your chest at the thought of parting from his side.

You will yourself to strip your bag from his grasp.

“Look, kid, I can’t force you to go. I don’t want to force you.” It would be easier to focus on what Jack is saying, if he didn’t have to sound so distracting. Soft-spoken, deep voice, on the verge of begging at an altar if it will get you to listen. “But I know what this job does to people, how it rots away at us if we don’t cure our wounds. I’ve lived it. I’ve seen it. I don’t want that for you. So just… Try, would you? If not for you, then for the poor old attending who really needs the help of his favourite nurse and her magic hands that manage to soothe even the weepiest of babies?”

Echoes of Mateo’s voice ring in your ear, his overly enthusiastic exclamation of The man made a good point! on loop.

There’s every chance you’ve been damned by some higher power, afflicted to live this life with a particular weakness to the man before you. It’s the only thing that makes sense, truthfully, when you find yourself conceding without a fight.

“Okay.”

How unfair it is, for eyes like that to light up so easily, “Okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll… I’ll give it a try.” This time, there’s no bitter aftertaste to your agreement. Just the cold hard truth on your tongue: you’ll take a step down the path towards help, the path Jack put you on. “Can’t make it any worse, I guess.”

“That’s my girl.”

His words hit you like a sucker punch, straight to the gut and leaving you winded.

You stumble, both on your words and on the stairs, as you bid him goodbye and dash into your apartment building.

Safely tucked away at last, a whole week ahead without the threat of mortifying yourself in front of Jack Abbot.

The fourth time is a matter of protocol.

Jack once heard Dana ask Robby, “is it really a shift in the ED if you don’t end it wanting to quit?”

Today more than ever, he feels an itch to see resignation papers.

Not his own.

Yours.

Wrapped up in the active war zone of a multi-vehicle collision, Jack’s hands, eyes and mind were too focused on the woman actively bleeding out on the table to notice you slipping out of the OR, called upon by the charge nurse.

She needed you to check on a patient.

A favour, quick and simple. That’s all it was supposed to be.

There was never supposed to be a grapple for power. Or the clatter of metal meeting the ground. Or the crack of a skull following suit. Or the sickening sound of someone calling code Hula Hoop, when Jack’s hands are too occupied to run towards the source of violence.

It takes him twenty-eight gruelling minutes to make it free from the trauma rooms.

Jack strips himself of the PPE with haste, gloves and gown practically disintegrating under the force of his need to get out of the room and find out what happened, who it happened to.

He knows the answer is you before Mateo even gets the chance to speak.

Lena is on the phone, barking orders down the line. By the few words he manages to catch through his own deafening panic, the police no doubt sit on the receiving end of her call.

There are other patients to attend to, and other matters that are far more pressing — from an outsider’s point of view — that call for Jack’s immediate attention. He brushes them all aside, near blind to any consequence as something commands his feet across the department floor and straight for Exam Room 3, where the tiniest glimpse of you waits behind glass.

Shen is already tending to you, planted firmly by your bedside while the Pitt’s newest resident, Nazely, runs through your vitals. One of your arms is bent backwards, holding a compress to the back of your head. There’s a spatter of blood down the shoulder of your scrubs, splotches of a deep red staining the grey fabric. If Jack looks at it for too long, he’ll throw up, so his eyes shift to your face instead.

When he finds you smiling, a flood of anger finally collapses the immovable dam within him.

Jack frowns before he can even think to stop himself.

“What the hell happened?” Disgust stains each of his words, bleeding all over the room and stiffening the shoulders of those who potter around you, Nazely and the nurses alike.

Only Shen is unmoved by his outburst, turning to meet him with a deadpan stare and a mocking finger pressed to his lips, before he breathes out a gentle shh. “Watch it, old man, my precious patient’s got a nasty headache.”

There’s a likelihood Shen doesn’t get the chance to witness Jack’s eye roll, as the older man slips right through the gap between your gurney and his fellow attending. Without a word of acknowledgement tossed your way, he pries the cold compress from your fingers, commanding you to drop your arm and yield the task of holding it against your head over to him.

This time, Jack speaks a little softer, “Are you gonna tell me what happened?”

“I don’t know, Doctor Abbot, there’s this thing called HIPPA-”

“John, I swear to-”

“It was my fault,” your voice cuts through the bickering of the two attendings, snapping the heat of Jack’s gaze off of Shen and onto you. The frown lines along his forehead ease ever so slightly, against his will, as you insist on flashing him an even bigger smile than before. “Lena, she told me- warned me the guy was in an altered state of mind. I shouldn’t have- I know better than to turn my back on a patient in that state. But it’s fine-”

Jack starts up immediately, hackles rising on the back of his neck as he takes the stance of a defensive mutt, ready to fight tooth and nail to protect its owner, “It’s not fine-”

“I’m fine, Dr Abbot,” pathetically placid, the brush of your fingertips as they graze his arm is enough to neutralise his outrage, nostrils no longer flaring with each puffed out breath of frustration. “He grabbed me, we tussled, and then I slipped on my own untied shoe lace.”

“And where is he now? This altered patient,” his grip slips slightly on the compress, apologies flooding his tongue at the slight wince the action wakes in you. Ignoring your pain, you take more notice of the hostility in his stance, quirking an eyebrow up at him in a silent question. “Don’t give me that look. I’m a doctor, I want to make sure he’s getting the standard of care he deserves.”

When you try to shrug off his interrogation, Shen finally proves he can do something other than get on Jack’s nerves this evening and unveils the truth, “He took off, slipped out the ambulance bay when they called the code.”

“Son of a-”

“CT’s back,” Nazely, quiet as a mouse, had managed to slip out the room unnoticed, and now shoulder-barges her way back in, carrying your results and cutting off Jack’s foul mouth. “Other than a nasty bump, you’re in the clear.”

It’s not that Jack doubts the intern’s ability as a doctor.

And it’s certainly not that he doesn’t trust Shen.

It just so happens that, when the young resident goes to hand-off your CT scans to one of the attendings, Ellis comes knocking on the door, demanding the input of her most trusted attending.

Jack’s never been more relieved to come in second.

Hawk eyes scan over black and whites images, and only once he’s confirmed with his own two eyes that you truly are in the clear does Jack feel that tension in his shoulders begin to unwind.

In a room that now only houses two, he lets himself stand as close to you as he needs, shifting his stance to keep watch on the doors on either side of the room — a guard dog that can never deny it's nature to protect, even as it nestles into its owner.

He doesn’t quite nestle into you, careful to obey that fine line of decorum that exists between colleagues, between a junior and a senior, between a girl your age and a man as weathered as him. No matter the itch in his palm that begs to be scratched by skin no other than your own, he resists the urge to touch you.

Until you move.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Puzzled by the sternness in his usually nonchalant voice, you gaze over your shoulder at him, now sat upright and with both legs swung over the other side of the bed, “To finish… my shift?”

And that is how his hand finds your arm, a grasp that is gentle yet firm, allowing him to guide you back into your previous position. In his other hand still sits the ice pack, as he continues pressing it to your head.

“Uh-uh,” the denial is followed by a tsk, as he slips back into Doctor Abbot mode and puffs out his chest, taking on the persona of big, bad, commanding professional who knows exactly what his patient needs. “Your shift ended the moment that head of yours hit the ground. And since that asshole-” a pointed look shoots his way, warning in your eyes. Jack corrects his previous verbiage, “altered patient who did this took off, new protocol says I can’t let you leave hospital grounds on your own. Now unless you know someone kind enough to pick you up at 4 am, I suggest you take the opportunity to get some rest. I’ll come wake you when the morning shift zombies start strolling in.”

He leaves no room for debate.

He leaves the room, drawing the curtains and switching off the light.

If Jack were even a modicum more brazen, he’d shamelessly have locked the doors, ensuring you can’t slip away to return to your duties. In the end, he doesn’t have to worry about catching you back out on the floor, as when he checks on you some time after five fifteen, Jack finds you curled into the bed, the ice pack now fully melted and discarded halfway down the foam mattress.

By the time he wakes you, the clock has long struck seven and Robby is breathing down his neck, urging him to open Exam Room 3 back up to actual patients and not just that nurse you like to ogle.

Something in your demeanour has shifted.

Quiet, slow, weighed-down. You don’t walk; you drag yourself to the lockers. Head turned to the floor, body pulled in on itself, voice soft as you bid people good morning and goodbye.

Jack follows in your footsteps, hovering in the periphery of your every move, from your locker out into the street.

You don’t acknowledge him, barely even look at him, yet you yield easily to the way he takes the weight of your bag off your shoulder, slipping it onto his own. And so he gives you your space, walks a few paces behind as you both inch along the path back home — your home.

A shiver forces him to break the silence.

It creeps down your spine, from top to bottom, and settles into your hands, a subtle shake that not even shoving them into the pockets of your coat can quell.

“Wait a second, would you, kid?”

Jack’s never fought so hard to keep his voice soft. Despite his efforts, you startle at the interrupted silence. When your feet pause on the concrete, it’s unclear if it’s because of his request or your shock.

Instead of dwelling on the thought for too long, Jack focuses on his self-assigned task, shrugging his bag off of one shoulder and manoeuvring it to lay against his chest, allowing him to observe the contents as his hand riffles through it. Digging way down past rolls of bandage, a tube of specialised moisturiser, a few odd pairs of compression socks, and various other miscellaneous wonders, his fingers finally happen upon what they’ve been seeking: hand warmers.

“Here,” he starts up, as he hastily rips a packet open and shakes the bag. “This should get the cold out your bones.”

Jack has always prided himself on his rationality. Controlled and composed, with eyes that have payed witness to more horrors than the heart can cope with, it is a rare — if not impossible — feat to catch him sporting a heart rate higher than seventy three.

Watching you envelop the warmer in both your palms, soothing out the shake brought on by early morning chills and the residue panic from your attack, he’s tachycardic.

Months of awaiting the rise of an opportunity — since that second time he walked you home and watched you attempt to hide your skin from the wind’s bite with the flimsy pockets of your coat — buying those hand warmers has at last payed off.

He’s not quite finished digging through his bag.

Untangling the ball that has become of his wired earphones, Jack awaits permission before slipping one bud into your ear, the other into his own. He plugs them into his phone, swipes along his catalogue of playlists, and hits play on the first one that catches his eye. Medicine in the form of music, doctor’s orders.

And just like that, you’re both on the move again. The silence between you now carries a soundtrack, a mixture of eighties rock and seventies funk marking the beat of each footstep. Jack no longer hovers a few paces behind, welcomed back to your side by the short string of wire dangling between you.

Halfway through The Cure’s Just Like Heaven, Jack catches himself entranced in the shape of your lips as they mouth along to each lyric, and it strikes him, then and there, that maybe a moment like this is what inspires a musician to write, to eulogise an emotion through the eternal art of music.

For a man who long ago stopped talking to any version of a god that may exist, walking along by your side, hands brushing occasionally, bodies drifting closer to each other’s orbit; it’s as close to heaven as Jack may ever get.

Jack doesn’t leave you at the entrance to your building.

He holds the heavy door open for you, follows you in. Learning quickly that you live on the third floor, he bites back a comment about how shaky the elevator is, enduring the ride up. Following as you weave through the hall, right down to the end, he keeps quiet as you pause outside a door.

For a moment, he thinks that you’re going to say goodbye. That you’re going to thank him for walking you home, again, even after he’s told you it’s no bother. That you’re going to fish out your keys and slip through the door, starting the countdown on the clock of when he’ll get to see you again, later tonight for another shift in the pitt.

What Abbot isn’t expecting is for you to turn to him, cheek already streaked by a rogue tear, with another dancing on your eyelashes and promising to follow soon.

You take a moment to find your voice, lips parting and delivering the promise of your voice, “I’ve never felt unsafe at work.”

He doesn’t answer immediately, wanting to let your words simmer.

You have other plans.

“But when he-” the crack in his heart echoes the one in your voice, lips trembling over silent vowels as you fail to speak.

Tears roll down like waves, crashing against your chin and dripping onto the neckline of your sweater. And all Jack can do is clench his fist, hold it close to his side as blunt nails tattoo their print into the flesh of his palm. He cannot risk letting his guard slip, risk acting on an impulse you might not welcome.

“I was scared.” You breathe out, like the words you utter are a grave sin, the weight of guilt at last ripped off your shoulders. “Which is stupid, I know. I was fine, it was just a- I shouldn’t of-”

“It’s not stupid,” he interrupts, daring to take a step closer, hands still glued to his sides. “You were attacked.”

Like hearing it spoken aloud clicks something into place, gravity kicks in and you finally come crashing down, waves of tears now aided by a storm of overwhelming emotions. Shoulders shaking, breath stilling, eyes landing on every inch of the hallway but the place he stands.

Jack is no stranger to stomach-churning sights.

He’s withstood the horrors of a war zone, watched bullets hit their marks and shrapnel claim countless victims — his leg, to name one. From the brutality of war to the chaos of an emergency department, he’s bit back the acrid burn of bile at the back of his throat; it comes with each life he fails to save. There are nights where he cannot count the dead on both hands, never mind one. He has reckoned with the missing piece of him, where empty space now occupies the flesh that once extended below his right knee. Perched upon a shower bench, or throbbing with a phantom ache, or soothing vaselines and creams into an angry red stump, Jack learned to endure the pain.

But this — you, breaking down before his eyes, barely a step between you both — brings on a pain like no other, something he can't quite describe.

Cracks are forming in his composure, a trait he wears like armour, threatening to spill onto the dirtied floors of the building's hallway. His fingers slip, no longer balled into fists but pressed flat against the top of his thighs, drumming a nervous rhythm into stained cargo. When Jack tries to clear his throat of the ball forming within, he nearly breaks out in a cough, choking on the comfort he longs to speak into existence.

You interrupt his collapse of self-control.

Two steps is all it takes for your forehead to kiss his shoulder. Dampness overcomes the grey fabric of his shirt, your tears staining it a darker shade. Jack freezes at first, hands unwilling to move beneath the growing fear of touching you wrong, scaring you off. Then, slowly, as the weight of you presses deeper into the crook of his neck, his arms find themselves taking full possession of you, fingers splaying up the length of your spine and pulling you tighter against him.

For a moment, the outside world holds no consequence. Jack is not an attending, you are not a nurse. There's no decade of time between the age of your bodies, nor a quiet though respectful history of admiration between you as coworkers. That acceleration of his heart is not a reason to panic but a reason to rejoice, no fear of any wicked woes from years gone by sneaking back up to remind Jack of troubles past.

No, none of that matters in this moment but you, Jack, and the syncopation of your breathing.

One of his hands finds your hair, equal parts warm as it is large when it cups the back of your head and smothers you closer into his pulse point. Suddenly he’s grateful he reached for the expensive cologne today.

Clearing his throat, Jack attempts to self soothe from the sharp pain in his chest that grows with every sniffle from you, “Fear doesn’t make you any less brave.”

Your reaction is delayed, barely acknowledging the fact he spoke at first, until you’re bursting into a fit of subdued giggles.

While laugher wasn’t exactly what he was aiming for, Jack can’t help but feel like he's succeeded at something.

“Who knew you could be so deep, Jack,” he wrestles with his body at your soft reply, willing himself to not imagine you mentioning deep and his name in a much racier setting, preferably splayed out on the navy of his bedsheets, hair a soft halo that further cements your image as an angel… An angel he wants to commit every carnal sin against.

You move too soon for Jack’s liking, who nearly clings onto your figure until logic kicks in and reminds him how pathetic of an image that would paint. There's a streak of colour down your cheeks, stains where tears have dragged away the subtlest hints of makeup, yet Jack swears he’s never seen you in a prettier light than this: beneath the cold, buzzing light of the hallway, stepping back from his arms with a look in your eyes far lighter than the one you sank into him with.

“Easy on the teasing, kid,” the nickname has never felt more like a lie, sour on the back of his tongue. The last thing Jack Abbot considers you is a kid. Younger? Of course, but nothing short of a woman, in shape and in mind. “I stole that quote from my therapist actually, I’ll have you know.”

Then, for reasons less related to muscle memory than he would dare to admit, Jack shoots a wink in your direction.

Goodbyes exchanged and apologies for wet shirts successfully curved, Jack lingers by your door until he hears you twist the lock shut behind you, a solid frame of wood bringing the abstract divide between you into the world of the tangible.

Right then, right there, still running on that same spike of adrenaline from when he first heard the horrid cries of code Hula Hoop, Jack Abbot is struck over the head with a horrific realisation.

One taste of you in his arms is not enough, and it never will be.

Jack needs more.

The fifth time is a matter of routine.

You’ve always been a fiend for structure; a creature of habit. Doctor Jefferson reckons it’s the perfect trait to balance out the chaos your field of work brings into your life — when you reiterate that explanation to Jack, him retying his laces for the third time in a row and you reshuffling the same stack of papers for a fifth time, the attending is quick to agree.

“Have you seen yourself eat a sandwich?” Jack’s defensive retort comes no sooner than a moment after your hand teasingly swats his shoulder. Unbeknownst to you, the sudden sway he gives has less to do with the force behind your hand, and everything to do with how your touch grips at his soul. “You’re the only person I know that takes the exact same order of bites, every time.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” your protest is far from filtered through any seriousness, words that are soon followed by an amused snort. “No I do not!”

“Uh yes, you do,” back on his feet and standing straight, Jack’s gaze lowers to meet your own, sitting prudently at your desk and finding any measly task to occupy your hands for five more minutes, if only to continue giving your feet the break they need from running here, there, and everywhere. Force of his own habits, or perhaps a nervous tick, you watch as the attending occupies his hands with the shape of his stethoscope, two fists dangling from his neck as he curls his knuckles and tugs on the object.

With your apparent eating habit now dragged into the spotlight, Jack dismisses himself with nothing more than a cheeky lift of his lips, and a muttered Duty calls! as a set of EMTs come strolling in with a gurney.

The rest of your shift passes in a Jack-less blur, your eyes and ears too occupied as you trail next to Parker.

She had lay claim over you no more than seven minutes into your shift, face lighting up like a Christmas tree at the sight of you strolling out from the locker room, still rubbing the sleep from your eyes as your body familiarised itself with the shape of your scrubs. Without even so much as a hello, Ellis grasped a hand around your forearm and tugged you off towards triage, paying no mind to Jack’s questioning gaze as you both shot right past him. All she offered him was a, “Sorry, Abbot, your girl is mine for tonight.”

Abbot didn’t correct her.

Your girl.

Every part of your psyche is aware it’s a minuscule thing to get hung up on, to feel your stomach fluttering with an unknown anxiety each time you replay the scene; yet it happens all the same.

As you assist Dr Ellis, passing her a scalpel.

As you rip off dirtied gloves and replace them with a new pair.

As you stir sugar into your third coffee of the night, eyes staring blankly ahead while Ellis talks your ear off, venting about her recent misadventures in love.

“And then guess what she said!” Parker’s voice may as well be going in one ear and out the other, because you’re far from listening, eyes too busy following the shape of Abbot as he cuts down the length of a hallway, one of the younger residents glued to his side and pitching their newest case.

Has the casual dominance he wears like another layer of clothing always had this effect on you, firing off error warnings in your mind as you watch him steer his resident out the way of an oncoming gurney — a motion that reads as second nature, not even so much as a moment’s thought running through him before he’s executing the action.

Ellis snaps you out of it, fingers clicking in your face and blinking her back into focus.

“Are you even listening to me?”

“Huh? What?” It’s torture not to let yourself get wrapped up in Jack again as he perches himself across from you both, elbows braced on the nurse’s station and arms straining at the seams of a navy top you swear is purposefully two sizes too small. “Yeah, of course I am.”

“Then guess what she said next,” despite the distrusting glint in her eye, Dr Ellis spares you the humiliation of telling you she caught you staring at her attending.

“Uh… That she’s not ready for a relationship, even though you met on a dating app?”

“Worse!” she exclaims, right as you notice Jack’s hazel gaze meet yours, intrigue practically dripping off his eyelashes with every involuntary blink. “I don’t date Virgos. I mean, can you believe that? The girl is navigating her love life by letting goddamn starry shapes guide her!”

“Hey,” you feign a face of offence, hand clasped your chest as though to shield your heart. “Some of us just like the comfort of fixed compatibility.”

You watch as the betrayal settles over Doctor Ellis, glazing over her already dead-pan stare with a look of pure judgement, “Et tu, brute? Go on then, shove your knife deeper, would you ever date a Virgo?”

“I don’t know. I guess? I’ve never really thought about what signs I wouldn’t date,” you pause, the hairs on the back of your neck standing to attention as a strange sensation of being watched creeps over you. But as you look back over in Jack’s direction, you find him engrossed in his phone. A pitiful feeling dawns over you, baptising your heart with a hollow ache only disappointment can conjure. “Weirdly though, all my exes have been either a Pisces or Gemini. I don’t know what that says about me but-”

You finish on time, for once.

No last minute emergencies, no lingering to help Jack as he squeezes one last case into his already-finished shift, no letting your scrubs overstay their welcome; you pry them off like they are caught ablaze. And then you linger.

Hands occupy themselves with minuscule tasks, organising and rearranging the items in your locker; then unzipping your bag and going through each of your belongings. Eyes take the occasional peek towards the entries of the lockers, and ears perk up each time footsteps grow closer.

It’s only when Jack steps through the door at last, defeat written all over his face, that your mouth moves. First, stretching into a smile, and then forming a few words.

“Rough night?”

Relief ripples his features at the sound of your voice — like finding a streak of sunlight on a rainy day— bringing the tiniest spark of joy back into his sunken eyes, “Thought you’d have gone by now, kid.”

You waver, something about his question feeling accusatory, even if he delivers it in the gentlest of voices.

Why haven’t you left?

A troublesome cat, an unfinished box-set, and a bowl of leftover pasta sit in the confines of your apartment, practically begging you to race home back to them and delve yourself into comfort, that momentary pause to the chaos of the PTMC you struggle to find in the hours between shifts. A few months ago, you would already be a glass of wine deep and settling in for just one more episode of many, far from lingering like a bad scent amongst the lockers. But then again, a few months ago, the road home was a lonely one.

At what point did that seventeen minute walk become the highlight of your day?

Something warm meets your nostrils, dragging your attention across to where Jack now stands, spritzing his sweat-ridden neck with a few pumps of cologne. You don’t mean to notice the bottle has less than a quarter of its amber liquid left. You also don’t mean to reminisce on the first time you saw the bottle, clasped in Jack’s hands. The memory was one you thought would be singular, never once before having witnessed the older man groom himself after a shift.

Instead, it’s become his signature.

Clock out, hit the lockers, drown the stench of bleach with a warm musk, and then…

“Do you have any gum?”

You know this scene all too well, you almost get ahead of the script and answer before he even asks. Fortunately, you manage to play it cool, “Uh, let me check… Yes!”

Jack doesn't need to know that you didn’t really need to check.

And Jack definitely doesn’t need to know that you never used to carry gum, not until the first time he asked.

But does he need to move closer, that cloud of freshly sprayed cologne enveloping you in its arms, just to pluck the strip of gum from your outstretched hand?

Mint blankets over the notes of bergamot and black pepper, and Jack washes away the stale coating in his mouth, jaw wound tight as he crushes the white rubber beneath his molars.

He doesn’t inch away, retreat back to where he once stood. Instead, his hand finds your own, fingers bumping against yours and silently commanding you to relinquish control… Of the strap of your bag, of course, index and middle finger hooking beneath the padded fabric and slinging the bag over his own shoulder.

“You know,” you say, because you have to. If you don’t distract yourself with speech, you’ll drown in those hazel eyes, too close for comfort and, yet, nowhere near close enough. “You should really start bringing your own gum. Or a toothbrush, if you’re that scared of having a bad breath. What if I switch to day-shift, huh?”

Maybe Jack scoffs in disbelief, knowing there’s not a version of reality where you elect to work days. Or maybe the scoff is a way of downplaying his irritation at the thought, possessive over the sheer possibility of losing his girl to the likes of Robinavitch, hot-head extraordinaire with a touch of suicidal tendencies.

Whatever his reason, Jack is quick to mask the original expression on his face with an easy smile, one corner of his lips twisting upwards as he shrugs, “It’s less to do with not wanting a bad breath, more to do with the fact I like being in your debt.”

Frozen in shock, mouth slightly agape and brows furrowing, you barely register as Jack starts to make his way down the hall, snapping out your trance only as he calls your name.

Like a dog called to heel, you scurry off to join his side.

Jack stops informing you that he’s walking you home.

Without fail, every shift, he shows up, steals your gum, invades your space, and takes your baggage hostage, guiding you out of the ER with the ghost of his touch against your lowers back, steering you through the crowd of ailing folks and stopping you from diving in to help.

Conversation is no longer something the space between you demands, a comfortable silence settling in; the wind down of a hectic shift sound-tracked by the sound of a city waking up, the smack of your footsteps hitting the ground, and the occasional exchange of words.

Like today, as you pass by a unit under construction and Jack reads over the sign: a soon-to-open sushi restaurant.

“You ever been to Japan?” He asks, curiosity practically beaming from his eyes.

“Never. You?”

“Once, when I was young-” he hesitates, like he intended to add -er to the end of his word but decided against it. “Would you ever go?”

“To Japan?” He nods. “Yeah, maybe.”

His reply arrives like a confession, gentle and lacking the confidence you’ve come to associate with Jack, “I’ve been meaning to visit again.”

Silence keeps you both company the rest of the way, until your feet come to a halt outside your apartment block. Jack doesn’t intend to follow you to your door, not like the last time. Instead, he shrugs off your bag and helps you slip it over your own shoulder, using those large hands to scoop your hair up, rescuing you from the sharp sting of feeling the strap pull down on it.

Then Jack announces, just as lacking in confidence as the last time he spoke: “I’m not a Virgo.”

You stare at him, blinking slow, letting his words settle into the grooves of your brain and sink down until some part of you starts to make sense of them.

The more he speaks, the clearer it becomes what he’s attempting to say, “Or a Gemini. Not even a Pisces.”

Suddenly, those moments as you stood listening to Dr Ellis’ romantic woes, with the nurses station between you and Jack and fleeting glances snuck between nurse and attending, it all feels less innocent, less casual. More intentional.

Jack had been listening, hanging on to your every word as you entertained Parker and pretended to allow astrology to rule over the romance in your life.

“Just, thought I should let you know,” much to your dismay, Jack’s fleeing quicker than you can chase him, a sheepish smile overcoming his face and a hand reaching up to rub at the back of his neck. “In case you were ever wondering.”

Finally, there is the time where lines blur.

“Come on,” the tell-tale whine of a tipsy Trinity Santos rings out of your phone’s speaker, interrupting an intimate evening for three: you, your cat, and a cheesy horror movie, where the only thing scarier than the lacklustre VFX are the plot inconsistencies. “Even Crash- Ow! Sorry, I mean, even Vic is here!”

The last thing you want to do on your night off is to squeeze yourself into a pair of jeans and spend it in the presence of the exhausted day-shifters, four-drinks too deep for you to ever catch up, no matter how many shots you throw back.

Unfortunately for you, the only thing more convincing than Trinity’s pleading is Whitaker’s tipsy bellow of your name, followed promptly by, “I need a karaoke partner! Santos ditched me for Mel!”

It’s only with a groan that you agree, “Okay. Fine, yeah, whatever. I’ll come. But I’m having an early night! No seven am walks of drunken shame like last time!”

“Don’t worry meemaw, we’ll get you tucked into bed before three, latest,” Santos’ laugh rings down the line, the alcohol coursing through her veins amplifying the humour she already finds so easily in her own words. “Now hurry, the bar closes at eleven, then who knows where the night might take us!”

You enter the bar, already braced and ready for the impact of the Pittlings swarming you, like bees drawn to honey, a tangle of arms wrapping themselves around you. Only as Mel let’s you go — the last to do so — do you notice a figure you had not anticipated.

Dr Robby, sat in all his grumpy glory, greeting you with a tightlipped smile and a single wave of his hand. Before you can even open your mouth, ready to return the greeting, you take a step forward, heel landing in a puddle of spilled drinks, and nearly slip… only to find there’s a presence at your back.

Not touching you, but there; hovering, lingering. A buzz of energy trapped in the minimal space between the small of your back and the warmth of a hand.

“Careful, kid. There’s better ways to fall head over heels.”

Without even having to turn your head, you know it’s him.

You do so, anyway, and welcome in the sight of Jack Abbot clad in a pair of dark jeans, dark boots, and a white button up, sleeves rolled below his elbows and with the buttons undone enough to tease the way his collarbones sit dusted by freckles. Familiarity is in his scent, a cloud of his cologne settling into the atmosphere above your head, and the low lights of the bar catch on his pupils, reflecting warmth.

A million thoughts run through your head: how he’s no doubt come to keep Robby company, how the sleeves of his shirt are practically choking his biceps, how wrong it feels to see him surrounded by the Pittlings, how much of a relief it is to see him.

But all your mouth can manage is an unpleasant, “Why are you here?”

The table’s chatter comes to a pause, all eyes on you two as an exchange of chuckles, whistles, and even a soft ouch crawls its way out of Robby’s lips.

“No! Sorry, I-” hellbent on embarrassing yourself, it seems, you groan as your face dives into the safety of your palms, cheeks hot to the touch. “That’s not what I meant-”

Fingers seize your wrists in a gentle grasp, momentarily soothing over your rapid pulse point before they tug your hands away from your face, putting you back on display to the rest of the bar. All you see is Jack, in front of you, biting back laughter and fighting off a teasing grin.

“I know what you mean,” by the grace of something merciful, he lets go of you, sending your hands dropping back down to your sides. “I swapped with Shen. He needs my Sunday off.”

At the mercy of God, or the universe, Samira puts an end to your humiliation ritual and jumps out her seat, lacing her arm with yours, and drags you off in the direction of the bar, “Let’s get you a drink. Alcoholic, preferably!”

A half hour passes in the blink of an eye, clock striking ten and beginning the countdown to the bar’s closure. You down your first drink - a concoction of fruit juice, and syrup, and cheap liquor. The second is one you treat a little kinder, nursing your glass of vermouth and giving it the attention it deserves, each sip a chance to let the flavours melt into your tongue. By your third, the sweet feeling in your chest is enough to counter the bitterness of any drink, and so you move onto the cheap beer Trinity clings to like a lifeline.

Jack sits furthest from you, alternating between sophisticated sips of a bourbon and gulps from a beer bottle his hand engulfs entirely too easily. Despite the fact he sits knee-deep in conversation with Robby — who has spent most of his night complaining, no doubt, about a recent run-in with Gloria — while you lend an ear and a smile to Dennis as he pleads his case to you on why his friendship with a certain widow is perfectly innocent, the two of you orbit each other.

With eyes that wander, drawn from one side of the table to the other. At first, it’s bashful: whenever you catch him, Jack’s neck snaps his attention right back to his fellow attending. But as the drinks flow and time ticks on, it grows bolder, transitioning into a challenge; hazel eyes pinning your own into a staring contest as they watch you over the rim of his glass. You lose, conceding to whatever force draws your eyes down like magnets to the sight of his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows.

With fingers that toy a line between distance and friction. When you reach for the handful of nuts at the centre of the table, Jack’s fingers meet your own in the bowl. The graze is minute, barely a whisper of contact between skin, yet it shakes you to the core. Familiar fingers meet your skin as Jack makes his way around the table, excusing himself with needing a trip to the bathroom. It’s as he passes you that he strikes, a teasing drum of fingertips against your shoulder — mimicking the call of someone searching for your attention — that has your head turning to the right, only to find no one there. By the time you catch onto the fact it was Jack, he’s standing in a queue for the toilets and offering you a challenging raise of his brows. What the challenge is, you don’t quite know yet.

You’re not given the chance to dwell on the thought, not when Santos slams an empty bottle down into the centre of the table and declares, “Time to find out all your dirty secrets. Truth or Drink!”

A chorus of groans echo from the surrounding party, yourself included… Yet you all entertain her all the same, no one daring to challenge her pointed stare as she spins the bottle.

It lands on Mel, whose excitement lasts all of the seven seconds it takes Trinity to dish up a question.

Have you ever tried to break up a marriage?

Mel drinks.

Victim #2, much to Trinity’s delight, is Javadi.

Javadi, who already is nose deep in her glass before a question can even hit the table, slamming her empty cup down onto the table with a sheepish smile.

“Dammit, I was gonna tell Mel to ask about Mateo,” comes Santos’ disappointment.

The younger girl is just as quick to reply, “Why do you think I drank?”

Poor Robby ends up roped into the game next, following in the footsteps of the previous players and drinking instead of answering Javadi’s interrogation, “Do you follow me on TikTok?”

It’s when Dennis takes a swig of his colourful cocktail that Samira groans, surprising the entirety of the table as she throws her head back and exclaims, “Oh my God, you people are so boring! All too chicken to answer!”

Jack seems to take that as a challenge, for when the bottle comes to a halt, neck pointed in his direction after Dennis spun it, his arms remain firmly crossed over his chest.

“Shit. Wow, okay,” the younger boy is startled, no question burning on the tip of his tongue for a man he barely knows. So he settles with something simple, something impersonal, something with no deeper intention behind it to humiliate the man: “When was the last time you lied?”

Jack doesn’t answer immediately.

No, he makes a show out of turning his wrist up to his eyes, squinting as they read of the dials and his face settles into an emotionless expression, “Like… an hour ago?”

Quick as a whippet, Trinity dives at the first chance to investigate, “Who did you lie to?”

“That’s a different question,” Jack fires right back, reaching for the empty bottle to spin.

For some reason, his eyes are pinned on you. Even as the bottle lands on Trinity, they linger on your frame, that same unknown challenge in his stare.

The bar spits you all out at four minutes past eleven, bodies spilling out into the street. It’s chaos, voices of strangers mingling in with those of your coworkers. You’re being tugged each and every other way, a million questions fired in your direction.

C’mon, don’t you agree we should go Downtown?

No, no! We have to head to Passion!

Ew, Passion sucks. Every surface is… sticky.

Can’t we just go anywhere that offers karaoke?

Poor, unsuspecting Dennis is left flinching back in shock as a unified bark of No! comes from all the girls, disgusted eyes burning him for so much as daring to suggest such a thing.

“Wherever you kids are going, it won’t be with her,” Jack, emboldened by the booze in his veins, finally lets that hand of his fully press against your lower back. Your head turns to find him already watching you, amused by your puzzled look. “You’re working tomorrow.”

“So are they!” You exclaim, hand pointing out to the crowd of Pittlings. “They have work sooner than I do!”

“And that’s Dr Robinavitch’s cross to bear. You, on the other hand,” a finger drags down the slope of your nose, taping against the tip as Doctor Abbot leans down to your ear, like you’ll suddenly lose the ability to hear him over the noise of the city streets. “You’re my problem.”

It’s hard to breathe; the night air too cold, too thick, too drenched in Jack’s cologne.

You know his reputation; you’ve been victim to it. Jack Abbot, shameless flirt, tongue always locked and loaded with a comment capable of shaking even the most stable of heartbeats. But this is different.

This is his hands on you, this is his voice claiming some form of ownership over you, this is his stare tearing through the fabrics of your being and embedding itself inside your chest, awakening a kind of warmth that even the hottest Pittsburgh summer day would envy.

“Boo!” It’s Victoria who cries out, cutting right through the budding tension between nurse and attending, one-too-few seconds away from blossoming into something far from the professionalism of colleagues. “You’re leaving already!?”

Your mouth opens, ready to answer.

Jack steals the words right out your mouth, “Yes. I think it’s about time we leave, don’t you agree?”

Spotlight pointed at you, he puts you on the spot for the entire group to watch how you fumble over a simple, “Uh, sure.”

The hand against your lower back sticks to you like a magnet the whole way home.

A journey longer than the one you usually stumble down with Jack by your side. It would have made more sense to hail a cab, any rational adult would recognise that, yet neither of you dare to suggest it. Crowds of drunken fools spill out from bars and invade the sidewalk — the kind of stumbling messes that activate a cynical part of you, wondering just how many of them will wind up in the care of your colleagues before the end of the night — Jack answers their invasion by drawing you closer, footsteps fading to the back of yours as he guides you to walk ahead of him, the burn of his hand reminding you that he’s there, that you’re safe, that no wave of foreign faces is going to sweep you up and drag you away.

Even as you make your way up the stairs to your apartment floor, elevator out of service, Jack lingers a few paces behind, watching your every move.

It’s as your fumbling around in your purse, fingers blindly rummaging through loose change and half-empty lip gloss tubes in search of the keys to your apartment, that Jack takes it upon himself to start spewing revelations.

“It was you,” he says, pauses and, when met with your questioning eyes, glancing back at him over your shoulder, clarifies. “The last time I lied, tonight. It was to you.”

A few seconds pass in silence, and then, “Oh.”

“Shen doesn’t need Sunday off.”

“Oh.”

“I knew you were off tonight.”

“Oh.”

“Oh,” he leans down, enters your orbit and invades you with the knowledge of how solid his chest feels pressed against your back, and how warm his breath feels, brushing against the shell of your ear as it mimics your repetitive exclaims of shock. “‘S that all you know how to say?” Before you can politely beg him to back up, for the sake of your sanity and your fraying willpower, hanging on by a single thread that seems more than eager to snap and unleash the burning in your loins upon the older man, Jack shuffles a few steps back and takes a deep breath — the kind that has his shirt straining against the growing width of his chest. “It’s not the first time I’ve lied to you.”

“Oh- Wait,” Cut off by your own confusion, you spin on your heel a little too quickly and stumble forward, hand inches away from rediscovering the meaning of balance against his chest. “What have you lied about?”

“There we go, finally using that pretty voice properly again,” if you had known this was what a tipsy Jack Abbot behaved like, you would have offered him a drink months ago. Especially with the way his cheeks sit blushing in red, a shy imagery to contradict the growing boldness in his words. “My car was never in the garage. I even drove it to work that day. But you wouldn’t accept Mateo’s offer for a lift, so I figured I’d need a real good excuse to walk you home.”

Clarity washes over you not in repeated waves, but in one single tsunami.

Overwhelming, a wall of emotions flooding over your being. You mentally retrace each step you’ve taken in his company. Each walk home, each careful conversation exchanged between you. Every cloud of worry that hovered overhead, convincing you of a reality where your presence and the act of accompanying you home is nothing but a burden to Jack Abbot, a simple kindness that’s gotten out of hand and now he does not know how to back out of.

But his words bend that reality, until it snaps in half and ceases to exist. Because here Jack is, telling you he orchestrated reasons to walk you home, excuses to linger in your presence after the night shift came to an end and patients are no longer a force that brings you into one another’s proximity.

Jack Abbot wants to be around you. So why on Earth would you part from him now, just because your finger had hooked itself around a keyring?

“Jack,” in the quiet of the hallway, his name echoes off your lips, uttered more intimately than ever before. “Do you want to come in for a drink?”

Your confidence is a case of easy come, easy go; dissipating before you can even wait for a proper reply from the man. Anxious thoughts dialled up and overloading, you turn back to face your front door, shakily shove the key into the door, and unlock something that feels a little more than just your apartment, a point of no return awaiting in it’s premises should Jack choose to accept your offer.

Walking in before Jack can speak, you get your answer with the gentle closing of the door behind you and the clearing of Jack’s throat, swallowing back what may just be a similar ball of emotion swelling within your own.

If you had anticipated Jack Abbot standing in your living room tonight, you would have at least attempted to tidy up.

Then again, if you had anticipated this, there’s other things you would have done differently… You would have made sure you actually had something to offer him to drink, for starters.

“Uh… I don’t have any beer,” you mutter, more to yourself than Jack, one hand holding the fridge door open and the other rummaging through the half-empty shelves, like you might somehow unveil a surprise bottle of anything-worth-drinking. “I can offer bourbon? Maybe? Or I’ve got leftover wine. Might have gone bad though. Shit, sorry, I really don’t have anything to offer.”

Closer than you anticipate, hovering by the entry to the kitchen, Jack rasps a careful, “Just you is fine. ‘S all I’m really here for.”

Like two opposing magnets drawn together by an unseen force, distance becomes null and void as eyes meet and you both inch closer, devouring the space between you with careful steps. Face to face at last with everything that has been brewing beneath the surface of your interactions, you barely squeeze out a whisper of his name before Jack claims your mouth as his prisoner.

Lips lock like shackles, trapping you in place against the older man. Hands find one another’s frames, his large palm staking claim over the back of your neck and tilting your face into the perfect angle for him to deepen the kiss, tongue teasing with a graze over your lower lip, the beginning of a chuckle bubbling in his chest as you answer his touch with a pitiful whine, before he finally licks into your mouth. Your own hands carve out a path for themselves, sliding over the expanse of his broad shoulders, curling around the tightness of his biceps, trailing down his waist to find the worn out leather of his belt, two finger hooking beneath and drawing his body closer — like any space still exists between you.

He lets you move him all the same, walking yourself backwards and dragging him along until your back hits whichever wall sits the closest. Any memory of the layout to the apartment you’ve spent the last five years living in has melted away in the heat of Jack’s mouth, kissing you like he has something to prove and this is the only chance he’ll ever get.

Squeezed flush against one another, no barrier but clothes sitting between, you feel the shape of him pressing into your hip and making you painfully aware of the fact Jack Abbot, the older attending you forced yourself to learn to observe quietly and cautiously from a safe distance, now has his semi-hard cock straining against you. That realisation must run through you too viscerally, for Jack’s soon tearing his mouth away from you.

“Shit- Sorry,” he just about gasps the apology out, lips incapable of drifting too far for too long, a smatter of kisses meeting the edge of your jaw as you feel Jack angle his hips away from you. “Been a while since I last-” He’s cut off by his own groan, reactionary to the weight of your hand landing atop the bulge of his jeans, palming at the length of him in hopes of finding out just how hard he can grow. “And I’ve just been thinking about this, ‘bout you for so long. Just-” greedy mouthed, even his desperate please for apology are interrupted by the drag of his tongue over your pulse point. “Ignore it, I’ll keep myself in check. Don’t wanna come on too strong, scare you off.”

It’s a bit late to retreat now, is what you want to say, with the way your thighs are squeezing together in search of any friction and the cotton of your panties sticks uncomfortably against your folds.

But Jack is blushing enough as it is, tips of his ears as red as you imagine his hair once was, face burning hot as he burrows it deeper in your neck. So you spare him some kindness and settle on the buckle of his belt, choosing direct action over teasing words.

A switch seems to flip at the brush of your fingers as you reach for Jack’s belt, attempt to dive beneath the waistband of his boxers. The older man stiffens against you, in more ways than one, head rising from your neck like a cobra enchanted by the notes of a flute. Thick fingers curl around your wrist, prying your hand from him gently yet accompanied by the disapproving tut only an authority figure could conjure, moments away from teaching you a lesson.

His chastisement isn’t vocal but physical, dragging your wrist up to his mouth and greeting it with the gentlest press of lips, right where your pulse recounts a soliloquy on the affect this man has on you, heart rate spiking. Jack lingers, face turning to brush the tip of his nose against your skin while his eyes slip shut, like he’s drowning himself in the fading notes of your perfume. Then, he jumps right back into action, manoeuvring both your arms above your head and pinning them against the wall.

“No one ever tell you to keep your hands to yourself, sweetheart?” No man’s condescension has ever sounded so appealing, so soft. A softness he pairs with the brush of fingers, his free hand tracing a path for itself down the length of your torso, catching on the waist of your jeans and lingering, only to continue its descent over the shape of your thigh. “‘S okay, I don’t mind being the one to teach you.”

“Doctor Abbot,” you breathe, something stirring in your bones the longer the man stares at you, eyes spilling secrets of every degenerate thought passing through his mind.

“Really?” Jack reclaims your skin with his mouth, teeth scraping over your clavicle before his tongue tastes your flesh, a slow drag of the wet muscle halfway up your neck. Your pulse, a bass drum thrumming against the restraints of your veins, brings him to a pause, luring him into peppering a series of chaste kisses over the spot. All the while, his hand is familiarising itself with the curve of your thigh, fingertips dragging over the seam of your jeans and following its journey north, inching towards your clothed core. “Still calling me that, even while I’ve got my hand between your thighs?”

Maybe the alcohol is clouding your judgement, eradicating any hint of the usual hesitation that has ruled over past encounters like these, leaving you shy and bashful, and far from the kind of person willing to rip their aching desire right out their chest and present it to it’s new owner, heart in hand and lust in eyes.

The unexpected confidence boost has your hips shamelessly rolling into the palm of Jack’s hand as he engulfs the expanse of your core. Breathing stalls as the inseam of your jeans brushes against your lace-covered clit, pulsing with anticipation of whatever the older man plans to do with you.

“You’re beautiful, y’know that?” It’s unfair, hearing such earnest words falling from his lips, a touch of breathlessness to further sweeten the desperation in his voice; all the while one hand tightens it’s grip on your fidgeting arms and the other, firm and steady, undoes the button of your jeans and begins drawing the zip down at an agonizing pace. “Dangerously so. Might have to file a complaint soon, tell the board how inappropriate it is of you to distract me with just a smile while we’re meant to be saving lives.”

A sigh, delicate as silk, robs you of the satisfaction of replying instantly, body too busy accustoming itself to the intrusion of his hand on your skin, explorative touches that dip beneath your waistband and drag slowly through your folds.

Stealing yourself and silencing the part of you that wants to melt into his hand and let him remould you into something new, you eventually manage an amused, “I can always change departments, Dr Abbot. They’re always looking for extra hands with the inpatients.”

“Do that, and I’ll drag you back, kicking and screaming, if I have to.”

Beneath your clothes, the tip of Jack’s middle finger has taken to dipping between the warmth of puffy lips, collecting a dollop of your liquid pleasure, and lathering it over the desperate nub of your clit in gentle circles. His movement is casual, careless, not a hair out of place or a shaking of nerves evident on the man in front of you. Just the hungry eyes of a man in control, ready to take his time tearing you apart bit by bit, in a way only he can put you back together after.

“Fucking soaked,” Jack’s comment feels aimed at his own ears, a passing acknowledgement of your state that you just so happen to hear as he brings a second finger up to lazily play with your clit, all the while the wet patch soaking into your panties grows, no doubt seeping through lace and staining denim. “‘S actually a little pathetic, kid. I’ve barely even touched her and she’s weeping for me.”

Heat burns at your cheeks, the foul nature of the words leaving his mouth bringing you to a confusing state of embarrassment mixed with the headiness of lust, clouding your better judgements and axing whatever part of your brain is in charge of overthinking, just in time to halt a spiral down into the dreaded pits of sleeping with a coworker, a man you’ll have to continue to see nearly everyday, for better or for worse — everything hinges on how tonight ends.

There’s no time to worry about the end when Jack is just beginning.

Those same fingers that teased at your clit dip lower, nestling themselves between your folds. As though shocked by your warmth, you feel more than hear the man groan into your neck, a half-bitten back string of curses parting from his pretty lips.

“Can I, sweetheart?” His plead for permission pulls you out of your body momentarily, mind drawn away as it attempts to recall the last time a man bothered himself with asking before taking. “Need to know how she feels, ‘s all. Can you let me do that, hmm? Let me fill her with my fingers? Promise I won’t ask for more, won’t push my luck. Christ, already know I’m pushing it now, thinking an old man like me has any business messing with a pretty thing like-”

“Yes, Jack!” Cutting off his rambling mouth, your hips keen into the tantalising drag of his fingers through your slit, a back-and-forth motion he’d spent his whole monologue performing idly, with an occasional torturous catch of his fingertips on your entrance, threatening to delve deep only for him to course-correct and set them back on the track up the length of your slit. “Please, God, just- Touch me.”

“Greedy girl,” he tuts, face winding it’s way out from your neck just for his hazel eyes to observe your face as he finally breaches his fingers past your entrance. “Am I not already touching you?”

Replies are lost to the kitchen air, breath knocked out your chest in one foul swoop as he burrows his fingers knuckle-deep. Your lips part, your eyes roll back, and you grind down against his hand, as if by some grace of god he’ll hit some place deeper inside, fingers already pressing against that spot inside you as Jack curls them towards himself, putting the come in come-hither.

The angle is awkward, movement hindered by the tight squeeze of your jeans around his wrist, yet Jack works through the strain, digits pulling out at a slow, agonising pace, only to slip back inside equally as slow. It’s like he’s making you savour the feeling, imbedding every ridge and wrinkle along his fingers and knuckles into your memory, so the next time you find yourself hot under the blanket and struggling to sleep at night, your own hand won’t bring you half the relief.

His fingers fall into a rhythm, a back and forth tease that sets your nerves ablaze and unravels a ball of desire you long ago tossed aside, four weeks into working at the Pitt and telling yourself that those pesky butterflies you felt every time a certain attending crossed your path were nothing but newbie nerves. Marking the tempo of his touch, the repeated squelch of your cunt being filled by his fingers rings out; the deeper he dives, the wetter you grow. Your moans follow along to his beat, a perpetual huff of half-formed whines and hitched breaths, echoes of pleasure that claw their way out your throat and shamelessly sing him a song of praise.

“Ah, ah,” Jack mimics you, hot breath brushing against the shell of your ear as he feeds your moans right back to you in a tone so condescending, you feel your toes curl. “‘S that all you know how to say?”

Those same words and that same mocking tone from the hall have your skin crawling with need. A need to press yourself closer, until all your frayed edges tangles themselves in Jack. A need to fight against the hold of his hand, wrists squirming and fighting for release in hopes of winding your arms around his broad shoulders. A need to give in to the overwhelm, dive head first into the waves of desire that roll over you… So you do.

Jaw slack, toes curled, head thrown back. An orgasm crashes into you with the force of an ocean, sweeping you under and flooding the palm of Jack’s hand with the sticky sweet evidence of how good he’s making you feel.

His fingers fuck you through the experience, lazily curling and stroking the fire, drawing out your pleasure for as long as your body allows him, until a dry sob racks through your chest and tears dance along your lash line, head shaking as you protest the overstimulation.

The retreat of both Jack’s hands, slipping from the waistband of your jeans and relinquishing the grip on your wrists, it does not grant your poor heart respite, a chance to calm the beating it’s delivering against your chest. Instead, he doubles the speed, raising the fingers stained in your own slick and brushing the tips against your lower lip.

“Say ah,” not a question, a demand. Jack is an expert at ordering you around in a manner soft enough, confident enough to have your head reeling and will bending to his every wish.

Under the effect of his darkened gaze and the intoxicating scent of his cologne mixing with the beer on his breath, how can you do anything but let your mouth fall open?

Your first thought is disbelief, running cold down your spine at the unexpected sweetness that coats your tongue; sweetness that melts into a sharp tanginess, giving way to a thirst like no other, glands going into overdrive and wetting your palate. Drunk on yourself, you let your eyes slip shut and your lips wrap around the stretch of Jack’s fingers, a pleased hum bubbling up your throat as his digits apply the slightest of pressure against your tongue, testing the waters of your gag reflex as he slowly pushes himself deeper in your mouth, soaking himself in your spit.

“That’s it, pretty girl,” Jack’s spare hand has found its way down to your waist, slipping over the slopes of your curves and perching itself atop your hip, where he delivers a firm squeeze. “Made a real mess of my hand, ‘s only right you clean it up.”

By the time Jack pulls his hand back, a string of saliva connects his fingers to your lips and a craving is reawakening between your thighs. Afraid to fracture the fragile atmosphere between you and the attending, you choose to lead with action again, one hand grappling at the buckle of his belt while the other begins to hastily drag your jeans down the swell of your ass, skin-tight fabric stubbornly refusing to give way and grant you the freedom of air against your legs.

You only make it so far, barely managing to pry apart his belt when Jack intercepts your desperate touching, hands reclaiming possession over your own and shooing them away. With a pause for consideration, the mental cogs visibly turning behind his eyes, you watch as the attending descends the path of your body, peeling down your jeans along the way. A hiss is bitten back as he bends his knees, one foot planted firmly on the ground the other — his right knee — kissing into the kitchen floor, prosthetic calf laid behind him.

It’s the brush of a breath against your thigh that has you lurching back into your body, ignoring the worried nagging voice that wants to drag him off his knees for the sake of his health and comfort… and instead focusing on the part that wants him off his knees for a far more selfish reason.

“Jack,” your attempt at protesting is pathetic, a well-intended firm call of his name fracturing midway and collapsing into a whine as the man takes to laving his tongue up the expanse of your inner thigh, inching dangerously close to where you can feel your centre throbbing, crying out for him in morse code, desperate for the simplest of touches so long as the one delivering it is the older man currently kneeling on your kitchen floor.

Fingers wind in greying curls, the faintest burn of auburn and copper tickling against your knuckles. You attempt a tug, gentle enough to do no harm yet firm enough to get the point across of what you want: Jack, up and on his feet.

The man does not take the hint, instead he inches further up your leg, nose nuzzling against your mound. Blood rushes in every direction as you witness him pull in a sharp inhale, flooding himself with the intoxicating scent of your would-be pheromones.

“I want to taste you,” he says it with a fire behind his eyes, words impassioned by an animalistic desire; any woman would be mad to not throw herself at him, plead him to take anything and everything from her, however he should please.

Which makes the confusion burning his features more than understandable as he takes in your shaking head and your gentle mutters of no, followed swiftly by, “I need you to fuck me, Jack.”

Hands seek purchase on your hips, grip squeezing a little tighter as he steadies his prosthetic back onto the floor and brings himself back to his standing height. You can see the hesitation, in his eyes and in his fingers, as he slowly continues the undoing of his belt, slow and calculated movements that drag cracked leather free and loosen the clutch his jeans have around his waist.

“Who knew the Pitt’s sweetest nurse could be so demanding?” he muses, like joking might distract you from the cloud of doubt that has so visibly rolled in and settled above you both.

You entertain him, even if only for a moment, “Only when I don’t get what I want. Are you gonna deny me, Jack?”

“So you’re a brat,” bypassing your question, Jack drags the zipper of his pants down and leans his face in, lips brushing against your own with the ghost of a kiss. “Noted.”

His kisses paint a pretty picture of distraction, peppering affection over inches of skin that had spent so long being neglected, you’d nearly forgotten they existed. Over the swells of cheeks, down the slope of a throat, onto the point of a shoulder and back up to the shells of an ear. While your heart wants to sink into the feeling, fall back and let him lather you in every mouthful of affection he can sear against your burning skin, your brain takes the reins of the situation and forces your hands onto his shoulders.

“What’s wrong?” Direct and to the point, you avoid the time-waste of skirting around the subject and confront the change in his demeanour head-on, the sudden hesitancy. A sense of panic licks up your spine, filling your mind with thoughts of Jack regretting having started this, crossing over the safe lines of coworker and marching across into trickier territory. “If you don’t want- I’d understand, okay? If you say it was just the heat of the moment, and the beer, and that you no longer want-”

“What? Baby, I promise this is anything but- Fuck,” Jack practically collapses into the groan that tears out of him, hand falling over his face and pressing into the corners of his eyes as he struggles to get the words out fast enough, a soul-crushing need to put an end to the rejected twinkle in your eyes as you offer him a gentle smile, the kind offered by politeness instead of happiness. Jack hates it on you. “I don’t know how to explain without sounding conceited.”

“Oh-kay,” your confused exclaim melts into acceptance, though your eyes remain sceptical as they trail over the attending’s face, awaiting further explanation. When it doesn’t come, your eyebrows jump, a visual nudge that has Jack finally spilling confessions all over your kitchen floor.

“I’m… Big.”

And cue the laughing track.

Watching as the tips of his ears bleed a bright red, you bite back and swallow down a comment about how his height is a little over average at best. Because when a puppy-eyed Jack Abbot warns you of his size in a manner that implies real danger, the last thing you should do is turn his panic into a joke.

“How big?”

“I don’t know-” Then he cuts himself off, like reality has struck him over the head and he remembers he is, in fact, a medical professional and, though he may never have measured his own endowment, surely he can guesstimate. “Maybe like eight. Inches, I mean. And, um…” what a thrill to see Jack reduced to a mumbling mess, a man so usually consumed by his flirty nature, a charm so potent that it pours off him in rivers, soaking all who wind up in his vicinity. Yet here he stands, barely enough space for a deep breath between you, shyly detailing the heat he’s packing beneath the waistband of his trousers. “I’m- I mean it’s pretty thick, too.”

Silence haunts the space between you.

A sick satisfaction pools in your loins, knowledge renewed on the fact you’re bare from the waist down yet all the power seems to sit in the palm of your hand in this moment, Jack’s fate hanging in the balance of however you choose to react to his assumed shameful confession.

So when all you offer is cocked head and a tongue poking against the inside of your cheek, Jack just about falters into insecurity, seeking validation before you even have time to utter a word.

“I’m not bragging. Or, you know, talking myself up. It’s just- I don’t want to hurt you, or to-”

“Take it out.”

His neck practically snaps as his gaze flies from the floor to your eyes, hazel rings that grown thinner under the enlarging of his pupils, lust bleeding into his stare as he managed a careful, “What?”

“This big dick of yours,” emphasis to your words, you finally let yourself look down and catch sight of him, firm and heavy beneath the confines of dark blue denim. The view of his bulge alone is enough to have your mouth watering, but you can’t let it slip, not when your grip on the reins is finally secured. “Let me see it, Doctor Abbot.”

The switch is instant.

Bashfulness melts away and the cloud of doubt is blown away as a cockiness overcomes Jack’s features, face splitting into a shit-eating grin. Fingers work fast this time, dipping beneath the elastic of his boxers and granting his cock freedom at long last.

No trace of a lie in his words; Jack is big. Uncut, with a rosie red tip that’s already made itself known, glistening with the rogue drops of precum that smear the mushroomed head. At the base sits a bush of hair, groomed enough to show you he cares enough to trim it yet overgrown enough to tell you it’s been a few weeks, silver locks threaded through a valley of dark auburn. Freckles dust his skin in subtle specs, while a vein draws a colourful line up the length of him.

You can practically feel yourself throbbing, calling out for him with each moment that passes, your eyes glued to the phallic shape. Jack, evil incarnate, has the gall to lick a stripe up his palm, hand wrapping around himself and daring to give a slow pump.

“I’m gonna need you to stop looking at me like that,” Jack cuts himself off with a hiss, teeth taking his bottom lip hostage as a chuckle rustles out from the depth of his chest. In that moment, you swear nothing has ever been more attractive than the gentle disapproving shake of his head as he rakes his stare down the shape of you, eyes clinging to where your thighs sit squeezed together, stealing any amount of friction you can find. “‘Else I might cum all over myself like some desperate college kid.”

You reach your hand out, searching for traction and finding it in the belt loop of his trousers, still clinging to his tree-trunk thighs. And thank god for that, for it allows you to tug the man closer, chest to chest, knuckles brushing over the hood of your clit as he works his hand over his cock one last time.

“Then give me a reason to stop looking, Doctor Abbot,” swallowing back any lingering shame or shyness a less hornier version of yourself possesses, you curl a hand over the top of his and stare into pools of hazel as you speak, “Don’t you want to make my eyes roll back?”

Never has a man looked so eager to part your legs, the skin of his knuckles burning white as he takes a hand to the back of one of your knees and hooks it over his waist. Left with no choice but to keep your thighs spread, you indulge yourself by glancing down at the view. Visual sin, erotica live in emotion, Jack guides the blushing tip of his cock up the length of your cunt, soaking himself in your arousal. A mutual gasp echoes out into the kitchen on his second swipe, head catching on your entrance only to be denied easy access, hips rolling only to watch himself press against your clit.

“Don’t care if it hurts,” bordering on lost in lust, you barely register the words as your mouth moves. Jack, on the other hand, clings to every syllable, awaiting whatever salvation they promise to bring him. “Just wanna feel you, Jack. All of you, please.”

“Shh, shh,” his hushing is full of mockery, like the last thing he really wants is to silence the desperate plea in your voice. He does so, unintentionally, by finally lining himself up with your entrance. “Don’t need to beg, baby. I’m gonna give it to you, all of it. Just be sure to cry real pretty for me if it gets too much.”

Something animalistic comes over you as Jack feeds the first inch into your cunt.

The burn is there, the stretch of long-unused walls remoulding themselves around the shape of Jack. But any pain is sweet, the kind that tickles at your nerves and has your heart speeding up, adrenaline activated and intoxicating your bloodstream.

Jack, conscious of the crease between your brows, is tentative, careful. He gives a barely-there thrust, letting himself inch just a little deeper into the pulsing warmth of your pussy. There’s a vein across his forehead that makes itself known, the force of his concentration paired with an accelerating heart rate drawing it to front and centre stage of his face. All it does is make you want him more, deeper, quicker.

Words cease to serve any purpose as the two of you give in to the physical, hands that grasp and pull and anchor themselves atop one another’s skin. You think you breathe some version of his name, but the letters are knocked out of you as your fingers tangle themselves in grey curls and, in the blink of an eye, Jack’s pelvis sits flush against your own, cock buried right to the deep hilt and face collapsed into your own, foreheads exchanging sweat as his temple kisses against yours.

A pitiful whine claws its way from you, suddenly painfully aware of how well Jack fills you, stuffed to the brim in a way no man before has quite achieved. You feel him in your cunt, in your guts, in your lungs with every shaky breath you pull; you are drunk on the attending and the feeling of his cock pulsing deep within your gummy walls.

“Sorry, baby. I’m so sorry,” apologies are overflowing from the fountain of Jack’s mouth, brushing against your cheek in tiny puffs of breath as the older man blesses you with a whimper so pathetic you nearly come undone right then and there, cunt ready to spill all over his throbbing cock. “Didn’t mean to- shit. Wanted to take it slow, ease him in, but god… You’re just so tight. And warm, and- Ahh! And your nails, they- they scrapped against my scalp and you were tugging on my hair and I couldn’t help it, baby.”

How can you even contest or complain, when you feel like a live wire, thrumming with a deadly kind of energy that threatens to burn everything and anything that touches you and isn’t Jack Abbot?

His hips rock back slightly, only for him to fuck back into you, tip to cervix. The leg hooked around his waist tightens around him, holding Jack as close to you as possible. The scene between you plays out with an intensity one could cut with a knife.

Slow and shallow rolls of hips, punctuating each shaken breath you pull and forcing the air out of you in pitiful whines and moans, songs of praise for Jack's viewing pleasure.

Foreheads together, breaths mingling until it’s hard to tell where your exhale stops and his inhale starts. Both nurse and attending, junior and senior, woman and man; whatever title you and Jack may be addressed by, you’re equal measures of the same mess, staining one another with nails that scrape over freckled skin and five o’clock shadows that burn at cheeks.

“Look at you,” Jack marvels, one hand scooping up to cup your face and remind you of how big his hands look — hands you spent weeks wishing would reach for yours during quiet walks home. Yet now one cradles you while the other grips at your body, tilts your hips at angle that drives him just that little bit deeper. “Taking it like a good girl, no whining or complaining that it hurts.”

What really hurts is that he is still moving at an agonisingly slow pace, torturous drags of his thick length along your walls. If you weren’t speechless under effects of his ministrations, you’d maybe find the ability to tell him this.

“You’re just grateful to have something to fill this pussy, huh?” Something catches in Jack’s throat, a fractured groan that raises a sudden alarm. It feels different to previous ones, born from somewhere deeper, more painful in his chest. “If I knew you’d be do eager, I wouldn't have waited this long to come inside.”

You stomach three more measured rolls of Jack’s hips before you cave into the anxious feeling hollowing your pleasure, the wince on his face having grown deeper and more concerning.

All it take is a hand to his shoulder and a barely formed Jack, wait, for the man to tear himself off you, putting immediate distance between you despite the hand that remains on your face, holding it steady as his gaze sweeps over you in search of evidence of your well-being.

“What’s wrong, kid?” Just like that, you watch him slip back into the practised role of a caretaker, Dr Abbot taking centre stage and relegating Jack, the man keen on seeing you come undone at his touch, to the wings. “Did I hurt you? I’m sorry, I told you- Warned you, baby.”

His rambling would be endearing, if you weren't aware of the sudden empty feeling of your cunt clenching at nothing and, worse, the bitten-back wince of pain that pronounces itself across his face as he shifts weight from one foot onto the other.

So you take matters into your own hands to silence his spiralling mind.

Literally into your hand, fingers wrapping themselves around the thick swell of his cock, standing at attention and smearing the evidence of your lust over Jack’s lower abdomen. The reaction is instant: hips bucking into your touch in a stuttered thrust, mouth falling agape and silent as you envelop him in your gentle touch.

“You didn’t hurt me,” quite the opposite, the tight fit of his dick bordering on nothing short of heaven. “But you’re hurting yourself.”

Before Jack can demand a much earned explanation, you trade his cock for one of his hands, threading yourself to him and enduring he can’t let go as you begin guiding him to your bedroom, the gentle jingle of his loose belt slapping against his thigh announcing each step he takes.

Lit only by the silver light of moon, you turn to him as you reach your humble queen size bed and try your hand at that stern yet caring look Jack has mastered — the look that’s held your heart hostage since you first witnessed it directed at you.

“Your leg. It’s hurting,” now you wish you had opted for switching on a light, because you swear you see the subtlest hint of a blush taking over Jack’s cheeks, guilty and caught when he thought he was doing such a good job to mask the dull ache of his limb. “Take it off, Jack. Or at least let yourself rest on the bed, let me do the work.”

Your silver fox puts up little fight, mouth opening and swiftly closing before any empty protest can flee. The mattress squeaks beneath his weight as Jack sits down on the edge, both legs bent at the knee and feet planted on the floor — he makes a conscious effort to keep his boots from touching the small carpet that runs along your bedside, unwilling to taint the cream coloured fur.

As he hunches over, hands peeling back the leg of his trouser to expose the sight of his faux-calf, a fragile quiet befalls you both. You watch entranced as he removes the prosthetic, a practised ritual he performs with the ease of a man who long ago came to terms with the cards that were handed to him. Freed at last, unwinding a strip of bandage from the stump, Jack takes to removing his clothes next, while you take to filing away his previous movements into a part of your mind labelled later, a future in the shape of a question mark, the possibility of some day needing to remove it for him.

There is something decidedly cruel about the sight of Jack Abbot sitting at the edge of your bed, completely undressed and pinning you beneath his stare as his hands now occupy themselves with more nefarious actions, one gripping at his cock and indulging himself in a languid stroke while the other takes claim of the bottom of your shirt, balling the fabric up in a fist as he tugs you close so abruptly, it’s only natural that you slip and tumble into his naked lap.

An awkward repositioning is punctuated by your own nervous laughter, a shy giggle making itself known as you straddle the doctor, the hand between his legs now teasing at your core, dipping into your honeypot just to soak himself in your sweetness before diverting his attention to your clit, pointer and middle finger rubbing an agonisingly slow circle over the nub.

“You’re gorgeous,” Jack whispers, honesty rolling off him in waves as his eyes ravage the newly exposed sight of your naked chest, t-shirt and bra tossed behind you in the blind chaos of falling into Jack. “You know that, right?”

There is urgency in his voice, like his worldview might just collapse if you tell him otherwise, and the desperation is enough to have you giggling all over again, a noise that quickly is intercepted by a gasp, eyes slipping shut as the man welcomes himself to the taste of your flesh, mouth swooping forward to take the right nipple between his lips, “You might have mentioned it before.”

“Then let me mention it again,” mumbled into your chest, he marks the sentence with a kiss to the opposite nipple, “And again,” the next kiss lands back on your right nipple. “And again.”

Both of you groan at the other’s ministrations, your hand threaded back in the silver locks of his hair and tugging at them just sharp enough to have Jack’s hips rutting up into you, bodies searching for the sweet release of friction yet neither of you rushing to give in as you slowly wade into the depths of lust, grinding desperately against one another like a pair of inexperienced college students.

“Jack,” you breathe his name, hand tilting his head back from your chest and granting you the freedom to plant your mouth against him, tongue dipping into the cavern of his mouth, the taste of beer and bourbon still on his lips.

“Hmm,” Jack hums, hand cradling your cheek.

Between you, tensions rise as your folds spread around his cock, rubbing up the length of him as he rocks himself against you.

“Are you going to fuck me,” is all he lets you get out before he drags you in for another kiss. “Or are we going to sit like this all night?”

“I don’t know, feels pretty good to me,” he’s teasing you, enjoying the sight of you growing more and more dishevelled by your own carnal needs, your nails digging into his freckled shoulders. “I wouldn’t mind.”

Sighing with nothing but sexual frustration, you recapture those earlier reins and slip your hand between you both, grabbing at Jack’s cock and lining it up at your entrance, thigh muscles burning as you hover, “Well I would.”

You sink down onto him slowly, eyes incapable of resisting the urge to roll to the back of your skull as you feel that sweet familiar burn of him stretching your walls.

Jack is speechless, but far from quiet, mouth open and singing you the prettiest songs of guttural praise. His hands are on your hips, gripping you in a way that threatens to bruise, all the while you are savouring the flush press of your bodies, your soaked folds kissing the base of his cock with a creamy ring.

When you finally begin to move, a careful raise of hips, you condemn both of you to a world polluted by lust, and pleasure, and the aching need to keep stimulating friction.

The rhythm comes naturally, a slow build-up of you fucking yourself down onto him, stuffing your cunt full to the brim. Jack has given in, handed himself over to you for you to use how you please, while his hands rake over every sliver of skin they can reach. Smoothing over your thighs, grabbing at your waist, pinching at your hard nipples, guiding your mouth down to meet his, a kiss that is more an exchange of breaths than a battle of lips.

A symphony composed entirely of sin, the darkness of your bedroom is set ablaze by the wet slap of skin meeting skin, a squelch punctuating each time he fills your cunt and a new wave of your arousal drips down his thighs and stains your bedsheets.

“This fucking pussy,” Jack speaks like you have personally wounded him, your forehead meeting his shoulder as you let out a squeak, the hands on your waist no longer sitting idle but now guiding you, bouncing you down to meet the upward rut of his hips. “‘S so tight, and warm, and perfect. You’re perfect, letting me stretch this little hole. Taking all of me.”

“Love it, Jack,” You’re babbling into his shoulder, mind turning to unusable mush the faster Jack slams you down on him.

“Love what, kid?”

“Your cock.”

“Yeah?” Oh, the smugness in his voice should be illegal, but you have only yourself to blame. “Who knew my pretty nurse was so good at taking dick. Can’t believe you’ve been holding out on me all this time.”

A chord is winding inside you, drawing tighter and tighter as Jack continues to bounce you down on his cock, pausing every few thrusts to let you savour the full stretch, grinding up and biting back laughter as you greet him with the whites of your eyes.

“Holding- ahh! Out?” Your walls flutter around him as you feel yourself closer to the edge of an orgasm.

“Yeah, sweetheart, holding out,” a kiss lands on the side of your head, as though Jack is incapable of not showering you in as much physical affection as possible. “Ignoring all my flirting, never giving me a sign that you want me just as much as I want you.”

“Flirting?!” Head out from his shoulders, you gaze down at him in disbelief, refusing to take the blame for why it has taken so many months for the pair of your to wind up here, naked and desperate and staining your sheets together. “How was I supposed to know? You flirt with everyone- Jack!”

His name is more shriek than moan, tearing out of you as his fingers press themselves to your clit and send you head-first into an orgasm.

Jack fucks you through it, slower rolls of his hips stretching out your state of euphoria and granting him a longer view of your mouth spewing profanities and your eyes rolling back and your hips bucking atop him, both fleeing from and feeding into his touch.

A sudden bang interrupts the scene, cutting your bliss short and forcing you to swallow back a moan.

Frozen in place, fingers to your clit and cock half-way buried inside, Jack’s wide-eyed gaze watches you with a questioning glance. Silence isn’t given the chance to settle fully between you, as soon another sound — from the same direction as the bang — echoes through your bedroom.

“Hey! Keep it down, some of us are trying to sleep.”

Jack is the first to react, laughter shaking his shoulders. His head tilts back, disbelief gripping him in its clutches. Collapsing back onto your bed, he drags you down with him, sweaty chest pressing to sweaty chest. You follow him into laughter too, your own muted chuckles spilling into his neck as you shyly bury your face away, mortified by the thought of one of your neighbours hearing you and Jack.

Apparently, it has the opposite affect on him.

Because instead of crippling mortification, Jack has already begun rutting back into you, shallow thrusts that he somehow manages to deliver, despite the fact his cock already fills you to the brim. Nerves aflame from a ruined orgasm, your body is quick to submit to him, hips tilting to welcome him deeper, back arching into his body. But the moment your lips dare to part, a chastisement is quick to follow, a disapproving tut coming from the man beneath you.

“Shh,” despite his hushing, he makes no attempt to slow his thrusts, the very cause of your fracturing sanity, mouth no longer in control of the noises you let out. Neighbours be damned, you would happily dare any of them to feel the sweet release of Jack stretching them out and not turn into raving banshees. Well, not quite so happily, for you are very quickly growing not only fond but possessive of the attending. “I know, kid, I know. Feels good, right? So good you just wanna scream, don’t even care if someone hears?”

Whether you realise it or not, you nod along to his mockery, desperate please for more, please, just like that, Jack proving his point perfectly: you don’t care.

The only thing you can do is feel him, all of him.

“That’s it, let it out,” he croons, faux sympathy in his voice while he cups your face and swipes away at a tear, the overwhelm of feeling so full and so close to cumming for a third time finally getting the better of you. Tear gone, the hand on your cheek drifts down to cover your mouth, smothering you into silence, muffling the shriek you let out as his hips grow sloppy, desperate, fucking you deeper, harder, faster each time, his own orgasm creeping over the horizon. “I’ll take you to my place next time. ‘S a detached bungalow, can be as loud as you need to be. And, god, I plan on giving you reasons to be loud, put you in every possible position, make you cum so many times you lose count.”

Every moan and groan and whine of his name that leaves you is muffled by the heavy palm of his hand… Which turns out to be a blessing in disguise when a third and final orgasm collides, head first, right into you, leaving you a mess. As you writhe and wriggle, one of the muscles in your calf cramping as your toes curl and your body pulls itself taut, Jack is fighting his own personal battle, hips stilled and limiting the friction as much as possible while you fall apart atop him.

Fingers tangled in his hair, face engulfed by his heavy hand, thighs squeezing around his hips; the image of you cumming is the kind that pushes a man to pick up a paint brush, all in the hopes of memorialising the art in motion onto canvas. Jack can barely focus on you, however, eyes squeezing shut as he steadies his breathing and struggles to hold back a flood.

“‘M gonna cum, baby,” Jack strains out, pulse near visible along his jugular as his heart rate shifts into overdrive. “Need you to lift these pretty hips off me or else- ahh!”

The whimper you pull from him is damn near heartbreaking, right from the gut and full of a fractured sincerity. Unwilling to so much as let him finish any thought of pulling out, never mind his sentence, you’ve staked your claim, shook your head, and cemented yourself flush atop him, cock stuffed to the brim and left no choice but to spill into the pulsing heat of your walls.

Hot, thick ropes of Jack’s cum flood your pussy, painting a pearly white mess inside of you. Overflowing and with nowhere else to run, you feel the unmistakable stickiness of his cum, now mixed with your own orgasmic bliss, leaking out of you and staining both your skins in the act. Breathless and minds drifting far away from the physical plane, you crash down atop Jack, overstimulated and overspent, and drift into the comfort of his arms enveloping you, holding your sweaty figure against his own in an embrace that says stay without uttering a single syllable.

Frozen in time, the pair of you remain glued to one another. Your breathing falls in sync, each rise of his chest matching perfectly with your exhale, and a gentle rocking remains between your bodies, an invisible stream of desire that ebbs and flows, manipulating Jack into rocking up into you and teasing you into grinding down to meet his movements, in spite of the teeth clenching sensitivity tingling at your skin.

You are the first to move, a careful rise from his chest. Already softened within you, his cock slips out of you and you pull a breath in through a grimace. The muscles in your thighs have turned to mush, more unstable than jelly, and so it is nothing short of a miracle to feel Jack’s steady touch settle itself on your hips, hands supporting the dead-weight of your lax body and guiding you to hover over his lower abdomen. You quickly realise he has less than pure intentions, as you watch satisfaction creep back into his pupils when a string of his cum dribbles out from your cunt and drips down onto his skin.

Admiring the picture you paint over his lower stomach, Jack has the nerve to mock the tired whine he coaxes from you as fingers swipe through the white mess and slip between your folds, feeding his spend right back into your walls.

Back hitting the mattress before you can protest, you struggle over a gasp and a barely stringed together sentence while the attending slips down the length of your body, pausing only when his head reaches your thighs.

“What are you doing?”

“What’s it look like?” Jack, with reflexes quick enough to match his wit, intercepts your legs before they can crush his head between them, your hips bucking and your heart unsure whether you are trying to chase after or run from the teasing stripe he licks up your cunt. “You cleaned your mess, now let me clean mine.”

Your heads hit the pillow as the Sun hits the horizon.

By nine, birds chirp by the windowsill and sunlight cuts through the sliver in your curtains, forcing your half-asleep form to retreat into the safety of Jack’s chest. He answers your cry for help instantly, arms pulling tighter around your waist as he continues to venture through a land of dreams, lips parted in the softest snore.

By noon, the city is awake. Cars honk their horns, voices fill the streets, doors slam from floors above and below. But in your apartment, not a creature stirs, bodies clinging to one another and sleep with equal fervour. If you drift left, Jack soon follows. If Jack flips onto his front, your palm is quick to flatten itself over his back. Magnets connected by an unseen force, the pair of you toss and turn beneath wrinkled bedsheets.

By four, the bathroom mirror is fogged. You are a nervous wreck contained behind the nervous smile of someone who is trying their best to be supportive despite the shampoo stinging at your eyes and the grown man you are supporting against your frame. Unwilling to let you drag one of your leather dining chairs into the cubicle, Jack had insisted he would be fine to shower standing, so long as you kept him company.

By six, your apartment is empty. Clad in the familiar shapeless clothing that is sure to keep you comfortable throughout your shift, you’re struggling to find the right time to ask Jack to hand you your bag back, too used to his habit of prying it out your hands to even notice he had done so as you both departed from your front door. No choice but to throw on last nights clothing, Jack is silent at your back, one arm pulling you against him as yet another neighbour slips into the confines of the elevator — freshly fixed yet sending a shiver down your spine with each shake it gives in its descent down to the ground floor.

By some miracle, you make it out onto the street.

Which maybe, now that the fresh air hits your cheek, you are beginning to lament. Because this is it, the point of no return; where you go one way and Jack will go the other, trailing home to enjoy the rest of his night off while you no doubt will spend your entire shift dreading where the events that transpired between you — the stolen kisses, the lustful whines, the rolling hips — leave you both standing.

Taking your bag from him seems like the correct first move to make towards goodbye, but when you reach your hand out, Jack answers your silent plea with his empty one threading itself into your hold, fingers entwined in a manner so perfectly it has you reminiscing on how your bodies lay atop your mattress.

The attending has already tugged you halfway down the street before your mouth catches up with your feet, choking out a dumbfounded, “Where are you going? You’re off today.”

“So?” Jack barely offers you a bothered shrug of his shoulders, glancing back at you with a look in his eyes so warm, you worry you might just melt into the asphalt. “That doesn’t mean I can’t walk you to work.”

+ extra hyde!

· this fic was meant to be short, believe it or not... my first proper fic of 2026, yippee! · olivia, girl... never stop making albums for me to cry to. · pov: jack abbot, the biggest flirt who turns into a bumbling idiot when faced with the person he actually wants:

[sonarspace]

۶ৎ SUMMER LOVIN’

❦ synopsis. jack abbot was your father’s best friend, fifteen years your senior, and entirely off limits. you slipped him your number anyway. bad idea? probably. worth it? absolutely.

content. 18+. jack abbot x fem!reader. dbf!jack. age gap (reader is in her mid 20s, jack is early 40s). sneaking around. oral (f!receiving). protected p in v. car sex. mirror sex. finger in mouth (brief).

wc. 10.7k

an. it's a longgg one. so enjoy !!

the almost-summer insects are loud the evening of your dad’s annual memorial day bbq. you’d taken the train up from the city that morning, a bag packed for a few months rather than a few days, needing the suburban quiet more than you’d admitted to yourself. a few hectic months of finishing your masters while working full time had left you wrung out in a way only a proper break could fix.

you step out into the backyard and the warm air hits you, voices mixing in with the cicadas, the smell of charcoal and something sweet. your parents are well off, the backyard expansive and manicured, fairy lights strung between the trees already glowing gold in the early evening.

and that’s when you see him.

silver haired, broad shouldered, standing with your father and another man you don’t recognize. he’s not loud about it, the way some men are at parties like this, drink in hand, laughing too hard. he’s just there. a steady presence. like the room arranged itself around him without him asking.

he looks up and catches you staring.                                      

you give him a small smile. he holds it for a beat, returns it, quiet and unreadable, and then turns back to the conversation like nothing happened.

“there you are, darling.” your mom finds you before you can register what just happened, pulling you into the huddle. “come meet jack. this is dr. jack abbot, remember? i told you about him. he’s the one who was at the gym with your father when he had that small stroke. kept him stable until the ambulance came.”

you did remember. vaguely. your mom had mentioned him a few times over the phone during those scary first few days, always with this tone like she wanted you to know he was one of the good ones. she’d also, at some point, let slip that he was quite handsome for his age which had made you curious enough to look him up.

you’d found almost nothing. a blurry photo from some hospital gala where he was younger, dark haired, barely recognizable. another from an award ceremony, grainy and poorly lit, his face half turned from the camera. you’d closed the tab and thought nothing more of it.

the man standing in front of you now had not been adequately prepared for.

you reach your hand out. his is warm, large, engulfing your palm easily. the touch moves through you faster than it should.

“nice to meet you,” you say, and you mean it more than is appropriate.

he looks at you the way men his age sometimes do when they’re trying very hard not to. “you as well.”

your dad says something about jack being a veteran, about it being a meaningful weekend for him too. jack doesn’t smile at that. just something solemn moving behind his eyes, confirming that whatever he’d seen hadn’t left him clean.

you think about that look for the rest of the evening.

---

you run into him at the farmer’s market three days later.

you’re standing at a stall debating between two bunches of peonies when you feel someone stop beside you. you glance over and there he is, in a grey henley and dark jeans, looking entirely too good for a saturday morning farmer’s market in suburban new york.

“dr. abbot,” you say, a little surprised.

“just jack,” he says, eyes moving to the flowers and then back to you. “visiting your parents for the weekend?”

“for a little longer than that,” you say. “you live around here?”

“ten minutes that way.” he nods vaguely in a direction. noncommittal. like he’s already deciding how much to give you.

you buy both bunches of peonies just to have something to do with your hands.

he walks with you for a bit, not quite on purpose, or at least that’s how he plays it. the conversation is easy in a way that feels unfair. he asks about your masters, what you studied, what you’re doing now. he listens like he’s genuinely curious about you, takes his time without interruption. you learn he’s been in suburban new york for a few years, that he left his practice in the city after his wife passed, that he has his own little clinic now because apparently that’s what you do when you’re trying to build a quieter life.

he says it nonchalantly and you don’t press for more.

when you reach the end of the market he stops and you stop with him.

“i’ll see you around,” he says. not a question exactly. more like something he’s hoping for.

“probably,” you say.

he almost smiles. almost.

---

you see him twice more before the dinner.

once at your parents’ house when he stops by to drop something off for your dad, catching you in the kitchen in an oversized tee and sleep shorts, hair still messy from bed. he looks at you for exactly one second longer than he should before fixing his expression back to neutral and asking if your father is home.

and then once at the pharmacy, where he’s picking up a prescription and you’re buying face wash, and he ends up standing in line behind you and making a quiet comment about the brand you picked that makes you laugh, and then looks almost annoyed at himself for making you laugh.

he’s trying. you can see it clearly. the deliberate neutrality of him, the way he keeps his eyes from lingering, the way he keeps things brief and polite.

it makes you want to push.

---

the dinner is your mother’s idea. a small thank you, she says, for everything jack did for your father. nothing formal, just the four of you on a friday evening.

you wear a dress that you’d packed for no real reason. silky, short, the kind that sits just high enough on your thigh to be a problem. you tell yourself it’s because you felt like it.

you know that’s not entirely true.

jack arrives at seven. you watch him from the top of the stairs as your dad lets him in, see the moment he looks up and finds you coming down, see him look away just as quickly. his jaw goes tight, a muscle flickering there briefly before he smooths it over.

dinner is pleasant. your mom talks too much, your dad laughs too loud, and jack sits across from you being perfectly polite and perfectly composed and absolutely not looking at you any more than is necessary.

which somehow makes it worse.

you excuse yourself after the main course, slipping down the hall toward the bathroom. you’re washing your hands when you hear him in the hallway.

you step out and find him already there in the narrow hall, and neither of you move. the dinner sounds feel far away. the space between you is close enough to feel the warmth of him, and his cologne reaches you before anything else, something quiet and warm, and he’s looking at you the way he’s been carefully not looking at you all evening.

your pulse does something it has no business doing.

you reach into your pocket slowly, pull out the folded slip of paper you’d put there before dinner, hold it out between two fingers. your eyes stay on his.

he looks down at it. back up at you. and for a second, just one, his gaze drops to your mouth and stays there long enough to make your breath catch.

“i’m your father’s friend,” he says. his voice comes out lower than intended.

“i know,” you say softly.

he should walk away. you can see him thinking it. the war behind his eyes.

he reaches out and takes the paper instead, fingers brushing yours, and then he steps back and clears his throat and goes back down the hall without another word.

you lean against the wall for a moment before you follow.

---

you go back to the table and finish dinner and make conversation and laugh at your dad’s jokes and do not think about the hallway.

you do not think about the way he’d looked at your mouth.

you do not think about the way his fingers had felt brushing yours when he took the paper.

jack stays another hour, polite and easy and perfectly composed, and when he leaves he shakes your dad’s hand and thanks your mom for dinner. he glances at you once on his way out, brief and unreadable, the kind of look that gives nothing and takes everything.

“lovely to meet you properly,” he says.

“you too,” you say.

the door closes and you help your mom clear the table and go to bed and do not think about it at all.

---

a week passes.

you work. that’s the honest answer for what you do with the silence of your phone. you open your laptop early and close it late and fill the hours in between with emails and decks and calls that run long, the familiar rhythm of it steadying in a way you hadn’t expected to need.

it helps, mostly. you’d taken this break to breathe and somehow you’d gone and complicated it spectacularly within the first two weeks, so throwing yourself back into spreadsheets feels like a reasonable correction.

your mom keeps finding reasons to bring him up at dinner. jack mentioned he might come to the farmers market this weekend. jack was asking after your thesis topic, isn’t that sweet. you nod and eat your food and say nothing.

your phone stays quiet.

you start to feel that particular kind of silly that you really hate feeling. the kind that makes you want to be annoyed at yourself more than at anyone else. you’re not a girl who waits around. you’d handed him your number because you’d wanted to, not because you were expecting anything, and it had meant nothing, and you are completely fine.

your phone buzzes on thursday morning and you pick it up embarrassingly fast.

it’s your landlord about a leaking pipe in your city apartment.

you put the phone face down and open another email.

---

you go for a walk thursday afternoon because you need air and because staring at a laptop in your childhood bedroom is making you feel sixteen in a way you don’t appreciate.

the neighborhood is quiet and warm, someone’s sprinkler ticking in a front yard, birds doing their thing in the trees. you have your earbuds in and you’re almost feeling like yourself again when you turn a corner and nearly walk into him.

he’s coming back from a run, slowing to a stop, a little breathless. grey tee, dark shorts, the outline of his prosthetic visible below the hem, silver hair slightly damp. looking entirely too good on a thursday afternoon.

you look straight ahead and keep walking.

you hear him pause then fall into step beside you.

“hey,” he tries.

nothing.

“you’re ignoring me,” he says. there’s a quiet amusement to it that makes it significantly harder to maintain your expression.

you pull one earbud out and look at him with the most neutral expression you own. “can i help you?”

“you walked right past me.”

“i didn’t see you.”

“you saw me,” he says simply.

you stop. turn to face him fully on the pavement, squinting a little in the afternoon sun. “you didn’t text.”

he holds your gaze. “i know.”

“okay,” you say pleasantly, and put your earbud back in.

he reaches out and touches your elbow, gently, and you stop again.

“it’s not right,” he says, when you look at him. his voice is low and even, like he’s explained this to himself many times already. “your father is one of my closest friends. you’re his daughter. there’s an age gap that—”

“i’m aware of my own age,” you say.

“i know that.”

“and i’m aware of yours.”

“that’s not what i—”

“jack.” you say it quietly but clearly. “i have a masters degree. i have a career. i pay my own rent in one of the most expensive cities in the country.” you hold his gaze without flinching. “i don’t need you to decide what i can and can’t handle. i don’t like being put in a box, especially not by someone who looked at me the way you did in that hallway.”

something shifts in his expression. he looks away briefly, jaw working.

“one drink,” he says finally, still not looking at you. “there’s a place on 4th avenue. friday night.”

you look at him.

“no,” you say.

he blinks. looks back at you. “no?”

“dinner,” you say. “and then a drink.”

a beat.

“you’re negotiating.”

“i’m clarifying,” you say pleasantly.

he looks at you for a long moment. you watch him try very hard not to smile and almost succeed.

“dinner,” he says. “and a drink.”

“and you’re paying,” you add.

he exhales through his nose. “obviously.”

you put your earbud back in and start walking. “friday works,” you call back.

you don’t turn around but you’re fairly certain he’s standing there watching you go and doing that almost-smile again.

good.

---

he texts friday morning.

jack: should i pick you up or are you meeting me there.

you stare at your phone for an embarrassing amount of time.

he confirmed. he actually texted to confirm, which means he’d been thinking about it, which means he hadn’t spent the week being perfectly unbothered the way you’d assumed he had. and he’d offered to pick you up. like it was a real date. like he was going to come to your parents’ front door and walk you to his car and—

you put your phone face down on the bed.

get it together, you tell yourself.

you pick it up again.

but he’d offered to pick you up. that’s a thing a gentleman does. a thoughtful person. and he’s thoughtful, you’ve noticed that about him, the way he listens, the way he remembers small things you’ve said, the way he—

and he’s so annoyingly attractive. how does that happen. how does someone get to be that age and look like that and also be like that. it should be one or the other. it’s unfair is what it is.

you realize you’ve been staring at the ceiling for five minutes.

you: i’ll meet you there.

you put the phone down and go get ready and absolutely do not smile at yourself in the mirror.

you smile at yourself in the mirror a little bit.

---

the place on 4th avenue is small and warm, the kind of bar that moonlights as a restaurant. dark wood and low lighting and a chalkboard menu above the bar. he pulls out your chair and you sit and pretend that doesn’t do anything to you.

he orders without looking at the menu. you notice that but don’t say anything.

it starts careful. he already knows the broad strokes of your masters from the farmer’s market, so he asks something different tonight. what you actually want to do next, now that it’s done. where you see yourself going. you tell him honestly, more honestly than you expected to, about the job you’re good at but aren’t sure you love, about the version of your career you’re still trying to build toward. he listens with his glass resting in his hand and his eyes on you and doesn’t once look at his phone.

“and now you’re here,” he says.

“now i’m here,” you agree. “taking a break. or trying to. i’m still working remotely so it’s not quite a break.”

“doesn’t sound like much of a rest.”

you think about it honestly. “it’s getting there.”

he nods like he understands that specific kind of tired. you get the feeling he does.

you ask about medicine, what made him choose it, whether he ever wanted something different. he thinks before he answers, which you like about him, the absence of automatic responses.

“lost a close friend when i was young,” he says simply. “couldn’t do anything. felt like i should have been able to.” he turns his glass once. “so i decided i’d learn how.”

“and the army?”

“enlisted after my first year of pre-med. served as a combat medic for two tours.” a brief pause. “finished my degree when i came back.”

he says it with the flatness of someone who has made peace with something that didn’t deserve it. you don’t push. just let it settle between you the way it needs to.

you talk about other things after that. easier things. he asks about the city, whether you miss it yet, and you tell him honestly that you miss the noise more than you expected to. he tells you he grew up in boston, that new york had always felt like someone else’s city even after years of living there. you ask what suburban new york feels like and he thinks about it for a moment.

“quieter,” he says. “in a way i needed.”

you ask him what he does with the quiet and he says he reads, mostly. medical journals, some fiction. runs in the mornings. you tell him that sounds very disciplined and he looks at you with something dry.

“you say that like it’s an insult.”

“i say it like it’s very you,” you say, and he looks at you for a moment like he’s trying to decide what to do with that.

the conversation moves like that all evening, one thing leading naturally into the next, barely any effort. you forget to check your phone. you forget to be nervous. you just talk, and he talks, and at some point you realize you’re leaning forward with your chin in your hand and he’s leaning forward too and the space between you has gotten smaller without either of you deciding it.

at some point the bar fills in around you. the dinner crowd thinning and the drinks crowd arriving, louder, livelier, music turned up a notch. someone laughs too hard at the bar. a group spills in through the door bringing the warm night air with them.

you and jack don’t notice any of it.

it’s only when he glances around and then back at you that you realize how late it’s gotten.

“i’ll just use the bathroom,” he says, pushing his chair back. “be right back.”

you watch him stop at the bar on the way back. a quiet word with the bartender, something slipped across the counter without a word to you about it.

he comes back and picks up his jacket.

“ready?” he says simply.

you smile a little without meaning to. “yeah,” you say. “let’s go.”

---

the night air is warm with a slight breeze when you step outside. you pull your jacket loosely around your shoulders and say “i had a really good time” and mean it completely and then immediately start wondering if it sounded too eager. you fall into step beside him on the pavement and the silence is comfortable but your brain is doing that thing where it replays the whole evening looking for something to be anxious about and finding too many candidates.

did it go well. it felt like it went well. he paid without making it a thing which was. god that was sweet. but he hasn’t said anything since we left and maybe that means—

“you’ve gone somewhere,” he says.

you blink. look up at him. “what?”

“just now.” he glances at you, steady. “where’d you go?”

your mouth opens. closes. “nowhere,” you say.

he looks at you for a moment in that way he has, like he can see straight through the word, and almost smiles and says nothing and you feel your face go warm.

“do you want to take a walk,” he says instead. “there’s a park just around the corner.”

“yes,” you say, maybe a little too quickly.

he definitely notices. doesn’t say anything.

---

the park is quiet, just the sound of your footsteps and the distant hum of the street. the trees are full and dark against the sky and the path is lit by old iron lampposts and the air smells like cut grass and something floral.

you spot the ice cream stand before he does. a small cart tucked near the park entrance, fairy lights strung around the awning.

you stop walking.

he follows your gaze. looks back at you. that almost smile already happening.

“come on,” you say, already heading over.

he shakes his head slightly and follows.

you get strawberry cheesecake in a cup. he gets dark chocolate pecan, which somehow suits him completely. you both stand under the fairy lights eating ice cream while the warm night moves around you.

“here,” you say, holding your spoon out toward him.

he looks at it. then takes the taste, and his expression does something reluctant and impressed at the same time.

“that’s actually good,” he says.

“i know,” you say smugly.

he holds his own spoon out without a word. you lean in and try it and the dark chocolate hits first and then the pecan and it’s rich and warm and very him somehow.

“okay,” you admit. “that’s also good.”

“i know,” he says, and you laugh, and this time he actually smiles. quiet and real and just for a moment.

you look at him in the lamplight and feel something settle warm in your chest and think. oh. okay. this is a problem.

---

you start walking again when the cups are empty, slower now, no particular direction. the park is mostly yours at this hour, just the occasional dog walker passing with a nod.

you’re not in your head anymore. somewhere between the ice cream and the smiling you’d stopped replaying the evening and landed back in it.

he’s walking close enough that your shoulders brush every few steps and neither of you moves away.

you stop near a lamppost where the path curves and turn to look at him and he’s already looking at you, that careful composure doing very little at this particular moment.

you lean up and kiss him.

he goes still. one second. two. then his hand comes up slow and cups your jaw and he kisses you back, deep and sure, and you forget about the warm night and the lamplight and everything else.

he pulls back first. steps back slightly. shakes his head.

you groan softly. “i’ve never had to ask for things, you know.”

that flicker at the corner of his mouth. “so you’re a spoiled brat.”

“what will it take,” you say, looking up at him. “for you to just give in.”

“i’m not—” he stops. jaw tight. “i’m not relationship material. you should know that going in.”

you hold his gaze. “i’m not looking for a relationship either. it doesn’t have to be more than what it is.” a beat. “we’re adults, jack.”

he looks at you for a long moment. the last argument behind his eyes going quiet.

then he kisses you again. different this time. his hand gripping your face, consuming, and you grip the front of his jacket and let him.

he pulls back just enough to speak, voice low.

“the townhouse is two minutes from here,” he says.

you didn’t know that. you file it away for later.

“okay,” you say.

he takes your hand and you go.

---

the door barely shuts behind you.

his hands find your waist before you’ve taken a step inside, walking you back against the entryway wall, mouth on yours, and the kiss is nothing like the one in the park. that one had been careful, him dipping his toe in. this one is hungry, open mouthed, his tongue sliding against yours slowly, like he’s tasting something he’s been thinking about for a long time. you make a sound against his mouth and feel him exhale hard through his nose like it costs him something.

your fingers find his shirt buttons. his hands push your jacket off your shoulders and it hits the floor somewhere. something knocks off the entryway table, neither of you flinches.

he pulls back just enough to look at you, chest rising and falling, hair slightly messed from your hands, and the composed dr. jack abbot of dinner and parks and careful measured distance is completely gone. what’s left is just him, looking at you like you’re the only thing in the room he’s done being good about.

he takes your hand and walks you backward through the darkened living room and sits down on the couch, pulling you down onto his lap in one smooth motion, hands settling on your hips.

“jack—”

“here,” he murmurs, guiding your hips forward, then back, slow. “like that.”

your breath catches. his jaw is tight, eyes dark, watching your face with an intensity that makes it hard to think straight. his hands grip your hips and move them again, that same slow roll, and a soft sound escapes you before you can stop it.

“you have no idea,” he says, low, almost to himself. his forehead drops to your shoulder for just a moment. “how long i’ve wanted this.” his mouth finds your jaw, your neck. “wanted you.”

you pull back just enough to look at him, chest heaving, lips swollen. his eyes meet yours, dark, pupils blown.

“fuck me,” you breathe against his mouth. “please.”

a groan tears out of him.

he flips you in one smooth motion, your back meeting the couch cushions, him over you, and his hands find the zipper of your skirt, fumbling with it in a way that is deeply satisfying coming from someone so usually composed. you reach down to help and he bats your hands away gently.

“i’ve got it,” he mutters, jaw tight, and you bite your lip to keep from smiling.

he does.

---

you wake up to the smell of coffee.

for a moment you just lie there, ceiling unfamiliar, sheets softer than yours, the morning light coming in through curtains you don’t recognize. then it lands. right. jack’s townhouse. you sit up slowly and push your hair back and look around the room.

it’s neat in the way of someone who lives alone and likes order. dark furniture, minimal, a small stack of books on the nightstand. a glass of water on your side that wasn’t there when you fell asleep.

you stare at the glass of water for a moment.

you find his shirt at the foot of the bed and pull it on and pad downstairs.

he’s in the kitchen. grey tee, dark pants, barefoot. you can hear the faint clink of his prosthetic foot as he moves around the stove with that same leisured pace as always. coffee already poured, two cups. eggs in the pan. toast just popped.

he glances over when you appear in the doorway.

“morning,” he says simply. like this is normal. like you wake up in his house all the time.

“you made breakfast,” you say.

he just smiles in return.

you slide onto the stool at the kitchen island and wrap both hands around the mug he pushes toward you and watch him cook and try not to feel too much about any of this.

you mostly fail.

he plates the eggs without ceremony and sets it in front of you and sits across with his own and you eat together in the quiet morning, the kind of quiet that doesn’t need filling. outside birds are doing their thing in the backyard. somewhere a lawnmower starts up distantly.

“did you sleep okay?” he asks at some point.

“really well actually,” you say, and mean it. the peaceful dreamless kind you’d been craving for months.

---

you leave just after nine. he walks you to the door, and just before you step out he cups the back of your head gently and presses his lips to your forehead.

your insides melt.

“i’ll see you later,” he says.

you look up at him. “yeah,” you say softly. “you will.”

you walk to your car with his shirt smell still on your skin and the ghost of his mouth on your forehead and think. oh you are in so much trouble.

---

it becomes a pattern after that.

stolen minutes, mostly. a look across the room that lasts a beat too long. his hand finding the small of your back when he passes you in the hallway at your parents’, gone before anyone could notice. a text at odd hours that starts as nothing and becomes something by the time you put your phone down.

---

it was gathering at your parents’. a few neighbors gathered in the living room, some rosé for the women, beers for the men, your mom moving between guests with a platter of something she’d spent the morning making. it fills up fast the way your parents’ house always does, loud and warm, someone’s kid running through the hallway.

you’re in a sundress, yellow, the kind that sits light on your shoulders. jack is there when you arrive, talking to one of your dad’s colleagues, and his eyes find you once across the yard, darkening just a fraction.

you go inside for ice an hour in.

the kitchen is quiet after the noise of the backyard, just the hum of the fridge and the distant sound of someone laughing outside. you’re pulling the ice tray when you hear the door behind you.

you don’t turn around. you already know.

his hands find your hips from behind, turning you, and then his mouth is on yours and it’s nothing like the usual careful composed kisses. one hand slides into your hair, the other flat against the small of your back pulling you in, and he kisses you the way he does when he’s been watching you from across a yard for an hour and has run out of patience for it. open mouthed, his tongue sliding slow against yours until your fingers curl into his shirt and you forget what you came in here for.

his hand moves under the hem of your dress, palm dragging slow up the inside of your thigh, and he pulls back just enough to look at you.

“is my girl wet for me?” he murmurs, low, meant only for you.

your breath stutters. you don’t answer. he finds out anyway, fingers pressing against the thin fabric of your underwear, and the quiet sound he makes against your temple is deeply unfair.

“jack,” you warn softly.

“shhh,” he says, and drops to his knees.

he pushes your dress up and hooks your underwear down in one smooth motion, tucks it into his pocket, and then his mouth is on you and the world narrows to the warm press of his tongue. your hand flies to your mouth. the other grips the counter behind you hard enough to whiten your knuckles, the noise of the party bleeding through the walls while he takes you apart quietly on the kitchen floor.

he doesn’t rush. that’s the thing about jack. he never rushes.

by the time you come you’re biting down on your own fist, eyes squeezed shut, shaking.

he stands up and fixes the hem of your dress back down like nothing happened. looks at you once, the corner of his lips tilted up in a smirk, while you’re still trying to remember how to breathe.

“i’ll give those back later,” he says, patting his pocket.

“you’re unbelievable,” you manage.

he reaches up and tucks a strand of hair behind your ear. presses a single kiss to your cheek and walks back outside.

you stand in the kitchen for a full minute before you follow.

---

he keeps his eyes on you for the rest of the day. not obviously. just enough that you feel it every time, that quiet heat from across the yard. enough to know he hasn’t forgotten.

you don’t get the underwear back.

what you get instead, after the last guests trickle out and your parents call it a night, is his hand finding yours in the dark hallway and him walking you to the downstairs bathroom and clicking the lock behind you both.

you’re quiet about it. mostly.

---

the dinner is a few of your dad’s colleagues and their wives, jack included, the type of evening that involves good wine and stories you’ve heard versions of before. you sit at the far end of the table and catch him looking at you twice, both times immediately looking away.

you wear something simple. nothing risky. you’re behaving.

mostly.

you say your goodbyes at the door, your coat already on. “i’m heading out to meet a friend,” you tell your dad, kissing his cheek. “i’ll stay over hers. i’ll be back in the morning.”

“i can drop you off,” jack says from behind you, already reaching for his keys. “i’m heading that way.” you were going to meet him anyway.

your dad claps him on the shoulder. “perfect, save her the uber.”

you smile. “thanks, jack.”

the drive starts quiet. lights bleeding past the windows, jack’s hand loose on the wheel, the low hum of the radio filling the space between you. comfortable on the surface. charged underneath.

you watch the road for a while.

then you reach across the console.

“don’t,” he says immediately, his hand closing over yours.

you do it anyway.

he exhales hard. pulls off at the next quiet stretch, a side road that’s dark and empty. he clicks the lock and reaches for the lever at the side of his seat and lets it fall back. then his hands find you and he hauls you over the console and onto his lap before you’ve fully registered the movement.

you land against him and his mouth finds yours, urgent in a way that pulls low in your stomach. you’re both pulling at things, his shirt buttons, your top, the zip of his pants, the graceless urgency of too much want in too small a space.

when he finally pushes inside you, both of you stilling for just a moment at the stretch of it, thick and familiar and so so good, your forehead drops to his shoulder and you exhale shakily.

“okay?” he murmurs.

“yeah,” you breathe. “yeah, move—”

you start to roll your hips and his hands grip your waist, steadying, guiding, letting you find the rhythm. the windows fog at the edges. his jaw is tight, eyes dark, watching your face with that focused intensity that makes you feel like the only thing in the room.

then his feet find the floor and he starts thrusting up to meet you, slow and hard, and your head falls back.

“jack—”

“i’ve got you, darlin’,” he says low, one hand splayed across your lower back holding you close, the other pulling your top aside, unhooking your bra, his mouth replacing it, warm against your hardened peak. you dig your fingers into his shoulders and stop thinking about anything at all.

the radio plays on softly. outside the road stays empty.

neither of you are in any hurry.

---

you end up staying the night.

you hadn’t planned to. but the radio plays on softly and neither of you move and at some point the quiet of the car becomes the quiet of his townhouse and then it’s late and he’s pulling his shirt over your head in the dark and saying stay against your temple like it’s nothing.

so you do.

---

a few days later you answer the door at your parents’ when the doorbell goes.

you’re in sleep shorts and an oversized tee, hair up, not having expected anyone. jack stands on the other side of the door in dark slacks and a polo, his glasses hanging from the collar, looking entirely too put together for a tuesday morning.

you lean against the doorframe. “where are you going dressed like that?”

he looks at you. then very deliberately looks at your shorts. “golf. your father suggested i develop a normal hobby.”

“and you listened?”

“he’s very persuasive.”

you open your mouth to say something else when your dad’s voice carries from inside. “jack! give me five minutes, i’m almost ready!”

jack raises an eyebrow at you. you raise one back.

and then he steps into the foyer, glances once over your shoulder toward the stairs, and kisses you quickly. you feel his hand caress your jaw and then it’s gone just as fast when he pulls back.

“i’ll see you later,” he murmurs.

he steps back and straightens his collar. looks completely poised.

you are not completely poised.

your dad comes thundering down the stairs two minutes later, clapping jack on the shoulder, steering him out the door. jack follows, and just before he reaches the car he glances back once.

you’re still in the doorframe.

he smiles. that small smile, only for you, and turns away.

you stay there a moment longer than you need to before going back inside.

---

the phone starts buzzing an hour later.

it’s sitting on the kitchen counter where your dad left it, lighting up with a number you recognize from his office. you grab your keys.

you find them on the sixth hole. your dad spots you first, face confused, and you hold up the phone. his expression shifts immediately into the particular look he gets when something’s gone sideways at work.

he steps away to take the call and you’re left standing on the green in your tiny shorts while jack abbot turns around and takes you in with a slow once over.

“my dad forgot his phone,” you say innocently.

“i can see that,” he says.

“interesting shorts,” he says.

“thank you.”

“that wasn’t a compliment.”

“i know,” you say, and smile.

your dad reappears, phone pressed to his chest, apology already on his face. “jack, i’m so sorry, there’s something with the mcvoy merger, i have to go. i’ll make it up to you, we’ll reschedule—”

“go,” jack says easily. “don’t worry about it.”

your dad looks between you both. “she can drive you back—”

“go sort your merger,” jack says.

your dad squeezes his shoulder gratefully and strides off toward the car park, already back on the phone. and then it’s just you and jack and the open green and the warm afternoon stretching out around you.

he looks at you.

you look back.

“get a hole in one,” you say.

he stares at you. “i’m sorry?”

“hole in one, old man,” you say. “and i’ll make it worth your while.”

a long pause. he looks out at the green. looks back at you. the corner of his mouth pulling in a way he doesn’t quite manage to hide. he shakes his head with a chuckle under his breath. 

he lines up his shot with the confidence of someone who is very good at things he pretends not to care about.

it drops clean.

he turns and looks at you over the top of his glasses.

you burst out laughing.

he’s still giving you that look, warm and steady and just slightly wolfish, and something flips over in your chest.

“hole in one,” he says simply.

---

things fall in his entryway.

his keys missing the hook. your sandals somewhere near the door. his phone clattering off the console table that neither of you stops for because he has you against the wall with his hands under your thighs before the door is fully shut, your legs wrapping around him, laughing into his mouth until you’re not laughing anymore.

“you wore those shorts on purpose,” he says against your jaw.

“i have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” you manage.

he pulls back just enough to look at you, hair messed, chest rising and falling, and shakes his head slowly, a quiet laugh in his expression.

“what am i gonna do with you,” he says, low and gravelly, shaking his head in faux disappointment.

“i have a few ideas,” you say.

he carries you upstairs with your legs still around him, mouth finding your neck, the curve of your shoulder. he sets you down on the edge of the bed and steps back, reaching behind him to pull his polo off in one smooth motion.

you take a moment to just. look at him.

toned shoulders in the way of someone who has been active his whole life, with a softness at his middle. freckles scattered across his arms and chest, concentrated at the shoulders, the kind that come from years in the sun. a slight roundness to his stomach that makes him look exactly his age in the best possible way. silver hair dusted across his chest, catching the afternoon light. you bite your lip as you take him in.

his eyes are already on you.

his hands find the waistband of your shorts and drag them down slowly, dropping them somewhere on the floor. he straightens up and looks at you for a moment.

“touch yourself for me,” he says quietly.

you hold his gaze for a beat. then you lean back on your palms and slide a hand down between your thighs, fingers tracing down your folds, finding the growing wetness there.

he stands there watching, breathing a little heavily, before his hands find his belt buckle, unhooking it slow, shoving his pants down without looking away from you. his cock is thick and already hard and his hand wraps around it, stroking, eyes tracking every movement of your fingers, and the whole thing is so intense and quiet that your breath has gone completely unsteady.

then he steps forward.

he takes your wrist and brings your hand up and closes his mouth around your fingers, sucking them clean without breaking eye contact, and your brain short circuits completely.

he pushes you back onto the bed.

he buries his face between your thighs, mouth finding your clit with no warning, and your back arches clean off the bed. he works you open, tongue fucking into you obscenely, and you’re loud about it, louder than you mean to be, one hand twisting in his silver hair while your hips roll down against his mouth chasing more.

you soak him and he doesn’t pull back. just makes a quiet satisfied sound against you and keeps going like he has nowhere else to be, like this is exactly where he wants to be, until you’re shaking and your brain has turned completely to mush and your whole body is pulling tight.

“jack— jack i need—”

he pulls back just enough to look up at you, mouth slick, eyes dark, expression perfectly composed.

“hm?” he says. “can’t quite hear you. old man ears.”

you groan. “jack.”

“sorry?” the corner of his mouth twitches.

“you know what i need—”

he tuts softly. “you’re going to have to be more specific, sweet girl.”

you huff, thighs squeezing around his shoulders, and he raises an eyebrow at you like he has all the time in the world and fully intends to use it.

“please,” you breathe. “please please just fuck me, jack, please—”

you keep saying it, broken and shameless, until he pulls back, rolls a condom on with steady hands, and finally fills you in one slow push that knocks the air clean out of your lungs.

---

the bed creaks.

he has your legs pushed up, knees to your chest, ankles hooked over his shoulders, and you are folded so completely beneath him that the only thing you can do is hold on and take it. his hands brace either side of your head, eyes on your face, and he moves with a focus that makes it impossible to think about anything else.

the headboard finds the wall. once. twice. and then it just. stays there, a constant rhythmic clatter that fades into the background because there are other sounds now too — the slap of skin, your moans climbing higher with every stroke, the low sounds he makes when he’s trying to stay controlled and losing the battle. the room is loud with all of it and neither of you are doing anything to stop it.

“you’re doing so well for me,” he murmurs. his thumb finds your clit, rubbing slow circles over the swollen bud, and you make a sound that you feel in your whole body. “killin’ me, baby,” he grunts. your puffy lips stretched around him, taking everything he gives, and he looks down at where you’re joined and his breathing is shaky. 

his hips are losing that careful rhythm, thrusts getting shorter and more urgent, and you can feel him everywhere, the relentless drag and push of him, your whole body pulled taut around him.

“jack—”

“yeah baby,” he breathes. “yeah yeah, come for me. fuck—” his thumb keeps those merciless circles over your needy clit. “this pretty pussy’s squeezing me so good, can you feel that—”

and that’s it. you come with his name on your lips and your whole body arching up into him, thighs shaking against his shoulders. he follows right behind you, a low groan pressed into the curve of your neck, hips stuttering to a stop.

for a moment neither of you move.

---

then he carefully lowers your legs, pressing a brief kiss to the inside of your knee before he pulls back. you hear him in the bathroom, water running, and then he’s back with a warm towel and he cleans you up quietly, thorough and gentle, and you lie there and let him and try not to think too hard about what that means.

he tosses the towel aside and settles on the edge of the bed. reaches down and unstraps his prosthetic, setting it carefully against the nightstand. the room is quiet while he does it, a routine for him.

you watch him from where you’re curled on your side, still soft and sleepy.

“does it hurt?” you ask, voice still a little wrecked.

“not hurt,” he says. “just gets uncomfortable after a while.”

you reach out without thinking, fingers finding the end of his residual limb, and you massage there gently. he goes very still for a moment. then his hand comes up and squeezes your shoulder.

neither of you say anything. you don’t need to.

he settles back against the headboard and pulls you into his side, your cheek finding his chest, his hand moving through your hair in long slow strokes. he presses his lips to the top of your head and you close your eyes and breathe him in and think that this is a very dangerous thing to have gotten used to.

“i’m ordering thai,” he says after a while.

“okay,” you say, not moving.

he reaches for his phone with his free hand, the other still in your hair, and places the order without asking what you want because he already knows. you smile at that a little where he can’t see it.

the food arrives forty minutes later and you eat together in his bed, containers spread between you on the duvet, casablanca pulled up on the tv.

you groan when you see the title screen.

“you haven’t seen it,” he says, already settling back.

“i’ve seen enough of it.”

“that’s not the same thing.” he hands you a container of pad thai. “watch the movie.”

you watch the movie.

it’s good. you’re not going to tell him that.

halfway through you’re completely invested and stealing bites off his plate and he lets you, which is how you know he’s in a good mood. the lamp is on low, the room warm, the sound of old hollywood filling the quiet between you. he makes a comment about the cinematography at some point and you make a comment back and it turns into a whole thing and by the time you look up the scene has moved on entirely.

“we missed it,” you say.

“i’ve seen it forty times,” he says. “it’s fine.”

you laugh softly and settle back into his side.

you’re asleep before the ending. you don’t even realize it’s happening, just the warmth of him and the low sound of the television and then nothing at all.

you wake up to a dark room and credits rolling softly on the screen.

jack is asleep beside you, breathing slow and even, one arm still loosely around you. you lie there for a moment in the quiet of his townhouse, the distant sound of a car outside, the low hum of the television.

then you slip carefully out from under his arm.

you find your clothes in the low light, dress quietly, check your phone. 12:43am.

you lean over him. “jack,” you whisper.

he stirs. opens one eye.

“i’m heading home,” you say softly.

he reaches up and tucks a strand of hair behind your ear, still half asleep. “text me when you’re in.”

“okay,” you say.

you let yourself out.

---

the house is quiet when you slip through the front door, just the lamp on low in the living room. you’re halfway up the stairs when your dad’s voice comes from the kitchen.

“that you?”

you pause. “yeah, it’s me.”

he appears in the doorway in his robe, mug in hand, looking more tired than suspicious. “where were you?”

“out,” you say.

“with?”

you open your mouth. close it. look somewhere past his shoulder.

your dad watches you for a moment, something shifting in his expression, gentle rather than pressing.

“hey,” he says quietly. “i’m not going to push. you’re an adult, i know that.” he sets his mug down and comes to the foot of the stairs, looking up at you with that look he’s had your whole life. “i just worry about you, kiddo. that’s all. just want you to be careful.”

you feel it in your chest, that particular warmth that only he can put there.

“i know,” you say softly. “i am.”

he reaches up and presses a kiss to your forehead. “get some sleep.”

you watch him shuffle back toward the kitchen. then you go upstairs.

---

you’re in bed, lamp off, staring at the ceiling when you pick up your phone.

you’re in bed, lamp off, staring at the ceiling when you pick up your phone.

you: i think dad knows

jack: how?

you type out the whole interaction. 

jack: okay. let’s lay low for a bit.

you stare at the screen.

you: :(

jack: be good and i’ll reward you.

you smile at your phone in the dark.

you: tie me up?

jack: i just said be good.

you laugh to yourself, quietly. 

you: fine. deal.

you put your phone face down and close your eyes and fall asleep smiling like an idiot.

---

it’s been a few days since the golf course.

you text. not constantly, not in the way that would mean something you’ve both agreed not to name. just enough. a voice memo here, a late night exchange there, him sending you a dry one liner about a patient that makes you laugh out loud at your laptop and your mom asking what’s so funny from the other room.

you missed him. more than made sense for something that wasn’t supposed to be more than what it was.

you wondered if he missed you just as much. you didn’t ask.

---

it was game day. a few of the neighbors had gathered in your parents’ living room, beers cracked, the big tv loud with commentary. it fills up fast the way your parents’ house always does, loud and warm, someone’s kid running through the hallway, the smell of something good coming from the kitchen.

you’re on the back porch when you hear your name.

“no way.”

you turn. marcus is standing at the sliding door grinning at you, older than you remember but the same eyes, the same easy smile. you went to high school together, lost touch the way people do.

“marcus,” you say, and he pulls you into a hug that lifts you slightly off the ground.

you spend the next hour catching up in the corner of the living room, half watching the game, laughing at old memories and terrible teachers and that one party junior year that neither of you should probably talk about. he’s easy to be around. always was.

you don’t notice jack until you feel it.

that particular awareness. like a change in the room’s temperature. you glance over marcus’s shoulder mid laugh and find jack across the living room, standing with your dad and two other men, drink in hand, eyes on you.

he looks away the second you catch him.

but you felt it. the weight of it. a different kind of watching than his usual.

you let it go and laugh at something marcus says and don’t look over again.

your phone buzzes at 9:43 pm, twenty minutes after the last guests have trickled out.

come over.

two words. no context.

you say goodnight to your parents, grab your keys, and go.

---

he opens the door before you’ve knocked.

he’s still in what he wore to the game, shirt untucked now, sleeves rolled to the elbow. you can see the definition in his forearms, a vein running through the muscle there, fit in the way of someone who keeps at it without making a show of it. he steps aside to let you in and you cross the threshold and turn to look at him and know. something is sitting differently about him tonight.

“jack,” you start.

“bedroom,” he says. “strip and get on the bed.”

you hold his gaze for a moment. he holds yours back, jaw set, unblinking.

you go upstairs.

you hear him follow a minute later. you’re sitting on the edge of the bed when he comes in, jaw set, eyes darker than usual.

“i said strip,” he says quietly.

“i know what you said,” you say. “i’m trying to figure out what’s going on with you first.”

a beat.

“nothing’s going on,” he says.

“jack.”

he looks at you for a long moment. then he crosses the room, tips your chin up with two fingers, and looks down at you.

“who was he,” he says. low and even, not quite a question.

oh.

you feel the smile start before you can stop it. “marcus?”

his jaw tightens. “is that his name.”

“he’s an old friend,” you say. “we went to high school together.”

his face stays still. but his eyes shift.

“strip,” he says again. “and get on the bed.”

this time you do.

---

the lamp on the nightstand casts the room in dark golden hues. he stands at the foot of the bed and watches you undress, unhooking your bra, sliding fabric off your shoulders, letting things fall. his eyes track every inch of you as it’s revealed, quiet and intent, taking his time with it.

you feel every second of his gaze like a physical thing.

he strips himself without looking away from you. shirt first, then his belt, his pants. the freckles scattered across his body, heavy on his arms, the slight roundness of him. you bite your lip as you take him in.

he looks at you for a long moment in the warm quiet of the room.

“did anything ever happen,” he says. “between you and marcus.”

you look up at him. “we kissed once. at a party junior year.” a pause. “that’s it.”

his jaw ticks.

“once,” he repeats.

“once,” you confirm. “it was nothing.”

he looks at you for another long moment. then he reaches forward and turns you, guiding you onto your hands and knees, one hand pressing firm between your shoulder blades.

you hear him behind you, the tear of a wrapper, and then his hands find your hips and he tilts your chin gently to the right.

there’s a mirror.

long, leaning against the wall, angled just enough that you can see everything. him behind you, broad shoulders, the curve of his body, hands gripping your hips. you, flushed and waiting. the two of you together.

“look,” he says quietly. “look at how good you look with me.”

you look. and then he pushes inside and your mouth falls open.

he sets a pace that’s different from his usual. not cruel, never cruel, but insistent. purposeful. his grip on your hips tighter than normal, fingers pressing into the flesh of you in a way that’ll leave marks and you both know it. every thrust driving you forward, the headboard finding the wall, that familiar clatter filling the room.

“fuck,” he groans, almost to himself, eyes on the mirror meeting yours. “such a good girl, takin me so well.”

you whimper. his hand moves from your hip to your jaw, thumb pressing at the seam of your lips, and your mouth opens for it without thinking. you suck on it lazily, eyes fluttering shut, clenching around him, and the sound he makes behind you is low and barely contained.

then he pulls back, flips you, hauling you up the bed in one smooth motion so your back meets the mattress. he hoists your leg up over his shoulder, the other hooking around the back of his thigh, and pushes back inside and the angle is different, deeper, and you make a sound that comes from somewhere embarrassingly desperate.

he looks down at you.

his eyes are darker than usual. not angry exactly. something more complicated than that. like there’s a purpose behind them, something he’s working through that has nothing to do with you and everything to do with you, and he’s groaning low with every thrust but his jaw is carrying something heavier than exertion.

he wants to imprint himself on you. you can feel it. the want of it radiating off him in waves.

and somewhere underneath all of it, buried where you can’t quite see it, he knows he needs to stop. that this isn’t — it isn’t — it isn’t supposed to be—

his thumb pressing down, rubbing tight circles against your clit, and your back arches clean off the mattress.

“jack—”

“yeah, baby,” he grits out. “come on. come for me.”

you do. hard and shaking, his name breaking apart in your mouth.

he stills. pulls out before he can get there, jaw tight, sits back on his heels. too far in his own head to follow you over the edge. he deals with the condom quietly, efficiently, like if he moves fast enough you won’t notice.

you’re too far gone to notice.

silence settles over the room.

---

he cleans you up without a word, warm towel, the same quiet efficiency as always. then he sits back against the headboard and you roll onto your side, cheek on the pillow, looking up at him.

you’re smiling. you can’t help it.

he looks down at you. reaches out and tucks a strand of hair back from your face.

“what,” he says.

“i like this side of you,” you say.

he looks at you for a long moment, the corner of his mouth doing a slow losing battle.

“go to sleep,” he says.

you keep smiling.

“goodnight jack,” you hum.

---

he doesn’t sleep.

you’re curled against his side, breathing slow and even, and he lies there in the dark with the ceiling above him and his thoughts going in circles he can’t stop.

marcus. the way you’d laughed with him. easy and bright, the kind of laugh that comes from somewhere comfortable, somewhere with no history of grief or war or bad decisions made in the dark.

he’s a good guy probably. your age. no baggage. no prosthetic leaning against a nightstand. no dead wife he still talks to sometimes in his head when things get quiet enough.

these past two months have been — he stops himself. doesn’t finish the thought.

it was supposed to be simple. he’d told himself that from the beginning. told you too. not a relationship. not more than what it is. just two adults who understood the terms.

but then breakfast happened. and the ice cream in the park. and you falling asleep against him during casablanca and him not moving for two hours because he didn’t want to wake you.

he’d said he wouldn’t give in. he’d said it to himself in that hallway at your parents’ house the night you slipped him your number. he’d said it on the walk when you’d called him out. he’d said it outside the restaurant.

and then he’d stopped saying it entirely.

he looks at you in the dark. the soft rise and fall of you. something clenching in his chest that he doesn’t have a name for and doesn’t want one.

he should put some space between them. before it becomes something it can’t come back from. before you wake up one day and realize you’ve wasted the best years of your life on a man who is held together with old stitches and careful habits.

he thinks about the sabbatical he’s been putting off for two years. three months. scotland, maybe. somewhere far enough that the distance does the work he can’t seem to do himself.

he makes the decision somewhere around four in the morning.

he lies there until six feeling terrible about it.

he’s careful getting up. detaches his prosthetic in the dim light, reattaches it quietly, presses a kiss so soft to your cheek you don’t stir.

then he goes to the kitchen and makes breakfast.

you appear in the doorway twenty minutes later, hair loose, wearing his shirt again, and something about the sight of you does exactly what he knew it would. you pad over and wrap your arms around him from behind, cheek pressed between his shoulder blades, and he goes very still.

“morning,” you say, muffled against his back.

“morning,” he says.

he keeps his voice even. keeps his hands moving. eggs in the pan. toast just popped. coffee already poured.

you don’t notice anything. you’re too warm, too soft with sleep, too happy. you steal a piece of toast and sit at the island and talk about something you’d dreamed about and he listens and nods and says the right things and thinks about scotland.

you leave after breakfast with a kiss to his jaw and a smile that does something complicated to his chest.

“i’ll see you later,” you say.

“yeah,” he says.

he watches you go.

---

you drive home giddy in a way you haven’t been in a long time.

you spend the morning working from your childhood bedroom, laptop open, but your mind keeps drifting. to the mirror. to his hands. to the way he’d looked at you in the warm lamp light like you were the only thing in the room worth looking at.

he likes you. he has to. people don’t look at people like that unless they mean it.

maybe next time you see him you’ll tell him. quietly. simply. just — i really like you, jack. and see what happens.

you’re smiling at your laptop when your phone lights up on the desk beside you. four consecutive buzzes.

5:04 pm.

you pick it up still smiling when you see it's from the man who won't leave your head.

the smile fades before you’ve finished reading.

jack: hey.

jack: i’ve been thinking about us. what we had these past few months has been really good. more than i anticipated, if i’m honest. but i think we both knew this wasn’t built to last.

jack: the sneaking around, your father, the gap between us. it isn’t fair to either of us to keep going. i’m taking a sabbatical i’ve been putting off for some time. leaving tomorrow. a few months away feels like the right call. i'm sorry i couldn't say goodbye.

jack: take care of yourself.

you read it twice. then a third time like the words might rearrange themselves into something different if you give them enough chances.

they don’t.

you put your phone face down on the desk and sit very still. outside the neighborhood kids laugh. a car passes. the world just keeps going.

you’d been planning to tell him you liked him. you’d been rehearsing it in your head all morning.

you think you heard it. the moment your heart shattered into a million pieces.

an. yes there is a part 2. no, i don’t know when it’ll be out :d hope you liked it !!

[bloodiedskirtts]

Thinking about DBF!Jack getting jealous about you going on a date. Maybe texting you about what he would do to you throughout it. How he would take care of you better than some stupid little boy...Just a thought!

Slow Hands

dbf!jack abbot x robinavitch!reader

summary: oh anon, you're making my head all buzzy! continuing on from the og dbf!Jack Abbot

content/warnings: mdni, inappropriate relationship, unspecified age gap, dad's best friend, daddy kink, dirty talk, sexting, fingering, sex

wc: 1.6k

"Maybe your dad is right," Jack tells you as he leans against his porch railing.

You're sitting on the steps, looking out at the setting sun.

"We shouldn't be doing this, kid. It was a mistake."

The word makes you flinch. A mistake. All those nights, all the kisses, the cuddles, the giggles...a mistake. This is enough to make you stand up, without another word and walk to your car.

You can't exactly block Jack Abbot from your life. Robby is easy to forgive, a quality you don't inherit from him. So soon, Jack is back spending lazy afternoons drinking beer at your house.

He keeps out of your way as best as he can. Until you come down the stairs all dolled up. His eyes linger on how your breasts practically spill out of your dress, how it's just on the edge of too short. And he feel his cock stir in his pants. It's been too long since he's had you...and he won't. He can't betray Robby like that again.

It was a mistake...

"Where are you going?" Robby asks as you grab a jacket.

"On a date!" you simply respond, your eyes meeting Jack's before you slip out the door to a waiting Uber.

This isn't the first time that Jack has watched you go on a date. No, far from it. It is the first time since he knows how sweet you sound when you cum.

He's spent years watching you try out different boys for size. The college quarterback who got too handsy on the first date that Jack had to save you from. The pretty barista who lasted almost a year. Both Robby and Jack hated him. The musician...the other musician...and the Soundcloud rapper. What the fuck was a Soundcloud rapper?

And all the disastrous dates ended with you sitting on Jack's couch, bemoaning the fact that you would never find love. You had no clue that Jack was secretly praying for their downfall. He wanted you so bad for so long.

Jack has no idea that pretty barista broke up with you because you moaned Jack's name when he went down on you... Jack has no idea that after every single one of those failed dates you went home and made yourself reach your peak by imagining the filthy things your dad's best friend would do to you.

You had been circling each other for years. But you wouldn't step back, not after Jack called you a mistake!

It's only been about fifteen minutes since you left for your date but Jack is antsy. And Robby is noticing how his leg is bouncing.

"I should go home, I'm back on tomorrow night and I don't wanna completely fuck up my sleep schedule," Jack tells Robby. Any excuse to get out of his best friend's hair when all he can think about is bending his daughter over and making her cream over his cock.

Instead, he gets home and pulls his phone out.

He won't know how to make you feel good, baby girl, let daddy make your pussy feel good.

It's only a few seconds before Jack's phone lights up with a response.

oh daddy missed his chance and now this pussy needs to be filled by someone else x

Jack shouldn't be turned on by this. By the way you're making him suffer.

He doesn't know how you like it, baby girl. I'd be so sweet, let you ride my face all night if you want to. Play with that perfect little clit.

And Jesus, you're going to make him suffer. Because you don't respond.

It's supposed to be your third date with Brian. He's a nice guy, your age, works in finance, has just put a down payment on a house in the suburbs, wants kids, has a pension.

You say supposed to be your third date because you're sitting in a cocktail bar, all dolled up and Brian is nowhere to be seen. You check your phone over and over. But there's nothing.

After an hour, you realise that you've been stood up. You have no idea what to do. Looking at your phone you dial the number you know that will answer.

You're sitting on the curb trying not to cry as Jack's truck pulls up. He immediately jumps out, parking laws be damned.

"Baby girl, what's wrong? Did he hurt you? Make you do something you didn't wanna do?" he asks as he cups your face in his hands.

And Jack being so sweet is the final straw for you. You burst into tears as you shake your head. He cradles you in his arms.

"He stood me up," you confess, embarrassed.

Jack tuts and leads you to his truck.

"What a fuckin' idiot," he tells you as he drives you back to his house.

He guides you inside and upstairs to the bathroom where he starts to run the bath.

"Look at my sweet girl, all prettied up for some idiot. He has no idea what he's missing," Jack purrs as he massages your thighs before taking off your heels.

"Why don't you have a bath here, huh, pretty girl?" he breathes.

You nod your head trying to stop crying. But Jack doesn't care. He grabs a washcloth and cleans off your ruined makeup. Then he begins to undress you, willing his cock down when he sees the lingerie you picked out.

"Oh that fuckin' idiot," he repeats. "You picked this all out for him, huh? Thought he deserved to see you like this?"

You shake your head.

"I don't know. I just wanted to have the option but I...I don't think I was gonna sleep with him," you confess.

You haven't been able to get Jack out of your head. As much as you've tried. He kisses over the soft flesh of your thighs.

"C'mon baby, let daddy get you into the bath," he hums as he removes your underwear.

You sink into the water as you let Jack run soap over you. It's not needed but his hands feel so fuckin' good. And finally he presses his large hand between your thighs, his fingers trailing to your throbbing cunt. He teases your clit first, taking his time getting you worked up before sinking two thick fingers inside you.

"That's it, baby. Let daddy make you feel good," he groans as he pumps his fingers lazily in and out of you.

You can't help but pull him in for a kiss. You need to taste him. But Jack doesn't like how his mouth his muffling your moans so he pulls away so he can hear you get loud, louder and louder until your voice all but breaks. Your orgasm tumbles over you and you expect him to pull away.

But Jack isn't finished with you. You're so stressed, he thinks. So he continues pulling orgasm after orgasm out of you, until you're jelly in the bath.

"My pretty girl ready for bed?" he finally asks.

You nod your head, unable to form thoughts or words. He hums in appreciation. Jack picks you up, carrying you out of the bath and towels you off. He brings you to his bed, taking his time massaging moisturiser you left at his place into your body.

You settle into his bed then, tired from the overstimulation in the bath. You watch Jack through heavy lids as he undresses, shoes, then shirt, then pants, then boxers. He takes off his prosthetic leg finally before getting into bed beside you.

"Need to feel my angel around me," he breathes as he kisses you.

His lips start on yours before trailing down your neck and then to your breasts. You're a squirming mess when he finally presses the weeping head of his cock against your folds.

"So wet for daddy. You wouldn't be this wet for anyone else, huh?" he asks.

You just shake your head, his cock nudging against your clit.

"Need daddy's cock," you beg, dragging your nails down his back.

"Atta girl, use your nails on my back," he gruffs before pressing into you.

Jack isn't usually a patient man. But tonight, he takes his time with you, slowly rocking his hips into you. He wants to make this last. He wants to see you squirm under him, wants to make you cum over and over. He wants you to forget that anyone other than him exists.

"Fuck, daddy!" you cry out, tangling your fingers in his silver curls and pulling him in for a kiss.

He can feel your pussy tighten around his cock as he wrings another orgasm from you. He wants to feel this all night.

But Jack is also aware that he is a middle aged man and his own orgasm is fast approaching. The rhythm of his hips speeds up as he chases his own release.

"Fuck, daddy's gonna cum. Daddy's gonna cum in his little girl's pussy," he grunts against your neck.

You nod, letting him know it's okay. This is what you want.

As you come down from your highs together, Jack wraps you in his arms.

"You're not a mistake," he breathes into your hair. "Never a mistake."

a/n: thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed!

taglist: @sweetashhh @orangecheescakeleftover @elenamoncadaibarra

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