brynn

19 yrs old :) sophie thatchers #1 fangirl

[justiceforfoxface]

about me !!

hiii I’m brynn :)

19 yrs old, whatever pronouns make the joke funniest

i love yellowjackets + newsies + challengers and i might start posting fanfic on here soon but idk!

i read so much fanfic here and i tag my favorites with #brynn’s recs so you should check that out!!

a lot of my stuff here including the fanfics i repost are 18+, but minors can interact w/ me and be on my profile, i once was a minor with unsupervised internet access and i know a mdni isnt gonna stop anyone

that’s it bye 😼

[gobelindoll]

im rereading project hail mary already dont judge

[jacksally]

Centrifuge? Centrifuge.

PROJECT HAIL MARY 2026, dir. Phil Lord & Christopher Miller

[darlingdaisyfarm]

‧₊ ᵎᵎ BLEEDING FOR IT⋅ ˚✮

tags: nsfw, mullet!Stan x fem!reader, established relationship, kinda angsty at first ig, Stan needs to be praised so badly, blood and injuries, dirty talk ig, crying during sex, fingering, praise kink, “my girl” stuff sometimes used, pet names,

finally it's here.....ugh i hate and love it at the same time. thanks to one wonderful person who helped me with the gif!! ehehe (i hate making em) look at my boyyy ah yeah reminder that english isnt my native language so..

Stanley didn’t drink. well, he did, but not really. it’d been weeks since he’d touched anything stronger than the flat coke you kept in the fridge for when he got home too late and too tired to cook. and yet, standing there in the doorway of your shared apartment, Stanley Pines felt so fucking drunk, absolutely plastered. the room swayed under his boots like the deck of a ship he dreamt of when kid, and he had the sudden, absurd thought that maybe the blood drying in the corner of his mouth wasn’t from someone else’s fist but from biting his own tongue too hard when he laughed.

because he had laughed, he remembered it clearly. he could still feel the echo of it in his ribs.

his knuckles were raw and his lip was split. one of his eyebrows had taken the brunt of something, he couldn’t remember if it was a ring or just the edge of a rusted mailbox, but it throbbed like hell now, felt so hot, swollen and thick beneath the skin. and still, he leaned there with cocky stupid grin slashed crooked under the bruises, feeling he’d done something worth being proud of.

he looked like shit. and he felt, god, he felt glorious.

“hey, doll,” he rasped, pretending he hadn’t been gone four hours past when you expected him, sincerely hoping you wouldn't notice his voice hadn’t gone all hoarse from yelling or adrenaline.

your face, that beautiful face with such gorgeous traits Stanley always adored, lit up the hallway and it wasn't painted with joy, love or even panic. it was worse and he knew he fucked up. that face meant the mixture of worry and fury that only people who actually gave a shit ever managed to look like. it punched the wind out of Stan harder than the guy who’d clocked him in the ribs.

you didn’t speak at first because you didn't have to. your eyes flared, the twitch of your jaw, your hands curling into fists at your sides. it said everything.

“you’re smiling?” you said at last, “Stanley Pines, where the hell have you been?”

Stan blinked, scratched at the side of his neck with a half-split fingernail. “i mean—’m here now.” a pause. “uh, shoulda seen the other guy.”

and that stupid grin. that stupid grin.

you looked at him, and somewhere deep inside appeared stupid feeling of. . . resentment? it felt like he’d torn a piece of you without even realising it, because loving someone like him meant getting carved up a little just from how reckless he was with his own body.

“sit down,” you hissed. “don’t argue, just sit.” mentally you cursed yourself because it felt like you were treating him like a dog.

trying to be a good boy to you, he obeyed. slumped down into the sunken couch cushion, noticing that the adrenaline was finally wearing off, what made his limbs felt thick. the pain was setting in, and so was the guilt.

you disappeared down the hall, the bathroom light flicking on. Stanley stared at his bloody hands while you were gone, flexing his thick fingers, wishing he'd still get the change to hold his sweetheart tonight. you. Stanley wanted to hold you.

you tried, with every ounce of your rational being, to remain calm. to breathe through your nose like your therapist once suggested, to count backwards from ten, to tell yourself that he was here, that he was alive, that the blood hadn’t dried in streaks down his neck for any reason more sinister than his own goddamn stupidity. but that hot rage bloomed in your chest, dragging a new flare of worry behind it, and the longer you looked at him, slouched on the couch looking so fucking proud of himself for cheating death again, the harder it became to ignore.

you inhaled so slow it almost hurt your ribs, and opened that cheap plastic box with cotton balls and antiseptic you kept under the sink, first aid kit. setting each item on the table one by one, you tried to stay calm, hoping your mouth wouldn’t open and start screaming.

because what the fuck, Stanley. he scared you, his state scared you. the blood, how his tank top clung wet to his stomach, the deep red stain crusting around the neckline, and the fact that his damn nose hadn’t even stopped bleeding yet. and yet, that bastard sat there on the couch, legs splayed like always, all man-spread and proud of it, arms thrown along the backrest as if he hadn’t just come home looking like a murder scene.

you stepped between his thighs, your body slotting into the open space just like it had a thousand times before, except now your hands were shaking, your throat was tight and your fucking heart was banging around in your chest.

the first thing you did was grab his chin and tilted his face up toward the light, trying to get a good look at the mess of bruises along his cheekbone. his skin was warm, flushed with blood, heat and leftover adrenaline, and god help you, for one sharp, sick moment, you felt like someone’s mother dabbing her boy’s scraped knees with peroxide. that's how childish his behavior seemed to you.

“you look like hell,” you muttered as you brought the cotton pad to his brow, blotting gently at the swollen purple ridge above his eye.

“tellin’ ya, sweetie, you should see the other guy,” he said again, giving you slow, crooked, lazy smile that made you want to both kiss him and punch him in the jaw.

“don’t start,” you snapped, trying not to think about the fact that despite the bruising, the crooked smirk and the bleeding nose, he still managed to look like the hottest piece of shit you’d ever laid eyes on. “don’t fucking start, Stanley.”

“but baby, he was mouthing off. sayin’ very nasty things bout you. callin’ you a— oh, i dunno, i stopped listenin’ after the first insult. figured his teeth’d look better on the pavement.”

“so you decided to fight him?” you asked through clenched teeth, pressing the cotton a little harder into the cut beneath his eye.

Stanley hissed, a sharp intake of breath that sounded way too much like a moan, and you hated yourself for the way it made your thighs clench. get a grip. fuck, get it together.

“Stan, you could’ve died.”

“wasn’t gonna let him talk about you like that.”

“you idiot,” you whispered, and suddenly the words were tumbling out of you, “you stupid, reckless, self-destructive asshole. you’re already not sleeping. still flinch when someone knocks on the door too loud. you’re barely holding it together after the whole portal thing and now your brother’s gone and you go and get into a fight in the middle of fucking nowhere with a guy who wasn’t worth it!”

your breath stuttered, but you continued, letting emotions control you. “you’re not seventeen anymore! you don’t get to run around beating people up like some feral alley cat just because someone looked at me wrong, are you insane? you— what if he had a knife? what if you didn’t come home, what the fuck would i—“

Stan's hands were on you before you finished the sentence, both of them. big, rough, calloused, still scraped and red across the knuckles. one slid down your hip, the other came up fast, possessive. you gasped when they settled, cupped the backs of your thighs, squeezed your ass greedily.

and you froze for a second. you wanted to push him away. you wanted to kiss him stupid. you wanted to cry into his chest and tell him never to scare you like that again.

but instead you just stood there, cotton ball still soaked in alcohol, his blood under your nails, and his hands full of you like he couldn’t get enough.

his hands were on you, you repeated inside your head. holy fuck. and you'd be lying if you said you didn't want them there. you did want them there, but not like this. not while you were shaking with fury and his blood was still wet under your nails. not while you were halfway through swabbing the gash at his temple with trembling fingers and a heart that wouldn’t stop climbing your throat.

you were scolding him, and yet those goddamn hands had the audacity to find your ass, thumbs pressing in slow and deliberate at the crests, palms warm and so fucking possessive, as if he hadn’t just terrified you half to death

“do you ever fucking think, Stanley?” you bit out. “do you ever stop to consider how it feels for me? me, waiting at home, not knowing if the next knock on the door is gonna be some cop telling me they found your body in a gutter?”

his smile twitched, uneven beneath the crusted cut at the corner of his mouth. “ain’t gonna happen,” he said, and that answer made you even angrier. was this shit supposed to comfort you?

you stared at him, incredulous. “you think you’re invincible?”

“nah, i just know no one’s takin’ me out without a helluva fight.”

“you’re such a f᠎ucking idiot.”

you returned to your work with a renewed harshness, dabbing at the torn skin along his jaw, trying your best to ignore the thick fingers now kneading at you, groping because Stanley couldn’t help himself. for that lustful bastard, the mere proximity of your body was enough to bring his bloodied, battered self back to some grotesque semblance of desire. it was always this trick he played when he knew you were about to explode. he thought he could fix everything with his hands. or his mouth. or his cock.

though, for a second, you faltered. your knees momentarily weak as his grip tightened, pulled you closer.

but it didn’t last. no, not this time.

“this your game now?” you sneered, fingers tightening on the bottle of antiseptic as you poured it a little too liberally onto the cotton pad. “i get mad and you think you can distract me by squeezing my ass? maybe f᠎uck the anger outta me like always? well, guess what, Stan, it’s not gonna work this time.”

in response, you heard a groan, half from the sting of the disinfectant, half from the way your hips brushed his thighs as you moved, but still that arrogant grin stayed glued to his stupid bruised mouth.

“you sound real sexy when you’re pissed, y’know that?” that shameless bastard teased, “makes me wanna keep gettin’ into fights if it means you get this worked up.”

you shot him a glare so cold it could’ve stopped his goddamn heart. “are you insane?” although the answer was obvious.

Stan's thumbs slid lower, brushing under the curve of your ass now, dangerously close to the heat between your legs, and you wanted to slap him. wanted to break his f᠎ucking nose all over again.

“y’scared for me, huh? worried?” he murmured, mouth close to your neck now, too close. you swear you smelled sweat and blood with a metallic taste. “my girl loves me that much?”

you shoved the cotton pad into the little tray on the coffee table, blinking furiously against the sting in your eyes. “fuck you.”

“already on my knees for ya, sweet thing,” he purred, dragging his hands now up the backs of your thighs, thick fingers teasing beneath the hem of your sleep shorts. “you just gotta sit that pretty pussy on my face and i’ll show you how sorry i am.”

the audacity. you could’ve killed him.

your whole body was shivering from that wild cocktail of lust and fury he always managed to inject into your bloodstream. how dare he. how dare he joke like that. flirt like that. say shit like that when he looked like he’d barely escaped with his life.

and yet your thighs clenched, traitorous and aching, because he was still Stanley. your Stan. stupid, bruised, hot-as-hell Stanley, with fists like sledgehammers and a mouth that could ruin you in seconds. and god help you, he always won. always walked away victorious, hands bloodied and teeth bared. heart still beating strong for his sweetheart, you. deep down you knew that if anyone dared speak your name with anything less than reverence, he’d beat them to a pulp with a smile on his face.

he was reckless. dangerous. a f᠎ucking fool.

as he dragged you closer, thumbs now spreading across the swell of your ass, fingers toying at the crease between your thighs, you felt that stupid rage simmer into something hungrier.

his voice dropped to a whisper. “lemme make it up to you, baby. i know you’re mad. i know i scared ya. but i’m right here. didn’t i come back? always do. and all i wanna do now is make you feel good 'til you forget all about what a dumbass i am.”

you glared at him, not giving up. “you are a dumbass,” but fucking hell, his hands were too sure. too warm. too needy. and despite every ounce of logic screaming at you, your body betrayed you yet again, hips moving forward, thighs tightening around his knees.

“yeah?” Stan breathed. “then lemme worship you for a bit. make my penance proper.”

you weren’t sure if you wanted to kiss him or cry.

god, you felt like you were falling.

whether it was from the metallic scent of blood sticking to the back of your throat, the sweet ache pooling between your thighs or those battered hands sliding beneath the hem of your shorts. you weren’t sure. probably it was both.

you gasped. a quiet, traitorous sound, just a breath and a stutter of vocal cords, but loud enough for Stanley to hear and for him to know. because his fingers had found that spot, right there, just above the hem of your panties, brushing your clit with a clumsy tenderness that somehow always undid you. he pressed again, slower this time, coaxing the sound back out of you. and fuck, your shorts were bloodied now, too. the smudges from his knuckles had soaked into the fabric where he touched you, leaving scarlet fingerprints on your waistband.

Stanley looked pleased. satisfied like a well-fed wolf with your throat in his teeth, dragging you closer with rough palms, mouth open against the skin of your belly, pressing kisses, nipping little bursts of sensation into the soft below your navel, starving for the taste of you.

but if he thought you were letting him off that easy, he was out of his goddamn mind.

you curled your fingers into his brown hair, deep at the roots, right at the base of that beloved mullet, and yanked.

Stan hissed sharp through his teeth.

“hey!” he barked, jolting back, eyes wide and confused like a puppy that’d just been smacked with a newspaper.

“you move one more, Stanley Pines,” you snapped, “and i swear to god, i won’t let you touch me for a whole month.”

he blinked. then you saw a painfully familiar reaction. Stan pouted, lower lip puffing out like you’d just denied him his favorite dessert.

you hated him. you hated how cute he looked. all bruised and bloodied and bandaged, with that stupid sad-boy expression, his mouth turned down and his lashes wet from either pain, want or both. you wanted to throttle him, wanted to shove his face between your legs and let him cry about it there.

“c’mon, baby, you’re not gonna last a whole month without my hands on you. don’t pretend. not when you’re already so f᠎uckin’ wet.”

and god help you, he was right. you were soaked. throbbing. your panties clinging damp and tight to your folds, his thigh was warm between yours, and you hated yourself for wanting it

maybe you weren’t so innocent after all. who could’ve guessed you had a thing for bloodied men with split lips and knuckles stained red?

he gave you a cocky, devilish grin, and leaned to slide his hand back up your inner thigh smoothly. his thumb dragged against the seam of your shorts, and his eyes flicked to your face, reading every twitch of muscle.

“that asshole was askin’ for it, y’know,” he drawled. “talkin’ like he knew you. said some shit ‘bout how good you looked walkin’ home the other night, the tight little dress you wore when we went to that bar on main. said he wondered what kinda sounds you made.”

you tensed.

“so i asked him real nice to shut his mouth,” Stanley went on, “but he didn’t listen. first punch landed right here—“ he tapped his own jaw, where the split had swollen. “then gut. teeth. kicked his knee in backwards. dropped him like a sack of rocks. kept swingin’ ‘til his face looked more like hamburger than man. and then, only then, did i say ‘talk ‘bout my girl again and next time i won’t leave you breathin’.’”

you stared at him, fingers had loosened in his hair. you’d stopped tending his wounds, stopped moving entirely, in fact, because your breath had caught in your chest, and the flush running across your skin had nothing to do with anger anymore.

and Stanley knew it. he used that tiny moment of stillness to slip one hand beneath your waistband, thick fingers diving with ease into the heat between your legs, cupping you over your panties, rubbing slow and deep through the fabric until your knees wobbled and your mouth fell open in sound between a gasp and a moan.

“f᠎uck, look at you,” Stan grinned like a bastard as he worked slow circles into your sensitive clit. “drippin’ for me like a little angel you are. all that fire, all that fury and underneath it, you’re still my needy little thing. right, baby?”

you should’ve pulled away. should’ve slapped him. and as luck would have it, you couldn't help but whimper.

“d-don’t think,” you managed, hips twitching as he rubbed harder, “don’t think that if i don’t stop you, it means i forgive you.”

Stanley let out a chuckle as he leaned forward to kiss your thigh. “nah, sugar, just admit that you love me so much, takin’ care of your dumbass boyfriend while he ruins your couch and bleeds on your shorts and makes you feel so good you can’t even think straight.”

your head dropped back. “w-wait, you’re getting the couch dirty—”

“worth it,” he groaned, sliding your panties aside at last, fingers dragging slick through your folds.

you stood there like an idiot. all those little medical supplies, gauze rolls, antiseptic wipes, clutched helplessly in your shaking palms, hoping that if you just focused hard enough on being a nurse, you could pretend you weren’t standing with your legs parted between the thighs of a man whose bloody fingers were rubbing circles into your already swollen clit.

you were furious. righteously furious, but your body was folding inwards, betraying you, melting into him like sugar dissolving in heat. and it was so wrong, because he’d scared you. again. he could’ve gotten himself killed.

but god, his hands. his voice.

“this sweet little pussy always knows who’s touchin’ her. you feel it, don’tcha, baby? don’t even need my cock. not when you’re already this wet for my fingers. my voice. that’s all it takes, ain’t it? i trained so well. look at you.”

your breath hitched when his middle finger had slipped further down, not inside, not quite yet, but enough to skate along your aching entrance and tease the pulse of it, gathering your wetness and spreading it slow across your soft folds. and the worst part, it was working so well you caught yourself wishing for more than his hand. you wanted his cock inside, raw, fucking you stupid until the ache overtook the anger. but you couldn’t say that, no. if you admitted that, it would make you complicit in your own unraveling.

so you fought back the only way you could.

“you’re such a f᠎ucking moron,” you spat, though your voice was already thinning at the edges. “you think it’s sexy? coming to me with blood all over your shirt like some kind of street thug? you’re a stupid, violent, reckless son of a bitch, Stanley.”

he only smiled, pretending you’d just complimented his cooking. his hands didn’t stop.

“and i’d do it again. i’d fight a thousand bastards for you, sweetheart. every last one of ‘em. any man who so much as thinks he can look at you with anything but respect, i’ll knock his teeth down his throat.”

and just as you opened your mouth to answer, Stan slid two fingers inside.

it was immediate. an electric, desperate clench, your thighs slammed shut, trembling, the first aid kit supplies clattering uselessly to the floor, forgotten. you slapped both palms down onto his shoulders to keep yourself upright, breath leaving you in a crushed sound. you were soaking, embarrassingly so. the friction of his fingers pumping into your warm walls filled the room with a filthy, wet sound that made your stomach twist in humiliation and arousal both.

“sweet moses,” Stan murmured, watching your face. “you sound like a meal, mhmh. all this for me, baby? thought you hated me.”

“i do hate you,” you gasped, but your hips were moving, chasing his knuckles as you needed them inside you more than air. “you’re a goddamn disaster, Stanley— fighting like some caged animal, bleeding all over my furniture“

“couch looks better with my blood on it anyway,” he murmured, leaning forward to kiss the skin just beneath your chest. “’s a declaration of love, ain’t it?”

he kept kissing up your torso, open-mouthed and unhurried, leaving a warm trail of breath and spit from your navel to your sternum. pausing at your collarbones, he nuzzled like a boy desperate for comfort, then lowered his head and simply laid it on your chest, those eyes, those soft deer-eyes, looking up at you as he begged.

“please, baby, just a kiss. it’s been all day. i need it. i need you.”

you turned your head away.

it hurt. it hurt so bad your ribs creaked under the strain of it, because you did want to kiss him, more than anything, wanted to wrap your arms around this bastard and cry and tell him you’d die if he ever died, and he could never do this again, scare you like this. but you were still angry, drowning in that suffocating, pulsing worry that had gripped your throat when he came through your door looking half-dead.

and Stan saw that pain in your eyes, so he changed tactics.

“please,” he breathed, fingers still working you slow and firm, curling into that sweet spot that made your knees buckle, “please call me your good boy. jus’ once, angel. i’ll be better, i swear. i’ll be good, i’ll listen next time. please. . . lemme hear it. tell me i’m your good boy, baby— please please please”

you shook your head. even as your thighs trembled and your pussy clenched around his fingers, your wetness dripping in hot streams down your leg, your lips parted around broken moans, you shook your damn head, and it made you feel like a villain, like you were punishing a dog who only ever wanted to be loved.

Stan's mouth was on your chest, so hungry, sucking, licking, mouthing one nipple with noisy abandon while his free hand came up to pinch the other, switching between them, lavishing each with sloppy, obscene attention until your back arched off his lap and your head tipped backwards.

then, just as you felt the sweet tension pulling tight low in your belly, first wave of pleasure starting to bloom, you cried.

a tear slipped down your cheek, and then another, and then you hiccuped, your whole chest shuddering.

“you— you idiot,” a sob escaped you. “you don’t understand what it feels like to open that door and see you like that. i thought— thought maybe this time, maybe this time it wouldn’t just be a bloody nose— maybe this time they’d have a weapon. i thought, t-thought i’d never see you alive again”

Stanley pulled his mouth from your chest and looked up, horrified. “baby,” he said, breathless, “hey, shh. i’m right here”

“i hate you,” you choked, curling over yourself, arms now limp on his shoulders, fingers digging into his stained tank top. “i hate you because you make me love you. and you don’t know how to stop. you just— just keep getting yourself hurt, and i can’t— can’t watch it again—”

you were full of Stanley and full of Stanley mant full of rage and of unbearable love.

and Stanley just held you, fingers still working slowly in and out of your clenching pussy, kissing your skin and whispering, “i’m sorry, i’m so sorry, baby, i’d die for you, but i swear i won’t make you watch. i swear, i swear i’ll try to live for you instead.”

yeah, the idiot didn't know how to support you.

he begged you one last time, this time without that stupid playful, teasing crooked smirk that made you want to slap and kiss him in equal measure.

his hand was soaked, knuckles glistened with your juices, and your thighs had gone near-numb from trembling. your clit, swollen and over-attended, throbbed with need, signalling you were getting close. feeling this, Stanley continued fucking you with his fingers, working them inside with the unwavering focus of a man who didn’t know how to stop, who would finger you until your soul left your body.

“sweetheart, please, just kiss me. i ain’t gonna make it. swear to god, you don’t kiss me right now, i’ll just— i’ll drop dead right here with my fingers inside this perfect pussy. and what a way to go, sure, but f᠎uck, honey, i need you.”

your lip trembled while Stanley kept going, faster now, no longer patient, the pads of his rough fingers curling upwards to grind against that velvet-soft patch inside you, knot of nerves hidden in the heat of your folds. your walls were spasming in helpless pulses, more wetness dripping down your thighs like nectar. every stroke of his hand struck lightning through your spine.

“awwh this little clit so f᠎uckin’ needy,” he murmured, watching it twitch under his thumb. “your walls keep squeezin’ me baby, this cunt knows no one else can fill her right. you were made for this, weren’t ya? made to take my fingers, say it, princess. kiss me and say it.”

you tried to speak, but the pressure had climbed so high it hollowed you. something tremendous pressing against your ribcage, your throat and in the end of this all, against your sanity. the ache inside your cunt had become unbearable, your pussy spasming tighter and tighter around his fingers, sucking them deeper with every drag, desperate for that final push over the edge.

Stan's mouth was still open, face so close, so dear, those dry bloodstained lips trembling, eyes dark and glistening. such a needy face.

cursing yourself, you gave in, bent forward and kissed him.

thankfully, the kiss silenced you. because just as your lips touched his, dry and cracked, the orgasm overtook you so suddenly.

your body folded as your overstimulated pussy clenched down with such violent force you nearly cried out, but that kiss stole the sound away, swallowed it greedily. your thighs locked around his wrist, breath shuddered into his mouth, and your hands clawed into his strong shoulders, because the room had disappeared. the fucking world had disappeared. all that existed was the frantic pulsing of your pussy and the dizzy, collapsing crash of pleasure that emptied your mind and filled your body with white, hot, blinding light.

you fell. and this time, you fell into him.

all of you, crumbling downward, half-sobbing, half-limp, your head knocking gently against his chest. Stanley caught you in those awful, perfect arms, ams still marred with dried blood and bruises, and he held you to him like he would never let you go.

you were shaking. violently. legs useless, pussy aching, heart hammering as if it wanted to escape the prison of your ribs. your face was so red, eyes puffy from crying, lashes sticky with tears. thighs trembled against the edges of his seat. your mouth was slightly open, breathing shallow. completely undone.

“whoa, whoa,” Stan said softly, still holding you, one palm gently stroking your hip. “easy there, baby. thought you were gonna black out on me. what, my fingers that good? huh? blew the brains out your pretty lil head?”

a soft, wounded groan escaped you, and when Stan leaned in to kiss your cheek, grinning smug like the bastard he was, you pushed his face away with one hand, weakly, but still.

“we’re doing the no-sex thing,” you said hoarsely, voice hoarse from crying and cumming so hard. “for a month. starting now. that was your final freebie.”

Stanley chuckled, still cradling his fragile precious baby. “yeah, right, sure, sweetheart. tell that to your pussy. ‘cause she don’t sound like she got the memo.”

and still, that bastard kissed your temple so fucking soft. gentle in a way that said he’d wait, if he had to, of course.

giving up, you curled into your boyfriend. and for the first time that day, despite your bruised heart and shaking thighs, you felt way better and calmer.

[darlingdaisyfarm]

TO MAKE A FATHER

he’s been gone for months, and the only thing that got you through was the thought of him coming home and putting a baby in you

tags: nsfw, smut, birthday sex, breeding kink, vaginal sex & fingering, praise kink, pet names, established relationship, soft dom Stan but he’s losing his mind so it turns into rough sex, mating press, post sailing Stan, pussy drunk, father’s day got a little too literal, ovulation mentioned, pregnancy kink... i guess... idk...

comments or reblogs are highly appreciated, ty!

it was Stan’s birthday. and he was supposed to come back from sea only in a week, but god, you already missed him so fucking bad you felt feral with it. he’d been away for three months, just three, not a year like the last time, because Ford had promised this expedition wouldn’t be long. they needed to retrieve one last thing, map one last trench, and then they'd be home. a short voyage. no big deal. thank fucking god for that. because when Stan left for nearly a whole year last time, you honestly thought you might die of sheer fucking loneliness.

it was summer now. Mabel and Dipper were due back next week, just in time for the full Pines family reunion. the party was already planned, you just had to wait. one more week. that’s what you kept telling yourself, just one more week.

but even then, you couldn’t. everything inside you was missing him too much.

the postcards he’d been sending weren’t enough anymore, not when you couldn’t hug him, kiss him, bury your face in that stupid oversized chest.

and worse was that your period had ended, so you checked your ovulation tracker this morning, and like clockwork, your hormones were in open revolt. your body was aching, flushed and need-starved, and you hadn’t even touched yourself these past few days, because nothing, not your fingers, not some pathetic silicone toy, could replace that bastard’s cock.

his mouth, the filthy shit he always moaned right into your ear when he had you trembling under him.

and you were starving for it. for him.

too tired to be awake and too restless to sleep. the sheets felt too cold in places, too hot in others, and your body refused to listen, so you gave up and padded barefoot into the kitchen.

mug cake, maybe? you didn’t even know what your hands were doing. chocolate powder, milk. . . the smell was soft, but your brain was far, far away.

wait. was that. . . you froze, looking toward the window. was that really. . .?

no. it couldn’t be.

but you knew the sound of that beat-up car like the back of your hand.

your heart slammed stupidly in your chest and you barely made it to the front door before it opened, and there he stood, there he fucking stood.

Stanley.

still as tall and as broad-shouldered as ever.

his duffel slung over one shoulder, a soldier returning from war. his boots were caked with old salt and dirt, looking like he’d come straight from the docks to you. his red beanie sat over that growing-back mullet. and fuck, he still had that smile. that stupid fucking smile.

“what. . . but you weren’t supposed to be back for another seven days, Stanley! what the fuck. . .” you stammered, half-laughing, in utter disbelief. “what the hell is this— some birthday prank?”

Stan dropped the duffel to the floor with a meaty thud and was on you in two strides flat, arms cinching around your waist so fast it knocked the breath out of your lungs. god, you almost forgot what it felt like to be held like this. how his arms didn’t hug so much as claim. how his palms were incapable of staying above your waist for longer than thirty seconds without twitching down like they had a mind of their own, creeping toward the curve of your ass.

“i couldn’t wait,” he mumbled against your neck, already kissing the skin there, scratchy with stubble and breathless from the drive. “i tried. told myself i could stick it out, but c’mon, doll, a week? i nearly jumped ship. told Ford id lose my goddamn mind if i spent another week on that boat without my girl.

“but— wait, where’s Ford? weren’t you two supposed to come back together?”

“we did, we docked one hour ago. Ford said he wanted to jump off early, head to Fiddleford’s place and stay the night. said somethin’ about picking up that weird magnetic equipment thing they were rambling about for the past six months. . . oh, don't look at me like that, sweetie. he’ll be fine. i had more important things to get home to.”

you snorted. “god. nerds.”

“that’s what i said,” Stan chuckled, finally pulling back to look at you, hands still curled heavy around your waist, thumbs grazing over your skin because he couldn’t stop touching you if he tried. “two genius freaks, holed up together for the night. who knows what the hell they’ll get up to. maybe Ford’ll finally confess he’s in love with the guy and they’ll be makin’ out over a microscope.”

you rolled your eyes, heart still hammering. “god, Stan, if you got yourself arrested for speeding just to get laid—“

“wasn’t just for gettin’ laid,” he grinned, and pulled you closer. “missed you like hell, sweet thing. had to see my girl before i lost my mind. swear, if i spent one more night with my brother muttering about magnetic ley lines i was gonna walk off the edge of the damn boat.”

you hated how warm your chest felt. hated how much you loved this stupid, salt-crusted, grinning bastard.

“counted down every day, every minute. told myself i’d wait ‘til the birthday party, make it a surprise, but fuck, this’s better. you’re the only gift i wanted anyway.”

and then, just like that, your feet weren’t on the floor anymore, his hands were already full of you, lifting you into his arms with practiced ease. your reaction kicked in before sense could catch up as your legs wrapped around his hips in one motion.

“what the f— Stan! i’m heavy, put me down—“ you choked out through a half-laugh, face buried into his neck as you held on like the ocean might come crashing through the walls.

“sweetheart,” he groaned, one large hand landing on your ass with a sharp, adoring smack, “ive had safes and debts much heavier than you, so be a good girl and don’t insult yourself.”

you clung tighter, because what else could you do? this strong man always made you feel like gravity was optional. those broad arms, roped with age-earned strength, held you steady as he walked to the bedroom.

Stanley dropped you to the bed but never let go, not really. you fell together, a clumsy landing softened by kisses and clenched thighs. you hadn’t even realized your mouth had found his until you tasted sea salt.

“missed you,” he growled against your lips, voice almost trembling now, body taut with restraint. “missed you so goddamn much. couldn’t stop thinkin’ about you, sweetheart, i need you, i need you right now—“

Stanley hadn’t even bothered to undress all the way, too impatient to take everything off. besides, sex with clothes on had always felt hotter to him, more desperate and fucked-up, something about two people so worked up they couldn’t even get their damn pants off properly.

you heard the sound of his belt unfastening, and already saw his trousers halfway down his hips. you couldn’t help but laugh when you noticed how badly his hands were trembling.

“you really missed me, huh?” Stan mumbled into your neck, lowering his lips to your collarbone, leaving scorching kisses against your skin. “fuck, baby, wanna be inside you so so bad.”

what a rhetorical question, you barely had time to think, before he yanked your oversized shirt up, groaning at the sight of your tits, then dove in.

“yeah, Stan, fuck, yes, baby, missed you so bad—“ you gasped, feeling his wet tongue dragging over your nipple as he sucked it deep into his mouth.

it was so unfair, how you were already nearly naked and he was still fully dressed. unfair, unfair, unfair. you wanted to touch him too, wanted to place your palms over his belly, feel the hair on his chest, moan into his warm neck and scratch down his back, knowing how smug he’d walk around later, pausing in front of every mirror just to admire the marks you left him.

your back arched the second you felt his fingers on your clothed clit. Stan was still hungrily mouthing at your tits as if expecting milk to come out, and you twitched when the pad of his finger pressed against your swollen bundle of nerves. god. god. god. that was it. yes, yes, yes. you didn’t dare close your legs, though your whole body begged for it. it was just too much. too good and sensitive. especially after not being fucked for three whole months. when normally you couldn’t even last two days without him.

Stan finally pulled off your nipple, leaving behind a flushed, wet mark. for a second or two, he just stared at you, his girl, all flushed and needy, and then finally, finally, he tore your panties off with such roughness it made your stomach tighten.

you were soaked. not a word left your lips, but words weren’t even needed. Stanley stilled and didn’t dare move, only stared. stared like it was the first time again, as if he’d never seen anything more more beautiful in his life.

“oh holy moses,” his big hands slid under your thighs and spread you open, his sweet baby, the best damn gift he could’ve asked for on his fucking birthday. “you look so fucking good, princess. swear to god, i could die right here.”

his cock twitched visibly against his stomach, but he didn’t even touch himself. “been thinkin’ about this pussy, fuck. . . been dreamin’ about seeing it again,” he muttered, running two thick fingers through your soaked folds, gently spreading them apart. and then, because of course he did, he brought those fingers up to your lips, grinning. “come on, sweetheart.”

honestly, Stanley didn’t know how he didn’t cum right then and there, watching you sluttily suck his fingers in, licking every inch of them while your eyes got glassy from how badly you needed him inside you.

“atta girl. my good fuckin’ girl.” just from those words alone, you nearly whined out loud, and Stan noticed, the bastard, so he said it again, softer this time, “yes? you like it when i call you that? of course you do. such a good girl. my sweet baby.”

and those same wet fingers were between your legs again before you could ask, slowly sliding inside, curving so good that you moaned louder, remembering every god you knew from every religion, thanking them that Ford was still with Fidds and the kids wouldn’t be back for another week.

Stanley left kisses, if they could even be called that, greedy, open-mouthed sucks along your stomach, thighs and the inside of your thighs while he fingered your pussy.

your own fingers tangled into his grown-out mullet, slightly damp at the roots, and you pulled him up, trembling, eyes filled with tears you could barely hold back. “i need you,” you begged. “please. just— fuck, please! need your cock, i can’t— can’t wait anymore.”

in response, Stan leaned over, placing his palm on your thigh, pinning you down against the bed.

“easy, easy, slow down, doll,” he laughed, and if you weren’t so turned on and weak in the knees, you’d have socked him in the jaw right then for being such a tease. “lemme take my fuckin’ time with you. haven’t touched you in three months, m’gonna memorize you again.”

not even a second passed before his fingers started moving. again. slowly stroking, curling deep inside your cunt while his thumb traced slow circles around your throbbing clit, and all you could feel was yourself dripping right down onto the sheets.

it wasn’t even embarrassing to realize you’d nearly come in under two minutes. god, yes yes yes, you wanted to finish all over his fingers, while he massaged your clit just like that. Stanley, please, your brain was practically crying out, just let me have this one, please, and yet—

Stan knew you far too well.

he saw how your body writhed and how your moans morphed into choked gasps, that helpless thing of breathing that only came when you were so close you couldn’t think anymore. he saw how your pussy was sucking his fingers in, refusing to let go, clenching like it wanted to trap him inside forever.

yeah, he thought, smug bastard that he was, my sweet little thing’s about to come.

but wouldn’t it feel better if you came clenching around his cock instead?

and just like that, his fingers slipped out of you, so sudden and cruel, that the lack of sensation made your whole body jolt. left you achingly empty, so empty it brought tears to your eyes.

your head shot up. eyes red, lips parted as you grabbed him by the wrist with shaking fingers. “you asshole,” you sobbed, voice trembling. “fuck you, Stan—“ in your head, you were already planning revenge. next time he begged for a five-minute blowjob in between tours, you’d stop right before he could cum and pull the exact same stunt. let’s see how he fucking likes it.

but of course, Stan just chuckled. “what? i can’t tease my own birthday present a little?” he grinned, clearly pleased with himself, rubbing your thigh as if to soothe the betrayal, while doing absolutely nothing to fix it.

oh. right. his birthday. a date marked in red on the kitchen calendar. the day you’d spent months planning for, and somehow you still forgot, completely lost in the haze of arousal.

and then, it hit you. the second realization. father’s day. it wasn’t a joke. it really did fall on the same goddamn day this year.

you looked up at him with a lazy grin, rolling your hips upward toward where he was palming his cock now, his hand moving with long strokes to draw more blood to the shaft.

“you know your birthday falls on father’s day this year, right?”

Stan paused mid-stroke. “does it now?” he asked, oh, that voice. not playful anymore. your nod was enough, though, a line had been crossed.

“sweet fucking saints, don’t say shit like that unless you want me to knock you up right here, baby.”

you giggled innocently, despite the filthy wetness still dripping down your thighs. “well. . . sounds like you’ve got something to celebrate.”

his grip on his cock tightened. “yeah? you think i should fuck a goddamn baby into you, sweetheart? you want that? you want me to fill you up and let it take?” Stanley was hard now, painfully so. he rubbed the thick head of his cock up and down your folds, not entering yet, but enough for your pussy to flutter open around the tip, clenching at nothing, desperate to take him deeper.

you gasped when Stan's free hand pressed down gently on your lower belly. “wanna feel this tummy swell up, right here, sweetie. make you mine for real.”

your legs trembled as your hips jerked upward, chasing him. but you both knew the stakes.

the room spun slightly. god, he was hot teasing your pussy like this, but there was still enough sense left in your brain to mutter. “you gonna. . . use a condom?” your voice sounded disappointed.

“condom?” Stan paused, letting his cock rest there, brushing maddeningly against your wetness. then, he snorted, gliding his tip over your needy entrance, pretending he was deciding. “hmm, depends,” a lie. ”you ovulating?” he asked casually, voice too calm for someone who’d just threatened to breed you like a bitch in heat.

“yeah,” you swallowed thickly.

Stan grunted. “fuck. fuck.” he pulled back for a second and slapped the head of his cock against your pussy again, watching the way it jumped. “we could grab one,” he said, but made no movement to do so. “they’re in the drawer. second one down.” his hand stayed on his shaft, lazily rubbing it to keep himself hard.

hot belgian waffles, the idea of you, wet, flushed and begging under him, was almost too much already.

but you didn’t move either.

you just looked at him.

“you really gonna pull out on your birthday? c'mon. didn't you want to be a daddy?“

Stanley had no idea how he was supposed to not come just from that, it wasn’t even a question now. “you are evil, you know that? trying to get me to cum in you.”

your smile widened. “is it working?”

Stan knew he was playing with fire. the way he kept teasing himself too, hovering just outside of you, not sliding in, not yet, was pure torture. for both of you. because once that thick, leaking cock finally split you open, there was no going slow.

and god, he knew what he was working with. he knew his size and how often he lost control with you, how your tight little pussy made him feral. Stanley didn’t want to hurt you, he never did, but he also couldn’t stop this thing that rose in him every time you pulled him in like that, wet and trembling.

precum dripped from his tip like sap, and the way your slick coated the length of his cock only made it worse.

you looked down with dazed eyes and saw the moment he brought his hand to his mouth, dragging his tongue over his palm. “Stan, please,” your voice trembled like your thighs. and then he spat right into his hand, rubbed it down his shaft like he wanted to drown his cock in it, mixing his own saliva, precum and your wetness.

your mouth fell open. holy shit, why was that so damn hot?

“you gonna fuck me or marry me?” you teased, trying to keep your voice light, even as your body ached for him.

Stan groaned low in his chest, hand tightening around himself. “gonna do more than that, baby,” he nudged the head right against your entrance, slowly slipping inside. “gonna make sure you’re round next time i leave. gonna fuck a baby into you, princess.”

the second the word leave left his mouth, you flinched. a shadow passing through your face. obviously, you didn't like his words about leaving. but you didn’t get the chance to reply, because Stan pushed in.

a slow, thick slide, inch by inch as he pressed your hips down to stop you from wriggling away. your back arched violently and a cry ripped from your throat what made Stan cup your face as he kissed your jaw, whispering against your skin.

“shh, i got you. takin’ me so good, princess, so brave f’me. good girl, makin’ me feel like a man again.”

you gasped for air, fingers clawing at the sheets. god, you’d forgotten how big he was, forgotten how it felt, to be stretched and filled like this.

his cock pulsed inside you, and you could feel every damn vein, them throbbing against your walls as your pussy clenched in response, sucking him even deeper.

your brain turned to white noise. Stan said something about how tight you were, perfect and made for him, but all you could do was breathe like a fish out of water, mouth opening and closing with no sound.

god. god.

you wanted to say, no, you’re just so big, Stan, but your lungs couldn’t form a single word. only shivers and tears.

and he hadn’t even moved normally yet.

Stanley's cock felt so good inside you, so thick, hard and pulsing, what made you dizzy. the ridges, the curve, the stretch, fuck, this man was perfect. you moaned right into his mouth. “mmghh, Stan. . . gosh, you feel so good”

“baby— fu-fuck, missed this pussy. m-missed how good she feels. holy shit. . .” you whispered something like ”don’t pull out, don’t ever pull out” and Stanley groaned right into you, pressing his forehead to yours, about to lose his goddamn mind.

it was logical that he would start moving but for some reason you weren't ready for it, so when Stanley started to slowly push into your body with heavy thrusts, then reaching deeper. faster. harder, your mouth dropped open in a perfect “o”. especially when his tip slammed into your cervix. again. again. again.

fortunately or unfortunately, Stanley was aware of this too, felt the way you clenched immediately and the way your pussy grabbed at him, and he barely held himself back from pounding into you like a goddamn animal.

“fuck, fuck, fuck,” he choked. “im that deep inside you, princess, huh.” and god help him, he hadn’t known he could get this damn feral just knowing his baby wanted to be bred.

unable to contain himself, Stan slammed into you much harder than before, changing the languid and gentle rhythm to a rougher one. sweat dripped from his jaw onto your chest as he pinned you open, driving his throbbing cock in and out, groaning at how good your starved pussy felt, fluttering and gripping him so hard it made his eyes roll back.

his tip kissed your cervix again and again until you were crying, sobbing loudly into his mouth with every slam. and these sounds only increased in volume when his hand found your clit and rubbed fast.

“come on, baby,” Stan growled. “milk my cock. wanna feel this sweet little pussy squeeze the fuck out of me.”

you whined, closing your eyes tightly and starting to wiggle your hips, feeling a shiver run through your body. “go-gonna cum, gonna cum. . .hnnghn, Stan, im cumming“

“yeah, do it. good. cum for me, sweetheart.”

cumming on his cock was fucking divine.

so good it almost scared you. you’d forgotten how good it could feel, to twitch and clench and gush around that thick, perfect length, after three months without him. three months of empty nights, cold sheets, and fingers that never got you even halfway there.

Stanley knew you like the back of his bruised hand, and it was almost insulting how quickly he adjusted. so when he felt you pulse around him like that, that telltale flutter of your cunt trying to milk him dry, he slowed down enough to draw it out.

and honestly, he was almost shocked he could do it, shocked he could resist.

but he did, and he started to move in slow, deliberate thrusts, rolling his hips in smooth, sensual circles. not thrusting anymore, but massaging, pressing that cock into every inch of you with agonizing control.

from Stan's lips fell those guttural, low moans, perfect gravelly sound you always loved, as he was watching your body seize and flutter from the inside, feeling your pussy contract around him. in response, you clawed at his wide shoulders, gasping, moaning and sobbing his name. back bent so sharply that any gymnast would’ve gasped in awe. and your whole body shuddered like you’d been struck by lightning.

Stan waited, patiently, such a good man, until the full-body spasm of your climax ebbed, before he leaned in and kissed you sloppily, shoving his tongue into your mouth, claiming every inch of you inside and out. his tongue dragged over every soft corner of your mouth, so deep and thorough you started moaning again straight into his lips, barely able to breathe.

the bastard. he knew you needed a second to catch your breath. knew your lungs were still struggling from how hard you’d just come. and yet here he was, already fucking your mouth with his tongue like it was another hole for him to use.

god. what a man. what a sick, dirty, perfect man.

he treated you like a princess even when he was buried balls deep inside you. knew when to fuck you stupid and when to stop. knew when to rub your clit and when to grind that thick cock against your spot until you saw stars.

you’d never felt more adored.

“you alright, baby?” Stan brushed hair from your face with a tenderness that, honestly, didn’t match the way he was pounding you some minutes ago. “goddamn, you came so hard i thought you’d faint. like last time, huh?”

you laughed, cheeks going hot, and turned your head away, muttering under your breath. “oh no no no, we’re not talking about last time, Stan. i told you that was low blood sugar, okay?” what a good little liar you were.

because yeah, you had fainted. completely blacked out, limp with his cock still buried inside you. and for a full thirty seconds, Stan was convinced he’d fucked you to death.

no one was allowed to mention it ever again.

Stanley snorted softly, clearly still a little too proud of himself.

but now, the fog of climax was finally lifting, and beneath it, a new hunger bloomed, so you pulled Stan in closer, grazing your nails down his back, and gave your hips a teasing little wiggle, slow and bratty. the smile you flashed up at him said everything.

he got the message. oh, he got it.

“round two already?” he muttered, cock twitching back to life inside you.

“mm-hmm,” you purred. “but this time i want it real. wanna feel you cum in me, with me. wanna make a mess. make me yours. on your birthday, on father’s day, gosh, just fill me up already. you said you wanted to be a father so bad. . .”

that flipped something in him. “holy smokes, b-baby,” Stan hissed. “you want that? want me to fill this little cunt up, huh?”

the only reaction was a loud gasp when he pushed in deep until the head of his cock pressed hard against your cervix again, that feeling you missed the most. then he placed his hand on your belly, where a soft bulge had started to form.

“look at that,” he said, mesmerized. “i can see it, see where i am inside you.” his palm pressed down just a little more. “this is where my kid’s gonna grow, right here. right fuckin’ here.”

there was no rhythm anymore, only that frenzied tempo of flesh slamming against flesh. each thrust was so deep and rough it no longer resembled sex so much as it did two animals fucking, returning to instinct. his mating press had long since turned feral, especially with your hips lifted so high.

somewhere beneath the sounds of skin meeting skin, breathy gasps, and the creak of the bed under his weight, Stan's voice broke again. “th-the cervix, feel it,” Stan groaned, not even addressing you directly, “right here. fuck, it’s open, pullin’ me in.”

and indeed, your womb did feel like it was clutching him. suctioned around the thick head of his cock, pulsing as though starving for seed.

his pelvis rolled again, changing the angle. this time, the base of his cock ground hard against your swollen folds, while the tip pushed right up against that slick, trembling ring inside. too deep. so deep your ribs ached. “fuck, baby, fuck, i feel you so deep. you wanna get knocked up so bad, don’t you? my good girl.”

words were impossible as your cries came out strangled and high-pitched. and when your hands clawed at his back, digging in like mad, your fingers tangled in his hair, sliding across sweat-slicked skin, Stanley moaned. loud.

“fuuuck,” he whimpered, yes, whimpered, hoarse and guttural, so loud you were sure birds flew from the trees and every animal near the shack scattered. “baby, your pussy’s so hot, ready for my cum— gonna fill it, fuck, she wants it”

his balls slapped wet and heavy against your ass, tight and full, desperate to unload. while your pussy clenched, opening every time the fat mushroom head of his cock knocked against your cervix, your body knew what was coming, and welcomed it.

“Sta-stan, please, breed me, do it, i’m ovulating, you could do it,” your words came out garbled, barely intelligible even to yourself. “put your baby in me— mark my womb, make it yours. impregnate me.“

“gonna make you a mommy, that's right. you ready to take all of it? every drop? holy fuck, want me to wreck that womb so bad it never forgets me?”

you blink up at him, tears collecting in your lashes before they spill over, tongue half out from how hard you're panting, your jaw’s gone slack from the pace.

“yes, baby, yes. . .you’re gonna cum? you close, baby? oh god, please— please, Stan, do it. it’s your birthday. it’s fa-father’s day. don’t you wanna be a dad tonight?” your pussy is so soaked it’s slurring wet sounds back at him with every thrust, a dirty squelch echoing beneath your cries. thick strings of his pre-cum are already dribbling inside, kissing the opening, teasing the inevitable, marking you inside first.

“so tight. hhngh, sweetheart, the fuck are you doing to me. . .”

“make me a mommy,” you finally exhaled, blinking through the haze. “do it. d’you hear me? make me a mommy, Stan. wanna get pregnant today. on your birthday. you— you should cum inside me. fill me up and keep going.”

“gonna knock you up,” he whimpered against your lips. “fuck you ‘til you’re leaking me. to the last drop”

the moment he spilled inside, it was so messy. the way he came was just. . . thick. the pressure built right behind your cervix, in warm surges, as his cock pushed once, then again, and then started to slowly leak.

Stanley slowed, only marginally, just enough to thrust deeper, harder, driving his hips into you, and a low growl tore from his chest. your limbs tangled around him like ivy, squeezing, clinging, trembling from the mixture of pain and pleasure only sex with that charming bastard could bring.

“fuck, love, that’s what you wanted, yeah? my good girl, takin’ it so well,” whatever composure he had left was long gone. the thought of breeding you, of really making you a mommy, had scrambled something inside his brain, fried it beyond repair.

your head barely managed a nod. words failed, mouth too slack with sensation to form anything coherent. the best you could do was choke out a breathless, slurred chorus of “yes yesyes yes thank you, Stan, thank you for your seed,” broken up by sobs as your hips jerked again and again, trying to ride the wave out.

he was still coming. still. god, he kept spilling in slow hot streams, seeping straight into your needy womb, the tip of his twitching cock pressed to your opening, marking you from the inside out. your body responded on it's own, wet walls fluttering around him in rhythm, coaxing every last drop with shameless intent. good. a dazed, blissed-out smile curved across your lips. good. it was right. you were made for this. your body knew what to do. good.

“sill feelin’ it,” Stan muttered low against your skin, voice disbelieving. “shit, doll, you’re milkin’ me dry, ughh.”

and even as you felt so dangerously full, stretched to the edge of capacity, your arms remained locked around his neck, thighs clamped tight in a futile attempt to trap all that warmth inside, to keep him rooted there for good.

“don’t pull out,” came the urgent plea. “don’t you fucking dare. just keep going. you’re not done. still hard. just— just use me.”

and that was it, Stanley obeyed, rolling his hips into you with that same fierce determination. deeper than deep as he wanted to fuck the thought of anyone else out of your head forever. your womb was already full, and he was still trying to give you more.

starting again, sudden and unrelenting, as if there hadn’t been your sobbing and shaking from being too full. maybe he didn’t hear it, or maybe he just chose not to. it was easier that way, instead of facing the reality of what it meant to stop. who would want to? especially when it's still hot and sticky inside, everything is throbbing from the recent orgasm, and he's still so deep there.

there's something special about Stan still being able to fuck you well, even after he's already finished. it’s simply not enough just to cum inside, no, it has to stay there, warm, heavy, pooling. that was always the point. and god, the sight of that milky ring at the base of his cock only confirmed how determined this man was to impregnate you.

but satisfaction still didn’t come. lips were too swollen to beg, but the slurred plea was still there, pulled straight from some desperate corner of the brain that hadn’t yet given up. “twins, Stan. . .y-yeah, breed me again. . . give me twins, want them to look like you, baby.” the words didn’t stop, even if they sounded more like crying than anything else, a gasping, vowel-heavy mess of wanting.

everything was so sweet it started to burn.

Stan's hands locked hard around your hips and dragged your whole body deeper into the mattress until movement from your side wasn’t even possible anymore. he handled everything, the body beneath him belonged entirely to him.

groaning at your tightness, Stanley also felt how the mess from before had started to leak down already, thick globes of his cum dripping down your thighs and pooling under your ass, too much. there was no containing it anymore.

“look at that,” he murmured, almost to himself, eyes locked on the mess between your thighs. “stuffed you so full it’s leaking out . . . and you’re still clenching like a greedy little thing.”

“y-your greedy girl. . . Stan, i can feel you so deep. right in my tummy, oh.”

oh, Stanley heard you, don't worry. proof of this was his strong arms locking tighter around your thighs, hairy chest crushing into yours as he folded you under him completely, pressed you into the bed without any pity, rutting his cock into a cunt that couldn’t take anymore, yet begged for more all the same.

“i’m gonna get you pregnant, princess. properly, gonna leave you glowing while i rot at sea with my damn brother, right? riiiightt, that's my girl. wanna be bred so bad. . . ill be out there with Ford, and you’ll be here, walking around with my babies, my girl. my sweet girl. shiiiit, need to see you pregnant. yeah. i’ll give you the twins. you deserve them.”

and that’s how it started. your sob came without warning. humiliating sound dragged from somewhere deep enough to hurt. it wasn’t from his roughness, even though that was there too, those things made you sob before. but this time, it wasn’t pleasure.

you didn’t want him to leave. you couldn’t do it again. not like last time. it was panic.

perhaps it was the way your hands wouldn’t stop shaking as they clung to his shoulders, or it was just your shallow fast breath, but whatever it was, Stanley felt it and stopped to look down, meeting your red eyes.

“what? hey, hey, hey,” a voice above you, his fingers coming up to your cheeks. your face is wet, he realizes, soaked. “what is it baby? did i hurt you?”

perhaps it’s humiliating, to be fucked like this, so deep and animalistic, and suddenly fall apart for a reason that has nothing to do with his cock. except, maybe, it does? maybe it has everything to do with how it’s been months. months of no voice. no scent. months of drifting sleep and fake smiles.

“cmon, what’s goin’ on, doll, huh? talk to me.”

you hiccup and cover your face with your forearm because you’re ashamed. it’s pathetic, you think, probably selfish too, but it spills anyway. “its stupid, but i just— fuck. i missed you. so much. and i don’t want you to go. dont leave again, please, Stanley. please don’t leave me again—“

oh, his face said, even before his mouth could form the words. oh. that’s what this is.

“baby, no, no. no, not going anywhere, not again. not without you.” Stanley kissed each tear as it came, warm mouth chasing the salt from your skin.

“promise me you won’t.”

“i promise,” he exhaled into your mouth. “i promise, honey.”

“thank you, thank you . . .oh gosh, don't stop fucking me. i love you s-so much”

somewhere between thrusts, the rhythm stops being his alone. what began as Stan fucking into you becomes a meeting halfway, your hips lifting off the bed, you start working for it. liquid hunger pooling behind your lower belly. pussy pulling him in deeper with each forward roll.

you don’t even feel human, desperate to draw him in again and again until every drop’s drained.

eyes wide, Stanley knows, placing one hand on your belly to feel the outline of his cock rocking against your insides, he watches how your pussy welcomes each brutal slide.

“that’s it,” he growls, thumb dipping to your throbbing clit, rubbing smooth circles just as you move again and take all of him in one shameless motion. “doin’ it yourself now, huh? needy little doll. wanna milk my balls empty?”

your answer comes in loud whimpers and cries. the way his pulsing cock glides through you now, brushing up against that aching, swollen mouth of your cervix with every push, turns language into noise.

“s’it feel good, sweetheart? this birthday cock hittin’ so deep it’s got you dumb, huh?”

you giggled softly and stupidly. there’s cotton where your thoughts used to be. a glazed little smile, lips kiss-bitten and parted, drool glimmering down your chin as you tried to nod and say something clever, although nothing came out but a dizzy laugh and a small, “so deep, Stan. . . ‘s so much”

“fuck. don’t say that,” Stan begged, giving you one more deep, mean thrust just for the wet sound of it. “don’t say that while i’m still inside, or i’ll knock you up again before this one’s even settled.”

your cunt clenched at the threat, involuntarily of course. it was like your body couldn’t help itself, not when the head of his cock kissed your cervix and stayed there. you could still feel his warm cum drooling against it, dripping right where it needs to be.

“‘s your birthday,” you sighed, feeling your clit twitching under the ghost of his thumb. “m’just just your present,” and with a sleepy drag of fingers down your belly, you added, “and it’s father’s day. guess i better give you a baby too. seems fair.”

“fuck, sugar, you even hear yourself?”

you nodded, stupid-happy, still smiling as Stanley laughed breathlessly above you too.

“oh, you’re gone, huh? all fucked dumb off your old man’s cock, sweet little gift box all wrapped up for me. mhmm”

you wrapped your arms tighter around his shoulders, curling around him, murmuring nonsense into his chest. “birthday boy deserves to feel my womb wrap around him. deserves to cum inside.” you babbled, slamming your hips down to meet his thrusts like it’s all you were born to do. “you said you would. . . said id get round. my belly’d get all tight with your twins, Stan, please, please— fill me again“

he would. oh, he’d fucking make sure of it. he’d fill you so deep they’d see it in the way you walked. no doubts. he’d breed this sweet hole until it forgot anything else.

his balls drew tight, a hard twitch against your skin, when you felt him finishing, a rush of thick, roping cum flooding past the gate of your womb until you swore you felt it bloom inside you.

you spasmed, pussy fluttering around him, greedily milking, clenching, trying to seal him in. the whole bed gave a tired creak, nearly drowned out by Stan’s guttural groan as he pumped one last wave into you, leaking back around the base.

his chest was damp against yours. cock still buried, twitching faintly inside while you both fought to breathe again. Stan shifted like he meant to move, maybe give you relief, but your thighs snapped shut around his hips, arms looping behind his waist, hands grabbing handfuls of his ass just to keep him there.

“don’t pull out,” your voice was sticky with sleep and bliss. “m’so full. it’s all warm in there.”

Stanley didn’t answer right away. instead, he gave a single slow roll of his hips, just one, and it was enough to wring another broken whimper from your poor throat. he stayed pressed right up against that sore, overfucked spot deep inside, and the pressure made your belly feel swollen, stretched, already struggling to hold everything he’d given you.

“feels like you poured twins in me,” you said, dreamy. “think ill swell up for real this time.”

he huffed a breath that was almost a laugh, but his hand was already on your stomach. “they’re gonna have your eyes. . .your nose, too. sweet little face just like yours. don’t argue.” a kiss to your cheek, featherlight. “that’s final.”

however, deep down, intuition told him they’d be the spitting image of him. stubborn little things. his blood always did run strong.

you smiled into the crook of his neck, tears prickling again as your overstimulated pussy gave another soft flutter around him. not ready to let go. not yet. not for hours. maybe not ever.

“happy fuckin’ birthday to me,” Stan chuckled against your skin. “now be a good girl and hold it in, huh?”

[nenoname]

[ahhhdownwego]

How do you sleep at night?

[mistershwuzzums]

she had no idea they were about to play in her face😭😭😭😭💔💔💔🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀

[browneyebby]

i think what makes dallas winston so attractive is his lack of personal space, especially around the girl he likes. . .

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ 🪽 ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.

you were sort of flattered, honestly. you knew you shouldn’t be. dallas winston was a bad person. he carried a heater around, he jumped young boys and senior citizens, he stole, fought, cussed — he was everything you weren’t. and, to make matters worse, he was a greaser. but god, the amount of attention he gave you… it was almost dizzying. if you were a cat, you would be on your back all flirty, begging for him to scratch you more.

you acted as if it didn’t matter to you, ‘it’ being the attention and dallas himself. whenever you were alone and he’d talk to you, you’d be nice enough. you’d talk to him, making casual conversation about the weather or plans later. all he could ever notice was the way your lashes batted up at him, or how you’d stutter a bit whenever he would interrupt you. you were cute. which is why, whenever he saw you, his big hands were all over you. they’d caress your waist, massage your shoulders, fiddle with your hair or a new necklace he’d notice on you. he’d hold your belt loops, your hand. everywhere you could think of. you’d never stop him when you’re alone.

when you’re with friends, on the other hand, you’re a bitch (at least that’s what dally says). you adorably paw him off of you, calling him a slimy greaser, or a pervert. of course, just like you, he preens when he gets attention. but unlike you, it doesn’t matter if the attention is good or bad. you could cut off his dick and he’d still smirk at you in wonder, and not take a hint. it doesn’t matter if you push his hard chest, or stomp on his shoe, or call him names. he loves it. even though it’s just a show in front of your friends, he wouldn’t even care if it was for real. if you actually hated him this much. you were adorable to him.

“dallas winston, leave me alone!” you whine to him one day while you’re shopping on the main strip of town with your spoiled friends. “such an asshole, take a hint,”

he had come up to you and wrapped an arm around your shoulders. “you look pretty today, don’t ya baby?” he ignores your words, fiddling with the strap of your dress. “new dress? suits you,”

“thank you,” you murmur. “now let me go, please.”

“why?” he asks, pulling you closer.

“‘cause this is harrassment.” is your answer. “wanna get thrown in jail again? huh?”

“push me away then, you’re a strong girl,” he taunts.

you don’t hesitate elbowing him away, and he stumbles back, smiling. god, he adores you. that brief amount of willing contact on your end was enough to make his brain go fuzzy. “now go away, winston, m’busy,” you repeat again. the sound of your angry stomps is like music to his ears. the click-clack of your kitten heels feels like a hypnosis.

“miss ya already!” he calls out as you glance back at him. you bite the inside of your cheek and looks away again.

your interactions with him tend to stick with you for the entire day. you like his attention, as previously mentioned, and you miss when he’s not bothering you. you like the surge of annoyance you get when he embarasses you in front of your friends. this conversation with him is especially memorable, and for one apparent reason — you feel guilty for pushing him anyway. you wish you could’ve cuddled into his side, walked with him while he talked to you and teased you.

you hate the way you miss his attention, but you can’t help it. because when dallas winston gets within three inches of you, the high you get is worse than any other drug. you get addicted. and unfortunately, him and his two hands have hooked you. it’s just what he wants.

. ۫ ꣑ৎ taglist : @avroravia @r0seb100d @fawning4leif @dinerlana @diorgirl444

[epiphanyrogers]

⋆ ʊ ⋆ STEVE ROGERS AND THE WINTER KID

⤷ outlaws!stucky x fem!reader

⸝⸝ SUMMARY ─ ❝ as an outlaw, steve rogers has two rules: keep moving, and don't go back. but for you he's broken the second one more times than he can count. he comes when he can, leaves before dawn, and you don't ask what he gets up to in between. until one night it's not just steve at your door, but his partner, bucky barnes, with your outlaw bleeding through his shirt and bounty hunters four days behind them. ❞ ⧽ 23k

！SMUT, like seriously there is so much smut in this (3 separate scenes lol), dry humping, cock grinding, p in v, fingering, handjob, voyeurism/exhibitionism, masturbation (m), slight pervy!bucky?, oral (m & f receiving), threesome (reader goes to paris!), m/m content, praise kink, hair pulling, soft doms!stucky but lowkey switch!steve!, heavy yearning, three idiots in love, kinda one bed trope?, slow burn, shameless flirt bucky, bisexual awakening!stucky, angst, probably very medically inaccurate wound treatment, probably also historical inaccuracies, frontier/wild west AU, 18+ MDNI ⤷ from mads: this is my contribution to the Captain Americana film festival collab for steve's birthday (happy belated birthday stevie!!). i decided to base my fic off the film "butch cassidy and the sundance kid", because the first time i watched this i was just like... oh this is my stucky cowboy AU fr. plus, i thought steve deserved both you and bucky as his birthday present. half of this was written sleep deprived so sorry for any errors » cowboy edits of steve and bucky made by me with canva, pinterest and a dream please be kind and don't look too closely xx » MASTERLIST

Frontier towns always think they can tell a good man from a bad one.

A good man does honest work with honest hands. A good man comes to church on Sundays. Most importantly, a good man is known - by his name, his family, and his business. In a town like this, familiarity passes easily for virtue. A bad man, then, is the one nobody can place. And the town, never fond of a question, fills it with the worst thing it can imagine.

The law has a simpler system still. 

One that decrees who is a man and who is a wanted man. It prints the latter on paper and nails it somewhere decent folk can see. Ink drawings of men with shadowed eyes and a jaw made harsher by the hand that drew it. Beneath that is the list of wrongs they have done, and a number in dollars that someone is willing to pay to see him answer for them.

Fifty dollars for a fool. Five hundred for a danger. Five thousand for a dead man walking.

Women, of course, have their own sorting. Just like bad men, women have a value. Only women are rarely granted the dignity of being weighed by their own choices. Instead, they too are valued by a bad man’s wrongdoings. 

What he has done to her. Or what he is rumoured to have done with her. Or what he wanted badly enough to lie about. That is how a town makes its ladies. That is how it makes its whores, too.

There are no other kinds of women. Not in this town, or anywhere else for that matter. A third kind would require people to admit women have lives beyond the reach of men’s hands, and no one is in any hurry to go inviting that sort of trouble.

By all accounts, the town had decided kindly on you. A credit to the schoolhouse and a blessing to the children you teach. They would say that you are a fine young lady, and that any good man would be lucky to have you.

No good man, so far, has come and asked. Perhaps that should worry you more than it did. After all, a woman could only remain a fine young lady for so long before the title began to sour on her. A woman in your position was expected to want a steady hand, a clean name,and a ring bought with honest wages. A good man, by the town’s binary judgement.

Your heart, unfortunately, had never shown much interest in good men.

So that’s why tonight, like every other night, your walk home is made alone. Save for the company of crickets keeping up their endless racket, and the watchful hum of a town that likes to sleep with one eye open.

Your skirts hush against the dry grass as you walk further beyond the last few houses, where the town thins to prairie. There waits your little house at the edge of it all, porch sunk crooked in the middle and windows dark as shut eyes. Except the window over the washstand that’s still open; it never sits quite right in its frame. It swells in the summer heat, shrinks in the winter cold, and no matter the season, refuses to latch unless you lean your weight against it. 

You’ve been putting off fixing it for months. A respectable man might have fixed it for you by now, had one ever made himself useful.

By the time you step through your front door, the night has drawn close around the house. Moonlight slips through the narrow gap in the curtains, laying a soft glow across the floorboards. Enough to not bother with a lamp.

The schoolbooks go on the table. You set your hat beside them. Your boots are worked off by the bed, left where they fall. Then your fingers find the buttons of your dress.

The first slips free at your throat, then the second follows. The dress loosens by degrees, surrendering the shape of the schoolteacher the town knows so well, until all that remains is the woman beneath it. You drag in a deeper breath, eyes falling shut for a moment as the pressure eases. There is no sweeter mercy than taking off the day. No greater pleasure than unlacing yourself from what the world expected you to be.

With one hand still at your bodice, you turn towards the washstand. 

Your eyes catch on a shadow in the chair by your bed. A shocked gasp leaves your lips before you can stop it, sharp and uselessly small in the dark of your room. 

At first, he is only a shape amongst shapes. 

But the shadow is too still for a drunk, too quiet for a fool, and too comfortable for any man with honest business in a woman’s bedroom after dark. The chair complains beneath the size of him. One boot is planted flat against the floorboards, the other stretches lazily before him. A hand rests on his thigh, and something metallic in it glints in the moonlight.

It points straight at you.

Your breath stalls somewhere high in your chest, trapped behind the open buttons at your throat as your vision adjusts slowly to the dim light. His coat hangs open over a shirt that used to be white, now marked with trail dust and the stain of something you hope is mud.

The gunman tilts his head, and only then does the dark give up the glinting blue of his eyes - fixed on you with the possessive satisfaction of a man finding what he came for. They drop slowly to where your dress has come loose at your throat, exposing the delicate slope beneath your collarbone, and the first soft swell of your chest. Enough skin to make a decent man look away and a worse one very glad he didn’t.

An appreciative rumble hums low from his lips, before his thumb draws back the hammer of his gun with a pointed click.

“Don’t stop on my account, sweetheart.”

For a moment, you’re frozen. Just standing there with your fingers still curled in the loosened front of your dress, breath held tight beneath your ribs. The room narrows to the man in your chair and the gun pointed steady in his hand. He watches you without speaking, patient as a hunter, until he gives an expectant nod of the head.

Slowly, your fingers move again, buttons slipping free beneath your touch. His eyes fixate on the reveal, tongue dipping out the wet his bottom lip in anticipation.

By any measure the town would use, he is a bad man. By the sheriff’s ledger, or by the schoolmaster’s careful catechism about the sorts of men a young lady ought to avoid, the man in your chair is exactly the kind of ruin women are warned against.

You have never much cared for the schoolmaster’s catechism.

Instead your gaze drags over him in return, less innocent than the gasp you might have given. Over the breadth of his shoulders where his shirt pulls tight beneath his open coat. Over the narrowness of his waist and the careless sprawl of his body in your chair, as though he belongs there. Over the powerful thighs spread wide as he sat, revealing the hard, unmistakable bulge pressing against the front of his trousers. Indecent in its honesty and all the more shameless for the way he makes no attempt to hide it.

He watches you notice it, too. Watches your eyes catch and linger, watches your throat work around the breath you have not quite managed to take.

The last button slips free.

Your dress gives way, sliding from your shoulders and falling in a soft heap around your feet. It leaves you in your chemise, though the thin cotton does such a poor job of covering you that the word feels generous. Moonlight passes through it almost cleanly, turning the fabric pale and sheer over the shape of your body: the curve of your waist, the shadow between your thighs, the soft weight of your breasts barely hidden beneath it. 

Your nipples tighten into hard little points against the cloth, visible enough that you know he must see them. The knowledge makes your skin burn hotter than any shame ought to allow.

A deep, pleased groan escapes his chest.

The gun stays steady in his hand, but the other shifts against his thigh, fingers flexing into the worn fabric before his palm slides higher. He presses over himself through his trousers, just enough to ease some of the ache there. Just enough to make no secret of what the sight of you has done to him.

“Good girl,” he drawls, “prettiest damn thing I’ve seen in weeks.”

Your stomach pulls tight at the praise, and your thighs press together beneath the thin fall of your chemise before you can think better of giving him any satisfaction.

But the satisfaction arrives in the slight curve of his mouth before he rises from the chair. God, he’s tall, taller than he looks sitting down. And broader too.

If the dark had made a threat of him, the moonlight makes something worse. It loves him. There’s no other word for the way it lingers on him as he steps closer. 

It slips first over the dirty blond hair that has fallen loose beneath the brim of his hat. Then it catches on his face, and there’s no mercy for you in how gently it treats him. Long lashes cast low shadows under his eyes, and whatever blue hasn’t been swallowed by desire or the dark gleams too bright. His mouth is plusher than it ought to be on a man with a gun in his hand. Soft in a way the beard can’t rough out, though it tries.

It decorates his jaw, dragging a little danger back over a face that might have been too pretty without it.

The kind of face you know.

It’s nailed up outside the mercantile for decent folk to study and condemn. Some sheriff’s artist had done his best to make a villain of him in ink, darkening the eyes, sharpening the jaw, flattening the mouth into something easier to fear. Anything, perhaps, to keep a lady from looking too long and noticing what the moonlight gives away in your bedroom. 

Better, then, to look beneath his name at the hefty four figure sum printed there. And remember what kind of man earns a price like that.

A careful one, you would think.

A man worth that much should know better than to stand so close. And he should definitely know better than to let his defences drop. Most of all, he should know better than to let desire soften the hand with the gun in it. 

You move quickly. A sharp twist, a shift of your weight, and the revolver is in your hand instead of his. Then your palm hits the centre of his chest and you shove your weight against his chest.

He falls a little too easily back onto the bed with a rough laugh, his hat knocked loose and tumbling somewhere behind him. You follow before he can sit up, climbing over him with one knee pressed into the mattress on either side of his hips. The chemise rides high on your thighs as you settle your weight over him, and his hands instantly find a home there. 

You the press barrel up under his jaw with enough pressure to make him tilt his head back against the quilt, exposing the long line of his throat. All that arrogant ease goes still beneath you. Then his Adam's apple bobs beneath the rough gold of his beard, and the ridiculous blue of his eyes go wide.

He looks stunned. Worse, even, he looks delighted, as though some wicked part of him had been hoping all along that you would do exactly this.

You lean down until only inches remain between you, close enough to see the way his pupils dilate further, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath.

“You’re late, Rogers.”

He doesn’t reply straightaway. Instead, his eyes move over your face as though the rest of the room has fallen away, as though the weeks and the miles have all narrowed done to this - to you. Sat above him in the moonlight, furious and half-naked and close enough to touch. There’s something in his expression far too soft for the size of him, too tender for the outlaw laid out beneath you with a revolver pressed to his throat.

Something that looks almost like disbelief, as if he had spent the whole ride dreaming of you and even still, you looked sweeter than his dreams. Like he can’t quite believe the world has been kind enough to put you in front of him again, and now that he’s here, he means to drink down every inch of you before it can change its mind.

Then the tension eases out of him all at once.

His body goes loose beneath yours, the last of the game slipping from his shoulders as his hands slide higher up your thighs. They wrap around your ass, warm and possessive. The corner of his mouth curves, slow and devastatingly boyish beneath the ruggedness of his beard. Entirely too pleased for a man currently pinned beneath his own gun.

“Missed me?” he drawls, already sure of the answer

You press the gun harder into the soft skin beneath his jaw in answer. His fingers tighten on your thighs, as his hips shift beneath yours. It’s only a small, helpless grind, but it’s enough for you to feel the hard line of his cock twitch against the heat between your legs. The satisfaction of feeling his need for you is almost enough to make you forget you’re angry. 

Almost.

“You were supposed to be here three days ago,” you remind him, intending to be stern, but not convinced you achieved it.

“Train was delayed,” Steve replies, his blue eyes bright with the kind of trouble men get hanged for.

Your eyes narrow. He has the decency to look a little sheepish.

“Fine,” he concedes. “Train was delayed ‘cause I robbed it.”

His thumbs trace slow circles over your hipbones, familiar and possessive, like he has any right to soothe you after being the source of your concern. “You worried about me, sweetheart?”

You scoff, “I was debating whether, if the bounty hunters didn’t put a bullet in you, I ought to do it myself.”

It would’ve sounded better if your voice hadn’t come out breathier than you intended. If his body were not so solid and warm beneath you, his thighs hard muscle under your spread legs, his hands moving against your skin as though he had been starving for the feel of it.

“Gun’s not loaded,” His voice goes quieter there, the teasing easing at the edges. “Never is. You think I’d point a loaded gun at you?”

You hate him a little for that. For the empty gun. For the fact that some stubborn, tender part of him had crossed God knows how many miles with a bounty on his head and still remembered to make his filthy little performance safe. 

You hate him more for making you care enough to count the days. For making the nights stretch mean when he doesn’t come when he’s meant to. For making you understand, with an anger that burns too hot to be good, what sort of woman waits on a bad man.

“Don’t mean I’m not angry with you,” you whisper, though there’s no bite in your voice.

His gaze drops to your mouth.

“Yeah?” His hands slide back along your thighs, slow enough to make your stomach tighten, high enough to make the thin cotton of your chemise feel like no barrier at all. “Want to show me how angry?”

Your throat tightens. The revolver drops from your hand onto the quilt beside his head. Steve’s eyes lift to yours, and there he is beneath the outlaw. Tired, alive, and yours for the few hours he has no right to give you.

You kiss him hard, pouring all that fear and anger and need into his mouth.

Steve takes it with a groan, his head dropping back against the quilt again. One hand leaves your thigh to catch the back of your neck and drag you closer. This isn't a careful reunion. He bites your lip and the sound you make against his mouth ruins whatever patience he had left.

His tongue pushes possessively into your mouth, licking into you until your fingers twist in the front of his shirt just to have something to hold. When you rock down against him, grinding the damp heat of your pussy over the hard line of his cock through too much fabric, his answering sound catches high and helpless in his throat.

“I ought to punish you for makin’ me wait,” you breathe against his mouth, though the threat loses some of its dignity when your hips roll down again and your own breath breaks at the friction.

Steve’s hand tightens on your neck, keeping you close enough that his lips brush yours when he answers. “You ought to.”

Your hands shove at his coat, dragging it off his shoulders with more force than grace. Steve only helps enough to get free, too busy chasing your mouth again, greedy and open, his tongue sweeping against yours like he’s trying to taste every desperate sound he’s pulled from you. You tug at the buttons of his shirt next, fingers clumsy on the open collar before patience fails you entirely and you pull hard enough to strain the buttons.

You need skin. Need the warmth of him under your palms and the pulse of him beneath your mouth.

“I ought to send you back out the window you came in.”

His grin returns at that, mischief bright in his eyes despite the way his cock twitches under you. “You ought to get that fixed,” he rumbles, one hand sliding possessive over your waist. “Who knows what kind of bad men could get in?”

You punish him for the clever little comment with another roll of your hips. Steve’s fingers clamp around your waist and the sound he makes is almost a whine, mouth falling open against yours.

His chest rises hard beneath your hands, broad and golden in the moonlight, warm muscle shifting under your palms with every rough breath he takes. Scars litter his skin - some you know the stories of and some he has never given you. You touch them anyway, touch him anyway, needing the proof of him beneath your palms. Then your hips grind down again, and his stomach flexes, abs pulling tight as he lets out a rough groan.

“I ought to make you beg,” you whisper, mouth dragging down over his jaw, his beard rough against your lips as you kiss the place where his heartbeat pounds beneath his skin.

“Yes, ma’am,” Steve breathes, hands holding you tight over the thick, straining shape of him. “You ought to.”

Your chemise has ridden high over your thighs, and every drag of your body over his makes the ache in you sharper.

“Start with sorry,” you instruct.

Steve’s breath catches when you slow the roll of your hips, turning the grind into something almost cruel. His hands flex at your waist, big enough to move you if he wanted, strong enough that he could flip you easily. But instead he lies there beneath you, shirt open and cock hard under your weight, letting you make him wait. Letting you have this dizzying power over him and looking up at you like he would let you ruin him if you asked sweetly enough.

His throat works beneath your mouth.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” he murmurs.

You lift your head just enough to look at him, raising an expectant brow. His thumbs stroke once over your hips, softernow.

Steve’s eyes flick over your face, softening at whatever he finds there. “I’m sorry I worried you.”

Satisfied with his obedience, you lean down to kiss him again in reward. But Steve catches the breath between your mouths, his lips brushing yours when he adds, quieter, “I’m sorry I have to leave again at dawn.”

You still completely. Steve’s eyes find yours beneath his mussed hair, and there is and ache there so open it makes your chest hurt. Too honest for a man who’s worth more dead than most men will ever be alive. You can’t bare it for long. Your mouth finds his again, harder this time, before the feeling can name itself. That foolish hope of keeping a man who only ever comes to you with one foot already out the door.

“Then don’t waste my night, cowboy,” you breathe against his lips, rolling your hips down until his cock jerks beneath you. “You’ve got a lot to make up for.”

Steve answers with his hands. A sudden greed of them at your waist, then sliding further up beneath your chemise. His thumbs brush the underside of your breasts with just enough pressure to make you gasp into his mouth. Then he’s tugging the fabric higher, impatient now, and you lift your arms before he has to ask. 

He drags the cotton over your head, tossing it aside with the rest of your clothes until the night air has you bare above him.

His gaze rakes over you with such naked want that your stomach clenches. Over the tight peaks of your nipples, and lower still till to where you are spread over him in nothing but your drawers and stockings, already damp enough that the fabric clings between your thighs.

Steve’s hands tighten at your hips, his thumbs dragging once over the bare skin above your drawers. 

“You missed me somethin’ awful, didn’t you?” he teases, the corner of his mouth twitching, though his voice comes out rougher than the smile deserves.

You should scold him for that. You mean to, truly. But then his mouth closes over your breast, and the words break apart in your throat.

His beard scrapes over your skin as he sucks your nipple between his lips, tongue dragging over the tight peak before his teeth catch, sharp enough to make you dry out. Your hands fly to his hair, and you tug - meaner than you intend - but Steve groans against your tit, delighted.

“Love it when you’re mean,” he pants against your skin, mouth moving to the other breast, leaving the first wet with his spit in the moonlight.

His head tips beneath your grip, golden hair sliding through your fingers. He lets you guide him, all that size and strength beautiful under your hands. Because for all his sins, Steve is clever enough to know there’s power in obedience when it comes to the right woman.

His hands shove your drawers down over your hips, hurried and clumsy for the first time all night. They catch at your knees before you kick them away, leaving you naked above him, trembling with the kind of want no decent woman was ever supposed to admit by name.

Your fingers go to his trousers, but the buttons take too long. You curse them for it, and Steve gives a breathless little laugh that dies the second your hand slips inside and wraps around him. His cock springs free, slapping heavy against your thigh, already leaking at the tip. Precum smears against your skin as he twitches there, hard enough to make your mouth go dry.

It’s like you forget just how big he is until he’s in your hand again, fat and veined and heavy enough to make you wonder if he’ll still fit. But your cunt clenches desperately around nothing like it already knows the answer.

You sink your teeth into your lower lip and drag yourself over him, sliding the wet heat of your pussy along the length of his cock. He groans at the first slick pass, at the way your folds part around him, coating him in creamy white wetness until every rock of your hips makes an obscene, sticky sound between you.

The fat head catches against your clit with each pass, enough to make your hips stutter and your head tip back with a needy little whine. But Steve’s arms clamp over your hips, muscles flexing as he keeps you humping his cock. His precum mixes with the mess dripping from your needy hole, smearing over his shaft and down onto the golden muscle of his stomach under you.

“Fuck, ‘atta girl,” he rasps, head falling back against the quilt. “Get my cock nice and wet. Make yourself feel good, use me.”

So you grind down harder, slicking his cock with the mess he’s made of you, feeling his abs flex beneath your hands every time his tip nudges your tight entrance.

“Steve,” you whine, nails digging into this skin hard enough to leave marks. “I want it. I want your cock in me.”

“Yeah?” he breathes, and the little edge of a grin he tries for doesn’t last. Not when you reach between you, wrap your hand around the thick, wet length of him. “Then take it, ma’am. It’s yours.”

You push up on your knees, thighs trembling on either side of him, the thick muscle of Steve’s biceps bunching as he holds you steady. His cock pulses with anticipation in your grip, veins standing out beneath your palm as you line him up with your entrance. 

You’re both wet enough that it should be easy, your cream smeared down his shaft, his precum sticky on your fingers. But the first push of the mushroom tip stretches you open with a burn so sweet and full it feels like being split in half. Your mouth falls open the same moment his does, both of you moaning at the sensation after weeks without each other. 

Your pussy flutters around him, tight and greedy, sucking him in with little needy clenches that make his hands dig harder into your hips. 

“Missed this,” he groans, every muscle in him straining with the effort not to thrust up and take more than you give. “Missed your tight cunt so bad I damn near wore out my own fist thinkin’ about it.”

The filthy praise goes straight to your cunt, sending a fresh wave of arousal dripping around him as you sink lower. Your head tips back, his name spilling from your lips in broken little sounds as you take him inch by inch.

Steve’s eyes fix on where you’re joined, watching the slow, wet slide of himself disappearing inside you. His jaw clenches beneath his beard, every muscle in him pulled taut like the sight of your tight pussy struggling around him might make him spill inside you before you’ve even taken all of him. 

When your hips finally meet his, the fat tip of his cock kisses your cervix and it empties your head clean of any coherent though. You feel him twitch inside you as your walls give a wet squeeze around him, your cunt clinging tight like it needs a second to believe it’s taken all of him. 

“Fuck, Steve,” you whine, nails dragging over his chest. “You’re so big.”

You slowly try and find a rhythm, rolling your hips down until the tip of his cock hits deep enough to make your whole body jolt. The first few strokes are messy, your thighs trembling as you lift and sink. But Steve’s palms stay firm at your hips, helping you find the rhythm, holding you steady while you fuck yourself down onto him.

“But you’re takin’ it, sweet girl,” he groans, helping you down harder, pulling you into each stroke until your tits bounce and the room fills with the slick slap of your body meeting his. “Takin’ my cock so pretty. Always do.”

The bed complains beneath you, wood knocking softly against the wall, but it’s nothing compared to the wet, shameless sound of your pussy taking him over and over. 

“Steve—” Your voice breaks into a cry when he hits that deep spot again, “Need—fuck—”

Your pace turns desperate, hips rolling and lifting, chasing the thick slide of him inside you. Every time you sink down, your cunt grips him tighter, cream slicking the base of his cock in a white ring that smears against his skin and drips lower, making a filthy mess of his heavy balls.

Steve’s eye’s darken at the sight. “Pretty cunt’s makin’ such a mess on my cock, can feel her squeezin’ me. Feel you gettin’ close.”

You nod, pathetic and needy. “I need you,” you gasp, “Steve, please, I’m—”

His hand leaves your hip and slips between you, thumb finding your swollen clit. Your rhythm breaks, hips jerking as a needy moan catches in your throat. You try to keep riding him, but it turns sloppy fast, more grinding than bouncing now, your body chasing his hand while his cock stays buried deep inside you.

“That’s what you needed, sweetheart?” Steve rasps, watching you fall apart above him. “Then let me feel that tight pussy come on my cock.”

The pressure snaps tight in your belly, sharp enough to steal the air from you. One more stroke of his thumb, one more dirty grind down on his cock, and your orgasm crashes through you.

Your cunt strangles his cock, pulsing around him in tight, wet flutters. “Fuck,” he grunts out, hands grabbing for hips as his restraint finally snaps. “Fuck, ma’am, can’t—”

One second you’re on top of him, shaking through it, and the next his strength is under you and around you, flipping you onto your back like you weigh nothing at all. Steve settles between your thighs with a groan as he drives back into your soaked cunt in one deep thrust that punches the breath from your lungs.

“Steve!” You sob his name, oversensitive and helpless under him, but your legs hook around his waist anyway. Steve fucks into you harder, deeper, mouth catching yours in a messy kiss.

“There you go,” he grits out, one hand braced beside your head, the other gripping your thigh high against his hip. “‘Atta girl. Fuck, you feel too good, this cunt’s tryin’ to keep me.”

You can’t answer, not properly. Not with him pounding into you like this, all that leashed strength finally let loose, his cock dragging over your oversensitive walls while your legs shake around him. All you can do is cling to him and babble his name, too ruined to do anything but take it.

His thrusts turn rougher as his cock throbs inside you. At the last second, Steve pulls out with a broken groan, his hand wrapping around his slick cock as he spills hot over your stomach. Hot white ropes spill across your skin while his hips jerk into his fist, eyes fixed on the mess he’s making of you like it’s the prettiest thing he’s seen in weeks.

Steve’s strokes slow, his fist still wrapped around himself as the last of his release spills over your belly. His eyes drag from the mess on your skin to your face, and his expression softens instantly. 

“Good girl,” he rumbles, thumb smearing through the mess he’s made before he seems to remember himself. His mouth finds yours once, beards scratching softly over your skin as you make a tired little sound against his mouth. “Took me so good, sweets. So fuckin’ good for me.”

His lips move over your cheek, your jaw, the corner of your mouth, murmuring praise between each kiss, until the words sink under your skin. Then he forces himself away with a rough breath, tugging his shirt the rest of the way off before shoving his trousers down his hips. His boots hit the floor with a dull thud, followed by the rest of his clothes.

Naked, he crosses to the washstand with all that golden muscle and road-worn swagger, shoulders broad in the moonlight, hair mussed from your hands. He comes back with a damp cloth and cleans you himself. 

One big hand rests tenderly at your hip while the other wipes his come from your stomach. His gaze flicks up to yours once when you shiver, mouth curving beneath his beard, but he doesn’t tease. He only drags the cloth lower, gentle between your thighs, cleaning the sticky mess from your skin.

“So perfect,” he whispers, pressing a kiss just beneath your ribs when he’s done. “My best girl.”

Tossing the cloth aside, he climbs into bed beside you, greedy for your warmth. His arm hooks around you waist instantly, dragging you back against him like even the few inches between your bodies are more than he can spare. His chest presses warm against your back, his thigh slides between yours, and his mouth finds your shoulder before you’ve even settled.

For a while, neither of you says anything.

Steve keeps kissing you anyway, and his hand rests heavy over your stomach, fingers spread wide like he means to keep you against him forever. But his thumb moves gently. Back and forth. Back and forth. A quiet apology against your skin. You’re half asleep by the time your voice finds him again.

“Missed you Stevie,” you mumble, so low he might have missed it if he hadn’t been listening for every breath. “Was worried.”

Steve goes still behind you for a moment, then his thumb starts moving again, slow over the bare skin of your stomach like he can soothe the ache he put there. “I know,” he murmurs into your hair. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. Didn’t mean to leave you countin’ days.”

“What really happened?”

Steve exhales slowly behind you, mouth pressing to your shoulder before he answers, like he can feel the tightness gathering there already. “Train job got messy. Payroll car was heavier than we heard, and the guard had more friends than sense. Had to ride south after, lose a posse near the creekbed.” His hand tightens when your brow pinches in worry, though your eyes stay closed. “No, honey. Not like that. They got a shot off, but it only grazed me.”

Your eyes crack open. “Only?”

“I’m here, ain’t I?” he breathes, trying for that crooked little arrogance and not quite managing it. “Takes more than that to put me down.”

You make a sleepy, displeased sound and press back harder into him, grumbling something unkind into the pillow

Steve huffs a quiet laugh and presses his smile to your shoulder. “Mean little thing,” he whispers, but his arm tightens around you, and his lips linger. “I’m alright. Truly. Just took longer than I wanted.”

After that, the room settles around you. His hand stays where it is, warm and broad over your middle, and his breathing slows behind you.You’re almost asleep when the thought slips out of you, small and wounded.

“Don’t wake me when you leave.”

His chest stops moving against your back.

“I mean it,” you add, fingers finding his where they rest over your stomach. “I can’t watch you choose the door.”

That one hurts him. You feel his arm curl tighter around your waist like some selfish part of him wants to promise he won’t go at all. For a second, you think he might argue. But Steve Rogers has never been cruel enough to promise something so foolish.

“Alright,” he whispers, voice rough. “I’ll leave quiet.”

You nod once, already drifting, but your fingers tighten around his. Steve turns his hand beneath yours and holds on. “But I’m here now,” he murmurs, mouth brushing your skin. “Sleep, honey. I’ve got you.”

Morning doesn’t wake you kindly.

One moment you’re warm enough to feel the man behind you, and the next your hand is sliding across the mattress, reaching for a body that is no longer there. Still, you lie with your hand pressed to the place where Steve had been, as if there might still be enough of him left in the sheets to count for something.

The scrape of his beard still burns faintly along your shoulder. Your thighs ache when you shift. Proof everywhere, and still no man beside you.

The day doesn’t care. It waits for no woman, least of all one foolish enough to miss a man with four figures under his name. So you get up.There is no use in grieving a man who is not dead, and no sense in missing a man who warned you he would go.

You go about your morning routine and pull on your dress, fastening every button back into place until the schoolteacher returns piece by piece. Nothing to suggest what an outlaw had done to her in the dark. By the time your books are gathered, your hands have almost stopped shaking.

You check the stove before you leave. The door latch. The chair by the bed, sitting innocent in the morning light, as if it hadn’t held an outlaw the night before. Last, out of habit more than thought, you cross to the window over the washstand.

Your hand is already braced to force it closed when you freeze. The window is shut.

Not forced down, not wedged in crooked, not sitting stubborn in its swollen frame. Shut. Properly shut. The latch sits clean in its catch, holding firm beneath the careful press of your fingers.

It’s silly, really, to stand there with your throat gone tight over a fixed window. But it’s what almost does you in. Your bad man, making sure no worse men can get in.

Weeks pass with no word from your outlaw.

You tell yourself that’s likely for the best. Good news rarely travels fast where men like Steve Rogers are concerned; bad news, however, travels like wildfire. Still, each morning you find yourself scanning the newspaper columns with a sour twist in your stomach, looking for his name with morbid compulsion and praying not to find it. It’s the same grim, self-torturous routine every day, waiting for the one where some column out west reports Steve Rogers and the Winter Kid dead, captured, or hanged.

By night, the worry is worse. It follows you into bed and slips into your dreams, filling up the space Steve left empty. You sleep poorly when sleep comes at all, one ear tuned toward the road like a fool, listening for hoofbeats you’ve no good reason to expect, yet hope for all the same.

But it isn’t hoofbeats that pull you from slumber tonight.

It’s the violent thud of a fist hammering on your front door, hard enough to shake the frame and send you bolting upright with your heat already halfway up your throat.

“Hello?!” a man shouts through the door, breathless and frantic. “Miss! For God’s sake, tell me you’re in there!”

He swears under his breath, his voice comes again, but lower this time. “Goddammit, Rogers, if you gave me the wrong damn house—”

His fist hits the door again, harder now, rattling the latch in its frame.

“Open up! Please, open the door!” he yells. “Name’s Barnes—Bucky Barnes—I’ve got Rogers with me, and he’s shot real bad!”

Steve. Shot badly.

The words make your blood run cold, but fear is not enough to make you foolish. Graveyards are full of women who opened up because they believed bad men with good stories.

“Miss!” Barnes shouts, followed by a strained grunt and the scrape of boots dragging over your porch boards. “Please! I ain’t got time to stand here proper, he’s slippin’!”

Steve had spoken of a Bucky Barnes before, of course he had - Buck, usually, said with the kind of rough fondness he tried to hide and never quite managed - but knowing a name isn’t the same as knowing a voice through the door in the middle of the night.

You move for the shotgun. A lady might have felt shame keeping such a thing so close to her bed. A woman who lives alone knows better.

You cock it loud enough for the sound to carry through the door.

The knocking stops. When you speak, your voice is steadier than the rest of you feels. “If you’re lyin’, Mr. Barnes, you ought to know I’ve got a shotgun pointed at this door.”

“Lady, you can shoot me after if you’re still of a mind to,” he shouts back. “Right now I need you to open the damn door before Rogers bleeds out on your porch!”

Before you can answer, a low groan drags from the other side of the door, followed by Bucky swearing under his breath. Then you recognise Steve’s voice, frailer than you’ve ever heard it, trying to make your name out of what little strength he has left. It makes the shotgun feel useless in your hands.

You flip the latch up before you can think better of it, though you keep one hand on the shotgun as you pull the door open - barrel tipped down but ready. 

Bucky Barnes is braced on your porch, with Steve Rogers sagging against him.

His jaw is clenched from the strain of the weight, one shoulder shoved beneath Steve’s arm, with his own locked tight around Steve’s waist. Steve’s boots scrape uselessly over the boards when Bucky shifts him higher. It is clear, terribly clear, that Steve is only standing because Bucky has decided he will.

He’s bent nearly double, folded into the wound, hanging off Bucky with no strength of his own. His head dips heavy towards his chest, and he might almost look drunk if his skin were not so pale beneath the dirt, or if every breath didn’t seem to pull through him with effort. 

One hand rests low on his abdomen, fingers spread over a blooming red patch that has soaked through his shirt and keeps smearing beneath his palm. But the hand is slack. His arm trembles with the effort of keeping it over the wound, slipping through the blood rather than stopping it. Every breath drags through him shallow and uneven as though his body has begun bargaining over what it can afford.

“Steve!”

The shotgun clatters to the floor in an instant, forgotten in your panic. You reach for him instantly, palms cupping his face because you need to see his eyes. Need some proof behind the boneless sag of him. His skin is damp beneath your hands and it’s too cold for a man sweating so badly. When you lift his head, it comes slowly, with too much weight in it, his neck offering almost no help at all.

He looks worse than any newspaper ever managed to make him.

His mouth hangs open around each thin pull of breath, lips dry and parted beneath the rough gold of his beard. Dirt clings to the sweat along his hairline. There is a smear of blood near his lip, and his jaw has gone loose under your hands, all that stubborn Rogers grit worn down to something frighteningly human.

His eyes slide over you without settling, and that scares you more than the blood.

“Steve,” you repeat, thumb brushing his cheek. “Look at me. Please, look at me.”

Recognition gathers slowly, blue eyes dragging themselves back from somewhere far away. Then the worry comes with it, because even like this, Steve Rogers is sorry. His brows draw together as if he has been carrying one thought all the way to your porch and means to set it down before his body gives out beneath him.

“Told Buck not to wake you,” he slurs, stopping after it to drag in another shallow breath. “Told him you needed sleep.”

Bucky grunts a disbelieving laugh next to you. 

“Alright, Romeo, that’s real touching,” he snaps, shifting Steve’s weight higher with a grunt, “but you’re bleeding on the lady’s porch. Miss, I need him flat, I need light, and I need clean cloths. Now.”

The kitchen table is where Bucky wants him. There’s no time to argue about the indecency of it, or the blood, or how Bucky’s supposed to get him up there without injuring Steve further. 

Bucky pulls Steve through the door with one brutal shift of his weight, dragging him over the threshold whilst Steve’s boots scrape and stumble over your floor. The wound pulls with the movement, wrenching a raw, bitten-off sound deep from his chest.

“Clear it,” Bucky orders, jerking his chin toward the oak table. 

And you move only because your body takes over. A book hits the floor. Then the bowl you left out after supper, shattering somewhere near your feet. You don’t hear it over the rush of blood in your ears.

Bucky gets one hand under Steve’s arm and the other braced hard at his back. “Alright, Stevie,” he mutters, more to himself than to Steve. “Up we go.”

The lift tears a brutal cry out of Steve.

You’ve never heard that sound from him before. Pain has pulled groans from him, curses too, all stubbornly swallowed before anyone could make much of them. But Steve’s too far gone to care about that now.

“I know,” Bucky says at once, voice gone tight as he arranges Steve onto the table. “I know, I know. M’sorry, Stevie. I’m sorry.”

Steve is too far under to hear him properly. His head rolls against the wood, lashes fluttering, mouth open around another broken sound when Bucky drags his legs up after him. The table creaks beneath his weight. Blood smears across the pale grain in a dark, ugly sweep. Then Bucky plants one hand low on Steve’s abdomen and presses down hard.

Steve’s whole body jerks.

“Shit,” Bucky grunts out, leaning his weight into it when Steve tries to curl away from the pressure. “I know, pal. Ain’t got a choice.”

You just stand there, frozen.

That’s the shame in it. You stand there with your hands curled uselessly at your sides and your bare feet near broken crockery, staring at your outlaw bleeding out across your kitchen table. There is some part of you, in the back of your head, that understands the urgency of the scene, begging you to move. But the rest of you is somewhere else entirely, watching from a distance as the biggest, most capable man you have ever known lies pale as linen and fights for the next breath.

“Lady,” Bucky snaps. “I need you with me.”

But you don’t answer, eyes fixed on the slow rile and fall of Steve’s chest. The terrible wait between each shallow pull of air and the next. The horrible stillness after every breath, when your heart seems to stop with his and only starts again when his chest moves.

Bucky’s bloody hand slams against the table. “Miss!”

Your eyes jerk to him, though the rest of you stays frozen in place. He looks furious - terrified too, but masked beneath the practical need to keep moving. His jaw is set, his breathing hard, one hand still pressed down over Steve’s wound while the other points at you like he can drag sense back into you by force.

“You can stare at him dead or you can help me keep him livin’,” he says. “Pick quick.”

The words snap you back to reality. Your throat tightens, and you take a steadying breath, “What do you need?”

You scramble through your own house, trying to remember everything Bucky lists as fast as he names it. 

Lamps first, hands shaking hard enough that the chimney glass knocks against the metal. Then cloths from the press. The clean sheet from your bed, yanked free with one sharp pull and bundled under your arm. Thread from the sewing box. Needle. Whiskey from the cupboard that you only keep in for Steve. You put water on the stove and nearly drop the pot before you get it settled.

Behind you, Bucky cuts Steve’s shirt open. The sound of Steve groaning under the movement turns your stomach, but Bucky only mutters a low apology and keeps working, dragging ruined cloth away from ruined skin before reaching for the whiskey and one of the clean rags you brought him. He wipes around the wound with brisk, careful pressure, until the blood smears thinner and the shape of the damage begins to show.

You wish at once that he hadn’t. 

It looks smaller than it should for all the red it has made, one ugly hole low on Steve’s abdomen, close to his hip, and swollen angry at the edges. Blood keeps welling steadily no matter how quickly Bucky clears it. Steve’s stomach jumps beneath every touch, muscle pulling tight before giving out again.

“Bullet’s still in,” Bucky confirms, mouth grim. “Ain’t deep. That’s the good news. Bad news is you’re takin’ it out and sewin’ him up.”

“No!” You’re shaking your head before the word has even finished leaving your mouth. “You crazy, mister? I can’t do that!”

Steve makes a rough sound, half breath, half pain, and Bucky glances down long enough for something scared to flash over his face.

“Well, little lady, unless you reckon you can hold down two hundred pounds of half-delirious cowboy when he starts thrashin’ while I go fishin’ through his guts, then yes, you can.” Bucky’s hand clamps harder over Steve’s middle when Steve shifts with a broken sound, his shoulders lifting from the table before the strength goes out of him again. “Because if he comes off this table, he’ll tear himself up worse than he already is, and I can’t hold him and dig the bullet out at the same time.”

Your mouth opens, but nothing follows.

The lamp catches the sweat on Steve’s throat and the red glistening on Bucky’s hands. Too much of it. Too much on the table, too much soaked into Steve’s shirt, too much slipping between Bucky’s fingers no matter how hard he presses.

You nod once, firm, forcing the fear down into something more useful. Some of the harshness leaves Bucky’s face, not enough to soften him completely, but enough for you to see the man Steve must have trusted with all the worst parts of himself. 

“Good girl, I’ll talk you through it,” Bucky says, already reaching for the whiskey. “Steady hands is all I need from you”

So you give him steady hands. Or try to.

You wash them until the water in the basin clouds pink from blood. Bucky talks all the while, voice firm enough to keep you moving from one instruction to the next. He pours a splash of whiskey over the wound and Steve flinches from the table with a staggered cry, only for Bucky to catch him hard across the chest and shove him back down.

“I know, I’m sorry, pal,” Bucky murmurs, hands firm at Steve’s shoulders. “But you gotta try and stay still Stevie, please.”

The softness in his voice does nothing to gentle his grip. If anything, that’s what makes it worse: the way he bends close to Steve’s ear and coaxes him like a wounded horse whilst holding him down with enough strength to bruise. He gets the belt from his own waist and folds the leather between Steve’s teeth, fingers careful at his jaw.

“Bite down,” he instructs. “Before you break your damn teeth trying not to make noise.”

Steve’s lashes flutter, eyes too glassy to find either of you properly, but his teeth close around the leather. Bucky’s hand lingers one second at the side of Steve’s face before he reaches into his coat and pulls out a small roll of oilcloth, the kind of thing only carried by men on the wrong side of the law with no doctor waiting.

Inside is a short knife, and a pair of narrow steel forceps. He snatches those up first and presses them into your palm.

You take a steadying breath. It doesn’t help much

The first touch of metal to torn flesh makes Steve cry out around the belt, the sound muffled and awful. His hand slams against the table hard enough to rattle the bowl, but Bucky catches his wrist and pins it down without looking away from the wound. He murmurs something too low for you to catch.

Apology, prayer, curse; with men like them, there may not be much difference.

Under Bucky’s instruction, you search for the bullet, stopping every time Steve’s body bucks beneath Bucky’s hold. It feels endless, a handful of seconds stretched cruel by the sound of Steve’s breathing and the red shining over your fingers. Then the forceps catch on something hard, something that does not belong inside a man, and Bucky’s voice cuts through the room at once.

“That’s it. Easy now. Pull straight.”

The bullet comes free slick with blood and drops into the bowl with a dull little clink. For all the damage it has done, it looks far too small.

Bucky lets out a breath, but he doesn’t let go of Steve. “Good,” he praises, rough. “That’s real good, darlin’. Now stitch him.”

Threading the needle takes three tries and a muttered curse before the thread finally slips through. Cloth never prepared you for this - it stays put under your hands. Flesh has a give to it that turns your stomach, but you swallow it down and focus on the path of the needle, in one side and out the other, the thread slowly drawing the wound closed.

Bucky watches the first one go through, then the second, and whatever he sees must satisfy him enough to turn more of his attention back to Steve.

“Doin’ good, Stevie,” he murmurs. “Stay with me. There you go. Tough bastard like you don’t get to die in a schoolteacher’s kitchen.”

Steve makes a sound around the belt, weak now, worn down by pain and blood loss until even agony seems to cost too much effort. Then the needle catches wrong, just enough to make his body twitch beneath Bucky’s grip.

“Fuck—I’m sorry Steve,” you whisper before you can stop yourself, pulling the stitch through with a shaking hand. “I’m nearly done, promise.”

Bucky glances at you, then back down at him. “Hear that, Rogers? Lady’s apologisin’ to you while saving your sorry hide. You better live long enough to thank her proper.”

By the time you tie off the final stitch, your back aches, your hands are cramped, and your nightdress is ruined past saving. Bucky binds the wound tight with strips torn from your clean sheet, wrapping them firm while you hold Steve’s hand and try not to notice how loosely his fingers curl around yours now.

When Bucky finally steps away, the room seems to take its first full breath since two outlaws crashed into your evening. He wipes his hands on the edge of the sheet, eyes tracking over Steve, watching for any fresh red spilling through the bandage. He nods once to himself when none does.

“Alright,” Bucky says at last. “Now we keep him warm, and thank God he’s a stubborn son of a bitch.”

With the worst of the work done, the night settles into a long, sleepless vigil.

Steve is covered with every blanket you own, and neither of you can tear your eyes away from him long enough to do much beyond tend to him. His body has finally given itself over the exhaustion, sleeping so deeply you watch for his breaths to make sure he’s still alive. You clean what you can from him with a wet cloth - the dirt on his cheek, the sweat from his brow, the blood on his hands.

Bucky stays in the chair by Steve’s head.

He looks half-dead himself, shoulders bowed beneath exhaustion, eyes shadowed, jaw slackening each time sleep nearly takes him before he drags himself back from it. Every time Steve’s breathing changes, Bucky’s head lifts. Every time Steve shifts, Bucky’s hand is already there, soothing him back to stillness. Small, tender brushes of his hand through damp blond strands. He does it without thinking, with the ease of habit, and you get the feeling you’re seeing something usually kept from view.

It’s a strange thing to witness from a man with his name on a wanted poster. It’s a strange thing to witness from a man at all, really.

‘The Winter Kid’ the papers call him - always printed near Steve’s name like one shadow following another. He’s younger than the posters make him look, or maybe just more human. Handsome too, though that thought feels poorly timed and unwelcome. But true all the same.

Maybe he can feel you looking, because his eyes lift to yours a moment later. They’re unfairly blue against the tan of his skin and the dark fall of his hair,and for one strange second you feel caught in them the way you do in Steve’s.

“What?” he asks, tilting his head.

You shrug, a little embarrassed, but you hold his gaze. “You don’t look much like your picture.”

“Yeah, well.” The corner of his mouth twitches, and for the first time you feel that charm Steve warned you about, battered but not dead. “They charge extra for likeness.”

A small laugh slips out of you before you can stop it. Bucky hears it, and the corner of his mouth seems to twitch a fraction further up, pleased with himself. The air between you seems a little lighter after that, still ruled by Steve’s breathing, but less like two strangers keeping watch over a dying man and more like two people bound, against all better judgement, to the same stubborn fool. “I expected you shorter,” you admit, causing Bucky to raise a brow. “You know, from the name.”

Bucky groans like this is a wound all its own, head tipping back against the chair for half a second. “Christ. Not you too.”

“Well, it does give a certain impression,” you add, just to goad.

“It gives me a headache is what it gives me.” He drags a tired hand down his face, though the shape of a smile keeps threatening at his mouth. “You know how hard it is to be taken serious by women when half of ’em start grinnin’ soon as they hear Kid?”

“From what Steve tells me,” you say, glancing down at the man asleep between you, “you seem to manage just fine.”

His expression shifts slightly at that. Surprise first, then something warmer he tries to hide by leaning back in his chair and letting the charm crawl into the corner of his mouth. Worse now you know to look for it.

“Oh yeah?” he drawls, voice smoother than it should be after all his shouting. “And what exactly has Rogers told you about how I treat a lady, darlin’?”

You reach for the damp cloth beside you and wring it out over the basin, refusing to give him the satisfaction of looking flustered. “Careful, Mr. Barnes. I’ve still a mind to pick my shotgun back up.”

Bucky seems more pleased by your threat than scared, but lifts his hands in surrender all the same, “Of course, Miss. I’ll behave.”

After that, the conversation drifts into exchanging stories about Steve. It feels odd to speak of him like this whilst he lies pale beneath your blankets, yet necessary too, as if each foolish little detail sets another small weight on the side of the scale that says living.

Eventually, though, you can’t avoid the question anymore.

“What happened?”

Bucky’s smile disappears instantly, replaced by a grimace. “Rumlow.” 

Just the name is enough to fill the room with dread.

Brock Rumlow has a reputation that travels ahead of him. Bounty hunter, most folk call him. Brutal killer, if folk were feeling honest. But a good man by the town’s measure because he kills with the sheriff’s blessing. 

“He caught our trail two days west,” he explains. “We thought we’d shaken him after the river crossin’. But Steve said the tracks were too clean, and of course he just had to be right.”

His mouth twists, though there’s no humour in it now.

“Rumlow had men waitin’ by the ridge. More than we counted on. First shot took my horse out from under me, and Steve came back for me like the damned fool he is.” Bucky’s hand goes to Steve’s hair again before he seems to notice it, fingers combing once through the damp strands before he pulls away. “I told him to ride. He didn’t.”

Of course he didn’t.

That is what hurts most, perhaps. Not the recklessness - you made your peace with that, or tried to. No, it’s the unfortunate fact that no part of you can imagine him doing anything else because you know by now that Steve has never had much sense when someone he cares for is in danger. He might be a wanted man, but he’s good down to the marrow.

“He drew their fire long enough for me to get my rifle,” Bucky continues. “I managed to drop one man, maybe two. Then Rumlow put a bullet in him from the rocks. Steve stayed in the saddle after, somehow. Long enough to swear at me for fussin’.”

“That sounds like him,” you say quietly, reaching for Steve’s hand beneath the blankets. His fingers are cool when you fold them into yours and loose in a way that makes your throat tighten.

“Yeah.” Bucky huffs through his nose. “Stubborn bastard made it near six miles telling me it was only a graze. Then he went white as flour and damn near pitched off the horse.”

Your hand tightens around Steve’s before you can stop it. Bucky’s eyes catch it - for all his exhaustion, there is very little the man seems to miss.

“Kept off the road after that, muddied the trial in the creek too.” Bucky says. “Lost ’em for tonight, I reckon.”

“For tonight?”

His eyes lift to yours, and they give you the answer before his mouth does. “Rumlow’s still breathin’, ain’t he?”

That answers enough.

Bucky leans forward and peels the edge of the blanket back just far enough to check the bandage. With gentle fingers, he presses near your stitches, watching for fresh blood, and you find yourself holding your breath until he lets the blanket fall back into place.

“Stitches are holding,” he confirms. “You did good, darlin’, real good.”

Then his gaze drops to Steve, hand resting on his shoulder.

“Course,” he adds, murmuring almost to himself. “Rogers always did know how to pick good people.”

That makes you look back up at him, at the two of them together. And for a second you see it all playing out: Steve riding back into gunfire, Bucky dragging him through the dark, the two of them printed side by side on every wanted paper like the world has always known they come together.

“Yeah,” you reply softly, holding his gaze. “He does.”

The corner of Bucky’s mouth lifts without any of the charm from before. This smile is smaller, more honest. Grateful in a way neither of you can bear to acknowledge. 

The next couple of days pass in pieces for Steve.

Pain consumes most of it, sharp enough to drag him sleep sometimes. But he always wakes to company and the cool drag of a cloth over his face when fever leaves him damp and restless. Sometimes the hand at his brow is yours. Sometimes it’s Bucky’s calloused palms, not a soft but no less careful for it.

When he shifts too quickly, one of you is always there to press him back down. Your voice comes sweet near his ear, telling him to to rest and stop being difficult. Bucky has less patience about it, muttering, “Quit bein’ a jackass, Rogers,”but the softness in his voice gives him away.

By the second day, he starts catching more of the world around him. Mostly, he catches the two of you speaking over him like he’s some troublesome piece of work you have mutually agreed to keep alive. He hears you show Bucky how to change the sheets without jostling him, and Bucky grumbling that you’re a bossy little thing. Your quiet snicker follows, easy enough by then to tell Steve you’ve already learnt not to be scared of Bucky’s bark. And it settles him enough to fall back into another slumber.

Yet, when Steve wakes properly, the house is quiet. His mind goes straight trouble - you and Bucky hurt, or worse, taken.Then he sees the fresh cloth waiting on the washstand, the cup of water set near the bed, the plate of food left within reach. Someone has even pulled the blanket back from the edge of his bandage so it won’t catch when he moves.

Still, his gaze flicks back to the empty chair, a little more wounded at being left alone than he’d admit. 

But then he hears voices drift in from the window. Yours first, bright enough to pull his eyes open properly. Bucky answers beneath it, rougher and far too pleased with himself, and Steve rolls his eyes fondly at the ceiling. He knows Bucky in that mood, and exactly the kind of trouble he thinks he’s charming his way out of.

The sound of you both laughing together is too sweet to resist, and it pulls at Steve before he can think better of it. So he presses one hand to his side, grits his teeth and pushes himself upright with a low grunt. 

By the time he makes it to the doorway, he’s sweating through his shirt, and lightheaded enough that he has to lean against the frame for support. But when his vision focuses on the two of you, the pain pulsing from his side seems to subside. 

Bucky’s leaning against the fence with his sleeves rolled to his elbows - an unabashed display of his toned forearms if Steve’s ever seen one - hat tipped back and a loose board braced beneath his boot. He must have been fixing it before he got distracted. Or before you distracted him. Either way, he’s smiling at you like he knows just how handsome he is, which, Steve thinks fondly, he does.

“You call that fixed?” you ask, eyeing the board.

“It’s standin’, ain’t it?”

“It was standin’ before.”

“Well, now it’s standin’ better.”

Your mouth opens in disbelief, and Bucky’s grin widens like he has been waiting all morning to earn that exact look from you. He shifts the hammer in his hand, letting it hang loose at his side. “You this particular with all the men who do chores for you?”

“Only the ones who do half a job and then stand there lookin’ pleased with themselves.” You jibe, mouth curving before you can help it. “Steve never gives me cause to complain.”

Bucky presses a hand to his chest, wounded clean through. “Darlin’, I am beginnin’ to think you don’t appreciate the quality of my help.”

Steve watches your face as you say it, the way your smile tugs despite your best efforts to keep stern. You’re standing closer than you need to. Close enough to swat his arm when he mutters something about schoolteachers being as scary as he remembers. Bucky catches your wrist before your hand drops, letting his thumb skim once across the inside of it before he lets it go.

Too friendly, some part of Steve thinks. He should mind that. He knows himself well enough to expect the old ugly twist, the hard little claim in his chest that has no manners and less patience. His girl. His Buck.

“You remember I have a shotgun, right? Any more excuses from you and I’ll get it back out and see if it motivates you proper,” you warn, though there is too much warmth in it to do much harm.

Bucky looks far too pleased by that. “How could I forget?” He dips his head, absolutely unrepentant. “Pretty thing like you pointin’ a gun at me ain’t a picture a man forgets easy.”

He really should mind that. 

Only the longer he watches, the more it just seems… right. That’s the simple answer. The more complicated one is that there’s a want in him he hasn’t allowed himself to acknowledge until now. 

Then Bucky says something softer, and whatever it is makes your expression change. The teasing slips. You step forward and wrap your arms around him, gentle at first, then tighter when Bucky folds around you in return. His hand spreads over your back, yours presses between his shoulders, and he rests his chin on your head.

Something in Steve’s stomach twists hot, and it’s not the bullet wound. 

Oh.

Well.

That explains a few things.

When you pull back, your fingers drag lightly down Bucky’s sleeve before falling away. And then your eyes catch Steve in the doorway.

The smile drops straight off your face.

“Steve!” you chide. “Good lord, you shouldn’t be standin’ up yet!”

Bucky turns fast, all charm gone in an instant. “You stupid son of a—”

“Why aren’t you in bed?” you demand, already crossing the yard towards him. “You’re meant to be resting. You’ll tear the stitches, you’ll—”

“What’re you doin’?” Steve asks.

His voice is rough from sleep and disuse, but it cuts through your panic all the same. You stop a few feet short of him, caught between scolding him like one of your schoolchildren and reaching for him. Bucky has followed you, but that damn mouth of his curves back into his signature smirk.

“Stealin’ your woman?” he replies.

Steve huffs a laugh at that, breath catching a little in his chest from the pull of it. He shakes his head, looking between the two of you with something warm and wry beneath the exhaustion.

“Take her,” he shrugs, turning back towards the house, pretending with little success that every step doesn’t pull at his side.

You both go quiet behind him. Steve pauses at the doorway just long enough to glance back, tired eyes moving between the two of you.

“What?” he says, mouth twitching as he makes his slow way back to bed. “Take her.”

Bucky watches him go, grin crooked and eyes a little too soft. “Well, you’re a romantic bastard, I’ll give you that.”

You climb into bed that night tentatively, careful to keep your distance from Steve so you can’t accidentally hurt him.

He watches you fuss with tired amusement, flat on his back beneath the blankets. He’s been patient all day because he’s had no choice in the matter, but now, with you so close, what little patience he has left wears thin.

His arm reaches for you beneath the quilt. “C’mere.”

“But you need to be careful—”

He tugs you closer before you can finish, stubborn as always, and though the movement pulls a faint wince from him, it also draws a low, pleased rumble from his chest when you end up pressed along his side.

“Steve,” you hiss, braced on one elbow, already trying to take some of your weight off him. “You’re going’ to hurt yourself.”

“Worth it,” he murmurs.

You open your mouth to argue, but his lips find your shoulder first. He kisses over your skin lazily, as if he has all the time in the world and no bounty hunter breathing down the road. Then moves to side of your throat, where his beard scrapes softly enough to make your breath catch. Any protest thins in your mouth and dies there, useless, and the ease with which you melt for him makes Steve smile against your skin.

“Missed you,” he hums, pleased with himself.

The words catch somewhere tender, and before you can stop it, the fear you’ve been holding back for days slips free. “I thought you were going’ to die.”

Steve’s mouth stills against your skin. For a moment, he says nothing, then his jaw sets with all the stubborn bravado of a man determined to make the thing smaller than it was. “Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

You stare at him, eyes burning, and Steve’s bravado doesn’t survive it. His expression softens before he pulls you closer despite the faint wince it costs him, burying his face against your neck.

“No,” he murmurs, voice rough now. “Make a big deal out of it.”

Your fingers tighten in his shirt. Steve kisses your temple and lets you hold him as hard as you need to, though you can feel the care he takes with every breath. 

“You’re a fool,” you grumble against his chest.

“I know,” he agrees easily.

“And stubborn.”

“I know that too,” he adds, the hint of a smile returning to his voice.

You lift your head enough to glare at him through the last sting behind your eyes. “Don’t sound so smug.”

“Can’t help it.” His hand slides from your waist, broad palm warm through the thin cotton of your nightdress. “You get awful sweet when you forget to be cross with me, ma’am.”

You should scold him. You mean to. Instead your head tips, giving him more room, and Steve’s breath warms where your pulse has already started tripping under his mouth. Then his fingers drift lower, gathering your nightdress up slowly so his hand can hand slip between your thighs, and what comes out of you isn’t an answer at all. It’s too soft, too needy, your hips shifting before your pride can stop them.

Steve only hums, like that tells him everything he needs to know.

“Poor thing,” he murmurs. “You’re soaked already.”

You make a small sound of protest, breath catching as your hips shift against his palm. “You should be resting.”

“I am resting,” he counters. “You’re the one making all that noise.”

Heat rushes straight through you. “Steve.”

He grins, because he knows what that tone means. His fingers drag through your pussy, spreading the slick of you over your skin until you can’t hold back the needy little moan that escapes. “Buck been winding you up all day, huh? Flashing those pretty eyes at you, running that mouth, standing too close every chance he got.”

You bite your lip hard, but Steve knows your body too well by now. The little tremor that goes through you when he presses two fingers to your entrance, and the way your knees loosen when he rubs his thumb over your clit.

“Mm. Saw the way you looked at him.” His thumb presses a little firmer, drawing another helpless sound from you as his voice drops rougher by your ear. “Saw the way he looked at you too. Like he was wondering how sweet you’d sound if somebody got a hand under your skirt.”

You turn your face into his shoulder, scandalised and burning, but the heat pooling low in you stomach tells a different story. “You can’t say things like that.”

“Seems I just did.”

His fingers push into you then, thick enough to make you clutch at his shirt, his name leaving you in a soft, broken sound. Steve goes still for a breath, jaw tightening as your pussy clenches around him, warm and slick and greedy enough to make him curse the wound in his side for keeping his cock out of you.

“Atta girl,” he murmurs, voice rough at your ear. “Open up for me, sweetheart.”

Your thighs part around his hand, your body taking him with a helpless little roll of your hips. His cock twitches heavy against your leg, and the moan that slips out of you is louder than you mean it to be, needy enough to make heat rush to your face.

“That’s my girl,” Steve coos. “Been so good taking care of me, haven’t you? Let me take care of you now.”

“Wait—fuck—Stevie, he’ll hear us.” you protest weakly, eyes flicking toward the door, where Bucky is sleeping on the couch on the other side.

Steve’s fingers slow, but they don’t stop. If anything, his touch turns crueller, pumping in and out of your pussy with an unhurried drag as his thumb circles your clit.

“Good,” he says at last.

Your eyes widen.

Steve curls his fingers inside you, pressing just right, and your whole body jerks against him. “Let him.”

Your pussy tightens around him before you can pretend to be scandalised. Steve feels it and smiles, filthy and pleased, as another moan slips out of you. You try to swallow it down, but his thumb keeps stroking your clit and his fingers keep fucking you open, slow enough to make every wet sound feel obscene in the quiet room.

“S’okay, honey,” he encourages, kissing beneath your ear. “I don’t mind. You make those pretty noises for me and let Buck hear what he’s missin’ out on.”

“Steve,” you whimper into his neck, overwhelmed by the heat of it, by the way he says Buck’s name with no jealousy at all. Like it turns him on too. Like he knows exactly what he is doing to you.

His mouth brushes your jaw. “Poor bastard probably spent all afternoon thinkin’ about what you’d sound like if he got his hands on you,” he rumbles, fingers driving deeper until your breath catches sharp. “Now he’s out there listenin’ to me do it.”

Your fingers curl in the front of his shirt, hips moving against his hand now, chasing more. Steve makes a rough sound like the sight of you fucking yourself on his fingers might kill him faster than any bounty hunter ever could.

Then your hand slides lower before you can think better of it, finding the hard line of his cock through his drawers. He curses under his breath, hips twitching once into your palm before pain catches at him and makes his jaw clench.

You pull back instantly. “Steve—”

“Don’t.” His hand tightens on your thigh, stubborn even now, even with sweat at his temple and breath caught in his chest. “I’m fine, pretty girl, promise. Just need your hand on my cock. Need my girl to make it better.”

Your answering moan is too wanton to stifle, and out on the couch, Bucky hears it. 

He’s been awake for a while, one arm thrown over his eyes, every sore port of him arguing with the hard springs beneath the couch cushion. At first, he told himself he was just listening for Steve - that’s reasonable enough. A man has a right to keep an ear out for his best friend when said friend has nearly bled dry on a kitchen table. And if said friend is in bed with his pretty little woman, well, that’s hardly his fault, is it?

He knows should roll over and try to sleep. Or do literally anything other than listen to the needy catch in your breath when Steve’s fingers must find something good. Heat pulls through him before he can talk sense into himself. It’s been crawling under his skin all day. And now Steve’s voice is torturing him in the dark, coaxing the prettiest noises out of you like he means for Bucky to hear everyone.

His hand slides down over the hard ache in his trousers before he can pretend better of himself. His hips jerk into his palm at the first firm press. 

Bucky shuts his eyes as his lips part around a groan of relief. 

He should feel worse about it, probably. A gentleman might. Then again, he’s never made much of a claim to being one, and there’s nothing gentlemanly about Steve is talking to you through the door. Low and rough, sweet in all the wrong places, telling you how good you are for him whilst you make those soft ruined sounds that go straight to Bucky’s cock.

His fingers work the buttons of his trousers open, and he’s so wound up that the first touch to his throbbing length makes his hips jerk up. He’s already hard enough to hurt, thick and hot in his grip, precum slicking the head as he strokes once from base to tip. He has to force himself slower so he doesn’t spill too fast, listening to the shift of the bed in the next room and the wet sound of Steve’s fingers fucking you.

“Don’t hide from me,” Steve rumbles, voice carrying just enough. “Want him to hear how pretty you get when you come”

The needy moan you cry out in response, makes Bucky’s hand tighten and his eyes squeeze shut. He can picture it all wall for a man who hasn’t a right to see any of it. Your thighs spread under Steve’s hand, nightdress pushed up, tucking your face into Steve’s neck as you try and fail to keep quit. Steve, wounded and recovering, still generous enough to make sure Bucky knows what he’s missing. 

“Stevie,” you gasp, and Bucky’s cock jerks in his fist.

He drags his thumb over the swollen head with enough pressure to make his stomach pull tight. The couch springs creak beneath him when his hips jump into his hand, and he freezes momentarily, listening. But neither of you stop. If anything, Steve laughs, low and filthy, like he heard the sound and knows eaxctly what it means. 

“That’s it, sweetheart,” Steve groans. “Bet Buck’s got his hand around his cock right now, listenin’ to you. Bet he can’t help himself.”

Bucky presses his forearm over his mouth, a helpless grin pulling at him even as pleasure burns through his gut. Bastard. Mean, beautiful bastard. He strokes himself harder, giving up on pacing himself, fist slick and tight around his cock as your moans slip through the thin bedroom door and wrap around every filthy picture Steve puts in his head.

“Wish he could see you right now,” Steve goads, and Bucky nearly spills right there. “So wet for me. Sweet little pussy takin’ my fingers so good. He’d lose his fuckin’ mind.”

His hips buck desperately into his first, breath coming harsh through his nose as Steve keeps talking like he knows every dirty place Bucky’s mind has gone and means to walk you through all of them. Your moans pitcher higher, thinner, more desperate.

“Please Stevie—so close,” you whine, and Bucky doesn’t think he’s ever heard anything more beautiful. 

“I’ve got you, sweet girl,” Steve coos. “Come for me. Let him hear.”

The sound you make as you fall apart under Steve’s hand is obscene. You pleasure spills out into the dark as Steve praises you in that honey-deep register like he’s got his fingers buried in the best thing he’s ever touched. Bucky strokes himself harder, cock slick in his fist, teeth digging into his wrist to keep his own noise down.

Then Steve groans low around a curse, and God, Bucky knows that sound. Learnt on cold nights under open sky when bedrolls were laid a polite distance apart and neither of them ever spoke of what they heard in the dark.

But hearing it now, with you, is enough to finish off what your moans started.

His hand works faster, rougher, chasing it until he spills over his own knuckles. He strokes himself through it, hips jerking up into his fist, hot cum slicking his fingers while the last of Steve’s filthy praise drifts through the door.

Head falling back against the couch, he throws his free hand over his eyes again as if that might make a decent man of him after the fact. But the other is still loose around his sensitive, softening cock. From the bedroom, Steve mutters something too low for him too catch, but you laugh in response, breathless.

Bucky smiles up at the ceiling, completely and utterly fucked. Both of you tucked under his skin, deep as a wound and twice as troublesome. 

“Romantic bastard,” he scoffs into the dark.

 You wake reaching for Steve, hands sliding over the sheets in search of the warmth that’s usually gone by the time daylight finds you. For one awful, familiar second, your heat braces for emptiness, and then your fingers meet his chest. Still there.

The joy it brings is so small and foolish it almost hurts. Steve’s still beside you, warm beneath your palm, alive beneath your hand, his breath moving slow and steady. You don’t mean to smile as hard as you do for something that won’t last, but you feel it happen anyway. 

Steve’s eyes crack open, tired blue finding you through the grey morning light. His mouth curves faintly. 

“Mornin’,” he rasps. 

He lifts a hand with more effort than he lets show and brushes his knuckles along your cheek before drawing you close enough to kiss your forehead. It is gentle. Domestic, almost, in a way that feels absurd given the blood dried somewhere in your kitchen and the wanted posters nailed up in town.

But then Steve starts trying to get up. He looks pale enough that you threaten him twice before he gets both feet on the floor. 

“You are pale enough to haunt this house, Steve Rogers. Sit still.”

His brows lift, innocent as sin. “Jus’ thinkin’ about breakfast is all, ma’am, swear.”

He takes your continued scolding with a faint curve to his mouth, one hand shielding the wound slightly, as you get up to help him dress. He even lets you fuss over him, and you breathe a sigh of relief when you see no red blooming on his bandages. 

By the time you get him into the kitchen, his jaw his set hard enough to make you narrow your eyes. Steve takes your silent warning and lowers himself into the chair before bringing your hand to his mouth and kissing the inside of it. Just a brief, warm brush of his lips, eyes lifting to yours in quiet apology for every minute he’s made your heart suffer these last few days.

The door opens before you can say anything soft enough to embarrass you both. Bucky steps inside with a sack under one arm; he’s been gone since first light, having ridden into town for coffee, cartridges, and whatever else two outlaws and one increasingly compromised schoolteacher might need. You’re expecting some crooked remark as he kicks the door shut behind him. Maybe something about Steve looking less like a corpse, or you running the kitchen like a jailhouse.

Instead, his face is grim.

Steve clocks it immediately, and his shoulders straighten. Pain forgotten under the old readiness that lives dormant in him until needed. “What?”

Bucky sets the sack on the table. “You feel well enough to ride?”

Steve frowns. “If I have to.”

“Good.” Bucky’s eyes flick over you, brows tightening, then back to Steve. “Rumlow’s in town, asking questions at the mercantile. Offered coin for anyone who knew anythin’ about Steve Rogers and The Winter Kid.”

Steve face flattens, jaw setting into that hardened mask he uses to cover whatever else he’s feeling. Nodding once, he pushes up from the chair.

“Steve—” you start at once.

He bends and kisses you before you can finish, once hand gentle at the side of your face. It tastes too close to a goodbye kiss for your heart to bare, and the panic rises in your throat.

“We’ll draw him off, honey,” he murmurs, clearly misinterpreting your worry. “He won’t know you had anything to do with us.”

Then he turns to Bucky. “Get the horses ready. We’ll cut south - maybe this time we stop talking about Mexico and actually head there.”

Mexico?

You look from Steve to Bucky, at the silent communication already passing between them, and the speed with which they become men leaving. Men packing their lives into saddlebags. Men deciding what they can carry and what must be left, including, apparently, you. 

“Take me with you.”

Both of them immediately stop.

Steve turns firs,t protest already written across his face. “Sweetheart, you can’t seriously —”

Bucky interrupts, sharper. “Absolutely not.”

“I wasn’t askin’,” you counter firmly, mustering up the same voice you use in the schoolhouse when a child thinks they might try their luck.

Steve’s brows pull together. “You don’t know what you’re suggestin’.”

“I do.”

“You don’t.” Bucky cuts in, which only makes you angrier. “This life ain’t—”

“Ain’t what?” you return. “For a lady?”

That closes his mouth. For once, Bucky Barnes has no clever answer ready, and Steve looks no better. The two of them stand there, each searching for the combination of words least likely to upset you further and finding none fast enough.

“After last night, I think any claim I had to bein’ a lady has been thoroughly mishandled.”

A flush climbs through the rough gold of Steve’s beard at once, and he drops his eyes to the table as if the wood grain has become a matter of deep interest. Bucky looks toward the window with equal dignity, which is to say very little, given what he had so clearly heard through your bedroom door. But you feel a little wild with it now. Freed by the strange relief of having already stepped over the edge in your own mind.

“I’m a schoolteacher in a town that’s been dyin’ for years,” you continue. “Folk still smile at me like I’m still respectable, but every year I stay unmarried, they look a little closer for the rot. And every night I come back to this house alone, and wait to hear news of Steve’s death.”

Steve’s face falls, and he looks at you with such earnest guilt that you have to look away or you’ll lose the nerve to finish. Your eyes sting badly enough that you have to blink hard and focus on staring at the floorboards.

“I’m no fool,” you say. “I know what I’m sayin’. Long days. Cold nights. Men with guns behind us. I know it won’t be some grand adventure out of a penny paper.” You lift your head again. “But I want a life I choose. I want more than waitin’ in this house for grief to come find me. And I want to be with you.”

Bucky looks at Steve then, and Steve returns it. They do that thing again where a whole conversation seems to pass without either of them opening their mouth, and you can already tell this is a feature of them that will get on your nerves. Still, you stand there and wait. You can see them weighing the right choice. You can also see, with a painful twist of hope, that neither of them likes the thought of leaving you behind.

Steve exhales through his nose. “You’d have to listen.”

“To both of us,” Bucky adds. “When it counts. If Steve says run, you run. If I say stay put, you don’t move a muscle.”

“You’ll ride until you ache,” Steve says, eyes searching your face for the first sign of regret. “Sleep under open sky. Eat beans out of a tin when there’s nothing else. Go without a proper bed more often than you’ll have one.”

Bucky leans his hip against the table, arms folding, his expression hard despite the tired edge of him. “And you’ll keep that shotgun close. Learn a pistol too, whether you like it or not. Pretty face won’t do much good if Rumlow catches up.”

“I’ll do it,” you agree, looking at Steve first, then Bucky, making yourself hold both their gazes long enough for them to see there’s fear in you, plenty of it. Just none useful enough to change your mind. “I’ll do it all, I promise.”

They seem satisfied enough to move again, almost. Steve’s hand twitches toward the supplies, Bucky’s eyes flick to the door. But you stop them before the moment can run away from you.

“The only thing I won’t do,” you continue, quieter, “is watch either of you die. I’ll skip that scene, if you don’t mind.”

Steve’s hand closes around yours before you can busy yourself with anything else, or turn away and pretend the words weren’t all too honest.

“Once we go,” his eyes hold steady on yours, “we go.”

There’s warning in it, but there’s promise too. You squeeze his hand in confirmation. 

“Then let’s go.”

You leave before the town has finished waking, with no grand farewell to your little house. Just five minutes to pack the essentials, and everything else left behind for the town to make stories about two bad men and the lady they corrupted.

For the first couple weeks, you ride with Bucky. At first, Steve enjoys watching the two of you grow closer. But a few days pass without your arms around his waist and the man starts acting abandoned. Nothing dramatic, of course. Steve Rogers is far too dignified for that. He only gets quieter, pouts into his coffee, and looks at you from under those ridiculous lashes with his pretty blue eyes, utterly wounded.

But there’s only so much sympathy you can give him when every jolt of his horse leaves his face tight and grey - having you pressed against his side would pull at the wound no matter how carefully you held him, so you sit behind Bucky instead. Your arms wrap around his middle, sometimes resting your cheek between his shoulder blades when the road stretches long.

He’s always warm - despite the nickname - and complains when your cold hands slip under his coat in the mornings, but never makes you move them.

It’s on one such morning that the question slips out before it’s even fully formed in your head. Absent in its curiosity. 

“Bucky?”

He turns his head back slightly, catching your face in the corner of his eye. “Hmm?”

Your chin is hooked over his shoulder, the brim of his hat shading your eyes from the sun. Steve is riding a bit ahead, far enough to pretend he’s not listening and close enough you know he is.

“Do you ever wonder, if I’d met you first, that we’d be the ones the get involved?”

Bucky makes a thoughtful sound, as though this is a matter requiring serious study. “But we are involved, sugar.”

You lift your head. “Are we?”

“You’re ridin’ my horse with me.” His hand covers yours where it rests against his stomach, thumb brushing once over your knuckles. “In some countries, that’s the same as being married.”

Steve glances back over his shoulder. “Name one.”

“Plenty, Stevie,” Bucky shoots back without missing a beat. “Just ‘cause you ain’t a romantic don’t mean it ain’t true.”

“That mean you don’t know any?”

“Means I’m a man of mystery, Rogers. Let me have that.”

You laugh into Bucky’s shoulder, and Steve turns forward again, shaking his head. Even from behind, you can see the curve at the corner of his mouth.

That becomes one of the biggest pleasures of the road, the two of them bickering like an old married couple with loaded guns and a shared talent for pretending they are the sensible one. Steve corrects Bucky’s directions. Bucky mocks Steve’s caution. Steve tells him caution is the reason he’s still alive, and Bucky retorts, “Barely,” with a pointed look at the bandage under his shirt. 

You learn to sit between it and smile into the back of Bucky’s coat, warm with the strange comfort of being folded into something that clearly existed long before you and somehow has made room for you anyway.

The weeks begin to fold into one another after that, measured less by days than by how far Steve can ride before pain makes him stubbornly quiet. He never says when it’s too much - of course he doesn’t. But you both learn the signs, so that when that happens, you or Bucky find an excuse to stop. Steve accepts each excuse with the grateful dignity of a man who knows precisely what you’re doing and lacks the strength to protest.

Some nights you find a town small enough to risk, and the three of you take one room under a false name while Steve lies stiff on the bed and Bucky sleeps in the chair with a gun across his lap. Other nights, there is only open country and the fire between you, Bucky’s coat under your head, Steve’s hand tucked around your waist, pleased now he can finally pull you close.

You learn quickly; you have to. 

How to ride until your thighs ache and keep your complaints mostly to yourself. How to drink bad coffee without making a face. How to keep your hair pinned under a hat when passing through towns where a woman travelling with two men draws more attention than a pair of wanted faces.

Bucky teaches you to shoot a pistol at a row of bottles outside an abandoned line shack, and Steve stands behind you, correcting your grip until Bucky accuses him of distracting you. 

Rumlow stays behind you like bad weather you can’t outride, always somewhere on the edge of the horizon. Some days there’s no sign of him at all. Other days Bucky comes back from a supply run with his jaw tight, or Steve sees something in the dirt that makes both men go quiet. Neither of them likes fear on your face, so you learn how to hide that, too.

By the time Steve’s stitches come out, the three of you have already become a kind of routine.

Steve reads the land ahead. Bucky watches what follows. You keep track of the food, the clean cloth, and all the small human things the two of them would forget in favour of keeping moving. You sleep between them when the nights turn cold, Bucky pressed at your back and Steve careful against your front, one arm laid over your waist like even in sleep he means to keep you safe. Nobody ever says much about it in the morning.

But the trouble with Mexico is that it keeps costing money. By the third month, the coins in Bucky’s purse have started to sound lonely, and Steve has taken to rationing his own portions to make sure you have enough. You always protest that he needs it more, but it falls on deaf ears.

“We need money,” Bucky says one evening, poking at the fire with a stick.

Steve doesn’t look up from the map. “I know.”

“We need quite a bit of money.”

“I know.”

You look between them. “Why do I get the feelin’ neither of you is about to suggest honest work?”

Bucky grins. Steve sighs.

A plan is soon in place, and you quickly realise you aren’t just being given soft work. They aren’t just tucking you safely away and asking you to wait pretty by the horses. No, you’re the distraction. Steve watches your face intently whilst they explain your part, searching for fear, and Bucky watches your hands to see if they shake. They do, a little. You tell him they shake less when people stop staring at them.

“Mean little thing when you’re nervous,” Bucky murmurs.

“You’d know better than to test me, then,” you snap back, much to his delight.

And that’s how you find yourself in your best dress two mornings later, walking into a town that has never heard your name and smiling sweetly at the bank clerk while Steve and Bucky do what Steve Rogers and The Winter Kid apparently do very well.

Soon, there’s a saddle under your hips, stolen money in Steve’s saddle bag and Bucky laughing as the town bell starts clanging behind you. Steve rides quietly beside you, one hand low on his reins, hat pulled low against the flare. He looks more pensive than you’d expect for a man who just planned and executed a successful robbery. 

“You know,” he considers, tilting his head. “When I was a kid, I always figured on bein’ a hero when I grew up.”

“Too late now,” Bucky shoots back instantly.

Steve turns in the saddle, mouth pulled into an exaggerated pout that almost looks genuinely hurt by the insinuation. “You didn’t have to say that—What’d you have to say that for?”

“Because we just robbed a bank and you’re gettin’ wistful about virtue. Felt like someone ought to keep you on track.”

You laugh before you can stop yourself, and Steve looks betrayed for all of half a second before his own mouth gives him away.

“I could still be heroic,” he argues.

“Of course, Stevie,” you soothe, reaching over to squeeze his arm. “And if heroism ever starts includin’ bank robbery, you’ll be the first man I nominate.”

Steve shakes his head, but there’s warmth in it. There’s warmth amongst all three of you now. The money will carry you further south. Rumlow, for the moment, is behind you. And for one bright stretch of road, with the sun high and the horses steady beneath you, the three of you ride easy.

When you reach the next town just before dark, it’s mercifully large enough to have a hotel, though only just. The main building fronts the street, while a handful of squat lodging cabins stand behind it beside the stable yard, each containing little more than a bed, a washstand and a door that locks.

You’ve already separated from Bucky two streets over - two men and a woman trying to book one cabin would draw eyes. A man and his wife, tired from the road and keen to be left alone, draw far fewer.

Bucky will return after dark with supplies and come through the open window like any decent outlaw.

By now, the routine is well worn. Steve keeps his hat low and asks for a room for himself and his wife. Your stomach gives a foolish little turn at the word, which is unhelpful given the circumstances, so you tuck yourself closer into his side and play your part.

The clerk turns the ledger around. “Name?”

Steve takes the pen and writes one of the names agreed between the three of you, this time settling on Mr. and Mrs. Drysdale.

The clerks eyes move over Steve as he writes, a little too closely for your liking. Steve’s hat shadows most of his face, though there is only so much a brim can do against a jaw like his. Then the clerk’s gaze drops to you, lingering on the plain dress, the tired hem, the cheap ring on your finger where your hand rests neatly against Steve’s sleeve.

“Long road?” he asks.

“Long enough,” you answer before Steve can, sweet and harmless. “My husband’s been poor company since noon.”

The clerk’s mouth twitches. “That so?”

“I get hungry,” Steve says.

“He gets sulky,” you correct.

The clerk looks amused now, his suspicion giving way to the easier pleasure of watching a married couple prod at each other. He reaches for a key from the row behind him.

“Cabin four,” he says. “Out and to the right.”

Steve takes the key with a polite nod, your hand still tucked around his arm, and the two of you make your way to the cabin to wait for Bucky and whatever trouble he tends to bring back with him.

But exhaustion claims you before said trouble arrives. You barely manage to loosen your dress before crawling beneath the covers, telling Steve you only mean to close your eyes whilst he checks the room. The bed feels strangely wide after so many nights spent wedged between two warm bodies beneath the open sky. Even when there had only been Steve beside you, his arm always fond your waist before sleep did. 

Tonight, the empty space at your back bothers you more than it ought to, and you drift off feeling faintly abandoned by both outlaws. 

Until finally you stir to the mattress dipping behind you and warmth settling along your back. It’s broad and familiar enough that your half-asleep mind doesn’t ask questions. Instead, you arch back into him, pleased to have your outlaw close, fitting your ass against his hips. 

Impatiently, and a little pointedly, you reach back for the arm that has failed to wrap itself around you. You drag it over your waist and hold is hand beneath yours. 

“Took you long enough,” you mumble into the pillow, a little pout tucked into the words. After all those weeks of Steve looking wounded whenever you rode with Bucky, he might at least have the decency to act pleased now that he can pull you close whenever.

His body goes stiff, and you take the teasing for what it is, grinding back again. Slower this time, rolling your ass over the shape beneath his trousers until his cock begins to harden against you. A strained breath warms the back of your neck. Then another, rougher, when you press closer and keep moving, sleepy need gathering fast between your thighs.

Still, his hand remains where you put it.

Your brows pinch. Steve has never needed this much encouragement where you;re concerned. Usually, one soft sound from you is enough to have him pushing up your skirts and getting greedy with whatever he finds beneath them.

“Stevie,” you whine, catching his wrist again. “Quit makin’ me ask.”

You guide his hand down over your stomach and between your thighs, pressing his palm against the heat gathered beneath your drawers. His fingers flex once. The groan that leaves him is low and delicious beside your ear, and you answer it with a needy little roll of your hips, trying to coax his hand into giving you what you want.

“That’s it, honey.” You hear Steve drawl, but his voice doesn’t come from behind you. “Keep grindin’ that pretty ass over Buck’s cock, he’s been waitin’ weeks to feel how sweet you are.”

Your eyes snap open. 

Steve is sat in the chair near the window, one ankle hooked over the other, watching the two of you through the low lamplight. His hat rests on the table beside him, hair pushed back from his face, and the hard shape beneath his trousers leaves little doubt as to how much he’s been enjoying the view.

Behind you, Bucky has gone completely still. His hand remains trapped between your thighs where you placed it, fingers flexing once against the damp cloth of your drawers before stopping again.

Steve catches the hesitation on your face.

“Easy, pretty girl,” he coos, voice dropping softer. “You’re alright. Ain’t nobody cross with you.”

His gaze stays warm and steady on yours, settling some of the panic before it can take hold. Bucky makes no attempt to claim what you offered him in your sleep, leaving the choice entirely with you now that you’re awake, and the restraint loosens something in your chest.

You sink back against him again, and a quiet, needy “Steve” slips from your mouth. 

“Well, quit teasin’ him then, sweetheart. You dragged Buck’s hand down to that needy pussy yourself.” His eyes stay on yours, smile turning wicked. “You want him to touch you, don’t you?”

You nod, “Yes, Stevie, please.”

Approval rumbles from Steve across the room at the same moment Bucky groans against your shoulder. His hand finally moves, slipping beneath the damp cloth between your thighs and dragging two rough fingers through the slick gathered there.

“Christ,” Bucky breathes, the word warm against your neck. “You’re soaked through darlin’.”

Your hips chase his hand before you can help it, opening wider as his fingers circle your clit. He parts you slowly, gathering the mess of you over his fingertips before circling your clit. And God, does he learn quickly. Taking each broken breath and twitch of your thighs as instruction, until your body is rolling against him with shameless impatience.

“That feel good?” he murmurs. “Been wondering how sweet you’d get for me.”

You whine and press back against him, already impatient, already desperate for more than the teasing drag of his fingers. Bucky laughs softly into your neck, pleased by how quickly you come apart for him.

“Yeah, I can feel that.” One finger presses into your pussy, drawing a thin moan from you as he works it deeper. “Taking me so easy. Such a good girl for us.”

Bucky pushes a second finger into your pussy, and the stretch of them pulls a broken moan from you. His hand is rougher than Steve’s, the calluses catching at tender places as he works you open, but he watches every reaction with the same focused attention he gives everything. One curl of his fingers makes your thighs tremble, and he does it again immediately.

Steve watches from the chair with one hand resting over the hard shape in his trousers, his eyes fixed on the way you grind down over Bucky’s knuckles.

“That it?” he asks against your skin. “Right there, sugar?”

“Yes—God, Buck—”

Bucky curses when your walls tighten around him. “She’s so damn sweet, Stevie.”

Steve’s mouth curves.

“If you think she’s sweet around your fingers,” he says, voice low enough to make your stomach clench, “wait till you get a taste of her.”

The thought pulls a desperate sound from you. Bucky answers with a groan of his own, his fingers curling inside you as his gaze drops hungrily between your thighs from over your shoulder. Your hand is already reaching back, fingers tangling in his dark hair as you twist toward him and tug with very little patience left.

Bucky goes willingly, laughing once under his breath as he lets you pull him down the bed, tugging down your drawers as he goes.

“That eager, darlin’?”

“Yes,” you gasp, spreading your thighs wider to accommodate those broad shoulders. “Please.”

Steve leans back in the chair, hand now palming over his cock as he watches.

“Go on, Buck,” he drawls. “Show her that mouth’s good for something besides bein’ a clever jackass.”

The first slow drag of Bucky’s tongue through you tears a cry from your throat. His hands close around your hips at once, holding you open while he tastes you again, deeper this time, mouth working with none of the caution his fingers had shown. He licks through every slick fold, groaning against your pussy.

Then his tongue circles your clit, and your hips jerk sharply into his face.

“There,” Steve rumbles, hand pressing harder over his thick length, still trapped beneath too much fabric. “She likes it right there. Don’t rush her, Buck. Keep your tongue flat and make her grind on it.”

Bucky follows the instruction immediately. He spreads his mouth over you, tongue broad and slow beneath your clit while his grip shifts lower, fingers digging into the soft flesh beneath your thighs to pull you closer. Your back arches, breath breaking into a helpless whine as you begin to move against him, too desperate to stay still and too overwhelmed to find any rhythm beyond chasing whatever his mouth gives you.

“That’s it,” Bucky praises against you. “Good girl. Use me.”

His words vibrate through your pussy and leave you clenching around nothing. He feels it, answers with another hungry groan, then slips two fingers back inside you while his mouth returns to your clit.

The room seems to tilt.

“Buck—Steve—God—”

Their names tangle together as Bucky curls his fingers into the place that makes your thighs shake. Steve keeps talking from across the room, telling Bucky when to press harder, when to keep his mouth where it is, every quiet command proving how well he knows your body and how willingly Bucky is learning it.

Pleasure builds so quickly that instinct has you trying to squirm away from it. Your hips twist even as they buck toward him, hands scrambling over the sheets while Bucky holds you firmly in place and refuses to let the distance grow.

“Easy, darlin’,” he soothes, breathless against you. “I’ve got you. Let me have it.”

But you can’t. You need more. Need both of them.

Your hand reaches blindly toward Steve even though he’s still too far away, fingers stretching uselessly through the space between you as his name leaves you in a broken plea. “Stevie.”

He’s out of the chair before the word has finished. Steve comes to the bedside and catches your reaching hand, pressing it against his chest as he bends over you.

“I’m here, pretty girl,” he coos. “You close?”

You nod frantically, one hand clutching his shirt and dragging him lower because words have abandoned you. Steve lets himself be pulled into the kiss, mouth covering yours just as Bucky’s tongue flicks hard over your clit again.

You moan against Steve’s lips as his hand slides into Bucky’s hair.

“Closer, Buck,” Steve pants into your mouth, pushing him more firmly between your thighs. “She’s trying to run from it. Don’t let her.”

Bucky groans and buries his face deeper, lips and tongue turning greedy while Steve kisses you through every broken sound. The hand in Bucky’s hair holds him just where you need him, and Steve’s other palm cups your jaw, keeping your mouth against his as your body begins to lose all control.

“That’s my best girl,” Steve praises between kisses. “Lettin’ me share this sweet pussy with Buck. Look how greedy you’ve got him.”

Your fingers knot in Steve’s shirt as your hips rise hard against Bucky’s face, chasing the relentless pressure of his tongue. Bucky holds you there and eats you through it, groaning when your thighs close around his head and the first desperate pulse of your orgasm rolls over his mouth.

You come with Steve’s name breaking against his lips and Bucky’s muffled beneath it, your whole body shuddering as slick spills over Bucky’s tongue and chin. Steve kisses every cry from you while Bucky greedily laps at everything you give him, refusing to stop until you are trembling and breathless between them.

Only then does Steve ease his hold in Bucky’s hair.

Bucky lifts his head slowly, mouth shining and eyes dark with satisfaction, looking every bit as wrecked as you feel. He’s knelt between your thighs, one hand warm against your hip, whilst Steve is still leant over you. It leaves them close enough that Steve’s gaze has nowhere else to fall but Bucky’s mouth.

“Fuck Stevie,” he breathes, wiping his thumb beneath his lip only to suck the taste from it. “Can’t believe you kept her to yourself for so long. Greedy bastard.”

But Steve’s gaze is too focused on Bucky’s swollen lips, glistening with your arousal, for his brain to think of a response. His tongue flicks out absently, sweeping over his lower lip as though he can already taste you there. The hunger in his face is so plain that your hand rises almost instinctively, fingers curling around his jaw and drawing him toward Bucky.

Their mouths meet hard enough to pull a startled sound from Bucky, and for one suspended second neither man moves. Steve’s hand stays curled around his jaw. Bucky’s fingers bunch in the front of Steve’s shirt. The rough scrape of stubble and the unfamiliar shape of another man’s mouth seem to catch them both off guard.

But then Bucky pulls him closer.

Steve takes hold of the back of his neck and kisses him properly, tongue pushing into Bucky’s mouth with a low groan, greedy for every trace of you left on his tongue. Bucky answers with all the hunger he had just spent between your thighs, opening for him as though this is something they have been circling for years without ever daring to name.

The sight of them together sends fresh heat curling low in your stomach.

Steve’s tongue pushes deeper into Bucky’s mouth, licking over his lips and teeth as though Bucky has become another place from which Steve can take his fill. Bucky groans, one hand sliding around the back of Steve’s neck while the other tightens possessively on your thigh. Every reckless rescue, every night spent back to back beneath the open sky, every time one of them chose the other without hesitation finally makes sense for what it has always been.

Your slick still glistens on Bucky’s chin. Steve’s mouth smears through it as the kiss deepens, and neither of them seems to care where one taste ends and the other begins. Years of rough affection and stranger devotion turn filthy in front of you, Steve holding Bucky by the jaw while Bucky bites lightly at his lower lip before drawing him back in, as if now they have finally started, neither of them knows how to stop.

Then Bucky’s hand drops between them. His palm settles over Steve’s straining cock, and Steve groans into the kiss. Bucky rubs him slowly through the fabric, swallowing each low moan Steve gives him while Steve keeps one hand firm at the back of his neck. They look made for this, rough hands and parted mouths, years of devotion finding a new language right in front of you, and the thought leaves you aching all over again.

Your thighs shift restlessly beneath them. One hand slips between your legs, fingers finding your swollen clit while you watch Bucky palm Steve’s cock through his trousers. A moan escapes before you can smother it.

Their kiss breaks, both men looking down at you, though their foreheads remain pressed together. Bucky’s mouth is red and wet, Steve’s no better, and neither of them moves for a moment as they watch your fingers circle desperately between your thighs.

“Well, look at her,” Bucky murmurs, his hand still cupped around Steve. “Got herself all worked up watching us.”

You whine softly, pressing harder against your clit.

Steve’s eyes darken. “Poor pretty thing.”

Bucky gives Steve’s cock another slow squeeze, making his jaw tighten. “Reckon we ought to find that mouth something to do besides whine.”

Steve’s smile turns wicked. “Reckon you’re right.”

He shifts farther onto the bed and settles on his knees near the headboard, giving you room to turn beneath him. You move eagerly onto your hands and knees, facing Steve with Bucky still kneeling behind you, close enough that his thighs frame yours and his chest brushes your back when he leans over.

Bucky reaches around you before you can, fingers working open Steve’s trousers slowly at first, then surer when Steve does nothing to stop him. His hand closes around Steve’s cock as it spills free, heavy against his palm, the skin flushed deep at the head and drawn tight over the thick ridge beneath it. The vein you know so well runs dark along the underside, disappearing into Bucky’s fist when he gives one cautious stroke.

Steve’s head tips back on a broken groan.

The sound seems to delight Bucky, eyes dropping to watch his hand move again, slower this time, thumb dragging over the wet slit before sliding back down the length of him. Steve’s broad chest rises sharply beneath his shirt, every muscle in his shoulders pulled tight with the effort of holding still while Bucky learns how easily he can make him come apart.

Something needy catches inside you at the sight. You’ve heard that sound beneath your own hands too many times to let Bucky keep it all to himself.

You lean forward and press your lips to the swollen head, kissing it once before your tongue slips out to taste the slick Bucky has spread there. Steve’s breath breaks again, rougher now, and you follow the thick vein beneath his cock with a slow drag of your tongue, smiling when his hips twitch toward your mouth.

You kiss the tip again, softer this time, letting your lips linger around the crown. Steve’s hand braced against the headboard curls hard enough that the wood gives a quiet complaint beneath his grip.

Behind you, Bucky makes a low sound of disapproval.

“Now that ain’t kind,” he murmurs, gathering your hair away from your face with one hand. “Stevie’s been real good, lettin’ me have my fill of you, and here you are making him suffer for it.”

Steve tries to laugh, but it comes out rough and unsteady when you trace the underside of his cock with the tip of your tongue, following that thick vein until his hips jerk helplessly toward you again. Bucky’s fingers tighten in your hair.

“Think you oughta thank him proper.”

The push is slow but firm, guiding you down Steve’s length before you can tease him again. Your lips stretch around him as inch after inch slides over your tongue, Bucky holding your hair clear while he eases you forward until the swollen tip presses into your throat. You gag softly around him, eyes watering as your hands catch at Steve’s thighs, and the sound Steve makes is loud enough to fill the room.

His forehead drops against Bucky’s.

“Fuck,” he groans straight into Bucky’s mouth, breath breaking between them while your throat works helplessly around his cock. “Sweet girl, always so damn good to me.”

The praise goes straight through you. You moan around him, and Steve curses as the vibration rolls over his cock.

Bucky’s grip settles more firmly in your hair, guiding you back until Steve’s cock slips from your throat and then forward again in one slow, measured stroke. He controls the pace with an ease that makes your stomach tighten, keeping you steady while your lips drag over every inch of Steve. Each pass pulls another sound from Steve, his restraint coming apart piece by piece as the two of you work together to ruin him.

Bucky watches it happen with open satisfaction. His fingers tighten whenever Steve’s hips twitch, holding you in place long enough to make him feel the wet heat of your mouth before easing you back again. When your throat tightens around him and pulls another helpless groan from his chest, Bucky closes the distance and kisses him, swallowing every broken breath you pull from Steve as you bob on his cock.

 Then Steve seems to decide he’s had enough of Bucky being the only one left with any composure. His hand drops between you, fumbling once at Bucky’s trousers before dragging them open. Bucky’s breath breaks into the kiss when Steve wraps a fist around his cock, giving him an experimental stroke.

“Stevie,” Bucky groans against his lips.

Steve’s mouth curves against his. He pumps him again, firmer this time, and the sound Bucky makes rolls straight through you. It leaves you suddenly, painfully aware of the hard weight of him behind you, of how close his cock is to the slick heat between your thighs while his hand remains tangled in your hair.

Your knees edge farther apart without thought.

The movement opens you beneath him, your hips rocking back in a needy little invitation even as your mouth continues working over Steve. Bucky feels it immediately. His free hand slides down your spine and cups your ass, spreading you wider as his thumb traces through the slick already coating your inner thighs.

“Goddamn, sugar, look at you,” he breathes , looking down at the wet heat waiting behind you. “Spread wide and drippin’ all over yourself for my cock.”

Steve follows his gaze.

His fist slows around Bucky’s cock, drawing the swollen head through the mess between your thighs. You whimper around Steve as Bucky’s cock slides over your clit and nudges against your entrance.

Bucky presses forward slowly, teasing you with every inch of his cock. He isn’t as thick as Steve, but he is longer, the stretch different enough to wrench a muffled cry from you around the cock already filling your mouth. Your pussy opens greedily for him, slick walls fluttering as he sinks deeper until the head of him kisses your cervix and leaves you shuddering between them.

“Fuck me, Steve,” Bucky groans, driving in until his hips meet your ass. “You been fillin’ this pussy every chance you get and she’s still tight enough to choke my cock.”

Steve’s cock pulses over your tongue at the words. You barely have enough strength left to hold yourself upright, arms trembling beneath you while Bucky draws back and fills you again, each long stroke knocking the breath from your lungs. Steve’s hips begin to move with him, pushing into your mouth as Bucky fucks into your pussy, and soon there is no rhythm left for you to keep, only the one they make between them.

You let them have you.

Steve’s hands settle on either side of your face, keeping you steady as his cock slips wetly over your tongue. Saliva gathers at the corners of your mouth and spills down your chin. Every thrust from behind rocks you farther onto Steve, leaving you whining and gagging softly around him while Bucky’s cock reaches so deep your legs threaten to give beneath you.

“Look at her, Buck,” Steve rumbles, watching your lips stretch around him. “Can’t decide which cock she wants more, so she’s takin’ both like the greedy little thing she is.”

Bucky groans and drives in deeper, his hips pressing flush to your ass, causing your mouth to jolt forward around Steve. “She loves it, Stevie. Can feel her squeezin’ me every time you push down her throat.”

Your walls clench hard around Bucky at the filth in their words, milking his cock as another broken moan vibrates around Steve’s. 

“Think she likes hearing us talk about her.”

Steve’s gaze drops to you again, dark with affection and something far less gentle.

“Course she does,” he murmurs, thumb brushing through the spit shining on your chin. “Our filthy girl likes knowing she’s got both her outlaws pleased.”

Bucky’s thrusts begin to turn rougher behind you, each one driving you further onto Steve’s cock whilst Steve keeps one hand cradled against your jaw, thumb catching the drool that slips from the corner of your mouth. They feel your orgasm building, your pussy gripping Bucky and your moans breaking around Steve, and they chase it without mercy.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” Steve groans, eyes fixed on yours. “Come for us. Let Buck feel what that greedy pussy does when she gets everything she wants.”

Bucky’s hand tightens in your hair as his hips snap into you again. “Go on, sugar. Come all over my cock while you choke on his. Show us how good we make you feel.”

It’s the words that push you over. Pleasure tears through you so hard your arms nearly buckle beneath it. You come with both of them filling you, Steve thick over your tongue and Bucky buried deep enough to empty every though from your head. It’s both too much and exactly what you need - the two of them wrapped around you, with the truth of what they are to each other finally laid out between you.

Your walls clamp down around Bucky in frantic, pulsing waves. “That’s it darlin’,” Bucky growls as your pussy milks him, hips stuttering against your ass. “Keep choking me like that and I’m gonna paint this pretty back with my come.”

He pulls out just in time. His fist closes around his cock, stroking fast as the first hot spill lands across your lower back, followed by another thick stripe over your ass. Bucky groans your name as he empties himself over you, watching his seed streak your skin while your body still trembles beneath him.

Steve stares at the mess his best friend has made of you, and his cock jerks at the sight of you marked by Bucky’s cum. It’s enough to break him, spilling down your throat with a broken groan, hand tightening against your jaw as pulse after pulse fills your mouth. You swallow greedily around him, taking every drop while Bucky’s palm smooths over your hip.

“Such a sweet little thing,” Bucky murmurs behind you, still breathless. “Think your girl likes being shared, Steve.”

Steve’s thumb strokes tenderly over your cheek as you swallow the last of him, eyes glassy and looking up at him with such devoted affection it pulls his heart.

“Our girl.”

The next morning, you stir to Steve trying to leave the bed without disturbing you. He almost manages it. But the mattress shifts beneath his weight, and the warmth pressed against your front begins to disappear before you make a soft, petulant sound and reach for him beneath the covers. Steve catches your searching hand, pressing a kiss to your knuckles before leaning down to brush another against your forehead.

“Go back to sleep, sweetheart.”

You answer by tightening your fingers around his wrist, unwilling to surrender the place you have spent the night tucked between your two outlaws. Steve’s mouth softens, but Bucky solves the problem without properly waking. He makes a rough, sleepy noise behind you and pulls you firmly into his chest, one arm cinching around your waist until your back is fitted to him and there is no room left to complain about being abandoned.

“There,” Bucky mumbles into your hair. “Quit fussin’.”

You melt into him happily enough, eyes drifting shut again while Steve dresses nearby. Buck’s body is warm and heavy behind yours, his breath slow against your neck, and for a few precious moments the room feels safe enough to forget where you are. 

But then Steve’s curse cuts through the quiet.

“Buck.”

Bucky doesn’t move immediately. “Mm?”

“Get up.”

The tension in Steve’s voice does what the words alone can’t. Bucky’s arm disappears from around your waist as he pushes upright, sleep falling away from him in an instant. You sit up with the blanket clutched to your chest and find Steve beside the window, peering through the narrow gap he has made in the curtain. His gun belt is already fastened. One revolver rests in his hand while he checks the chamber of the other.

“What is it?” Bucky asks, reaching for his trousers.

Steve lets the curtain fall back into place. “We’ve got company.”

Bucky crosses the room barefoot, keeping himself close to the wall as he looks out. His expression hardens. “How many?”

“Too many.”

Your heart begins to pound. You drag the sheet around yourself and slip from the bed, though Steve catches sight of you moving and immediately shakes his head.

“Stay back from the window.”

“What’s happening?”

Neither answers quickly enough.

You look from one man to the other, watching the quick efficiency with which they arm themselves. Bucky pulls on his shirt without bothering to button it before buckling his holster. Steve gathers the ammunition from the table and divides it between them, his movements calm in a way that frightens you more than panic would have.

“Steve,” you push, and when Steve glances back at you, the desperation on your face is enough to make him stop pretending.

“Street’s surrounded,” he finally admits. “Sheriff’s got men covering the front, both ends of the alley and the stable yard. More on the roofs across from us.”

The words make you freeze. “How did they find us?”

Steve looks toward the door, jaw working once. “Maybe the clerk didn’t buy our performance after all.”

Bucky looks through the curtain again, studying the street below. “Back window?”

“Two men in the alley, three more watching the yard. We’d need to draw them round the front first.”

They continue to move through possibilities quickly, cutting each one down almost as soon as it’s spoken. There are too many men. That’s the truth beneath every low exchange, though neither of them says it aloud. Bucky begins loading his rifle. Steve watches him for a moment, then glances toward you. The look passing between them is brief, but you understand it anyway.

“No.”

Steve’s face closes. “Sweetheart—”

“No.”

Bucky sets the rifle down. “Sugar, listen.”

“I know that look.” Your voice shakes despite every effort to steady it. “You’re working out how to get me clear.”

Steve crosses to you, hands finding your cheeks and tilting your face to his. “Buck and I will draw them towards the front, and once they’re focused on us, you slip through the yard and take the first horse you can reach.”

Your eyes burn as you look between them. “And what chance does it give you?”

Neither man answers.

Months ago, when they let you ride away with them, you told them there was only one part of their life you wouldn’t share. You would endure the cold, the hunger, the long days in the saddle and every bullet sent chasing after them, but you wouldn’t stand by and watch either man die. Now they mean to hold you to it.

Bucky comes to stand beside you, one hand settling at the back of your neck. His thumb moves once over your skin, the touch unbearably gentle from a man preparing to walk into gunfire.

“You take the horse south,” he says. “Don’t stop in the next town. Just keep goin’ ‘till you can’t.”

You search their faces for another answer and find none. They’re terrified - you know them well enough now to see it. But they’re simply more frightened for you than they are for themselves. So you nod. 

Steve’s hands linger against your cheeks for another second before he releases you, and Bucky’s thumb brushes the back of your neck once more before both men turn away, returning to plan as they let you dress. 

Your fingers feel clumsy fastening your stays, though you force them through each familiar movement, pulling on yesterday’s dress and tying your hair back with shaking hands. Bucky crouches beside the bed and spreads their remaining cartridges across the floorboards, counting beneath his breath until a thought makes him pause with one round still caught between his fingers.

“Wait a minute - you didn’t see Rumlow out there, did you?”

Steve glances over from the rifle. “Rumlow? No. Why?”

“Thank God for that.” Bucky exhales and drops the cartridge onto the pile. “For a minute there, I thought we were in trouble.”

Steve’s expression flattens while a startled laugh escapes you despite everything, and the crooked grin Bucky sends your way suggests that was precisely what he’d been aiming for.

Steve returns to checking the rifle with a quiet shake of his head. “Idiot.”

Bucky’s smirk lingers only a moment before the boys begin getting ready in earnest. 

Steve fastens the last of the ammunition at his belt and checks both revolvers one final time, while Bucky gathers the remaining cartridges into his pockets and slings the rifle over his shoulder. You stand beside the bed with your coat half-buttoned and look between them, both armed now, both trying to pretend as though this is merely another bad plan they will laugh about by nightfall.

It’s Steve who comes to you first. He cups the back of your neck and kisses you hard, all the tenderness in him sharpened by the knowledge that he cannot afford to linger. You clutch at his shirt anyway, trying to hold him there, but he pulls back just enough to rest his forehead against yours.

“Promise me you’ll run,” Steve begs against your lips.

Before you can respond, Bucky adds “And don’t look back.”

You turn toward him, already crying despite the effort you’ve made not to. Bucky’s expression softens. He reaches up and wipes beneath one of your eyes with his thumb before drawing you against him and kissing you with none of his usual teasing left in it.

“You promise us, sugar,” he murmurs against your mouth. “You hear the gunfire, you run.”

Your bottom lip trembles, tears spilling freely, but you manage to keep you voice steady enough to reply “I promise.”

They lead you to the back window and ease it open just enough for you to slip through when the time comes, before heading back to the front door.

“Sheriff’s moved two more men toward the front,” he observes, peering through the narrow gap in the curtains. “Looks like they’re expecting us to make a grand entrance.”

Steve cocks his gun. “Well, I’d hate to disappoint.”

Bucky turns from the window with a faint smile, and just for a minute, the years between them seem to gather there in the quiet. They stand beside the door with their weapons ready, drawing one steadying breath before looking at each other.

“Till the end of the line,” Steve says.

Bucky’s answer comes without hesitation. “Always.”

Then they burst through the front door.

Gunfire erupts immediately, deafening in the close quarters, answered by the heavy crack of Steve’s revolver and the sharper report of Bucky’s rifle as they force the fight toward the front of the hotel. Every instinct in you screams to turn, to look, to run after them instead of away, but you cling to the promise you made and climb through the rear window once the coast is clear.

Then you run. Across the yard, past the stable wall and toward the first horse you can reach, every step carrying you farther from the two men you love. The law may have their names and faced printed on posters, may call them thieves and bad men, but you know better now.

Wanted men they may be, but they’re the best men you have ever known.

more mads: sooooo, i am so so sorry for how late i am for posting this. half of this was written in a sleep deprived, frantic haze so apologies if any of it gets confusing at any point, especially the ending. i had a different plan for it at first, but then i want to stay more loyal to the film, and i also needed to just get this fic done considering how late i already was to posting it. so this is what i landed on and i'm worried it hasn't quite worked :/ idk, this could be the sleep deprivation talking but i just started to hate this fic as i got closer to the end. hopefully you guys still enjoyed - if you did, please hit like or, even better, please consider leaving a comment/reblog bc it would genuinely make my whole day. my leo moon means i will literally perish without external validation. i’m tinkerbell coded. love u <33

taglist: @juniebjonesin @heldbybarnes @love-stucky @badbitchsincebirth05 @phoenix-in-writing @tw1sters @blowingbarnes @sassandscribbles @alpinebarnesworld @buckybsdoll @gilwm @venigrantrogers @mrsevans90 @rainyapricotcreatorparty @midnightramyeoncravings @catchmeupimgettingoutofhere @tangledllaces @thatisamericas-ass @mrsmhaddock @supercoolswagicornxd

[solace-in-werifesteria]

I think this is one of the best fan-fictions I’ve ever read. I absolutely adored it, like it made me feel so many emotions and it was just so good. I would love so many more parts of this because it was just that good.

I totally get hating a writing toward the end of it but this was just phenomenal you should be proud of yourself. I absolutely adored it and it’s definitely a story I’ll be coming back to read!

Also, whatever you ate during the making of this story, eat it again because you cooked. This story had me kicking my feet and twirling my hair LMAO

[tsaheylutales]

Dating Clark Kent headcanons:

Random thoughts. idk i'm bored. the ending might be cringeeeee. someone send me asks my inbox is so quiet...jk there's loads of requests...but still...?

Mentions of smut, mdni! <33

Clark Kent who was a stuttering mess trying to ask you out, too oblivious to see your heart eyes around him.

Clark Kent who took you on four dates before kissing you, and another three before asking to be your boyfriend. He later admits he’s wanted to kiss you since the day you dropped all your paperwork in front of him, your first day, 16 months ago.

Clark Kent who sleeps with you on the night of your two month anniversary. He wanted it to be romantic, and he wanted it to be fully your idea, no pressure!

Clark Kent who is soo vocal in bed. You feel so so so good and he’s been waiting so long he just has to tell you how good he feels.

Clark Kent who wholeheartedly believes in aftercare, which honestly lasts longer than the sex. He runs baths, gets you a drink, a snack, changes the sheets, gets you some comfy pjs (his boxers and an old college shirt)

Clark Kent who starts getting very bold once you have sex, because once you’ve started, he can’t get enough.

Clark Kent who loves pinching your ass as you walk by, only to look completely innocent when you whip your head towards him.

Clark Kent who gets you flowers every Sunday without fail.

Clark Kent who loves picking you up whenever he can, over the shoulder, up against his chest, in his arms, he just loves holding you!

Clark Kent who never lets you plan a single date, ever! It’s either dinner at the restaurant you like, the museum, the movie theatre, a picnic, dinner at his place, a weekend away.

Clark Kent who tells you he’s Superman almost immediately because he can’t keep a secret from you. He’s riddled with guilt and loves you too much to lie to you.

Loves you?…Wait what!?

Oh yeah!

Clark Kent who tells you he loves you two nights after becoming your boyfriend. He just can’t keep it in! And bonus, he’s lucky you love him too.

[yasministration]

eyes wide shut - jonathan byers

summary: Nancy is deeply offended when she finds out her own sister is dating Jonathan Byers and hasn't told her, but after a little investigation, she finds out nothing was ever hidden from her. In fact, you and Jonathan were so open about your relationship that maybe she was just blind the whole time. wc: 1.4k+ cw: nancy and jonathan never dated thanks, i villainise nancy once more i'm sorry

Nancy never considered herself to be particularly close with any of her siblings, but she never thought she had a bad relationship with them. Now, she can’t help but rethink what she knows. She always thought that you'd come tell her about your relationships like she's somewhat done in the past. But as she stands across the street from her own house, she watches through your lit up window as Jonathan Byers pulls his shirt back onto his naked torso, your hands resting on his chest. Jonathan doesn’t try swatting your hands away, even when his shirt can’t slide all the way down his body — instead, his hands come up to cup your face, and he leans forward to kiss you.

Your sister gulps thickly as she shamelessly stares, feeling an ugly emotion build up inside her. Why wouldn’t you tell her about having a boyfriend? It’s not like she’s never met this man before - that you’re keeping him secret from everyone in your circle. This is Jonathan. There was a point in time where she saw this man everyday. Sure, they’re not exactly friends, but Nancy would have expected you to tell her that you’re seeing him. That he’s in your bedroom every night between your sheets with his shirt off, your hands on his bare skin. You don’t even have to tell her all these details, but at least a little ‘Jonathan and I are seeing each other.’

Jonathan now fishes your hands out from under his shirt, tugging you closer to him so he can kiss you deeper, but it doesn’t last long before you’re pulling away from him. Nancy sees your lips move, face only inches away from Jonathan, and your boyfriend steps away from you, leaning down to grab his backpack and slinging it over one shoulder. He struggles to get his bag over his second arm, especially when you cling onto his side, draping yourself over his body. Jonathan hums, hands securing themselves on the dip of your waist when he’s finally comfortably settled, accepting the kisses you press all over his face. One of his hands leaves your waist to cradle the back of your head, guiding your lips back to his.

Nancy feels utterly betrayed. She feels stupid like this, just standing on her side of the road spying on her sister. She rushes across the street when Jonathan separates from you. She doesn’t want to bump into him while he makes his way out of your window. She scrambles through her purse for a moment, looking for her keys before giving up and trying the door handle to see if she even needs them.

Luckily, the door is open. Nancy sighs as she pushes it open, wiping her feet on the doormat before entering the house. She doesn’t think she can speak to anyone, so she heads straight towards the stairs, but she violently stops in her tracks when Jonathan comes skipping down them. He offers her a “Hey, Nancy” as he passes her, but all she can do is stay frozen as he passes her. She catches sight of some glitter on his cheeks as he zooms by, and she instantly knows which lip gloss of yours it’s from.

Maybe she’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Maybe in a week you’ll come to her and let her know that there’s something going on between you and the Byers boy - that everything is very new and you hope things go well with him.

But that week goes by and you act the same as normal. You offer to drive Mike to Will’s when it’s late at night, and Nancy knows what you will be up to. She wonders if Mike and Will know. She wonders if the whole lot knows — Hopper who is often with the Byers, Steve and Robin who are often strung in weird experiments with you, Dustin who is somehow always with you and your friends. Everyone but her. So Nancy brings it upon herself to ask around about it, and who better to ask than your very best friend?

Robin shifts awkwardly on your doorstep, clearing her throat at the sight of a very still Nancy in the doorway. “Can I come in?” Robin asks, eyes glancing towards the stairs, which she needs to get to in order to retreat to your bedroom. In the meantime though, Nancy holds her hostage.

“Can I ask you something?”

Robin’s eyes widen in that very obvious sign of panic of hers, and she squeaks out a high-pitched “Sure!” Nancy steps out of the doorway, letting Robin step into the house. Robin momentarily deliberates running up the stairs past Nancy, but instead, she follows your sister to the kitchen, awkwardly standing in the sport nearest to the door in case she needs an escape.

“Why is my sister hiding her relationship from me?” Nancy asks in a confrontational tone, expecting Robin’s nerves to make her spill out the truth. But instead, Robin’s eyebrows furrow in a state of confusion, posture straightening in her own sense of surprise. “Hiding?” Robin echoes, watching as Nancy’s eyebrows raise and she nods her head meanly, scoffing out “Yeah, hiding.”

“Nancy, she’s not hiding anything - everyone knows about her and Jonathan.”

“How does everyone know but me!?” Nancy questions, feeling deeply offended at the smirk that makes its way onto Robin’s face. “Maybe you’re the only one not paying attention. They haven’t explicitly told anyone, Nancy. They didn’t need to.”

Nancy almost flinches back at the honesty in Robin’s voice. What on earth is she on about? She doesn’t realise that for the past three months you and Jonathan have been the most disgustingly adorable couple to be around. On the Byers’s couch during long nights, Jonathan’s arm around you whilst you nuzzle your face into his neck. Or when the entire crew is huddled together after making potentially life saving discoveries, and Jonathan drags you out of the room by the hand, stealing you away from everyone else.

Max and El have accidentally interrupted your kissing in the front seat of Jonathan’s car when retrieving Will's backpack. Dustin has walked in on your kissing in your own kitchen when you thought no one was home and he wanted a snack. Will has seen way more than he wanted to in the middle of the night when fetching water from the kitchen and interrupting a ‘movie night’ of yours. Steve and Robin took the brunt of it though, forced to constantly be exposed to whatever PDA you had to offer whenever you and Jonathan seemed to be in the same room.

But you’re not always this disgusting.

Everyone found out long before your relationship even happened from slight changes in behaviour around each other. Shy glances towards each other, volunteering to do things together, or even the quality of your voices when speaking to each other in comparison to everyone else. Then came the subtle hand-holding, the comforting hand on each other’s arms, the growing comfort in each other’s company. Obviously, this developed into the displays of affection your friends and family hate seeing, but in your defence most of the time you’re somewhere private! Semi-private. Whatever.

And still, Nancy hasn’t noticed anything.

Even when Jonathan has parked his car down the street, waiting for you. Even when Mike has caught you halfway out the door, insisting you to take him with you to Will’s otherwise he’ll tell your parents. Even when you both have a hushed argument downstairs, you telling him that you were leaving because there’s already too many people in this house and him replying that he’ll know what you’re doing either way so it won’t change anything. Nancy doesn’t know how she didn’t notice when you’ve apparently been been dragging your feet down the street with Mike happily trailing behind you. All she could’ve done to find you out was look outside her window. But she never did. She never saw how you’d get in Jonathan’s car, giving him guilty eyes as Mike climbed into the backseat.

Jonathan would always give you an extra long kiss just to spite your younger brother, grinning when Mike would make a disgusted noise and heat would rush to your cheeks.

“I’m her sister though. She should tell me.” Nancy finally says, voice unstable.

“Nancy, when have you ever told her anything about your life?” Robin genuinely asks, shrugging her shoulders in question. Nancy freezes, and Robin takes the chance to slowly step out of the room, running up the stairs when she’s far enough to do so.

Oh dear, she cannot wait to tell you about the conversation she’s just had. You’re about to be so mad at Nancy.

taglist: @bxuzi, @rory-cakes, @dlljdhsh, @aouoo, @fandomhoe101, @sharkers00, @joonbread, @paankhaleyaaar, @bearymuchso, @princesstiti14, @challengers4ev, @selenewowww, @lunavelha, @iceyyhyeji, @doiki3, @maymo0, @daisylove3, @ballylagginblues, @cosm1cpiink, @laufeysvalentine, @eyantice, @cheetoscmj, @l0vesreceipt, @snake-in-a-flower-crown

[levanswrites]

𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: steve harrington x reader 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: old money!steve, waitress!reader, slow burn, enemies-ish to lovers, idiots in love, mutual pining

♡ · · · ♡ · · · ♡

The card room is full of men old enough to be your father.

Some are old enough to be your grandfather.

They all call each other by their last names and gamble away more money in a single hand than you make in six months, all while finding the time to tell you you'd look prettier if you smiled.

The tips are obscene, though.

So you smile. 

You refill glasses before anyone has to ask and laugh politely at jokes that haven't been funny in thirty years.

You pocket your tips. You move on.

Until one Thursday, someone new walks in.

He couldn't be more than a year or two older than you.

Maybe not older at all.

He's got the kind of face rich boys seem to keep well into their thirties: hazel eyes that catch warmth in the low chandelier light, a strong nose and soft, full lips. Thick brown hair that refuses to stay in place, falling forward in a way that looks accidental even though you know it probably took a 300-dollar haircut to make it look that effortless.

He's dressed simply—pale blue Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms and dark slacks—but everything about him is stupidly expensive if you know what you're looking for.   

The watch, the loafers. The clean, understated cologne and the heavy gold signet ring on his left hand.

Old money.

Of course.

Another trust-fund prince getting dragged in by his daddy to “learn the family business.”

You grab the bourbon ordered for seat four—two fingers of Woodford Reserve over fresh ice—and carry it across the room.

He glances up as you set the glass beside him.

Unfortunately...

He's somehow even better-looking up close.

His eyes are stupidly big, lashes stupidly long. There's a scattering of tiny moles across his left cheek, little imperfections that stop him from looking carved out of marble.

Rich boy's got a nice face.

Shame about everything else.

His eyes catch yours for a moment before he gives you a polite nod.

“Thanks, honey.”

Then his attention drops right back to his cards.

You blink.

Honey?

Who the fuck is this guy?

He's your age.

Maybe younger.

You've got seventy-year-old regulars who've been calling waitresses “sweetheart” and “doll” since before you were born, but somehow hearing it from someone who probably still remembers freshman orientation is infinitely more irritating.

You turn on your heel before he catches the expression crossing your face.

Trust-fund asshole.

Probably couldn't tell you what a gallon of milk costs if you put a gun to his head.

Fuck that guy.

· · ·

Well.

Turns out, trust-fund asshole is good at poker.

Disgustingly good.

He’s not loud about it either; that’s what the older men hate most.

For almost an hour, he folds hand after hand, absently spinning that signet ring around his finger while everyone else slowly convinces themselves that he's way out of his depth.

So it's almost funny, when this twenty-something-year-old cleans out someone who's been playing cards since before he was born.

You have to bite back a laugh when one of the regulars slams his cards down hard enough to rattle everyone's glasses.

Serves him right.

By the time you make another round, half the table is bleeding chips.

Everyone's in a foul mood.

Everyone except for seat four.

You set another Woodford beside him.

“Thanks, honey.”

He smiles, this time.

The corners of his hazel eyes pinch with it, little creases fanning outward. It gives him an almost boyish look, rounding out his cheeks, smoothing away the sharp lines of his face until there’s something disarmingly gentle about him.

Huh.

Then he goes right back to looking at his cards.

Asshole.

· · ·

The game finally breaks sometime after midnight.

You're clearing glasses when you notice a thick wad of cash tucked under silver-spoon dickhead's—seat four's—empty tumbler.

You assume it's meant for the cashier... until you pick it up.

It's all hundreds.

A lot of hundreds.

You count it once. Then again. Then a third time because surely, surely, there’s no way.

Your head snaps up toward the entrance and find him standing by the coat room, shrugging into a camel-colored cashmere overcoat that could probably cover your student loans three times over.    

You hurry after him before common sense can stop you.

“Hey! Um, excuse me!”

He turns.

“I think, uh...” You hold up the money. “I think you made a mistake.”

His eyes drift over your face, then flick down to the wad of cash pinched between your fingers—fifty crisp hundred-dollar bills.   

He blinks at you, those ridiculous lashes fanning against his cheeks, his brows drawing together like he honestly can't figure out why you’ve chased him down.  

A tiny little crease appears between his brows, which would almost be cute if he wasn't so disgustingly wealthy.

“Did I?”

“...Yeah.”

He studies the cash for another second before understanding dawns on his face.

“Oh.” He gives a small shrug. “No.”

“No?”

“That wasn’t a mistake. It was for you.”

You laugh, because that's insane.

To someone who just walked away with well over a hundred thousand dollars, five grand probably feels like buying coffee.

To you, it's rent. It's gas, tuition, groceries, bills. An entire semester where you wouldn't have to hold you breath every time you swiped your debit card.

“I... I can't take this.”

His brows pull together again. “Why not?”

You stare at him.

“Because it's... five thousand dollars? That's—” You huff another disbelieving laugh. “I mean, that's just... way too much for a tip.”

He glances back toward the card room, then back at you.

Smiles, just a little.

“Didn't seem like too much from where I was sitting.”

You open your mouth, but nothing comes out.

And before you can think of another reason to refuse a tip worth more than your savings account, he's already shrugging the rest of his coat on, straightening the lapel with an absent swipe of his thumb.

He turns toward the door, making it only three steps before he pauses.

One hand settled on the brass handle, he glances back over his shoulder.

“You're here Thursdays, right?”

It takes you a second to answer.

“...Yeah?”

His smile comes back.

“Great.”

He tucks his hands into his coat pockets, gives you a little nod, and heads for the door.

“I'll see you next week, honey.”

And then he's gone.

· · ·

He comes back the next Thursday.

And the Thursday after that.

By week five, you've learned his name.

By week six, you've stopped rolling your eyes every time he calls you honey.

By week seven, he starts lingering after the games instead of disappearing the second the last hand is dealt.

One night, you're hauling a crate of empty glasses toward the bar when, without warning, the weight disappears.

You glance up to see a pair of hazel eyes blinking down at you—a warm, boyish smile on those plush lips, almost sheepish, like he's not sure if you're going to let him help or tell him to get lost.  

You raise a brow. “Uh, I'm pretty sure that's not your job.”

“No, it’s not,” he agrees easily.

“Then why are you doing it?”

He shrugs like the answer couldn't possibly be complicated.

“Gets me an extra five minutes.”

“Five minutes?”

“With you.”

He says it so casually that it takes a second for the words to actually land.

And when your face flares with heat, you’re grateful he’s too busy balancing the crate to notice.

· · ·

After that, Thursdays become a little easier.

The job is still the job—the endless dance of dodging wandering hands, stepping away from men who mistake a smile for an invitation and politely slipping your wrist free from people old enough to know better.

But Steve Harrington becomes your bright spot.

He never touches you unless you’re handing him a glass.

He’s the only man in the room who doesn’t let his eyes linger on your ass or snap his fingers to get your attention.  

He always arrives ten minutes early.

Always orders the same Woodford Reserve. Always says thank you.

Always calls you honey.

You learn little things about him.

That he tips everyone far more than necessary.

That he folds cocktail napkins into perfect little squares whenever he’s lost in thought.

That his thumb always finds the gold signet ring on his finger when he’s making a decision.

That he taps it twice against the felt whenever he’s nervous about a bluff.

(You never tell him you figured that one out.)

You learn that Steve doesn’t talk much about his work or his family.  

Instead, he asks about you.

Your classes, your major. The exam you mentioned weeks ago that he somehow remembers without you ever bringing it up again.

You tell yourself he’s probably just like that with everyone.

That Steve Harrington is simply the kind of person who makes people feel noticed.

Special.

You never quite believe it.

· · ·

One Thursday, the game wraps up just before midnight after two of the regulars call it early.

The older men filter out puffing expensive cigars, grumbling about bad beats and rematches.

You're halfway through counting your tips when Steve appears beside the bar.

Hands tucked into the pockets of a navy wool coat, rocking back on his heels.

He waits until you look up.

“Hi.”

“Hey.”

And Steve Harrington—poker prodigy, heir to whatever impossible amount of money his family had sitting around—suddenly looks unsure of himself.

Which is new.

And, admittedly, a little adorable.

You set your money down.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah.” He answers too quickly, then clears his throat. “Yeah. I just—can I ask you something?”

You eye him suspiciously.

“With you? Depends.”

A small smile pulls at his mouth.

“Fair.”

He pulls his hand from his coat pocket, resting it on the bar between you. His thumb brushes over the gold signet ring on his finger, twisting it slowly.

“Well, I was just wondering, if you're done for the night...”    

Tap. Tap.

Two soft taps against the bar top.

You bite back a smile.

“Would you let me take you to dinner?”

You blink.

“...Right now?”

“Yeah.”

“It's midnight.”

“Late dinner, then?”

His expression is so serious that you have to bite back another laugh.

Steve watches you, a faint smile tugging at his own mouth.

“What?”

You shake your head, reaching for your jacket.

“Nothing.”

“No, what?”

You look back at him, pursing your lips.

“You’re just... so different from what I thought you’d be.”

He tilts his head slightly, a flicker of amusement creasing his expression. He’s not offended in the slightest—if anything, he looks intrigued.

Steve Harrington has never been someone who seemed bothered by other people’s opinions of him.

“In a good way or a bad way?”

You consider him for a moment, taking in the guy you were so sure you had figured out from the second he walked through the door.

This boy you’d dismissed as just another entitled douchebag, who turned out to be so downright strange—awkward where you expected arrogance, thoughtful where you expected indifference.

You can't help but smile.

“Ask me again after dinner.”

♡ · · · ♡ · · · ♡

[levanswrites]

𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐲 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐬

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: steve harrington x reader 𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: the rumor going around the moms of the hawkins little league team is that coach steve harrington is single. it's a good thing you don’t partake in petty small-town gossip. 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: coach!steve, singlemom!reader, established (secret) relationship, piv sex, overstimulation, pleasure-dom!steve, multiple orgasms, prone/headlock+light choking, rough sex, teasing banter, possessive dirty talk, light/pretend jealousy, light degradation, pet names, aftercare, angst abt being a single parent, fluff, brief child's pov, happy ending (6.4k) 𝐚/𝐧: started as dumb smut, somehow ended up with plot and angst. story of my life.

.   *　✦　　.　 ˚　✦　 .

The resounding rumor in the Hawkins Little League baseball program—more specifically, among the women who occupy the third row of bleachers at Elm Street Ballpark every Tuesday and Thursday—is that Coach Steve Harrington is single.

Very single.

“There’s just no way,” Sharon McIntyre sighs for the third time this inning. She squints toward the field, shading her eyes with one hand like she might be able to spot a wedding ring from home plate. “I mean, look at him. Nobody looks like that coaching a little league team.”

“I’m telling you, Shar,” Kelly Dunlop chimes in, iced coffee rattling in her hand. “My sister works mornings at the diner. She says he comes in all the time. Always alone. No ring, no girlfriend, nothing. If he had someone, she’d know.”

Across the field, practice is in full swing. Kids swarm the infield, shouting over one another, cleats kicking up clouds of dust. A bright, metallic clang rings through the air, signaling a clean hit. The whole team erupts into cheers as little Johnny Peters takes off for first, freckles flashing beneath his helmet.

You smile, eyes following the chaos fondly.

“God,” Sharon mutters, gaze fixed entirely elsewhere, “I know he’s young, but does he really have to look like that?”

“How old is he, anyway? Twenty?” another mom asks.

“Twenty-two,” Sharon corrects promptly. “I asked.”

Kelly snorts. “Of course you did.”

“Huh. And he’s not seeing anyone?”  

“Apparently not.”

You take a slow sip of your coffee, keeping your expression neutral. You’ve gotten very good at that lately.

“It’s the whole authority thing, right?” Kelly says after a pause. “Give a guy a whistle and suddenly—"

“—suddenly he’s attractive,” another mom finishes.

“Well,” Sharon adds, “I think it’s a little more than the whistle.”

A soft ripple of laughter moves down the row.

Just then, the sharp blast of a whistle cuts through the air.

The effect is instantaneous.

It’s like Pavlovian conditioning, the sudden hush that settles over the stands. Conversations drop off mid-sentence. Heads lift in near-perfect unison. Like suburban meerkats sensing a storm, all eyes snap toward the field.

Every mom here knows exactly what that whistle means.

Coach Steve Harrington steps out from the dugout, lips still wrapped around the whistle, hands signaling a time-out as he jogs toward the pitcher’s mound. His cap is pulled low, shades perched on the bridge of his nose. The top two buttons of his Dodger-blue jersey are undone—as usual—revealing tanned collarbones and just the faintest tuft of chest hair.

He calls out a few pointers to the team, then leans over the plate to demonstrate a perfect, controlled swing.

The pivoting motion tugs his shirt upward, flashing a patch of sun-warmed skin at his stomach. It also strains the fabric of his pants, those khakis clinging to his ass in a way that’s a little snug for a public park.

A very un-subtle sigh rolls through the bleachers.

“Jesus,” Sharon mutters. “I mean, that’s just unnecessary.”

“He’s gotta know, right? There’s no way he doesn’t.”

“That shirt’s always like that. Never fully buttoned.”

A chorus of murmured agreement follows.

You press your lips together, managing to school your expression just as you hear a pair of little cleats pounding toward you.

“Mom! Mom!”

Toby skids to a stop in front of you, panting with effort, helmet crooked, knees grass-stained. He wedges himself between your legs and you reach up instinctively, straightening his helmet before it tips again.

“Mom, did ya see me? Did ya see that throw?”

“‘Course I did, honey! You were amazing!”   

His grin goes blinding. “Coach Steve said I got way better this week. He said I’m really fast. Like, like, maybe fast enough to be a pro!”   

“Yeah?” you smile, brushing a smear of dirt from his cheek. “You’ve been working so hard. I’m so proud of you.”

Toby nods so vigorously his helmet nearly slips again. He takes a quick gulp from the water bottle you hand him, then darts back to the dugout.

Across the field, Steve is crouched near home plate, murmuring low encouragements as he adjusts another kid’s grip on the bat.

After a moment, he straightens.

Flicks his cap off, rolls his shoulders, then lets his eyes roam over the bleachers.

When he finds what he’s looking for, he flashes a quick, casual smile.

From this distance, it’s broad enough to be meant for no one in particular.

And yet.

You look away immediately, pretending to study the condensation sliding down your coffee cup.  

“Oh my god,” Kelly whispers beside you. “I think he looked over here. Sharon, was that at you?”

Sharon scoffs, though the corner of her mouth quirks up. “Please. He smiles at everyone.”

“Mm, not like that.”

You keep your gaze fixed firmly on the cup.

⚾︎

“Alright, Cubs! Awesome job today! Make sure to grab all your stuff. I’ll see you back here Tuesday, yeah?”

A chorus of okay, Coach! and bye, Coach Steve! follows.

The bleachers wake up all at once. Moms rise in unison, purses scraping against aluminum, lipstick caps popping open for quick, totally casual touch-ups meant for no one in particular. Kids spill off the field in excited clumps, chatter overlapping as they relive every hit, every near-catch. Toby’s voice cuts through it all, loud and proud as he recounts a grounder he almost snagged.

You’re stuffing a water bottle into your tote when a voice behind you makes you freeze.

“Excuse me, ma’am?”

You turn.

Steve stands there, casual as ever, bat slung over his shoulder, sunglasses pushed up into his hair. His jersey’s still hanging half-open, collar darkened with sweat.   

“Hi.”

You purse your lips, stifling a smile. “Hi.”

He stares for a beat too long before he shakes himself, clearing his throat.

“Uh—I just wanted to say Toby did really great today. Kid’s a natural. Solid throw, great hustle. And..." his eyes flick briefly toward the chaos of children behind him, voice dropping a notch, “...he actually listens.”    

You laugh softly. “That last part’s news to me.”

Steve grins. Takes a step closer.

His voice slides into a familiar cadence you’ve come to recognize, warm and teasing. “So... I heard you might be on snack duty next week.”

You raise a brow. “You did, huh?”

“Yep. And, you know, I run a pretty serious operation here. Snack’s are a very important part of team morale. So I thought maybe we should… discuss our options.”

You can’t hide the smile this time. “Oh? And what exactly were you thinking, Coach?”

“Well…” he leans closer, eyes glinting. “We might need to talk details. You know… what kind of chips to get, how many… make sure everything’s perfect.”

“Mm,” you nod solemnly. “Sounds important. Why don’t I—”

“Mom! Mom!”

Toby barrels toward you, juice box clenched in his hand like a trophy, still buzzing with post-practice adrenaline.

“Mom, can I sleep over at Jackson’s tonight?”

You blink. “Tonight?”

“Yeah! He’s got the new Super Mario game! And, and, he said we can have pizza while we play!”

You glance up to see Jackson’s mom waving from a few yards away, already herding kids toward her van.

“You sure, baby? I made that lasagna you like.”

“Nooo, Mom, please? Everyone’s going.”

You give in with a smile, smoothing his hair back. “Okay. You want me to bring your stuff over?”

“Nope, he’s got extras!”

“Alright. Be good at Mrs. Miller’s, okay? And say thank you.”

“I will!” He vibrates in place just long enough for you to bend down and kiss his cheek.

“Okay, bye Mom! Love you! Bye, Coach Steve! See you next week!”

“Bye, buddy,” Steve waves. “Great job today. Let me know how that game goes, yeah?”

Toby nods furiously before sprinting off.

When you turn back, Steve’s grinning at you.

Hand shoved in his pocket, rocking lightly on his heels.

He's more boyish than ever, looks downright fucking pleased.

“Well,” he starts, tilting his head, “I don’t know about Toby, but…”

He shrugs, eyes flicking to you with warmth and something unmistakably like intent.

“I could definitely go for some lasagna.”

⚾︎

“You know all the—mmph—the moms are... t-talking about you, right?”

Even with your face shoved into the pillow, words muffled, jaw slack and drooling, you know exactly the kind of shit-eating grin that’s hovering behind you.    

“Yeah?” His voice comes perfectly level, lazy with a familiar taunt. Like he’s not ramming you within an inch of your life. “What’re they saying?”

“Mm, Shar... Sharon thinks you’re—fuck, Steve!”  

There’s no warning, just the sudden crush of his weight shoving you flat onto the mattress, pinning your stomach against the sheets. His hips snap forward, driving all the way to the hilt in one, long thrust, your body jolting up the bed from the sheer force of it.

You let out a strangled yelp, hands flailing back instinctively, scrabbling at his arms, his hips. You squirm desperately for leverage, clawing at the Dodger-blue fabric bunched around his waist, but he pins you easily, weight sinking down like an anchor. A thick forearm comes around to hook under your chin, wrapping around your neck to hold you there.

“She thinks I’m what?” he breathes, lips pressed to your temple.  

“She... she...”

He allows you a moment of merciful reprieve, thrusts slowing to a teasing grind, hips rolling in deep, languid circles against your ass.

“Into her,” you manage. “S-she thinks you’re into her.”

“Huh,” he pants, thoughtful. “Mrs. McIntyre?”

You nod weakly as he adjusts his grip around your neck, pressing up until you can feel your own pulse thundering along the column of your throat.

Then, before you can find your next breath, the weight over you lifts, the pressure around your neck releasing. You suck in a long, trembling gulp of air—the first real one in what feels like forever—just as you feel a pair of hands wrap around your hips, flipping you swiftly onto your back.

You hit the pillows with a startled gasp, chest heaving, legs splaying open instinctively.

Your cunt glistens between your thighs, weeping a slow, sticky trail into the sheets. It’s twitching uselessly, clenching around open air as if it could pull him closer.

From between your knees, your man watches.

The late-afternoon sun cuts through the room in slanted gold, draping his body in warmth and shadow. You take him in helplessly, all the familiar lines of him—the sloped planes of his shoulders, thick biceps and a toned chest that melts into the soft curve of his stomach. The pale-white scars that shimmer along his sides, stark and beautiful against flushed skin.

He’s naked except for that blue jersey. Hanging open at the front, hem brushing over his hips. The last two buttons are gone, thanks to your handiwork.

It’s a miracle his shirt’s stayed intact at all, what with the way you were climbing over each other the moment the door slammed shut.

Savage, open-mouthed kisses giving way to ragged gasps as you staggered through your living room, tripping over the ottoman, narrowly avoiding a vase as you dragged each other toward the bed. His dirt-stained khakis discarded mid-stride, he barely managed to tear your clothes off before hauling you onto the mattress.

Predatory.

It’s the only word to describe the way he’s looking at you now, honey-brown eyes darkened with intent, burning hotter than the molten orange sunset bleeding through the curtains behind him.

He takes his sweet time.

Holds your gaze, unblinking, as he shrugs the jersey the rest of the way off, letting it drop away. He raises a hand up to his chest, palm flat, and drags it slow across his skin. Slides it over his ribs, his stomach, the trail of coarse hair running below his navel, reaching down, down, down, until his fingers brush against the sticky patch of curls at his base.

A pleased, knowing smile spreads across his face as he drinks in your reaction.

“Mrs. McIntyre, huh? I had no idea.”

And even this fucked up—dazed and boneless from the way he’s been drilling his cock inside you for the better part of an hour, buried so deep you can feel him in your stomach—a tiny part of you can’t resist pushing back.

Just enough to test him, to see how far he’ll let you go.

“Don’t act like you’re surprised…” you murmur, words slurring. “You were smiling at her today.”

There’s a beat of silence. Then a low, incredulous laugh.

“At her?”

The hand on his stomach moves lower, thumb and four fingers splayed to form a wide ‘V’ as he cradles the imposing monument he calls a cock. The head of it’s all swollen, leaking, skin flushed from friction and glossed all over with your arousal.

“Huh,” he intones mildly, gaze flicking down between your legs, tongue gliding slow across his bottom lip. “Did I make my girl jealous?”

You scoff, pushing weakly against his shoulders as he makes his way back down, boxing you in between his elbows. “You wish, Harrington.”

He laughs under his breath, soft and playful, before he slams his lips against yours in a filthy kiss, tongues clashing until you’re left panting for breath.

Pulls back with a wet smack, eyes hooded, blazing with amusement.

“Sorry, honey,” he breathes, head tipped in mock sympathy. “Had no idea.”

You roll your eyes, instantly betrayed by the tremor in your voice. “I don’t care.”  

“Mm,” he smiles, dipping his head to nuzzle your cheek, mouthing along your jaw while he reaches a hand down without looking. “I think you do.”

His cock drags against your inner thigh as he positions himself against your opening.

“And I think,” he adds softly, “you mean Coach Harrington.”

You laugh despite yourself, breathless, feeling him bury a smile of his own against your neck.

“Nice try... ‘m not calling you that in bed.”

“Worth a shot.”

“Uh-huh.”

Your amusement quickly dies on a moan when he nudges the head of his cock against your swollen clit, dragging it down in a slow, wet schlick to your entrance. The pressure makes you clench, whining when he rubs insistently against your folds without pushing in.

“Steve—"

“Shh, I know, baby,” He smooth a warm palm up the inside of your thigh, pushing it back, spreading you wider. “I got you.”

In and in and in, he bottoms out in one stroke, stretching you endlessly until his pelvis is flush against yours. You take him well—pussy warm and slick from earlier rounds—but the weight of him, the sheer girth pressing into you, draws a low whimper from your throat.

“Yeah?” he breathes. “Is that good?

His lips trail soft, lingering kisses across your neck, one hand coming up to smooth your hair back, cradling the top of your head to shield it from bumping against the headboard.

It all runs so counter to the way he’s thrusting—slamming inside in quick, deep thrusts, hitting your g-spot with such merciless accuracy that your eyes prick with tears.

“God,” he huffs, brow furrowed in pleasure, jaw going slack as he starts hitting that rhythm proper, “You have any idea how hard it was to behave today? Couldn’t stop fucking staring at you. Couldn’t... couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

His eyes roam greedily over the fresh trail of bruises he’s already mapped across your body: deep wine-reds that bloom just underneath the skin, running down your neck, your collarbone, the soft underside of your tits.

“You were looking at me too, huh?” he murmurs, already knowing.

Head lolling back against the pillow, you can only nod, too dizzy and breathless to do more.

“Yeah, baby, I know you were,” he coos, dropping his forehead to yours, lips brushing in a slow, teasing ghost of a kiss. “Sitting up there… looking so pretty. Bet you were making a mess out of the bleachers, huh? Getting yourself all wet.”

You groan, arching against him. “Steve—”  

“Tell me,” he grunts, voice rough with need. “Tell me how good this feels. Tell me how much you need this cock.”

“I—fuck—I need it. I’s so good. Feels... feels so good.”

He lets out a guttural groan, pressing down harder, pulling you closer.

“Drives me… drives me fucking insane, you know that? Acting all polite out there, ‘Yes, ma’am…’ ‘Oh, he did just great today...’ When all I want—” He draws his hips back, slamming back inside to punctuate his next words “—is this.”

“Fuck, Steve—!”

The pleasure is blinding, a violent flash-bang to the senses that knocks the breath straight out of you. You squeeze your eyes shut, gripping onto his shoulders for dear life as you tip into your third orgasm of the day. He fucks you through it, murmuring praise, hips pistoning so hard it makes the mattress squeak, the headboard rattle.

And even as the high fades, he doesn’t relent. Light, shallow thrusts that leave you whining, twitching, your clit jolting each time he brushes against your tender g-spot.

“Mm…” you squirm, legs trembling against your will. “Steve...”

“Hm?”

“Can’t... ‘s too... too sensitive...”

“Just one more, baby.” He pants, lifting himself up on his hands. The playful edge in his eyes replaced by a look that’s all earnest now, all intent. “Want you to come one more time for me.”

You groan weakly, shaking your head. “I can’t.”

“You can,” he leans in close, nudging his nose against yours, pressing a soft peck to the tip. “Just one more. One more, baby. For me?”

Your response breaks into a loud groan when his hand slides down to your clit, middle and ring finger pressing slow, firm circles across the sensitive nub, making your cunt spasm around him with each pass.

“Come on, honey,” he whispers, voice soft but insistent, almost petulant in its coaxing. “I never get to take my time with you. Never get to have you like this.”

And even in this state, you can’t stop the wet, fucked-out laugh that escapes you. “You... you had me like this two days ago.”

The memory hits in a dizzying haze. He’d invited you over to his place before practice on Tuesday. Fed you a surprisingly excellent omelet first, then wasted no time bending you over the counter, and then the couch, and eventually his bed—both of you panting and laughing by the end of it, scrambling to get dressed once you realized how much time had passed.

“But we were still rushing then,” he counters, and you can’t muster the energy to argue that three and a half rounds don't exactly count as ‘rushing,’ but maybe for Steve Harrington they do.

“Please, baby,” he murmurs, still thrusting gently. “We’ve got all night today. Wanna see how many times I can make you come.”

“Fuck...” you sigh, head tipping back as another shudder rolls through you. You were convinced you’d come up against a wall, but the moment he angles his thrusts upward, fingers continuing their precise, coaxing swipes over your clit, the smoldering tension in your stomach catches kindling.

The high starts climbing back, somehow, sharper and brighter than ever.

“God, you’re so pretty... so fucking gorgeous,” he whispers, driving in a little harder. “Can’t believe you think I’d look at anyone else when I’ve got you.”

You whine weakly at his words, at the way his voice dips on the words I’ve got you, unmistakably possessive yet so bruisingly tender.

“You’re mine, aren’t you?” he mumbles against your lips. “No one gives it to you like this, hm?”

Your response is a trembling, breathless gasp, mouth brushing against his on every thrust, pressed so close it’s impossible to tell when you’re not kissing.

“Yeah? Say it, then. Tell me.”

“Yours, yours, ’m yours... fuck, don’t stop... mmph—"

Long, slow, filthy passes of his tongue as he pries your lips open, gliding into your mouth; he craves this point of connection, always. Every sound you make is swallowed eagerly, turned into something shared.

He breaks easiest when you’re this close, when the air between you disappears and his control gives way to raw, aching need. Instinct pulling him toward a singular desire to stay close, to share breath and spit and praise while he takes you.

“Oh... oh my god—Steve, I’m—"

“Yeah, that’s it, honey. Let go, I’ve got you.”

It almost hurts, this time around.

The slow, exquisite, endless pull of pleasure, cruel hands of a thousand little deaths come to strangle you off. Every nerve in your body feels raw and frayed, tears leaking freely when you shut your eyes tight. You bury your face into his shoulder, nails pressing hard enough to break skin, clinging desperately to his words for some fragment of relief.

“Good girl... ah, shit, s-squeezing me so tight. That’s it. Keep coming, baby. There you go.”

Your cunt spasms uncontrollably around him—long, drawn-out pulses that keep him from pulling back out. He ruts the last few inches inside before spilling deep, groaning against your neck.

“Fuck, yes, just like that. God, baby....”

He always stays inside you afterward, for as long as he can. Kissing, kissing, always kissing, like he just can’t help himself, lips roaming over any patch of skin he can reach. When he finally draws his hips back, he does so carefully, softening the distance with more kisses when you whine at the loss of him.

“C’mere,” he pants, breath still ragged as he rolls onto his side, tugging you in until you fit flush against him. “I’ve got you.”

Warm, gentle strokes against the curve of your back as you level out together, syncing your breaths. The window’s cracked just enough to let the evening air roll in, cooling against heated, buzzing skin.

“You okay?” he murmurs after a while.  

You hum in response, nodding once as you tuck your nose closer to his chest, breathing him in. Citrus cologne. Sweat. Steve.

“Wow,” he exhales, half a laugh caught in his throat. “What was that, three times?”

“Four,” you mumble, words muffled against his skin.

“Oh my god,” he laughs fully now, warm and boyish, chest vibrating beneath your cheek. He dips his head to press a quick kiss to your temple. “We’ll do five next time. Promise.”

You groan softly and shove at his shoulder, rolling away to hide your face in the pillow.

You hear him chuckle behind you as he slides off the bed. The soft pad of bare feet follows, sliding across hardwood, then the click of the bathroom light. Water trickles quietly from the sink.

You’re still catching your breath when the mattress dips again.

His fingers brush the backs of your legs, gently coaxing you to turn onto your back. You do, cheeks burning as he carefully swipes the warm, damp towel between your thighs, focused and attentive.

It’s something he’s done countless times before.

And still, it’s the part that always makes your chest tighten.

You push yourself upright once he’s done, settling against the headboard. He tucks the sheets around your waist, smoothing the fabric over your hips before reaching for the glass of water on the nightstand.

Brings it to your lips.

“Steve,” you laugh softly, still flushed, “I don’t need you to hold it.”

“Ssh,” he murmurs, lips quirking. “Small sips.”

You narrow your eyes at him but drink anyway, hands folded uselessly in your lap while he keeps the glass steady. When you’re done, he takes a long drink himself before setting it aside.

He turns back, catches you staring.

“What?”

You shake your head, smile faint. “Nothing.”

He studies you for a beat longer, searching your face, but doesn’t push. Instead, he stretches with a low groan, shoulders rolling until something pops.

“God,” he mutters. “You hungry?”  

“Sure. I could eat.”

“You said there’s lasagna, right?”

“Uh-huh.” You start to scoot toward the edge of the bed, but his hand lands firmly on your arm.

“Woah, hey. Where are you going?”

“To... get the lasagna?”

He shakes his head, already moving away. “Nope. Just tell me where it is.”

“Steve, it’s fine, I can—”

“Not happening.” He nudges you back against the pillows, then tucks another one behind your back for good measure. “I got it.”

You open your mouth to argue again, but he’s already pulling his boxers on.

“Is it in the oven?” he calls over his shoulder.

“...Yeah.”

“'Kay. Be right back.” He leans in for a quick kiss, lifting a finger at you as he backs toward the door. “Don’t move, alright?”  

You purse your lips, watching him go.

He’s back not ten minutes later, balancing two plates in his hands. Steam curls from the lasagna, edges crisp and bubbling.

“You gonna feed it to me too?” you ask dryly as he settles beside you.

He doesn’t even blink. Just picks up a fork and starts cutting into one of the slices.

“Jesus, Steve,” you laugh, grabbing the plate from him. “I was kidding.”

He hands it over with a grin, watching you take the first bite before digging into his own.

“Oh, hey,” he asks after a while, swallowing around a mouthful. “Did Toby like the new glove? Didn’t see him with it today.”

“Yeah,” you nod. “He loves it. I think he’s saving it for when the old one gives out.” You hesitate before adding, quieter, “Thank you, by the way. You really didn’t have to do that.”

Steve pauses mid-bite, fork hovering for half a second before he lowers it, lips pressing together.

“Yeah,” he nods softly. “Of course.”

You glance down at your plate, tracing a smear of sauce with the tip of your fork. “You know… if he knew it was from you, he’d probably never use it. He’d want to put it on a shelf or frame it or something.”   

He snorts quietly. “Guess it’ll be our secret then.”

“Hm,” you nod, the sound coming out thin.

You don’t eat much after that. Staring at nothing, just pushing the food around, lost in thoughts much heavier than hunger.

Steve notices.

He looks up from his plate, cheeks full, a smudge of tomato sauce at the corner of his mouth. He chews slowly, studying you over the rim of his fork.

“Hey,” he says once he swallows. “You okay?”

You blink. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”

He watches you for another beat, then sets his plate aside and slides closer. His hand settles on your knee, rubbing small circles.

“Did I, uh…” He glances down, then back up, eyes sheepish. “Wear you out too much?”

You nudge his ankle with your foot, managing a small smile despite the ache blooming in your chest. “No. It’s not that.”

“Okay,” he says softly, not quite smiling back. “Then what is it?”

“It’s... it’s nothing. Stupid.”

“Baby,” he reaches for your hand before you can pull away, fingers threading through yours. He shuffles closer until your knees press together. “Talk to me.”

You close your eyes for a moment, drawing in a slow breath, then another. Your chest tightens on the exhale.

“Is... is this about…?” His voice trails off, gentle, circling the truth carefully.

You sigh and turn your head, but he follows, refusing to let the space grow.

“’Cause if it is,” he rushes on, urgency bleeding into his tone, “I’m ready. Whenever you are. I mean it. I want to—”

“Steve, stop,” you whisper, shaking your head. “You can’t.”

He freezes, lips parting like he wants to argue. The light in his face shifts: eyes drooping, brows pulling together. So young, stripped of his usual bravado, it hurts to him look at him like this.

“Why... why not?”

“Because I can’t ask you to do that.”

He shakes his head, grip tightening as he pulls your hand to his chest, pressing it over his heart.

“Ask me to do what? Be part of your life? Be around your kid?” He shifts closer, trying to catch your eyes. “I… I wouldn’t—look, I care about Toby. I really do. And I care about you. I lov—”

His voice falters. He swallows hard, throat working around the word.  

“I love you.”

You stare at a spot on the sheets, blinking hard, vision going blurry at the edges.

“Baby,” he murmurs, thumb sliding gently under your chin. “Look at me. Please.”

You do. Lashes heavy, eyes shining despite your efforts. He smiles at you then, soft and steady, certainty radiating in a way that makes your chest ache.

“I love you,” he repeats. “I want… I want to be with you. Wake up next to you, go to sleep next to you. Take you places.” He lets out a small laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. “I mean, that old caravan I bought is a total mess, but... I thought we could fix it up together. Travel a little. Go see the country.”

His smile softens, expression sobering a bit. “And I want to be there for Toby. I know what it’s like to have a shitty dad. I would never do that to him. Ever.”

You make a small, broken sound and turn away, but he doesn’t let go. His thumb keeps tracing the same soothing path over your knuckles.

“And I’m not saying we should get married or—or move in or anything. Just… maybe a couple nights a week? I could come over, help with homework, hang out with him, just be there however you need m—”

You surge forward, pressing your lips to his in a desperate, trembling kiss. He freezes for a heartbeat, then melts into it, arms winding around your waist and lifting you onto his lap with careful, fluid strength.

You cling to each other, kissing in a messy, gasping rhythm, until the salt of your own tears brushes against his lips.

“Hey,” he whispers, pulling back, gently drawing your face into his chest. “It’s okay, it's okay."

You let yourself fold into him, cheek pressed against his bare skin.

"We’ll figure it out. We'll be okay, I promise."

You melt against him, surrendering to his warmth, letting the steady, gentle strokes of his hand calm the storm of thoughts in your head.

Eventually, a small, wet laugh slips out.

“Toby’s gonna lose his mind.”   

Steve pulls back a little, meeting your eyes. “You think he’d be weirded out by it?”

You shake your head, a smile breaking through. “No, he’d love it. He already worships you. And then you two would just… gang up on me every day.”

Steve laughs, thumb brushing a stray tear from your cheek. His gaze is unwavering, soft and intent as he lingers over the lines of your face, like he’s seeing you for the first time.

“I don’t know,” he murmurs, eyes sparkling. “I’m pretty sure I’ll always be on his mom’s side.”

⚾︎

epilogue

Toby sits at the very end of the dugout bench, where no one else is sitting.

He’s six and a half years old, not a baby anymore, but his legs still don’t touch the ground when he sits. They just kick the air, swinging back and forth, back and forth, cleats cutting little half-circles in the air. He scoots down an inch so the tips of them can scrape the dirt, and he finds a small pebble near the bench post. He nudges it with his toe, then nudges it back, careful not to kick it too far.

Everyone else is out on the field.

There’s the loud crack of a bat, and all the kids start shouting at once: “Mine!” “Run!” “Heads up!” The ball pops straight up into the air, and bonks Nathan Foster on the head when he tries to catch it. Everyone laughs. Even Nathan laughs, rubbing the back of his head like it didn’t hurt, even though it probably did.  

Coach Steve says that kind of thing is okay. Messing up is how you learn.

Coach Steve knows a lot of things.

He knows how to line your fingers up on the bat, and how to breathe out when you throw so the ball goes straighter. He says baseball is supposed to be fun, even when you strike out, even when you’re not the best player on the field.

But Toby isn’t having fun.

He keeps his glove in his lap, hugging it tight with both arms like it might slide off if he lets go. It’s new. It's the one Coach Steve bought for him, even though his mom said his old one still worked fine. This one is stiff and smooth and smells good—like a store, or like the inside of Coach Steve’s car. Toby presses his fingers into the leather and traces the thick stitches with his thumb, over and over.

It helps a little.

There’s a worry sitting in his chest. Heavy and squishy, like when you step in mud and it won't let go of your foot right away.

He hasn’t told anyone about it. Not Miss Collins from art class. Not his mom. He didn’t even whisper it to his glove, even though sometimes he tells the glove things—like how fast pitchers make him freeze, or how scared he was on his first day of school.

Today, the worry stays stuck inside, pressing down.

A part of Toby thinks maybe he shouldn’t be worried at all.

Coach Steve said that everything would stay the same. Normal. And most of the things Coach Steve says turn out to be true. So maybe this will be too.

But Jeremy Miller said something different.

Jeremy knows stuff. His dad’s a doctor, and doctors are smart. They do important things.

Toby kicks the pebble a little harder than he means to. It skitters across the dirt floor and disappears under the bat rack with a soft clack.

“Hey, buddy.”

Toby looks up.

Coach Steve is standing at the opening of the dugout, blocking out part of the sun. His whistle hangs from his neck like always, bumping softly against his chest when he steps closer.

“You hiding from me?” he asks, grinning. “’Cause if you are, this is kind of a bad spot.”

Toby shrugs and drags the toe of his cleat through the dirt, making a crooked line. He sort of misses the pebble he kicked away. “I’m not hiding.”

Coach Steve comes in and sits down beside him, the bench creaking under his weight. His knee bounces once, then goes still.   

“So,” he says, leaning his elbows on his thighs, looking out at the field. “I was kinda thinkin’ today might be the day you show off that rocket arm.”

The heavy feeling in Toby’s chest squishes tighter.

The words fall out before he can stop them.

“Are you and Mom gonna get married?”

Coach Steve freezes.

Just for a second, but Toby notices. His grin fades, and he blinks like he forgot what he was about to say. His hand comes up and rubs the back of his neck.

“Uh…” he clears his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, we are, buddy.”

Toby nods. He already knew that. Mom had told him. Coach Steve had told him. Grandma cried a little on the phone when they both told her together. Still, hearing it out loud again makes his stomach feel all twisty.

“Is that…” Coach Steve says, then stops. He presses his lips together. “Is that still okay with you?”  

Toby sighs and draws another line in the dirt next to the first one, pressing hard so they match.

“I guess.”

Coach Steve moves a little closer, his arm brushing Toby’s. He rests a hand on his shoulder and gives it a gentle squeeze, thumb rubbing slow circles like he does when Toby’s nervous before a game.

“Hey, if you’re feeling weird about me and your mom, that’s okay to say.”

Toby swallows. His throat feels tight, like when he’s about to cry but doesn’t want to.

“No, it’s just—” He stops, frowning. “I just want you to be my coach, still.”

Coach Steve turns his head sideways, frowning. “Why wouldn’t I still be your coach?”

Toby’s shoulders curl in. “’Cause Jeremy said that if you’re family, sometimes you can’t do stuff for each other.”

 “Jeremy Miller?”

Toby nods. “Yeah. His dad’s a doctor. Jeremy had to have surgery ’cause his ap-pen-di-sigh-tis was broken, and his dad couldn’t do it. They didn’t let him.”

Coach Steve lets out a slow breath through his nose. “Oh.”

Toby grips his glove tighter. “So, if you’re my family… you can’t be my coach anymore, right?”

Coach Steve’s face goes a little funny. His eyebrows pull together, and his mouth does this wobbly thing, like he’s trying to smile and can’t figure out how. He reaches out and gently pushes Toby’s hair back, his thumb brushing across his forehead.

“Toby,” he says softly, “that’s not how that works.”

Toby frowns. “But Jeremy said so.”

“I know, bud. And sometimes grown-up rules are really confusing.” He lets out a small huff of a laugh. “Doctors have rules like that. Coaching’s a little different.”

He waits until Toby’s looking at him.

“I’m always gonna be your coach, Toby.”

Toby wants to believe him. He really does.  

“…You promise?” he whispers.

Coach Steve’s face scrunches up more, eyes shiny like maybe some dust blew in from the field. “Yeah, buddy. I promise.”

Toby sticks out his pinky. He doesn’t do that at school anymore, because he’s a big first-grader now, but he still knows it’s the strongest kind of promise there is.

Coach Steve smiles, hooking his pinky around Toby’s, giving it a firm shake.

Satisfied, Toby launches forward. It’s all of him at once, knocking the air right out of Coach Steve.

“Oof, okay—” Coach Steve laughs, arms coming up to catch him. He pats Toby’s back, holding him closer as he rocks him side to side.

Toby squeezes back just as tight. The heavy feeling in his chest lifts, like taking off his backpack full of books at the end of the day.

He pulls back, smiling now, and says the thing he's been scared to say since the day he talked to Jeremy.

“Love you, Dad.”

Coach Steve goes very still. Then he clears his throat and quickly blinks up at the sky, like he definitely got some dirt in his eyes that time.

When he looks back at Toby, that funny, wobbling smile is back.

“I love you too, buddy.”

Toby grabs his glove and hops off the bench. His feet hit the ground, solid and steady.

Coach Steve stands too, quickly scrubbing the dirt from his eyes before turning back to him.

“So. You wanna go show your mom that throw we’ve been practicing?”

Toby smiles, then breaks into a run. 

[yasministration]

wrong twin - fred weasley

not a random boy au summary: for a long, gruelling minute, angelina is under the impression that her best friend has a crush on her boyfriend. but no, that's the wrong twin. wc: 1.3k+

At first, Angelina thinks you have a crush on her boyfriend.

It starts one day over the summer before your last year at hogwarts. You’re spending the day at hers, and after exhausting hours spent at the pool, committed to the summer tan you wanted oh so badly, you’ve both approached the hour of lazying around after a long, tiring shower. You'd taken to the carpeted floor of Angelina's bedroom, slumping down on a soft pillow, hair still damp, now laying in your pyjamas. Angelina is replying to a letter from George while you flick through a quidditch magazine.

“Hey, want to be in this photo?” Angelina asks, pulling out her polaroid camera from a drawer by her bed. “To George?” Angelina nods and you shrug yes, straightening up and turning to face the camera that she turns to face the pair of you. You smile casually in the photo intended for your friend, turning back to the magazine as Angelina rewatches the photo playback. She smiles softly “We look cute in that.”

“Then keep it. The man doesn’t deserve it.”

Angelina laughs. Nothing is suspicious to her at this point — obviously. But a few days later, you see another letter addressed to Angelina from Fred and George, and the instant she pulls out her camera, you’re fluffing up your hair and turning your shoulder to the camera cutely as you lean in closer to Angelina, perfectly smiling for the camera. Your best friend doesn’t comment on your sudden change in behaviour, but she furrows her brows as she watches the moving image appear on the sheet of plastic after you've taken the photo.

You take a peek over her shoulder, asking “Wait, do I look good?” and that’s when Angelina feels her heart drop. She turns the photo towards you, and you nod in approval. Angelina shoots you a blank stare before turning her gaze back to the image, noting the way you press yourself against her in the image, hands gently placed on Angelina’s arm, looking into the camera with an angelic gleam in your eyes, smile on full display.

Angelina swears to herself that if she finds out you’re doing all that for her boyfriend, she’s going to pounce on you. But for now, she gives you the benefit of the doubt, because after all, you’ve been her best friend for six years, and she might as well just be imagining things. So Angelina clears her throat and attaches the image to the letter before folding it into an envelope and sending it off.

“They’re inviting us to the Burrow tomorrow for a lake day.” You jerk forward at Angelina’s statement, grimacing as you echo “Tomorrow!? Ugh, that means I need to shave tonight.” Angelina glances down at your exposed legs, shrugging at the short hairs decorating your skin. “You know Fred and George don’t care about that stuff.”

She sees you becoming flustered, averting your eyes from hers as you chew on your bottom lip. “Yeah, but — I don’t know.”

Three months ago, you wouldn’t have cared if the hairs on your legs were fully grown before wearing shorts around the twins. Angelina bites her tongue, nostrils flaring as she thinks of a method to find out if you actually like her boyfriend or not, otherwise she’ll drive herself crazy.

“Yeah, I get it. I mean, I want to impress George even though he doesn’t mind my body hair. Even down - you know where.”

You laugh loudly, digging your face into one of Angelina’s pillows as you yell “Angie! Gross!”

“Oh please, you’ve never complained about the details of my sex life before!”

“Yes I have! Doesn’t mean I don’t want to keep hearing them though. Keep them coming. Please.”

Obviously, you and Angelina agree to meet up before going over to the Burrow, despite her conflicting feelings. But at least it means that when you floo over there, she gets to witness your exact reaction to seeing her boyfriend, and she can decide on whether to jump you or not. While she gives George a long hug, Angelina misses the excited smile you shoot Fred, who’s still halfway across the living room. She pulls away from George, watching as you loosely hug him, keeping your hands respectfully on his shoulders. There’s a lot of space between your bodies, and your casual ‘hey’ confuses Angelina, especially when one of your hands pats his shoulder in an almost brotherly manner.

Was she imagining things this whole time?

But then she sees the way your make eye contact with Fred, and notices the way your eyes light up as he comes closer to you, arms extended for a hug. You press yourself onto your tippy toes as you drape your arms over Fred’s shoulders, face digging into the crook of his neck. Fred’s arms are tight around your waist, his hands placed on your back, bodies pressed snugly against each other. You sway a little in the hug, and when you pull away, a smile still lingers on your lips.

Angelina internally scolds herself, arms hanging loosely by her sides, because how did she not notice?

Angelina can’t help the wide smile from making its way onto her face — both in joy that you don’t have a crush on her boyfriend and in utter disbelief. It’s so obvious. She clears her throat in a poor attempt to recompose herself as Fred gives her a quick side hug, but you’ve seen the look on her face. You know she knows.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.” She whispers to you on the way out of the house, and you shrug, cheeks tight with the smile that’s on your face. God, you missed Fred so much. “I’ve been dropping hints to you for a month now.” And, she can’t exactly argue with you, because when she looks at things retrospectively, even your small actions from the past two days make sense. Like the way you didn’t care about how you looked in an image just to George but posed like a model in one she sent to the twins — to Fred.

Angelina speeds her pace up, skipping to her boyfriend joyously and coincidentally, Fred slows his down so he can walk with you towards the lake. “It’s good to see you.” Fred says with a smile, looking down at you.

“Yeah, you too. Two weeks of summer without your pretty face around was a mistake.” Fred laughs, bumping his shoulder with yours.

You drop your bag on the floor alongside where Angelina and George have laid their things out, sliding your feet out of your flip flops. “We can put the blanket out,” Angelina starts, raising a hand up to her eyes to protect them from the sun. “You guys go test the water or something.”

“Uh, what if I want to go test the water?” You ask, but Angelina rolls her eyes, tossing the big beach mat at you, and you manage to catch it despite your eyes being glued to a now shirtless Fred Weasley. You huff in mock annoyance but begin helping her out anyway, sitting down on the mat in triumph as you strip off your top. Angelina moves to stand in front of you, hands on her hips, eyes squinted at you in battle with the sun.

“You know, for a second there, I thought you had a crush on George.”

You snort out a graceless laugh, leaning back on your elbows as you loosely shrug your shoulders. “That explains why you were being a bitch.”

Angelina laughs, joining you on the mat. She observes George, biting the inside of her cheek as she internally scolds herself again. Why on earth would you have a crush on her boyfriend? “Yeah I was, wasn’t I? Whatever. You do know I’m going to try setting you guys up now, right?”

“Uh, don't insult me like that. I don’t need help with men. Give me two days and he'll be on his knees for me.”

“Sorry, remind me how long you've liked him for?”

Angelina’s question earns her a side eye.

taglist: @ravisinghs-wife, @starry-remus, @pain-in-the-ashe, @hiireadstuff, @treefairy-28, @superlegend216, @kitkatkl, @juliet-017, @fl0weryannie, @tiaajosephin, @dream-alittlebiggerdarling, @dearlizzies, @matcha-kitty13, @thenasoneshots, @slytherin-princess-x, @bxuzi, @rory-cakes, @dlljdhsh, @girlontheblock, @5sospenguinqueen, @bluebvrriee, @aouoo, @spider–girl, @fandomhoe101, @user010380, @simp-for-fiction, @selenewowww, @paytonluvxx, @sharkers00, @joonbread, @rhettsluvr, @gr1mesgirl, @iluvhrj, @mischivana, @sunnywithlotsoflove, @krokietino, @paankhaleyaaar, @tea-biscuits-books

[tsunderecamour]

not to be a whore but i need to be fords controversially young s/o where at first he doesnt see you that way,more just a friend or apprentice, but as time goes on he cant help but fall in love with how kind,funny and smart you are

you never said anything bad about his extra fingers or his nerdy hobbies, infact you thought his extra finger was neat! when you asked to compare hands you were so gentle and sweet, carefully touching him, face full of intrigue

and you thought he was just so smart and cool! no ones ever thought he was Cool before... you love dungeons dungeons and more dungeons as well and ask him to teach you to play with him! and even though he is old enough to be your father or even grandpa, you never treat him like hes some feeble old man, you act like you guys are the same age and just think hes so fun!

he cant help but fall in love... he tries to push those feelings away, its wrong after all... hes 60, youre in your 20s... but god, he cant help the way his heart pounds out of his chest when you laugh at a stupid joke he made or listen intently to what he says, even if you don't fully understand everything... youre even so sweet to his grand neice and nephew! always willing to go along with whatever shenanigans they think up and keep them safe

maybe hes just a creepy, perverted old man whos desperate for affection but when you sleepily lean against his shoulder after pulling an all nighter, he doesnt seem to care all that much anymore....

the final nail in the coffin is when winter comes and you notice he doesn't really have many weather appropriate clothes, its hard to get good gloves for six fingers after all... when you come into the basement with a small gift box in hand and shyly hold it out to him, rambling about how you saw he only had one pair of gloves even though hes always out in the cold and he probably has to either make them himself or special order them- he stops fully listening when he opens the box and sees a pair of soft, knitted/crocheted gloves...

when you dont hear a response from him and just see him staring down at the box you get even more nervous, mumbling something about how youve never made gloves before so you hope they fit... you made stan be your hand model, testing to see if they fit but you werent sure about his extra finger... he doesnt have to wear or accept them if he doesnt want to, you wont be upset (you would-)

you stop rambling when he looks up at you with the softest, most genuine smile and look in his eyes youve ever seen, quietly uttering a 'thank you...'

was that a blush on his cheeks and crack in his voice...?

[evilgoodguys]

he’d forgotten how much he missed that smile.