“my mind turns your life into folklore”

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[ltbarnes]

Masterlist

Last Updated: March 3rd 2024

🔞Most works contain explicit content and are not meant for minors, therefore my entire blog is 18+. Minors do not interact!

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CALL OF DUTY

Back to December | Part 2 | angst, smut

[ex!Simon “Ghost” Riley x fem!reader]

Your new job as an assistant for the CEO of a big, shiny company was supposed to be a good thing. Instead your ex from uni who completely ghosted you out of nowhere several years ago happens to be one of your superiors. It doesn’t help that he’s only gotten more handsome over the years. But you hate him for leaving without an explanation, and he seems to hate you too. Everything is just fucking great.

MARVEL

One-Shots

Webs of Opacity | fluff, angst

[Peter Parker x Rogers!reader (adopted, of course), Steve Rogers x sister!reader]

On the eve of the annual Stark Halloween party, you’ve managed to gulp down too much alcohol and tangled yourself into intricate webs of trouble. Even glittering fairies can’t escape the drama, and handsome 80’s film characters can’t always save them from sleazy boyfriends and hangovers.

My Blood Turns Into Alcohol | fluff, angst

[bartender!Bucky Barnes x fem!reader]

Bucky Barnes doesn’t step out behind his trusted bar counter, no matter what goes on out on the floor. Until you, that is—the town newbie who stumbles inside the lanky old bar and won’t stop showing up in your pretty dresses and with that shy smile. Bucky is infuriated. Maybe that’s why he won’t let you pay for even one of your drinks, or why his coworkers won’t stop bothering him about you.

Braces Are Breaking | angst, fluff

[Peter Parker x sister!reader, Bucky Barnes x reader]

Peter Parker does not have much family left, and the small part he has he protects fiercely. When he suspects someone is dating his sister, he’s determined to find out who it is. What he doesn’t expect is to do so under such dire circumstances.

Barefoot in the Wildest Winter | angst, fluff

[Steve Rogers x agent!reader]

Being hopelessly in love with Steve Rogers does nothing to help you in your massive fight after risking your life on a mission. Steve Rogers being hopelessly in love with you might just help save your life when the heat goes off in your reclusive safe house in the midst of wild winter.

You Flower, You Feast | smut, angst, little bit of fluff

[Bucky Barnes x fem!reader x Sam Wilson]

Ever since you began your work as an agent, John Walker has treated you like shit and you have no idea why. Sending you to watch over Sergeant Barnes and his work should have been a punishment—turns out it was anything but.

Sweet Spot | smut, fluff, angst

[Steve Rogers x fem!reader]

Fed up with being the only one who can’t relate to the seemingly mind-blowing sexscapades everyone seems to be experiencing, your superior and great friend Captain Steve Rogers offers to help you with your problem. You should have never agreed to it.

Series

Resurrection Masterlist ON HIATUS!

[brother!mafia!Bucky Barnes x adopted!sister!reader, mafia!Thor Odinson x reader, mafia!Loki Odinson x reader, eventual Steve Rogers x reader]

Bucky Barnes was only nineteen when the lives of his parents and little sister were taken right in front of him by the ruthless members of the Odinson mob. His father’s mistakes have turned Bucky into a vengeful and cold shell of the charming boy he once was, now deeply rooted in the criminal lifestyle of the Stark mafia. Sudden attacks ignite the conflict between the two forces of the city, refueling the rivalry that has been rather tame for years. Nine years since Bucky’s life fell apart, he finds it shattering once more when what was supposed to be long dead returns to the living.

Anachronism Masterlist COMPLETED

[slightly feral Bucky Barnes x fem!reader, Steve Rogers x fem!reader]

Sprained ankles, snowstorms, blood-thirsty wolves and feral super soldiers. What was supposed to be a peaceful walk in the woods surrounding the cabin you're staying in with your best friend Steve quickly turns devastating, forcing your path to cross with a mysterious and burly man who can't seem to grasp social cues and the concept of privacy. His past is a puzzle that can't seem to be solved and your feelings for the sweet and giant man quickly develop from friendly gratitude to something neither of you can't quite grasp.

Stark U Masterlist

[college!Steve Rogers x fem!reader, college!Bucky Barnes x fem!reader, college!Natasha Romanoff x fem!reader, college!Sam Wilson x fem!reader]

Five people crammed into a loft just outside of the Stark University campus might have been a bad idea. Concussions, breakdowns, asshole hook ups and secret pining are everyday occurrences. Nobody is normal and chaos is constant, but what would you ever do without them?

Drabbles

You’re Gonna Go Far

[older brother!Steve Rogers x sibling!reader]

You’ve been acting different for weeks now and Steve is not having that at all. His little sister is his world, and sitting crying in your room without telling him why? Unacceptable.

Wildest Dreams

[Bucky Barnes x reader]

Song fic!! Based on Wildest Dreams by Taylor Swift

[kooksandpearls]

garrett graham ❄︎ house law.

pairing – garrett graham x reader summary – dean’s ex was meant to be off-limits. garrett has several problems with that. warnings – suggestive content, heated kissing, sexual references, situationship tension, arguing, strong language, dean being possessive-ish, party/alcohol setting notes from me – loosely based on this ask!! thank u for sending it through babe! xx word count – 8.9k

navigation – masterlist | taglist

The first time she realises Garrett Graham might actually be a problem, he’s sitting on the players’ bench after practice with damp curls, flushed cheeks, and a towel slung around the back of his neck, talking about leadership like he hasn’t spent the last forty minutes making half the men on the ice look mildly unemployable.

The rink has that post-practice emptiness to it now, all scraped-up ice and cold metal and fluorescent light, the air still carrying the sharp wet smell of snow, rubber, and boy sweat no amount of ventilation has ever fully defeated. 

The rest of the team has already filtered out in waves of noise, sticks clattering, showers starting somewhere down the hall, somebody yelling something obscene about Logan’s tape job from the locker room. Garrett had stayed behind because she’d asked for a few more minutes, and because being captain also meant being professionally accommodating to journalism majors with deadlines and a possibly self-destructive interest in his forearms.

Sports journalism was, allegedly, her actual academic focus. This was supposed to be clean. Useful. A feature piece on Briar hockey culture through the lens of the captain everyone on campus already had some opinion about. 

Garrett Graham, projected pro prospect, Bruins interest, team leader, annoyingly handsome campus fixture with a smile that had almost certainly caused several GPA drops across the student body. 

She had come prepared with questions. She had her recorder running on the bench between them, her notebook open across one thigh, her pen uncapped and ready in her hand like a woman with purpose and professional integrity.

Then Garrett started answering properly, and that had become its own issue. He was good at being smug, obviously. That part was easy. Garrett carried arrogance like some men carried cologne, lightly applied but immediately noticeable. 

But when she asked him about being captain, about what it felt like to have younger guys looking to him, about whether the Bruins pressure changed the way he saw the rest of the season, he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, one hand turning a roll of tape between his fingers. 

He spoke with this unexpected care that made it annoyingly difficult to remember she was meant to be extracting quotes and not just sitting there watching his mouth form words.

“I don’t know,” he says, eyes moving briefly to the rink like the ice might have an answer written somewhere under all the skate marks. “People act like captain means you’re the guy with the loudest voice in the room. Sometimes it is, sure. Sometimes you gotta call shit out. But most of it’s just… paying attention. Knowing which freshman needs to get his ass kicked in practice and which one needs you to pretend not to notice he’s about to puke from nerves before a game.”

Her pen hovers.

Garrett huffs a little laugh, looking down at the tape. “That makes me sound nicer than I am.”

“It really does,” she says, without thinking.

His eyes flick back to her, amused. “Wow.”

“No, I mean–” She laughs, because his grin has gone sharp now, pleased and teasing and very aware he’s caught her somewhere. “I mean, it’s a good answer. Annoyingly good. Like, I’m going to have to cut some of it down or people will start thinking you’re emotionally intelligent.”

He presses a hand dramatically to the centre of his chest. “That would ruin me.”

“Completely. Your whole brand gone overnight.”

“My brand is very layered, actually.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Is it?”

“Yeah. Hot, talented, emotionally unavailable but, like, in a charming way.”

She snorts before she can stop herself, and Garrett’s grin widens like her laugh is something he’s earned and plans to be unbearable about.

The thing is, he keeps doing this. Slipping between real and ridiculous so smoothly she never has time to brace for either version. One second he’s making some dumb comment about Logan being held together by athletic tape and poor decision-making, the next he’s talking about pressure in a voice low enough that the empty rink seems to lean in around them. 

He talks about the Bruins carefully, not like a boy pretending not to care, but like someone who cares so much he’s had to teach himself not to flinch every time someone says the word future near him.

“It’s there,” he says, after she asks whether the scouting attention ever messes with his head. His hand stills around the tape. “Even when I’m trying not to think about it. It’s there. People talk like going pro is this finish line, right? Like once somebody wants you, you’re supposed to just be grateful and shut up. But it’s weird. It’s a lot of people having plans for your body before you’ve even finished using it where you are.”

She forgets, for a second, to breathe normally. There’s no tragic little performance, no athlete pretending vulnerability because it looks good in a profile. Simply Garrett, sweat drying at his temples, towel loose around his neck, saying something true because she asked the right question and he trusted her enough to answer it.

Her pen hasn’t moved in at least thirty seconds. Garrett notices. His eyes drop to her notebook, then lift again slowly to her face, one brow rising. “Are you supposed to be writing this down?”

For one horrible second, she just blinks at him. Then she looks down at the blank stretch of page beneath her last half-written sentence and makes a sound so undignified it bounces off the empty seats. “Oh, fuck. Yes. Shit. Sorry.”

Garrett bursts out laughing.

“Don’t laugh,” she says, already scribbling so fast the words are barely forming. “You said something good and I got distracted.”

“You got distracted?”

She gives him a look without lifting her head, though the effect is slightly ruined by the fact that she is smiling like an idiot. “By the quote. The quote was good.”

“Sure.”

“It was.”

He shrugs. “I believe you.”

“You’re being smug.”

He laughs again, softer this time, and when she glances up, he’s already watching her. His elbows are still on his knees, shoulders rounded forward, the tape forgotten between his hands. His smile’s faded into something smaller, warmer, almost private, and the look of it moves through her body in a way that makes the cold rink air feel suddenly useless.

Her fingers tighten around the pen. Garrett’s gaze drops, briefly, to her mouth.

The silence shifts. Loud in all the places neither of them is touching. She can hear someone in the locker room bark out a laugh, distant and echoing, but it might as well be happening in another building.

Then Garrett clears his throat and looks away first, jaw flexing once like he’s physically pulled himself back from the edge of something. “So,” he says, voice just rough enough to betray him. “You need more captain wisdom or can I go shower before I become part of the rink?”

She looks down at her notebook because it is safer than his face. “I think I’ve got enough wisdom for one day.”

“Smart. Too much and you’ll fall in love with me.”

Her laugh comes out too quick. Too exposed. “Yeah, God forbid.”

He stands, and even that’s irritating: the size of him unfolding beside the bench, broad shoulders, hockey thighs, damp curls, all that casual physical confidence men get when they’ve never once had to question whether their body works in their favour. He grabs his gloves and stick, then pauses at the gate.

“Same time Thursday?”

She nods. “For the follow-up.”

“Right,” he says, and his mouth does that slow, dangerous little curve. “The follow-up.”

Then he walks away before she can decide whether to throw her pen at him or herself.

By the time Garrett drops into the chair beside her in the cafeteria two days later, she has one hand buried in a bag of chips, half a sandwich abandoned on a napkin, and fourteen open tabs on her laptop because higher education is mostly just creating new and inventive ways to make Google Docs feel judgmental.

“Jesus,” Garrett says, leaning sideways to peer at her screen. “You writing an article or hacking the Pentagon?”

She doesn’t look up immediately. “Both. Don’t tell anyone.”

“Hot.”

That gets her eyes off the screen. Garrett’s already grinning, backwards cap low over his curls, hoodie sleeves shoved up to his forearms. He has a tray in front of him loaded with the deeply alarming quantity of food hockey players treat as a casual lunch, and he looks far too pleased with himself for a man who has interrupted her academic suffering with one word and too much eye contact.

She fights the smile. Loses. “Do you just sit wherever you want?”

“Yeah.”

“That tracks.”

“This seat taken?”

“You’re already sitting in it.”

“Great. Love when stuff works out.”

She rolls her eyes and reaches for her iced coffee, mostly so her hands have something to do that isn’t immediately stupid, like touching the bit of hair curling out from under his cap. “Don’t you have captain things to do?”

“I am doing captain things.”

“You’re eating fries next to me.”

“Team morale starts with carbs.”

“You’re such an inspiration.”

“I get that a lot.”

He steals one of her chips without asking, which should be annoying but is somehow just familiar now, another one of those tiny domestic trespasses they’ve started building between them without ever discussing it. 

He asks about her other assignment, some feature for a media ethics class that has made her want to walk calmly into a pond, and then actually listens while she talks. He leans back in his chair, chewing thoughtfully, asking questions that are annoying only because they’re good.

“So basically,” he says after she explains the whole thing, “your professor wants you to prove journalists shouldn’t be assholes.”

“My tuition dollars at work.”

“Could’ve saved you a semester. Don’t be an asshole. Boom. Done.”

She points a fry at him. “That’s a devastatingly Briar hockey interpretation of media ethics.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I’m not thanking you.”

“You’re thinking about it.”

She laughs, and it happens too easily now. Garrett makes laughing feel like slipping. Like she can brace all she wants and still end up somewhere warmer than where she started. He keeps looking at her like he’s delighted by the exact shape of her thoughts, like he wants to be around for whatever she says next, even when what she says next is technically an insult.

Across the cafeteria, someone calls his name. Garrett doesn’t look away from her. That does something embarrassing to the back of her neck.

“So,” he says, picking up his drink. “You gonna quote me in this ethics thing too?”

“Only if I need a source on moral decline.”

He grins, biting softly at the inside of his lip. “Mean.”

“Accurate.”

He opens his mouth, probably to say something unbearable, when Dean’s voice cuts across the cafeteria with the clean sharpness of a puck hitting glass.

“G.”

Garrett’s expression changes so quickly she almost misses it. The humour doesn’t disappear, but it gets filed away. His shoulders tense by half an inch. He turns, and she follows his gaze to where Dean and Logan have just come through the cafeteria entrance, Logan with a smoothie in one hand and the relaxed posture of a man who’s wandered accidentally into tension he fully intends to enjoy.

Dean, on the other hand, looks pissed. He stands there in a jacket that probably costs more than her laptop, blond hair messy, jaw tight, eyes moving from Garrett to her and back again with something sharp underneath.

Garrett exhales through his nose. “I’ll talk to you later,” he says, already pushing his chair back.

She looks between them, trying to keep her face normal. “Yeah. Sounds good.”

He grabs his tray, then hesitates, turning back like he’s remembered something he very much doesn’t want to leave unsaid. “Hey,” he says. “You going to Beau’s mask thing?”

“The masquerade party?” She feels Dean’s stare from across the room like a physical object, which is absurd and irritating and makes her sit a little straighter. “It’s after the game, right? Yeah, I’ll be there.”

Garrett’s grin comes back just enough to make her stomach dip. “Sweet. See you there.”

She tilts her head, trying to sound light even though the air has gone weird around them. “Yeah. Or not. Because of the masks.”

He nods solemnly. “No, totally. Could be anyone. Real mystery.”

“Very mysterious.”

“Guess I’ll have to use my detective skills.”

“You have those?”

“No,” he says. “But I’m hot, so people help me.”

She laughs, and he smiles like he’s taking that with him.

Then Dean says, louder, “Garrett.”

Garrett’s jaw moves once. “Yeah, man, I’m coming.”

He walks away from her table and over to them, and for a few seconds she tries very hard to return to her laptop like she hasn’t just become fascinated by the world’s stupidest male summit happening beside the salad bar. It doesn’t work. Her eyes keep cutting over, catching pieces.

Dean talking low and fast, one hand moving once in a sharp, irritated gesture. Garrett looking away, then back at him, expression shut down into something stubborn. Logan standing just behind them, eyebrows slightly raised, smoothie straw at his mouth, looking like he would pay actual money for popcorn if the cafeteria stocked it.

Dean’s gaze flicks back to her. She looks down too late.

The whole thing sits strangely under her skin after that, a small ugly pebble in the shoe of an otherwise normal afternoon. Dean has no reason to look at her like that. Dean has no reason to chew Garrett out over sitting with her at lunch, unless Garrett has told him something, unless she’s misread the last few weeks completely, unless the reason Garrett keeps getting close and then stopping is not because he doesn’t want her, but because Dean somehow still thinks he gets a vote.

The thought irritates her enough that she closes three tabs too hard, as if her laptop deserves consequences.

“You’re kidding.”

She looks up from where she’s sitting on the bench near the rink entrance, one skate half-laced, the other sitting on the floor like a weapon designed by sadists. “I’m not kidding.”

Garrett stares at her. “You’ve never skated?”

“No.”

“Ever?”

“No.”

Garrett gestures loosely. “Like, not even badly at a birthday party when you were twelve?”

“I grew up near tennis courts, not ice rinks, Garrett. We had other hobbies.”

He makes a wounded sound. “You’re writing a piece on hockey.”

“I’ve watched hockey.”

“That’s not the same.”

She tilts her head. “I’ve also interviewed hockey players.”

“Still not the same.”

“I watched you practice for three weeks.”

“Still,” he says, pointing at her with his stick, “not the same.”

She bends back over the skate, tugging at the lace with the kind of aggression that suggests the boot has personally wronged her. “If this is about journalistic integrity, I’ll put a disclosure at the bottom. The author has never voluntarily placed herself on a knife shoe.”

Garrett laughs, then crouches in front of her before she can fully process the movement. One second he’s standing there, being tall and smug and irritatingly warm in a Briar hoodie, and the next he’s on one knee between her feet, taking the laces out of her hands like this is a thing his body has decided is allowed.

“Here,” he says. “You’re doing it wrong.”

Her mouth goes dry in a way that feels deeply inconvenient. “I’m tying shoes wrong?”

“You’re tying skates wrong.”

“Different sacred art?”

“Very different.” His head’s bent, curls falling forward as he works the laces with quick, practiced hands. “You want them tight through the ankle or you’re gonna fold like a lawn chair.”

“Comforting.”

“I’m a great teacher.”

“You just compared me to outdoor furniture.”

“A beloved piece of outdoor furniture.”

She bites her lip around a smile and watches his hands instead of his face because his face is worse. His fingers are broad and nicked in little places, tape residue near one knuckle, nails cut short. 

He tightens the skate with firm, efficient pulls, one hand briefly wrapping around the back of her ankle to hold her steady, and the touch is so normal, so practical, that her body has absolutely no business reacting to it like he’s slid his palm under her shirt.

Garrett glances up. She looks away immediately, which is subtle in the way a car alarm is subtle. He says nothing, because he’s learned mercy in one or two isolated categories, and finishes tying the second skate.

Getting onto the ice is an act of public humiliation, except there’s no public, thank God, just Garrett, which might actually be worse. He steps on first with the careless ease of a person whose body understands frozen water as a workplace, then turns and offers both hands.

She grips them immediately. “If I die, I’m haunting you.”

“You’re not gonna die.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I kinda do.”

“You’re too confident.”

He laughs, pulling her gently forward. “Okay. One foot.”

The first skate touches the ice and immediately slides an inch in a direction she did not approve. “Nope.”

“Yes.”

She frowns. “No, Garrett.”

“You’re fine. Both feet, come on.”

She gets both feet onto the ice and grabs his hands so tightly he huffs a laugh, but he doesn’t tease her as much as he could. That’s another thing about Garrett, one she hates more than the smugness because it’s harder to protect against. He knows exactly when to push and when not to. 

He grins, sure, but his hands stay steady around hers, thumbs warm over the backs of her fingers, his skates braced wide enough that she knows without question he could hold her up if she fully lost it.

“There you go,” he says, softer. “See? You’re doing it.”

“I’m standing.”

“Standing is part of skating.”

She grips his hands tighter. “I’m incredible.”

“Generational talent.”

She laughs, then immediately squeals because the laugh disrupts whatever fragile treaty her ankles had formed with physics. Her legs straighten wrong, the skates slip, and she pitches forward straight into him.

Garrett catches her like it’s nothing. She hits his chest with a breathless little sound, hands landing on his biceps, his hands coming to her waist fast and firm. The impact knocks a laugh out of both of them, and for a second they’re just there, tangled and stupid, her skates sliding uselessly while Garrett holds her upright with the kind of casual strength that makes several parts of her brain quietly resign.

“Hi,” he says.

She looks up at him. His face is close. Too close for any version of this that’s still pretending to be about skating. His cheeks are pink from the cold, curls messy under the rink lights, grin fading as his eyes move over her face. 

His hands are still at her waist. Hers are still wrapped around his arms, and holy fuck, his arms. Solid under her fingers, warm through his hoodie, steady in a way that makes leaning into him feel less like a choice and more like gravity having a point for once.

“Hi,” she says back, and it comes out smaller than she intended.

His throat moves. The rink is quiet around them. Huge and cold and empty, boards rising white around the ice, old skate cuts beneath their feet, one distant machine hum somewhere behind the walls. 

She can feel his breath against her cheek now. She can feel the tiny adjustment of his fingers at her waist, like he’s reminding himself not to pull her closer and doing a bad job of it.

She tilts her face up. A question more than a move, her mouth parted slightly, her eyes dropping to his lips because she’s tired of pretending not to want the thing they’ve both been standing too close to for weeks. Garrett goes still. Completely still, except for the rise of his chest under her hands.

Her eyes flutter shut. His hands tighten once at her waist. Then he pulls back.

It’s not far, barely an inch. But it’s enough to let cold air rush between them, enough to make her eyes open and her stomach drop with the ugly, immediate heat of embarrassment.

“I can’t,” Garrett says, voice low.

She blinks at him. “What?”

His jaw works. He looks genuinely pained, which would be more flattering if she didn’t currently want to throw him into the boards. “I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because–” He glances away, breath coming out through his nose in a hard little huff. “Because of Dean.”

The name lands wrong. Wrong in her body, sour and metallic. She loosens her grip on his arms. “What about Dean?”

Garrett’s eyes cut back to hers. “Come on.”

“No, don’t come on me.” She shifts back on the skates, immediately wobbles, and grabs the boards beside them with one hand because anger, while energising, isn’t an adequate substitute for balance. “What about Dean?”

“You guys dated.”

“We barely dated.”

“You were together for, what, three months?”

“We hooked up for three months,” she says, sharper now. “Sometimes. When we were both free. It wasn’t a great tragic love story. We hung out at parties and occasionally made out in laundry rooms.”

Garrett winces. “I really don’t need the visual.”

“Then don’t bring him up while I’m trying to kiss you.”

His eyes flash at that, heat cutting through the restraint for half a second before he shuts it down again. “You think I want to be bringing him up?”

“I don’t know what you want, Garrett, because every time I think you’re finally about to do something about the fact that you keep looking at me like that, you suddenly remember friendship law.”

“Friendship law?”

“Bro code, house code, whatever the fuck you guys call the sacred little pact where nobody is allowed to touch anyone someone else once had mediocre sex with.”

His mouth twitches despite himself, then immediately flattens. “I’m trying not to be a dick to my friend.”

Her eyes flash. “You’re doing a great job being a dick to me instead.”

“I’m not trying to be a dick to you,” he says.

“No? Because it feels pretty dick-ish from here.”

He drags a hand through his hair, turning away for half a second like he needs the rink to help him survive the conversation. His skates shift on the ice with a clean scrape. “Jesus Christ.”

“What?”

“Dean put a rule down, okay?”

The whole world narrows. Her fingers tighten around the top of the boards. “What rule?”

Garrett looks back at her and immediately seems to realise, too late, that he’s opened the wrong door.

She steps toward him, or tries to. The skates slide. She catches herself, furious enough that fear of the ice has temporarily become background noise. “Garrett. What rule?”

His shoulders sink. “He said you were hands off.”

For a second, she just stares at him. The rink noise fades into a thin ringing at the edge of her ears. Her face goes hot first, then her chest, then the backs of her hands, a spreading flush of disbelief so sharp it feels almost cold underneath. “He said I was what?”

Garrett rubs a hand over his mouth. “Hockey house is hands off. That’s what he said.”

“Hockey house is hands off,” she repeats, slowly, because maybe if she says it back, the words might become less insane. They do not. They get worse. They sit there between them, stupid and male and possessive in a way that makes her want to start swinging one of his sticks around until something expensive breaks.

“It’s not–” Garrett starts.

“No.”

He stops.

“No, don’t do that. Don’t soften it. Don’t try to translate asshole into something prettier.” Her laugh comes out once, bright and humourless. “Dean put a no touching rule on me?”

Garrett’s face has gone sheepish now, which, unfortunately for him, only makes him look guilty by association. “I didn’t make the rule.”

“But you followed it.”

His jaw tightens. “He’s my teammate. He’s my friend.”

“And I’m a couch he called dibs on?”

Garrett flinches. “That’s not how I see you.”

“But it’s how he talked about me, and you all just what? Nodded? Took minutes? Filed it under house law?”

“No.” He skates closer, hands half-lifted like he wants to steady her and knows better than to touch. “No, it wasn’t like that.”

“Then what was it like?”

He opens his mouth. Closes it.

She gives a short, furious nod. “Right.”

Then she turns toward the exit. Badly. The skates immediately betray her.

Garrett moves on instinct, catching her elbow before she can eat shit in the middle of the ice. “Hey–”

“Do not hey me!”

“I’m just trying to stop you from breaking your ass.”

“My ass and I are leaving.”

“You can’t storm off in skates.”

She huffs. “Watch me.”

“You physically cannot.”

“I will crawl.”

“Jesus,” he mutters, skating backward as she clings angrily to the boards and inches toward the gate with all the dignity of a newborn deer seeking vengeance. “Can I at least help you?”

“No.”

“You’re going the wrong way.”

She shoots him a look. “I know where I’m going.”

“You’re heading toward the penalty box.”

“Maybe I belong there.”

He lets out a breath that almost sounds like a laugh and immediately thinks better of it when she looks at him.

By the time they get her off the ice and out of the skates, her anger has focused into something clean and bright. Garrett follows her out of the rink with her bag over one shoulder and the expression of a man walking behind an active bomb he’s personally helped assemble.

“You don’t have to do this right now,” he says as she shoves her feet into her boots.

“Yes, I do.”

“Maybe cool off first.”

She looks at him. “You think I’m going to cool off about being declared untouchable by a guy who once texted me you up? at one in the morning with a typo?”

Garrett’s mouth presses together.

“Don’t laugh.”

He shakes his head. “I’m not.”

“You want to.”

“I really don’t.”

“You do. You’re just scared of me right now.”

“A little,” he admits.

“Good.”

The hockey house door swings open before Garrett’s even finished taking his keys out of the door, because God wants Logan to have front-row seats. Logan looks from her face to Garrett’s face to the fact that Garrett is holding her skate bag like a guilty chauffeur, and his eyebrows go up with immediate, delighted dread. “Oh, this feels like something I should not be in the doorway for.”

“Where’s Dean?” she asks.

Logan’s eyes widen slightly. “Kitchen.”

“Great.”

She steps past him.

Garrett follows. “Maybe we don’t–”

“No, you’re coming too.”

“Yeah,” Logan says, shutting the door behind them with the dazed cheerfulness of a man blessed by entertainment. “You’re definitely coming too.”

The house smells like takeout, laundry detergent, and whatever tragic candle Tucker keeps lighting in a hopeless attempt to make four athletes living together seem less like a public health concern. 

Somewhere upstairs, music thumps faintly. The living room is half-clean in the deeply male way, meaning there’s no visible trash on the floor but several cups have been abandoned on flat surfaces with the confidence of people who believe dishes migrate naturally.

Dean’s in the kitchen with Tucker, leaning against the counter with a bowl of cereal at nearly six in the evening because money, talent, and good bone structure haven’t made him any less fundamentally ridiculous. 

He looks up when she walks in. Then he sees Garrett behind her. Then he sees her face.

“Oh,” Tucker says quietly from beside the fridge. “Shit.”

Dean straightens. “What?”

She stops on the other side of the island, hands flat on the counter because otherwise she might start pointing and never stop. “Did you tell the entire hockey house I was hands off?”

Dean’s eyes cut to Garrett. “Seriously, man?”

Garrett lifts one hand. “Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t issue a royal decree over her body.”

“Thank you,” she snaps, then points at Dean. “You. Answer.”

Dean sets the cereal bowl down slowly. “It wasn’t the entire hockey house.”

Logan, arriving behind Garrett with exactly the expression of someone entering a theatre late but thrilled, says, “It was kind of the entire hockey house.”

“Logan,” Dean warns.

“What? I’m pro-transparency.”

She stares at Dean. “You put a rule on me.”

Dean’s jaw tightens. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Oh my God, does every man in this house get issued that sentence at orientation?”

Tucker coughs into his fist. Garrett looks at the floor.

Dean’s face flushes, irritation rising fast now that he has an audience and no graceful exit. “I told them not to mess with you.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“Because what?”

“Because I didn’t want them to.”

She laughs once, so sharp Tucker actually looks toward the sink like he might find somewhere safer to stand. “That’s not an answer. That is something a toddler says about a toy truck.”

Dean’s mouth opens, then closes. He drags a hand through his hair, annoyed and cornered and visibly trying to decide how much honesty he can survive in front of Logan, Tucker, and Garrett. Not much, judging by the colour in his face.

“You and I had a thing,” he says.

“We hooked up.”

“We hung out.”

“Yes, Dean, that’s generally how hooking up more than once works. Sometimes there’s a couch involved. Maybe a movie nobody watches.”

Logan murmurs, “Educational.”

Dean points at him without looking. “Shut up.”

She leans forward over the counter. “We were casual.”

“Maybe to you.”

Dean’s face changes as soon as he says it, like the words have come out uglier and more vulnerable than he planned. Garrett stills behind her. Tucker’s expression softens by a fraction. Logan stops smiling quite so much.

Dean swallows hard, then doubles down because vulnerability has made him defensive. “I liked you.”

Her grip on the counter loosens, then tightens again. “Dean.”

“No, don’t Dean me. I did. I liked you, and you didn’t like me back.”

“I liked you fine.”

“You liked me fine,” he repeats, voice going high with disbelief. “Great. Awesome. That’s exactly what every guy wants to hear.”

“We weren’t in love.”

“I didn’t say we were in love.”

“You’re acting like I left you at the altar.”

“I’m acting like maybe it sucked watching you giggle with my best friend for three weeks after you decided you were too busy to text me back.”

Garrett winces. “Okay, let’s not–”

She turns her head. “You stay quiet.”

Garrett shuts his mouth.

Dean lets out a humourless laugh. “Yeah, good luck with that, G.”

She points back at Dean immediately. “Don’t redirect because you’re embarrassed.”

Dean shrugs. “I’m not embarrassed.”

“You should be. You made a house rule about me like I’m a disputed parking space.”

Dean’s face twists. “I didn’t want to watch my friends go after you.”

“Then say that to me like an adult.”

“I didn’t think I owed you a fucking press release.”

She smacks her hand down on the counter. “You owed me basic dignity.”

Dean’s mouth shuts, and for one tiny second he looks less like Briar’s rich blond menace and more like a twenty-one-year-old guy who handled hurt feelings with the political structure of a frat basement.

Then, because he’s still Dean, he recovers poorly. “Well, sorry I didn’t want Garrett’s tongue down your throat two months after mine.”

Garrett’s head snaps up. “Hey.”

“Oh, fuck off,” she says, loud enough that even Logan’s eyebrows jump. “You don’t get to act wounded and crude in the same breath like that makes you honest.”

Dean’s eyes flash. “You think I’m making it up? You two have been doing this little interview foreplay thing all over campus like everybody doesn’t see it.”

Garrett mutters, “Jesus Christ.”

She feels heat hit her face but refuses to look away. “Maybe if you had an issue, you could’ve talked to me instead of telling half the hockey team they needed permission to touch me.”

Dean scoffs. “I knew you liked him.”

“Yes, Dean. Congratulations. Your powers of observation survived your personality.”

Logan makes a strangled sound behind his smoothie. Dean points at her, the hurt cracking fully into the argument now, messy and oddly sincere under all the stupidity. “You didn’t look at me like that.”

“No, because you hooked up with someone else the same night you hooked up with me.”

Dean throws both hands out. “But I liked you more!”

The entire kitchen goes silent. Tucker closes his eyes. Garrett’s lips part in actual disbelief. Logan whispers, “That is an insane defence.”

She stares at Dean for one long second, then says, “Are you medically okay?”

Dean groans, dragging both hands down his face. “That came out wrong.”

“Did it?”

“Yes.”

“Because from here, it sounded like you were asking for emotional credit for ranking me first in a rotation.”

Garrett mutters, “Holy shit,” under his breath, and she cannot tell whether it’s horror or admiration.

Dean drops his hands. His face is red now, properly red. “I know I was shitty. I didn’t handle it right. You were… I don’t know. You were cool, and fun, and you didn’t need anything from me, and then you were gone. And I was a dick about it.”

She watches him for a second, her pulse still hot in her wrists. Dean looks back at her with more honesty than he probably meant to bring into the kitchen, and that makes it harder to stay perfectly furious. 

“You don’t get to be a dick by making rules about me,” she says.

His jaw tightens, but he nods once. “Yeah.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know.”

“No, I don’t think you do.” She steps around the island, close enough now that Dean’s eyes drop briefly like he’s checking whether she plans to slap him. She doesn’t. She wants to, a little, but personal growth and witness presence both intervene. “You can feel weird. You can be hurt. You can tell Garrett you don’t love it. You can even privately sulk like a blond little prince in your room if that’s what your healing journey requires.”

Logan whispers, “Blond little prince.”

Dean says, “Shut the fuck up.”

“But you do not get to decide what I’m allowed to do because your feelings arrived late and badly dressed.”

Tucker nods once, like this is fair. Dean looks at her, then at Garrett, then back at her. His mouth twists. “Fine.”

“Take the rule off.”

He stiffens. “No.”

Her eyebrows lift. “Excuse me?”

“No.”

She glares at him. “Dean.”

“I said I know it was shitty. I didn’t say I wanted to watch it happen.”

Garrett rubs the back of his neck. “Man–”

Dean points at him. “Do not man me. You’ve been waiting for this vote.”

He scoffs. “I have not.” She turns slowly to Garrett. He pauses. “Not… exactly.”

“Oh my God.”

Garrett winces. “Bad timing?”

“Terrible timing.”

Dean crosses his arms. “See? This is why the rule exists.”

She whips back around. “Dean Di Laurentis, take the fucking rule off.”

“No.”

“Take it off.”

“No.”

“Dean.”

He looks at her stubbornly. “What?”

“Take. It. Off.”

The kitchen holds its breath. Dean’s jaw works. For a second she thinks he might keep arguing, might dig himself even deeper because male pride is a tragic renewable resource. Then his gaze flicks past her to Garrett, and whatever he sees there makes his shoulders drop slightly.

Garrett’s not smiling now. He looks uncomfortable, yes, and guilty, and still maybe like part of him wants to put his head through a wall. But there’s also something earnest in his face, something quiet and clear and not even aimed at Dean, not really. It’s aimed at her. Like he’s waiting for permission he doesn’t want to need, and hating that he’s needed it anyway.

Dean sees it. She knows he does, because his mouth tightens with the final little pinch of someone losing a fight he probably should have surrendered ten minutes ago. 

“Fine,” Dean says.

She points at him. “Say it.”

He stares. “Seriously?”

“Yes. Make it official.”

Logan perks up. “I can witness.”

“Nobody asked you,” Dean says.

“I’m witnessing anyway.”

Dean exhales hard, looking at the ceiling like he has been personally victimised by consequences. Then he drops his gaze back to her. “The rule is off.”

She waits.

Dean’s eyes narrow. “What else?”

“It’s decreed or whatever.”

Tucker presses his lips together.

Dean’s face goes flat. “You want me to say decreed?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Dean.”

He stares at her. She stares back. Finally, with the exhausted dignity of a man being executed in his own kitchen, Dean says, “It’s decreed.”

Logan lifts his smoothie. “House law.”

Tucker nods solemnly. “House law.”

Garrett looks like he wants to laugh and die at the same time.

She smiles without warmth. “Good.”

Then she turns and walks out of the kitchen, past Garrett, past Logan, through the living room, and out the front door without looking back. 

She hears Garrett say her name once behind her, but she keeps going, because if she turns around too soon, she might either kiss him in the driveway or scream again, and neither feels like a strategic exit.

Beau’s holiday house is the kind of place that makes absolutely no sense as a college party venue unless someone’s parents have too much money and not enough concern about upholstery.

It sits just outside town, all big windows and pale stone and a deck wrapped around the back like the architect had been asked to design somewhere specifically for rich kids to make terrible decisions under flattering lighting. 

By the time she arrives after the game, the whole place is glowing gold from inside, music spilling out every time someone opens the front door, the lawn packed with cars, the porch crawling with people in masks and party dresses and button-downs worn by men who think rolling their sleeves up counts as formalwear.

The masquerade part has been loosely interpreted, obviously. Half the masks look expensive and intentional, feathered or black satin or glittering at the edges; the other half look like they were purchased from a party store by someone already drunk. 

Someone near the stairs has a full plastic wolf mask pushed onto the top of his head. Someone else is wearing sunglasses and insisting it counts. Briar, as an institution, remains deeply unserious.

She finds Garrett in less than five minutes. Which is ridiculous, given the whole point of masks, but Garrett Graham is impossible to misplace. He’s standing near the back doors with Logan and Tucker, broad shoulders under a black button-down, sleeves rolled to his forearms, dark mask cutting across the upper half of his face in a way that should look stupid and instead makes him look like someone’s bad decision dressed up as a theme. 

His curls are still a little damp from the post-game shower. There’s a tiny mark near his jaw from the game, a scrape or bruise starting to come up, and he looks unfairly alive, flushed from the win and the noise and whatever arrogant chemical floods the bloodstream of men who score in the third period.

He sees her at almost the exact same time. She knows because his body goes still. A pause in the middle of whatever Tucker is saying, drink half-lifted, head turning. His gaze moves over her once, fast and then slower, from the tiny silk halter dress skimming high on her thighs to the ribbon of her mask tied at the back of her head, to the heels she had worn with the full awareness that they weren’t practical and the private satisfaction that she would not need them to be for long.

The look hits her low in the stomach. There are no rules now. The thought should feel silly. They’re adults, technically. No one should need Dean Di Laurentis to revoke a house decree before two people can act like they’ve been wanting to act for weeks. But her body doesn’t care about the politics of it. Her body only knows that Garrett is looking at her like he’s run out of reasons not to.

She walks toward him, weaving through a cluster of girls by the kitchen island and one guy arguing loudly with someone about whether masks are classist, actually. Garrett says something to Logan without looking away from her, and Logan turns, notices her, then immediately smiles like an asshole.

“Tucker,” Logan says, patting him once on the chest. “We’re needed elsewhere.”

Tucker glances over, sees her, then gives Garrett a look that is equal parts warning and amusement. “Try not to start another legal dispute.”

Garrett doesn’t even look at him. “Go away.”

“Romantic,” she says when she reaches him.

His mouth curves. “You like it.”

“I like a man with manners.”

“Bullshit.”

She laughs, and his gaze drops to her mouth. It lingers there, and the noise of the party seems to press in behind her, warm and muffled and irrelevant.

“Good game,” she says, because some part of her brain’s still committed to sports journalism even while the rest of her is busy mentally dragging him upstairs.

Garrett’s smile deepens. “Yeah?”

“Mhm. That assist in the second was disgusting.”

His brows lift behind the mask. “Disgusting?”

“Complimentary.”

“Good.” He leans a fraction closer, voice lowering just enough that she feels it under the music. “Because I was trying to impress you.”

Her breath catches. Just a little.  “You were?”

“Yeah.” He takes a sip of his drink, casual in the way men only are when they’re doing it on purpose. “Had to. Big sports journalist in the stands.”

She tilts her head. “Is that what you were thinking about during the game?”

“Among other things.”

“Like what?”

His eyes move over her again, slower this time, and his jaw shifts like he’s physically stopping himself from saying the first answer. “You sure you want that list?”

Her skin warms under the dress. The party keeps happening around them. Someone screams laughing near the stairs. A bottle drops in the kitchen and shatters, followed by a chorus of deeply unhelpful cheering. The music changes to something louder, bass shaking faintly through the floorboards. Garrett doesn’t look away from her once.

She steps closer, because she can. Because Dean said decreed. Because Garrett’s hand is flexing at his side like he wants to touch her and is still, idiotically, waiting to be invited.

“So,” she says, looking up at him through the mask, “does house law have anything else to say tonight?”

Garrett’s grin comes slowly. “House law can go fuck itself.”

She pouts. “That’s very disrespectful to the institution.”

“The institution caused me a lot of personal suffering.”

“Poor thing.”

“Yeah,” he says, and his voice drops again, rougher now. “You have no idea.”

For a second neither of them moves. She can feel her pulse under the thin straps of her dress, in her throat, behind her knees, all of her suddenly aware of the distance between his hand and her waist like it’s a measurable failure of the room. 

Garrett’s eyes hold hers, dark behind the mask, the smile fading into something hungrier. Want, clean and badly restrained, finally allowed to exist in the open.

He sets his drink down on the nearest table without looking. “Upstairs,” he says.

She nods once. Garrett’s hand comes to the small of her back immediately, warm and broad and sure, guiding her through the crowd with a kind of focus that makes people move before they consciously decide to. They pass Dean near the bottom of the stairs, because the universe has comedic timing and a cruel streak.

Dean sees them. Sees Garrett’s hand. Sees her dress. Sees the direction. His mouth tightens for half a second. She lifts her eyebrows at him.

Dean looks at Garrett, then at her, then rolls his eyes toward the ceiling with the suffering grandeur of a man who’s made peace with a lawless society. “Use a room with a lock,” he says.

Garrett points at him without stopping. “That was almost mature.”

“Don’t make me regret personal growth.”

“Too late,” she says sweetly, passing him.

Dean mutters something that sounds like unbelievable, but there’s no real heat in it now. Not enough to stop anything. Not enough to matter.

The upstairs hallway is darker, warmer, the party noise blurring as Garrett leads her past a bathroom with a line outside it and a half-open door where two people are already making a terrible attempt at discretion. He finds an empty bedroom near the end of the hall, pushes the door open, checks once, then pulls her inside.

The door shuts. For half a second, they just stare at each other.

It should be funny, maybe. All that build-up and now a quiet guest room with somebody’s aunt’s decorative pillows on the bed and a framed beach print on the wall. It should break the tension, but it does the opposite. 

The sudden privacy makes the weeks behind them arrive all at once: the rink bench, the cafeteria, his hands tying her skates, the almost-kiss, the kitchen argument, every look he swallowed because someone else had written a rule neither of them agreed to.

Garrett steps toward her. She steps toward him at the same time, and they meet in the middle with no grace at all.

His mouth is on hers hard and immediate, one hand at her jaw, the other at her waist, walking her back against the door with enough force to make the wood thud behind her shoulders. 

She gasps into him, and he takes it like he’s been waiting weeks for the sound, kissing her deeper, hotter, his body crowding hers until there’s no space left to manage. Her hands go straight into his hair, knocking the mask slightly crooked, and Garrett groans low in his throat when her nails scrape over his scalp.

“Finally,” she breathes against his mouth.

He laughs, but it sounds wrecked. “Yeah, no shit.”

He kisses her again, and it goes messy fast. Garrett kisses like he knows exactly what he’s doing and is still a little pissed he had to wait to do it, mouth confident, tongue sliding against hers, teeth catching lightly at her bottom lip until her fingers tighten in his hair. His hand slides from her waist to her thigh, finding bare skin under the hem of the dress, and she makes a small sound that seems to go straight through him.

“Fuck,” he mutters, pulling back just enough to look at her. His thumb moves once along her jaw, like he needs to see her face properly and cannot tolerate the mask hiding any of it. “Take this off.”

“You take yours off.”

“Gladly.”

He reaches behind her head for the ribbon, but she gets impatient and pushes his hand away, tugging at his mask first. It catches briefly in his curls, and he hisses.

“Jesus, easy.”

“Sorry,” she says, not sounding sorry at all.

“You’re violent.”

“You like it.”

“I really do,” he says, and then her mask is gone too, Garrett pulling it free and dropping both onto the floor like they have personally offended him.

The next kiss feels different with their faces bare. Hotter somehow, more exposed. His hand cups her cheek for one strangely tender second, thumb brushing near the corner of her mouth, and that small softness nearly undoes her more than the door had. 

His eyes flick over her face, the cocky edge shifting into something warmer, more careful, before she drags him down by the front of his shirt because tenderness is lovely but she has limits.

He laughs into her mouth and lifts her. Hands under her thighs, her legs wrapping around his waist automatically, the movement so easy for him it makes her stomach flip. He carries her toward the bed while still kissing her, which is both impressive and deeply obnoxious, and when her back hits the mattress she pulls him down with her by the collar.

The bed bounces. Somewhere downstairs, the party roars at something completely unrelated. Garrett settles over her, one knee between her thighs, forearm braced beside her head, his other hand sliding up her side over the silk of her dress. His eyes are dark, mouth swollen, curls a mess from her hands.

“You good?” he asks.

It’s low, almost rough, but there’s no performance in it. The little practical care tucked inside all that heat. It makes something in her chest go soft and aching before the rest of her body can vote against it.

She nods. “Very good.”

His grin returns, slow and devastating. “Very?”

“Don’t get smug.”

“Too late.”

She pulls him down again, and his laugh disappears into the kiss. His weight settles more fully over her, warm and heavy in a way that makes her whole body go bright beneath him. The silk of her dress rides higher under his hand. 

Her fingers work at the buttons of his shirt with increasingly poor coordination, and Garrett lifts enough to help, grinning against her lips when she huffs in frustration. “Journalism major can’t handle buttons?”

“Shut up. I’m under pressure.”

“Performance issue?”

She bites his bottom lip. Garrett’s sound is immediate, low and pleased and a little startled. “Okay.”

“Still want to be annoying?”

“If you do that again? Kind of.”

She laughs, breathless, and he kisses the laugh right out of her, mouth moving down to her jaw, then the side of her neck, slow enough to make her squirm and deliberate enough to make her understand he notices. 

His hand slides down her thigh, thumb pressing into the soft skin there, and she arches into him before she can pretend to be composed.

“Garrett,” she says, half warning, half something else.

He lifts his head, eyes on hers. “Yeah?”

For a second, all the stupid jokes fall away. The room narrows to his face above hers and the warmth of his hand on her thigh and the fact that there’s no rule anymore, no Dean in the doorway, no rink air between them, no cafeteria table, no almost. 

Only Garrett looking at her like he’s still checking that she’s here with him, not because someone decreed it, not because he’s finally been allowed, but because she wants this too.

She reaches up and smooths her thumb over the little mark near his jaw from the game. “You really were trying to impress me?”

His smile softens around one edge. “Baby, I’ve been trying to impress you for weeks.”

Her stomach turns over. “Yeah?” she says, quieter.

“Yeah.” His thumb moves once on her thigh. “It’s been brutal. I had to talk about my feelings and everything.”

A laugh breaks out of her, warm and helpless, and Garrett’s face does something unbearably pleased at the sound. “That must’ve been so hard for you.”

“You have no idea.” He dips down, brushing his mouth over hers once, twice, not quite kissing properly yet. “I almost quoted a book.”

“You read?”

“Occasionally. Under supervision.”

She smiles against his mouth. “Hot.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm.”

He kisses her again, slower this time, and it turns heated almost immediately because slow with Garrett isn’t gentle so much as dangerous in a different direction. His mouth drags over hers like he has all night and not nearly enough patience for it. 

Her hands slide beneath his open shirt, over warm skin and hard muscle, and Garrett exhales sharply against her cheek when her nails trail down his ribs. “Fuck,” he says softly. “You’re killing me.”

“Good.”

“Mean.”

“You like mean too.”

He lifts his head and looks down at her, grin gone lazy and bright and so Garrett it makes her want to laugh and bite him at the same time. “I’m learning a lot about myself tonight.”

She hooks one leg higher around his hip. “Glad I could contribute to your education.”

His eyes drop, tracking the movement, and the humour in his face goes darker. “Yeah,” he says, voice rough. “I’m feeling very academically supported.”

She laughs again, but it thins into a breath when his mouth returns to her neck and his hand slides higher under the edge of her dress, all warm palm and careful pressure and that infuriating confidence he’s earned. 

Outside the room, the party keeps going, loud and bright and masked and stupid, but inside the guest room everything has shrunk to the bed, the silk twisted at her hips, Garrett’s open shirt under her hands, his mouth at her throat, the low sounds he keeps making like every inch of her is something he has been denied on principle and now plans to appreciate with interest. Someone starts chanting for reasons that almost certainly involve alcohol.

Garrett pauses with his mouth against her jaw. “You think that’s about us?”

She snorts. “If it is, I’m transferring.”

“Can’t,” he says, kissing the corner of her mouth. “Article’s not done.”

“Oh, right. My journalistic duty.”

“Mhm. Very important piece.”

“On Briar hockey.”

“And its captain.”

She looks up at him, pretending to consider this while his thumb moves distractingly over the bare skin above her hip. “I might need another interview.”

Garrett’s grin spreads, slow and wicked and warm enough to make her toes curl against the sheets.

“Yeah?” he says.

“Extensive follow-up.”

His mouth brushes hers. “Baby, I’m available whenever you need me.”

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

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[ilium-ilia]

John Price becomes a porter after he retires from the military.

Retirement. He hates that word, as if he's some old, decrepit man and not someone who's just worn his body too thin for killing.

He's the perfect fit. Tall and burly enough to offer a commanding presence in front of the building with his slick uniform and matching hat (it isn't as good as his boonie hat, but it'll have to do), yet cordial enough with his tight lipped smile that the residents of the complex like him.

More than that, it makes him feel useful. He gets to keep the peace and study strangers as if he's one step away from interrogating them, and at the end of the day his back hardly even aches.

Though, it is strange having a job that doesn't require him to get his hands dirty.

John decides it's worth it if he gets to see pretty things like you.

You, a single mom of a little girl who's a spitting image of you. Your mini-me adores John. Always quick to show him her projects from school when you bring her home. He can't tell if he truly likes him for him, or the candies he keeps in his pocket just to give to her, but either way he appreciates the smile that cracks along your lips each time you see him.

He looks forward to seeing you. Of grabbing your bag when your hands are full with your daughter, of walking you to your apartment, of escorting you to the bus stop late at night. He gets used to you. Your mannerisms. What makes you tick.

It's why he knows something is wrong when he shows up.

His gut tells him he shouldn't let him into the complex, even accompanied by you. Your shoulders are too tense, rolled forward like dry parchment, eyes avoidant and smile tense. This man reeks of filth. But his job doesn't allow him to act based on suspicions alone.

John knows he's right the moment complaints start rolling in from other tenants. He bursts into your apartment to find you scrapping with this strange man, blood running along your face like you're in the midst of the war.

It isn't until he sees your daughter sobbing in the corner of the room that he realizes that maybe he hasn't worn himself too thin to kill after all.

[ltbarnes]

omg i started reading stark university on wattpad and just rediscovered you on here haha also you should totally update it 🫶🫶

Hi!! I haven’t written anything in like a year and a half I think?? I don’t know where time went but I’ve had no inspiration at all 😔 hopefully it strikes soon because I loved writing and creating so much!

[sorrownotsexy]

I feel like fucking with Ghost would be so much different after you'd started dating.

His big hand would be splayed across your lower back, his thumb would brush against your small S.R. tattoo you got for his birthday. You're wearing his shirt because you were doing candle painting earlier, there's still crayon wax on his your socks.

Everything about it is so warm and just a fuzzy feeling and it's not sticky and messy and gross and he'd never tell you to

"take it like a slut"

He'd rather be hung by his ribs again than tell his girl she's a slut. He's kiss the back of your neck and you'd giggled at his warm breath and he'd laugh too.

Not everything with him has to be sexy, he's okay with hairy legs, he's okay when you moaned, not from his cock but when he accidentally moved too fast and popped your lower back.

"Yes, oh Sssimon, wait baby, push right tnere-"

Soft breathy moans interrupted by a chiropractic snap.

"Oh my god was that it?"

"Dude you just totally fixed my back, wait pull out."

"Can you touch your toes now?"

"Oh my gosh it doesn't even hurt anymore !"

[succubusvalentine]

Servant Simon Riley with a Princess reader. I always see servant reader, so I wanted to try a little opposite thing :3

Simon had grown up the son of a servant. His mother passing at the hands of his father. Making him an orphan at only fourteen.

He'd originally wanted to be a knight, to make his mother proud and defend women like her, children like he had once been; hiding behind their mother's skirts as their drunken fathers screamed at them.

But he didn't have enough education. He had some, but not nearly enough. So he decided to keep being a servant until he gained enough education to become a knight. He would train at knight, building muscle in secret.

It was strange to you, seeing such a large brute scrubbing the floors of your chambers. But it strangely aroused you, watching his muscular back flex under his thin shirt.

You watched him frequently. In the library, pretending to read a book while he fluffed the pillows on the lounge chairs, you watched him in your chambers when he made your bed.

And Simon felt it. He liked it.

There was something about being called a nobody by his father for fourteen years of his life, only to be found in the Princess' eye.

But there was a slight dilemma. You were to choose a Prince to wed in a weeks time.

You'd begun complaining to Simon whenever in his presence. How all of the Princes your parents had presented were pompous fucks. You rarely got a response. Simon mostly grunted. Which made you realise that you could tell him anything without it getting back to your parents.

You begun telling him everything. From your suitors, to your duties as a princess. And it was nice, having someone listen to you, grunting in acknowledgement. You could rant without being interrupted with some dumb egotistical tale like you did when you spoke to your suitors.

The day for you to choose you future husband and King arrived sooner than Simon liked. All palace staff, knights, the royal court, and all the Princes you'd been presented with gathered within the royal hall. Your parents and yourself stood in front of your thrones.

You stepped forward, hands clasped in front of you as you took a nervous deep breath. Before finally speaking. "The man I have chosen to be my husband, and my Kingdoms future King" you began.

"Is Simon Riley"

⛧°. ⋆𓌹♰𓌺⋆. °⛧

Buy my cat a treat? (•˕ •マ.ᐟ

[bramblebunnie]

Second drabble to accompany this "Soap X Reader But Ghost Is There Too" but can be read as a stand alone

The first time it happened, Ghost spent the rest of the week halfway between a heart attack and a stroke

He hadn't meant to, he swears- one moment he was swapping a bottle of jack back and forth with Johnny, the next the scot was in his lap and his mask was pulled up, warm calloused palms cradling his face like he was something precious as their tongues danced, whiskey strong on their breaths.

They were out on a mission but stuck in a dead zone, waiting for something to happen and camping in the woods for a week before they could go home.

They had separate tents but Soap was just so warm he chased the chill of night away, and before Ghost knew what was happening, they were waking up in the same sleeping bag, naked bodies intertwined far too closely for anything less innocent to have happened.

And Ghost Hated it.

He hated how good it had felt, how comfortable he was, how Right it felt to have Johnny curled over his back.

He spent the rest of the week out of it, shaky, terrified of what it meant, what it meant for Johnny to be acting like nothing happened, what it meant for his relationship with You- He had slept with your husband behind your back for fucks sake!

Standing at the front door, Johnny shuffling around his pockets for the keys, he felt like he was going to be sick, floor swaying under his boots at the thought of you on the other side of that door. Felt like somehow you'd be able to just See the sin staining his skin, like you'd take one look at him and yell and throw his stuff out and say don't you dare come back and-

You opened the door, startling Johnny into almost dropping the keys he'd just found, and you laughed softly and the bewildered look on your husband's face, pulling him into a hug and a soft kiss to welcome him back before ushering them inside. Ghost followed on autopilot, not entirely feeling his fingers as he took off his boots and put them by the door, going through the motions and trying desperately to pretend like he isn't falling apart inside.

He spends the entire evening just... staring. Staring at the walls, at his room, at the way the sunset fills the kitchen, at You. "..im..n?" He stares with such soft sad eyes because he knows this is the last time he'll see it, the last time he'll have the luxury of these comforts. "Si...on?" He stares and tries to commit it to memory, to hold close to his heart, to remember when he's inevitably kicked out and never sees you again.

"Simon?" Your voice brings him back to the present, soft and careful, and his eyes dart to meet yours, looking at him like he deserves the care, the attention, as if he hadn't ruined your marriage, as if he hadn't ruined everything good he got his hands on- "Love? Are you alright?" and he breaks.

He can barely breathe around the anxiety that's taken over his lungs, but it doesn't stop the words from falling from his lips, voice gruff like he gargled gravel as he confesses his sin, the betrayal of your trust

And then you're there, perched on his lap, palms cradling his face- when did he take his mask off?- and so so worried as Johnny crowds around you two like he hadn't desecrated the ring on your finger for the sake of fucking his lieutenant. "Simon, love, shh shh, breathe for me," You soothe, thumbs brushing against his cheekbones as you lean in and gently press your lips against his forehead. He doesn't know why you're so calm, why you're not yelling or throwing things, he doesn't understand- "Simon, I already know,"

. . .what?

The confusion stops him short, and he feels a little more solid, Johnny's hand a firm pressure on his shoulder.

"Darling, he asked for my blessing first, I can assure you I'm not mad," Your fingers carded through ruffled blonde locks, and beyond the confusion there was relief and elation, his chest aching with the sudden absence of dread.

"Aye, ahm sorry Lt, dinnae think it'd be such a worry on ye," Johnny said, crowding closer like he'd be able to fit on Simon's lap as well, gently knocking his temple against his. Then you're slipping off of him, his hands desperately clinging to your shirt. You untangle his fingers and intertwine them with yours, bringing a scarred hand up to press your lips against it.

"C'mon, Si, let's all go lay down, okay? We'll talk this out in the morning."

And he lets you tug him up out of the chair, Johnny flanking him like a sheepdog as you pull him towards the bedroom.

Maybe, maybe things wouldn't be so bad.

[crybabycabin]

touch and go | b.b.

✮ synopsis: he's the winter soldier, and you're just you. but when your skin touches his, he becomes bucky barnes again.

(or: the soulmate fic where touch is everything and bucky barnes will fight his way back to you, one broken memory at a time.)

✮ pairing: ca:tws!bucky x soulmate!reader

✮ disclaimers: fem!reader, soulmates, violence/action sequences, graphic descriptions of torture/memory wiping, PTSD, panic attacks, dissociation, past torture, brainwashing, heavy angst, touch deprivation, references to past violence/assassinations, hurt/comfort, fluff, eventual happy ending, bucky is down horrendously bad

✮ warnings: (18+) MDNI, explicit sexual content, unprotected sex, p in v, oral (f receiving), overstimulation, multiple orgasms, soul bond sex (enhanced sensations), touch-starved bucky, possessive behavior, marking/bruising, praise kink, body worship, emotional sex, crying during sex (in a good way), size kink if you squint, bucky has a dirty filthy mouth

✮ word count: 14.3k

✮ a/n: re-uploading all my fics to this blog so i'm posting a ca:tws-era oldie but goodie (the last 4k of this is straight smut, so if that's not your cup of tea feel free to stop at the **)

bonus drabble 1 bonus drabble 2 series masterlist

The library basement feels like a crypt tonight—all dead air and fluorescent buzz that makes your molars ache.

You've been down here so long your bones have started to match the temperature of the concrete, cold seeping through your jeans where you've been sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by a semi-circle of photocopied articles that all essentially say the same nothing in different ways.

3:17 AM according to your phone, which you check compulsively every twenty minutes like maybe time will take pity and skip forward to your deadline. The security guard made his last round two hours ago—Gerald? Gary? Something with a G—his whistling fading up the stairwell along with any pretense that you're not completely alone down here.

Your neck cracks when you roll it, vertebrae protesting the last six hours of hunching over sources that shouldn't be this hard to parse. But your advisor had smiled that sharp little smile when assigning this topic, the one that says let's see if you're really cut out for this, and spite is a hell of a motivator.

Even if your eyes are burning. Even if the coffee tastes like battery acid. Even if your soul bond has been aching since midnight with that peculiar emptiness you've learned to ignore.

The lights flicker—building's older than sin, held together by asbestos and prayer—but the air changes with it. Shifts. Like all the oxygen just remembered it had somewhere else to be.

Your fingers still on the keyboard mid-sentence.

Don't be stupid. It's a basement. In a library. The scariest thing down here is your browser history.

But your body knows things your mind pretends it doesn't. Every hair follicle suddenly awake, skin prickling with the kind of ancient warning that kept humans from being eaten in the dark. Your heartbeat kicks up, stuttering from normal to concerned between one breath and the next.

You turn.

He stands at the edge of the stacks like violence in human form.

Black tactical gear eats the light, makes him look like someone cut a hole in reality and taught it how to hunt. The mask covering the lower half of his face should make him less human, but somehow it's worse—forces you to focus on the eyes that track your movement with the kind of empty precision that makes your hindbrain scream predator predator predator.

"Oh." The sound punches out of you, high and strangled.

He doesn't speak. Doesn't need to. Just moves toward you with the kind of lethal economy that makes you understand, suddenly and completely, why rabbits freeze when hawks circle overhead. No wasted motion. No hesitation. Just purpose distilled into muscle and intent.

Your body tries—God, it tries. Scrambling backward, papers scattering, laptop sliding off your thighs to crack against the floor in what feels like slow motion. Three months of work fracturing into digital garbage as you crab-walk backward, palms slipping on photocopies, knee catching on your backpack hard enough to send you sprawling.

He crosses the space between you like it's nothing.

Like you're nothing.

His hand finds your throat before you've even processed standing, leather and pressure sending you backward into the wall hard enough to knock the air from your lungs. Old brick catches your hair, pulls it, but that barely registers against the feeling of being pinned like an insect, specimen for examination before disposal.

Both your hands fly to his wrist, fingernails catching on tactical fabric that won't give, won't move, won't budge. He's not crushing your windpipe—not yet—but the promise is there in the careful placement of his thumb, the calculated pressure that says I could, if I wanted to.

"Please—" It comes out thin, reedy. Your right hand abandons his wrist to push against his chest, trying to create distance that doesn't exist, will never exist. "I don't know what you—I'm nobody, I'm just—"

His head tilts. Minute. Considering. The eyes stay empty, stay cold, but something flickers there—assessment, maybe. Calculation. How long it will take. How quiet you'll be.

Your left hand keeps clawing at his grip while your right slides up his chest, finds the edge of his tactical vest, pushes uselessly at a shoulder that might as well be carved from stone. But the movement makes you stretch, makes your hand slip higher, past the collar of his gear, past the edge of the mask, until—

Your fingertips brush his jaw.

Skin against skin.

The world breaks apart.

Heat races from that point of contact like lightning seeking ground, if lightning could rewrite your DNA as it traveled. Every nerve ending lights up at once, not with pain but with recognition so profound it feels like drowning in reverse. Like every cell in your body suddenly remembers how to breathe.

His entire body locks. The hand at your throat spasms, loosens, and you hear him make a sound—sharp, bitten off, like someone just slid a knife between his ribs. Those empty eyes blow wide, pupils expanding until there's barely any gray left, and his chest heaves against your palm like he's just broken the surface after being underwater too long.

He rips the mask off with his free hand. Tears it away like it's burning him, revealing a face that makes your chest cavity feel too small. Sharp jaw, soft mouth, stubble that catches the shit fluorescent lighting and turns it into shadow. Beautiful in the way broken things can be beautiful, in the way that makes you want to cut yourself on the edges.

The leather glove at your throat disappears—he tears it off with his teeth, movements gone jerky and desperate where they were smooth before. Then his bare hand is cupping your face, thumb brushing your cheekbone with the kind of reverence reserved for holy things, impossible things, things that might disappear if you breathe wrong.

He pulls you forward, or maybe he falls into you—either way, your foreheads meet in the space between one heartbeat and the next. His breath fans across your face, ragged and hot, and you can feel him shaking. This man who moved like death incarnate thirty seconds ago is shaking.

"Oh," he breathes, and his voice—Christ, his voice is nothing like you imagined during those empty nights when the bond ached worst. Rough like he hasn't used it in years. Soft like he's afraid it'll break something. Accent pulling at the vowels in ways that make your chest hurt. "Oh, no. No, not—not like this."

You can't move. Can't think. Can't process anything beyond the electricity still racing through your veins, the place where his thumb traces your cheekbone like he's trying to memorize the architecture of your face through touch alone. Your hands are caught between you, one still fisted in his tactical vest, the other pressed flat against his chest where you can feel his heart hammering out a rhythm that matches yours.

He pulls back just enough to look at you, and the devastation in his eyes makes your throat close for reasons that have nothing to do with violence. Gray like winter mornings, like grief, like the moment before the sky breaks open.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, wrecked. His thumb catches the tear you didn't realize was sliding down your cheek, and the tenderness of it makes you want to scream. "I'm so fucking sorry, I didn't—I couldn't—"

"Who are you?" Your voice comes out destroyed, barely recognizable. The soul bond hums between you like a live wire, like coming home to a place that's on fire, and you don't know whether to run toward it or away.

His jaw works, muscles tightening and releasing like he's fighting something immense. When he speaks again, it's careful. Measured. Like each word costs him something irreplaceable.

"Someone who's going to disappear." His forehead presses against yours again, harder this time, desperate. Both hands frame your face now, holding you like something precious, something he's about to lose. "Someone who needs you to run. Now. Before—"

A sound echoes down the stairwell. Footsteps. Multiple sets.

The change in him is instant and terrible. The softness vanishes like it was never there, replaced by the same lethal efficiency that brought him here, but now there's something else in his eyes. Something that looks like anguish.

"Forgive me," he says, and before you can ask for what, his thumb finds a spot behind your jaw.

The world tilts. Your legs go liquid. But he catches you—of course he catches you—lowers you to the ground like you're made of spun glass while your vision tunnels to nothing.

The last thing you feel is his mouth pressed to your forehead, words whispered against your skin in a language you don't recognize but somehow understand.

I'll find you again.

I promise.

I'm sorry.

When security finds you four hours later, you have bruises on your throat that look like purple-black fingerprints, a concussion that makes the world swim, and no memory the EMTs will accept of how you ended up unconscious in a locked basement.

But you remember.

You remember the way his hands shook when he held your face. You remember the devastation in winter-gray eyes. You remember the electricity of recognition, the soul bond snapping into place only to be severed, leaving you with a phantom ache that feels like dying in slow motion.

There's a leather glove clutched in your fist that no one can pry from your fingers.

You tell them you don't remember where it came from.

You lie.

The world had always been divided into two types of people: those who'd found their match and those still waiting.

You'd grown up watching the found ones move through life with that particular brand of settled confidence, like they'd discovered some fundamental truth the rest of you were still stumbling toward.

Your mother used to tell the story at dinner parties, after her second glass of wine made her sentimental. How she'd been twenty-three, working at a bank in downtown Brooklyn, when a man came in to dispute an overdraft fee. Their hands touched when she passed back his paperwork. The bond snapped into place like a rubber band that had been stretched across decades, just waiting to contract.

She'd knocked over her coffee. He'd forgotten his own name for thirty seconds. They'd been married six months later.

"You just know," she'd say, fingers intertwined with your father's across the table. "It's like every cell in your body suddenly remembers what it was made for."

You'd wanted to believe her. Spent your eighteenth birthday waiting for that recognition to hit, for your body to suddenly make sense in a way it never had before.

But days turned to weeks turned to months, and all you felt was the same low-grade emptiness everyone without a bond carried—that constant, quiet ache of incompleteness.

By twenty-one, you'd stopped looking for it in every accidental touch.

By twenty-three, you'd convinced yourself you were one of the statistical anomalies. No bond. No match. Just you and your dissertation and a future that looked exactly like your present, only with better coffee and maybe tenure if you played your cards right.

The bruises have faded to sick yellow-green by the time you make it back to campus. Two weeks of medical leave that you spent staring at your apartment ceiling, trying to make sense of something that refuses to be made sensible. The official report sits in your email, cc'd to your advisor and the department head and probably half the university's legal team: Student found unconscious in library basement. Possible assault. No cameras functioning. Investigation ongoing.

You don't correct them. Don't mention the glove hidden in your nightstand drawer. Don't explain that the bruises on your throat match the exact span of fingers that had held your face like you were something holy, something worth breaking for.

Your body remembers even when your mind tries to forget. The soul bond, severed as quickly as it formed, has left you feeling like someone hollowed out your chest cavity with a melon baller. It's worse than before—before was just absence. This is active loss. This is knowing exactly what you're missing.

The dreams start the first night home from the hospital.

Not nightmares—that would be easier. These are soft things that leave you gasping awake at 3 AM with tears on your face and your hand pressed to your cheek where he'd touched you. Dreams where those gray eyes find yours across impossible distances. Where his hands shake as they frame your face. Where he whispers apologies in languages you don't speak but somehow understand.

Sometimes you dream of snow. Of cold so profound it burns. Of a voice saying his name—names?—until there's nothing left but the mission.

Sometimes you dream of falling. Of a train that screams through mountain passes. Of reaching for something—someone—who's always just beyond your fingertips.

But mostly you dream of that moment. The mask coming off. The devastating gentleness of his forehead against yours. The way he breathed you in like his lungs hadn't recognized oxygen until then, like you were the first real thing he'd touched in decades.

You become an expert in lying about the nightmares. "Trauma response," you tell the university-mandated therapist. "Yes, I'm processing. No, I don't remember details. Yes, I feel safe on campus."

Lies. All lies.

You remember everything. The weight of him. The contrast between violence and tenderness that shouldn't have existed in the same person. The way the soul bond had sung between you for those impossible seconds—not the gentle hum your mother described, but something desperate and raw, like two halves of something broken trying to fuse back together.

The research starts three weeks after the incident. You tell yourself it's academic curiosity. Tell yourself you're not the first person to lose a soulmate before really finding them. There are support groups. Statistics. An entire subset of psychology dedicated to severed bonds and what they do to the human psyche.

Increased rates of depression. Anxiety. Insomnia. Some subjects report physical pain at the site of initial contact. Others experience what researchers call "phantom bond syndrome"—the persistent sensation of a connection that no longer exists.

You check every box. Feel him in every room you enter, just a second too late. Wake up with your hand pressed to your face, trying to hold onto the ghost of leather and gunpowder and something metallic you couldn't place then but can't stop tasting now.

The databases give you nothing. Facial recognition software turns up empty. You sketch what you remember of his face—strong jaw, soft mouth, eyes like winter—but it feels like trying to draw music, like something essential gets lost in translation.

"Maybe he was military," Katrina suggests over coffee that tastes like disappointment. She's trying to help, your best friend since undergrad, but she looks at you with the kind of careful concern reserved for people about to break. "Special ops or something. That would explain the tactical gear."

You don't tell her about the way he moved. Don't mention that special ops soldiers don't usually have metal arms—you'd felt it when he caught you, the strange whir of plates adjusting beneath the fabric. Don't explain that whatever he was, military doesn't quite cover it.

December bleeds into January. You submit your dissertation proposal late, blame the incident, receive an extension wrapped in sympathetic looks. The bruises are long gone but you wear scarves anyway, can't stand the feeling of air against your throat where his thumb had pressed.

Your google search history becomes a testament to obsession:

“severed soul bonds recovery time?” “can soul bonds reconnect?” “military tactical gear supplier identification” “metal prosthetic arm advanced” “soul bond physical pain management”

Nothing. Always nothing.

But late at night, when the world sleeps and you're alone with the ache that lives between your ribs, you pull out the glove. Run your fingers over worn leather that's been softened by use and something else—care, maybe. The kind of attention that comes from having nothing else to focus on.

It smells like winter. Like violence. Like the ghost of cologne that might have been nice once, before it mixed with gunpowder and fear and whatever else clings to people who move through the world like weapons.

You press it to your face and breathe deep, eyes closed, trying to summon those impossible seconds when he'd looked at you like you were salvation and damnation all at once. When his voice had broken on an apology for something you didn't understand. When he'd promised to find you again in words you shouldn't have been able to translate but did.

The bond throbs. Phantom pain for a phantom connection.

You fold the glove carefully. Place it back in the drawer. Go to bed knowing you'll dream of gray eyes and the kind of gentleness that only comes from people who've forgotten they deserve it.

Tomorrow you'll get up. Go to class. Pretend your chest doesn't feel like someone excavated it with rusty tools. Pretend you don't scan every face on campus, looking for winter eyes and a jaw that could cut glass.

But tonight, you let yourself remember. Let yourself feel the echo of his forehead against yours, the desperate press of his mouth to your skin, the way he'd held you like you were worth breaking the world for.

I'll find you again.

You touch your throat, the memory of leather and promise.

I'm waiting.

The asset doesn't fight anymore.

Hasn't for years. Learned the hard way that resistance only makes it worse—more voltage, longer sessions, deeper cuts into whatever remains of the person he might have been.

Better to go limp. Better to let them position him like a doll, open his mouth for the rubber guard, wait for the electricity to wash it all away.

The asset craves it sometimes. The blankness. The nothing. Easier than carrying the weight of what his hands have done.

But Bucky Barnes fights.

Screams himself raw before they get the guard between his teeth. Thrashes against the restraints hard enough to bend the metal table, to make the technicians step back with wide eyes because the asset never does this, hasn't done this in fifteen years, not since they perfected the chair's calibration.

"Hold him!" Pierce's voice cuts through the chaos, sharp with irritation. "Get those restraints tightened before—"

Bucky's metal arm tears through the leather strap like tissue paper. Swings wild, catches a handler across the jaw with a crack that sends him spinning into medical equipment. Two more rush forward and he fights them with everything he has, everything he'd forgotten he could be.

Soft hands on his face. Bright eyes wide with recognition. The soul bond singing between them like coming home—

"No!" The word tears out of him, accent thick with desperation. Russian, English, something older—he doesn't know anymore, doesn't care. "Please—please, I can't—"

A needle finds his neck. Sedative, fast-acting, enough to drop an elephant. His knees buckle but he keeps fighting, keeps reaching for—what? The memory's already going slippery, falling through his fingers like water.

Someone. There was someone. Wasn't there?

"Interesting." Pierce circles him as four handlers wrestle him into the chair, voice clinical. "What happened on the mission? You terminated the target, but something affected you. The timeline's off by forty-three minutes."

Bucky's jaw works around the guard they're shoving between his teeth. Can't tell them. Won't tell them. But what is he protecting? The feeling's there—urgent, desperate, worth dying for—but the shape of it keeps shifting.

A face. Soft mouth parted in shock. The way she'd—

The electricity hits before he can finish the thought.

White-hot agony races through every nerve ending, bows his back against the restraints they've doubled, tripled. The scream locks in his throat, comes out as a sound that doesn't belong to anything human. But underneath the pain, worse than the pain, is the feeling of something essential being carved out of him.

Don't take her, some part of him begs. Take everything else, but not her, not this—

But the machine doesn't care about please. Doesn't care that he's crying—when did he start crying? The asset doesn't cry. The asset doesn't feel. But Bucky Barnes is sobbing, choking on the rubber guard as memories start to fracture and fade.

Her hand against his jaw. The world breaking open. Recognition so profound it rewrote thirty years of programming in seconds—

Another pulse. Stronger. Pierce has turned the dial past safety parameters, past sanity, past anything they've done before.

"Sir," one of the technicians ventures, nervous. "The readings—"

"Continue."

Forehead to forehead. Breathing her in. The apology scraping his throat raw because he'd never wanted to meet her like this, never wanted her to know him as a weapon first and a man second—

Gone. It's gone. He reaches for it, desperate, but there's only white noise where her face should be. Only the echo of something precious he'd held for minutes—hours?—seconds?—he doesn't know anymore.

The machine winds down. Silence except for his ragged breathing, the drip of something (blood? tears?) hitting the concrete floor.

"Asset."

He doesn't respond. Can't. There's something wrong with his chest, like someone reached in and scooped out everything that mattered.

"Asset."

Training kicks in where consciousness fails. His head lifts, eyes focusing with effort on the man in the suit. Pierce. Handler. The one who holds the leash.

"Ready to comply." The words come out broken. Mechanical. But correct.

"Mission report."

"Target eliminated. No witnesses." A pause. Something scratches at the back of his mind, urgent, important. But when he reaches for it there's nothing but static. "Extraction successful."

Pierce studies him, pale eyes narrowed. "And the deviation? You were off-schedule."

The asset blinks. Searches the white noise of his mind for an answer that makes sense. "Unexpected resistance. Handled."

"I see." Pierce doesn't look convinced, but he waves to the technicians. "Run a full cognitive recalibration. I want him stable before the next deployment."

They unstrap him eventually. He doesn't fight. Doesn't do anything but stare at his metal hand, trying to understand why it feels wrong. Why everything feels wrong. There's an ache in his chest that wasn't there before—or was it always there? He can't remember. Can't remember anything but the mission, the chair, the readiness to comply.

But that night, locked in cryo-prep, he dreams.

Fragments. Glimpses. A basement that smells like old paper and fear. Someone pressed against a wall, hands pushing at his chest. The feeling of skin against skin and the world exploding into color he didn't know existed.

He wakes with her ghost on his lips—no name, no face, just the shape of an apology in a language he's not supposed to know.

The asset reports for cryo on schedule. Lies still as they prep the chamber, ice already forming in the tubes that will freeze him until the next time he's needed. But as consciousness fades, as the cold takes him under, one thought persists:

Someone. There was someone. And I've lost them.

The machine hisses. Frost spreads across the glass.

The asset sleeps.

Bucky Barnes screams.

The Starbucks on 42nd doesn't have soul bonds on the menu, but they do have overpriced lattes and witnesses, which is why you're here instead of home, staring at your bedroom ceiling and trying to parse nightmares from memories.

Six months.

Six months of the glove under your pillow losing his scent. Six months of your advisor asking pointed questions about your "lack of focus" and your therapist prescribing sleeping pills that don't work because how do you medicate a severed soul bond?

How do you explain that you're mourning someone you knew for less than five minutes?

You're arguing with yourself about the merits of a fourth shot of espresso when the world explodes.

Glass shatters inward, the windows becoming a thousand diamonds catching afternoon light. Your coffee hits the floor—there goes eight dollars you don't have—as your body moves on instinct, dropping behind the counter with five other people who smell like fear and pumpkin spice.

Screaming. So much screaming. Cars screeching outside, the percussion of something that might be gunfire but sounds too wrong, too close, too real for a Tuesday afternoon in Manhattan.

You peek around the espresso machine and your heart forgets how to beat.

He's standing in the middle of the street like death dressed for winter. Same tactical gear, same casual violence, same way of moving that makes everyone else look like they're traveling through molasses. The mask covers the lower half of his face again, but you'd know those eyes anywhere. Have been seeing them every night for six months, after all.

A cop raises his weapon. The soldier—your soulmate, your ghost, your nightly torment—disarms him with an economy of motion that's almost beautiful. The crack of breaking fingers carries even through the shattered windows.

Get up, your brain screams. Run. Move. Do something that isn't standing here like a deer watching headlights come to claim it.

But your body has other plans. Your treacherous, soul-bonded body that recognizes his even across thirty feet of chaos and broken glass. You're moving before conscious thought catches up, stumbling through the destroyed storefront on legs that feel like they belong to someone else.

This is stupid. Monumentally stupid. The kind of stupid that gets psychology PhD candidates killed in broad daylight. But your hand is already reaching, already grasping, because maybe—

Your fingers close around his wrist.

The barest slip of skin where his sleeve has ridden up, your thumb finding his pulse like it was made for nothing else. The connection slams through you—heat and recognition and yes, finally, yes—

The gun clatters to the asphalt.

His whole body goes rigid, that same terrible stillness from before. You watch his pupils dilate, watch six months of careful nothing shatter in his eyes as a stranger crashes back into existence.

He moves so fast you don't process it. One second you're standing there, thumb on his pulse, the next you're spinning, back slamming into his chest as his metal arm locks across your body. The gun—when did he pick it up?—presses cold against your temple.

You stop breathing.

Around you, cops and civilians alike freeze. Weapons lower incrementally because now there's a hostage situation, now there's a girl who was stupid enough to touch the Winter Soldier and—

"Name." His voice in your ear, so quiet you almost miss it under the sirens. That sound that had haunted your dreams, rougher now, desperate. "Your name. Please."

Your lips barely move, sound threading between heartbeats. You tell him, soft as a whisper.

The gun doesn't waver. To everyone watching, he's perfectly still, a predator considering prey. But his metal thumb moves against your bare arm where your shirt has ridden up. Gentle. Deliberate. Tracing letters maybe, or just feeling, and you wonder if he can—if there are sensors in the metal that let him—

"My name is James Buchanan Barnes." Each word careful, precious, pressed into the space below your ear like a secret. Like a gift. "Bucky. My name is Bucky. I won't remember, so I need you to—you have to remember for me."

James Buchanan Barnes.

It tickles something in your memory. A history class, maybe. Something about World War II, about Captain America, about—

"What have they done to you?" The words slip out, horrified, because the pieces are trying to fit together but the picture they're making can't be right, can't be possible—

"Find me." Urgent now. His realness, his hereness makes your chest ache with completion even as your mind screams danger. "When I—after they—find me. Please. I can't—"

His voice cracks.

The gun leaves your temple.

The crack of the shot makes you flinch, but it's the cop to your left who goes down, clutching his knee, screaming. Bucky shoves you—not hard, but enough to send you stumbling into the crowd as he moves the opposite direction, using the chaos as cover.

You hit the ground hard, knees cracking against asphalt, palms scraped raw. Around you, people scatter like startled birds. Someone's hands on your shoulders, pulling you back, asking if you're hurt, if you need medical attention.

You can't answer. Can't do anything but stare at the place where he'd stood, where he'd held you, where he'd given you his name like it was the only thing he had left to give.

Your arm throbs where his metal thumb had traced patterns. When you look down, you can see the faint red marks—not bruises, just pressure. Just proof.

"Miss? Miss, we need to get you checked out—"

"I'm fine." You're not. You're the opposite of fine. You're shattering in slow motion, held together by adrenaline and the phantom feeling of his chest against your back. "I'm—he didn't hurt me."

The EMT looks skeptical. "He held a gun to your head."

"He didn't hurt me," you repeat, and you're not sure who you're trying to convince.

They take you anyway. St. Luke's emergency room, where you spend four hours being poked and prodded and questioned by people who look at you like you might break or explode. The FBI shows up eventually, two agents in bad suits who ask the same questions fifteen different ways.

"Did he say anything to you?"

My name is James Buchanan Barnes.

"No."

"Are you sure? Even something small could help."

Find me.

"He didn't say anything."

They don't believe you. You can see it in the way they exchange glances, the way their pens hover over notepads. But what are you supposed to tell them? That the most wanted man in America is your soulmate? That he gave you his name like a prayer? That even now, hours later, you can still feel the phantom press of metal against your skin?

They release you near midnight with a card and instructions to call if you remember anything. You take a cab home because the subway feels too exposed, too dangerous, like maybe he'll be there in the shadows between stops.

Your apartment is exactly as you left it. Laptop open on the counter, half a cup of cold coffee growing something ambitious by the sink. Normal. Safe.

Empty.

You sink onto your bed, still fully dressed, and pull out your phone. Your search history is already damning, but what's one more nail in the coffin?

James Buchanan Barnes

The results make your stomach drop.

Born 1917. Best friend of Steve Rogers, Captain America. Sergeant in the 107th Infantry Regiment. Fell from a train in the Alps in 1945. Presumed dead.

Except he's not dead. He's not dead because you touched him today, felt his pulse under your thumb, heard him breathing in your ear as he held you like something breakable and precious all at once.

You dig deeper. Past the official records, past the Wikipedia entries, into the conspiracy forums and leaked documents that only half-load on your shitty wifi.

The Winter Soldier.

HYDRA.

Seventy years of ghost stories.

An assassin who appears and disappears like smoke, leaving bodies in his wake.

Your soulmate is a century-old brainwashed assassin. Your soulmate is Bucky Barnes, who died in 1945. Who didn't die. Who was turned into something else, something violent and beautiful and dangerous.

Who fights back to consciousness every time you touch him only to be dragged under again.

What have they done to you?

You close your laptop. Lie back on your bed, fully clothed, and stare at the water stain on your ceiling that looks like a rabbit if you squint. Your arm still throbs where he touched you. Traced letters, maybe, or just—

You bolt upright.

Grab a pen, try to recreate the pattern from memory on your other arm. It takes three tries before the movements feel right, before the shapes resolve into something recognizable.

Numbers.

He'd traced numbers on your skin. Coordinates.

Find me, he'd said.

Your hands shake as you type them into your phone. A location upstate, middle of nowhere, the kind of place where no one would look twice at an abandoned building or hear the screams from underground.

You should leave it alone. Should forget his name, forget the numbers, forget the feeling of being whole for thirty seconds in the middle of chaos. Should be smart and safe and boring and alive.

Instead, you screenshot the location. Book a rental car for tomorrow. Pack a bag with things that might matter—the glove, pepper spray that won't do shit against a super soldier but makes you feel better, a first aid kit you probably won't get the chance to use.

Find me.

You're going to. God help you, you're going to find James Buchanan Barnes.

Even if it kills you.

(It probably will.)

(You're going anyway.)

The HYDRA facility squats in the pre-dawn darkness like something that crawled out of the Cold War and forgot to die. You're crammed in the back of a tactical van between enough weaponry to level a city block and Captain America's guilt, which somehow takes up more space.

Forty-eight hours. That's all it took from wine-drunk-email-to-vague-Avengers-PR-listing to this—body armor that doesn't fit right, your heart hammering against ceramic plates, and the ghost of coordinates still throbbing on your arm where he'd traced them.

"Two minutes to insertion." Natasha's voice crackles through comms you're not supposed to have. But Steve had insisted, jaw set in that way that apparently nobody argues with. Not even Fury.

Steve Rogers had shown up at your door with Natasha Romanoff and Nick Fury, your roommate had screamed in her towel, and you'd told them everything. About the library. About the way Bucky's entire being had shifted when you touched him, like watching someone break the surface after drowning.

About how he'd held you in that Starbucks, whispered his name against your ear like a secret, like salvation, like the only thing he had left that was his.

Steve had gone very, very still. Then: "We're finding him. We're bringing him home."

Now he's sitting across from you, shield balanced against his knee, and you can see why people follow him into impossible situations. It's not the shoulders or the jaw or the way he fills out tactical gear like he was born to it. It's the way he looks at you—not through you, not around you, but at you. Like you matter. Like your connection to his best friend makes you worth protecting.

"Remember," he says quietly, pitched below the engine noise. "The moment we find him, the moment you make contact—"

"I know." Your fingers won't stop moving, tracing and retracing the numbers Bucky left on your skin. "Skin contact. Bring him back." Don't let go."

What you don't say: What if it doesn't work this time? What if they've wiped him too many times? What if whatever's left isn't enough to—

The van stops.

Everything happens too fast after that. Doors flying open, bodies moving with practiced precision, you stumbling to keep up as Steve's hand on your elbow guides you through pre-dawn shadows toward a concrete mouth that looks like it's waiting to swallow you whole.

The facility is worse inside. All industrial fluorescents and that particular kind of silence that sounds like screaming if you listen too hard. Your soul bond, quiet for months, starts to ache with proximity—a deep, bone-level recognition that makes your teeth chatter.

"Northeast corridor clear." Natasha's voice, clinical.

"Southwest clear." Someone else, call sign you didn't catch.

"Movement in the lower levels." Another voice. "Looks like they're mobilizing—"

A sound cuts through the chatter. Not quite human. Not quite animal. Something between a scream and static that makes your hindbrain light up with warnings to run.

Steve's already moving. "That's him."

You follow because what else can you do? Down stairs that smell like rust and terror, through corridors that branch like diseased arteries. The ache in your chest intensifies with each level down, soul bond pulling taut as piano wire.

Then—

The room opens before you like a wound. Medical equipment that belongs in museums next to things that belong in nightmares. And in the center, strapped to a chair that looks more like an electric chair than anything medical—

"Bucky." Steve's voice breaks on it.

He's shirtless, sweat-slick and shaking, with enough electricity running through him to light up half of Brooklyn. His hair hangs limp around his face, and even from here you can see the way his muscles lock and release in waves as current pulses through the chair. Fresh burn marks lattice across his chest where the nodes attach, and there's blood—so much blood—dripping from where he's fought against the restraints.

There are bodies on the floor. Technicians, by their white coats. The blood is fresh enough to still be spreading.

"Stay back." Natasha has her weapon trained on him, all business. "He's still the Winter—"

Bucky's head snaps up.

His eyes find yours across twenty feet of blood and machinery.

Time stops.

Those aren't the empty eyes from the library. Aren't the desperate clarity from the coffee shop. These are something else entirely—feral and frightened and so fucking broken under all that damage. He looks like something that's been torn apart and reassembled wrong, like an animal that's been in a cage so long it's forgotten what sky looks like.

You're moving before conscious thought catches up. Dodging Steve's reaching hand, slipping past Natasha's outstretched arm. Your feet slip in blood—whose blood? His? Theirs?—but you don't stop. Can't stop. The soul bond is screaming, every cell in your body reaching for its other half.

"Don't—" Someone shouts. Might be Steve. Might be God himself. Doesn't matter.

Because Bucky's watching you approach with the kind of stillness that precedes violence. His metal arm—and this close you can see how it's grafted to flesh, red and raw and infected at the edges—flexes against the restraints. The leather creaks. His chest heaves with each breath, and there's a wild look in his eyes like he can't decide if you're real or another torture.

You collapse on the arm of the chair. His breathing is ragged, chest heaving, and this close you can see old scars layered on new ones, a roadmap of decades of damage. Seventy years of this. Seventy years of being unmade and remade into something sharp and wrong.

Your hand reaches up, slow as you'd approach a wounded animal.

He flinches.

Actually flinches, this assassin who's probably felt every kind of pain there is. A sound escapes him—small, wounded, barely human. But when your fingertips brush his cheek—skin to skin, that electric recognition—his whole body convulses.

"Oh," you breathe, and it's inadequate, it's nothing, it's everything. Because the bond slots into place like coming home if home was a person who'd been carved hollow and filled with ghosts.

His eyes clear incrementally. Pupil contraction, focus sharpening, and then—

The noise that tears out of him is inhuman. Seventy years of grief and rage and desperate loneliness condensed into a single sound that makes your bones ache. His metal hand shatters the restraint like tissue paper, then the flesh one, and before you can process the movement he's dragging you up, up, into his lap, crushing you against his chest with desperate strength.

"You," he's saying, over and over, voice wrecked beyond recognition. "You, you, you—real, you're real, you're—"

His hands are everywhere at once. Metal fingers tangling in your hair, flesh hand splayed across your back hard enough to bruise, holding you like you might dissolve if he loosens his grip for even a second. He buries his face in the curve of your neck and the sob that escapes him is pure agony, seventy years of touch starvation hitting him all at once.

You can feel him shaking—no, not shaking, convulsing, like his body doesn't know how to process gentle touch anymore. Doesn't know what to do with softness after decades of nothing but pain.

"I'm here," you whisper against his temple, your own tears falling freely. "I'm real. I found you. I've got you."

His response is to hold you tighter, tight enough that breathing becomes difficult, but you don't care. Can't care when he's falling apart in your arms like this. The metal hand fists in your tactical vest and you hear fabric tear, but he doesn't seem to notice. He's pressing his face harder into your throat, breathing you in like you're air and he's been suffocating for seventy years.

"Thought I dreamed you." The words come out destroyed, muffled against your skin. "They said—they said I made you up. That the pain was making me see things. But you smell real. You feel—" His flesh hand slides up to cup the back of your head, holding you in place. "Please be real. Please, please be real."

"I'm real." You press your lips to his temple, just a brief touch of comfort. "James Buchanan Barnes, you're real and I'm real and I found you."

His breath hitches at his full name, and suddenly he's pulling back just enough to look at you. This close, you can see everything—the burst blood vessels in his eyes, the way his pupils can't quite focus, the decades of accumulated scars. He looks ancient. He looks young. He looks absolutely shattered.

"Don't know who that is anymore." Raw honesty, delivered while his thumbs trace your cheekbones with desperate reverence. "Don't know who I am when I'm not killing. When they're not—" He breaks off, jaw working. "I've been empty for so long. So fucking long. And then you touched me and I remembered what it felt like to be human and they took it away—"

"They can't take it away again." You frame his face with your hands, forcing him to meet your eyes. "We're leaving. Right now. Together."

"You don't understand." He's crying openly now, no shame in it, just pure emotional overflow. "Seventy years. Seventy fucking years of this chair, this room, these walls. They put me in the dark and take me out to kill and put me back and I can't—when they say the words, I disappear. Everything disappears."

"Then we don't let them say the words."

"I've killed so many people." He presses his forehead to yours hard enough to hurt, but the contact seems to calm something in him. "Children. Civilians. Good people. Bad people. So many I lost count. The things they made me do—the things I did—"

"I don't care."

"You should." His metal hand comes up to wrap around your throat, gentle but present. "This hand has strangled innocent people. These fingers have pulled triggers that ended lives. I'm not—I'm not good. I'm not worth—"

"Stop." You turn your head to press your lips to his metal palm, and the sound he makes is pure agony. "You're worth everything. You're my soulmate. You're—"

He makes a broken noise and crushes you against him again, like he's trying to crawl inside your skin. His whole body trembles with the effort of holding you close enough, like no amount of contact will ever be sufficient after seventy years of nothing.

"They're gonna wipe me again." Matter-of-fact. Resigned. "Soon as they realize what happened here. They always do. And I'll forget you again. Forget this. And next time—" His voice breaks. "Next time they'll make sure I can't touch you. They'll find ways to hurt you through me. They'll make me—"

"No." Your hands tighten on his face. "No, they won't. We're leaving. Steve's here. Natasha. We're getting you out."

"Stevie?" For the first time, his eyes flicker past you, landing on his best friend. The confusion there is heartbreaking. "But you're—you're supposed to be—"

"Hey, Buck." Steve's voice is thick with emotion. "It's me. It's really me. We're taking you home."

But Bucky's already looking back at you, like he can't bear to look away for more than seconds. His flesh hand hasn't stopped moving—tracing your face, your neck, tangling in your hair like he's trying to memorize you through touch alone.

"I don't want to forget again." It comes out small, broken. "Please. I can't do it again. Can't lose you again. It'll kill me. It'll—"

"You won't forget." You shift in his lap, wrap your arms around his neck, and he makes a sound like you've given him salvation. "I won't let them take you. I won't let them hurt you anymore. I promise."

"We need to move." Natasha's voice, soft but urgent. "Security response in two minutes."

Steve's at your side instantly, but when he reaches for Bucky, the soldier flinches back violently, metal arm coming up in defense. The only thing that keeps him from lashing out is your hand on his chest, your voice in his ear.

"It's okay. It's Steve. He's safe. He's here to help."

"Can you walk?" Steve asks, careful to keep his distance.

Bucky nods against your shoulder, but when you try to move off his lap, his arms lock around you with desperate strength.

"No." Panicked. "No, please. Need to—need to touch—"

"I'm not going anywhere." You run your fingers through his hair, and he leans into it like a cat. "We're walking out of here together. But you have to let me stand up."

It takes visible effort for him to loosen his grip. When you stand, he follows immediately, swaying slightly. He towers over you even hunched with exhaustion, and when his hand finds yours, it's with the grip of a drowning man finding driftwood.

You start moving as a unit, but Bucky can't stop touching you. His free hand keeps finding your face, your hair, your shoulder, like he needs constant confirmation you're real. At one point he stops entirely, pulls you back against his chest, and just breathes you in for several seconds while Steve and Natasha stand guard.

"Left," he says suddenly as you reach a junction, pulling you down a side corridor. "Service tunnel. I've—I've tried before. Three times. No. Four? They always—" His free hand comes up to his head, pressing against his temple.

"Hey." You squeeze his hand. "Doesn't matter. Which way?"

The service tunnel is narrow and dark. Bucky pulls you through it like muscle memory, but halfway through he stops, pressing you against the wall. His hands frame your face in the darkness.

"What if this isn't real?" Desperate. "What if I'm still in the chair? What if this is just another way they're breaking me?"

You reach up to cradle his face in return, thumbs brushing over his cheekbones. "Does this feel like a dream?"

"No." He breathes the word against your mouth. "No, it feels—it feels like waking up."

The exit spills you out into pre-dawn forest. The quinjet looms out of the darkness, and for the first time in seventy years, Bucky Barnes runs toward freedom instead of away from it.

But even on the jet, even safe, he can't stop holding you. He pulls you into his lap on the bench seats, ignoring the medical team, ignoring everyone, and just holds on. His face stays buried in your neck during takeoff, his arms locked around you like prison bars in reverse—keeping the world out instead of keeping him in.

"You're free," you whisper, over and over, like a prayer. "You're free. You're safe. You're mine."

"Yours," he agrees, and finally, finally, his death grip loosens just enough for you to breathe. "Yours. Always yours. Even when I couldn't remember. Even in the dark. Somehow I was always yours."

The sun breaks the horizon as you fly toward home, and for the first time in seventy years, Bucky Barnes believes he might actually make it there.

The first time Bucky Barnes calls you at 3 AM, your body knows it's him before your mind catches up.

The phone vibrates against your nightstand, and your hand's already reaching, heart already racing—not with fear but with recognition. That soul-deep pull that's been your compass for three months now.

"Bucky?" Your voice comes out sleep-rough, concerned.

Just breathing on the other end. Ragged, like he's been running. Or fighting. The sound makes your chest tight.

"Can't—" His voice cracks like splintered wood. "Can't remember if the blood on my hands is from yesterday or a decade ago."

You're already moving, sheets tangling around your legs as you hunt for clothes in the dark. "Where are you?"

"Steve's. The Tower. I'm—" A shaky exhale that you feel in your own lungs. "I'm safe. Everyone's safe. Just needed—"

"Me." Not a question. The bond thrums with his distress, a phantom ache under your ribs. "I'm coming."

"You don't have to—"

"I'm coming."

Twenty minutes later, Happy's pulling up to the Tower's private entrance. You're wearing the first things your hands found—pajama shorts with snowflakes on them that you stole from your roommate, one of Bucky's hoodies that still smells like him (cedar and gunpowder and something indefinably him).

The elevator ride feels eternal. Your skin prickles with proximity, the bond pulling taut as you rise through the floors. By the time JARVIS deposits you on the residential level, your hands are shaking with the need to touch him, to soothe whatever's tearing him apart.

You find him on the couch, knees drawn up to his chest like he's trying to make himself smaller. His metal hand is clenched so tight you can hear the recalibration whirs, flesh hand buried in his hair. Steve hovers nearby, hands opening and closing like he wants to help but doesn't know how.

"Buck," you breathe.

His head snaps up, and oh—his eyes are winter-wild, pupils blown with panic, caught in some liminal space between then and now. You watch him catalog you in pieces: face, voice, the way you're already moving toward him like gravity's reversed its pull.

You don't speak. Don't need to. Just fold yourself onto the couch beside him, close enough that the line of your body presses against his from shoulder to hip. His flesh hand finds yours immediately, desperate, fingers lacing between yours like maybe if he holds tight enough he won't drift away.

The effect is immediate—a full-body shudder, his breathing starting to sync with yours. The bond hums, warm honey spreading through your veins. Steve makes a sound—relief wrapped in something more complicated—and quietly retreats.

"Sorry," Bucky murmurs after a moment. His thumb finds your pulse point, traces it like he's counting heartbeats. "Shouldn't have woken you."

"Yes, you should have." No reproach, just fact. "That's what this is."

He turns to look at you then, really look, and you watch him surface by degrees. His metal hand comes up without conscious thought, fingertips ghosting along your jaw with impossible gentleness. The cool metal makes you shiver, but you lean into it, letting him map the reality of you.

"There you are," he whispers.

Something fractures inside you. He pulls you in—careful, always so careful with you—until your foreheads touch. His breathing ghosts across your lips, and you stay suspended in that space, sharing air and warmth and the indescribable thing that ties soul to soul.

It becomes your new normal.

The calls come at all hours. Sometimes Steve's the one calling, voice carefully controlled: "Can you come? He's asking for you." Sometimes it's Natasha, brusque but not unkind: "Barnes needs you." Once, memorably, it's Tony: "Your touch-starved assassin is having a moment. Also, he may have broken my espresso machine."

You always go.

The team adapts to your presence like you're a new piece of furniture—necessary, functional, occasionally in the way. You learn to read Bucky's tells from across a room: the way his eyes go distant when memory bleeds through, the micro-flinches when sound becomes too much, the careful way he holds himself when he's fragmenting.

But more than that, you learn the language his body speaks when it's seeking yours.

He's always careful at first, tentative as a feral cat learning to accept kindness. A brush of fingers, testing. The barest press of his palm to yours. But once that first contact is made, something in him unravels.

He touches you like he's mapping a new world.

It starts innocuous enough—fingers tangled together during movie nights, his thumb painting absent patterns on your wrist. His hand finds the small of your back when you walk, not possessive but anchoring, like he needs proof you're real. He pulls you between his knees when he's sitting, arms banding around your waist, chin notching over your shoulder while you chat with Sam about nothing important.

But as weeks become months, the touches grow bolder. Hungrier.

"Does it bother you?" he asks one afternoon.

He's had a brutal therapy session—three hours of guided recall that left him shaking and grey-faced. You'd spent the past hour with his head in your lap, your fingers carding through his hair while he pieced himself back together. His flesh hand has found its way under your shirt, palm spread wide over your ribs, and his metal fingers trace delicate patterns on the inside of your wrist.

"Does what bother me?"

"This." He gestures vaguely at the negative space between you that stopped existing weeks ago. "How much I need—" He stops. Swallows. Tries again. "How I can't stop touching you."

The question deserves honesty, so you give it consideration. Think about how your life has restructured itself around these points of contact. How you've started wearing layers just so there's always fabric to push aside, skin to find. How your body anticipates his touch now, turns toward him without conscious thought.

"No," you say finally. "It doesn't bother me."

He studies your face with those searching eyes, looking for the polite lie. You let him look, keeping your expression open.

"I've been thinking," you continue, adjusting so you can see him better. His hand immediately shifts, fingers splaying wider across your ribs like he needs more contact to make up for the movement. "About touch. About deprivation."

A muscle in his jaw ticks.

"Seventy years," you say softly. "Seventy years where touch meant pain. Programming. Violence. Where hands on you meant—"

"Stop." Rough. His hand presses harder against your ribs, feeling your heartbeat.

"—so is it any wonder you're hungry for something else? Something good?"

His exhale shudders out of him. "The doctors say it's codependence."

"The doctors haven't had their souls systematically unmade and remade." You cover his flesh hand with yours, pressing it more firmly against your skin. "You're not codependent, Bucky. You're human. You're healing. And if touch helps—"

"It's not just that it helps." The words come out jagged, confessional. "I want—" His metal hand comes up, traces the line of your throat with one careful finger. "I want to touch you all the time. Want to know the texture of every inch of your skin. Want to map you like territory, like—" He cuts himself off, jaw clenching.

Heat pools low in your stomach, but you keep your voice steady. "Like what?"

"Like you're mine." Barely audible. His eyes won't meet yours. "Like I have any right to—"

"You do." You turn into him more fully, catch his face between your palms. His eyes flutter closed, and he leans into the touch like a man starved. "You have every right. We're soulmates, Bucky. That means something."

"What if I never get better?" Raw, honest. "What if I always need this? Need you?"

"Then you'll always have me."

His eyes snap open, winter-blue and desperate. "You can't promise that."

"Watch me."

The trial is excruciating. You watch from designated seating as Bucky sits statue-still, hair pulled back severe, wearing a suit that makes him look like someone else entirely. They read names, show photographs, detail missions that exist in his memory like shattered glass—some pieces clear, others reflecting nothing but blood.

The days he testifies, he comes to you after.

Never speaks about it. Just shows up at your door looking hollowed out, and you let him in without questions. He wraps himself around you like you're the only solid thing in a tilting world, face buried in the curve of your neck, breathing you in like oxygen.

These are the times his hands grow bold.

Not inappropriate—never that. But searching. He maps you like a cartographer charting new territory. Palms skimming your sides, memorizing the curve of waist to hip. Fingers tracing the ladder of your ribs through thin fabric. Metal thumb finding the hollow of your throat where your pulse flutters hummingbird-quick.

"I need—" he'll say against your skin, words muffled and desperate.

"I know," you always answer. "Take what you need."

So he does. His flesh hand slips under your shirt, finds the warm plane of your stomach, spreads wide like he's trying to absorb your steadiness through osmosis. His metal fingers trace patterns on whatever skin he can find—the inside of your wrist, the nape of your neck, the sensitive spot behind your ear that makes you shiver.

Sometimes you'll find his hand at your sternum, metal fingers splayed over your heartbeat like he's using it to calibrate his own. Sometimes he'll trace the boundary where clothing meets skin, fingertips ghosting under hems and necklines but never pushing further, just needing to know there's softness underneath, that not everything in the world has sharp edges.

"Is this okay?" he asks every time, even as his touch grows more familiar, more certain.

"Yes," you answer every time, even as your skin heats and your breath catches and you want—

You want.

"So are you two fucking yet?"

You choke on your coffee, hot liquid searing your throat. Across the kitchen, Bucky's shoulders go rigid where he's making eggs with the kind of focus usually reserved for defusing explosives.

"Tony," Steve says, warning clear in his voice.

"What? It's a legitimate question. All that touching, the eye-fucking across every room, the way Barnes goes feral if anyone else so much as—"

"We're not." Your face burns. "That's not—we haven't—"

Tony's eyebrows achieve escape velocity. "You're telling me you've been playing the world's most intense game of grabass for three months and haven't—"

"Stark." Bucky's voice is winter-quiet, dangerous in the way that makes smart people reevaluate their life choices.

But Tony's never been accused of survival instincts. "I'm just saying, that level of sexual tension could power—"

The plate in Bucky's metal hand shatters.

Silence rings out, broken only by the drip of egg yolk hitting tile.

"I'll just." Tony backs toward the door, hands raised. "Workshop. Important things. Very important things."

He's gone before anyone can blink, leaving you, Bucky, and Steve in a kitchen that suddenly feels airless. Bucky stares at the ceramic shards in his hand like they've personally betrayed him.

"Buck—" Steve starts.

"I need air."

He's out the door before you can process the movement, leaving you with cooling eggs and Tony's words hanging in the air like smoke.

Steve sighs, the sound of a man who's aged a century in the last minute. "He's an idiot. Tony, I mean. Though Buck's also—" He stops. Runs a hand through his hair. "This is none of my business."

"But?"

"But." Steve fixes you with those earnest eyes that probably ended wars. "He thinks he's protecting you. From himself. From what he's done. He doesn't think he deserves—" A gesture encompasses you, the kitchen, the entire situation.

"That's not his decision to make."

"No," Steve agrees. "But when has that ever stopped him?"

You find Bucky on the roof because of course that's where he goes. He's sitting on the edge, legs dangling over nothing, and your heart does something complicated in your chest.

"Most people have their existential crises at ground level," you say, settling beside him carefully.

His mouth twitches—not quite a smile, but close. "Most people haven't fallen off a train."

"Fair point."

The city spreads below like a circuit board, all light and movement and life. Without looking, his hand finds yours, fingers interlacing with the ease of long practice. The bond settles, that constant thrum of rightness that comes with skin meeting skin.

"Tony's not wrong," he says eventually.

You wait, let him find the words in his own time.

"I think about it." His voice is carefully controlled, but you can feel the tremor in his hand. "Touching you. Not just—not just to ground myself. Not for the bond. I think about touching you because I want to. Because you're—"

He stops. His throat works, and when he speaks again, his voice is rougher. "Because you're beautiful. And kind. And you laugh at my terrible jokes even when they're not funny. You come when I call at 3 AM. You let me put my hands on you even though these same hands have—"

"Bucky—"

"I dream about it." The confession comes out raw. "Dream about kissing you. About how you'd taste. How you'd feel. Wake up with your name in my mouth and my hands reaching for you, and it's not about the bond, it's about—" He turns to look at you then, eyes dark with something that makes your breath catch. "It's about how much I want you. How much I want things I have no right to want."

"What if," you say, voice steadier than your pulse, "I want those same things?"

His breathing stutters. "You don't. You can't."

"Don't tell me what I want." You turn toward him fully, free hand coming up to his jaw. He leans into it helplessly, eyes falling closed. "I know exactly what I want. Who I want."

"I'm held together with duct tape and trauma," he says, but his resolve is crumbling. You can see it in the way he presses harder into your palm. "I can't take you on normal dates. Can't promise I won't have panic attacks. Can't even sleep through the night without—"

"I don't want normal." Your thumb traces his cheekbone, feels him shudder. "I want you. Every piece, every edge, every nightmare and bad day. I want the man who hums old songs when he thinks no one's listening. Who makes terrible eggs but keeps trying. Who touches me like I'm something precious and looks at me like I'm a miracle."

"You are," he breathes. "You're—"

You kiss him.

Or maybe he kisses you.

Maybe you meet in the middle, drawn together by forces older than choice.

The first press of lips is tentative, a question asked and answered in the same breath. His flesh hand comes up to cradle your face, and the tenderness of it makes your chest ache. But then you make a sound—small, needy—and something in him breaks.

Or maybe something in him finally fixes itself.

His metal arm bands around your waist, pulls you against him with desperate strength. The kiss deepens, and oh, you understand now why people write symphonies and wage wars. Because Bucky Barnes kisses like he's drowning and you're air, like he's been starving for seventy years and you're sustenance, like maybe the universe knew exactly what it was doing when it tied your souls together.

He kisses you like he's trying to crawl inside your skin.

His tongue traces the seam of your lips and you open for him without thought, and the sound he makes—broken, grateful—sends heat racing down your spine. He tastes like coffee and something indefinably him, and you chase that taste deeper, hands fisting in his shirt.

He doesn't surface for air. Doesn't pause. Just tilts his head to find a better angle and kisses you deeper, harder, like he's trying to memorize the shape of your mouth, the texture of your sighs. His metal hand spans your lower back, pulling you impossibly closer, while his flesh hand maps your face, thumb stroking your cheek even as his mouth devastates you.

You're half in his lap now, twisted awkwardly on the ledge, and you don't care. Can't care about anything beyond the heat of his mouth, the way he groans when you nip at his lower lip, the way his hands shake where they hold you.

"Wanted this," he gasps against your mouth, not pulling back enough to actually stop kissing you. "Wanted you. Before I even knew you. So long, so fucking long—"

You answer by sliding your hands into his hair, nails scraping his scalp, and he shudders against you, kiss going a little sloppy and desperate. He's not cold, not controlled, not careful. He's burning, pressing against you like he wants to fuse at the molecular level, like the soul bond isn't enough and never could be.

When you finally break apart—only because oxygen is apparently necessary—you're both wrecked. His lips are swollen, eyes dark and dazed. You probably look the same. His forehead drops to yours, and you can feel him trembling against you, all that careful control finally, beautifully shattered.

"Okay?" His voice is destroyed, rough like he's been screaming.

"So far past okay," you manage. "Though your timing—we're on a roof, Barnes."

He laughs, the sound surprised out of him, and presses kisses to your cheeks, your jaw, the corner of your mouth like he can't quite stop now that he's started. "Sorry. I'll plan better next time."

"Next time?" You're going for teasing but it comes out breathless, hopeful.

His eyes find yours, and the intensity there steals any words you might have had. "Every time. Any time. All the time, if you'll—if you want—"

You press your mouth to his again, swallowing whatever self-deprecating thing he was about to say. He makes a noise of pure relief and hauls you closer, and you think maybe Tony Stark has exactly one good point in his entire existence.

Not that you'll ever tell him.

** The science had been clinical, sterile words on a page that you'd skimmed in college while nursing a hangover and trying to make sense of your Behavioral Psych reading.

Enhanced neural connectivity. Synchronized endorphin response. Heightened sensory feedback between bonded pairs.

Academic language that utterly failed to capture this—Bucky's mouth hot and slick and desperate against your throat while his hands relearn territory they've been mapping under cotton and denim for months, each touch sending electricity racing down your spine like lightning seeking ground.

"Fucking finally," he growls against your pulse point, and you feel the words more than hear them, vibrating through skin into bone, into the very marrow of you. His metal hand spans your ribs, each individual plate recalibrating against your skin with tiny whirs and clicks, like even the machinery of him is trying to get closer.

"You know what it's been like? Having you close enough to smell, to taste in the air, but not—Christ, the way you tremble each time I touch you, like you're starving for it—"

You try to form words but he's already peeling your shirt away with hands that shake despite their practiced efficiency, and the first full press of his bare chest to yours—scarred skin against soft, furnace heat against cool air—whites out anything resembling higher thought.

The soul bond doesn't just sing—it screams, every nerve ending recognizing its other half and lighting up like a constellation, like a neural map catching fire.

"Oh," you gasp, and it's inadequate, it's nothing, but Bucky goes rigid above you like you've shot electricity straight through his spine.

"Yeah," he agrees, voice absolutely wrecked. His forehead drops to your shoulder, dog tags dragging cold metal across your overheated chest as he pants against your skin, each exhale making you shiver. "Yeah, that's—fuck, is it always gonna feel like this? Like touching a live wire, just—"

"More," you manage, arching into him until there's no space left between your bodies, and you feel his control splinter like ice under pressure.

His mouth finds yours again, hungry and graceless, all that careful restraint from months of chaste touches finally, blessedly gone. His tongue slides against yours and you taste coffee and something metallic—blood maybe, from where he's been biting his lip. When you nip at his bottom lip he makes a sound like something wounded, something primal, hips rolling into yours with zero finesse, just pure need, his cock hard and insistent through too many layers of fabric.

"Sensitive," he warns against your mouth, but it comes out more like a plea, like he's begging you to understand. "Everything's dialed up to eleven, I can—I can hear your blood moving in your veins. Can feel every place you're warm and wet and—fuck—" His whole body shudders when you rake your nails down his back.

Your fingers find the scarred terrain of his back and he actually whimpers, muscles rolling under your touch like water, like something liquid and desperate. That's when the second revelation hits: whatever you're feeling, he's feeling it magnified. Seventy years of sensory deprivation plus enhanced everything plus a soul bond that's been stretched taut for months—

"Gonna lose my mind," he mutters, mouthing at your jaw, your throat, anywhere he can reach, leaving wet trails that cool in the air and make you shiver. His stubble scrapes against sensitive skin and you gasp, hips bucking up involuntarily. "Already lost it. Lost it the second you touched me in that library. Do you know? Do you have any fucking idea what it's like, having someone reach inside your skull and turn all the lights on? Like going from black and white to color, like—Jesus—"

His flesh hand fumbles with your pants, clumsy with urgency, while his metal hand grips your hip hard enough to leave marks—and god, you hope it does, hope you wear his fingerprints for days. The button pops free and he makes a victorious sound that might be funny if you weren't so desperate, if you weren't already so wet you can feel it soaking through your underwear.

His hand slides lower, fingers slipping beneath elastic, and when he finds you soaked and swollen, the noise that punches out of him is pure animal—a growl that starts in his chest and rumbles through both your bodies where they're pressed together.

"Christ." His fingers slip through wetness, exploratory and reverent, and you can feel the tremor in his hand. "This is—this is for me? You get like this just from—" He circles your clit with his thumb and you cry out, hips jerking. "Fuck, you're dripping. Can feel your pulse in your cunt, baby. So swollen, so ready—"

"From you," you gasp, grinding down against his hand as he slides two fingers inside without warning. The stretch makes you moan, makes your walls clench around him immediately. "Always from you. Only from you."

Something fractures in his expression—something raw and possessive and desperately vulnerable all at once. He hooks his fingers, finding that spot that makes your vision white out, and watches your face like he's cataloging miracles, like he's mapping the geography of your pleasure. "Say that again."

"Only you." It comes out breathless, edged with desperation as he finds a rhythm that has your thighs shaking, has wet sounds filling the air between you. "Only ever you, Bucky, please—"

"No." His thumb finds your clit and circles with devastating precision, pressure just the right side of too much. "Not yet. Not when I've been imagining this for—do you know how many times I've jerked off in the shower thinking about this? About how you'd sound when you're desperate? How you'd taste?" He adds a third finger, stretching you wider, and grins dark and feral when you sob. "Bet you thought about it too. Bet you touched yourself thinking about me, didn't you? Tell me."

"Yes," you admit, face burning, and his pupils blow even wider.

He drops to his knees between your thighs suddenly, metal hand holding you open like something precious, like an offering. The first swipe of his tongue has you jackknifing off the bed, but he just pins you down with his metal arm across your hips and does it again, slower, a long drag from entrance to clit that has you seeing stars.

"Fuckin' knew it," he groans against you, and the vibration of his voice makes you clench around nothing. "Knew you'd taste like heaven. Like mine. Knew you'd shake for me just like this." He spreads you wider with his fingers, looking at you with dark eyes. "So pretty. So perfect." He spits on your cunt, watching it mix with your wetness, and the filthy intimacy of it makes you moan. "Gonna ruin you for anyone else. Gonna make it so you can't come without thinking of my mouth, my fingers, my cock."

His words dissolve into action, mouth working you over with single-minded focus. He eats you out like he's starving, like he's dying, all lips and tongue and just the edge of teeth. The soul bond makes it devastating—you don't just feel the physical sensation, you feel his hunger, his satisfaction at finally being allowed to give pleasure instead of pain. His metal fingers dig into your thigh hard enough to bruise and you hope they do, hope you wear his marks for days, hope everyone who sees them knows exactly who put them there.

"Close," you warn, though he probably knows—can probably taste it in the way your cunt's clenching, feel it in the bond that's gone molten between you. Your thighs are shaking, muscles pulled so tight they hurt, and there's a sound filling the room that you distantly realize is you, making noises you've never made before.

He pulls back just enough to speak, lips glossy with your wetness, chin soaked, eyes wild. "Yeah? You gonna come on my tongue? Gonna let me taste it?" He slides three fingers in, curling with devastating intent, and your back arches off the bed. "Come on, sweetheart. Give it up. Let me have it, don't be greedy."

You shatter with a sound that might be his name, might be pure noise. The orgasm rolls through you in waves, each crest higher than the last, and he works you through it mercilessly, not letting up even when you try to squirm away from oversensitivity. Through the bond you feel his echoing pleasure—not physical, not yet, but something bone-deep and satisfied and proud.

"Atta girl," he murmurs against your inner thigh, pressing kisses to sweat-slick skin while his fingers still move lazily inside you, drawing out aftershocks. "So fucking beautiful. Look at you, all fucked out and soft and mine. Could do this for hours. Will do this for hours. Keep you here, coming apart on my hands, my mouth, until you're so sensitive you cry, until you forget there was ever a time we weren't—"

"Bucky." You tug at his hair, need making your voice rough despite the orgasm still sparking through your nerves. "Get up here. Need you inside me. Need—"

He's moving before you finish, shucking his pants with graceless efficiency. The first glimpse of his cock—thick and long and leaking steadily—makes your mouth water and your cunt clench with fresh want. When you reach for him he catches your wrist, gentle but firm.

"Next time," he promises, reading your intent with unnerving accuracy. His voice is strained, like he's hanging on by a thread. "Let you taste me next time. Let you choke on it, fuck that pretty mouth until you're drooling, until—" He cuts himself off with visible effort, chest heaving. "But right now I need—if I don't get inside you in the next ten seconds I'm gonna fucking die—"

"So do it." You spread your legs wider, shameless, showing him how wet and open you are, how ready. "Come on, sergeant. Follow through."

His control snaps audibly. He's on you between one breath and the next, pinning you down with his weight, cock nudging at your entrance. The head catches on your rim and you both groan, but he stops there, trembling with effort, forehead pressed to yours.

"Look at me." It's not a request—it's a command, rough and desperate. You force your eyes open, meet his gaze—winter blue swallowed by black, raw and vulnerable and fierce. "Need to see you when I—need to know you're here, that you're real, that this is—"

"Real," you confirm, wrapping your legs around his waist, heels digging into his ass to urge him forward. "I'm real. You're real. This is—oh fuck—"

He pushes inside in one long, devastating slide, and the world reconstitutes itself around this moment. Around the stretch and burn and perfect fullness of him, around the broken sound he makes against your throat—half sob, half growl—around the soul bond lighting up like a supernova, like every nerve ending suddenly discovering what it was made for.

"Fuck." His metal hand grips the headboard hard enough to crack wood, splinters raining down. "Fuck, you're—tight. So fucking tight. Hot. Perfect. Can feel—God fucking damn, I can feel everything. Can feel how good it is for you, can feel how your cunt's trying to pull me deeper—" He shifts his hips and hits something devastating inside you, makes you clench around him involuntarily. He laughs, breathless. "Yeah, right there. That's it, isn't it, baby? Right fucking there."

He moves experimentally, just a slow roll of hips, and you both moan at the drag of him inside you, at how your bodies fit together like they were made for this, only this. The angle is perfect—he's reading your body's responses in real-time, adjusting until every thrust has you climbing higher, until you're making noises that would embarrass you if you could think.

"Not gonna last," he warns, rhythm already getting ragged, desperate. Sweat drips from his forehead onto your chest, mixing with the sheen already there. "Not this time. Too much, too long waiting, too—the way you feel—" His flesh hand finds your throat, rests there warm and possessive, thumb pressing just enough to make your pulse flutter. "Like velvet. Like coming home. Like I could fuck you forever and it would never be enough—"

"Don't care." You pull his head down, bite at his jaw hard enough to leave marks just to feel him shudder, to watch his control fracture further. "Just want you. Just need—"

"Tell me." His grip on your throat tightens fractionally, not enough to restrict breathing but enough to make you aware, to make you feel it. "Tell me what you need. Want to give you everything. Want to be so good for you, sweetheart. Want to make up for every night you went to bed empty when you should've been—"

"Full of you," you finish, and his hips stutter, lose rhythm entirely for a moment.

"Yeah?" His thumb presses against your pulse, feeling how fast your heart's racing. "That what you need? Need me to fill you up? Keep you full and fucked out and dripping with my come? Make sure everyone knows you're mine, that I'm the only one who gets to—"

"Yes." You're beyond shame, beyond anything but the building pressure where he's driving into you harder now, each thrust shoving you up the bed. The wet sounds of your bodies meeting fill the room, obscene and perfect. "Yes, Bucky, please—"

"Say my name again." He's fucking you harder now, chasing his release with single-minded intensity. The bed frame creaks ominously with each thrust. "Want to hear it when you come. Want to feel it when you—fuck, you're clenching around me, baby. You close? You gonna come on my cock? Gonna be good for me?"

You nod frantically, words lost to the slide of him inside you, the relentless pressure against that perfect spot, the way his pubic bone grinds against your clit with each thrust. His metal fingers find your clit, cold against overheated flesh, and the contrast makes you scream.

"That's it," he growls, working your clit in tight circles while maintaining that punishing rhythm. "Come for me. Come on my cock like a good girl. Let me feel it, let me—fuck, there it is, I can feel it starting, you're getting so tight—"

You come with his name on your lips, back arching off the bed so hard you think you might snap in half. The orgasm slams through you like a freight train, like dying and being reborn, every muscle locking up as pleasure whites out your vision. The bond makes it circular—your pleasure slamming into him and reflecting back, amplified, until you're both shaking with it, until you can't tell where you end and he begins.

"Oh fuck—" His rhythm breaks entirely, becomes something desperate and animal. "Fuck, I'm gonna—gonna fill you up, gonna—"

"Inside." You dig your nails into his shoulders hard enough to draw blood, hold him deep even as oversensitivity makes you want to squirm away. "Want to feel it. Want all of it."

He comes with a sound that's half your name, half prayer, half roar, hips grinding deep as he spills inside you. You feel it all—not just the physical sensation of his cock pulsing, filling you with warmth, but the emotional avalanche through the bond. Relief and want and mine mine mine and something that feels dangerously close to devotion, to worship, to complete and utter belonging.

He fucks you through it, shallow little thrusts like he can't help himself, like his body won't stop even though he's already given you everything. Each movement makes more come leak out around his cock, makes wet sounds that have you hiding your face in his shoulder, embarrassed and aroused in equal measure.

The aftershocks last forever, little sparks of shared pleasure that have you both gasping, twitching, clutching at each other like lifelines. When he finally stills, he doesn't pull out, just shifts enough that his weight isn't crushing you, keeping you plugged full of him.

"Stay," he mumbles into your neck, words slurred like he's drunk. "Just—stay exactly like this. Please. Need to—need to keep you full. Need to know you're here, that this is real, that I get to—"

"Not going anywhere." You card your fingers through his sweat-damp hair, feel him shiver at the gentle touch after all that intensity. "Never going anywhere. You're stuck with me, Barnes."

His arms tighten around you, and you can feel his smile against your skin, feel the way his cock twitches inside you with renewed interest. "Good. Because now that I know what this feels like, what you feel like—" He rocks his hips experimentally, and you both groan as you feel his come shift inside you, feel how wet and open you are. "We're not leaving this bed for a week. Gonna fuck you in every position I've imagined. Gonna map every inch of your body with my mouth. Gonna find out exactly how many times I can make you come before you beg me to stop—"

"What about—"

He kisses you quiet, slow and thorough and filthy, tongue fucking into your mouth in a pale imitation of what his cock just did. When he pulls back, his eyes are dark with promise and his cock is fully hard inside you again, enhanced recovery time making itself known.

"Nothing else matters," he says simply, starting to move again, slow and deep and devastating. You're so sensitive it borders on too much, but the soul bond floods you with his pleasure, his desperate need, and suddenly you're right there with him again. "Just this. Just us. Just how many times I can make you come before sunrise. How full I can keep you. How loud I can make you scream."

You clench around him involuntarily and his eyes flutter closed, hips stuttering.

"Gonna kill me," he mutters, picking up speed, the wet sounds even more obscene now with his come easing the way. "Seventy years of nothing and now—" A particularly deep thrust has you seeing stars. "Now I've got a soulmate who looks at me like I'm worth something, who touches me like I'm not a weapon, who lets me use her however I need—"

"Who loves you," you interrupt, watching his face crumble and rebuild itself, watching him fight back what looks suspiciously like tears.

"Yeah?" Barely a whisper, so vulnerable it makes your chest ache.

"Yeah." You pull him down for another kiss, pouring everything you can't say into the contact, letting him feel it through the bond. "So much. So long. Even before I knew you, I think I loved you. Think I was waiting for you."

He makes a broken sound and starts fucking you in earnest, like a man possessed, like he's trying to climb inside you and never leave. "Say it again."

"I love you."

"Again." Harder now, each thrust shoving you up the bed.

"I love you, Bucky Barnes."

He fucks you like a promise, like a prayer, like maybe if he does it right the universe will let him keep this. You come apart under him again and again, until time becomes meaningless, until the only reality is where you're joined, where the soul bond burns brightest, where his come leaks out of you with each thrust only to be fucked back in, marking you inside and out as his.

When exhaustion finally claims you both, he's still inside you, still hard, wrapped around you like armor and apology all at once. You're going to be sore tomorrow—hell, you're sore now—but you wouldn't move for anything.

The last thing you feel before sleep takes you is his lips against your temple, his voice rough with wonder and satisfaction:

"Love you too, sweetheart. More than I've got words for. More than I probably should. Gonna spend the rest of my life showing you, if you'll let me. Gonna take such good care of you. My girl. My soulmate. Mine."

"Yours," you mumble, already drifting, clenching around him one last time just to feel him shudder.

His arms tighten, and you feel his smile against your skin, feel the way his cock twitches inside you with interest despite everything.

"Forever," he promises.

"Forever."

Outside, Brooklyn wakes to another morning, unaware that two souls have finally, fully, found their way home.

check out the series masterlist♡

[bramblebunnie]

Soap x Reader but Ghost is there too

You know those jokes of how when two friends in a trio start dating, the third friend becomes their kid?

Yeah thats y'all's group but like, unironically

Johnny comes home from deployment and it's just expected that Simon's right there behind him with all the bags hauled over his shoulder

He has his own room in your apartment/house, having slept in the guest room so often that it's just Simon's Room now

Despite this, 90% of the time you still wake up to find nearly 300lbs of muscle sprawled across yours and Johnny's bed, not even under any blanket, just snoring away and out cold, but he grumbles and tries dragging you back if you start to slip out from under him

When Johnny's out on deployment but Simon isn't, its a lot like having your own personal guard dog, the brit just kinda shadowing you everywhere cause he promised Johnny he'd keep you safe

When both of them go on deployment, Johnny gives you a kiss thats 60% tongue and Simon lingers just a bit too close over his shoulder as he assures you he'll get your husband back in one piece

When it's just Simon out on deployment, you both make sure he has a soft bed, clean bath, and warm food to come back to when he inevitably shows up on the porch in the middle of the night because he didn't want to have to wait on-base until morning

Its to the point that when people are talking about "The MacTavishes", they mean all three of you

(accompanying angst drabble)

[ceilidho]

Margaritaville

For days now, you’ve been seeing the same broad-shouldered man lounging around the resort. Or: the knocked up on vacation au Part 3 masterlist

-

A shower and thorough scrub after the fact washes away most of the more damning evidence, but paranoia still buzzes under your skin when you rejoin your friends downstairs. They’re sitting beside each other in a row of lounge chairs by the edge of the pool when you reappear, beach bag in hand, waving at you from across the way. You hurry over to join them.

“What—did you fall asleep up there?” one of them asks you, and it takes a second for you to recall the excuse you gave them about going upstairs to look for a book to read. 

“Yeah,” you lie. “I wasn’t feeling too good, so I lied down for a bit.”

“Oh no,” one of them says with a frown, sitting up on her elbows to get a better look at you. “You feeling better now? We can go back to the hotel room if you want.”

“Nah, I’m alright now. I had a shower too, so I’m feeling much better.”

You might’ve been better off pretending that you just fell asleep upstairs rather than lying about feeling sick. 

Though still hours from sundown, the sun isn’t anywhere near as thick in the sky anymore; a cloudless expanse of blue as far as the eye can see, stretching from zenith to offing. Despite the slight breeze and the UV index starting to inch back down, you still slather on a fresh layer of sunscreen. 

“So what’d you get?”

You look up from your legs and a glob of sunscreen slips down your calf and onto the chair. “Huh?” 

“Your book,” she repeats, looking at you like it should be obvious. “What book did you go get?”

Your hands freeze over your bag, a cold sweat leaking through you. All that just for you to forget to bring back a fucking book. 

“Oh, I, uh,” you stammer, looking in your bag helplessly like a book might suddenly appear out of nowhere. “I must’ve left it back upstairs. Damn.”

Lucky for you, no one has the energy to care or look past the obvious stutter in your voice, accepting your words as gospel. Your friend closest to you rolls her eyes and pushes her sunglasses back up her nose. “It’s alright—here, I’ve got another in my bag. It would be such a waste of time to go all the way back upstairs.”

“Yeah,” you say, swallowing when you think about heading back into the resort and taking the elevator to the next floor up from your room, following the long hallway back to John’s room, where he’d be waiting for you with a wry smile and open arms, towel still cinched around his waist. “That would suck. Thanks.”

For one singular day, you actually make a concerted effort to steer clear of John. 

That means: no surreptitious glances or orchestrating accidental run-ins. You keep close to your friends the whole day, never more than a couple feet away. 

And for the most part, it works. You’re mostly successful that first day. For a while after your little hookup, you don’t see hide nor hair of him anywhere around the resort. Where before John was seemingly everywhere, now he’s nowhere to be found. 

It’s almost infuriating. Had he been this elusive in the days since you arrived at the resort, you might not have felt as tempted by his constant presence. It was the proximity and blatant invitation that gradually wore away at your resolve. 

You keep deferring responsibility for your actions. That belongs to a future, stronger you, whether or not she’ll ever come to fruition.

“Looking for someone?” your friend asks when you glance around the poolside for the umpteenth time. Her words are laced with a subtle kind of humour, some inside joke that you haven’t caught on to just yet.  

You shake your head. “Nope. Just people watching.”

“Right,” she drawls, only burying her nose in her book again after sending you a sceptical glance.

When her attention is back on her book, you peek around again, searching for any sign of someone in pin-stripped swim trunks. Disappointed when you find nothing. 

The girls insist on going down to the beach and renting jetskis in the afternoon, guaranteeing that you won’t see John for the rest of the day, but at least it gets you out of your head for a while. Air whips by your ears and you scream in delight, your arms cinching around your friend’s waist as she guns the engine.

Afternoon melts into evening, which melts into night. At supper, someone mentions taking a dip in the hot tub and you pounce on the thought, the four of you giggling and tumbling down the stairs on your way back to the pool area. 

The hot tub lights oscillate between purple, pink, and blue at a timed interval, keeping the water bathed in a cool, dark colour as night falls. Dusk ushers in a changed world. Large snails leave slimy trails as they creep out of the potted plants and slither across the furniture. Spiders and moths emerge from dark corners as well, the nocturnal world coming to life around you. 

The three of them get out of the hot tub around nine, someone complaining about still being hungry. As tempted as you are to join the girls for a late bite to eat at the restaurant, the hot water and jets are doing wonders for your sore muscles, especially after the previous day. You can’t exactly explain that to the others though, so when they try to cajole you out of the water, you brush them off and promise that you’ll join them in a few minutes. 

Besides, you’re overdue for some alone time. The more you have, the less likely you’ll be to start fights over nothing, cabin fever finding no foothold in a person aware that it hovers on the periphery. 

Around the complex, the pools glow cyan like bioluminescent glowworms, the floodlights on to keep drunk tourists from falling in on their way back to their rooms. Some angelic-voiced eighties singer croons over the speaker, music still playing around the pool area until it abruptly cuts out and silence rushes in like a wave to fill the emptiness. The silence doesn’t worry you though; it’s almost serene sitting alone in the dark and gazing across the way at the buildings still brightly lit from the inside. 

You don’t realize that you aren’t actually alone until someone joins you in the water. 

The loud splash of his feet entering the water is what alerts you to his presence, the sudden noise causing your heart to jump up into your throat, head snapping to the side when a large body sits down beside you, displacing the volume of the water in the hot tub. 

“Oh shit,” you gasp, heartbeat going wild for a second. You scoot away instinctively and hit the low wall to your left. 

“Didn’t mean to scare you, honey,” John apologizes, settling in beside you. “You seemed lonely all by yourself, so I thought I’d join you.” 

His body inadvertently crowds you up against the pool wall. Or at least, it feels inadvertent, like he just sat wherever happened to be free, notwithstanding the fact that by doing so, he had trapped you at the edge of the bench. 

John rests an arm behind you, almost tucking you into his side when he slides over a bit more, thigh pressed against yours under the water. Spreading his arms out along the edge of the pool forces his chest to stick out and his shoulders to broaden. 

“Where’d you come from?” you ask, glancing around behind you. 

“Around.” He cocks a thick, dark eyebrow, studying you. “Were you looking for me?” 

“No,” you deny, almost vehemently. More to yourself than to him. “You just caught me off guard. I thought I was alone.”

“Noticed that. Why aren’t you with your friends?”

“I am,” you object. “…I just wanted to be on my own for a bit.”

“Needed some time apart? They give you a hard time for what we did earlier?”

Heat rushes to your cheeks at that. “No,” you hiss, teeth clenched, pitching your voice lower to keep anyone from overhearing. “I didn’t…tell anyone. And we aren’t fighting. They’re getting something to eat and I wasn’t hungry.”

“Seems like I’m always catching you on your own.”

“I like being by myself.”

Your breathing is a little quicker than usual. His presence now is different than the times before, back when he was nothing more than a pretty face to you. You know what his mouth tastes like now, what the bristles of his beard feel like on the delicate flesh of your inner thighs and how deep his fingers can curl inside of you. He isn’t just a stranger across the pool anymore, but a man that knows you intimately. Biblically.

You wrap your arms around yourself to shield your breasts from his eyes. That’s what you tell yourself anyway. Maybe you cross them to make sure that you keep your hands to yourself.

“Why come with them at all then?” John asks, breaking the silence. 

“…I’ve never travelled on my own.”

He nods approvingly. “Good. Smart girl.”

That pisses you off for some reason. Probably the insinuation that there’d be something wrong with you travelling by yourself. Like you couldn’t take care of yourself. “I could if I wanted to.” 

“Didn’t say you couldn’t, but it’s smarter that you don’t. Safety in numbers.”

If he wasn’t so handsome, you’d probably be mildly off-put by the condescension in his voice. It’s part and parcel of him though, that slight arrogance that clings to his skin like the smell of smoke, like dirt wedged into the grooves of his fingers. Old and lived in. 

“Maybe I’ll just ask my husband to come with me the next time I feel like going somewhere,” you say snarkily. 

He doesn’t respond right away. When the weight of his stare gets a bit too heavy, you glance up at him to find his pupils blown wide. 

“Maybe you should,” John rasps. 

The sound of his voice, rough as tire over gravel roads, makes your nipples bead in your damp swimsuit.

For a moment, it feels like there’s nothing else in the world except for the two of you. All of the chatter and music from the nearby buildings drop to a hush. If you shut off your mind, you could almost trick yourself that it’d always been this way. 

Damp, calloused fingers pinch your chin and hold you in place, rooting you in that moment like his hold is the only thing tethering you to the world. 

“I should get back to my friends,” you say. Even though you practically whisper the words, they pierce through the silence, a little nearby lizard scuttling across the damp concrete floor towards a tree, where it disappears into the darkness. 

“They can wait a little longer,” he murmurs, leaning forward until your lips slot with his and your sigh makes your whole body tremble, lips parting when his tongue slips in and he slides a hand in between your thighs under the water. 

It’s torturous to see him around the resort and not be allowed to touch. 

Another day in the scorching heat and you’re on the verge of defeat. You sweat and you sweat until the only thing left to give is your will. It bends like straw, chaff breaking off the closer it comes to snapping. 

At a certain point, you have to accept responsibility for your own actions. You’re a big girl after all. Old enough to understand the weight that each of your choices bear and the consequences they’ll inevitably bring about. Disappoint your friends or disappoint yourself. Simple a choice as has ever been put in front of you. 

And, selfish as you’ve been this entire trip, the choice is easy enough to make in the end. 

In the early morning before the rest of your friends have woken up, you quietly slip out of bed and take the elevator up to John’s floor, knocking twice before he opens the door and pulls you inside with a growl. 

“John—John, fuck, please—”

“I know, honey, I know,” he murmurs into your neck, exhaling heavily when he drops you back down onto his cock, juices running from the base of his shaft to his balls. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”

Your thighs burn with the effort to bounce on his dick, John having to do most of the work once your muscles begin to give out. 

Not even the pretense of a condom this time. You didn’t say anything when he didn’t make a move to take one out and now it feels a bit too late to bring it up. It’s not the end of the world though; you’ll just tell him to pull out when he’s close to coming. 

“Fuck, honey, Jesus Christ—”

“Sorry,” you whimper, inner muscles suddenly clenched so tight that you nearly come right then and there. Just the thought of him coming in you raw sends a sharp spike of pleasure through your body. 

All you can think of is sticky, messy cum leaking out of you. Thick strands ribboning between your fingers when you pull them apart. It’s a dangerous thought; you’re playing fast and loose with the most dire of consequences. 

“Ohmygodohmygod—” you whimper, tears building on your waterline and spilling over. “Oh f-fuck, I’m gonna—come, John—” 

“Yeah, you are,” he grunts, brow furrowing in concentration, the vein in his forehead more pronounced than ever. “C’mon, honey, give it to me—give me it—”

It rushes over you all at once, inner walls tensing and squeezing around his shaft. Eyes rolling back in your head when you feel him come inside you, a rush of heat flooding against your womb. 

He doesn’t make you wait long after pulling out, immediately ducking his head down to burrow his face between your thighs, running his tongue up the seam of your sex and huffing out in pleasure. Hot breath blows over your clit, and your whole body jolts at the sensation. Your clit is too sensitive, puffy and engorged. Your walls squeeze around his fingers when John shoves a couple in and busies himself with laving his tongue over your clit and sucking it into his mouth. 

“Wait, wait—” you squeal, threading your fingers into his hair and trying to pull him off. “I can’t—I can’t—”

His own cum trickles out down his fingers as he plunges them in and out of your hole, feeling the mess he left inside of you. Heat floods to your cheeks at the lurid squelch of your hole when he presses his fingers back in.

“You can,” John says unsympathetically, the fingers pistoning in and out of your hole punctuating his words. 

And, true to his words, you do. 

When you limp back down to your room an hour later, you turn the knob extra carefully lest someone wake up to you doing the walk of shame. 

You were stupid to ever think this could be a one time thing. That you could have him once and then move on like it never happened, like it scratched that itch of yours permanently instead of waking it up from its slumber. 

Now it buzzes under your skin morning, noon, and night. Insatiable—libido ramped up by a factor of ten and no matter how many times he fucks you senseless, you’re always desperate for more. When you see him from across the pool, it’s all you can do not to swim across and crawl into his lap, wedging his thigh between your legs and grinding down until the pressure tips you over the edge.

From the looks of it, your friends don’t suspect a thing. How could they after all? You leave the hotel room at the crack of dawn and come back before they’ve even turned over in bed. 

John is as subtle in public as ever. A thousand times more discrete than you. He’s so good at ignoring you around the resort that it’s almost infuriating.  It’s your own fault, seeing as how you begged him to keep a low profile. You have no one to blame but yourself for his inattention.

In the privacy of his hotel room, it’s a whole different story. 

Sometimes he says weird shit when you fuck. The pet names you can excuse because they get you all hot and bothered, but it’s harder to ignore the way he laces your fingers and looks deep into your eyes while rocking into you, patting your cheek roughly when you try to close your eyes. It’s too intense. Too intimate. Not the kind of thing you do with a vacation fling.

You’re speaking from limited experience though. A small sample size, if you can even call your love life that. Maybe this is something people do with their flings, the rules of intimacy eschewed with an established understanding of finitude. You are going home at the end of this, after all. Whatever you do in between then and now doesn’t matter. 

You could say or do anything and it wouldn’t matter. It’s not like you’ll ever see him again. 

On the pet name front though, you do test him on the off chance that he actually just forgot your name entirely. It catches you off guard when he remembers not just your first name but your last name as well, murmuring it back to you like he’s memorized it when you ask.

“Oh,” you reply, unsure of what else to say. “…Sorry. I thought…”

His thumb brushes over your cheekbone when he cups your face in one hand. “I know what you thought, honey. Never had anyone pay enough attention to you, have you?”

You don’t know what to say in response to that. He pops his thumb into your mouth when you gape at him for too long, letting it rest on your tongue. The weight of it holding your tongue down is almost soothing and the thoughts in your head fizzle and pop like stars when you close your mouth around it and suck. 

Sometimes though, you’re the one that makes things weird.

“I wish I came here with you,” you admit in a hushed whisper when you’ve been backed into his bed.

“Would’ve been me if I’d found you first,” John grunts, gripping you by your calves and yanking you towards the edge of the bed. 

Big hands scoop up under your ass and lift you into the air to get the angle right. He impales you on his dick inch by inch, the stretch familiar now even though it still takes your breath away. 

“Yeah?” you breathe. 

John doesn’t answer at first, eyes going blank as he draws you off his dick and then plunges back into you. His stare is blank and yet it doesn’t waver. Locked on your face even though he almost stares right through you. 

“Yeah,” he rumbles, snapping his hips forward. “Could’ve made a baby here instead of sneaking around like teenagers.”

Oh—

(fuck)

You know it’s just dirty talk, but you get all tight and tingly anyway, licking the sweat off your upper lip when you repeat, “A baby?” 

His eyes go darker when he hears you say it. Animalistic; mindless. And suddenly all you can think about is the fact that you’ve foregone protection again to let an older, virile man hit it raw. Dirty talk trembling over the edge of make believe and staring down into the abyss because he could

really knock you up right here and now. 

His lip curls up almost into a snarl. “Came enough times in you by now. ‘Be a miracle if you weren’t.”

You lick at the sweat beading on your upper lip. “You want that?”

Dumb question. You know there isn’t a shot that a man his age on vacation is looking to knock up the first girl he comes across, but it gets you so hot that you forget about common sense for a second. It’s irresponsible. Selfish. Stupid. 

He hikes a knee onto the bed to get some leverage before folding his whole body over yours. All however many pounds, enough to take your breath away and make your heart beat faster. A heavy, suffocating presence punctuated by the way he fucks into you even harder, huffing as he chases after it.

“Would’ve used a fuckin’ condom if I didn’t,” John snarls right in your face, and the pleasure that evokes hits you so hard that you nearly pass out when you come. 

Sooner or later, you were bound to slip up. 

Your friend catches you on your way out the door one morning on your way to see John, your hand barely brushing the doorknob when her voice suddenly comes out of nowhere. “Going to get breakfast?”

You flinch at the sound of her voice, head whipping to the left. In your hurry to meet up with John, you hadn’t noticed her standing in the bathroom with the door wide open. Arms crossed and already dressed, staring at you like catching you almost out the door isn’t surprising. 

“Uh, yeah. What’re you doing up?”

She shrugs. “I slept long enough; been up for a while actually. Mind if I come with? I’m starving.”

You do in fact mind, but short of telling her why you’d prefer she didn’t, you have no excuse for why she shouldn’t join you for breakfast. You acquiesce instead, forcing a smile and nodding before following her out the door and in the opposite direction of the elevators. 

Breakfast is awkward, to say the least. The conversation comes strained and stilted, like it’s the first time you’ve ever met the girl sitting opposite you instead of a friend of several years. You can tell that she suspects something, but since she doesn’t bother bringing it up, you don’t either. 

All you can focus on is the fact that somewhere upstairs, John is still in his room waiting for you, and that as more time passes with you downstairs at breakfast, the less time you’ll have with him when you finally make it upstairs to his room. 

“Hey? Are you listening to me?”

Your head snaps up. “Hm?” 

The look she levels you with is thoroughly unimpressed. “I asked if you’d finished your book yet.”

“Oh, yeah. I finished it the other day at the beach. Did you want to borrow it?”

“Yeah, that’s why I asked.” She sounds annoyed, and with good reason. You’ve been flighty and inattentive at best; downright neglectful at worst. 

You eat quickly, downing half your plate before a server comes by with coffee, which you very nearly refuse until you catch the way your friend squints across the table at you. Too obvious. Her hackles are already up, suspicions hissing like snakes in her hair. 

The terse conversation that follows only further illustrates that. If she hasn’t already figured it out, she’s at least begun to suspect your frequent absences and the perpetual smell of sex on you. She’s just nice enough to not come right out of the gate and say it. 

A busser comes by as soon as they spot your empty plate, gathering everything up and piling the cutlery on top before hurrying away to bus another table. When the server comes by again to top up your cup, you politely refuse, finishing the rest in a single swallow. 

“What’s the rush?” your friend asks, cocking an eyebrow. “Somewhere else to be?”

“No, I just—” You freeze, half out of your seat, the sound of the chair scraping against the tile underneath abruptly cutting out. Excuses assemble on your tongue but refuse to leap off, choked back by the fact that you just don’t know what to say. “I just…I’m done eating.”

“Right,” she drawls, arms folded on the table, nearly full plate still in front of her. “I guess my conversation was staler than the food.”

“No, look, it’s not—”

“It’s fine,” she sighs, waving you away. “I’ll tell the others you went down to the pool when they wake up. Just be there in an hour.”

You didn’t expect the reprieve. You barely deserve it, as a matter of fact. But her dismissal rings loud and you aren’t about to pass up the opportunity to go up to John, despite the guilt curdling in your belly. 

“Yeah, okay,” you promise. “I’ll be there.”

And you really, truly think you’re in the clear until you turn to walk away and she says her parting words. “Give him my best, by the way.”

Full body cringe. You don’t turn back around though, shame finally catching up to you, and the sound of your flip-flops squeaking against the tile on your way towards the elevators mocks you the whole way up to John’s room.

[dearwalker]

Sex pollen - Clark Kent x reader

Word count: 3.2k

Description: When Clark gets poisoned with sex pollen, he tries everything in his power to stay away from you. Until he ends up crashing into your living room, and you have a god on his knees, with your name in his mouth and your body at his will.

Tags/warnings: smut, established relationship, clark is sorry, he gets freaky with his powers, consent kink, breaks you and worships you at the same time, begging, praising, hovering (yes hovering👀), so much dirty talk (he’s feral but sweet), overstimulation.

Note: Guess who watched superman today and got a new man to obsess about🙂‍↕️ honestly I don’t even know what took over me when I wrote this but all I can say is go ahead, live your best life and enjoy the sweet filth 🫶🏼

archive / masterlist

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You wake up with a loud crash coming from your living room. You jolt upright from your bed as you hear glass shatter, sprinting toward the noise. You curse as your body, only covered by Clark’s giant shirt, gets hit with the crisp midnight air as wind gushed through your apartment like a hurricane just passed by.

A figure stood where your glass door used to be, leaning weakly on what was left of the frame. You turned on the lamp next to you, illuminating your boyfriend’s stumbling body.

“Clark!?” you exclaim, confused by his abrupt arrival.

He doesn’t look up, just stands there against the frame, chest heaving, fists clenched. Like he is barely holding himself together.

Worry washes your features, something must be really wrong. You start making way over to him, but as soon as you take a step forward he puts a warning hand in front of him.

“Stop! Don’t move,” his deep voice comes out strangled, like he’s been screaming for hours. “Don’t come closer… please. Just–just stay there.”

He keeps his hand up to stop you, panting heavily as he swallowed to try to soothe his dry throat. He slowly looks up, and groans when he meets your eyes. His pupils are blown wide, dry lips parted, his breath ragged like he’s been flying across the globe. His usually perfect wavy hair is now flat, messy, sticking to his sweaty forehead.

“I didn’t want to come here,” he whines. “I–I didn’t want you to see me like this.”

“What happened to you?” You ask from your spot, fighting the urge to run to his aid.

“I’ve been infected,” he chokes out, and your brows furrow more. “Some kind of … alien pollen. It hit me out there. I flew straight into it and fuck ... It’s messing with my head, my body, I…”

He suddenly turns away, pacing in small frantic circles on your balcony like he’s trying to shake something off. His hands tremble as he fights to not make eye contact, like just looking at you hurts.

“What do you need? D-do you have the antidote?” You ask, scared as hell. He never acts like this.

He just shakes his head first with a bitter laugh, only to nod frantically afterwards.

God, if only you knew.

“I tried to wait it out,” he groans, fists now in his hair. “I swear I did, my love, I locked myself away for hours … tried to fly as far as I could but I kept turning back because I could smell you.”

Your breath catches in your throat, somehow understanding what this was about.

“I can smell you, sweetheart. Even from across the city … I can hear you breathing … your heartbeat. I didn’t want to hurt you but right now I have you in front of me and I can see–dammit … I’m sorry–“

He stumbles backward like he’s ashamed of himself, like he can’t even look at you.

“You know can’t turn it off,” he whispers. “I never mean to look, I swear, but I can see you now. Everything.”

Of course you know what he means. You know he can see right past his giant shirt covering your body. And the guilt on his face is gutting. He looks like he’s trying to claw his own powers out of his skin.

“Clark… it’s okay. You don’t have to explain, ”you step forward, slowly, gently. “It’s not like we haven’t–“

“No you don’t get it!” He snaps, his voice booming through your walls so loud you were sure everyone on the block heard him. He instantly feels worse with the way you flinched to his volume. “S-sorry darling … you just don’t get it … you have no idea what it’s like to smell you and know how soft you are, how warm. My instincts are going crazy. I just need to be inside you … I need to touch you, mark you, fill you up until I can’t think straight,” he just rambles, eyes raking through your body.

You take a deep breath, his words making you clench your thighs together and he noticed. Of course you’ve had sex before. You know what he sounds like when he’s needy. But this? This is feral. You’ve never seen him like this.

But you’re willing to do anything to help him. Always.

“Clark… you don’t even have to ask,” you speak softly, your own eyes darkening with desire.

He shakes his head. You don’t even understand the amount of restraint he’s having right now.

“I do … I always do. Especially now. Because I’m not going to touch you like I should. I’m not going to make it about you. I’m going to use you. Because you’re the only one who can fix me … you are the antidote and I hate it. I hate that I can’t even think straight unless I’m inside you … I need you so bad, darling, I’m shaking–“ He cries, an actual tear comes out his desperate eyes.

You’re watching a god fall apart in front of you.

Because of you.

You finally cross the space left, and he doesn’t stop you this time. You grab his face between your hands, and kiss him without hesitation. His arms immediately cling to your frame, cold hands slipping under your shirt to roam every inch of your warm skin.

You moan into his lips, when you taste the salty tears on his face. His hands land on your ass, and he squeezes hard, bruising, making you squeal. He immediately pulls back, apologizing. Like he still can’t let himself go.

“I love you, I’m sorry–” he blurts out immediately, hands soothing the skin he pinched while he fought the urge to do it again, harder. “God I love you … and I would never hurt you. Never. I swore I’d never touch you like this. Unless you asked me to. Unless you wanted me to. So please … tell me you want this too. Say yes, or I’ll leave. I swear I will.”

He nods, frantically, like he’s trying to convince himself more than he’s trying to convince you.

“I’ll leave if you tell me to,” he breathes. “I’ll fly through a mountain. I’ll bury myself in the ocean. Just don’t say yes unless you want this. I’m barely holding on– if you say it, I won’t be able to stop.”

You want him. God you always want him.

The way he keeps asking makes you want him even more. Even if he’s not your Clark now. Even if he won’t take care of you like he always does. Even if you can’t breathe or move after. Because you love him too.

“I want it,” you whisper against his lips, nodding. “I want you. You need me? Use me. Take all you want … I can take it.”

It’s over.

The moment you say yes there’s no going back. He lunges forward, tightening his grip on you as he lifts you off the ground to fly you towards the wall, knocking the lamp when your back hit the wall, leaving you both in complete darkness. Only the moonlight left to shine over his hungry eyes.

His massive hand cradles the back of your head to protect it from the hit, while the other tears off your shirt like he needs your skin on his or he’ll die. Your panties don’t even last two seconds before they fly away too.

His lips hit yours. Tongue desperate, hands everywhere, so large, so shaky, everywhere at once. He groans into your mouth like a man dying of thirst finally tasting water.

“Thank you,” he gasps between kisses. “Thank you sweetheart … I’m so sorry I can’t help you first … but I need you … I need to feel you inside, please just let me…”

He knows it hurts you when he doesn’t prepare you properly, when he doesn’t make you cum at least twice on his fingers before he fucks you …but he can’t right now. Not when he can smell how soaked you are already, not when he swears it’s dripping on the carpet.

“Do it,” you pant, hungry for him. “Clark just do it … please.”

He doubts only for a second, and then without thinking he rips the suit. Literally tears it at the waist, tugging it to get rid of it completely. He’ll care about that later.

Right now he is just muscle in front of you.

His painful cock springs up, and he presses himself to you with a wet slap, your back hitting the wall again. Your pussy throbs at how impossibly huge he is over your stomach.

You’ve had him before. You’ve barely made it. You still want him to rearrange your guts.

“Feel that?” he groans. “That’s what you do to me, that’s what’s been driving me insane all day, darling.”

He’s not even pretending anymore, his cock is throbbing, massive, already leaking. He aligns himself between your soaked folds, rutting the tip against your pussy a few times like he’s lost control of his body entirely. You moan at the friction. Every nerve ending screaming.

You know he’s gonna wreck you. You weren’t ready. But at the same time you’ve never been more ready.

He grabs your thigh and lifts it against the wall, before whispering against your lips. “I’m sorry…”

He pushes his hips forward, and when he finally slides home with a snap … raw, hard, you let out a strangled scream.

One long, broken sound, high pitched and helpless, because he stretches you brutally, all at once, bottoming out with a growl. An actual growl. Like he finally felt some type of relief since he got hit with the pollen.

You fight back a cry, lunging forward to bite his shoulder. He starts fucking you into the wall as he whispers ‘I love you’ ‘thank you’ ‘sorry’ like some sort of chant. Like it’s the only thing keeping him rooted to the version of him that is still careful with you when you have sex.

Your breath leaves you in a gasp, your bare back against the cold plaster, legs around his waist, and arms clinging to his biceps for dear life. All you can do is moan as you get adjusted to his unfairly thick cock slamming in and out of you.

“Just like that … you’re taking me so well,” he pants. “You can do it, sweetheart … you’re doing so good … fuck, you were made for this … made for me.”

His hands grip your thighs. He fucks you like he’s possessed, no rhythm, no thought into it, just deep, hard thrusts that hit something devastating every time, shaking the wall with every slam of his hips.

And the whole time, he keeps whimpering into your neck.

“I love you … I’m sorry … I love you …I’m gonna ruin you …I need it…”

You think you’re about to white out when the room starts moving, but you quickly realize what’s happening.

He’s lifting your bodies off the ground.

Still fucking you.

Going up as much as your ceiling allowed him too. He pins you high on the wall when his head touches the roof, like gravity doesn’t apply anymore. It never does, not to you, not to him.

So now you’re fucking hovering. Literally. Unable to do anything but take it.

And you feel him like never before. A complete moaning mess. Nails dragging down his back, mouth open in shock as you look down to the floor. Your whole body is a live wire, and he’s fucking you like it’s the only thing keeping him alive.

His cock twitches inside you. He’s already close. Has been since he walked through that window. But he’s holding it, fighting it, because he needs to stay inside. Needs to keep taking. You can’t.

“Fuck Clark … I’m gonna–“

“Yes? do it … darling please, you’re doing so well. I’ve got you … cum all over this cock baby I got you.”

Your body breaks before you can breathe. Your first climax of the night hits hard, clenching down on him, while you pant into his chest. Your whole body goes limp and he feels it.

He fucks you through it. Rough thrusts with his hand stroking your back and the other wrapped under your thighs. He keeps thanking you as his cock splits you open over and over.

“I wanna give you everything,” he groans, voice cracking. “Fill you up, stuff you full of me … Can I? Please? Let me finish inside you …. let me have you–“

“Yes, yes, fill me up,” you blurt out, still seeing stars.

He slams in once more and chokes, hips locked, whole body shuddering as he comes with a moan so broken it feels like it came from his soul. He shakes as he fills you, mouth pressed to your neck.

He doesn’t pull out yet. He holds you there, trembling, pressed against the wall like he knows you’ll fall if he loosens his grip.

Even after the first wave passes, after the groans, the shaking, the desperate I love you’s, he holds you like you’re the only thing anchoring him to this planet.

“…Are you okay?”

You just nod, breathless, a blissed out smile in your face. He smiles too. And then, slowly, he lowers you back down to the floor.

But he’s not soft for long. He doesn’t even give you a minute to recover. He can’t. The second round starts before the first one even finishes sinking in.

You’re still trembling in his arms, leaking down your thighs, whimpering his name into the crook of his neck. And he’s still inside you. Still painfully hard.

Still needing you.

“One more, please. Just–just one more,” he begs. “Let me have you again. Please, darling I need it.”

“Take it Clark, take all you need,” you nod, absolutely wrecked.

But what’s a few more rounds with your unearthly strong boyfriend?

He melts.

You usually go multiple rounds, but he’s softer, he gives you downtime, even brings you water in between orgasms. But right now he can’t believe the way he fucked you and you still let him have more. But he needs more. The pollen is fogging his brain.

He finally pulls out, just to set you down on the floor. The second your back hits the rug, he’s on top of you again. And god he’s heavy. Solid. He doesn’t even hold his weight like he usually does because all he’s thinking about is fucking you senseless.

He buries himself deep again, groaning, cursing under his breath. You close your eyes, nails digging the carpet, back arching when you feel him deeper from this angle. You pant small whines from the feeling.

“Shhh … don’t–“ he coos, he wants to be slow, but he can’t. His hips snap hard without even thinking. “You’re doing so good, sweetheart … so good for me… just need one more.”

You know it’s not just one more. And he fucking knows that too.

None of you cares.

“You’re so wet … so perfect” he groans, the filthy sound gushing loudly every time he thrusted. “I didn’t even give you time to come down … didn’t even let you breathe and you still take me so well”

He praises. Worships. He looks down to where your bodies meet, and he sees right through your skin. He can see his huge cock filling you with every thrust. He can see your walls clenching around him. And he looses it.

You’re suddenly running out of air when he presses his chest to yours, pining you tighter to the floor with his body as he pushes harder. And you feel all of him. The broadness of his chest against your ribs. The strain of his thighs bracketing yours. His cock still buried deep, rock hard.

You hit his bicep with your hand first, but he’s not paying attention, he’s too caught up on the way your pussy takes him to notice.

It’s not smooth. Not rhythmic. Just sharp, ragged thrusts that hit you so hard your body jerks on impact, tits bouncing, nails clawing at his back as he crushes you into the floor with every rut of his hips.

Your head starts spinning.

“Clark,” you choke out, hitting his bicep again. “I can’t–can’t breathe…”

His head finally snaps at you, eyes going wide. He lifts up a bit, but he doesn’t pull out, he just … can’t.

You finally gasp for air as he shushes you softly, tucking away the hair sticking to your sweaty forehead.

“I’m sorry … I can’t … can’t stop. I tried, I swear I tried,” his forehead presses to yours, without crushing you alive this time.

His hips don’t stop moving. You pant between moans. You’re close again, you can feel it.

“It’s okay, you’re just … you’re so big …so heavy.”

“I’m sorry,” he breathes. “I’m sorry, I know. I just … I don’t want to let you go–”

“Don’t,” you whisper. “Don’t let me go.”

His expression breaks. Because he knows. And you know. He’s not really letting you go. Not all the way. He’s still pressing his weight into you, even as he tries not to. Because he needs to. Because letting go means losing you, even just for a second.

He doesn’t know what takes over him, he grabs your hands and pins them above your head. Watching you sob, moan, eyes rolling back, skin already bruising in multiple places by his grip. He’s not like this. He should be apologizing. Begging. But you just feel so damn good.

And you like it, god you love it.

“I–I love it when you fuck me like this,” you confess, voice barely above a whisper, dumb smile on your face as he hits that spot repeatedly. “I just- I can’t…”

“I know darling, I know … just a little more,” he groans. “One more please. You can take it …you’re doing so good.” He soothes, but he can’t slow down, not when you’re clenching him like that.

He picks up the pace.

“C-Clark … please, I’m gonna-“

“I’ve got you, darling …I’ve got you, let yourself go for me.”

You see white this time. You’re not even moaning anymore. Just gasping. Twitching. Letting him take what he needs because you want to. Because this is Clark, your Clark, and you’d give him your whole body a thousand times if he needed it.

And he does.

He fucks you like you’re his last breath.

Even after you’re wrecked, limp, twitching … he keeps going.

You don’t even remember the next time he finishes. Or the time after that. Or where it happened. Your body is a mess, trembling and raw and wet and full. Marked. Praised.

All while he keeps saying, “Just one more … just let me stay inside you a little longer… please sweetheart, I’m still hard I know you can take it … this is the last time I promise…”

Again and again. You’ve never heard him lie so much before.

Yet still, with your hair splayed, legs shaking, literal tears leaking from the corners of your eyes from the pleasure, the pain, the strain, the goddamn pollen he pumps into your body every time he comes…

You are having the time of your life being drunk on his cock.

“Fuck me harder.”

You beg, even when you can’t feel it anymore. Maybe that’s why you need it harder … deeper.

And because you knew that once he came back to normal he wouldn’t fuck you like this again. And he makes sure to let you know.

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry I’m hurting you. I just need you so fucking much … I love you I love you I love you—”

You just nod, because it hurts embarrassingly good.

You lose count of how many times he comes in total. How many times you come. You only know time’s passed when the sky starts to lighten outside your broken window, and Clark is rocking into you so slowly it’s more like he’s just holding you in place, his mouth pressed to your shoulder, whispering thank you with every lazy thrust.

By the time he finally slows down, finally wears the substance out of his body after dumping it all inside you … you can’t move. You’re limp in his arms, boneless and dripping and his.

Your bed feels incredibly soft in contrast to all the spots he fucked you on last night.

You’re draped across his chest, tracing the muscles under his bare skin. His fingers are in your hair. Barely moving, just tracing small patterns. Soothing you like he didn’t cause all the pain in your body.

You’re still trembling a little. Just from… after. Your body’s still echoing with everything he gave you. Everything he took.

Worth it.

Clark kisses your temple. He hasn’t stopped kissing you every few minutes. It’s like he’s trying to apologize without saying it. Like he’s trying to prove that he’s still the man you love, the man who flinches when he bumps your head by accident, who picks you flowers and gets flustered when you kiss him in public. The one who always put you first in bed.

Not the one who just broke the sound barrier flying to your apartment because his cock told him to.

“…I broke your window,” he finally breaks the silence, a chuckle makes his chest vibrate against your ear.

“Clark … you broke a lot more than my window.”

You both start giggling … glowing. Your throat hurts, you’re sore, probably can’t even walk today or the whole week, and somehow, it feels like the safest place on Earth.

“I love you,” he whispers. “So much.”

“I know,” you whisper back. “You said it like 87 times while destroying me.”

⋆⋅ ♡ ⋅⋆

I created a blog dedicated to Superman, where I’ll be posting my writing for him from now on 🫶🏼 so if you wanna check it out, go to -> @404superman

Feedback and sharing is always appreciated, thank you so much for reading <3

[luveline]

𝗜 𝗞𝗻𝗼𝘄, 𝗜 𝗞𝗻𝗼𝘄, 𝗜 𝗞𝗻𝗼𝘄

You confess your affections to an unsuspecting Superman, but your best friend Clark can’t know about your crush, okay? You’d die of embarrassment. (Or, Clark falls in love while Superman does most of the wooing.) fem, 8k

˚‧꒰ა ❤︎ ໒꒱‧˚

You never thought you’d get to talk to Superman. You've never been in that kind of danger, and you never hoped to be. You hadn’t wanted to talk to Superman because you know this is weird. You can’t have a crush on someone you don’t know. It’s idol worship, a celebrity fixation, and Superman is the perfect target. You’re not alone in loving everything about him —it’s easy. You aren’t ever confronted with the bad in his good. 

And then he’s standing in front of you with his hands braced on your shoulders, and there’s blood running down your face from your temple and you’re crying, because it hurts, because you’re in the panic of your life and not sure what to do next. 

He frowns at you with an unwavering gentleness. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, “take a deep breath, ma’am. Deep breath.” 

“It’s bl– bleeding.”

“I know.” 

You shudder through tears as Superman brings his cape up and rips. It startles you, sending fat tears plinking down your cheek. You hold your breath as he brings his scrap to your face, dabbing the wetness from your cheeks before turning the fabric and holding it to your temple firmly.

You gasp painfully under his touch, desperate for air.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he murmurs, his voice a new shade, “it’s alright, you’re going to be fine, I promise. I’m gonna press this to your head, and we’ll see if we can get this bleeding stopped. As soon as it does, I’ll take you down and we can get you some real help.” 

You nod, skittish as a scared deer, eyes as wide as they’ll go to follow his movements. It doesn’t hurt any more than the injury itself as he presses down on your head wound. He sighs in sympathy anyway. A broad hand spreads behind your back, familiar in a way, or maybe it’s the way he’s talking to you now. Like he knows you as you know him. 

The photos of him online don’t do him justice. 

“It’s not bad. I know it hurts, but,” —his hand finds your shoulder, squeezes lightly— “it’s because it’s so high up, alright? They always bleed more. It doesn’t mean this is anything to worry about beyond fixing you up and getting you some pain relief.” 

“You– you’re real help.” 

He holds your gaze. “Yeah?” 

You wonder if he can feel the heat of your blush. It’s all over. He’s lucky your head wound doesn’t start spurting. “Yeah– yeah, I– Superman.” 

His smile is everything. “What?” he asks patiently. 

“I’m a big fan of– of yours.” 

“You are?” 

“You’re so brave,” you breathe out in a rush, though it hurts your head. “So brave. And– and…” 

“Sorry,” he murmurs, putting a little more pressure on your temple. “Thank you for being a fan. All I want is to keep everyone safe.” 

“You’re so gentle with everyone, even the aliens, and– you’re pretty…” 

“Pretty?” he asks, pure surprise in his voice, his hand falling off of your arm. 

You wince. “Yeah. Yes. Handsome. Sorry, you must get told that so much.” 

“It’s okay. I won’t hold you to anything you say. You’re injured, after all.” 

His teasing tone pretty much flies over your head. “No, I’m not lying. I mean it. You’re really lovely, and what you do, it makes you lovelier, it does–” You nearly choke on your enthusiasm. He has to know.

“Don’t get wound up, I’m sorry. I believe you. Let’s try to stay calm.” 

Your head is aching in a new way, now. Less the sting of a wide cut, more beating, like a whirl in your own brain twisting and shaking, dizziness alive behind your eyes and threatening to knock you over. You clutch at Superman’s arm and he knows what you need, slipping his free arm behind your back before you can collapse. 

“I don’t usually get crushes on people,” you inform him. “But it was hard not to get one with you. You’re even nicer than I thought you’d be.” 

“It’s easy to be nice to you. Easy as breathing.” 

Superman hugs you. You swear he does. But when the concussion begins to clear up and your confusion wanes in a hospital bed outside of the battle zone, you realise that he was holding you upright. Superman doesn’t know you, he never will, and you’re okay with it in the grand scheme of things. If you had to meet him, you’re glad it was while he was keeping you safe. He really is a good guy. 

—

A week later, Clark Kent is waiting for you at the doors to the Daily Planet. 

“Are you sure you don’t need more rest?” he asks, forcibly removing your handbag from your shoulder to carry himself.

“I’m sure.”

“It’s okay if you need more time to recover. You’re still wearing a dressing.” 

“It’s a bandaid, Clark, and it’s to hide the scar for now, it’s–”

“It’s still a wound.” 

“It’s fine! You saw it, you know it’s fine.” 

Your overbearing best friend had surprise-visited you the day after your injury despite a text to tell him to stay home. You’re fine. It was a cut and the mildest concussion you could’ve had. You didn’t throw up, or collapse, you’d simply gotten confused and bled all over Metropolis’ finest super hero until his hands were more red than white.

“It looked awful, it still does.” 

“It looks fine. Even the nurse said it was a small cut, in an unfortunate place.”

“Very unfortunate.” 

You follow him to the elevator bank with a frown. “Clark, you don’t have to sulk.” 

“I’m not sulking! I just don’t see what’s wrong with staying in bed for now.” 

“I have stuff to do, babe. I have to work. I have to move forward, it barely hurts anymore.” 

He likes being called babe, simpering accordingly. “Well, you’re sitting down all day. Doctor’s orders.” 

“Show me your oath and I’ll consider it.” 

“Please?” 

He looks like he could cry. Not that he will, but like he could if you keep saying no to him. And despite all your grievances with being treated like you’re fragile now, you decide to take it easy, if only to give Clark the peace of mind. “Okay, sure. You can wait on me all day.” 

“Yes. Thank you.” 

Clark’s your best friend because —no matter how much it might confuse you— he seems to really love you, maybe from the moment he met you. You started at the Daily Planet and he took to you like a duck takes to water. Everything you said made him laugh, every recipe you wrote was one he had to try. And you figured it was something boys tend to do, right? Pretend you‘re interesting until they get what they want from you, but Clark’s never asked for anything else, loving you wholly and expecting nothing in return. 

You let him swing an arm around your shoulders, a mirror of himself those few nights ago where he’d come shaky and sorry to see you. He apologised for not being there when you got hurt, as if he could’ve stopped it. 

“I’m sick of working already,” you say. 

“Then let’s go home.” 

“Clark. I’m being conversational.” 

“Don’t tease me,” he pleads, sounding all sudden and whiney. You squirm out of his arms to poke his side. Gets more solid by the day. Idiot boy. 

“Have you been working out?” 

“Can you stop?” 

“Can I stop? You’re a nightmare.”

Clark threatens to superglue you to your deskchair, but he titters around you hopelessly all day. 

— 

You’re laying on the gravel roof of your apartment on top of a sun lounger, trying to decide if getting some sun is worth all the noise. Beeping, birds, cars, doors, the wind, this high up and occasionally curving through buildings to kiss your skin —noise, noise, noise. Your phone is ringing while you ignore it, desperate to get through the last chapter of your book without interruption. You have thus far been foiled, and figured nobody’d be able to find you up here. 

The quick, awful zip of a high impact sounds somewhere close. You nearly topple from your lounger, a hand pressed to your chest, your heart racing near painfully at the surprise. You whip your head to the horizon looking for smoke, but there’s nothing. For a few minutes, you can’t hear anything at all. 

The shape of him descends before your mind can catch up. Then, he’s there in one piece. A touchable dream, Carol Ann Duffy at work and torturing you in passing. You’ve seen a ton of photos of him, hundreds, videos of girls recording to ask him sweet questions, and you’ve never seen him smile so shyly. You shiver violently down your arms, but Superman isn’t here to hurt you. 

“I’ve been looking for you.” 

“You were?” you ask.

“I wanted to make sure you were doing okay.” 

You sit up properly. The book in your lap makes a crunching noise that you happily ignore. “I’m fine. I’m fine, did you– You’re here to see if I’m okay?” 

His smile strengthens. “Is that okay?” 

You stammer, “Of course it’s okay!” A flush rises from your chest to your cheeks as he stays there. He’s not leaving until you answer. Holy fuck. “I’m great, Superman. All healed up.” 

“Are you sure? You still have–” He gestures to your bandaid. 

“It’s to keep it clean in the daytime. I take it off before bed.” 

“Does it hurt?” 

“No, of course not.” 

“Why of course not?” 

Your heart makes a funny pulse. Handsome isn’t the right word for him. There’s something special about it, otherworldly, literally, the cut of his jaw somehow sharp and soft at once, his pert nose, his eyes gone light in the sunshine and framed by dark lashes that beg to be touched. You imagine running a fingertip along them, gently brushing them up for no reason at all, and he narrows his gaze at you in your silence. The shorts you’re wearing have you worrying you’re underdressed in his eyes. They’re pajamas, pink with black polka dots and edgings. You’d had the forethought to wear a short-sleeve rather than a vest lest one of your neighbours find themselves up here with the same quiet idea. Superman’s fully clothed in comparison. 

His boots look formidable next to your puppy dog socks. 

“It doesn’t hurt,” you promise, half-lying and uncaring. Superman saved you. He’s perfect, so your head doesn’t hurt. 

“You seem a little flustered, is all.” 

“Oh. Oh, well, it’s hot out, and I’m not like, super used to being in your company. Or any company, um, like yours.” 

“You’ve never met a metahuman?” 

“No, never.” 

“We’re just like everybody else.” 

You laugh. 

“No, really,” he says, idling toward you, red boots treading the gravel down flat. “I’m just like you, you don’t have to be nervous.” 

“Sorry.” 

“Now what do you have to be sorry for?” 

You laugh again, a giggle you’d never admit to. He’s strangely intimidating; a presence, but not an imposing one.

“What are you reading?” he asks, nodding to your lap. 

“Oh, uh. Uh, it’s called The Ocean?” You straighten up the book to show him the cover. “It’s good, uh, the main character is a young boy who wants to find his father, I think it’s supposed to be a take on The Odyssey,” 

“Why is he looking for his father?” 

“He’s missing after a terrible war. It’s one of those ones that hurts the entire time but the ending has wrapped it up so nicely, it was worth it.”

“Maybe I’ll read it, too. You look like someone who has great taste.” 

“You can borrow my copy.” 

Superman’s gaze narrows again. “You’re finished?” 

“Yeah, I finished it before you got here.” 

He waits in the quiet. You’re sure he’s going to call you out for your lie. It's not as though a Kryptonian truth-radar would be outside of the realm of possibility. 

Superman finally smiles. “I promise to bring it back,” he says simply. 

“Sure. Well, take your time.” 

—

How long can it possibly take a superhero to read one book?

You shouldn't be thinking about it again. Poor Clark is sitting in the corner of the couch with your feet stuck under his thighs, telling you about the grocery store widow who asks him for help to take her groceries out to her car whenever she sees him. She’d spotted him at the produce section today and dibsed him, and Clark doesn’t mind (though she leaves her car at the back of the parking lot no matter the weather). In fact, Clark doesn’t bring it up to complain. He’s sympathising with her, how lonely she must be. 

You try to shake Superman from your head while Clark is talking, but the thoughts of him won’t budge. 

You’d made a fool of yourself on the roof. Superman had taken your book to be polite. He probably won’t come back. 

“Hey.” 

You lift your head. 

Clark’s looking at you. Big blue eyes in a classic face, the line of his glasses dark and heavy against his brow. They trace your expression, searching for the misery you’ve failed to hide, until he finds it in the creases of your eyes. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks. His voice is weak with worry. 

“Nothing.”

“It’s something.”

“It’s really not.” 

“It definitely is. You can tell me about anything, you know. Or you don’t have to tell me, but I’ll be here for you no matter what. Some food for thought.” 

“Food for thought. Eat this, Kent,” you say, jabbing him at the top of the thigh with your heel. 

Clark grabs your foot. “Come on. I know something’s wrong, and I don’t understand why you wouldn’t tell me, but…” He lets your foot smack down into the top of his thigh to grab his tea instead.

“Isn’t that cold?” you ask. 

“It’s tepid,” he allows after a sip.

You laugh, so he laughs. It’s a lovely sound.

“Again. Again, you don’t have to tell me what’s wrong, but I’d listen if you wanted me to.”

“Don’t try and make out like you’re not keeping secrets.” 

Clark goes slack-jawed. “Sorry?” 

“You don’t tell me everything. I know exactly where you disappear to all the time.” 

“You do?” 

You climb up on your knees and settle in front of him. You’re wearing those pink polka dot shorts like you were on the roof with Superman, in hopes they’ll summon him to you like a talisman. Clark presses his lips together, watching you closely as you take his face into your hands. 

“You’re dating Lois Lane,” you say. 

His fingers dust your elbow. “What?” 

“You’re sweet on her, aren’t you? Plus, you’re busy all the time. You’ve cancelled movie night three times this month, did you know?” 

“I’m sorry–”

“I’m not. I’m happy for you.” 

Clark shakes his head. “But Lois and I… I mean, not for months. We were almost something, I think, but no. Not for a while.” 

You let your hands fall off of his cheeks. “Oh. Sorry, Clark.” 

“Don’t be. I should’ve told you, but it was new and then it was over.” 

“You should’ve told me,” you agree, “but I sort of get why you didn’t. I’m your girl best friend. That’s a thing.”

“You’re my best friend,” he promises, no ‘girl’ prefix necessary. “That’s not why it ended, Lois isn’t like that. It was… we disagreed on so many things. Looking back, I think she was right about most of it.”

“Well, she’s a girl.”

“That she is. You’re all the same, aren’t you? All dazzling.” 

He says it with an earnestness that reminds you of the other half of your friendship-equation. Clark’s your best friend because he loves your work and your jokes and your company, and you’re his best friend because he’s good as gold, inside out, just awfully lovable.

“You’re ’dazzling’ too,” you say. “You are.”

Clark offers you his mug of tea. You take a sip for something to do. 

“Not that cold,” you murmur. 

“I never realised you were such a liar.” 

“I don’t really lie to you, Clark.” 

He leans up to kiss your head, chaste against your purpling scar. “I know.”

—

“So, this book–”

You jump hard enough to send your groceries five different ways, oranges and kiwis for Clark flying up in the air. They never hit the ground —Superman catches them in two hands. 

Your loaf of bread lays cradled in his arm like a baby. 

“Fuck,” you complain. 

“I’m sorry.” Superman laughs at you. Laughs. “Sorry. But this book, is there a sequel?” 

“What?” you ask. Superman tips your groceries into your waiting paper bag. 

“I think I need a sequel.” He pulls The Ocean from a pocket and squeezes it unkindly. “I think it ruined my life.” 

“There’s no sequel. But–” don’t spoil the ending for me, you almost say. “Did you enjoy it at all?” 

“It was good. Do you read a lot, or are you down to the real heart-achers?” 

“Uh, I guess. Well, no, I used to read more, but I didn’t have time for a while ‘n now I’m usually too stirred up to settle down.” 

“You cook.” 

You blink. “You googled me?” 

“No, how could I? But I did see you on the third page of the Daily Planet. You have a little author’s window. You made pumpkin pie.”

“For Thanksgiving weekend, yeah. They only ever put me near the front or on the main page of the website if it’s the holidays.” 

“Is that true?” 

You shake your head. Not to say no, to say, let’s not talk about it. Silly insecurities are unnecessary conversation. At least, they are with him. 

Someone gasps from behind you. With one comes a few. The people near the crosswalk are starting to notice Superman’s tall figure standing in the sun, and though you’d wish he’d managed to hide in the shadows, you admit to yourself that there’s nowhere else he could ever be. He looks right in the sun. 

“Do you want to come with me?” he asks. 

Do you want to go with him? What the fuck does he think? said in your head ecstatically, not a lick of derision against him. Your excitement nearly blinds you. 

“Yeah,” you say, practically mumbling, wanting to come off nonchalant and instead sounding painfully shy, even to your own ears. 

“Yeah?” He offers an arm. “Come here.”

Your charmed little laugh makes him grin. “Alright?” he asks, locking an arm around you vice-tight. 

“Where are we–”

The air leaves your lungs in one fell swoop. There and gone, breathless and weightless in tandem.

The sky is more than blue when you’re in it. 

There’s nothing you can say about it. You’re terrified Superman is going to drop you, you can hardly breathe from the sudden speed at which you’d been taken up with him, but beyond that, there’s nothing to say. Wordless, endless sky. Blue, blue—

“It’s not as scary as you think, right?” he asks, his head angled down to yours. 

“I expected you to have to shout. I don’t know why.” 

“It’s windier in the air, but we’re close. I don’t need to yell.” 

“You’re lucky I didn’t get many groceries.” 

“You aren’t heavy.” 

You’re delighted. “This is a paper bag, you realise! I’m surprised it didn’t explode the second you got me up here!” 

“I’ll be careful. You’re precious cargo, and you deserve a better experience now than the one you got when you first came up here with me.”

“I don’t remember much of it.” 

“That’s okay. I do.” 

You should feel ridiculous, but strong arms hold you steady. Blue eyes like someone familiar pour over your face, as though they need to see you clearly, with all this perfect light. Your few groceries are squeezed between your chests as you squeeze him by the neck, desperate for the extra security, that he won’t simply let you go, and have you fall. 

“This is amazing,” you breathe, your eyes sweeping down to take in beautiful Metropolis beating away beneath you. The cars look like ants. The buildings cast shadows you’d never noticed from the ground. 

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s something.” 

You glance up to find him still staring at you. 

The girls on SuperClub would never, ever believe you if you tried to tell them what passes between you, then. (Not that you frequent SuperClub. Often. You see it while scrolling, and you tend to scroll past it with a fond eye roll.) They wouldn’t believe that Superman brings his hand to your head to touch your temple, as though your small scar is a personal affront to him. They wouldn’t believe the way that he pauses when you shudder. Wouldn’t believe how he lets his fingertip tumble down your cheek, or the soft incline of his head. The slightest kiss of his eyelashes meeting in the very corners of his eyes as they almost close. 

“Don’t feel guilty, please,” you say. 

“What?” He sounds as though he’s woken up from a nap. 

“About what happened. It wasn’t your fault that I got hurt. I wanted you to know that. You saved me.” 

Superman lets the distance between your two faces grow. “I…”

“If this is what that is, if you feel like you owe me something, well. You don’t… I don’t know you, Superman, but sometimes I think I do. It’s like… someone I've met before? I can see your bleeding heart.” You offer a brash smile. “But I’m just fine. You promised me that I would be, and I am.” 

“You’re not making this any easier for me.” 

You shift in his grasp, his hair tickling you and the little hairs on your arms. 

“I’m not a very easy person,” you say. 

Superman presses his nose to your cheek. 

“I think you’re giving me tachycardia,” you whisper.

He hears it. Doesn’t answer for a while, and when he does, it’s to neither of the things you said before.

“Let me take you somewhere new,” he says.

—

A day later, Clark asks if he can bring you dinner. Like and unlike himself, to care enough to ask but to forgo his usual boisterous lack of respect when it comes to taking care of you. Clark recognises that you like to be cared for aggressively. That you want someone to care so much that they won’t stop at the first hurdle. You want someone to take it at a sprint, and Clark’s a show off loser-dork who likes taking care of you. 

He meets you at the door, where you show him your small picnic basket kitted with two plates, knives, forks, and a hidden dessert. “Too hot in my apartment,” you say. 

“What’s wrong with the AC?” 

“It’s leaking.” 

“I’ll take a look at it. What happened to that fan I got you?” he asks, his fingers at your wrist trying to steal the basket. 

“Oh, Clark, can’t you just leave me alone?” you plead. 

He laughs like a kid. “I love when you do that.”

“What?” 

“I don’t know, is it sarcasm? I don’t think that’s apt. Whatever it is, when you act like that? You’re really convincing. It’s funny.”

“I can be funny.”

“I know, that’s what I’m saying. You’re really funny. Can you do it some more?”

“Now it’s not natural, though.” 

“Please?”

“Leave it alone, Clark. You’re such a beg.” 

He laughs again. It peters off to a quiet you’d like to live in. His takeout bag rustles, your picnic basket rattles, his fingers brushing the back of your arm as he follows you down the street to the wooded path. 

There’s a small park not far from your apartment that’s been divided into two halves. The playground for the neighbourhood kids, and the picnic tables made of strangely shaped wood. They’re all rounded. One table is shaped like an ‘S’. Another like a filled in ‘8’. 

You sit at the one furthest from the playground, coincidentally shaped like a ‘C’. “For Clark,” you say, pleased. 

“Adorable.” 

You set up your plates, dividing up the food squarely. Clark had the wherewithal to bring two cans of soda and a big bottle of water. He asks which one you want, cracking it open accordingly. “Gonna pour it into my mouth, too?” you tease. 

“Do you not want me to be nice to you?” 

And the night slips away. You eat your takeout at the picnic table and linger until your legs are numb. The grass around the park is damp, but you sit, and you shoot the breeze until the sun starts to go down. It must be hours out there together. 

Clark takes his jacket off and spreads it over your shoulders. “This is your only bad trait,” he says happily. “You never tell me when you’re cold.”

“I’m not that cold.”

“Sure you’re not. Look, come here,” —he pulls you bodily into his side, his voice turning silky as angora— “you act like you’re such a plague, like– I don’t know, like I wouldn’t wanna know that you’re cold.”

“I don’t act like that.” 

“You do. You could rely on me for more, you know? I want you to lean on me.” 

You lean on him.

Clark presses his nose to your temple, his glasses digging into your skin.

And you think, I know you. 

But you don’t know why. 

—

Clark can't believe this is happening again. 

He woke up this morning with a scary yet firm plan: he’s going to get himself together, pluck up what he has in the way of courage, and be honest with you about Superman. If only so he can stop lying to you. He should’ve told you months ago that he was Superman. Hell, he might’ve told you from the moment he met you, that’s how sure he was that he’d love you. As a friend —his best friend, half of his life. There’s this ease, like he’s known you for far longer than he truly has, like he could know you for the rest of his life. 

And lately. 

Oh, lately. Clark can’t get a handle on things. He hadn’t realised he was falling in love with you, isn’t even sure that’s the way to describe it; far from a sharp plummet downward into love, this has felt like a slow and steady ascent, but now suddenly he’s at the mountain top and the air is thin, and he’s looking for you, aching for relief, and you’re sitting in the snow with your book and your shy smile, cross-legged, just waiting for him to get there and open his cowardly mouth. 

Or that’s what he’d like to think. 

Fact of the matter is, Clark would like to kiss you. Hold your hand, have your head rest on his shoulder. He’d like to pull you into his lap and squeeze. Clark could die happy if he got just one shot at it, no matter the outcome. 

He knows he won’t lose you, but he’s worried you don’t want what he wants. He’s gotten so close to having you, he’s not sure he can take being any further apart than this. 

Clark takes the tramline to the rich part of the city with the best florist. There are buckets and buckets of flowers; orange tiger lilies and white orchids turned green in the sun; roses as big as his fist, unfurling; sweet peas kissing pinkest camellias all tangled up with baby’s breath. He chooses the sweet peas. They really are sweet, their hemmed edge petals curling in and nearly blue. They’re beautiful. He can see them in a glass on your nightstand by tonight if he’s lucky.

It’s on the walk to your apartment (tramline too busy to risk, lest your flowers get hurt) that the trouble begins. 

The light goes out. 

It doesn’t make logical sense. He’s outdoors. It’s the early morning, the sun should be shining for hours to come. 

He looks up and finds a singular dark rectangle over Earth. 

It blots out everything, disapears the clouds, turns the blue sweetpeas in his hand a tired shade of grey. 

Clark wonders if he should’ve told you how he felt when he had the chance. Then, he leaves his glasses, his jacket, and his sweetpeas in the hedgerow at the park with alphabet picnic tables and throws himself upwards into the sky.

—

What emerges from the spaceship (and it is a spaceship, made of an element humans aren’t want to touch) are creatures shaped like spinning asterisks, wisps of their angel-white bodies bending the shadows they’ve cast down onto Metropolis. It’s like smoke. 

The dark makes it hard to breathe. 

You sit huddled in your bedroom looking out through the window, despite a desperate urge to hide somewhere further inward. Sirens echo throughout otherwise quiet streets, discordant wailing that wavers for long, sharp minutes. There had been screaming and crying and the splintering sounds of glass. It’s not —not unseeable, out there, but anyone with poor vision will find themselves stranded.

You open your phone. Your theory is that the aliens have been able to dampen sound as well as sun, leaving the battlefield dangerously quiet. Clark’s not answering your texts because he never has his phone, but you’re sure he’s out there somewhere. He told you he was coming. The last message he sent this morning blinks at you from the bottom of your screen: Coming by soon if you’re not busy, do you want me to bring breakfast? 

You’d said, just some eggs please if you want eggs 

You’d said, hey, are you safe? What’s with the dark? 

You’d said, clark please text me back right now, I’m freaking out, do you need me to come get you? 

He won’t answer the phone. Outside, up in the sky where it’s darker still and the white shadows have begun to ripple, the occasional red beam of heat slices into whiteness, turning it to shadows again. There are two sets of red if you watch carefully. Green light flickers at the ground. 

And Clark Kent is out there all alone. 

You crawl to your shoes under the bed and put them on, pajamas and all. Clark’s blue hoodie lays on the back of your deskchair. You shrug it on. 

He’s gonna lose his entire mind if you do find him out there. Can friends ground you? Because Clark’s going to ground you. But you’d rather be grounded than all alone. 

—

Superman groans into the floor, his tongue coated in dust. 

He has far better vision than a person feasibly needs. He wore a pair of glasses once that are supposed to approximate what it’s like to have legal blindness, and he’d felt suddenly, achingly sorry for the human race. But then he’d found the glasses stand beside it with all their different prescriptions and shrugged it off. Humans are brilliant. He’s in awe of their persistence, their resilience, and their strength. He knows he can find it in himself to go on because they can, too. 

He has better vision, and still he finds himself batted away from the entities like a bothersome fruit fly. 

“Krypto?” he asks into the smog. 

His borrowed dog flies at him with impressive speed, pressing his snout straight into a bruise. 

“Ow!” 

Krypto snuffles and hits at his arms with both paws. 

“Krypto, stop! Jeez, stop. You’re such a pai– Ow! Get off.” 

Krypto nibbles his shoulder. 

Clark forces himself to sit up. At least he hasn’t killed the dog. Kara would probably eviscerate the planet country by country if something happened to her dog, not mentioning the aliens that started this whole thing. And he is good at bringing the suit when Clark needs it. 

He rubs at his eyes and drags himself to his feet, back aching, eyes like sand. Nothing is healing because he can’t feel the sun, but he’s not too hurt. He can take a bad landing. He can take twenty of them. 

“Krypto, stay.” 

Krypto tilts his white blurry head. 

“You’re not helping.” 

Arf! Clark rolls his shoulders and shoots back into the air. 

Krypto stays down, for now. 

Clark takes a lap through the air, searching for signs of life with his ears. The eery quiet is beginning to fill with catastrophe.

“Clark?” 

He stops dead in the sky. 

“Clark?” you call, ten miles below him, shouting all clipped and scared. “Clark Kent! Are you out here? If you can hear me, call back to me!”

He says your name.

“Clark? I’m here!” 

Clark looks up into melted-sugar shadows as they begin to curdle and makes a choice. Damn the aliens, they can have the sky, so long as Clark gets to keep you safe. 

He has to keep you safe. 

—

You’re watching a shadow plummet toward you when the sky opens up into shards of Technicolor. Concentrated around a single point of red and blue and moving so fast it turns puce.

—

There’s a scene in The Ocean where the main character realises his father has been dead before the beginning of the book. Dead for years. He goes searching for him because he’s scared to be alone, brave enough to realise it, and young enough to misunderstand the danger of the world. He treks sandbanks, ferries favour, turns in promises and follows the footsteps of a man long dead across the world. Clark told you once, privately, quietly, in a moment that immediately panicked him, that his parents had adopted him, and that his birth parents had left him with a letter after they both died.

What did it say? you’d asked. 

To be good. 

You find your copy of The Ocean cradled in familiar hands. You recognise its secondhand cover, the bends in the front where a previous owner had tented it for a long period of time. The spine is loose and lax with age. The pages are yellow with time. 

Clark is sleeping quietly in the plastic-wrapped chair beside your bed. He doesn’t have a bruise or cut. He doesn’t look anything like Superman had as he’d flung himself at you, two seconds too late, his body a shield against an explosion that lit your body with fire and colour alike. The whole world had been red, and then yellow, and suitably blue. There was pain. 

Not a darkness as people often say. Just hurting and now this. 

You take a scary breath. Hitching and pained, you search for comfort and find none of it. There’s a needle in the back of your hand secured with a teddy bear wrapping. The sheets have been drawn to your chin and choke you as you try to sit. 

After a moment of struggling, you sink back and try for another breath. Deep, aching breaths. You do it until your lungs burn, these awful, stringing breaths, eyes to the ceiling and fighting the spots of nothingness that cloud your vision. 

“Hey,” a soft voice says, softer hand pressed to the curve of your neck. “Oh, hey, sweet girl, hey… it’s okay. The pain won’t last, they gave you a little more morphine a few minutes ago, it’ll kick in.” 

“Uh–”

Clark makes a sound. “Oh.” 

You let your eyes slide to him. He’s checking his wrist where it’s resting on you. 

“I was sleeping for a long time, I… Honey, I’ll get a nurse.” 

“No,” you breathe. 

“Yeah, honey, I’ll get a nurse,” he repeats, stroking your neck with his thumb. His eyes are their usual calm blue, bearing down into your own with an emotion that’s somehow palpable and implacable. “It’s no good, you being in pain like this. I’ll come right back.” 

“Clark, don’t go,” you whine. 

It’s like the world has been placed heavy on your head. 

Clark offers you relief. “I won’t go if you don’t want me to. Tell me what’s hurting, and I’ll fix it.” 

You shake your head at him. Fuck, nothing hurts. It’s not pain you’re being smothered in. 

“Okay,” he murmurs.

For a while, you don’t talk. Clark stays stooped over you, too tall and careful anyhow to stay out of your light. He holds your cheek, rubbing at skin with his thumb until it’s tickled into numbness, your body begging you to move away from his touch and your brain knowing you can’t. You’ll never duck away from his fingertips ever again. 

Where he’d been unhurt, he isn’t unharried. His hair is in a complete disarray, curls in places pulled straight and greasy behind his ears. His face is pale. His eyes flicker obsessively between you and your monitor, as though he can decipher the information it displays. He must see something there that he trusts, sitting down again in the chair dragged quick and easy to the side of your bed. His hand stays at your face. He’s long. It’s simple work. 

“You read The Ocean,” you whisper. 

“I read all your annotations, too,” he tells you, turning his hand to run it down your cheek, his fingernails especially silky against the line of your jaw. 

You turn your face toward his touch. Your eyes flutter closed as he indulges your deepest fantasy. 

“I didn’t–” Oh, you can’t say it. You hadn’t meant to want him like this. You hadn’t known he was Superman, and isn’t that awful? Something cruel. Your best friend kept a worst secret. 

He doesn’t rush you. 

You’re ready to try again a few minutes later. His fingertips have started to draw a flower into your neck. 

“I’m embarrassed that Clark knows what I said to Superman,” you say plainly. 

“Superman didn’t tell Clark anything,” Clark says. His voice is light in contrast to your hesitancy. 

“But you know it all.” 

“I know you,” he agrees. 

“I’m really… sorry. I’m sorry, I–” You search for his touch and he immediately cups your cheek again. “Clark, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come out looking for you. I didn’t realise you could look after yourself and I made things worse.” 

“Do you even remember?” he asks. 

Mildly. You’d woken once before and found a less fixed Clark covered in blood above you. A part of you had understood that it was Clark, even without his glasses, and a different part knew it was Superman. Then things had blurred, half-replaced by a memory of his hand behind your back in the middle of a meadow halfway across the world, that beautiful quiet valley where the water had been ice and the grass emerald velveteen under your legs. 

In the dream, Superman (and this had been real until it wasn’t), turned to you, and said, with Clark’s dorky intonation, “That’s seriously beautiful, huh?”  

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“But–”

“You don’t. I won’t argue about it with you. You have no apologies to make, you did everything right and nothing wrong, and I lied to you, and I got you hurt, and…” He has the gall to pink in the cheeks, like you’ve taken the skin between your knuckles and pinched. “I wasn’t honest with you about my feelings. I almost kissed you as Superman, and that wasn’t fair.” 

“You really are… him?” you ask weakly. 

“Yeah, I am.” 

Clark sits up as a doctor opens your room’s door. 

“Everything okay?” she asks. When she sees you awake, she smiles broadly. “Hey, you’re up! Can we get you some dinner now?” 

“You skipped breakfast,” Clark tells you. 

“I was awake for breakfast?” 

“Barely. We had you on some pretty gnarly painkillers,” the doctor says. She adjusts her white coat. “I just wanted to check in with your nurses and your lovely partner here that you hadn’t thrown up again.” 

You flush. “I’m fine.” 

Clark simply rubs your chest like a wave of his hand against your heart. 

“I’m worried you haven’t gotten enough sustenance this past day, but we try not to hook you up with too many things,” the doctor explains, “much better for you to settle and then eat. And to drink some water!” 

“I don’t feel very hungry.” 

“The painkillers you’re on can make some people feel quite sick. But try your best, okay? I’ll come back after dinner to see what we can do about those broken fingers.” 

You follow your arm down to your hand. Your pinky and ring finger on the non-dominant hand have been splinted but not casted. 

“Oh.” 

The doctor takes her leave, abandoning Clark to your questions. 

“What’s wrong with me?” you ask. 

“You got concussed again. It made you sick, and your hand is very nearly broken, but they think it’s just your fingers from the look of your x-rays. And you have a long cut.” He puts his hand on your stomach gently. “Here. Almost as long as your arm, but it’s a surface cut. You landed on debris. I’m sorry, my– honey. Sorry.” 

You can’t fight the chills or your bewilderment. “What for?”

“I didn’t get to you fast enough.” 

“Clark.” Your mouth is dry. He’s pretty. Your head goes round and round and aching and then with a dash of clarity, the world snaps back into place. Your hospital room is empty and bright, with a vase filled to bursting with sweetpeas in pride of place on your nightstand. There are voices drifting in from the hallway, and Clark is handsome even as he tears himself apart. The silver lining his bottom lashes doesn’t go unnoticed. “I’m okay, babe.” 

He laughs wetly. 

“I’m fine,” you promise, quieter now. “How couldn’t I be? You’re so gentle.” 

Clark finds your hand, pulling it to his forehead, his body bending forward like a marionette on loosening strings. He shakes his head vehemently, his grip on your wrist tight but far from cruel. 

“You’re gentle,” you promise under your breath, “I told you that before, didn’t I? You’re kind, and brave, and– it’s not your fault I went looking for you.” 

“I should be comforting you. I should be helping you,” he whispers. 

“You won’t catch me crying on your shoulder twice, Superman.” 

His head flinches up, like he’s realising for the first time that you know who he is. 

Whatever he sees in your face helps him to settle down. He curls long, thick fingers around your hand. You can’t help noting how adversely tender they feel while he holds your hand. 

“What did you think of the book?” you ask finally. 

“I didn’t know you liked to read,” he says. 

You shrug. Let your head fall back into a thin pillow, wondering how you might go about getting a better one, and beginning to feel the effects of the painkillers they’d been talking about. “It’s not like it’s the most alarming secret, between us.” 

He lets out a wounded whine. “Why do you hate me?” he asks. 

“You’re due some hazing.” 

“Can’t you take pity on me?” he asks. 

You curl your fingers around his where they’d otherwise been limp. “I’m not really half as cool as I’m trying to act, Clark.” 

He sulks beautifully. “I think you’re lying to make me feel better.” 

Only a little. 

—

Being cool around Clark Kent lasts about as long as the morphine does. The reality is this: Clark Kent —best friend extraordinaire, sweetheart farm boy who’s vetted all your worst ideas, held your hair back in the smallest toilet in Metropolis bar history after a too-happy happy hour, knows all your holey socks and questionable medical queries— is Superman. 

And Superman? 

He’d been courting you. 

The word is antiquated and accurate. Superman had been cautiously courting you with his sparse visits, shy and brave at once, brash but remarkably put together. It is after you know the truth that you realise Clark had been not so secretly courting you simultaneously. 

“Is that why you were bringing me dinner and stuff?” you ask, lured into the conversation by accident, now deeply curious. 

“No. I did that stuff before I wanted you. It was hard to sort the feelings into boxes, like– platonically, I’ve loved you since you came into the office with your miserable laptop and– and romantically, I don’t know. I guess I didn’t realise until I tried to kiss you and you wouldn’t let me.” 

“Sorry?” 

“I tried to kiss you, and you thought it was a pity kiss.” 

You hold him by the shoulder. “That was real?” 

“Do you dream about it?” he asks knowingly. 

“It was really going to be a kiss?” 

He softens. Clark, big on your smaller couch, in his pajamas with his hair finally washed again and your hand in his lap, rests his shoulder into yours with a long-suffering sigh. “Best kiss of your life,” he promises. 

“Prove it.” 

“What?” 

It’s been four days since the hospital and Clark is horrifically chaste. “Do you not want to kiss me?” 

“You know I do.” 

“So kiss me.” 

He pinches your chin. “If you wanted a kiss, you could’ve just taken one,” he tells you, looking you straight in the eyes. 

“From Superman?” you ask with a little scoff. 

He moves his head from left to right. “From me,” he says. 

There has been so much to tell him. So little space to hide from him. Lines of books you’d underlined for him, lines for Superman, for both of them. The guilty way you’d watched Clark Kent take off his shirt at the public pool in summer heat and the loop of Superman under your thumb as you’d fallen asleep scrolling SuperClub. You’ve been more honest with him than you’ve dared to be previously. 

Clark has repaid you in kind. 

Did you know, he’d confessed, when you were still grody from the hospital and he’d demanded you let him stay, that night, that everything I’m good at is because of the sun? I can function without it. I can store up the energy in my cells and I don’t need much to stretch it far, but without the yellow sun, I’m just like you? 

How could I know that? you’d thought. Why are you telling me this? you’d asked instead.

I want you to know. 

Clark loves the sun, you realise now. He turns his face up to it often, soaking it in silently. He gets this look whenever he stops to take it in. Perfect contentment. Trust, that it will make him feel better. 

Clark tilts his chin against yours, nudging your face gently inward, giving you the shortest glimpse of that content stretched across a smile as it presses into yours.

You hyperventilate your way into an open-mouthed, gasping sort of thing, and find Clark a fiercer kisser than you could’ve imagined. All those daydreams about Superman saving you from another day copyediting your own messes, you’d never thought to picture the boy sitting at the desk across from you, how his hand might slide behind your neck like water. How he’d take the breath from your lips and offer his own in a shaky, wanting gasp. 

Superman, breathless under your touch. No one would ever believe you. 

“Did you want me to tell you how it ends?” 

You break away from him, panting, vaguely confused. “Sorry?” 

“The Ocean? You never finished it.”

“Oh. Maybe you can read it to me. You know, afterwards.” 

Clark grins. “After,” he promises, leaning down for another kiss. 

˚‧꒰ა ❤︎ ໒꒱‧˚

thank u Bec for proofreading ur brains are irreplaceable <3 and thank u everyone else for reading! 

[luveline]

𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗸𝗶𝘀𝘀

You realise nobody’s ever gone down on Clark before and aim to change that. (Or, Clark gets spoiled.) fem, 3k

established relationship, oral sex, messy gentle blowjob, a helping hand, mildly inexperienced clark. requested here

˚‧꒰ა ❤︎ ໒꒱‧˚

Clark strokes the back of your neck gently. He has nice fingers. He’s tall, so his arms are long and his hands are wide, but they’re pretty, too, with trimmed cuticles and light hairs at the knuckles. You squint with an eye smushed close in his chest, daytime TV the only discernible sound beyond Clark’s breathing. You time your inhales to his, then your exhales. Clark probably hears it, but he doesn’t say anything. His touching grows softer still. 

You shift in his hold some and wrap an arm around his waist. Under your arm, you can feel the bite of his denim jeans. They’re a good fit. They… accentuate things. 

You try to pay attention. Clark put the cooking channel on because he knows that’s what you like. He is earnestly sweet, and likely heartily bored. 

You let your hand fall to his thigh. His skin is warm even through the denim, heat seeping through your hand and his thigh, back and forth.

If your face were to fall a little further down, if his hand slipped higher, guiding your head…

You slide your hand up to his hip and feel at it accordingly. “Clark?” you ask, voice croaky with disuse. 

“Mm?” 

“Can I ask you somethin’?” 

“Sure, baby. Ask me something.” 

You could fall asleep like this if heat weren’t stirring in your stomach at even the idea. Clark calling you ‘baby’ with his Friday-night-tired voice doesn’t hurt the fantasy. Your knees hot against the hardwood, braced, Clark’s stuttering pleasure.  

He must find a tell in your expression, going quiet and smiley. “What?” he asks. 

“You don’t have to answer.” 

“I doubt I’ll mind. I’d tell you anything.” 

You let your thumb stray toward the inside of his thigh. Feel the muscles there twitching. “I know I’m not your first girlfriend, but you told me you aren’t… totally experienced.”

“Right. What, do you want to know what I meant?” he asks. 

You know Clark’s fucked girls. Has gone down on girls, just not many. Clark has fucked and gone down on you, and he did it beautifully, but he’s never let you blow him: you’ve never asked. And it isn’t because you don’t want to, only, Clark seems to have a want to do things in his order and you’d been happy to follow his lead this whole time. 

“Has anyone ever gone down on you?” you ask quietly. 

Clark goes slightly stiff, despite best intentions. “No,” he answers, scratching at the nape of your neck. “No one’s ever gone down on me.” 

“You don’t want to try?” 

“No one’s ever offered, and I guess I’ve never wanted to ask.”

“How come?” you ask, to gauge where he is with it. 

“It’s different, to ask. Girls– women are expected to do certain things, but I’ve never expected anything of you. I still don’t. I figure if you want to, you’ll ask me, and if you don’t want to, it’ll never hurt anyone that you don’t.” 

He’s so, so sweet. The thought of him being too shy or too unwilling to be that guy makes you want to do it more. There is an expectation in contemporary culture, but it doesn’t mean the act itself between you and Clark has to have that connotation. 

“Can I blow you?” 

Clark huffs a quiet laugh. “You don’t have to, honey.” 

“Please?” 

Clark can’t hide the heat of his skin under your hands, but he’s putting up a convincing front otherwise. His hair has fallen into his eyes again, sweet knocked curls kissing a pale forehead. “I don’t wanna hurt you,” he says.

“It doesn’t have to hurt anyone,” you say. You’ve both fallen into the quiet voices you use before you fuck, and he’s wearing an expression you’d find mirrored if you could see your own face, like he’s waiting for the next move, and then the next. “Okay? It’s not rough. Not unless you want it that way.” 

“Uh– I–” And while you’d like to say there’s something in him turned on at the notion, you genuinely believe that Clark Kent is astonished at the idea of hurting you on purpose. 

“You can tell me exactly what to do, or I could,” —you let your hand rest at his belt buckle— “do what I think you’d like. I can make you feel good, Clark.” 

Clark’s eyes fill with knowing. You’re seducing him and he’s being pulled in, but going willingly doesn’t mean he’s unaware. “Is that what you want? You wanna make me feel good?” he asks, teasing and testing. 

“Will you return the favour?” 

“I can lay you out right here,” he promises simply. Which is why getting on your knees in front of him is easy work. The eagerness on his face turns to worry, “Hey, you don’t have to kneel down there, we can move.” 

“It’s easier like this. Can see everything.” 

“Oh.” His mouth tightens.

“Not so easy, being seen up close,” you murmur. “But I know you’re pretty, Clark.” 

He’s hardening in his jeans. You readjust your position and use your weight to spread his thighs some, which helps to send a little more blood to his cock. You watch the fabric tighten a touch, watch Clark’s cheek dimple as he bites the inside of his mouth. 

“You okay?” you ask. 

“Hey,” he says, taking your elbows into his hands, “I’m fine, just trying to act like a gentleman.” 

Straightforward when he isn’t telling the flimsiest lies ever. You rally at his eagerness, holding his arms in tandem, fingers spread over curved biceps. 

“You really are something,” you mumble, letting your fingers trail down his arms. 

“Should I– can I take my belt off?” 

“Yeah, honey, open it up. Or I can?” 

He nods tightly. 

You slip the leather of his belt from the buckle, heat pooling in your abdomen at the clink it makes, and the quiet shush as you free it from a belt loop on either side. Your fingers are steady as you unbutton him, as you take the zipper between your fingers and pull it down. His legs widen to let you in, and you slide into the space as well as you can. His thighs are muscled, solid around you, squeezing you gently as you push his shirt up his stomach. 

“Lay back a li’l,” you murmur. 

Clark lays back. 

The erotica of his open jeans and his trimmed, dark tummy hair makes your eyes warm. Standing, you could rap your knuckles against his waist and hear it like stone, but there’s a new softness to his stomach when he slouches. 

You work your hand up to his bulge. 

“Are we done?” Clark asks, tipping his head back with a groan. There’s redness climbing his neck. “Fuck, let’s– let me take you to bed.” 

He’s mostly kidding. Careful, you slip your hand up his cock and back down again, marvelling the rigidity of it already, saliva pooling right behind your teeth. “Can I move these outta the way?” 

“Honey, don’t,” he says. Which means Honey, don’t tease.

“Baby,” you say, he’d felt it coming, but he still drags his head up to stare at you like you’re a dream, “do you want this?”

“Yes,” he says. 

“Can I kiss you?” 

He’s not so pale in the face now. “Yeah,” he says, “please.” 

You take the length of his cock into a tentative hand and lean downwards. Clark makes a noise before you’ve so much as breathed on it, the red head of his cock dry but so full of blood it looks bruised as your fingers close at the shaft. You look up at him, and you feel his weight in your hand, angling yourself down to touch his cock to your cheek. Then you turn your face to brush it over your lips, and any cool Clark held swiftly dissipates. 

It’s slow to begin with, just kissing a mouthing at the length of his cock, feeling it twitch on your tongue, the heat of his blood in your palm as you drag it up and down. With enough kissing the skin is slick, and stripping it makes a sound that’s almost as lewd as his shudder when you take the head against your tongue for the first time. He smells so fucking good, he smells clean, and he smells like his skin and that sweat scent before it has time to sour, like he’s overheating under your hands, and he smells like precum as it begins to dribble from his slit. You press your nose to his cock, drinking up the gasp he makes, his thighs tensing under your touch. And it’s perfect, but he needs to relax.

“Baby, take your pants off,” you say, drawing back from his cock, spit wet on your bottom lip. 

“What?” 

“I can’t kiss all of you–”

“I don’t think–”

“Clark, I’m not going to break your trust, baby,” you say, giggling lightly, not gonna kiss anywhere he doesn’t what, “just– just get undressed. I can– I can be naked, too.” 

He’s better convinced. Clark shimmies his jeans off, then his shirt when you laugh. You strip out of your shirt and reach back for your bra, but Clark clasps your wrist and insists that the jeans be the first thing to go. 

“Idiot,” you murmur without heat, standing off your achy knees to unbutton your jeans. You roll them down your hips. 

Clark’s once over isn’t half as salacious as it could be. “Beautiful,” he says. 

“Thank you. You like the set?” you ask, turning to the side to show him your blue underwear. The panties have see-through lace squares at the sides and the bra’s slightly too tight at the band, but his gaze doesn’t linger anyplace. He finds your face. 

His eyes flicker to your panties and then back again. “Beautiful,” he says again. “Come and sit up here with me, sweet girl. Can’t do that to your knees anymore.” 

“It’s easier–”

“I can move, but you can’t sit down there anymore.” 

You love when Clark uses his voice like that. It’s like it’s not him anymore. It’s not, totally. Threads of his other half wrap you up, have you crawling onto the couch next to him to set yourself down across his thighs, left arm and shoulder leaning on his legs, right arm guiding the head of his cock back into your mouth. 

“Guide my head,” you murmur around him. 

He gives his sharpest pant yet. “What?”

You grab his hand and press it to your neck. “Move me onto it.” 

“I don’t want to choke you.” 

“Then be gentle,” you advise softly. “I won’t let you choke me, babe, I just need help finding a rhythm.” 

For some reason, that’s what gets him most. Clark dissolves back into the cushions with his hand grasping your neck, guiding your head as you take his cock into your mouth. It’s all hot and humid and his crotch is quickly wetted, spit under your nose and on your chin, eyes misty as he brushes the back of your mouth with his cock. You refuse to choke and scare him off, so whenever he guides you down too close, you pull away. 

You hold the swell of him rather sweetly, rubbing a thumb over them each time you pull off his cock. He’s eager to fuck against your warm tongue, just a little too much, and you’re staring up at him with your mouth full and your nose wet when his eyes go silver. 

“That’s perfect,” he says, his pelvis flexing, “just like that– just– you’re perfect, I swear–”

“Love you,” you say, sniffing the heat that’s gathered in your nose away gently. 

“I love you.” He grabs your cheek in his hand. “I love you more, honey, you look insane like this, I didn’t realise…” 

“This is why people like it so much.” 

He adores the hint of shyness he hears in your voice, you can see it in his smile. You can almost see his teeth. But behind his smile there’s a need there, something anxious, so you lean your face against his hip and begin pumping his cock in a slick hand. “Let me make you cum,” you say softly. 

Clark doesn’t answer. He gives you this besotted leap-of-faith kiss pressed to top of your head and nudges your mouth back toward his cock. “Kiss, please,” he begs. 

You press tens of little kisses into his cock, letting precum bead up and drip onto the tip of your tongue. 

“Clark,” you say, licking the salt from your lips as his breath starts to stagger, “you can cum, honey, do you want to? You can cum in my mouth.” 

He shakes his head vehemently and covers your hand where it’d been pumping his cock. For a second, things are stopped, but then he drops his head back against the cushions and uses your hand under his to jerk his full length, sticky heat pressed into each finger, the pressure of each strip like a lick until he’s suddenly over the edge. He brings your hand up and tugs at the tip of his cock, cum dripping down your knuckles in fat rivulets. 

You give an experimental pull.

“Fucking–” He moans your name like an afterthought. “Ah, baby, baby–”

“Sorry,” you say. 

Clark catches his breath for so long you worry you’ve permanently maimed him. He’s still holding your sticky hand to his cock, letting it drip down his front and his hip the longer he leaves it alone, but who are you to judge? You force him to free your hand in search of a discarded t-shirt. 

When you’ve managed to clean off your hands and Clark’s abdomen, he lifts his head from the couch to deliver a suspicious glare. “What the hell, babe?” 

You startle. “What?” 

“How’m I ever supposed to get off by myself now? I think you just ruined me forever.” 

“I’m sure you’ll be okay. Idiot.” 

He wipes his hands again and before he takes your face into both hands. “Kiss, okay?” he asks, pulling you forward. 

“Mm,” you affirm against his lips. A kiss is sorely needed. 

It’s an unashamed kiss that spans a half-second too long, like he’s forgotten you need to breathe to survive, but he says sorry with a chaste peck pressed to the very corner of your eye and one of his great groaning sighs as he gets an arm around you and manhandles you into his lap. 

“Watch your dick, baby,” you mumble, ready for the quiet, dizzy afterparty that comes whenever you both fuck. 

Clark just laughs under his breath. “It’ll be fine. Now let me see these,” he says, tipping you back enough to bring his free hand to your thighs. His thumb brushes the bump of your cunt. “I don’t think you can take these off. That’s, like, not even federal at that point. It’s international.” 

“Crime to undress me?” you ask, not bothering to click into the conversation fully. Clark’s barely any better, all mumbly and sluggish as he brushes a hair off of your cheek.

“Mm, no, I don’t think so. That wouldn’t bode well for me, would it, beautiful?” 

You wrap your arms around his neck to nuzzle under his jaw. 

And Clark? He lets his head fall back again, sighing with the same dizzying pleasure he’d shown with his cock pressed to the roof of your mouth, as though he finds your affection just as heavenly.

“I owe you a debt,” he says to the ceiling. 

You kiss his Adam’s apple, unhurried. As far as you’re concerned, he’s paid it forward greatly, 

˚‧꒰ა ❤︎ ໒꒱‧˚

[tojisteddy]

size kink but reader isn’t actually small. You’re small compared to him.

And it throws you off a little bit, because you know you’re about or above average in height. You have a little weight on you, and it all mixed together with that gorgeous face that makes the man swoon just from eyeing you up across the bar.

It’s maybe your first time dating a man who you really have to look up to. Hes tall, broad shoulders, a large chest and amazing muscles. He’s the type you can easily spot in a crowd, who will take your hand in his large one and lead you through the mess of a busy Sunday market. Loves looking down on you and rubbing at all your curves while hugging you from behind. He’ll whisper it while kissing along your neck.

“So fuckin small, so fuckin pretty.” He grumbles.

But you’re not small, but he makes you feel like it. Everytime he lifts you off your feet you get spooked because he sweeps you off your feel like you weight a crumb. How he towers over you when he flirts or reaches for something past you. His shirts actually going mid thigh and barely coving your ass. How he measures where his cock is gonna reach in your pudgy stomach—

you two play fight a lot because you swear you can take him on. He’s not that much taller than you. Do you end up getting bent in half, knees to your earlobes, like it’s nothing?

Every fucking time.

Everytime he has to break you in like you’re a born again virgin, his large fingers stretching out your dripping tight walls till he smacks his leaking mushroom tip against you, rubbing through your sloppy folds. He slowly ruts himself inside you, with the power of patience, till it feels like hes stuffed you full. It’s almost a disappearing act the way you take his thick veiny cock.

“ Hah- ‘s not all the way there Mama, come on baby, biiig stretch.”

And he fills you to the hilt, till he feels his balls smack against you, covering your body completely, his large weight pressing against you ever to perfectly. your eyes rolling to the back of your skull, letting out a pornographic moan. You clench around him making him his. He presses into your stomach with the bass of his fingers, riiiiight where he can feel his tip kissing your cervix and you cream around him from that alone, sobbing at how big he is, how much he stretches you out.

“That’s my fuckin girl, take my cock so well.”

˚₊·—̳͟͞͞♡ Simon, Toji, König, Sukuna, Joel, John, Gojo, Nanami

a/n: for the girls who are 5’8 and above✊🏾 Joel & John 6’2 propaganda? Well, yes!!

[localgoblinlad]

mine

[ceilidho]

Margaritaville

For days now, you’ve been seeing the same broad-shouldered man lounging around the resort.Or: the knocked up on vacation au Part 2 masterlist

-

For all your zoning out, you still know how to make the most of your vacation. 

Grains of white sand scratch the skin between your toes on the walk back from the beach, sun-fatigued and pruny-fingered. Synapses firing slower than usual. You nearly doze off on the shuttle ride back to the hotel until someone jostles you awake, the embarrassing snort you let out entirely unintentional.

It’s not your fault. Several hours in the sun and sea will do that to a person.

You can’t put John entirely out of your head though. The intent in his gaze still sizzles under your skin like a bad burn. It takes everything in you not to tell your friends that you’ll see them around and take the shuttle right back to the hotel to meet up with him. Knowing him, you’d probably find him in one of his usual haunts—lounging around poolside or still seated at the swim-up bar—pleased as punch to see you come crawling back.

You pinch your arm to snap yourself out of it. You’re better than that. You can take your mind off John long enough to focus on spending time with your friends and making the most of your vacation. It’s not like there aren’t plenty of activities going on around the resort to help take your mind off him. 

The silent disco is held on a small patch of sand in the atrium of the hotel, surrounded by couches and corridors leading to the other wings on all sides. There’s a DJ booth off to the side that’s mostly for show since the only music playing is what’s blaring from your headphones. 

Three hours spent dancing and drinking and you’ve practically sweated out all the alcohol in your system, which you’re more than happy to replace with another drink. You stumble over to the bar twice for a top up on your margarita before your head begins to spin something fierce and the sand somehow poses more of a risk than the ground given that it keeps slipping out from under you. 

You slip the earphones off your ears and turn to your friends, two of them still dancing together. The other is sitting on one of the couches nearby, hands folded over her belly and eyes pinched shut like she might throw up. 

One of your friends dances a bit too close to you and you reach out to tap her shoulder.

“D’you guys mind if I go upstairs?” you ask, slurring your words only a little. 

“Yeah,” one yells, only one headphone pushed to the side. 

You point over to where your other friend is still sitting on the couch. “Are you guys gonna—”

“Yeah, we’ll take her up, don’t worry. I only had one drink.”

Reassured, you say your goodbyes and dust the sand off your feet before putting your sandals back on. 

You barely make it a couple yards from the atrium dance floor when the exhaustion finally starts to catch up to you. Your feet catch on the grout line of the tile floor when you can’t seem to muster up the energy to fully lift your feet with each step, making you stumble forward a couple steps.

A hand catches you under your elbow when you nearly stumble right into a wall, reeling you in firmly.

“Hey, hey, hey—think you might’ve had a bit too much,” a gruff voice says, lightly scolding you, and you blame the way you instantly go liquid at the sound of his voice on the alcohol still clouding your head. 

“I’m gettin’ water,” you insist and he snorts, less amused than indignant. 

“You damn sure are.”

He herds you over to a couch and makes you sit down, growling at you when you try to get back up, insisting that you wait until he comes back. Alcohol might make you more petulant than usual, but the warning note in his voice doesn’t escape you, so you sit there with your hands in your lap, head spinning, until he returns a few minutes later, sitting down beside you and handing you an unopened bottle of water. 

It says something about the state of your fixation that you recognize exactly who came to your rescue by voice alone, despite having only spoken to each other the one time. It registers in the lizard part of your brain that makes you go almost servile, letting him put you exactly where he wants you and take what’s given to you.  

“Drink up—there we go,” John instructs when you take a long drink, nudging your chin up with his knuckle and nearly making you choke. “That’s a good girl.”

You drink your water with gusto, the plastic bottle crinkling under your fingers, condensation making the plastic label slide all over the place with your thumb. A bead of water dribbles down your chin and drips onto the floor. Your face burns from his touch and his words. 

It’s not the first time that you’ve seen him in something other than his swim trunks—that wouldn’t be appropriate to wear at the breakfast buffet—but the patterned Hawaiian shirt and board shorts combo is doing something unholy to your libido. His shirt is mostly unbuttoned save for the two in the middle, hiding his midsection but exposing his pecs at the top and the treasure trail of dark hair leading down into his shorts.

“Where’d you come from?” you ask dumbly. 

He laughs softly and your stomach flips at the sound. “The bar over there.” He points someways off and you squint until you can make out the shape of the bartender moving back and forth between the people sitting in front of him, submerged in cindery darkness. “You know, I’m on vacation too.”

“Oh. Yeah. I know.”

It’s healthy that you remember that every once in a while—that a whole world exists outside of your experience of it. John isn’t here as a manifestation of your libido, but as a real person on vacation too, one that just so happens to make your heart beat twice as fast when you see him. 

But a better time for introspection might be when you’re upstairs in your bed and not drunk off your feet. 

“You need any help getting back up to your room?” John asks.

You grunt, shaking your head and regretting that action almost immediately when the room starts to spin all the more violently and your stomach lurches. 

“That’s a yes then,” he says, shushing you when you start to protest. “Don’t argue. Drink your water.”

Exhaustion leaves you boneless, no fight left in you to object to his words. Besides, he’s not wrong. With the way your head is spinning, you’ll be flat on your ass tomorrow if you don’t drink water now. 

You guzzle the rest down with both hands until there’s nothing left, blindly handing the empty bottle back to the man sitting beside you who leaves for not more than a second to toss it. He comes back to find you slumped over, your elbows braced on your thighs and your breath coming out short and shaky. 

“You gonna be sick, hun?” John asks, kneeling beside you and holding a new, ice cold water bottle to your cheek, an instant balm to your suffering.

“…No,” you sigh, suppressing the urge to shake your head. “Just need to lie down.”

He nods. “Okay. Wanna give me your key and we’ll get you up to your room?”

Your eyes crack open a hair to stare suspiciously at him. “…You’re not coming to my room with me.”

John shakes his head. “Didn’t mean it like that, honey. Just not sure you can make it up on your own right now.”

Though he isn’t exactly off in his judgement, you’re still not sure how you feel about a strange man walking you back to your hotel room in this state. You’re tempted to go back to your friends instead, and maybe he sees that in your gaze because he reaches into his back pocket to pull out his wallet and then hands you his driver’s license. 

“Take a picture and send it to your friends—anything happens to you and they can hold me responsible.”

You don’t know why that statement of all things nearly leaves you breathless. You listen though, snapping a quick picture of his license before sending it to one of your friends with a quick little message to keep her from worrying. 

“Good?” John asks, lifting an eyebrow. You nod, mouth still dry from drinking too much.

The ease with which he hoists you up onto your feet briefly renders you speechless. Wide-bodied man that he is, he seems twice as large stood beside you, the arm linked with yours one big slab of muscle. He keeps you braced to his side as he starts towards the elevators. 

True to his word, after the long journey back upstairs with your arm hooked through his to keep you on the straight and narrow, John lets you go at the door, though not before handing you the unopened bottle of water still in his other hand. 

“For tomorrow morning,” he says.

“Oh,” you reply, all raspy and unsure. “Thank you.”

For a second, you almost think he’s going to follow you in. You’re not sure what you’d do or how you’d feel about it. There’s not much you’d be able to do if he really wanted to force his way in—even sober, you’d have a hard time putting up much of a fight. 

So when he takes a step forward into the room, your heart skips a beat and your stomach drops, only for John to grab the handle and pull the door shut behind him, leaving you in the empty room alone. 

The girls are piled together on the other bed when you wake up the next day, still out for the count despite the alarm going off on one of their phones. They must have gotten in not long after you, but they look twice as knackered, makeup smeared around their eyes and still in their clothes from the night before. No one must have bothered to sit them down and forced them to drink a bottle of water before passing out for the night. 

Your head buzzes at the thought. Instead of focusing on it, you turn your head to look down at your bedside table where the extra water bottle and Advil are waiting. Heat flickers briefly into your cheeks when you remember who was responsible for making sure you’d be alright in the morning. 

The day slows to a crawl when you’re by yourself. It’s quieter somehow, late enough that most of the families have already left for the beach or the more kid-friendly pool on the other side of the resort. The girls only crack open their jaws and yawn good morning around noon, long after you already went downstairs for coffee and breakfast, enjoying the morning to yourself for once. 

“I think my head’s going to explode,” one complains, collapsing into a chair. 

Despite your own mild hangover, you’re not void of sympathy. “Want me to get you guys some food?” you ask. 

All three look over at you with big, pleading eyes. You take that as a yes. 

The breakfast service from earlier in the morning has already been swapped for the lunch service. Too late to grab something from the omelette station or a full English breakfast. From the state of your friends, you don’t think they’d turn down anything carb-heavy though, so you head to the pasta station with a tray big enough for two or three plates. 

Head in the clouds, you don’t see him coming until he’s suddenly there. All it takes is the slightest tilt of your head to catch him from the corner of your eye, John all the way at the front of the line, big and imposing as ever. Even more so in the light of day. 

When he feels your stare on him, he looks over, winking when he meets your eyes. 

There’s nothing to bury your face in and hide what wink does to you. All you can do is smile at him awkwardly and turn to the cook when she hands you back three plates, which you pile on your tray one by one. 

Your friends are in various states of collapse when you return to their table, heads resting on folded arms. There’s a round of drinks in front of them from a passing server, though only one of them has the wherewithal to pop the straw into the corner of her mouth and drink.

“Hot guy’s over there,” one of your friends grumbles, pointing as discretely as possible. You follow her finger to find John at a nearby table, minding his own business. If he feels your stare on him, he doesn’t acknowledge it this time.

“Yeah…I saw him in line,” you admit.

“He’s good eye candy…” another muses. “But…we should make some kind of pact.”

“What kind?”

“No one tries to fuck him. We’re supposed to be on vacation together—it won’t be any fun if one of us leaves the group to shack up with the only hot guy on the resort when we’re supposed to be spending the rest of the week together.”

Not a chance in hell, you almost blurt out, swallowing your words at the last second. You’re more offended at the thought that any of them would try than at the idea of you not being allowed. 

Another one of your friends snorts. “He’s not the only hot guy around.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Seriously—there’s a group of frat bros that checked in the other day. I saw them at dinner the other night.”

“I saw them too and please be so fucking for real. They were nowhere near as hot as the other guy.”

A medley of snorts breaks the slight tension. “Okay, whatever, it doesn’t matter. Are we all in agreement?”

“Why bother making a pact?” you ask, annoyance flickering in you like a lizard scuttling up the wall. 

The one who brought it up turns to you, unimpressed. “You texted me his ID last night, dude.”

You cringe, just now remembering that you did in fact send her the picture of his ID the night before. “Oh, that’s just—he walked me back up to our hotel room last night after I left. He didn’t, uh…come in or anything.”

“Yeah, sure,” she says, not buying a word of it. 

“He made me do it actually. Just to be safe.”

“Well, that was nice of him,” another snorts, fork clinking against the plate as she starts digging into her food. “Guess that means he only wants to fuck one of us.”

“Oh my god, stop,” you beg, hands covering your face so you don’t have to look at any of them. You do take some pleasure in her saying that though, however guilty that pleasure may be. 

The only thing that brings you back to Earth is glancing over at John’s table again to find him still oblivious to your staring, too preoccupied with his breakfast to pay you any attention. That stings a bit. It’s as good a reminder as any that despite him wanting to fuck you or not, he won’t be sitting beside you on the plane at the end of the trip. It’s your friends that you’ll have to face back home if you sideline them on your group trip.

You turn back to them, pinky finger out for them to take. “Okay. Promise.” 

And you almost believe it when you say it. 

But promises made in peacetime aren’t easily kept in times of strife. Days of unbuttoned Hawaiian shirts and sunglasses sitting low on the bridge of John’s nose prove that to you. 

Your resolve wavers like a bear shaking fruit from a tree—standing up on its hind legs with both paws braced against the tree trunk and giving it a few powerful shakes before checking around to see what came loose. 

His complexion deepens as the days go on, tan setting in and sunburn fading away. When you see him through the glass walls of the fitness centre on the way to the pool in the early morning, it’s all you can do to keep walking. 

Now that you’ve broken the ice, John isn’t shy to track you down around the resort. Not that he ever was. Maybe before he was just biding his time, waiting to see if his advances would be reciprocated, and now that you’ve given him the greenlight, so to speak, his reservations have vanished into thin air. 

The attention feeds your ego to the point of critical mass. You can’t stop imagining yourself from an outside perspective, obsessed with the thought of what you might look like to John from afar, in the throes of a perpetual out of body experience. 

It’s just addicting to think about a man like John being interested in little old you. Makes you look at yourself in a whole new way. In the morning, you put on your sunscreen in front of the bathroom mirror and take an extra few minutes to appreciate all of your features, turning this way and that to admire your form, insecurities plucked out one by one, his desire refracted in the prism of your chest and reflected back out.

The frustrating part is that you know you’re doing the wrong thing by indulging him when you shouldn’t be even entertaining his flirtatious overtures. You came all this way to spend time with your friends, not follow a hot man back to his hotel room. If it were any of your friends and not you toying with the idea, your anger would come swift and righteous. It’s hypocritical to not think they’d ask the same of you.

But—you chew your lip when he makes eye contact with you from across the restaurant at dinner—like everyone else, you have a breaking point. You’re only human at the end of the day.

“Ah, ah, ah, there we go,” John rumbles right in your ear, hot breath panting down the side of your neck. 

You don’t know how you wind up back in his hotel room hours later with your knees draped over his shoulders and his voice low in your ear telling you to count to ten while he pushes in, gasping every time his hips punch forward, cockhead nearly nudging your cervix and filling you all the way up, close to overspilling.

Too much, too big; even though he stretched you out on two thick fingers for what felt like hours, it still forces all the oxygen out of your lungs when he bottoms out. 

“Gonna have to pry you open, huh,” he chuckles in your ear. You don't get what's so funny about that, but in fairness you can barely wrangle enough sense together to form a thought. 

One big hand effortlessly pins your wrists over your head. His grip isn't even that tight and you can't wriggle out of it. Your heart quickens when you realize that. 

He worships your breasts like a man that prefers tits over ass and he tells you that too: got a lovely set on you, honey, and then sucks a nipple into his mouth. 

You shouldn’t be here. Your friends are all down by the pool soaking up the sun and getting their feet wet while you’re in John’s room on the other end of the hotel getting railed within an inch of your life. You should’ve known that it would end up here. You should’ve known that you were always going to end up in his bed. 

Nothing but experiencing his broad body suspended over yours and rutting between your thighs could’ve prepared you for the reality of it. Smothering, oppressive; tacky skin sliding against yours, friction making your skin burn, the hair on his pecs and belly all sweat-slicked and dragging against your chest. Broader and heavier than you could’ve imagined. 

One time, you tell yourself. One time and then never again, just to know what it would be like. Just to know what fucking a man like John would do to you. One time and then you can go back to your friends and act like it never happened, like a man didn’t just fold you in half and drive his dick to the root into your pussy.

The hand holding your wrists together disappears and reappears at your waist. Both of them this time, snug on either side of you, scooping under your low back and lifting it up to get more leverage before driving his hips down, plunging his shaft deeper into your hole, the tip of his cock nudging against something that makes your leg spasm and your breathing go choppy. 

“Oh—f—fuck,” you grit out, squeezing your eyes tight. 

It’s deeper now. Deep enough in you that his cock might well be butting up against your cervix. You’ll have to waddle back to your friends after this or ice your pussy until it stops aching from having too many inches of dick shoved inside it.

“There we go,” John says. “That feel good?”

He asks that like he doesn’t see your eyes rolling back into your head, like there isn’t a line of drool leaking down your cheek. 

There's a condom wrapper on the bedside table that you don't remember him putting on. He must have though, you think blearily and then he repositions his knees and drives forward hard enough to make your teeth clack together and whoops, there goes any chance at forming a coherent thought again. He must have because what man would forego a condom before turning you over onto your belly and slipping a hand under you to palm the flesh there, hips flexing forward and groaning when you squeeze him a bit too tight. What man would run the risk?

“Careful,” John laughs into your hair. You don't understand. “Gonna take a little souvenir home with you if you keep that up, sweetheart.”

Your stomach swoops at that. His meaning, as always, comes clear as day, but this time the shock of it ripples through you like an electric current, mind wiped clean of anything apart from the sound of his voice.  

He pumps into you with a single-minded intensity, not giving you an inch to breathe. Smooth, measured strokes, an intent to his fuck instead of a mindless, frantic search for his end. It’s a treat to be with someone who knows what he’s doing—and fuck, does John know what he’s doing.  

“John—hgn, ah—fuck—” you gasp, so close to the edge that your voice almost gives out altogether. Taut as a tightrope. Charged as a live wire. “Wait, wait, wait—”

He thrusts one last time to the hilt before stilling, petting a hand down your spine to reassure you of his attention. “You alright, love?” 

“You—ah, um—c-condom?” 

It must come out too soft, too breathy, because he doesn’t catch your words at first, ducking his head to hear you better. “What’s that?”

“D’you have a condom on?” 

It’s the wrong time to ask the question, far too late for it to matter, but you ask it anyway. You should’ve confirmed it earlier when he didn’t have you flat on your belly with your hips canted up, pussy soaking wet and throbbing, so desperate to cum that you’d accept any answer so long as it meant he wouldn’t stop fucking you.

His fingers dig into the flesh of your belly. “Saw me take one out, didn’t ya?” 

“Uh huh,” you slur. When you turn your head, you see the foil wrapper on the bedside table, ripped only halfway open. Maybe just enough to stick a finger inside and fish the condom out. 

Your cunt clenches around his dick involuntarily and you swear you can feel the thin rubber against your walls. You swear you can. 

“Then quit askin’ stupid questions,” John growls into the crown of your head and drives his hips forward again.

Cold air from the AC wafts over your sweaty body as you lay stretched out on the mattress, cum drying between your thighs and chest still heaving with every breath. Goosebumps ripple across your flesh like tall grass swaying with a gentle breeze. 

John’s somewhere else in the hotel room. Probably in the bathroom from the faucet you can hear running in the background. He’ll probably gently coax you out in a few minutes. Give you just enough time to come back to yourself before helping you get dressed and seeing you to the door. It’s the kind of dalliance that you’d expect from a man like him—a good fuck, a solid effort to make you come, and then a gentle but firm hand on your back leading you to the door. You won’t be surprised when it comes. 

That’s good though. Now that you’ve gotten it out of your system, he won’t be as much of a distraction anymore. You’ll finally be able to leave behind any guilt that you felt before and devote yourself and your attention entirely to your friends, your little tryst a careful secret shared just between you and him.  

Catching your breath, you slowly lift yourself up, throwing your legs over the side of the bed and drawing your body to the edge. Allow yourself one last glance around, intrigued by the sight of his suitcase tucked away in the corner of the room, open face on the luggage rack. It says something about him, but you’re not sure what. Like he’s always ready to leave at a moment’s notice. 

“In a hurry, sweetheart?” John asks from the doorway, startling you. A glass of water dangles precariously from between his fingers. 

You figured he might come out in a robe or towel, but he’s as naked as when he left the bed, flaccid cock resting against his thigh and the dark thatch of hair at the base of his shaft still damp with your cum. He leans against the doorframe like he’s got nowhere to be and no one to answer to, all lazy confidence and assumed authority.

“Well, I figured…” You gesture towards the door with your thumb, lip caught between your teeth. 

“Figured what?” John asks, prompting you to keep going. 

He takes a step forward, heavy cock swaying with the movement of his hips. It’s big, even soft, flushed and spent against his thigh. The dull ache between your legs reminds you of where that shaft was buried not too long ago. It looks almost brutish in the light of day, heavy like a hammer and marbled with veins. 

“Figured that you’d—” Your voice trembles into nonexistence the closer he gets. “Figured that you’d maybe…want me out of your hair…”

The thunk that the glass makes when he sets it down on the bedside table makes your pulse jump. Muscled thighs covered in a thick dusting of hair fill your vision, his cock unavoidable this close to your face. 

A big hand wraps around his cock while the other braces itself on the back of your head, drawing you in. “You at least gonna clean up your mess before you leave?”

There’s no point in pretending like you don’t understand what he means, not when the evidence is right in front of your face, so close that you nearly go cross-eyed staring at it. Wrapping one hand around his shaft, he guides the soft, blunt head of his cock to your lips and pries your lips apart with his thumb, hips guiding it the rest of the way in. 

“There we go,” John sighs, eyes dark and heavy-lidded. His breath comes out heavy. “Y’can leave after. Won’t be more than—ah—a minute.”

Throat stuffed with his cock, your moan comes out muffled, eyes already watering from the strain. Your thoughts go soft and fuzzy when he drags his thumb over the bulge of your cheek, stroking the skin there tenderly. Almost affectionately. 

One time, you tell yourself as he draws his hips back and thrusts forward again. One more time and then never again.

[delusionsofgrandeur13]

canine

your roommate!simon “ghost” riley x reader

eighteen plus or else. i'll literally find you i stg.

you buy a toy that’s marketed as ‘deathly silent.’ too bad your roommate is a highly trained soldier.

“deathly silent”: that’s what the box said. that’s what the ad, the website, the product name, all said. 

and it was, in and of itself, silent. 

but you and your noises weren’t. 

at least not to your roommate, government trained, experience-laden, finger on the trigger, simon “ghost” riley. 

you’d been amicable, cordial roommates for two years. it’d gone without a hitch: he responded to your post online, went through your vetting process. agreed to get a background check. 

once he’d moved in, (if that’s what you’d even call it) it was like you still lived alone. even when he was deployed, rent was deposited right on time, every month. 

but somehow a man that size had learned to move silently. you’d never quite been able to figure it out. sometimes he’d scare you, sure, but he always apologized and moved on. made sure to make his footfalls heavier for the rest of the day. 

over the course of two years, you’d managed to learn a couple of things about him. 

he likes his coffee black—he buys the same brand they keep on base. 

but when it comes to tea, simon buys artisanal earl grey. 

he’s got a couple masks, so he’s always wearing a clean one. 

he puts his boots next to yours at the door. jackets are the same story. 

he has to make huge portions for himself when he does cook, so you’re always offered some. you stopped declining a month in: the man knows his way around a kitchen. 

he likes chocolate chip cookies, but not as much as he likes brownies. 

it’s almost weird to know so much about someone you’re not quite friends with. not quite family with. 

you’ve never lived in such close quarters with a man you’re not related to or in love with. so this purchase was extremely necessary. 

if you never had to hear him.. 

then he should never have to hear you. 

“mm, fuck!” you whispered around clenched teeth. at the sound of simon’s feet walking down the hallway, into his room, you slap a hand over your mouth. 

his presence next door just puts words to your unconscious thoughts. every sliver of fantasy pulling you closer to the crest is roommate related. 

you’re reminded of his eyes above the skull mask, the bulk of his shoulders in a black shirt. how he spreads his legs when he sits on your couch watching the game. it’s inescapable to you, inexplorable. it’s a safe place in your mind. 

your roommate, whose cologne lingers in the hallway. whose empty cups of tea sit in your sink. 

inescapable. inexplorable. 

a high pitched whine escapes from between your fingers, your back arching from the mattress. 

this thing was a lot stronger than you realized. 

your legs shake as you reach orgasm number three, your toes clenching. you can barely keep a grip on the toy itself, you’re so wracked with sensation. 

pleasure coats your bones, a slickness that oozes out of every pore, out between your legs. 

simon heard the buzzing from the kitchen. he’d seen the ‘discreet packaging’ in the trash. this wasn’t his first day on earth. his roommate's got a new toy. 

he can’t get the sound out of his head. he can hear it over the sound of water boiling in the kettle, over the football talk show on low in the living room. it’s utterly inescapable. 

an attack animal trained to hear frequencies he shouldn’t—simon was cursed with the knowledge that you were fucking yourself stupid behind closed doors. 

the thought alone had him throbbing under his joggers, blood swelling the piece of meat between his legs. 

it was already torture, living with someone like you. 

someone with such a light inside. someone who smiled at him like he wasn’t a monster with a kill count in the tens of hundreds. someone with great legs, that peeked out from tiny sleep shorts. if you asked he’d toss you a pair of his boxers to wear instead. 

he was waiting for you to ask, like you ever would. 

it was torture, knowing he had a bird waiting at home for him that wasn’t exactly his. 

torture that he had to hear your whines as he walked down the hallway, and couldn’t do anything about it. 

shouldn’t do anything about it. 

he shut his door with a loud click, giving you the chance to stop if you wanted. 

you didn’t. 

it was torture, but he couldn’t resist any longer. 

leaning against the wall, his head tipped back to hear better, he gives in.

simon slips his hand under the waistband of his sweats, fist immediately around his cock. 

his thumb brushes over the tip, and he’s making his own noises. 

they blend in with yours to soundtrack his thoughts, a scenario where he’d be the one under those sheets with you. instead of some stupid piece of machinery. 

you grow louder, your poorly muffled whimpering seeping through the thin walls. 

it’s obvious: you’re not trying to hide it anymore. 

you can’t. 

pleasure has taken over. sensation has gained command of your good sense. 

the finish line nears, and you can barely keep the buzzing piece of rubber on your clit as your whole body shakes, shudders. a full-bodied moan rips from your mouth as you soak the sheets, liquid squirting from underneath your fingers. 

the next room over, cum coats simon’s knuckles as he shudders into his own fist, the room spinning. 

he can’t remember the last time he came so hard. 

simon coughs, thankful for his mask. his cheeks are burning hot. 

“nice shirt, eh?” he remarks, his eyes trained on the ‘RILEY’ painted over your shoulders. 

you turn your head, smiling. it almost hurts to see you like this. like you’d just been rolled around in bed. 

“thanks?” you reply, a little confused. it was just the first clean shirt in your drawer. 

your roommate’s acting kind of odd.

he shakes his head. you have no clue what you’re wearing. what you’re doing to him. 

“s’mine,” he growls out. tone a little harsher than he means for it to be. 

you finish stuffing your dirty sheets into the washing machine, dropping a soap pod in after them before slamming the lid closed. 

looking down at the shirt you’re wearing, the fact that it’s simon’s is becoming increasingly obvious. it smells like him, it’s about three sizes too big, and it’s sporting a logo reading TF141 over the left breast. pulling at the shirt until you can read the back, your eyes widen at the huge letters of his last name. 

“i’m sorry! d’you want it back?” you squeak out, mortified. 

“nah, keep it.” simon says, tone flippant. devil-may-care. 

if that’s the way it’s gonna be, maybe he’ll slip a pair of boxers into your laundry later.

༄ first time writing cod! writing simon! i thought of this prompt and just knew i needed to put fingers to keyboard about it. lmk if i need to explore this more! ❤︎

divider: @viviansturns