âď¸đ¤âď¸ she/her, 20something historian from Europe, the one with the priest fics, this blog is strictly 18+ !Requests are closed! Don't copy or edit my work. Multifandom imagines to keep you distracted. Stay safe in those crazy times. xxx Masterlist ao3
You can now pre-order the German version of my first dark romance novel âCircle of Sinâ!! And Iâd be so so so grateful if you would give this story a chance đ¤
Sechs Jahre lang hat Deliah versucht, alles zu vergessen, doch nun kehrt sie zurĂźck an den Ort, an dem sie alles verloren hat â ihre Unschuld, ihren Glauben und ihr Vertrauen.
Doch nun wird sie sich den Dämonen ihrer Vergangenheit stellen.
Sie wird sich ihm stellen â Dean Scott. Seine Besessenheit ist ihr Verhängnis. Seine Leidenschaft ist ihr Feuer. Seine Dominanz ist ihr Fluch.
Konfrontiert mit dem Ort ihrer Vergangenheit entflammen eigentlich verbotene GefĂźhle von neuem.
Deliah dachte, sie wäre stärker. Aber wie kämpft man gegen eine Dunkelheit, in der man sich selbst verlieren mÜchte?
Slow Burn Dark Romance voller Manipulation, Trauma und starker innerer Entwicklung â perfekt fĂźr Leser:innen von New Adult, die intensive Liebesromane suchen.
Inspiriert von Ethel Cainâs Musik und der männliche MC schaut (natĂźrlich) aus wie Dean Winchester. đđ¤
This came to me while listening to "Tempest" by Ethel Cain. Please like and reblog if you enjoyed reading this, your comments keep us writers motivated! Enjoy my loves. Xxx
Summary: Dean and reader were best friends once, teenagers who kept close while she was desperately in love, but he had left eventually without a warning after she had confessed her feelings, now, years later, their paths cross again
Warnings: 18+, smut, piv, handjob, fingering, friends to lovers, reunited after years
Pairing: Dean Winchester x fem!reader (3.3k words)
The diner looked like it had been forgotten by God somewhere around 1987. Its neon sign buzzed weakly against the dark, throwing pink and blue light across an empty parking lot slick with rain. The highway stretched endlessly in both directions, a black ribbon cutting through fields that seemed to have no beginning and no end.
She wasnât supposed to be here, a thought which had been circling her mind for the last thirty miles. Places like this had a way of digging up things that should've stayed buried after all.
The bell above the diner's door chimed when she stepped inside and the warmth hit (y/n) first, followed by the smell of burnt coffee and frying grease. It was supposed to be a quick stop, a place to grab some food and coffee before driving to her next hunt, a town a couple hundred miles over. A plan that was interrupted as her eyes settled on the frame of a ghost of her past.Â
For a second, her brain refused to make sense of what her eyes were seeing. A man sat alone in one of the booths, broad shoulders hunched beneath a worn leather jacket. One hand wrapped around a coffee mug, the other drummed absently against the countertop. He was older. The sharp edges of boyhood sanded down into something rougher, but he was still unmistakably himself. Dean Winchester.
The breath left her lungs as he looked up and froze. The years between them collapsed instantly, suddenly small enough to step over, nothing but rubble at their feet. She knew that face, not this version of it, the stubble, the tired eyes, the lines etched around his mouth, but the bones underneath. The same boy who used to sneak cigarettes behind Sonnyâs home and swear he'd leave the second summer was over. The same boy who'd climb onto the roof when he couldn't sleep. The same boy who'd looked at her one summer night and confessed, in a voice barely above a whisper, that he was terrified of becoming his father.
Dean stood so abruptly the coffee in his mug almost spilt over. For a moment neither of them spoke as rain still rattled softly against the windows. A country song crackled through old speakers overhead, but then Dean laughed once.
"No fucking way." She stepped closer and smiled despite herself.Â
"Hi, Dean." His expression shifted, shock giving way to recognition, which gave way to something warmer, something far more dangerous. Because people changed, years passed, lives happened, but some feelings didn't know how to die. Dean looked at her like he'd spent a decade trying to forget her face and had failed every single day. And suddenly the diner felt far too small, far too warm, far too full of ghosts.
âWhat are you doing here? Do you live here?â She sat down across from him, eyes not daring to leave him once while she told Dean she was just passing through, just like him.Â
Three cups of coffee later neither of them had moved while the rain outside had only gotten worse. It came down in sheets, blurring the windows until the world beyond them looked washed away entirely.
Dean had spent the last hour trying not to stare, but he wasn't doing a very good job of it. She had changed, of course she had. The awkward teenager he'd known was gone and in her place sat someone harder around the edges.Â
"You seriously hunt?" She smirked over the rim of her coffee mug, pleased with the surprise he seemingly couldnât shake.
"That's what I've been telling you for twenty minutes, Dean." Dean shook his head at her words, he leaned back in the booth, broad shoulders pressed against the old leather.Â
"No, I heard you. I'm just trying to figure out where the hell I missed that chapter."
"You left before you got to read it." The words slipped out before either of them could stop them. Silence settled between the two for a moment while Dean's jaw tightened.Â
(Y/n) looked away first. Outside, thunder rolled across the distant fields, the waitress appeared with the check, saving him from having to answer and Dean paid before she could argue. Some things seemingly never changed, heâd always try to look after her.Â
The two stepped outside together while cold rain-scented air rushed over the parking lot. The neon sign flickered overhead as Dean followed her to her old truck, leaning against it while he tried to soak in every second they were offered.Â
"No surprise she is yours now" The both of them glanced at the Chevy while (y/n) spoke. She laughed quietly, a sound tugging something in his chest, the same way it always had. The storm cracked overhead, another flash of lightning illuminated the empty highway. Dean looked up at the sky and then back at her.
"You got somewhere to stay?" She hesitated at the question, all too aware that she needed to leave soon enough, called away by the hunt she needed to get over and done with, but leaving was no choice, at least not now. "Sam's out on a case, Iâve got a spare bed if you want to crash there and keep talking for a bit."
The rain drummed steadily around them. Part of (y/n) wanted to say no; part of her knew saying yes was a terrible idea. Because the problem wasn't sharing a motel room, the problem was Dean, the problem had always been Dean.
"You sure?" He laughed, a sound shooting an almost uncomfortable wave of heat through her body.Â
"Trust me, sweetheart. I've fought vampires with less risk involved." The nickname hit harder than it should have and she hated that it did. Dean seemed to realize it too as his smile faded and the space between them suddenly felt much smaller.
"I mean it," he tried again quietly. "You can stay."
(Y/n) looked at him for a long moment, at the tired eyes, the familiar face. The man who had disappeared one morning without so much as a note. The man who had left her standing outside Sonnyâs looking for him for three days afterward. The man who'd listened to her confess her feelings one night beneath a broken porch light and vanished the next morning.
"Why'd you do it?" Dean froze, the question clearly wasn't the one he'd expected. "Back then."
His expression changed immediately, she saw recognition flash across his face, followed by guilt, a lot of guilt. The storm suddenly felt very far away as she spoke again. "You know which day I mean."
Dean looked down and for the first time all night, he didn't have a joke ready, didn't have a smart answer, didn't have anything. The silence stretched, but finally he exhaled slowly.
"You told me you loved me." Dean dragged a hand across the back of his neck as the words hung between them. Lightning flashed somewhere beyond the fields and Dean's voice was rough when he spoke again. "But I didn't leave because of that."
"Then why?" He looked at her, really looked at (y/n). And for a second she saw something vulnerable underneath all the armour.
"Because I wanted to stay. I was young, I had a dad who was always halfway out the door. A little brother who depended on me, no money, no future. I knew if I stayed, I'd never leave. But there was too much on the line, too much I couldnât risk.â Something twisted painfully in her chest. The confession settled heavily between them, years of resentment suddenly colliding with years of understanding. Neither one made the hurt disappear, but they changed its shape somehow.
"I'm sorry." The words were barely above a whisper. Dean looked exhausted, like he'd been carrying that answer for a very long time. She kept staring at him, the boy sheâd loved. The man standing in front of her now, still infuriating, still impossible, still her Dean.
âFollow me to the motel, and if you want to leave later, youâre free to go. Promise, I just want to spend some more time catching up with you.â With a heavy sigh leaving her, she nodded, turned away from him and started the car, set on following Dean to the motel.
***
The motel wasn't much to look at, flickering vacancy sign, peeling paint, questionable carpet. The kind of place Dean Winchester had spent half his life in. She stood just inside the door while he shrugged off his jacket and tossed it onto the chair in the corner. Two beds, one small table, a television that looked older than both of them. Home sweet home.
Dean disappeared briefly into the tiny kitchenette area and came back carrying two beers. The bottle hissed softly when she twisted the cap off and let her eyes wander again. The room glowed gold beneath the old lamp beside Dean's bed. Comfortable silence lingered between them for now, while Dean sat on the edge of one mattress, (y/n) settling onto the other, facing him.
"What?" She only shook her head with a laugh and mumbled a soft âNothingâ.Â
"Bull." Another laugh and there it was. Dean Winchester, still incapable of letting anything go. So, she shifted on the bed, legs pulled to her chest while she had one arm wrapped around them.Â
"You look older." Dean groaned at her words, took a sip of the beer and threw his pillow at her, missing her only by a few inches.Â
"Fighting monsters isn't exactly a skincare routine, mind you." She only smiled at his words and the sight made something soften in his expression, followed by a smile tugging on his own lips. God, (y/n) had missed that smile and the way it reached his eyes, the way it made him look younger.
"So." Dean cleared his throat while leaning back against the pillows. "Tell me everything."
"Everything?" She snorted at that, wondering how she would be able to squeeze all what had happened into one evening. He only nodded and then the next hour slipped by easier than expected. They talked about hunts, near deaths, stupid mistakes, and people they both had lost. The years that had stretched between them began shrinking one story at a time.
Dean told her about Sam, about Bobby, about the bunker, about things he couldn't quite explain without sounding insane. While she told him about learning to hunt, about being alone, about figuring things out herself, and about the nights she had wished someone would show up and tell her what the hell she was doing.Â
Dean listened carefully, the way he always had, like every word mattered. At some point the beers became empty bottles on the table, and at some point midnight came and went while the conversation drifted back toward the thing neither of them had truly stopped thinking about. The night before he left.
"You know," Dean rolled his bottle slowly between his palms and (y/n) instantly knew where this was going. His eyes stayed fixed on the label. "I thought about that night a lot. You scared the hell out of me with your confession. Nobody had ever said something like that to me before." The vulnerability in his voice caught her off guard.
"I did mean it, if that still counts." (Y/n) whispered the words while looking away herself, unable to look at the man any longer.Â
"I know." The answer came immediately without any hesitation or doubt. "I always knew."
The room suddenly felt too small, too warm while uncomfortableness clung to her. The conversation had turned unexpectedly heavy, something neither of them enjoyed.Â
"You never answered, Dean, you do know that, right?" His jaw shifted as the old guilt returned. "You just left."
His eyes closed briefly, he took the last sip of his bottle and placed it down on the ground while he let go of a sigh. "You wanna know something pathetic? I had an answer. Actually, scratch that, I always have the same answer."
The world seemed to stop, outside, inside, everywhere. She stared at him while Dean stared right back. There were no jokes, no deflections, nothing to hide behind anymore.
"You felt the same?" His expression softened at her confused words, so much it almost hurt.
"Yeah, course I did.â The single word settled somewhere deep inside her. Years of wondering, years of hurt, years of imagining a hundred different possibilities. Gone, just like that. "I was in love with you, (y/n), ever since I met you"
The confession hung between them and her eyes burned unexpectedly. Dean noticed, of course he noticed, he always had. He rose to his feet, let a few seconds pass and then sat down next to her, shoulder to shoulder, both their eyes focused on the ground.Â
"I spent years convincing myself I imagined it." Dean's face tightened at her trembling voice, eyes finally flickering up to look at her side profile.Â
"You didn't." His gaze never left (y/n)âs. The room went silent again, filled with years finally catching up to both of them. She forced herself to look at him again, he sat close enough now that she could see every line in his face, every scar, every year, and somehow still see the boy underneath.
His eyes dropped briefly to her mouth and stayed there. The tension that had followed them all evening finally snapped like a wave reaching shore. Dean lifted a hand, slow enough for her to stop him, which she didnât. His fingers brushed her cheek, a touch so gentle it almost broke her heart. Then he leaned in and kissed her. It wasn't rushed, wasn't desperate, perhaps it should have been. All those years of missed chances and unanswered questions should have made it desperate, instead it felt careful as if both of them were making sure the other was real.
Everything that had been left unsaid, everything that had survived was now finally answered. Dean rested his forehead against hers when he pulled away, breathing hard. But she didnât let him pull away further, hands settling on his neck to kiss him again, deeper this time around.Â
Without breaking the kiss, Dean helped her into his lap, thighs pressed together, hearts racing in sync, lips unable to part. It was perfect, so perfect both couldnât help but mourn the time they could have used for moments like these. She gave him a push back, letting him lay on the bed while her mouth kissed its way down his throat, fingers disappearing beneath his shirt.Â
Too much time had passed, too many lost moments, there was no time for anymore waiting. He helped her pull the shirt over his head before his hands took care of hers, bra following moments later. Dean sat back up to kiss at her chest, leaving marks on soft spots which made her skin tingle in excitement, letting heat pool between her thighs.Â
âI always wondered how it must feel to touch you, I hate myself for not letting us experience this earlier.â She shut him up with another kiss, body filled with too many emotions to speak. Her fingers explored his soft skin, she traced his tattoo, his rough muscles, before undoing the button of his jeans, feeling what her touch was doing to him.Â
She pulled him free from his boxers, letting her eyes flicker back to his for a second as if checking in to see if he was doing alright, but Dean could only moan at her touch, hips jerking to force her to move. She spat onto the tip, saliva lubing him up before (y/n) began pumping him, slow at first, exploring the soft skin with careful touches. His groans urged her on, begging her to move faster, to pump him with enough pressure to make him see stars.
âYouâre too good at this.â He panted the words, which drew a proud chuckle from her. She was concentrated on the task, on the speed she used to move her hand, not daring to break the rhythm until Dean eventually pushed her away, needing to focus on her before he could cum.Â
âLay down, show me what Iâve been missing out on.â (Y/n) gave in to the command, she placed herself down on the mattress, got rid of her clothes while Dean undressed himself before returning to her. He lingered between her thighs, keeping them open with his knees as his eyes took in her naked frame. Their lips met for another kiss while his fingers brushed through her wetness, spreading it on her skin and pulsing bundle before pushing a finger inside her.Â
Her moans filled the room, she clung to him with her fingernails leaving marks on his strong back, etching her touches into the body she had always wanted to feel pressed against her. Dean was careful with his touch, yet he used just enough pressure to make her tremble beneath him. He circled her clit, pushed her further and further into the waves of pleasure while brushing against that sweet spot inside of her.Â
It was a sight so beautiful, he wondered if he was dreaming it. It felt too good, too real to be something this perfect. But Dean didnât dare break the moment, he didnât care if it was just a dream, not as he finally got the chance to have her like this.Â
âCan I fuck you now? I need to be inside you, sweetheart.â She nodded at him with glassy eyes, teeth buried in her lower lip while she tried to calm herself down from the waves of pleasure threatening to drown her. He reached for a condom, ripped it open with his teeth, and rolled it down onto his cock.Â
Their fingers found together as he pushed into her, spreading her walls around him while both let go of a groan at the sensation. Dean allowed her to adjust, not set on hurrying her while she breathed heavily. But the second he felt her relax, he began to move, fucking her with a comfortable rythym both found enjoyment in. They clung to one another, foreheads pressed together, hearts racing.
âDean,â she choked out his name as (y/n) threw her head back while feeling his fingers on her pulsing bundle. He kept circling the spot, kept fucking her deeper and deeper while groaning her name over and over again like a prayer spoken to set them both free.Â
She came first with a cry, fingernails leaving a few scratches on his back, proud memories heâd carry for a while. He kept fucking her, kept guiding her through her orgasm while chasing his own, eventually giving in with another deep, raspy sound which made her tremble once more.Â
For a while neither of them felt the need to fill the silence, bodies pressed together, hearts slowing down their racing beats. Dean lay beside her, one arm draped lazily across her waist, his fingers tracing absent-minded patterns against her side.Â
âI wonât disappear this time, I promise. And if youâll still have me after all those years, Iâm yours.â She turned her head just enough to find him already looking at her. Her emotions overwhelmed her, they choked her, so she could only nod at him, jaw clenched, eyes teary.Â
For the first time in a long time, the future didn't feel like something waiting to take him from her. It felt like something the two of them might actually reach together.
This came to me while listening to "Tempest" by Ethel Cain. Please like and reblog if you enjoyed reading this, your comments keep us writers motivated! Enjoy my loves. Xxx
Summary: Dean and reader were best friends once, teenagers who kept close while she was desperately in love, but he had left eventually without a warning after she had confessed her feelings, now, years later, their paths cross again
Warnings: 18+, smut, piv, handjob, fingering, friends to lovers, reunited after years
Pairing: Dean Winchester x fem!reader (3.3k words)
The diner looked like it had been forgotten by God somewhere around 1987. Its neon sign buzzed weakly against the dark, throwing pink and blue light across an empty parking lot slick with rain. The highway stretched endlessly in both directions, a black ribbon cutting through fields that seemed to have no beginning and no end.
She wasnât supposed to be here, a thought which had been circling her mind for the last thirty miles. Places like this had a way of digging up things that should've stayed buried after all.
The bell above the diner's door chimed when she stepped inside and the warmth hit (y/n) first, followed by the smell of burnt coffee and frying grease. It was supposed to be a quick stop, a place to grab some food and coffee before driving to her next hunt, a town a couple hundred miles over. A plan that was interrupted as her eyes settled on the frame of a ghost of her past.Â
For a second, her brain refused to make sense of what her eyes were seeing. A man sat alone in one of the booths, broad shoulders hunched beneath a worn leather jacket. One hand wrapped around a coffee mug, the other drummed absently against the countertop. He was older. The sharp edges of boyhood sanded down into something rougher, but he was still unmistakably himself. Dean Winchester.
The breath left her lungs as he looked up and froze. The years between them collapsed instantly, suddenly small enough to step over, nothing but rubble at their feet. She knew that face, not this version of it, the stubble, the tired eyes, the lines etched around his mouth, but the bones underneath. The same boy who used to sneak cigarettes behind Sonnyâs home and swear he'd leave the second summer was over. The same boy who'd climb onto the roof when he couldn't sleep. The same boy who'd looked at her one summer night and confessed, in a voice barely above a whisper, that he was terrified of becoming his father.
Dean stood so abruptly the coffee in his mug almost spilt over. For a moment neither of them spoke as rain still rattled softly against the windows. A country song crackled through old speakers overhead, but then Dean laughed once.
"No fucking way." She stepped closer and smiled despite herself.Â
"Hi, Dean." His expression shifted, shock giving way to recognition, which gave way to something warmer, something far more dangerous. Because people changed, years passed, lives happened, but some feelings didn't know how to die. Dean looked at her like he'd spent a decade trying to forget her face and had failed every single day. And suddenly the diner felt far too small, far too warm, far too full of ghosts.
âWhat are you doing here? Do you live here?â She sat down across from him, eyes not daring to leave him once while she told Dean she was just passing through, just like him.Â
Three cups of coffee later neither of them had moved while the rain outside had only gotten worse. It came down in sheets, blurring the windows until the world beyond them looked washed away entirely.
Dean had spent the last hour trying not to stare, but he wasn't doing a very good job of it. She had changed, of course she had. The awkward teenager he'd known was gone and in her place sat someone harder around the edges.Â
"You seriously hunt?" She smirked over the rim of her coffee mug, pleased with the surprise he seemingly couldnât shake.
"That's what I've been telling you for twenty minutes, Dean." Dean shook his head at her words, he leaned back in the booth, broad shoulders pressed against the old leather.Â
"No, I heard you. I'm just trying to figure out where the hell I missed that chapter."
"You left before you got to read it." The words slipped out before either of them could stop them. Silence settled between the two for a moment while Dean's jaw tightened.Â
(Y/n) looked away first. Outside, thunder rolled across the distant fields, the waitress appeared with the check, saving him from having to answer and Dean paid before she could argue. Some things seemingly never changed, heâd always try to look after her.Â
The two stepped outside together while cold rain-scented air rushed over the parking lot. The neon sign flickered overhead as Dean followed her to her old truck, leaning against it while he tried to soak in every second they were offered.Â
"No surprise she is yours now" The both of them glanced at the Chevy while (y/n) spoke. She laughed quietly, a sound tugging something in his chest, the same way it always had. The storm cracked overhead, another flash of lightning illuminated the empty highway. Dean looked up at the sky and then back at her.
"You got somewhere to stay?" She hesitated at the question, all too aware that she needed to leave soon enough, called away by the hunt she needed to get over and done with, but leaving was no choice, at least not now. "Sam's out on a case, Iâve got a spare bed if you want to crash there and keep talking for a bit."
The rain drummed steadily around them. Part of (y/n) wanted to say no; part of her knew saying yes was a terrible idea. Because the problem wasn't sharing a motel room, the problem was Dean, the problem had always been Dean.
"You sure?" He laughed, a sound shooting an almost uncomfortable wave of heat through her body.Â
"Trust me, sweetheart. I've fought vampires with less risk involved." The nickname hit harder than it should have and she hated that it did. Dean seemed to realize it too as his smile faded and the space between them suddenly felt much smaller.
"I mean it," he tried again quietly. "You can stay."
(Y/n) looked at him for a long moment, at the tired eyes, the familiar face. The man who had disappeared one morning without so much as a note. The man who had left her standing outside Sonnyâs looking for him for three days afterward. The man who'd listened to her confess her feelings one night beneath a broken porch light and vanished the next morning.
"Why'd you do it?" Dean froze, the question clearly wasn't the one he'd expected. "Back then."
His expression changed immediately, she saw recognition flash across his face, followed by guilt, a lot of guilt. The storm suddenly felt very far away as she spoke again. "You know which day I mean."
Dean looked down and for the first time all night, he didn't have a joke ready, didn't have a smart answer, didn't have anything. The silence stretched, but finally he exhaled slowly.
"You told me you loved me." Dean dragged a hand across the back of his neck as the words hung between them. Lightning flashed somewhere beyond the fields and Dean's voice was rough when he spoke again. "But I didn't leave because of that."
"Then why?" He looked at her, really looked at (y/n). And for a second she saw something vulnerable underneath all the armour.
"Because I wanted to stay. I was young, I had a dad who was always halfway out the door. A little brother who depended on me, no money, no future. I knew if I stayed, I'd never leave. But there was too much on the line, too much I couldnât risk.â Something twisted painfully in her chest. The confession settled heavily between them, years of resentment suddenly colliding with years of understanding. Neither one made the hurt disappear, but they changed its shape somehow.
"I'm sorry." The words were barely above a whisper. Dean looked exhausted, like he'd been carrying that answer for a very long time. She kept staring at him, the boy sheâd loved. The man standing in front of her now, still infuriating, still impossible, still her Dean.
âFollow me to the motel, and if you want to leave later, youâre free to go. Promise, I just want to spend some more time catching up with you.â With a heavy sigh leaving her, she nodded, turned away from him and started the car, set on following Dean to the motel.
***
The motel wasn't much to look at, flickering vacancy sign, peeling paint, questionable carpet. The kind of place Dean Winchester had spent half his life in. She stood just inside the door while he shrugged off his jacket and tossed it onto the chair in the corner. Two beds, one small table, a television that looked older than both of them. Home sweet home.
Dean disappeared briefly into the tiny kitchenette area and came back carrying two beers. The bottle hissed softly when she twisted the cap off and let her eyes wander again. The room glowed gold beneath the old lamp beside Dean's bed. Comfortable silence lingered between them for now, while Dean sat on the edge of one mattress, (y/n) settling onto the other, facing him.
"What?" She only shook her head with a laugh and mumbled a soft âNothingâ.Â
"Bull." Another laugh and there it was. Dean Winchester, still incapable of letting anything go. So, she shifted on the bed, legs pulled to her chest while she had one arm wrapped around them.Â
"You look older." Dean groaned at her words, took a sip of the beer and threw his pillow at her, missing her only by a few inches.Â
"Fighting monsters isn't exactly a skincare routine, mind you." She only smiled at his words and the sight made something soften in his expression, followed by a smile tugging on his own lips. God, (y/n) had missed that smile and the way it reached his eyes, the way it made him look younger.
"So." Dean cleared his throat while leaning back against the pillows. "Tell me everything."
"Everything?" She snorted at that, wondering how she would be able to squeeze all what had happened into one evening. He only nodded and then the next hour slipped by easier than expected. They talked about hunts, near deaths, stupid mistakes, and people they both had lost. The years that had stretched between them began shrinking one story at a time.
Dean told her about Sam, about Bobby, about the bunker, about things he couldn't quite explain without sounding insane. While she told him about learning to hunt, about being alone, about figuring things out herself, and about the nights she had wished someone would show up and tell her what the hell she was doing.Â
Dean listened carefully, the way he always had, like every word mattered. At some point the beers became empty bottles on the table, and at some point midnight came and went while the conversation drifted back toward the thing neither of them had truly stopped thinking about. The night before he left.
"You know," Dean rolled his bottle slowly between his palms and (y/n) instantly knew where this was going. His eyes stayed fixed on the label. "I thought about that night a lot. You scared the hell out of me with your confession. Nobody had ever said something like that to me before." The vulnerability in his voice caught her off guard.
"I did mean it, if that still counts." (Y/n) whispered the words while looking away herself, unable to look at the man any longer.Â
"I know." The answer came immediately without any hesitation or doubt. "I always knew."
The room suddenly felt too small, too warm while uncomfortableness clung to her. The conversation had turned unexpectedly heavy, something neither of them enjoyed.Â
"You never answered, Dean, you do know that, right?" His jaw shifted as the old guilt returned. "You just left."
His eyes closed briefly, he took the last sip of his bottle and placed it down on the ground while he let go of a sigh. "You wanna know something pathetic? I had an answer. Actually, scratch that, I always have the same answer."
The world seemed to stop, outside, inside, everywhere. She stared at him while Dean stared right back. There were no jokes, no deflections, nothing to hide behind anymore.
"You felt the same?" His expression softened at her confused words, so much it almost hurt.
"Yeah, course I did.â The single word settled somewhere deep inside her. Years of wondering, years of hurt, years of imagining a hundred different possibilities. Gone, just like that. "I was in love with you, (y/n), ever since I met you"
The confession hung between them and her eyes burned unexpectedly. Dean noticed, of course he noticed, he always had. He rose to his feet, let a few seconds pass and then sat down next to her, shoulder to shoulder, both their eyes focused on the ground.Â
"I spent years convincing myself I imagined it." Dean's face tightened at her trembling voice, eyes finally flickering up to look at her side profile.Â
"You didn't." His gaze never left (y/n)âs. The room went silent again, filled with years finally catching up to both of them. She forced herself to look at him again, he sat close enough now that she could see every line in his face, every scar, every year, and somehow still see the boy underneath.
His eyes dropped briefly to her mouth and stayed there. The tension that had followed them all evening finally snapped like a wave reaching shore. Dean lifted a hand, slow enough for her to stop him, which she didnât. His fingers brushed her cheek, a touch so gentle it almost broke her heart. Then he leaned in and kissed her. It wasn't rushed, wasn't desperate, perhaps it should have been. All those years of missed chances and unanswered questions should have made it desperate, instead it felt careful as if both of them were making sure the other was real.
Everything that had been left unsaid, everything that had survived was now finally answered. Dean rested his forehead against hers when he pulled away, breathing hard. But she didnât let him pull away further, hands settling on his neck to kiss him again, deeper this time around.Â
Without breaking the kiss, Dean helped her into his lap, thighs pressed together, hearts racing in sync, lips unable to part. It was perfect, so perfect both couldnât help but mourn the time they could have used for moments like these. She gave him a push back, letting him lay on the bed while her mouth kissed its way down his throat, fingers disappearing beneath his shirt.Â
Too much time had passed, too many lost moments, there was no time for anymore waiting. He helped her pull the shirt over his head before his hands took care of hers, bra following moments later. Dean sat back up to kiss at her chest, leaving marks on soft spots which made her skin tingle in excitement, letting heat pool between her thighs.Â
âI always wondered how it must feel to touch you, I hate myself for not letting us experience this earlier.â She shut him up with another kiss, body filled with too many emotions to speak. Her fingers explored his soft skin, she traced his tattoo, his rough muscles, before undoing the button of his jeans, feeling what her touch was doing to him.Â
She pulled him free from his boxers, letting her eyes flicker back to his for a second as if checking in to see if he was doing alright, but Dean could only moan at her touch, hips jerking to force her to move. She spat onto the tip, saliva lubing him up before (y/n) began pumping him, slow at first, exploring the soft skin with careful touches. His groans urged her on, begging her to move faster, to pump him with enough pressure to make him see stars.
âYouâre too good at this.â He panted the words, which drew a proud chuckle from her. She was concentrated on the task, on the speed she used to move her hand, not daring to break the rhythm until Dean eventually pushed her away, needing to focus on her before he could cum.Â
âLay down, show me what Iâve been missing out on.â (Y/n) gave in to the command, she placed herself down on the mattress, got rid of her clothes while Dean undressed himself before returning to her. He lingered between her thighs, keeping them open with his knees as his eyes took in her naked frame. Their lips met for another kiss while his fingers brushed through her wetness, spreading it on her skin and pulsing bundle before pushing a finger inside her.Â
Her moans filled the room, she clung to him with her fingernails leaving marks on his strong back, etching her touches into the body she had always wanted to feel pressed against her. Dean was careful with his touch, yet he used just enough pressure to make her tremble beneath him. He circled her clit, pushed her further and further into the waves of pleasure while brushing against that sweet spot inside of her.Â
It was a sight so beautiful, he wondered if he was dreaming it. It felt too good, too real to be something this perfect. But Dean didnât dare break the moment, he didnât care if it was just a dream, not as he finally got the chance to have her like this.Â
âCan I fuck you now? I need to be inside you, sweetheart.â She nodded at him with glassy eyes, teeth buried in her lower lip while she tried to calm herself down from the waves of pleasure threatening to drown her. He reached for a condom, ripped it open with his teeth, and rolled it down onto his cock.Â
Their fingers found together as he pushed into her, spreading her walls around him while both let go of a groan at the sensation. Dean allowed her to adjust, not set on hurrying her while she breathed heavily. But the second he felt her relax, he began to move, fucking her with a comfortable rythym both found enjoyment in. They clung to one another, foreheads pressed together, hearts racing.
âDean,â she choked out his name as (y/n) threw her head back while feeling his fingers on her pulsing bundle. He kept circling the spot, kept fucking her deeper and deeper while groaning her name over and over again like a prayer spoken to set them both free.Â
She came first with a cry, fingernails leaving a few scratches on his back, proud memories heâd carry for a while. He kept fucking her, kept guiding her through her orgasm while chasing his own, eventually giving in with another deep, raspy sound which made her tremble once more.Â
For a while neither of them felt the need to fill the silence, bodies pressed together, hearts slowing down their racing beats. Dean lay beside her, one arm draped lazily across her waist, his fingers tracing absent-minded patterns against her side.Â
âI wonât disappear this time, I promise. And if youâll still have me after all those years, Iâm yours.â She turned her head just enough to find him already looking at her. Her emotions overwhelmed her, they choked her, so she could only nod at him, jaw clenched, eyes teary.Â
For the first time in a long time, the future didn't feel like something waiting to take him from her. It felt like something the two of them might actually reach together.
This came to me while listening to "Tempest" by Ethel Cain. Please like and reblog if you enjoyed reading this, your comments keep us writers motivated! Enjoy my loves. Xxx
Summary: Dean and reader were best friends once, teenagers who kept close while she was desperately in love, but he had left eventually without a warning after she had confessed her feelings, now, years later, their paths cross again
Warnings: 18+, smut, piv, handjob, fingering, friends to lovers, reunited after years
Pairing: Dean Winchester x fem!reader (3.3k words)
The diner looked like it had been forgotten by God somewhere around 1987. Its neon sign buzzed weakly against the dark, throwing pink and blue light across an empty parking lot slick with rain. The highway stretched endlessly in both directions, a black ribbon cutting through fields that seemed to have no beginning and no end.
She wasnât supposed to be here, a thought which had been circling her mind for the last thirty miles. Places like this had a way of digging up things that should've stayed buried after all.
The bell above the diner's door chimed when she stepped inside and the warmth hit (y/n) first, followed by the smell of burnt coffee and frying grease. It was supposed to be a quick stop, a place to grab some food and coffee before driving to her next hunt, a town a couple hundred miles over. A plan that was interrupted as her eyes settled on the frame of a ghost of her past.Â
For a second, her brain refused to make sense of what her eyes were seeing. A man sat alone in one of the booths, broad shoulders hunched beneath a worn leather jacket. One hand wrapped around a coffee mug, the other drummed absently against the countertop. He was older. The sharp edges of boyhood sanded down into something rougher, but he was still unmistakably himself. Dean Winchester.
The breath left her lungs as he looked up and froze. The years between them collapsed instantly, suddenly small enough to step over, nothing but rubble at their feet. She knew that face, not this version of it, the stubble, the tired eyes, the lines etched around his mouth, but the bones underneath. The same boy who used to sneak cigarettes behind Sonnyâs home and swear he'd leave the second summer was over. The same boy who'd climb onto the roof when he couldn't sleep. The same boy who'd looked at her one summer night and confessed, in a voice barely above a whisper, that he was terrified of becoming his father.
Dean stood so abruptly the coffee in his mug almost spilt over. For a moment neither of them spoke as rain still rattled softly against the windows. A country song crackled through old speakers overhead, but then Dean laughed once.
"No fucking way." She stepped closer and smiled despite herself.Â
"Hi, Dean." His expression shifted, shock giving way to recognition, which gave way to something warmer, something far more dangerous. Because people changed, years passed, lives happened, but some feelings didn't know how to die. Dean looked at her like he'd spent a decade trying to forget her face and had failed every single day. And suddenly the diner felt far too small, far too warm, far too full of ghosts.
âWhat are you doing here? Do you live here?â She sat down across from him, eyes not daring to leave him once while she told Dean she was just passing through, just like him.Â
Three cups of coffee later neither of them had moved while the rain outside had only gotten worse. It came down in sheets, blurring the windows until the world beyond them looked washed away entirely.
Dean had spent the last hour trying not to stare, but he wasn't doing a very good job of it. She had changed, of course she had. The awkward teenager he'd known was gone and in her place sat someone harder around the edges.Â
"You seriously hunt?" She smirked over the rim of her coffee mug, pleased with the surprise he seemingly couldnât shake.
"That's what I've been telling you for twenty minutes, Dean." Dean shook his head at her words, he leaned back in the booth, broad shoulders pressed against the old leather.Â
"No, I heard you. I'm just trying to figure out where the hell I missed that chapter."
"You left before you got to read it." The words slipped out before either of them could stop them. Silence settled between the two for a moment while Dean's jaw tightened.Â
(Y/n) looked away first. Outside, thunder rolled across the distant fields, the waitress appeared with the check, saving him from having to answer and Dean paid before she could argue. Some things seemingly never changed, heâd always try to look after her.Â
The two stepped outside together while cold rain-scented air rushed over the parking lot. The neon sign flickered overhead as Dean followed her to her old truck, leaning against it while he tried to soak in every second they were offered.Â
"No surprise she is yours now" The both of them glanced at the Chevy while (y/n) spoke. She laughed quietly, a sound tugging something in his chest, the same way it always had. The storm cracked overhead, another flash of lightning illuminated the empty highway. Dean looked up at the sky and then back at her.
"You got somewhere to stay?" She hesitated at the question, all too aware that she needed to leave soon enough, called away by the hunt she needed to get over and done with, but leaving was no choice, at least not now. "Sam's out on a case, Iâve got a spare bed if you want to crash there and keep talking for a bit."
The rain drummed steadily around them. Part of (y/n) wanted to say no; part of her knew saying yes was a terrible idea. Because the problem wasn't sharing a motel room, the problem was Dean, the problem had always been Dean.
"You sure?" He laughed, a sound shooting an almost uncomfortable wave of heat through her body.Â
"Trust me, sweetheart. I've fought vampires with less risk involved." The nickname hit harder than it should have and she hated that it did. Dean seemed to realize it too as his smile faded and the space between them suddenly felt much smaller.
"I mean it," he tried again quietly. "You can stay."
(Y/n) looked at him for a long moment, at the tired eyes, the familiar face. The man who had disappeared one morning without so much as a note. The man who had left her standing outside Sonnyâs looking for him for three days afterward. The man who'd listened to her confess her feelings one night beneath a broken porch light and vanished the next morning.
"Why'd you do it?" Dean froze, the question clearly wasn't the one he'd expected. "Back then."
His expression changed immediately, she saw recognition flash across his face, followed by guilt, a lot of guilt. The storm suddenly felt very far away as she spoke again. "You know which day I mean."
Dean looked down and for the first time all night, he didn't have a joke ready, didn't have a smart answer, didn't have anything. The silence stretched, but finally he exhaled slowly.
"You told me you loved me." Dean dragged a hand across the back of his neck as the words hung between them. Lightning flashed somewhere beyond the fields and Dean's voice was rough when he spoke again. "But I didn't leave because of that."
"Then why?" He looked at her, really looked at (y/n). And for a second she saw something vulnerable underneath all the armour.
"Because I wanted to stay. I was young, I had a dad who was always halfway out the door. A little brother who depended on me, no money, no future. I knew if I stayed, I'd never leave. But there was too much on the line, too much I couldnât risk.â Something twisted painfully in her chest. The confession settled heavily between them, years of resentment suddenly colliding with years of understanding. Neither one made the hurt disappear, but they changed its shape somehow.
"I'm sorry." The words were barely above a whisper. Dean looked exhausted, like he'd been carrying that answer for a very long time. She kept staring at him, the boy sheâd loved. The man standing in front of her now, still infuriating, still impossible, still her Dean.
âFollow me to the motel, and if you want to leave later, youâre free to go. Promise, I just want to spend some more time catching up with you.â With a heavy sigh leaving her, she nodded, turned away from him and started the car, set on following Dean to the motel.
***
The motel wasn't much to look at, flickering vacancy sign, peeling paint, questionable carpet. The kind of place Dean Winchester had spent half his life in. She stood just inside the door while he shrugged off his jacket and tossed it onto the chair in the corner. Two beds, one small table, a television that looked older than both of them. Home sweet home.
Dean disappeared briefly into the tiny kitchenette area and came back carrying two beers. The bottle hissed softly when she twisted the cap off and let her eyes wander again. The room glowed gold beneath the old lamp beside Dean's bed. Comfortable silence lingered between them for now, while Dean sat on the edge of one mattress, (y/n) settling onto the other, facing him.
"What?" She only shook her head with a laugh and mumbled a soft âNothingâ.Â
"Bull." Another laugh and there it was. Dean Winchester, still incapable of letting anything go. So, she shifted on the bed, legs pulled to her chest while she had one arm wrapped around them.Â
"You look older." Dean groaned at her words, took a sip of the beer and threw his pillow at her, missing her only by a few inches.Â
"Fighting monsters isn't exactly a skincare routine, mind you." She only smiled at his words and the sight made something soften in his expression, followed by a smile tugging on his own lips. God, (y/n) had missed that smile and the way it reached his eyes, the way it made him look younger.
"So." Dean cleared his throat while leaning back against the pillows. "Tell me everything."
"Everything?" She snorted at that, wondering how she would be able to squeeze all what had happened into one evening. He only nodded and then the next hour slipped by easier than expected. They talked about hunts, near deaths, stupid mistakes, and people they both had lost. The years that had stretched between them began shrinking one story at a time.
Dean told her about Sam, about Bobby, about the bunker, about things he couldn't quite explain without sounding insane. While she told him about learning to hunt, about being alone, about figuring things out herself, and about the nights she had wished someone would show up and tell her what the hell she was doing.Â
Dean listened carefully, the way he always had, like every word mattered. At some point the beers became empty bottles on the table, and at some point midnight came and went while the conversation drifted back toward the thing neither of them had truly stopped thinking about. The night before he left.
"You know," Dean rolled his bottle slowly between his palms and (y/n) instantly knew where this was going. His eyes stayed fixed on the label. "I thought about that night a lot. You scared the hell out of me with your confession. Nobody had ever said something like that to me before." The vulnerability in his voice caught her off guard.
"I did mean it, if that still counts." (Y/n) whispered the words while looking away herself, unable to look at the man any longer.Â
"I know." The answer came immediately without any hesitation or doubt. "I always knew."
The room suddenly felt too small, too warm while uncomfortableness clung to her. The conversation had turned unexpectedly heavy, something neither of them enjoyed.Â
"You never answered, Dean, you do know that, right?" His jaw shifted as the old guilt returned. "You just left."
His eyes closed briefly, he took the last sip of his bottle and placed it down on the ground while he let go of a sigh. "You wanna know something pathetic? I had an answer. Actually, scratch that, I always have the same answer."
The world seemed to stop, outside, inside, everywhere. She stared at him while Dean stared right back. There were no jokes, no deflections, nothing to hide behind anymore.
"You felt the same?" His expression softened at her confused words, so much it almost hurt.
"Yeah, course I did.â The single word settled somewhere deep inside her. Years of wondering, years of hurt, years of imagining a hundred different possibilities. Gone, just like that. "I was in love with you, (y/n), ever since I met you"
The confession hung between them and her eyes burned unexpectedly. Dean noticed, of course he noticed, he always had. He rose to his feet, let a few seconds pass and then sat down next to her, shoulder to shoulder, both their eyes focused on the ground.Â
"I spent years convincing myself I imagined it." Dean's face tightened at her trembling voice, eyes finally flickering up to look at her side profile.Â
"You didn't." His gaze never left (y/n)âs. The room went silent again, filled with years finally catching up to both of them. She forced herself to look at him again, he sat close enough now that she could see every line in his face, every scar, every year, and somehow still see the boy underneath.
His eyes dropped briefly to her mouth and stayed there. The tension that had followed them all evening finally snapped like a wave reaching shore. Dean lifted a hand, slow enough for her to stop him, which she didnât. His fingers brushed her cheek, a touch so gentle it almost broke her heart. Then he leaned in and kissed her. It wasn't rushed, wasn't desperate, perhaps it should have been. All those years of missed chances and unanswered questions should have made it desperate, instead it felt careful as if both of them were making sure the other was real.
Everything that had been left unsaid, everything that had survived was now finally answered. Dean rested his forehead against hers when he pulled away, breathing hard. But she didnât let him pull away further, hands settling on his neck to kiss him again, deeper this time around.Â
Without breaking the kiss, Dean helped her into his lap, thighs pressed together, hearts racing in sync, lips unable to part. It was perfect, so perfect both couldnât help but mourn the time they could have used for moments like these. She gave him a push back, letting him lay on the bed while her mouth kissed its way down his throat, fingers disappearing beneath his shirt.Â
Too much time had passed, too many lost moments, there was no time for anymore waiting. He helped her pull the shirt over his head before his hands took care of hers, bra following moments later. Dean sat back up to kiss at her chest, leaving marks on soft spots which made her skin tingle in excitement, letting heat pool between her thighs.Â
âI always wondered how it must feel to touch you, I hate myself for not letting us experience this earlier.â She shut him up with another kiss, body filled with too many emotions to speak. Her fingers explored his soft skin, she traced his tattoo, his rough muscles, before undoing the button of his jeans, feeling what her touch was doing to him.Â
She pulled him free from his boxers, letting her eyes flicker back to his for a second as if checking in to see if he was doing alright, but Dean could only moan at her touch, hips jerking to force her to move. She spat onto the tip, saliva lubing him up before (y/n) began pumping him, slow at first, exploring the soft skin with careful touches. His groans urged her on, begging her to move faster, to pump him with enough pressure to make him see stars.
âYouâre too good at this.â He panted the words, which drew a proud chuckle from her. She was concentrated on the task, on the speed she used to move her hand, not daring to break the rhythm until Dean eventually pushed her away, needing to focus on her before he could cum.Â
âLay down, show me what Iâve been missing out on.â (Y/n) gave in to the command, she placed herself down on the mattress, got rid of her clothes while Dean undressed himself before returning to her. He lingered between her thighs, keeping them open with his knees as his eyes took in her naked frame. Their lips met for another kiss while his fingers brushed through her wetness, spreading it on her skin and pulsing bundle before pushing a finger inside her.Â
Her moans filled the room, she clung to him with her fingernails leaving marks on his strong back, etching her touches into the body she had always wanted to feel pressed against her. Dean was careful with his touch, yet he used just enough pressure to make her tremble beneath him. He circled her clit, pushed her further and further into the waves of pleasure while brushing against that sweet spot inside of her.Â
It was a sight so beautiful, he wondered if he was dreaming it. It felt too good, too real to be something this perfect. But Dean didnât dare break the moment, he didnât care if it was just a dream, not as he finally got the chance to have her like this.Â
âCan I fuck you now? I need to be inside you, sweetheart.â She nodded at him with glassy eyes, teeth buried in her lower lip while she tried to calm herself down from the waves of pleasure threatening to drown her. He reached for a condom, ripped it open with his teeth, and rolled it down onto his cock.Â
Their fingers found together as he pushed into her, spreading her walls around him while both let go of a groan at the sensation. Dean allowed her to adjust, not set on hurrying her while she breathed heavily. But the second he felt her relax, he began to move, fucking her with a comfortable rythym both found enjoyment in. They clung to one another, foreheads pressed together, hearts racing.
âDean,â she choked out his name as (y/n) threw her head back while feeling his fingers on her pulsing bundle. He kept circling the spot, kept fucking her deeper and deeper while groaning her name over and over again like a prayer spoken to set them both free.Â
She came first with a cry, fingernails leaving a few scratches on his back, proud memories heâd carry for a while. He kept fucking her, kept guiding her through her orgasm while chasing his own, eventually giving in with another deep, raspy sound which made her tremble once more.Â
For a while neither of them felt the need to fill the silence, bodies pressed together, hearts slowing down their racing beats. Dean lay beside her, one arm draped lazily across her waist, his fingers tracing absent-minded patterns against her side.Â
âI wonât disappear this time, I promise. And if youâll still have me after all those years, Iâm yours.â She turned her head just enough to find him already looking at her. Her emotions overwhelmed her, they choked her, so she could only nod at him, jaw clenched, eyes teary.Â
For the first time in a long time, the future didn't feel like something waiting to take him from her. It felt like something the two of them might actually reach together.
Emily Salvatore left Virginia after her brother died and moved to Los Angeles and she ran into Glenn Powell while she was getting coffee and he asked her out and then they started dating and then they started having feelings for each other and he asked he to be his girlfriend and then 1 year later he asked her to marry him and then they slept together and then 2 months later she founds out she is pregnant and she tells him and can you make it smut please and thank you
Hi! As you can see in my blog description, my requests are currently closed. xx
Summary: Eighty-five years after Soldier Boy left you behind, he finds you frozen, kept as leverage, and drags you back into a world you never got to live. Far from Voughtâs spotlight, you and Ben try to stitch a marriage back together from ash.
(sequel to "the softest thing")
Pairing: Soldier Boy x Reader
Warnings: Language, angst
Word Count: 10178
DISCLAIMER: Everything is purely fiction. I do not intend to attack or hurt anyone. The story is, of course, entirely made up and meant for entertainment purposes.
The file hit his lap. Ben looked down with the kind of flat, exhausted annoyance he had been wearing since he woke up in that obscene room high over the city. Homelanderâs room. Homelander stood across from him bright-eyed.
âThink about it againâ, he had said. Then the file.
Ben almost told him to go fuck himself twice. His fingers were already closing around the folder to throw it. Then he saw the label. A name. Not yours when you were his wife. Not Mrs. anything. Not the name on the marriage license, or the bills, or the little card at the dry cleaner back when there had still been ordinary days. Your name. The one from before him.
Ben went still. The suite got very quiet.
Ben looked down at the folder again. SUBJECT STATUS: CRYOGENIC CONTAINMENT STABLE
For one second his brain refused to understand the words in the right order. Then it did.
His thumb slipped under the edge and opened the file.
The first page was a photograph. Black-and-white. Studio-lit. Clinical in a way that made his stomach turn. You were in your twenties in it.
He knew that before the file told him, because he knew your face. Not the lined, careful face you might have worn if life had kept happening to you. Not the older version time should have made. This was you as you had been when he left you. Soft mouth, watchful eyes, hair set neatly back from your face, trying so hard in the picture to look composed that it hurt to see.
Twenty-seven. Frozen there. Eighty-five years gone and not a day on your face.
Ben stopped breathing. Below the photograph, line after line of text blurred and sharpened and blurred again.
Initial retrieval.
Unauthorized domestic association with asset.
Emotional leverage viability high.
Compound V survivability unexpectedly successful.
Long-term storage authorized.
Pressure contingency.
Pressure contingency.
Pressure contingency.
His hand tightened on the page hard enough to crease it.
Across the room, Homelander lifted his glass and watched him with open interest. âShe´s aliveâ.
Ben did not look up. The suite had narrowed to the file in his hands and the sound of blood rushing hot and violent in his ears.
There were more pages. Medical charts. Temperature logs. Monitoring summaries. A diagram of some buried facility with sectors blacked out in thick ink. One page clipped in later than the rest with a new date stamped at the top and a note:
Subject remains non-public. Retention advised. Utility value may increase if Soldier Boy becomes noncompliant.
Ben stared at that line until the letters stopped being letters and became something else. Something with teeth.
He had thought leaving you had been the worst thing he ever did to you.
Not because he had not done worse things to other people. He had. Plenty. Enough to wake sweating with names he never let himself say out loud.
But leaving you, walking out of that little kitchen for good, letting Vought sand down whatever was left of Ben until Soldier Boy fit cleanly over the top, had always sat in him like rust. Hidden. Eating through from the inside.
And all that time⌠All that goddamn timeâŚ
They had had you.
Kept.
Stored.
âI figured that might get your attentionâ.
Ben lifted his head then. Slowly. He had looked dangerous before. Hungover, heavy-eyed, broad across the shoulders even in borrowed clothes. Now he looked like something much older and uglier than danger.
Homelanderâs expression flickered, just a little, delighted and cautious at once.
âShe was always thereâ, he said lightly, as if discussing an old account finally brought current. âCute trick, really. Vought keeps all sorts of contingencies. You of all people should appreciate preparednessâ.
Ben rose from the couch.
âSoâ, Homelander said. âNow that you understand the leverage, are you ready to be useful?â.
âYou knewâ.
Homelander tilted his head. âI know lots of thingsâ.
âYou knewâ, Ben said again.
The file hung at his side, crushed under his fingers now, your photograph bent where his grip had warped the paper.
Homelander gave a small shrug. âI knew enoughâ.
That was all it took. Ben crossed the room. He caught Homelander by the throat and hit him through the edge of the bar. Marble split. Bottles exploded and glass sprayed the room.
Homelander laughed. Even half-crushed under Soldier Boyâs hand, he laughed.
âAhâ, he choked out, eyes bright and mad, âthere he isâ.
Ben hit him again. This time the sound was wetter. Angrier. A lamp went over. A slab of black stone cracked down the middle.
Homelanderâs smile came back bloodied.
âSheâs aliveâ, he rasped. âThatâs the important partâ.
Benâs fingers tightened at his throat. For one terrible second, he really might have killed him. Then Homelander, even pinned and bruised and half-grinning through blood, said the one thing that cut clean through the red:
âYou kill me, you lose herâ.
Ben froze. Homelander smiled wider despite the hand at his neck.
Ben looked at him and saw, all at once, every Vought man he had ever hated. The executives with polished shoes. The handlers. The doctors. The ones who turned human beings into concepts and concepts into assets and assets into pressure. Homelander was just the latest model, shinier, but made from the same rotten blueprint.
Very slowly, Ben let him go.
Homelander staggered back, still smiling because he could not help himself. Because getting under skin was the only intimacy he understood.
Ben wiped his bleeding palm on his shirt and looked down at the file again. Your picture stared back up at him. Twenty-seven.
A whole life stolen and held in a drawer.
His chest went tight in a way no fight had ever managed. Not even Russia. Not the furnace. Not the years in a tube under a foreign sky while his own name turned into a mascot and then a joke and then a warning.
You.
He thought of the side yard between your houses. Your mittened fingers tucked into his elbow. Your voice, soft and bossy at sixteen: Hold still. The little kitchen table where you had cleaned blood off his face while his fatherâs voice still rang in his ears, calling him a fucking disappointment. The way you had looked at him when nobody else looked at him like there was anything worth saving.
He had left you.
That was his sin.
But this⌠This was something else.
They had taken what he left behind and turned it into inventory.
Homelander straightened. âGet Butcher for meâ, he said, as if the room were not half-destroyed around them. âAnd I show you where she itsâ.
-
The air bit cold enough to sting the back of your throat just breathing it. Frost filmed the pipes overhead. Ben stood in the middle of the bunker, bloody from wrist to collar. Some of it was his. Most of it wasnât. Bodies lay where they had fallen. One by the far control panel, neck bent wrong over a spill of shattered glass. Two by the blast door, rifles kicked out of reach. One half-slumped against the wall. Another near the alarm box, hand frozen inches from the switch he never got to hit in time.
Ben had not made much noise doing it. That was what frightened him now, standing there with the little remote in his hand and your tank in front of him.
Not the killing itself. He had done too much of that for it to feel new.
Not even the speed of it.
It was how easy it had been. How clean. How Soldier Boy it had felt.
The remote was small in his palm. One red button under a flip-cover guard. Ridiculous, really, that after eighty-five years, after Russia and fire and Butcher and Homelander and all the rot in between, the distance between him and you had come down to one ugly little button.
He stared at it. Did not move. In front of him, behind a curved wall of glass gone pearly with cold, you stood upright in the tank. Frozen. Perfectly still. Twenty-seven.
That was the first thing that had wrecked him when Homelander shoved the file at him in the tower. Not the reports. Not the coordinates. Not even the word cryogenic typed in neat black letters above your name.
Your age. Twenty-seven.
He had been old enough to rot and be reborn and rot again. The world had gone through wars and presidents and hairstyles and goddamn moons and computers in peopleâs pockets.
He had been buried under Russian steel while his own legend got sold by men who had never once had to dirty their own hands.
And you were still twenty-seven.
Still wearing the same face he remembered from the last years before he left.
Softer in rest than in life, maybe, because whatever fear or sorrow Vought had dragged through you hadnât made it through the ice.
Your hair was pinned back from your face by frost and suspension gel and machinery he did not understand. Your lashes lay dark against your skin. Your mouth looked pale and closed and familiar enough to stop his heart. You looked exactly like all those years ago.
And the second he saw you, all the time between then and now collapsed so violently it left him dizzy.
The little house. The kitchen table. Rain on the windows. Your pink satin nightgown. Your face wet with tears while he stood in the doorway and let Soldier Boy win.
He had imagined finding you a hundred different ways on the drive out here. Older. Dead. Bones in a box. A grave with some false name.
He had not imagined this.
You looked like you could open your eyes any second and ask why he was home so late.
Benâs fingers tightened around the remote until the casing creaked.
He was afraid. Afraid of pressing a button. B
ecause once he did, it became real. Once he did, there would be no more distance between the idea of you and your body in front of him.
You might wake and not know him. You might wake and know him too well. You might look at him and see only the man who left. Worseâyou might not wake right.
Vought had held you for eighty-five years like inventory. Shot you full of V and put you under glass. Used your name as leverage in files. He had no reason to trust anything about what came next.
âJesus Christâ. He stepped closer to the tank.
Up close, he could see where frost feathered over the seams of the metal braces holding the glass in place.
Tubes snaked from the back of the chamber into your arms, your spine, the base of your skull. Machines had been kissing you longer than he had.
The thought made something black roll over in him.
He lifted his free hand and pressed his palm to the glass. The cold bit instantly through blood and skin.
Behind the fogged surface, your face stayed calm. Untouched by any of it. Soft in that old familiar way that used to wreck him even when he was a boy with split knuckles and too much pride.
You had always looked gentler than the world deserved.
He bowed his head once, just enough that his forehead nearly hit the glass. Blood from his hand smeared across the frost in a rust-dark streak. For a second, all he could see was another kind of red. Lipstick on a collar. Then your tears. Your wedding band glinting while you tried not to cry in front of him.
All the little moments he had buried under war and whiskey and Vought work and rage because digging them up would mean admitting what he had done with his own hands.
His thumb found the edge of the safety cover on the remote and flipped it open. Benâs heartbeat kicked hard. Then something inside him, something older than Soldier Boy and uglier than pride and maybe closer to Ben than he had been in years, made the decision for him. He pressed the button.
For one horrible second, nothing happened. Then the chamber gave a low hydraulic thud. Lights changed from green to amber. Somewhere under the floor, machinery woke in layersâpumps, vents, hissing valves releasing pressure in precise bursts.
Frost shivered loose from the tank seams and fell in powdery sheets. The hum deepened into a mechanical roar.
Ben took one step back, then stopped himself and stood his ground.
Amber turned to white. Warm fluid began draining in spirals around your body, slipping down the inside of the glass in pale pink streaks where blood had mixed into the solution somewhere in the tubing.
Numbers on the monitor started changing faster now. You did not move.
Benâs throat tightened until breathing hurt. âCome onâ, he muttered.
The glass clouded, then cleared in patches. Your skin changed color by degrees, from the waxy stillness of preserved flesh to something nearer living. Frost melted from your lashes. One lock of hair slipped loose against your temple. The line of your mouth softened as the cold released it. Still nothing.
Ben stepped closer again without realizing he had. The chamber hissed. A latch somewhere deep in the mechanism disengaged with a heavy clunk. Then your fingers twitched. So small he might have imagined it in another life. Not now. Ben stopped breathing altogether.
A second later your hand jerked again, this time harder, tendons pulling under your skin. Your chest gave a shallow, ragged hitch as if your body had forgotten the shape of breath and was trying to relearn it by force.
The front seal cracked with a metallic snap. Ben was moving before the door had fully opened. It swung out in a gust of freezing vapor, and you pitched forward with the dead weight of someone waking into gravity after a century.
Tubes tore free. Glassy fluid spilled over the lip of the tank onto the floor. Your knees buckled instantly.
Ben caught you.
Your body convulsed against him. Then you coughed. Ben looked down and saw the tube shifting at the back of your throat. âShitâ.
He dropped to one knee in the spill of coolant and freezing fluid, one arm locked behind your shoulders to keep you upright. The other hand hovered for a second over the tubing, his fingers slick with blood and condensation.
You gagged again, harder this time. âEasyâ, he said, though his own voice was shot through with something dangerously close to panic. âEasy, sweetheart, I got itâ.
He had no idea if he did.
He slid two fingers carefully to the base of the tube, trying to ignore how unnatural it looked disappearing past your lips, trying to ignore the old terror that came whenever your body was involved and his hands had to do something delicate.
His touch, for once, was painstakingly light. Your throat worked around the plastic. Another cough tore through you. Ben pulled. The moment it cleared your mouth you folded forward with a choking gasp. Your forehead knocked weakly against his collarbone. Cold fluid soaked through the front of his shirt where you leaned against him. You kept coughing. Your whole body shook with it.
âBreatheâ, he said, low and rough. âCome on. There you goâ.
There were wires everywhere. Thin sensor leads plastered to your skin. Adhesive pads at your icollarbone, your ribs, your temples. A cluster of ports and lines trailed from your back and arms and disappeared into the ruined chamber behind you.
The monitor to the side was beeping too fast now, numbers climbing. Ben glanced at it once. He didnât know what most of it meant. But he knew the sound of a heart trying to decide whether it belonged in a living body again. Fast. Wrong. Then skipping. Then racing.
His jaw tightened. âCâmonâ, he muttered, more fiercely now. âDonât do thisâ.
He reached for the first wire at your chest and peeled it back with maddening care. Then another. Then another. The adhesive came loose with soft wet sounds against your skin. His fingers shook once when one of the leads snagged in your hair and you flinched faintly even half-conscious.
âSorryâ, he said instantly. The word left his mouth before he could stop it.
He stared at your face after saying it, as if even now some part of him expected you to open your eyes just to tell him it was too late for apologies. But your eyes stayed shut. Your mouth was parted, drawing in broken little breaths that. Every now and then another cough shuddered through you, weaker than the one before.
Ben stripped the last wire from your throat and shoulder, then found more at your wrists. At the inside of your elbows. At the base of your neck. Whoever had put you in there had instrumented every inch of you like they were trying to measure a miracle and own it.
He tore the leads free one by one. The monitor screamed once before the rhythm smoothed. Still too quick and shallow. But steadier.
Ben went still long enough to listen. And there was your heartbeat. Fast. Frightened⌠Human.
He frowned and looked toward the monitor again. That made no sense. They had pumped you full of V. He knew that from the file, from the notes. He had come down here half-prepared to find something else in the tank. Some glowing-eyed Vought experiment wearing your face. Some twisted answer to a question nobody should have asked.
But your heart didnât sound like his. Didnât sound like Homelanderâs, his own or any of the monsters and mascots he had spent too much of his life around. It sounded breakable. Human.
Your breathing hitched again and your eyelids fluttered.
Benâs pulse hammered. He had faced gunfire with less dread. He could fight. Kill. Blow through steel doors. March into a bunker alone and paint the walls with guards and not blink. But waiting for your eyes to open⌠that nearly undid him.
Because now there was nothing between you. Now it was just you waking up. And him. The man who left. The husband who broke your heart before strangers finished the job. The one who had not come back in time. Not in 1970. Not in 1980. Not in any of the years after that.
The one who had let himself become Soldier Boy so completely that the company had thought the only way to control him was to freeze the last soft part of his old life and keep it in storage.
Ben sat back on his heels in the freezing slush and watched your face with the kind of terrible focus that made everything else disappear. A dozen possibilities chased each other through his head, none of them good.
You might wake confused. You might wake screaming. You might wake and remember only the worst of him. You might wake and hate him on sight.
You had every right.
That last thought lodged in him hardest.
Did you still hate him? Worseâhad the hatred had eighty-five years to sharpen somewhere inside whatever dreaming half-life Vought had trapped you in?
Or had the ice kept you right at the moment of your ruin, your grief as fresh as blood under skin?
Ben rubbed a hand once over his mouth and came away with red still drying there from someone else. He looked down at it with sudden disgust and wiped it on the concrete.
Your heartbeat jumped again. His attention snapped back to you instantly.
âHeyâ, he said. âStay with meâ.
Your fingers closed weakly around two of his without any strength in them at all. The contact hit him so hard it almost made him bow forward.
There you were. Cold. Half-conscious. Newly dragged from eighty-five years of dark. And still, by some reflex too old for either of you to kill, your hand had reached.
Ben swallowed hard enough it hurt. âI knowâ, he said softly, though you had not spoken. âI knowâ.
He didnât know what he meant by it. That he knew you were frightened? That he knew he shouldnât be the one you woke up to? That he knew exactly what kind of man he had been the last time you saw him properly and how impossible it was to ask for anything gentler from this moment?
Maybe all of it.
Your breathing steadied a little more. Still shaky. Still too quick. But less torn-up on the way in. Less like drowning.
The lights buzzed overhead. Down the corridor, a distant alarm warbled and cut out, maybe killed by the same broken circuits that had left this section half running on backup. Cold fog curled low around the empty chamber. Corpses stared at the ceiling in silence. And in the middle of all of it, Soldier Boy knelt on a concrete floor holding your hand like it was the only thing in the world he couldnât afford to break.
Your lashes trembled again. This time your eyes opened halfway. Blurred. Unfocused. They moved over the room in fragmentsâwhite light, concrete, the silver of the blankets around you, the dark shape of him kneeling in front of you.
Your brow drew faintly, confusion coming first. Then discomfort. Then the weak animal fear of waking somewhere wrong.
Ben saw the exact second your gaze snagged on his face and tried to make sense of it.
He was older. The face was still Benâs. The damage wasnât.
Recognition came slowly and painfully in pieces. Your lips parted. No sound at first.
Benâs chest went tight. âDonât push itâ, he said, instinctively rough, then caught himself and lowered his voice. âYou donât gottaââ.
Your mouth worked again. This time a thread of breath shaped itself into a word so faint he almost thought he imagined it. âBenâŚ?â.
There was no hate in your voice. Not yet. Not understanding either. Just stunned, impossible recognition.
His eyes closed for one beat. When he opened them again, something naked had slipped through the cracks in his face before he could stop it. âYeahâ, he said. âItâs meâ.
Your gaze held on him, still struggling to focus, still dragged under by cold and waking and the sheer wrongness of the room. He could see your mind trying to fit him somewhere it understood and failing.
The last Ben you knew should have been twenty-something and standing in a little house with his shadow too long on the wall. Not this.
Your fingers tightened weakly around his. Then your gaze dropped to the blood on him. To the bodies beyond. Back to the tank. Confusion turned to fear in a quick, bright flare.
Ben felt it like a knife. âNoâ, he said at once, too fast. âNo, easy. Youâre okayâ.
That was a lie, and both of them knew it.
But he could not bear the look in your eyes when it landed on the room.
He shifted closer, slowly enough to give you time to recoil if you wanted to. You tensed anyway. Only a little. Only instinct. Still enough. Ben stopped right there. His throat worked once. âI knowâ. The words were almost to himself.
He loosened his hand under yours, giving you the room to let go if that was what you wanted. His other hand stayed braced on the concrete beside your hip.
âYou were in thereâ, he said quietly, glancing toward the tank. âThey had you under. Long timeâ. His mouth tightened. âI got you outâ.
Your eyes flicked to the tank again, then back to him. Your voice, when it came, was no more than a scrape. âHowâŚ?â.
Ben let out a breath through his nose.
How did one answer that? How did one bridge war and Vought and Homelander and files and eighty-five years buried under concrete and ice?
He chose the only part that mattered first. âI found youâ.
Your lashes fluttered. Confusion still clouded everything. âYou leftâ, you whispered. The words were so weak they should not have had any force at all. They hit him like a bullet.
Ben went motionless.
Of course. Of course that was the first clear thing. Not the bunker. Not the blood. Not the impossible machinery.
Him leaving. The door. The kitchen table. The keys.
Your mind had come back through ice and nightmare and whatever half-life Vought had forced on you, and the first solid fact it reached for was the one that hurt most.
He looked at you and did not even try to defend himself. âYeahâ, he said.
Your face changed, not into anger exactly, because you were too weak yet for anything so hot. More like the old wound had opened before the rest of you had even finished waking.
Ben felt panic rise in him then. Helplessness. The kind he had always hated most.
Just then, your world tipped sideways.
One second you were looking at him and the next, everything in you simply gave out.
Your fingers slipped from his. Your eyes rolled shut.
Ben caught you before your head hit the concrete. âHeyâ.
The word cracked out of him, sharp with fear.
He felt for your pulse before he even realized he was doing it, two fingers at the side of your throat, then lower when his hand shook too much to trust the first reading.
Your heartbeat was still there. Fast, too thin, but there. Your breathing came shallow and uneven against the front of his shirt. You were alive. Just unconscious.
Ben closed his eyes for half a second and let the relief hit him hard enough to make his teeth grit.
Then he wrapped the blankets tighter around you, slid one arm behind your back and the other beneath your knees, and lifted you with a care that would have looked unnatural on anybody who knew what his hands could do.
Your head fell against his chest. Damp hair brushed his throat.
He got out of the bunker before the next wave came.
More alarms. More men. Maybe Vought cleanup. Maybe Homelander changing his mind.
He didnât stay to find out.
The car crooked in the gravel behind the bunker entrance, engine still idling.
He laid you in the back seat of the car heâd taken from the last guard first, then stopped, swore under his breath, and moved you again.
âNoâ, he mumbled.
Not back there. Not where he couldnât hear every breath right beside him.
So he settled you in the front instead, reclined the seat as far as it would go, belted you in with maddening care, then pulled both emergency blankets up to your chin before slamming the door and getting behind the wheel.
He took back roads first, then frontage roads, then some dark stretch of highway lined with shut gas stations and chain restaurants glowing in the distance. He didnât know where he was going until he saw a motel sign.
The place sat off a quiet road outside town, the sort of motel people used when they didnât want questions or company.
Ben carried you in through the side entrance of room twelve with the key still warm from the clerkâs hand.
Inside, the room was dim and ugly and blessedly quiet.
He set you down on the bed and for a second he just stood over you.
Your face was pale against the motel pillow. Your lips still had that bluish cast around the edges that scared the hell out of him. Coolant and thawed frost and fluid had soaked through everything. Blood, other peopleâs, maybe some yours, marked the silver blanket and his ruined jacket wrapped around your shoulders.
You looked small.
Not fragile exactly. You had always hated that word. But small in a way the world had no business making you.
Ben turned on the bathroom light. Found washcloths, thin towels, a sealed little bar of soap. Ran the sink until water came hot enough to steam.
He went back out with a wet towel and sat on the edge of the bed.
Then he hesitated.
Not because he hadnât seen your body. Christ, he had. A thousand times, in better years and worse. In satin and cotton and nothing at all. In the narrow bed of your first house with summer heat making the sheets stick, in dark mornings before he left for work, in the rare soft pauses where he had once believed wanting and keeping were the same thing.
That was exactly why it hit him so hard now.
Because all those memories came from a life before he broke the right to any of this.
Still, you were half-frozen and unconscious and shaking every now and then in little leftover aftershocks. He could not leave you soaked in chemicals and blood.
So he did what needed doing. Carefully.
He cleaned you with warm water and the washcloth, rinsing fluid and blood from your arms, your shoulders, your legs, your throat. Wiped the residue of adhesive from your skin where the sensors had been. Smoothed damp hair away from your face with fingers that dwarfed your temple and yet somehow barely touched.
Every now and then he stopped just to listen.
Heartbeat. Breathing. Human. Still there.
When you shivered hard enough to make your teeth knock together in your sleep, he stripped off the ruined top half of his suit without a second thought. Underneath, he had the long-sleeve undershirt Vought had built under the costume warm from his own skin. He pulled it over his head and for a second stood there in only his suit pants.
Then he dressed you in it.
That took longer than it should have. One limp arm at a time. Your head supported in the crook of his elbow while he eased the shirt down over you. The fabric swallowed you whole, hem falling to your thighs, sleeves past your wrists. His shirt on your body looked indecently intimate in a way that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with history.
He hated how much that undid him.
By the time he got you under the blankets, you were warmer than before. Not warm enough. But no longer ice. Ben sat beside you and stayed there.
-
At 2:07, you woke with a gasp that hurt all the way down.
The room lurched into view in broken pieces.
A yellow lamp with a stained shade. Floral curtains pulled almost shut. A ceiling painted the color of old nicotine. The stale smell of motel soap, dust and somebody elseâs cigarettes soaked into the carpet long before you ever got here.
Your body felt wrong in every possible direction and for one wild second, you did not know where you were.
Then you tried to move and everything came back badly.
The tank. The bunker. The blood.
Ben.
You pushed yourself up on instinct. Pain and dizziness hit at once. Your head swam. Your stomach turned over hard enough to make you press one hand against it. The blankets slid down your lap. Something warm and steady moved in the chair beside the bed.
âDonât do thatâ.
His voice came low and immediate. Awake already. Waiting.
You turned your head.
Ben sat in the chair by the bed with his elbows on his knees. He had no shirt on. Only those green superhero suit pants still clung to him.
He looked tired enough to split. His hair was damp, pushed back from his face by impatient fingers. There was gray at his temples now, not the gray of age so much as damage that had decided to show itself there first. Faint scars cut across his chest and shoulder, old and pale. His eyes stayed fixed on you with the kind of concentration men used on bombs.
You realized then that what you were wearing was not yours.
A dark long-sleeve shirt swallowed your body whole. It smelled like soap and something underneath it that was unmistakably him. Not cologne. Not city. Not the chemical glitter that had clung to him in the last years before he leftâŚ. Just Ben.
Your throat went tight.
He saw your gaze drop to the shirt.
âYou were freezingâ, he said. The explanation came out rough, almost defensive, like he was bracing for accusation. âYou had all that fluid shit on youâ.
You tried to speak too quickly. Your voice came out scraped raw.
âWhatââ. You stopped to swallow.
Ben was already reaching for the bottle on the nightstand. You took a sip and looked around the room again, slower this time. Cheap dresser. One door with a heavy chain lock. A purse-sized Gideon Bible on the nightstand.
âThisâŚâ. Your voice failed. You tried again. âWhere are we?â.
âMotelâ, he said. His eyes did not leave your face. âOutside the cityâ.
That answered almost nothing.
You licked dry lips and looked at him more carefully. Really looked.
The last time you had seen him properly, he had still been young in a way that made sense. Dangerous maybe, yes. Mean, yes. Already turning into something⌠cruel. But still recognizably anchored to the world you knew.
This Ben was not that.
The face was the same underneath. The mouth. The brow. The shape of his jaw when he clenched it. But timeâhowever it had touched himâhad done it from the inside out. He looked like a man who had been lived through by too much. A man who had survived things badly.
Your eyes dropped to the green pants again. To the ridiculous costume piece in a room that might have existed nowhere in the world you remembered.
Cold crept into you from somewhere deeper than your skin.
âWhat year is it?â.
Ben went still. You saw the way his shoulders locked and the way his eyes changed. As if this had been the question he had been dreading most.
When he answered, he did not soften it.
â2026â.
You stared at him.
The number meant nothing for a beat. Then too much.
Your hand loosened around the bottle. âNoâ, you said.
Benâs jaw tightened. âYeahâ.
âNoâ.
You shook your head once, then regretted it instantly when the room tipped again. The clock on the nightstand glowed red. 2:08. That horrible little digital brightness alone looked wrong enough to make your chest pull tight.
âThatâs notâŚâ. You swallowed. âThatâs not funnyâ.
His face changed at that. Something like pain crossed it fast and was gone.
âIâm not jokingâ.
You looked at the lamp. The clock. The cut of the curtains. The shape of the phone on the nightstand, plastic and smooth and alien compared to what memory expected. The air itself felt different. Colder in some mechanical way, flatter, less alive than the rooms you remembered.
You pressed your hand harder to your stomach.
Eighty-five years.
The number opened under your feet like a trapdoor.
Your mind reached for smaller things instead. Safer things. The last details it could still trust.
Rain on the kitchen windows.
The tick of the clock above the stove.
His keys on the table.
The newspaper on the floor.
Your breath started coming too fast.
Ben heard it immediately. He pushed out of the chair before you could register the motion, then stopped himself halfway to the bed, hands open at his sides, as if remembering all at once that moving fast toward you was no longer neutral.
âHeyâ, he said, lower now. âBreatheâ.
You looked at him and wanted to ask ten things at once.
Where had he been.
What had they done to you.
Why were you still twenty-seven.
Why did he look the same and not the same.
Who had dressed you.
Why did the room smell like bleach and old heat.
Why, why, why.
Instead what came out was, âI was deadâ.
âNoâ.
The answer was immediate. Too sharp. Almost angry.
Ben dragged a hand over his mouth and forced his voice back down. âNo. They had you under. Frozenâ. His mouth twisted around the word, hating it. âLong timeâ.
Your eyes burned. âWho?â.
âVoughtâ.
The name sat between you like acid.
You looked away. Of course. Of course it was them. Who else took people and turned them into property with a clean desk and a typed memo?
Your fingers curled into the blanket. âWhy?â.
He laughed once through his nose. No humor in it. âFor meâ.
You turned back to him. He did not look away.
âThey kept you as leverageâ, he said. âPressure. In case I ever stepped out of lineâ.
You looked down at your own hands. Pale against dark fabric. A strangerâs motel light on skin that had not aged. The shirt sleeve hanging over your knuckles, his shirt, because there had been no time or right or choice left in anything.
âFor youâ, you repeated.
Benâs throat worked once. âYeahâ.
A hundred feelings moved through you at once, too tangled to separateâshock, fear, grief, humiliation so old it woke up instantly, and somewhere under all of it a raw little thread of anger that had somehow survived even the ice.
You laughed once, softly and without any joy in it. âThat sounds about rightâ.
He flinched.
You had not meant to make him do that. Or maybe you had. You didnât know. Your whole body felt like it belonged to someone else.
Silence settled.
Ben stayed standing where he was, not near enough to crowd you, not far enough to pretend he wasnât waiting for every breath.
You looked at the motel door with the chain lock, then the window, then back at him. The movement was instinctive. Measuring exits. Safety. The habit felt new and old at the same time.
Ben noticed. âThis place is cleanâ, he said. âI checkedâ.
You almost smiled at the phrasing. Almost. It died before it got there.
âDid you kill them?â.
Ben went very still.
You already knew the answer. You had seen the blood on him in the bunker. The bodies. The way he carried violence now like a second skin. Still, some part of you needed to hear whether he would lie.
He didnât.
âYesâ.
You closed your eyes.
When you opened them, he was still watching you with that unbearable focus.
âThey were keeping you in a tankâ, he said, voice roughening. âI wasnât gonna ask nicelyâ.
No. He wouldnât have.
That answer should have frightened you more than it did.
Maybe because there was no room left for new kinds of fear yet. Only the old one, sitting between your ribs with his name on it.
You shifted under the blankets and the motion pulled a small, involuntary wince out of you. Ben caught it instantly.
âWhat hurts?â.
You blinked at him. The question came so fast it sounded as though he had been waiting to ask it for hours.
âNothingâ, you said automatically.
His expression said he didnât believe you for a second.
âEverything?â, he tried instead, and there was something almost grimly dry in the adjustment, something old-Ben enough to catch you off guard.
A tired, disbelieving breath escaped you.
âPretty muchâ.
That did something to his face. Softened wasnât the word. Wounded maybe. Or maybe just made him look like a man listening to damage he could neither fix nor fight.
He sat back down in the chair slowly. He leaned forward, forearms on his thighs, giving you less height to have to look up at. That seemed deliberate too. You watched him for a while.
âYou were waiting for me to wake upâ.
Ben looked at the floor for a second before answering. âYeahâ.
âHow long?â.
He flicked a glance at the clock. âCouple hoursâ.
The absurdity of that hit you strangely. The world had moved nearly a century. Vought had stolen your life. You had woken in a motel wearing your estranged husbandâs undershirt while he sat shirtless in superhero pants beside the bed like a sentry.
And still some small, intimate truth survived in the middle of all that ruin: he had waited.
You didnât know what to do with that. Neither did he, by the look of him.
He was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, lower than before, âYou can go back to sleepâ.
You almost laughed.
âBenâ, you whispered. âI woke up in 2026â.
His mouth flattened. âYeahâ.
âI donât think Iâm sleepingâ.
No answer at first.
Then, almost under his breath, âFair enoughâ.
Around three, Ben started talking, because the silence had become its own kind of cruelty.
He gave you the shortest version he knew how to give, which still wasnât short, because his life after you had been one long chain of violence, bad choices, and men using one another like weapons.
He told you about Countess first. Not gently. Ben had never known how to make ugly truths pretty.
He sat there half-turned in that ugly motel chair, forearms on his knees, looking at the carpet instead of you when he said, âYeah. I loved her. In my wayâ.
The words hit low and hard. You kept your face still, but your fingers curled tighter in the blanket.
He must have heard the change in your breathing, because his jaw tightened. For a second you thought he might take it back, soften it, say something to save you from the shape of it.
He didnât.
âShe wasnât youâ, he said after a beat, rougher now. âNever wasâ.
That should not have helped.
It did and didnât, both at once.
Then came the rest. His team. The betrayal. Countess turning on him with the others. The Russians taking him. Decades in a lab, drugged and buried and cut open and studied. He told it flatly, like if he stripped the feeling out of it first, maybe neither of you would have to touch it.
You listened with your arms around yourself. Every now and then you asked a question, and every answer only seemed to make the world wider and colder.
Then Butcher. His guys. Homelander. Vought changing shape over the years without changing its soul. Companies swallowing countries. Supes becoming celebrities and products and idols and nightmares all at once. The world getting louder, faster, filthier, greedier. Men in suits still running everything, just with better technology and whiter teeth.
You sat there trying to imagine all of it and couldnât.
Television everywhere.
Phones without cords.
Cars that barely made noise.
People living half their lives inside screens.
And then, for some ungodly reason, Ben spent far too long explaining porn.
At first you thought you had misheard him.
Then you realized, with growing horror, that no, he was seriously trying to explain the scale of modern depravity through the existence of instant filth on demand, as if that were somehow one of the key pillars of civilization you needed updated on.
âBenâ, you said at last, appalled, while he sat there shirtless in his green suit pants talking in the calmest voice imaginable about how âthereâs whole websites for every weird thing a person can think ofâ.
âWhat?â, he said, actually looking offended. âItâs relevantâ.
âIt is not relevantâ.
âIt tells you a lot about the cultureâ.
âIt tells me people need churchâ.
That shut him up for half a second.
Then one corner of his mouth twitched.
You saw it and hated that part of you still recognized that almost-smile.
âThis is funny to you?â, you asked.
âA littleâ.
âBenjaminâ.
That made the smile vanish properly, because you only used his full name when you were genuinely scandalized, and apparently even after eighty-five years that still worked on him.
You straightened under the blankets as much as your weak body would allow and gave him, in your raw half-frozen voice in a cheap motel room in 2026, a tired, sincere lesson about morality, modesty, Christian decency and the collapse of civilization.
Ben sat there and took it.
Mostly because he looked too tired to fight.
Partly, maybe, because hearing you sound like yourself again, even lecturing him, did something to his face he could not hide fast enough.
When you were done, he rubbed a hand over his mouth and muttered, âYou wake up after eighty-five years and your first real opinion is that everybody needs Jesusâ.
âYesâ, you said. âObviouslyâ.
That got a breath of laughter out of him. Quiet. Brief. Gone almost immediately.
From here, Ben should have let it go there.
He should have taken the small, strange mercy of that moment. Your outrage, his almost-laugh, the fact that for half a second the room had felt less like a grave dug up and more like two people who once knew how to talk.
But Ben was still Ben.
Which meant the second the air got almost manageable, he ruined it.
He leaned back in the chair, scrubbed a hand over his jaw, and said, with the kind of false casualness that was never a good sign, âYou should probably hear about Herogasm from me tooâ.
You blinked. âWhatâ.
His eyes flicked to you, then away. âItâs⌠a thingâ.
âA thingâ, you repeated.
âYeahâ.
The way he said it made your stomach drop before you even understood why.
You stared at him. âBenjaminâ.
That full name again. Sharper this time.
He shifted in the chair, suddenly looking like he knew heâd stepped wrong and had decided, in typical fashion, to keep walking anyway. âLook, Iâm telling you now because if you find out some other way later, itâll be worseâ.
You sat up straighter despite the ache in your body. âFind out whatâ.
Ben exhaled through his nose.
âItâs this yearlyââ. He made a vague motion with one hand. âSupes-only event. Vought pretends it doesnât know about it. Everybody knows about itâ.
You kept staring.
His mouth flattened. âBasically a giant degenerate free-for-allâ.
Your mouth fell open.
For one full second, you could not even form words.
âA what?â.
That won you the smallest twitch at the corner of his mouth, which only made your horror worse.
âA giant degenerate free-for-allâ, he repeated, less flippant this time, as if he knew very well how it sounded and had accepted that there was no better version.
You looked around wildly as though the motel room itself might confirm you had finally lost your mind. Then your eyes snapped back to him.
âAnd youâ, you said, each word distinct with disbelief, âwere involvedâ.
Ben had the nerve to look almost rueful.
âI kind of started itâ.
You made a sound so scandalized it barely qualified as language.
Then you grabbed the nearest pillow and threw it at him.
Not hard. You were too weak for hard. But with all the outrage and heartbreak your body could muster at four in the morning in a motel in 2026.
The pillow hit him square in the face.
Ben caught it a beat too late and let it fall into his lap.
For one stunned second, he looked at you over the top of it like he couldnât quite believe youâd done that.
Then, because he was exhausted and half-broken and still somehow capable of being amused at exactly the wrong moment, he let out a quiet huff of laughter.
You pointed at him from under the blankets, appalled. âDo not laughâ.
âIâm not laughingâ.
âYou areâ.
âA littleâ.
âBenâ.
That cut it off again. He dropped the pillow to the floor and held up both hands in surrender, though there was still a trace of something almost warm in his face. âAll right. All rightâ.
You stared at him in open horror.
âA yearlyââ, you broke off, unable to even repeat it properly. âWith other peopleâ.
He rubbed the back of his neck. âYeahâ.
Your cheeks felt hot now, which was ridiculous after everything. After tanks and bunkers and eighty-five years and blood and Vought and the end of the world as you knew it. And yet thisâthis obscene, careless, public filth attached to the man you had married in a church while wearing white gloves and trembling because you loved him so muchâthis was somehow what undid the last of your composure.
âYou are disgustingâ, you whispered.
Ben took that one. Didnât argue. Didnât posture.
Just sat there in the chair, shirtless, looking more tired than offended.
âIt was a long time agoâ, he said after a beat.
âThat is not helpingâ.
âI knowâ.
âAnd you thought I needed to know this now?â.
âYesâ.
âWhy?â.
He looked at you then and whatever joking edge had been there faded.
âBecause if you hear it from someone else, itâll sound worseâ.
You gave him a stricken, incredulous look. âHow could it possibly sound worse.â
His mouth opened. Closed. To his credit, he did not try to answer that.
The silence that followed trembled with the remains of your outrage. Your heart was beating too fast again, but for a different reason nowâless fear than a kind of mortified heartbreak, the shame of imagining too much and wishing you could imagine none of it.
Because beneath the scandal, beneath the appalled moral horror, there was something much simpler and more painful.
He was your husband.
He had been your only man. The only body you had ever made room for in your life. The only one you had ever known like that.
And now here he was, matter-of-factly admitting to entire arenas of dirt and excess and other people and acts so vulgar your mind kept swerving away from them before they fully formed.
Your eyes stung.
You looked down at the blanket before he could see it, but too late. One tear slipped free and landed dark on the fabric pooled over your knees.
Ben went still. All the humor dropped out of him at once.
âAh, hellâ, he said quietly.
You wiped at your face angrily.
âI didnât meanââ.
âYou never meanâ, you said and your voice broke halfway through.
That shut him up.
You pressed the heel of your hand to your mouth, furious with yourself now. Furious that after everything he had already told you, this was what pushed tears out. Furious that your body still kept finding new ways to humiliate you in front of him.
But it wasnât just Herogasm. It was Countess. It was the years. It was his body becoming public in every possible way while yours had been locked underground and forgotten. It was the obscene scale of all the lives he had lived without you. The filth of it only made the distance easier to picture.
Ben leaned forward in the chair, elbows on his knees again, hands hanging between them. He looked stricken in that angry, helpless way of his, like if there had been someone else in the room to hit, heâd have preferred that to watching you cry.
âI was trying to tell you straightâ, he said.
You laughed once through the tears, a soft miserable sound. âAnd that worked out beautifullyâ.
His eyes shut for half a second.
âNoâ, he muttered. âGuess notâ.
You kept your face turned down, breathing carefully, trying to stop the tears before they became more than a few. The blanket bunched under your fists.
After a moment, Ben said, lower now, âIt didnât mean anythingâ.
There were so many things wrong with that sentence you almost laughed again.
Instead you looked up at him with wet eyes and said, âThat might be the saddest partâ.
You sat there for a long time without speaking.
The tears had mostly stopped, but your face still felt tight with them. Your throat ached. The room had gone dimmer in a way that only happened toward morning, when the lamp seemed too yellow and the window too pale and everything looked exhausted with you.
Ben watched you from the chair.
He was bad at silence on a good day. Silence left too much room for things he didnât want to sit with. Guilt. Shame. Memory. The sight of you in his shirt with your eyes red from crying because of him.
So, after a few minutes of the kind of quiet that made the whole room feel held underwater, he tried again.
Not with anything important. That was how you knew he was trying.
He started telling you stupid little things about the new world. Not the big terrible ones this time. The ridiculous ones. The things that seemed to offend him personally on principle.
He told you about self-checkout machines that made customers do the cashierâs job for free.
About electric scooters left all over sidewalks âlike some kind of plagueâ.
About men in suits paying nine dollars for coffee and thanking the barista like theyâd just been handed medicine.
About something called âinfluencersâ and the look on your face at that word alone was so baffled that one corner of his mouth twitched before he could stop it.
âThey just⌠influence what?â, you asked weakly.
âEverything, apparentlyâ.
âThat is not a jobâ.
âNoâ, he said. âIt is notâ.
Then he told you about juice cleanses and gender reveal explosions and people filming themselves crying on the internet for strangers, and for the first time all night a sound escaped you that wasnât pain.
A small, startled chuckle. It slipped out while your cheeks were still damp.
The noise seemed to hit him almost as hard as your tears had. His face changed around it. Not into a smile exactly. Something quieter. More careful. As if hearing you sound like yourself, even in that tiny way, made him afraid to move too fast and lose it.
âThere she isâ, he murmured.
You wiped under one eye with the heel of your hand and gave him a tired look. âThis world sounds ridiculousâ.
âIt isâ.
âAnd immoralâ.
âThat tooâ.
âAnd badly dressedâ.
That got a real laugh out of him. Low and brief and gone quickly, but real.
âYeahâ, he said. âYouâre gonna hate half of it on sightâ.
âOnly half?â.
âMaybe seventy percentâ.
You gave a weak, watery breath that was almost another laugh.
The room loosened by one thread.
Not fixed, but loosened.
Ben shifted forward a little in the chair, elbows on his knees. The lamplight caught the line of one scar down his shoulder. He looked, suddenly, less like a myth and more like a very tired man trying and failing not to scare the one person he most wanted near him.
His hand lifted. Slowly.
You saw what he meant to do before he did it. Just brush your arm, maybe, or smooth the blanket where it had bunched near your elbow. Your body flinched back anyway. Small. Quick. Pure reflex.
Ben froze and his hand stopped in midair. Then dropped.
The look that crossed his face was so nakedly guilty it made something twist in your chest.
He looked down at his own hand like it belonged to someone else.
Then, very quietly, âIâm in control nowâ.
You didnât answer right away.
His voice roughened. âI amâ.
Ben swallowed once and kept his eyes on the floor.
âI know that doesnât mean much coming from meâ, he said. âBut itâs trueâ. A beat passed. âI spent years in Russia with every goddamn thing in me chained down and measured. Then more years after trying not to level a room every time I got pissedâ. His mouth tightened. âI know my own strength nowâ.
You watched him.
He finally looked up.
âI would never hurt you by accident againâ.
The sentence sat between you, heavy and imperfect. Not because you didnât believe he meant it. Because âby accidentâ still left too many other kinds of hurt in the room.
Maybe he knew that. Maybe that was why he looked away first.
Your voice came soft. âThat wasnât the only problem, Benâ.
His jaw flexed. âI knowâ.
And there was too much history in those two words to press any farther right then.
So you didnât. Instead you asked other things. Smaller things.
What music sounded like now. Why everyoneâs clothes looked so cheap in the brochures he found in the motel drawer. Why women wore running shoes with dresses. What a microwave was. Why cars all looked rounded.
Ben answered as best he could.
Sometimes badly.
Sometimes with surprising patience.
Sometimes with that old dry streak of humor that had once caught you off guard in kitchens and backyards and school corridors before life had filed all its edges into weapons.
By the time the clock dragged toward six, your body had started losing the fight.
The adrenaline had burned off. The shock had settled deeper. Every muscle in you felt borrowed and sore. Your eyelids turned heavy between one blink and the next. The room kept going a little soft at the edges no matter how hard you tried to keep your thoughts lined up.
Ben saw it before you said anything.
âYouâre doneâ, he said.
You frowned faintly. âIâm awakeâ.
âBarelyâ.
âI amâ.
He gave you a look. Not mean. Not even amused, exactly. Just familiar in a way that hurt.
âYou look like youâre about to fall over sitting stillâ.
You wanted to argue. Instead you yawned.
That made one side of his mouth twitch despite everything.
âYeahâ, he muttered. âThought soâ.
He stood then, slowly enough not to startle you, and crossed to the lamp.
âDonâtâ, you said, more quickly than you meant to.
His hand paused over the switch.
You looked toward the window, where the first weak gray of dawn was beginning to thin the dark. âNot all the wayâ.
Ben glanced back at you and seemed to understand.
The lamp stayed on, just dimmed lower.
Then came the awkward part. The room had one bed.
You looked at the chair. At him. At the bed. Your tired brain could not quite make those pieces into a shape that felt sensible.
Ben solved it the way he solved most things: by making a decision and standing still inside it.
âIâm not sleeping in that chairâ, he said.
The bluntness of it would have annoyed you in any other life.
Now you only looked at him through the fog of exhaustion.
âI wasnât asking you toâ.
He studied your face for a second, like he was checking whether that was true or just politeness shaped like surrender. Maybe it was both. You were too tired to sort it out.
He came to the bed carefully, pulling the blanket aside on the far edge and lying down over the comforter first, not under it, as if to prove he wasnât assuming anything. The mattress dipped with his weight. Your body noticed immediately. Tensed a little. Then, because you had nothing left in you for another flinch, slowly let go.
He kept his distance. An honest distance. A strip of mattress between you. One arm folded under his head, the other lying still on top of the blanket where you could see it.
You didnât complain.
Part of that was exhaustion. Part of it was that your thoughts had gone too loose and strange to fight anything except sleep by now.
And part of itâthough you hated admitting it, even to yourselfâwas older than all of this. Older than Vought and tanks and neon motel signs and digital clocks. Old training in your bones. A wife did not make a scene over a bed. A wife did not tell her husband no just because the world had ended and remade itself around them. Not when she was raised in the years you were. Not when love and obedience and habit had been braided together so early you could no longer always tell where one stopped and the next began.
Ben must have sensed some of that in the silence, because after a long beat he said into the dim room, âIf you want me out of the bed, say itâ.
You turned your head on the pillow and looked at him.
The offer sounded almost painful coming from him. Like it had cost him.
You were too tired to unpack that too.
âI donâtâ, you murmured.
It wasnât the whole truth. It wasnât a lie either.
He nodded once, eyes on the ceiling.
âAll rightâ.
âââââââââââ
A/N: Didnât plan on posting it this soon, but⌠well, here we go because Lila canât wait. Like always. The next one will probably be up in a week.
Also, just so you know, I had this one finished before season 5 aired đ I wrote it after that teaser of Ben in Homelanderâs suite came out. Kinda funny considering all the church and Jesus stuff⌠well, youâll see in the following chapters đ
