I occasionally post nsfw thoughts on here. You have been warned. You are responsible for your own media usage.
I write but I don’t take requests for writing. but if you wanna hear my thoughts on characters/have me talk about headcanons, send me an ask, it's always open
My writing is on my Ao3; Maplesyrizzup(can't miss it its a raccoon pfp)
Wips
- Sambucky Zombie AU. Sam wakes up freshly cured from the zombie virus and now him, Steve, and Bucky go in search of a Quinjet so they can get the antidote to someone who can make more and heal the world.
- Slow burn.
- (Chapters come out on Ao3)
- tumblr masterlist
- Librarian!Bucky/Professor!Reader AU. You never expect that when in transferring back to New York and reuniting with an old college friend Steve Rogers you'll finally meet the Bucky he's been talking about for so long. and you certainly never expect to catch feelings but here we are.
- Strangers to Friends to lovers. Slow burn. Yearning.
- (Is intended to be a one-shot but we'll see)
- Mob!Reader/Bodyguard!Bucky AU. The city knows your name, you've run it from the shadows ever since your father left you in charge years ago, and you're damn good at it. You've known Bucky since the two of you were kids. You trust him with your life. Which is part of the reason he was hired as your bodyguard. And over the years all there's been is this pull between you two, but what if the other doesn't feel it? What if confessing feelings ruins what you've got?
- Friends to Lovers. Yearning.
- Endgame AU. The other half of the world survived the Snap, which in turns leaves it up to them to figure out Time Travel and complete a Time Heist to bring everyone back.
- probably Sambucky if imma be honest. which means slow burn too
- (Multi chapter for suspense)
- tumblr masterlist
Masterlist
James "Bucky" Barnes
Drabbles
Bibliosmia. Fluff. Established relationship.
- Bookstore with Bucky.
- Headcanon/Thoughts. Bucky's hatred of the cold. angsty, maybe some fluff. sfw
- Headcanons. Bucky and his dog tags. sfw, nsfw, and angsty
- Vibes. What yearly season Steve, Bucky, and Sam give off.
Headcanons. How different Super Serums affect those injected with it.
Headcanons. MCU animals; Alpine, Fanny, Liho, Figaro.
Thunderbolts*
- Headcanons. The Thunderbolts* (plus Joaquin) favorite candy.
- headcanons. The Thunderbolts* are they night owls or morning birds?
- Headcanons. Random, Miscellaneous small post.
- Headcanons. The Thunderbolts babysitting a kid.
- Ava headcanons. bunch of random headcanons for Ava Starr
Characters/Ships I write for: writing Sambucky currently
My Favorite Characters + Fandoms
Teen Wolf: Lydia Martin, Nolan Holloway.
Spn: Gabriel, Adam Milligan, Rowena, Charlie Bradbury.
Chicago Fire: Brian "Otis" Zvonecek.
Flashpoint(2008): Spike
NCIS: Eleanor Bishop
Killing Eve: Villanelle
Kingsman movies: Harry Hart.
Ted Lasso: Jamie Tartt
~
MCU
- Sam Wilson. Natasha Romanoff. Steve Rogers. Bucky Barnes.
- Layla El-Faouly.
- Johnny Storm.
- Kate Bishop
- X-Men: Psylocke
~
Book characters
- Sam Cortland.
- ACOTAR: Mor. Azriel
~
Video game characters:
- Josephine Montilyet
- Muiri, Farkas(Skyrim)
- Penny. Harvey. (Stardew Valley)
- Kassandra(AC Odyssey).
- Ryis, Balor (Fields of Mistria)
- Bg3: Jaheira. Shadowheart. Halsin.
- Dragon Age The Veilguard: Bellara Lutare. Davrin. Neve
- Palia: Hassian.
- The Arcana: Muriel
~
Otps : Feyre/Rhysand. Sam Wilson/Bucky Barnes. Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes.
$ log - bucky barnes has a lot of feelings with no idea how to say them. you have a lot of anxiety and absolutely no idea what he means!
$ warn --sfw --gn!reader --soft!bucky --fluff
$ wc -w 1.7k
$ cd masterlist
$ echo "manager said it's wfh day tm!!!1!111!11" > authors-note.txt
$ vi dont-shoot-your-shot.txt (v1) dont-shoot-your-shot-v2.txt
Steve is gone before you finish turning around. You don't see him leave. One moment he's there and the next there is just an empty gym and the distant sound of someone who has decided this is not his problem anymore.
You turn back around. Bucky is standing next to the punching bag.
He'd been glaring — you'd clocked that much in your peripheral vision, the familiar weight of it, incident number thirty-something.
But the moment your eyes land on him something happens to his face that you don't have a category for yet. It goes through several things very quickly: the glare, then something that isn't the glare, then nothing. Then a very deliberate attempt at a neutral expression that doesn't quite land because he's already reaching out to punch the bag next to him with the energy of a man doing a completely normal thing he'd planned to do all along.
The punch is too light. He knows it's too light. He does another one, also too light.
You watch this for a moment.
Okay. You work with the Avengers. You have stood in rooms with people who could level buildings. You have completed extractions in active combat zones. You have done things that required considerably more nerve than walking across a gym floor and asking one man what your problem is. You can do this. You are doing this. You're going.
You go.
Across the gym, Bucky is having a separate but related crisis.
Say it, he thinks. Sam said say it. Sam said just say it, James, stop making it weird, it cannot possibly get weirder than it already is, so just —
He watches you stand up straighter, watches you set your jaw the way you do when you've made a decision. He watches you start walking toward him, and every single prepared sentence he's spent four days constructing evaporates completely.
He straightens up, putting his shoulders back. He breathes out once through his nose.
Say it.
You stop in front of him. He's looking at you. You're looking somewhere around his collarbone because his face has always been the problem, the weight of it, and you can't look at it directly right now.
"I've been meaning to ask you something," you start.
"I need to tell you something," he says at the same time.
You both stop. He gestures, slightly, with one hand. You first. You shake your head. You first. He nods once, like accepting a mission parameter. Then there is a brief silence in which he appears to be locating something inside himself that doesn't come easily.
"I think about you," he says. "A lot. More than — " he pauses, seems to decide that more than is a road he doesn't know how to finish, and reroutes. "You're the first thing I think about in the morning. Most mornings."
You stare at him. Your brain does a fast, wrong translation.
"I'm sorry," you say.
Something moves across his face. "What."
"I'm sorry," you repeat, to his collarbone, "for whatever I did. I've been going over it and I can't figure out what, but clearly something — "
"That's not — " he stops, and tries again. "I wasn't saying that as a bad thing."
"Right," you say, in the tone of someone who absolutely does not believe that.
He looks at the ceiling for a moment and then looks back at you. Bucky plants his feet straight.
"When you're in a room," he says, slowly, carefully, like he's translating from a language he's still learning, "it's quieter. In my head. It's been loud for a long time and when you're around it — stops. That's not something that happens to me."
You are quiet for a moment.
"Is it the mug?" you say.
Bucky blinks. "What."
"I used your mug. The grey one. I washed it but maybe I put it back wrong or — "
"This isn't about a mug," he says, with great patience.
"The obstacle course?"
"No."
"I beat your time."
"I know."
"By four seconds, I know that probably — "
"I don't care about the obstacle course," he says. "I've never thought about the obstacle course. Please." He exhales, trying to find the thread again, somewhere. He does, and pulls on it. "I gave you my rifle," he says.
You go very still.
"I've never given anyone my rifle," he continues. "I want you to know that. I need you to know that, actually, because I think — " he stops, rebuilds. "I gave it to you because I wanted to. Because I trust you with things that matter to me."
The silence stretches long enough to be uncomfortable.
"Did I scratch it?" you say quietly.
"What — " he closes his eyes for just a second, before opening them. "No. You didn't scratch it. It's fine. You were — your shots were incredible, that's the — " he stops again.
Bucky's three sentences away from where he wants to be and he can't seem to close the distance. He looks at you. You're looking at the floor, tracing the edge of a panel with your eyes, and he's looking at the ceiling again, at the flickering light in the far corner that no one has fixed.
There are approximately four feet between you that feel considerably larger than that. He tries one more time.
"I like you," he says. Just that, flat and direct and stripped of all the scaffolding because the scaffolding isn't working. "I like you and I don't — I'm not good at this. I know I'm not good at this. But I needed you to know that the way I've been — it was never — it was always — " he stops and looks at you. "It was never a bad thing, what I feel. It's not a bad thing."
Something small and white walks into the gym. You both look down.
Alpine surveys the situation with the expression of a creature who has found two people being unnecessarily complicated about something very simple.
Swalks in a slow deliberate figure of eight between your legs, purring at a volume that seems unreasonable for her size. Something in your face does the thing it does when you're not performing anything.
"Oh," you say softly. "Hi. Hello, who are you?"
Alpine headbutts your hand with considerable force. You make a small sound. You are now entirely focused on the cat, which means you are no longer focused on your own hands, your own shoes, the specific floor panel you've been staring at.
So, you’re certainly not focused on Bucky, which is the only reason you miss what happens to his face when he watches you with her.
He crouches down.
"Hey, baby," he says, to Alpine, in a voice about forty percent softer than anything you've heard from him, and Alpine abandons you immediately to climb onto his knee. He lets her. He runs his hand down her back and she presses into it.
He exhales, quietly, and then — because he's down here, because it's a different angle, because he's spent weeks looking at you from across rooms and corridors and ridgelines but not like this, not close and low and quiet — he glances up.
The thought arrives before he can stop it. He'd looked at you from many angles. Across briefing tables, through scope lenses, from the other end of long corridors. But this one — you close, and soft, and unguarded, not knowing he's looking — this one was different. This one he thinks he'll carry for a while.
You reach down to pet Alpine. He catches your wrist.
Not hard — barely anything, just his fingers closing gently around it. You go still, and he turns your hand over slowly, pressing his lips to your palm. Quiet and certain. The way he does everything when he's actually sure of it.
You look at him.
He's already looking at you. That same look, the one that's been there for weeks in the corners of rooms and the edges of missions. Except now there's nothing between you and it. And there’s no misconception or misunderstanding. It’s just his face, open in a way you've never seen it, and the understanding of what you've been seeing this whole time settling into place all at once.
"I like you too, Buck," you murmur. Your eyes move over his face like you're still learning it, this version of it, the one he's been keeping underneath everything else. "I was scared I'd disappointed you. That's — that's why I couldn't look at you. I thought you were angry and I couldn't figure out what I'd done and I just kept — " you stop, almost laughing a little. "I kept waiting for it to get worse."
Something in his expression shifts — not pain exactly, but close to it, the specific kind that comes from understanding something too late.
"No," he says, quietly. "Never that."
Alpine climbs off his knee and sits between you both with the air of someone who has successfully managed a very difficult negotiation and would like to be acknowledged for it.
In the doorway, Sam stops walking, with Steve, two steps behind him, stopping also.
They stand there for a moment, looking at the scene across the gym — Bucky on one knee, your hand in his, Alpine between you, the particular quality of the quiet from this distance —
"Is he — " Steve starts.
"No," Sam says immediately.
"Sam, he's on one knee — "
"He's petting the cat, Steve — "
"He was petting the cat, now he's holding her hand — "
"That's not a proposal, that's a — "
"You told him to go talk to them and now he's on one knee holding their hand, Sam — "
"I told him to confess," Sam says, with great emphasis, "I did not tell him to propose, those are two entirely separate conversations that I very clearly delineated — "
Steve turns to look at him with an expression of profound betrayal. "You said you had it handled."
"I did have it handled. Look at them, Steve. It's handled."
Steve looks. The gym is very quiet from here. Bucky is saying something low that they can't hear, and you're laughing — actually laughing, the real one, not the polite one — and Alpine is sitting between you both like she planned the entire thing.
Something in Steve's face settles.
"...okay," he says, after a moment.
"Thank you."
"You're still an idiot."
"Absolutely," Sam agrees, and neither of them moves toward the exit yet, standing there a little longer in the doorway, not wanting to be the thing that breaks it.
$ tag @twentytomidnight @froggibus
$ vi dont-shoot-your-shot.txt (v1) dont-shoot-your-shot-v2.txt
rules: send me an emoji in an ask, and I’ll write 3-5 sentences from that wip. You can send me more than one emoji in an ask or multiple asks! My wips right now are:
⏱️ Who is up for a Time Heist - Chapter 3 : Nothing we can do - Endgame AU. Sambucky
With Thanos dead and the stones destroyed the survivors are forced to come to terms with the fact that there is nothing they can do to save their fallen friends and the trillions that lost their lives.
Sam throws himself into work cause it’s much easier than thinking about his friends. But him and T’Challa uncover something unexpected on the first outing.
🧟♂️ I know that I’d die without you - Chapter 7 : Worth It - Zombie AU. Sambucky
After several days of peaceful trekking through Monongahela National Forest the group finds themselves in deep shit while searching for the SHIELD base in Lexington, Virginia.
Summary: Minutes before a gala, Bucky finds you spiraling in front of the mirror and decides there are better ways to remind you you’re worth every second of the spotlight.
MCU Timeline Placement: Thunderbolts*
Master List: Find my other stuff here!
Warnings: established relationship, explicit sexual content (f receiving oral), body image issues, self-esteem issues, discussion of insecurity, praise kink(?), language, light teasing, mild possessive/protective behavior, bucky ruining standards for men
Word Count: 5.3k
Author’s Note: this was a lovely request from my lovely dear mutual mare who somehow finally inspired me to get a bit more spicy???? who am i???? genuinely though this one meant a lot to write. body image and self-worth are such tender, complicated things, and getting to explore that with bucky being soft and filthy in equal measure?? yeah. thank you for lighting this particular fire. hope it wrecks you lovingly <3
The tuxedo fit too well.
Bucky tugged at the collar again, even though it hadn’t moved. Even though he’d stood in front of the mirror a full ten minutes ago and adjusted it just fine. No wrinkles. No seam out of place. Even the stupid cufflinks Val had sent over—some gaudy, high-sheen silver things with the team’s new crest etched into them like a brand—sat obediently in place.
He didn’t look like himself. Didn’t feel like it either.
But that was the point of these things, wasn’t it?
Not just the gala, but the whole new-leaf branding project: the “look how far they’ve come” parade. Clean cuts, clean lines, clean record. Congressman for six months, team player for the cameras, redemption wrapped in black tie and photo ops.
But he was still the same man who’d woken up shaking in cold sweats at three in the morning, trying not to put his fist through a wall. Still the same one who had to unclench his jaw when someone said “Winter Soldier” with that sharp little pause that always followed.
But tonight he was supposed to be…reformed. Spotlight ready. One of the good guys. One of the New Avengers, as Val had coined it. A man with both hands out of the grave.
Bucky pulled in a slow breath through his nose, shoulders rising just enough to stretch the seams of his jacket. He held it, jaw tight, before letting it out in a controlled exhale that warmed the edge of his collar.
His gaze shifted to the bathroom door, where you’d disappeared twenty minutes ago. The clock on the dresser said they had maybe fifteen minutes before Val started sending people up to drag them downstairs, but he wasn’t about to rush you.
The light was still on beneath the frame. He caught the sound of movement—fabric rustling, a zipper tugged too hard, something metallic clattering against the tile. A muffled curse, just under your breath.
Another few seconds passed. A soft groan.
Not pain. Frustration.
He moved toward the door, careful not to let the floorboards creak beneath his boots. Leaned one shoulder against the wall and tilted his head slightly, voice low, gentle.
“Hey, you alright in there?”
Silence.
“Yeah. I’m fine," your voice came, thinner than usual, almost sheepish.
He waited. Let the silence stretch for just long enough that you might fill it. You didn’t. Just more shifting fabric and another zipper catch. The kind of fumble that didn’t come from rushing, but from second-guessing.
You were never this quiet. Not with him. Not unless something was clawing at you behind the ribs.
He cleared his throat lightly. “You’ve been in there a while, sweetheart.”
You laughed, if you could call it that. It was small, brittle. “Sorry. Just—nothing looks right.”
That pulled something tight in his chest. A knot he recognized too well.
“I’m just…trying to pick something that doesn’t make me look like an idiot. Or a stuffed sausage. Or a—God, I don’t know. Everything I bought suddenly decided to betray me.”
That earned a faint smile from him, even if it didn’t reach his eyes. He could picture you pacing around the small bathroom, dress half-zipped, tugging at fabric that never seemed to sit the way it did on the hanger. He’d had his own versions of those moments. A suit that choked around the collar. A prosthetic that never matched. A face he didn’t always recognize.
“You want help?” he asked. Not pushy. Just offering.
There was a sigh. Then the sound of a zipper tugged halfway up, then back down again.
“No. I don’t even know what you’d help with. It’s not like you can magic something that doesn’t make me feel…ugh. I mean, it’s stupid. It’s just a dress.”
“It’s not stupid.”
“I know. But it feels like it is. I feel like I’m spiraling over something small. And you’re out there already dressed like a whole movie poster, and I’m over here losing a wrestling match with tulle and my own brain.”
Bucky’s brow creased. He rested his knuckles gently against the door.
“Sweetheart, you don’t owe me a polished version of yourself. Or anyone else, for that matter.”
You were quiet again.
He let the silence hang, but not too long this time. He didn’t want you folding in on yourself.
“Look,” he said softly. “I’m not gonna lie and say this shit isn’t hard. They’re parading us out tonight like action figures in shiny packaging. And yeah, I put on the tux, but it doesn’t mean I’m not still trying to breathe in it.”
You exhaled, just barely audible.
“I think I wanted to feel good,” you admitted. “And now everything I try on just reminds me of all the reasons I don’t.”
He hesitated, then reached for the doorknob, not to open it, but just to let you know he was there. The way you did for him when he had bad nights. When he sat on the edge of the bed with a sleeveless shirt in his hands and couldn’t convince himself to put it on, because all he saw were the scars and the metal and the reminder of what had been taken.
“Can I come in?” he asked softly.
Another pause.
“I don’t know. You’ll laugh.”
“Hey,” he said, quiet and certain. “I’ve never laughed at you. Not once.”
Still, you didn’t answer. He waited anyway. Gave you the time you needed, like you’d given him, a hundred times over. And after a moment, he heard the lock click.
The door creaked open an inch, then two.
You stepped out slow, eyes downcast, hands tugging at the sides of the dress like you could rearrange the whole thing if you just held it tighter. It shimmered faintly in the low light—midnight blue, the color he always thought of when he thought of you—but it was clear from the way you fidgeted that you didn’t feel like it fit.
“I wanted to wear the black one,” you said quickly. “But the zipper was too high and the red one makes me look like a—god, I don’t know. I just—this one was the only one that didn’t make me cry, and even then I still almost did, and I’m being ridiculous, I know, but it just—none of it feels right.”
You shook your head, like you were trying to physically dislodge the thoughts. “Forget it. I sound insane.”
Bucky didn’t respond right away. Didn’t rush to contradict you, or smother the moment in sweet nothings you’d only half believe. He just looked at you.
Not the way everyone else would tonight—cataloguing, assessing, slotting you into someone else’s narrative. Not like a possession on display, or an accessory to his redemption arc. Not like the plus-one to a man with a metal arm and too much blood on his hands.
Bucky looked at you like you were his. Like the gravity in the room bent differently when you were near. Like every cracked seam, every insecurity you were holding together with safety pins and sheer force of will, only made you more real.
“Hey,” he said softly, drawing your gaze back up to meet his. “You don’t sound insane.”
You tried to scoff. Tried to laugh it off, but it wobbled halfway up your throat. He reached out and brushed his thumb along the underside of your jaw, coaxing your eyes to hold his. You let him.
“I’ve seen you angry,” he murmured. “I’ve seen you covered in blood, outnumbered, exhausted, ready to break. I’ve seen you laugh so hard you cried and cry so hard you laughed. I’ve seen every version of you—and not once have I ever thought you were being ridiculous.”
Your shoulders dipped slightly, like maybe he’d carved out a little air where there hadn’t been any. But your fingers still tugged at the fabric around your waist, fidgeting, pulling, adjusting a dress that wouldn’t settle the way you needed it to.
“I just…wanted to feel good tonight,” you said, voice thin, like you weren’t sure it was worth saying. “I wanted to walk in and not wonder what everyone’s thinking when they see me next to you. Or what Valentina’s thinking, or what the headlines will say, or if someone’s going to post some photo of us and it’ll be the worst angle imaginable, and I’ll have to spend the whole week trying not to look at it but knowing it’s there—”
You stopped yourself. Took a breath. Shook your head.
“I didn’t want it to get to me,” you whispered. “But it does.”
Bucky’s jaw ticked.
There it was—that protective heat rising in him, quiet and searing. The same thing that stirred in his gut when someone so much as looked at you wrong on a mission. The same thing that made him keep an eye on entrances, exits, camera flashes, social feeds. Not out of paranoia, but out of need. Because he knew what it felt like to be dissected by the world. To be seen in pieces. To have your worst moments live longer than your best.
He stepped in closer, the space between you shrinking to almost nothing. His metal hand found the fabric at your side, not to fix it, not to smooth it out, but just to touch, to remind you he was there.
“You know what I see?” he asked, low.
You didn’t answer. Not because you didn’t want to, but because you couldn’t trust your voice to hold steady.
“I see the woman who made me breakfast barefoot in my kitchen three mornings in a row after staying up all night with me when I couldn’t sleep and never once looked at me like I was broken. I see the same woman who told off a U.S. Senator with red wine on her teeth and didn’t blink. I see someone who stands her ground when people twice her size start barking orders. Someone who gets shit done even when the whole world wants her to shrink down and stay quiet.”
He leaned in, just enough that his forehead almost touched yours. The metal of his left hand skimmed your hip, a familiar coolness through the fabric. His right thumb still traced along your jaw.
“You walk into that room with me tonight, and I guarantee you they’ll see it too,” he said. “But even if they don’t? Even if the whole damn world somehow misses it—I won’t.”
You blinked, quick. He saw the way your throat bobbed, the way your lower lip wavered before you bit it down.
“You don’t have to be anything but yourself,” he said. “You don’t have to win anyone over. You don’t have to impress a soul.”
You let out a shaky breath.
“But I do want to impress you,” you admitted, almost too quiet.
That undid something in him.
His mouth twitched, not into a grin, but something far more solemn.
“You already have,” he said, with that same certainty he used on the field when the odds looked bad and the exits were burning. “Every goddamn day. Whether you’re in this dress or sweats or half-asleep in my arms mumbling shit that doesn’t make sense. You don’t have to try for me.”
He said it like a vow. Like a line he’d carve into the marble of your shared life if he could.
“I love you in ways I still don’t know how to say out loud. But I don’t just love you despite the parts you hate. I love you with them. Through them. I love you even when you don’t believe me. Especially then.”
You didn’t say anything at first. Just stood there with your hands still fisted in the sides of the dress, eyes glassy, throat working like you were trying to swallow the lump down before it gave you away.
Bucky could see it, though.
The flicker of doubt you were trying to blink away. The war still playing out just behind your eyes—quiet, ugly, familiar. He knew it too well. The voice that waited for the mirror to catch you from the wrong angle, that twisted a glance into judgment, that made everything too tight, too loud, too much. He’d lived with that voice. Sometimes he still did.
And because he knew it, because he’d heard it in his own head, he didn’t dare let you pull away.
Instead, he kept his hands on you. Not holding or restraining, just there.
He drew a breath through his nose.
“People are cruel,” he said finally. “You and I both know that.”
You didn’t move. But something in your jaw twitched—tightening, then unclenching.
“They look at what they don’t understand and tear it down to feel better. They pick at the things that make you different, like that’s a flaw instead of the whole fucking point. And the worst part? You start believing them. Little by little. Like maybe if you shrink just enough, they’ll leave you alone.”
You closed your eyes, but Bucky didn’t stop.
“But I’m not letting you believe them,” he said, voice firmer now. “Not when they’re wrong. And they are wrong. Every single one of those assholes who’s ever made you feel small—whether it was with a comment, a glance, or some passive-aggressive bullshit about ‘expectations’—they’re cowards.”
His arm at your waist slid around you fully now, drawing you into his chest. His voice dropped low, all gravel and steel and unswerving conviction.
“If anyone looks at you sideways tonight, I won’t hesitate. I’ll break their nose and make ‘em apologize in the same breath.”
You huffed, half a startled breath, half a laugh. “You can’t do that. This is a diplomatic event.”
“Doesn’t mean I won’t want to,” he muttered. “And you know I could make it look like an accident.”
You tilted your head back to look at him. His expression was stone. Unflinching. But his hand smoothed gently up your back in contrast, the duality of him radiating from every breath. Soft and hard. Quiet and deadly. Yours.
“I just hate that they ever made you question it,” he said, a little quieter now. “Your worth. Your body. Your existence. That anyone ever made you think that this—” his gaze flicked down, slow and deliberate, before coming back to your face “—wasn’t something to revere.”
You felt it in the way he said it. Not just appreciate. Not desire, not even admire.
Revere.
The word settled deep, slow-burning and reverent, like a palm laid flat against your sternum.
His hand at your jaw moved, brushing your hair back gently, and then his fingers traced the curve of your neck. Your breath caught when his thumb dipped to trace the space just beneath your ear.
“You should think you’re beautiful,” he said, and his voice dropped, rougher now—not angry, but intimate. “You should see what I see every time you walk into a room.”
He tilted his head, mouth grazing just shy of your cheek. “You don’t know what that does to a man like me.”
You huffed, nose brushing his, your hands coming up behind his neck. “I think you’re being dramatic.”
“Dramatic?” His brow rose slightly, lips curving in that dry, knowing way he used when you pushed his buttons on purpose. “Baby, if I’m dramatic it’s only because you’re walkin’ around here lookin’ like that and expecting me to act normal.”
His vibranium hand slid a little lower on your back, fingers splaying, settling possessively at the top of your ass. You shifted instinctively toward him, and he smirked.
“That’s not fair,” you muttered, cheeks flushed now in a way that had nothing to do with shame. “You’re the one who’s looking like James Bond’s meaner older brother.”
“You like it.”
“Never said I didn’t.”
His thumb tapped your lower back. “Then quit squirming like I’m lying to you.”
You narrowed your eyes, but your mouth betrayed you—pulling into something faintly sheepish, barely there. Bucky’s gaze softened again, but the warmth stayed low, coiled behind his ribs.
“Say it,” he murmured.
You blinked up at him. “Say what?”
“That you look good.”
You tried to look away. He didn’t let you.
“That you know you make me crazy,” he added, leaning in close enough to nip your jaw with his teeth, gentle but not quite innocent. “That you’ve had me on edge since you walked outta that bathroom looking like you’re daring someone to say the wrong thing.”
You snorted. “I’m sure you were pacing before I even got the dress on.”
He grinned. “And whose fault is that?”
Yours. His. All of it.
Still, the warmth inside you climbed a notch. Not just because of the teasing, or the heat in his voice, but because it was easy. Because there was no pressure to be something you weren’t. No pedestal, no pedestal-smashing. Just this. Just you, exactly as you were, and Bucky Barnes pressing into you like gravity itself was a thing he’d fight off with his bare hands if it meant keeping you close.
“I don’t think I look bad,” you said slowly, cautiously, like the words might crack your teeth if you spoke them wrong.
Bucky didn’t press.
He just nodded once. “Good start.”
You tilted your head, giving him a look. “What, you want me to practice affirmations now?”
“I want you to say one nice thing about yourself,” he said, leaning his mouth down to your ear. “And if you don’t, I’ll just have to spend the next few hours whisperin’ filthy ones in your ear until you start believing me.”
You laughed. “You’re so full of shit.”
“Mm.” He kissed the corner of your mouth, then lingered just long enough for your lips to part. “But you’re blushing.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“I will bite you.”
He gave you a look like please, and dipped his head to kiss you properly.
It wasn’t exactly delicate. It was open-mouthed and hot and familiar in all the right ways, and when your fingers moved from his hair to curl into the lapels of his tux like you were considering ripping it off, he only growled against your lips.
“God, I hate that we have to leave this room,” he muttered, pulling back just enough to look at you, eyes heavy, voice low. “I’d trade a week’s mission reports to be late. Maybe two.”
“That’s a bribe,” you whispered, breathless.
“That’s a threat,” he corrected, mouth grazing yours again. “You keep looking at me like that, we’re not makin’ it out of this bedroom without some wrinkled seams.”
You shifted your weight onto one hip, eyes glinting just under your lashes like you were daring him again—no, testing him. Bucky could see it in the way your mouth curved. Not all the way into a smile, not fully confident, but enough to mask the edge of nerves underneath.
The way you always did when you felt too seen.
“Bet I’d look better out of the dress anyway,” you murmured, eyes flicking down to the dress like it was the punchline to your own joke.
It was the way you said it, like you didn’t really believe it. Like maybe if you got there first and said it like it was sexy, it wouldn’t sound so close to shame.
And that was what set something alight in him. Not because of what you said. But because you didn’t believe it the way he did. Because you still thought you had to prove yourself to him in some invisible way. Like he couldn’t already see the whole damn universe when he looked at you.
He didn’t speak. Didn’t give you time to backpedal or bury it under another joke.
He gripped the backs of your thighs and lifted you clean off the floor before you had the chance to blink. Your surprised laugh turned into a squeal as he twisted, stepping the two long strides it took to cross the room, and tossed you onto the edge of the bed. Not rough. Not careless. Just enough to bounce, just enough to feel the shock of air and momentum leave your lungs as you landed on your back.
The dress pooled around your hips like spilled ink, shimmer catching the low light. Your hair was mussed now, lips parted, hands splayed out across the sheets like you weren’t sure whether to push yourself up or reach for him again.
Bucky stood over you for a second, just long enough to look. Really look. Let you see him seeing you.
Not appraising. Not comparing. Just reverent.
“What, is this better, Sergeant?" you asked breathlessly, voice hitching with a shaky laugh as you tried to lighten the moment, eyes flicking to the ceiling like maybe you could play this off.
But he didn’t laugh.
He dropped to his knees at the end of the bed, hands sliding along the outside of your thighs. His flesh hand skimmed up until his palm flattened against your side, his thumb grazing bare skin where the dress had shifted.
“You know what I see when I look at you?” he said, voice lower now. Thicker.
You rolled your eyes, not unkindly, but he saw the flash of deflection in it. Heard it in the silence before you responded.
“Bucky—”
“I’m serious,” he said, and his hand pressed just slightly, grounding you in place. “You walked out of that bathroom thinking you had to sell it. Sell yourself. Like you needed to convince everyone that you belonged, that you were enough. But you don’t. Not for me. Not for them. You don’t owe a single person proof of your worth.”
Your breath caught.
And he leaned closer, mouth near your stomach now, where the fabric had pulled tight against your skin. He kissed the fabric, right over where your hand had earlier tried to hide the soft edge of yourself, the place you'd fidgeted with and tugged at like it might betray you.
“You keep covering and hiding this,” he murmured, pressing another kiss, slower now. “Like it’s something to be ashamed of. But this—you—this is where I rest my head when I can’t sleep.”
Another kiss, higher now, just below your ribs.
“This is where your warmth lives. Where you hold me at night. Where you laugh from.”
And another, right at the center of your chest, just above your heart. “Don’t you dare think there’s a single part of you that should be different.”
His hands moved again, thumbs brushing the curve of your hips as you let out a breath like you hadn’t meant to hold it.
“I know you don’t see it the way I do,” he said, his voice rough with feeling. “But I’m not gonna stop reminding you until you do. Even if it takes the rest of my life.”
You looked at him then. Really looked. Eyes more glassy now. Lips parted, body slack against the covers like the tension had finally begun to slip.
He kissed your thigh, slow and soft, then looked up at you with a grin that broke through the heat.
“And if it means throwing you on the bed every time you talk shit about yourself, then that’s just the price I’ll pay.”
You laughed—this time real, open, easy. The sound of it shot straight through him, leaving something warm and vital in its place.
He loved that sound. Loved how rare it used to be, how easily it came now. Loved that he could coax it from you with the right look, the right line, the right pressure of his hand on your skin like you weren’t a thing to be handled carefully but rather something holy, something his.
He wanted to bottle it, to trap it in the space between your ribs and whisper it back to you on the nights you couldn’t find it yourself.
But more than that—right now, with you laid out across the bed, that dress clinging to all the parts you’d tried to hide—he wanted to make sure you never questioned again whether or not you were wanted.
Needed.
Loved.
Because fuck the gala. Fuck the flashbulbs and the politicians and whatever the hell Valentina was trying to prove by trotting them out like reformed zoo animals. If they showed up late, they’d still have to shake his hand. Still have to smile like he didn’t see through all of it.
So when he leaned back in, he did it with intent.
No more trying to talk you out of the mirror. No more dragging you gently back from the edge. He was here. You were his. And if you couldn’t see yourself the way he did—if the words still caught in your chest, if the dress still clung in the wrong places in your mind—then he’d show you in a language you couldn’t argue with.
His hands slid beneath the hem of your dress, fingers parting the folds of the dress at your thighs. The fabric bunched in his palms like silk, and he kept his touch light, not asking, just offering. You shifted for him instinctively, thighs parting with that familiar, silent trust that still wrecked him every time.
He pressed a kiss to the inside of your knee first. Just one. Then another, higher, where your skin grew warmer, softer. You inhaled through your nose, eyes fluttering shut.
He mouthed higher, slow, deliberate, tracing lazy, open-mouthed kisses along the inside of your thigh. He could feel your pulse just beneath your skin, could feel the way you were already trembling. It made something low in him twist, dark and heady.
His hands gripped the outside of your hips again, thumbs dragging slow circles, grounding you to the mattress. His mouth found the edge of your underwear, and he didn’t pull it down. Not yet. Just kissed over the fabric, his breath warm through it, lips soft and coaxing.
You gasped, quiet and strangled.
So he did it again.
And again.
Until your hips arched just slightly into his mouth.
His tongue followed the shape of you through the fabric, slow and teasing, not giving you everything, but just enough to make your hands twist in the sheets. He licked through the center of you, and the choked little sound you made shattered whatever restraint he had left.
He slipped two fingers beneath the edge of the fabric then, pulling it gently to the side just enough to expose the part of you already waiting. He didn’t speak. Just breathed against you once before sealing his mouth over you fully.
You gasped—high and sudden and so fucking sweet—and Bucky groaned against you, like the sound alone rewired something in his chest. His tongue moved slow at first, savoring you, mapping every tremor and shift in your body like it mattered more than breathing. Because to him, it did.
He loved you like this. Loved you most when you couldn’t keep still, when you forgot to hold your breath, when all the things the world told you to hide came pouring out of you in gasps and whispered curses and the soft whimper of his name.
“Fuck, Bucky—”
You reached for him blindly, one hand finding his hair and threading through it, gripping hard when he moved his tongue just right. He didn’t stop. He couldn’t. Not with the way you moaned for him, not with the way you tilted your hips, chasing the heat he’d stoked into a flame.
He swore he could’ve stayed between your thighs for the rest of his life and died a content man. The sounds you made—the way your body arched under his mouth, the way you let go with him—was better than any redemption arc the world could’ve written for him. Better than clean records and polished tuxes and state-sanctioned forgiveness. This was real. This was his.
And God, you were gorgeous like this. You always were. But now, flushed and writhing and half-wild with need, hands buried in his hair like you’d drown without something to hold onto, you were divine.
He drew his mouth back just slightly, just enough to suck in a shaky breath and tilt his head to kiss the inside of your thigh. Then the other. Not just kissing, but revering—lingering, warm, open-mouthed. As if he could burn the shape of you into muscle memory.
Your fingers trembled against his scalp, and you let out something between a gasp and a curse.
He grinned softly, kissed higher, then slid his tongue up the center of you again, right before easing two fingers along your entrance, gathering slick before easing the first one in.
Your body jolted beneath him, muscles fluttering tight, and he kissed your inner thigh again just to ground you, to keep you in this place with him.
“Beautiful,” he breathed. “You are fuckin’ perfect.”
Another finger joined the first, slow but sure, and the sound you made twisted something inside him. He could feel you clench around him, so warm and wet and open, and he let his forehead rest against your thigh for a moment like he needed to catch up to how much he adored you.
“Can’t believe you looked at yourself in the mirror and thought you weren’t enough,” he murmured, fingers curling inside you just right, thumb brushing lightly against the swollen part of you in time with the motion of his mouth. “You’re everything.”
He dragged his tongue along you again, slow and greedy, while his fingers moved deeper, angling until you cried out softly and tugged at his hair. And God, the way you sounded—wrecked and radiant and just for him—he could’ve come undone right there, still fully clothed, just from the sound of your pleasure.
“You’re so goddamn gorgeous,” he whispered against you, his voice breaking slightly. “Every fuckin’ inch of you, sweetheart. I mean it. All of you.”
And just as he was about to lower his mouth to you again—
BANG. BANG. BANG.
“Barnes! You two decent yet?” The voice carried that clipped, rolling edge of a Russian accent, each word sharp and certain, vowels flattened just enough to make it sound more like an order than a question.
“Are you ready, or did you fucking die in there?!” Yelena added after a bout of silence, louder this time, the consonants biting hard, the sarcasm wound tight enough to cut.
Bucky exhaled against your skin.
You were already covering your mouth with one hand, shaking with silent laughter. Your legs twitched, thighs squeezing around his shoulders as he grumbled against your skin.
“Ten more minutes,” he muttered to himself, voice muffled. “Just ten more fucking minutes and I could’ve—”
“You’re already five late!” Yelena shouted through the door, like she could hear his internal monologue. “We were supposed to be fashionably on time, not scandalously late, and I swear to god if I have to stand next to Alexei by myself I will murder you both and frame Walker.”
“We’re coming!” you called out, voice strangled as you tried not to laugh and moan in the same breath.
“Clearly!” she snapped. Then, quieter—though not by much—“Tell Barnes to zip up. The hallway echoes.”
Bucky sat back on his heels, rubbing a hand down his face, then looked down at you with a rueful, breathless smile. Your hair was a little frizzy now, your chest heaving, your lips kiss-swollen and pink, and you’d never looked more beautiful to him in your life.
You blinked up at him, still flushed, still breathless, and raised an eyebrow.
He exhaled hard through his nose. “We’re finishing this later.”
You grinned, humming softly. “That a threat?”
“That’s a promise.”
He leaned down and kissed you again, deep and claiming and just a little filthy, like he wanted the taste of you on his tongue for the rest of the night.
And then, reluctantly, he stood, adjusted his ruined tux, and offered you his hand like a gentleman who’d very much just had his mouth between your thighs.
“You good?” he asked, voice low again. Soft.
You took his hand.
“Better than good,” you said, fingers curling around his.
no more taglists! tumblr’s @ limit said no 💔 follow @cheekybarnesupdates + turn on notifs for all fic drops!
could you write about congressman bucky about to go on stage to give a speech and his wife or gf gives him a couple of good luck kisses before he goes out and he ends up going out with lipstick on his nose and cheeks and the internet thinks it’s the cutest thing ever and sam teases them about it all the time💟💟
The first time you attend one of James Buchanan Barnes’ campaign speeches as his wife, you think you’re prepared for the nerves. You’ve seen him face down hostile committees, smear campaigns, and late-night news pundits who try to bait him into losing his temper. You’ve watched him sit through budget meetings that drag on for hours without so much as a flicker of impatience. He is steady, composed, unshakeable.
What you are not prepared for is how adorably human he looks five minutes before stepping onto that stage.
He stands in the small green room behind the curtain, suit jacket already buttoned, tie perfectly straight, thick fingers flexing at his sides like he’s about to step into a boxing ring instead of a town hall. His jaw is tight, the faint crease between his brows giving him that serious, intimidating look that made half his district vote for him in the first place.
“You’re gonna scare them,” you murmur, stepping into his space.
His eyes soften immediately when they land on you. That’s the thing about Bucky—he can go from imposing congressman to your husband in half a heartbeat. “I’m not tryin’ to scare anyone,” he mutters, though his shoulders are stiff. “Just want it to go well.”
“It will,” you promise. “You’ve rehearsed this speech like thirty times in the kitchen.”
He huffs a quiet laugh, some of the tension bleeding out of him. “You were supposed to forget that.”
“Never,” you tease, smoothing your hands up the lapels of his jacket. “I have it memorized too, just in case you choke and I have to run out there and finish it.”
He gives you that look—half exasperated, half smitten—that makes your stomach flip even after years together. “You’d love that.”
“I would.”
There’s a stage manager counting down somewhere beyond the door. Three minutes.
Bucky swallows. You can see it—the nerves. Not because he doubts himself, but because he cares. He cares so much it makes him anxious. He wants to say the right thing, do the right thing, represent people well. It’s written into him as deeply as the old soldier instincts he still carries.
“C’mere,” you whisper.
He leans down automatically, and you cup his face in your hands. Your lipstick is a soft rose shade tonight, something you picked because he once told you it made you look like you’d just come in from the cold. You press a kiss to his cheek, right over the faint line of an old scar. “For courage,” you murmur.
Another to his other cheek. “For clarity.”
He smiles, that shy, crooked smile he only ever gives you. “You’re ridiculous.”
“And one for luck.” You stretch up and kiss the tip of his nose because it’s right there and because he always scrunches it in the cutest way when you do.
He laughs under his breath, wrapping an arm around your waist to pull you closer. “You’re gonna ruin the image, sweetheart.”
“Your image can handle a little love.”
Someone calls his name. Thirty seconds.
He squeezes you once more, forehead brushing yours. “Stay where I can see you?”
“Always.”
He steps back, shoulders squaring again as he turns toward the stage entrance. You watch him take a slow breath, then another. The curtain parts. The crowd starts clapping.
He walks out into the lights.
You’re too focused on the way he carries himself—confident, grounded, steady—to notice anything else at first. He reaches the podium, adjusts the microphone, flashes that warm, practiced smile at the audience.
Then you hear it. A ripple of delighted laughter.
Bucky falters for half a second, clearly confused. He glances down at his notes, then back up at the crowd, brows knitting together. The laughter swells, mixed with a few audible “aww”s and the unmistakable sound of phone cameras clicking.
You frown slightly, craning your neck from the wings.
And then you see it.
There, bright and unmistakable under the stage lights, are three perfect lipstick marks: one on each cheek and a very prominent one right on the tip of his nose.
You clap a hand over your mouth.
Oh no.
He’s still speaking, because of course he is. “Good evening, everyone,” he starts, voice smooth despite the way his eyes narrow suspiciously at the audience reaction. “Thank you all for coming out tonight—”
More laughter.
Someone in the front row calls out, “We love your wife, Congressman!”
His hand lifts instinctively to his face, brushing his cheek. When he pulls it away and sees the faint smear of pink on his fingertips, his eyes widen just a fraction. He pauses, exhales, and then, to your utter surprise, he laughs.
It’s unguarded and warm and completely disarming.
“Well,” he says into the microphone, shaking his head. “Guess I’ve already got my good luck charm.”
The crowd practically melts.
Instead of wiping it off immediately, he leaves it there. All three marks. He launches into his speech like that, cheeks faintly pink—not from your lipstick, but from the realization that the entire internet is probably watching him stand at a podium with his wife’s kisses stamped all over his face.
By the time the event ends, the photos are everywhere. News outlets pick it up within the hour. “Congressman Barnes Goes Viral for Adorable Pre-Speech Moment.” “Lipstick Kisses Steal the Show.” There are slow-motion clips of him realizing what happened, memes of the nose kiss, comments about how refreshing it is to see a politician so openly loved.
When he finds you afterward, he’s half mortified, half amused. “You did that on purpose.”
“I absolutely did not,” you insist, though you’re laughing too hard to sound convincing.
He wraps his arms around you anyway, burying his face in your neck. “Internet’s never gonna let this go.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
The teasing only gets worse when Sam corners him at the next event. “Man,” Sam says, grinning ear to ear, “I’ve seen you take down terrorists without breaking a sweat, but one little lipstick ambush and you’re defenseless.”
Bucky rolls his eyes, but his arm stays firmly around your waist. “It was a tactical oversight.”
Sam snorts. “You wore it through the whole speech. That’s not oversight. That’s whipped.”
You beam proudly. “Thank you.”
Bucky just shakes his head, trying and failing to hide his smile. “I prefer ‘well-loved.’”
And every time he steps out onto a stage after that, you make sure to press at least one kiss to his cheek. He always pretends to grumble about it, checking reflexively for smears before walking into the lights, but you’ve caught the way his hand sometimes lingers over the spot afterward, like he’s carrying a secret.
Because no matter how many cameras flash or how many speeches he gives, he still walks out there knowing he’s loved.
Pairing: Steve Rogers x Bucky Barnes x reader
Summary: Tonight was about slow. But momentum takes control.
Tags/Warnings: plot what plot, pet names, m!receiving anal, f!receiving oral, ambiguous relationship between the three
Word Count: 720
+toast yap ! I am at the beck and call of my girlies … thanks for the idea @rosemint-tea @sassandscribbles, popped my Stucky cherry …
Nothing could be sweeter than the sound of Bucky gasping against your lips.
You kissed him slow, filthy, your tongue tangling with his as he choked on another moan.
“Baby, you’re doing so good,” you purred, stroking his cheek as yet another shudder wracked his body.
Peeking over his shoulder at Steve, you winked. Steve’s smile bloomed, his hand resting at the small of Bucky’s back gently steadying him.
“You good, Buck?”
There was a sound somewhere between a grunt and a whimper, and you held back your giggle.
Ghosting kisses against his lips, his cheeks, and his damp forehead, you ran your fingers carefully through his hair, nails scraping against his scalp just the way he liked.
His cock hung heavy between you, untouched, bobbing against your stomach with every thrust he took. You ached to press up against him—but that wasn’t what tonight was about.
Shuffling further up the bed from where Bucky knelt on all fours over you, you carefully took his shoulders in your hands and encouraged him to lay his head down in your lap.
Steve took the opportunity to drive deeper, a slow grind that pressed Bucky’s face against the curve of your belly, his guttural moan into your plush soft skin making you bite your lip.
“I know, darling,” you murmured, stroking his hair back from his forehead in time with the tortuously slow strokes of Steve’s cock inside him. “You needed this, didn’t you, hm?”
Bucky huffed a soft yes against your skin, pressing open mouthed kisses into your body.
Above him, Steve breathed out a groan, his dark eyes flicking between where he fucked Bucky deep and where Bucky’s head lay.
“So pretty,” he grunted. “So damn pretty, punk.”
Groaning long and deep at the praise, Bucky’s teeth scraped against you, lips closing on a light nip at your skin, and you couldn’t control the way you jerked up into him.
The rasp of his stubble against your belly, your thighs, and the sensitive skin between drove you wild. You rocked beneath him again, hand at the back of his head urging him lower, until finally his chin brushed against your mound and you sobbed in near-relief.
Bucky caught on quick. He pushed lower, tongue searching for your clit. Your hand in his hair clenched hard, angling him just so, until—there.
Your strangled cry when his tongue pressed and curled matched his low groan at the tangy taste of you.
Bucky ate at you greedily, tongue lapping at your aching folds, drool dripping down his chin to mix with your slick.
“Is he—?”
“Yes,” you hissed, and Steve’s jaw clenched.
His pace never changed, rhythm holding steady, but you felt the shift in power when every driving thrust forward sank him deeper inside Bucky’s body, and Bucky’s face deeper into you. Your hips caught the rhythm, pressing up into his tongue, moaning over the sound of skin on skin.
Your hands stayed woven in Bucky’s hair, keeping him buried deep in your cunt.
He groaned into your flesh when Steve rutted deeper, hummed against you, sending tingling lightening over your skin, but never did he give you his fingers. Your pussy clenched around nothing, aching to be filled, but Bucky knew better.
After all, that wasn’t what tonight was about.
He only pulled away once.
“You gonna cum?”
“Yes,” you and Steve groaned in unison.
Steve fell first. He lost all rhythm, rutting into Bucky with singleminded determination, hands gripping his hips and face scrunched in desperate concentration. Until finally, pressing deep, he came hard with a gasp, pulling Bucky’s hips back tight against him.
Slumping forward the weight of Steve’s body pressed that delightful tongue deeper, Bucky’s nose grinding down onto your clit, and you jerked in his grasp as your orgasm flooded over you.
Your keening cry sent Bucky over the edge and with a shuddering groan he finally came, spilling into the sheets.
Bucky lapped greedily at everything you gave, moaning at the taste, prolonging your pleasure with every swipe of his tongue. You were a quivering mess, moaning helplessly beneath him.
When he slowed, pressing a last precious kiss into you, he rolled to the side, taking Steve with him, using your sweat-slicked thigh as a pillow.
Somewhere between the tangle of bodies, Steve’s hand snaked up to capture yours.
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Prompt: Kaboom goes the dynamite (Humans are not invincible. I don't care what the Majiri say)
Fandom: Palia
Characters: Reth, Hassian, Nai'o
A/N: How are we feeling about the Royal Highlands, guys? Idk about y'all, but after the *ahem* 'explosive incident' near the end, I found the villager's reactions to be a bit....lackluster? We basically got the Letha treatment but survived it (sorry, hodari pls don't kill me). I also think it's impossible for the player to scrape by a whole bomb without any physical injuries so...yeah, s6 doesn't want to give us the townsfolk going through the six stages of grief so I'm just going to do it.
Reth:
Pretending everything's fine when it most certainly isn't is Reth's patented song and dance.
It's a skill, really. A craft. One of the few things life in the grimmelkin cartel did right for him. He has perfected the refined art of 'fake it until you make it'.
Smile when people expect a buffer. Joke when the air gets too heavy. Keep moving. Keep working. Your face is your greatest asset, pretty boy. Use it. Keep your hands busy and your mouth busier, because if you stop long enough to think about all the things that could go wrong, then the world will remember to come collect.
Reth's lived with that mindset for so long, he just can't kick it even if times are different. Slipping on the mask has become that old friend who stops into town for a visit whenever shit hits the fan. Always right when you least expect it to.
Reth just thought - selfishly - that he'd have more time before the next visit. To enjoy the peace that he hadn't quite settled into yet.
---
Ashura's inn was running on the warm side today. Loud in the comfortable way, not the 'there are six voices in my ear and they all sound miles off' kind of way.
The smell of stew and fresh bread clung to the air, and Reth was leaning over the chef’s counter with a knife in one hand, a cutting board under the other, and just enough attention to work on his mincing technique while ruminating over the same thoughts that invade his mind every day.
Tish was doing better. She'd just stopped in to grab 'brain fuel' for her and Jel to munch while getting creative. His debt to the cartel was paid. Had been, for months now. Although he still felt the kick to check if Zeki dropped off any packages for him to deliver. Reth's eye always strayed to the usual drop point when on break. Although his nerves hadn't yet conjured an illusion of some new contract to bind him.
Reth runs through his mental checks. He slept about four hours the night before. Which was good by his standards. Sifuu hadn't started another bar fight, thank dragon. Last week Tish had to replace three stools.
Ashura even mentioned giving him a small raise the other night. Never said why, but Reth could piece it together. A hint about 'getting him signed up a bank account so he could save for the future' here, another about keeping a bit of spending money to 'take his partner in crime on a date' there.
Speaking of, he got to see you earlier in the morning. Apparently you were off to the Royal Highlands on some special Order business with Subira. Reth was still waiting for her to put him in cuffs for his work with Zeki, but he was happy you were starting to get some answers about the whole 'humans popping up out of nowhere' business. Even if he barely understood most of it. Maybe with his newfound freedom, he could help out somehow and repay a bit of what you've done for him.
That is if he could convince Jina to teach him about humanity. There aren't many books in the library. He checked.
All Reth cared about was your happiness on that front, and you looked thrilled to explore the Royal Highlands. So he packed up a portion of hearty vegetable soup with a sliced baguette, kissed your cheek, and sent you off with the comfort of knowing you still hadn't realized how much of a mistake he was.
Everything was good. Pushing up sundrops, really.
The worst of life, the ugly, grinding, humiliating worst of it, was supposed to be over.
So why is there this...foreboding gloom hanging over his head? Why can't he just be happy?
He still didn’t know what to do.
Freedom felt too much like standing in an empty room and waiting for the door to open again.
“Reth, can I get one chappa masala to go?” someone called from nearby the hearth, and he lifted his head with practiced ease, ready with some lazy reply. The usual two-finger salute before getting a fresh order slip.
It was in that moment that time seemed to slow down. They say that seconds can feel like years when tragedy strikes, and he believed it. Felt it back when his parents never came home, when Tish's condition worsened, when he sat to let these dragon forsaken runes be carved into his skin with nothing to dull the pain.
Just because Reth's used to it, doesn't mean he's prepared. Never.
Shouting burst outside the inn's open doors, followed by heavy footfalls running up the outer stairway. The sudden scrape of urgency breaking through the heavy evening.
Reth frowned, knife pausing in his grip.
Through the swinging doorway came Subira’s commanding voice, sharp with alarm.
“Chayne—!? Chayne, I need you!”
Her panic cut through the inn like a blade.
Reth straightened to attention, stew forgotten despite needing a stir.
Across the room, Ashura was already moving, foregoing the steps down from his podium with one hop and rushing out with the kind of speed that showed he was still a trained solider even in his silver years. Reth caught the expression on his face for only a second — focused, grim, assertive — and then the inner doors banged behind him.
“What should I — ?” Reth started, but the offer died in his throat.
He should stay. He knew that. The inn was his post right now with Ashura gone. His job. His responsibility. He had a dozen plates halfway done, patrons still seated, and every sensible part of him knew he ought to keep his head down and his hands busy.
Instead he moved, leaping over the counter with one arm.
Because Subira sounded scared for the first time since she arrived in Kilma and he knew. Deep down, Reth could only think of one thing that might shake the Watcher and force her back from the Highlands investigation prematurely.
Because Chayne was not in the tavern taking his usual nighttime tea, which meant he'd been stalled by something far worse than a stubbed toe.
Because somewhere in the back of Reth’s mind, the part of him that spent too many years always braced for impact already started to say 'I told you so'.
The new breed of bad was here and peace was just an illusion.
The thing that strikes when you get comfortable.
He stepped out onto the porch just in time to see Chayne hurrying across the road, robes swaying in his wake, expression intent and troubled. Reth’s stomach dropped before he even looked past him.
Subira stood near the path, breathless, dirtied, and tense from the temples down, and in her arms —
For one endless second, Reth’s mind refused to understand what he was seeing. His gut was right.
You.
Limp in her arms. Face pale beneath the dirt and surface bruising. Your body draped in a way that made something cold and violent lurch through his chest.
Not dead. Not yet. He knew that because he would have known if you were already gone, wouldn’t he? He had to know that on sight at least. He had to be right.
But you looked so broken. Not at all like the sweet cheek he kissed just that morning, flushed under his attention and giving him the buzzy feeling that made each day something worth tackling.
Rather than those butterflies, all Reth feels right now are parasites eating at his stomach. He'll never be able to smell stew again.
Subira was saying something rushed before Chayne gestured down the road. She gave a curt nod before taking off in the direction of the healer's pavilion with you stolen away with her. Reth watches your head bob over her forearm and waits for your eyes to open. She disappears before they can.
Ashura’s voice cut in low and steady. Someone else was speaking too, maybe, but Reth couldn’t make sense of it. The sounds came at him from far away, like he’d slipped beneath the surface of a Lake Kilma and was hearing life through dense water.
He stayed rooted on the porch.
Couldn’t move.
Couldn’t make his legs work.
It was absurd, really. He carried trays full of hot food through crowded rooms, ducked knives and egos and the occasional exploding temper, survived enough terrible days to know how to keep a face on. He should be useful. He should be doing something.
Instead he was standing there like an idiot.
Dragon, why was he such an idiot.
His fingers twitched in the air, grasping at nothing.
No.
Not now. Not ever, really.
Not after everything.
Not after the cartel.
Not after Tish.
Not after all the nights he’d lain awake with the kind of dread that never really leaves, only changes shape. Not after resigning to be nothing, just to get a cruel taste of what freedom looks like. It had your face, your scent, your voice, your laugh, your touch, your...
Not after he had started, impossibly, to think maybe he could have a life that was just his life, and not a countdown to pay his due.
His gaze stayed fixed on the spot Subira once stood. You were here and not here. A body. A breathing thing. A person. The sight of you struck him in some old, buried place where hope and fear were tangled together so tightly he couldn’t tell them apart anymore.
This was it, wasn’t it?
This was the price.
Every small joy, every stolen laugh, every half-remembered moment of feeling safe in with your hand in his, of hearing you tease him through the storage room door, of seeing your face across the counter and thinking, against all reason, that maybe he could keep this. Maybe he could keep you.
He hadn't deserved any of it.
That thought came suddenly, sharp as a hook beneath the ribs.
All the things you had given him. All the new chances. The security. The patience. The way you looked at him like he was not a problem to solve or a burden to bear, but a person. He had not earned it. Not properly. Not nearly enough. He had not said the things he should have said. He had not thanked you enough. Hadn’t told you how often he thought of you when the night got too quiet, or how much lighter the world felt when you walked into the inn, or how he had started measuring days by the possibility of seeing you again.
Reth thought there would be time.
He thought he could be clever about it. Play it cool. Let things develop in their own time.
Dragon, there's never time. What made him think there would be now, when the universe was set to punish him for the sin of getting used to happiness.
His chest tightened so suddenly it hurt.
No, he thought again, but this time it was smaller. More frightened. Childish, almost. Like the voice in his head belonged to someone much more lanky, reading a report from the coastguard about a ship lost to the tides.
He didn't remember taking a still breath.
He didn't remember when his hands started shaking. Only that the air felt thicker.
“Reth.”
A rich, commanding voice, snapped straight through the haze.
Reth blinked hard, and the scene shifted into focus by degrees. Ashura was in front of him now, one hand braced on his shoulder, the other steadying him before he could even realize he was unsteady. His brow was furrowed with concern, the kind that came from someone who already made a dozen hard decisions before noon and still had room left to worry about other people.
“Hey,” Ashura said, low and even. “Listen to me.”
Reth stared at him, empty-headed.
Ashura’s grip tightened gently. “You need to hold down the inn for me, alright? I have to get Chayne what he needs but I'll be right back. Chayne will take care of them, okay? Just breathe and wait for me here.”
Your name carried weight across every syllable as Ashura spoke. If anyone knew the sinking feeling of half your heart being torn out, it was Kilma's gentlest innkeeper.
Reth swallowed, throat thick, grating, and useless. He could hear nothing clearly except the pounding of his own pulse.
Ashura said something else then, an apology maybe, or an explanation, but it washed over him without meaning. Reth barely registered the words. What he registered was the pressure of Ashura’s hands on his shoulders, the certainty in his voice, the fact that someone was still telling him what to do because he had not yet fallen apart enough to be spared responsibility.
Hold down the inn.
Yes. Right. Of course.
Useful. Be useful. Keep moving.
It was the only thing he knew how to reach for.
“Yeah,” he said, and the word came out thin. Crooked. “Yeah. Fine. Go. You can count on me."
Ashura searched Reth's face for one more second, as if he might object, and then nodded sharply. “I’ll be back. I promise.”
He let go and was gone almost immediately, already turning toward Chayne’s house at a speed Reth was sure would aggravate Ashura's bad knee later on. He'd only gather enough to care later, when this was over. It had to be over at some point.
Reth stood there a moment longer, staring after him, not because he was calm but because he had nothing left to do with his body. His hands felt far away. His legs felt borrowed. Everything inside him had gone still in the way a room goes still after lightning strikes nearby.
Then the world lurched back into motion.
Inside the inn, a chair scraped. Someone asked a question. A murmur of concern spread through the room, but Reth could not hear the words. He turned mechanically, like a puppet being tugged by a string, and went back in on legs that didn’t quite belong to him.
The smell of burning stew hit him again, warm and unbearable. He jumped the counter to turn off the burner.
His cutting board sat where he’d left it. The knife, too. The vegetables. The dirty bar rag hung on its hook. Ordinary things. Things that had no right continuing to exist while the rest of his world split open.
Reth put his hands on the counter and stared down at them.
He was still shaking.
He tightened his jaw.
Nope. Not here. Not now.
He picked up the knife and pulled out strip chaapa. Got to cubing it and grabbed an order ticket. Because what else was there? Because if he stopped, the image of you in Subira’s arms would keep replaying itself, over and over, and the breaking sound in his chest would turn into something messier and harder to hide.
A customer spoke to him and he answered automatically. Somebody asked if the tea was ready and he nodded. Another voice. Another plate. Another task. Another attempt to drag the world back into a shape that made sense.
But inside, he was still on the porch.
Still watching. Thinking.
I'm such an idiot.
I knew better.
I should've asked Jina sooner, should've asked Subira for details, should've begged them to stay - made an excuse. Been there.
Please.
Dragon, Pheonix, whoever you are ... if you're there.
Please.
Don't take them from me.
The word lodged in him like a splinter. Please let them live. Please let Chayne be able to fix this. Please let there be something in this world stronger than all the bad things waiting their turn.
Please don't let him lose the one person who's become the center of his life without him noticing until it was already too late.
And if there were gods—if there were any kind of listening power at all, any mercy tucked away behind the stars—then now. Now would be a very good time to prove it.
Because Reth could not do this again.
Could not stand by another bedside and wait for a voice to say there was nothing more to be done.
Could not hold himself together with jokes and flour and duty while the person he loved slipped out of reach.
Could not.
He pressed his fingers into the counter until his knuckles ached and kept his face angled just so, because the customers still needed feeding and the inn still needed him and if he looked too closely at anyone he was certain he would break. Their lingering eyes suggest they expect him to, and he won't slip.
But inside, where no one could see him, he was already broken.
Hassian:
Hassian considered himself one who exists with peace. In harmony with the world he inhabits. Yet that does not mean he is comfortable enough to take tranquility for granted. To exist in peace.
No.
Hassian is intimately aware that every day is different from the last, and that one's life can be ripped mercilessly out from its roots if there are roots lain down to do so.
While it is by the dragon's grace that he has comforts to lose, it is also by his cruelest will that those we cherish can be stolen for no reason other than circumstance.
It is not fear that claims Hassian. Not even grief. Of that he holds nestled between his seventh and eighth ribs, an urge to persist. It is not blood or hunger or the ache of long winters spent whittling in his grove and longer hunts as the game thins. Those were familiar changes.
Honest uprootings. The world had always been full of sharp edges, and he learned young how to move between them.
But peace?
Peace felt like standing on unfamiliar ground and being told not to brace for it to crumble. Hassian could not find it in himself to slip into peace.
Until now.
For a few hours, he had everything he would ever need in the palm of his hand. Every root lain in his garden, tucked safe under the ground, making their beds in Kilma’s soil as they should have twenty years ago.
Taylin. Mama. By some miracle, the Dragon returned her to Sifuu and him. Rather she was never claimed in the first place. For twenty years, she was just out of reach.
Yet he did not care to let that thought sink. None of it mattered.
Not when she was here with them now.
Alive.
Breathing.
Resting in the healer's pavillion after Chayne’s careful hands cleaned the worst of her wounds, after the impossible had become real and the ground cracked open just enough to let life sprout new roots. Sifuu hadn't let go of Taylin once she returned to herself, and Ulfie — who had been a stranger only yesterday and now felt like a new root in Hassian's family — stayed close too, quiet and watchful in a way Hassian recognized. Tau curled at the boys feet and waited his turn for pets.
The five of them sat together in that passing moment, and for the first time in longer than he could remember, Hassian's heart was not divided by loss.
It's become whole.
Even the open room seemed different for it. Smaller, perhaps. Warmer. Medicinal herbs never had such a welcoming aroma. Or maybe that appreciation was only the shape of his own disbelief.
There was so much to catch up on.
So much to learn.
So much to unlearn, too, from all the years he spent carrying the weight of a mama-shaped absence and calling it strength. And yet there was something gentle in it, too. Taylin looking at him like she was memorizing his face. Taking in all he'd become, yet still seeing the image of her little boy who'd look at the stars with hope.
Sifuu sat beside her, steady as stone. Barely holding back from sharing every little detail of their lives these years and straining not to ask Tailyn for her story. Not yet.
For a short while, the world felt almost complete. Only missing one piece to make the picture whole.
Just think of the human and they shall always come, just as Hassian's grown used to.
So he waits.
He waits.
He takes in these otherwise perfect, terribly short, hours.
He waits and he trusts you'll seek him out once your work is through.
Tau's head lifts at the sound of rushed footfalls, and Hassian can't help the twitch of his lip. Like clockwork. They're a bit frantic and lighter than your usual stride but it has been an eventful day. No one is entirely predictable, as you've proven time and time again.
He waits a little more.
And by dragon, if Hassian could take back the summons, the thought of you, then he'd do anything to make it so.
At first, he thought it was only another fevered trick of exhaustion.
You were with him only hours before, standing at his hip with that certainty of yours that guides a hunt to finish, alive and smiling and warm with a heart on your sleeve that makes him feel as though the world had one less thing to question. Even if you were full of them every day.
Your eyes, glazed with tears of happiness for his family reunited, and a brush to his arm brace as if to say 'Go. I've got it from here. Be with them'. He wouldn't have left you alone in the middle of unfamiliar territory under any other circumstance.
Yet even then, he should have lingered just a moment beyond that silent exchange. To ensure the security of whatever task you'd throw yourself into without him. Based on the trials set to gain access to that ancient mansion, he saw first hand that it would be neither simple or safe.
Yet you always pull a miracle. His mama come home is a prime example.
No matter what trouble you got yourself mixed up in - of which, Hassian is certain there are many he's unaware - you always find him later on, come the end of each day.
Later.
A word that only seemed solid enough to trust because of you.
When Subira came rushing into the infirmary, Hassian's first thought was annoyance at the interruption. With the way Tau perked, Hassian was certain it would be you rushing up the path. Emotions may have rattled the hunter's instincts, but his pluumehound's senses were never wrong.
His second thought was a vague, dreadful understanding that something was terribly wrong. Watchers are trained to maintain their calm under distress and yet one well-ordained is missing her footing.
His third thought, broaching reflexes dulled by everything that had already happened that day, stalled to static at the body clutched in her arms.
To the battered, limp shape of you.
For one long second Hassian's mind refused to name what he saw.
Then his gaze drifted to the hollow lavender tint under your eyes, a shade he knew did not belong on human skin, and so he tried to look away. Yet every inch of flesh was caked in dirt, soot, and splotches of maroon that he once again could not dare to name.
Is it true that humans bleed the same as Majiri? Of course they do.
So why, like a child who once thought the stars held all answers, could he not grasp the metal stench clinging to you.
Subira’s urgency murdered the peace Hassian no longer found himself in. Chayne had already stood, already crossed the threshold, already commanding with the wisdom of someone who had no room for panic because panic would help no one. Sifuu let go of Taylin's hand for the first time. The empty cot beside them was cleared.
Your head rolled to face him as Subira laid your body down. He expected your eyes to sliver open, your hand to reach for him from where it draped useless off the bedside.
Hassian felt Tau's muzzle nudge into his open palm, and it was enough for him to let go of pointless expectation. Peace wasn't even with him anymore. It abandoned them all.
Then, he moved.
Every little detail he allowed to exist without thought now assaulted him. He remembers the truth behind herbal scents in the air and clean cloth cut to strips, the meaning behind each creak under his feet, the harsh, terrible fact that these cots meant for healing can also hold bodies too broken to merely be resting.
A house of hope, can just as easily become a house of woe. One cannot exist without the other.
Balance of scales, the realist in him thought.
He got his mama back, and in the same day he would lose you.
His life had been perfect for a few short hours. That's more then most get. He could ask the dragon to take him instead, but it would do no good.
Nature does not bargain.
It demands its due.
It takes and takes and takes until one dared to think they've been spared. It takes them too. No one escapes in the end.
And now there was only this.
Your blood. Your bruises. He wraps your fingers in gauze and lets his fingers stray to your wrist. A pulse, but weak. Not the thrum of a hummingbird he was so used to counting when your skin was offered to him willingly.
Your spirit fading, with him hopeless to stop it. Hassian knew before Chayne spoke the words.
Hassian could feel the old instinct rising in him, the one that had kept him alive in the wilds, the one that had taught him to track the signs of danger before it struck. But danger this time was not something he could hunt. Could not shoot. Could not chase through the trees or stand between with bow in hand.
"Tell me what to do, Chayne. Anything. Anything at all, and it is yours."
The look in his Shepp's eye conveyed the answer Hassian knew to be true. 'There is nothing we can do, but wait' yet for all the patience he had when stalking prey, Hassian could not muster a drop of it.
Chayne must sense that he needs an order. A direction. He gives an order for materials from his house.
Hassian obeys.
Chayne asks him to escort Ulfie to Tamala's in Upper Bahari. The child shouldn't be alone right now. Hassian obeys, he barely spares her a look once the boy is indoors.
Change your bandages. He obeys. Deliver tonics for other patients. He obeys.
Anything to stay moving. Anything to keep from looking too closely at the shape of your face. Anything to keep from admitting that the feeling in his chest was not anger, though it was close to it, and not fear, though fear had its claws deep in him.
It was the awful, naked knowledge that he had just gotten you.
Just gotten this life.
Just begun to imagine a future where there would be more of you in it. Where he had a hearth to call his own and a family to sit around it.
And how each day that passes, the chance of that future fades with you.
No.
The thought came with violence Hassian rarely embodied.
No.
His jaw tightened hard enough to ache.
Please.
He had not meant to think the word, or to beg. Begging never helped when Taylin disappered. No one answered -- that's wrong. Twenty years it took but someone finally answered. It wasn't a god either. It was you.
So if he was going to beg, and plead, and cry. Let his voice break through, raw and unguarded, leaving him more exposed than any would could. If he was going to submit himself to prayer.
Then Hassian would pray to you. To reach wherever your spirit walks.
Please do not leave me.
Please do not become another absence.
Please do not become another loss I must learn to survive.
I can't live without my heart, and it beats with you.
Hassian holds your hand in his until the sun rises, and until it sets. Willing his words to reach you as he reads from books and recites poems he once thought would never reach your ears. Yet unless Chayne needs him to or his mothers voices carry enough for talk, he remains where your spirit can feel him calling.
Because if there was any strength in him at all, it would be used now in service of keeping you away from the stars. Your story is not ready to be written among them. Not yet. Not without him.
Nai'o
By the time Nai’o made it home, it was well past two in the morning.
The Elderwoods was left behind him, the long dark roads and leaning signposts finally left in the care of the moon. He checked them all. Tightened what needed tightening. Marked what needed marking. The kind of work that made his shoulders ache and his eyes blur a little by the end of it, but which still left him feeling useful, and being useful had always been the easiest way for him to sleep soundly.
The barn smelled like hay and work and the faint comfort of home. He cleaned up there the way he always did, moving on muscle memory more than thought, and by the time he pushed open the front door of the farmhouse, his body was asking (more like demanding) for sleep.
He expected quiet and toed off his boots carefully after sparing a quick look at Auni’s treehouse.
Maybe Ma’s awake with another book she pretended not to be too invested in. Maybe the soft creak of the old house settling around him as he walked the floor seams. Maybe Pa snoring so loudly upstairs that Nai’o would roll his eyes and smile despite himself.
What Nai’o did not expect was both of his parents sitting in the little living room without any light, locked in quiet conversation until he crossed the threshold. Both Ma and Pa looked right at him and he felt like he was 13, caught sneaking out to throw rocks at Kenyatta’s window all o er again.
Except Nai’o certainly wasn’t 13 anymore and surely hasn’t done anything wrong. Maybe. Not that he knows of?
Ma’s face was carefully composed in the way it only ever was when she was trying very hard not to fall apart. Nai’o can’t remember the last time he saw her like that. Her eyes were rimmed red. Not by much. Just enough to make his stomach drop straight through the floor.
Badruu held his straw hat to his chest, fingers curled around the brim like it was the only thing keeping him anchored.
Nai’o stared. His mouth opened, then shut again.
“Aaah,” he said stupidly, because his brain hadn’t yet caught up past getting his boots off. “Hi?”
Upstairs, a floorboard creaked.
Nai’o looked up just in time to see Auni peeking over the banister, then ducking back out of sight.
That was when Nai’o’s heart started to pound.
Auni was usually asleep by now. He didn’t stay in their shared bedroom anymore, complaining that Nai’o snored too loud. If he was awake here and not in his treehouse, it usually meant he was scared or Ma asked him in.
The thought made a cold little knot twist low in his chest.
“Ma?” Nai’o asked carefully, shifting between them. “Pa?”
Delaila inhaled through her nose, slow and steady. Which, for her, meant this was very serious indeed.
“Is everything okay?” Nai’o asked again, though even he could hear the uncertainty in his own voice. “We’re not losing the house, are we?”
His mind immediately went to the worst, but they weren’t behind on payments the last he checked. You helped them meet their quota last month too.
Badruu’s expression only got tighter as he rubbed a soothing hand over Delaila’s back. Why wasn’t anyone talking? What could be worse than losing the house?
Then Auni came tumbling down the stairs in a rush of oversized socks and nerves, nearly missing the last step entirely. He landed in the foyer, blurted your name out in a rush with his hands flying high, “There was an explosion! A bomb! The whole town was freakin' out!” and then froze like he had just run headfirst into a wall.
Nai'o was no better, his mind barely picking the right words out in a fight against exhaustion.
His family knew what you meant to him. They would never make that kind of thing up just to tease him after a long day. Or any day.
Because they loved you too. He knew that as surely as he knew the shape of his own hands. His ma smiled whenever you came by, asked if you'd been eating well up on that hill by yourself. His pa always found some excuse to ask how you were doing, test out a new pun, or send a bit of extra hay for your animals, even when he was busy. Auni thought you were the coolest person in the world and didn't act embarassed to admit it.
And Nai’o...?
Nai’o loved you in the simple, open way that never made much room for pretending otherwise.
You’re family. His future.
You’ve become everything and it almost felt like you’ve always been here. A steady, bright presence in the middle of all the things in his life that could be uncertain. When he saw you, he felt steadier. Better. Like the world was a little less likely to topple over.
The axis was tilting.
His breath left him in one hard, silent rush.
And then the fear became motion.
Nai’o was moving before anybody could catch him.
He was halfway out the door, hopping back into his muddy boots, when his mother called his name, but he didn’t slow down.
He was moving, his exhaustion burned clean away in a single rush of panic so sharp it almost hurt. He didn’t stop to ask for details. Didn’t stop to ask who was with you or whether Chayne had already seen you or what exactly had happened.
You were hurt.
You needed him.
That was all his body understood.
“Nai’o! Dear, hold on just a moment —” his ma started, but he was already at the door.
He heard Pa call after him, something about being careful, something about taking the good lantern, but he was gone before the words could settle. His boots hit the dirt path with a speed that shocked even him, and then he was running through the dark, one thought pounding in time with his steps.
I should have been there.
I should be there.
He’s been out working overtime. Checking the little things people relied on him for because that was what he did best. And while he had been out there, doing his job, doing what he was supposed to do, you were in danger.
That was the part he couldn’t quite fit into his head.
He knew you did important work, even when compared to the other new humans. He knew you were helping the Order, helping the village, doing things that mattered. Your work was so much bigger than him. Not a day passes where Nai'o doesn't wonder what you see in him.
Yet he never thought of that greatness as something to fear. He thought of it as one more reason to admire you. You were brave, and kind, and strong in ways he was still trying to understand.
But now he could feel the shape of that bravery in his chest like a bruise.
Nai'o has seen how people look while they processed loss. When Hodari lost Letha, and his daughter was injured - the two went months without visiting Kilma for anything other than food. When Ashura lost Sabaine, Kilma mourned a good woman. That’s right. Nai’o remembers now. That day was the last time he saw his ma cry so openly.
Nai'o didn't think he would feel that type of loss until his parents met the dragon. He never thought it would be you being carried into the dark like this. Not you, lying still. Not the crying eyes of Kilma meant for you.
Nai’o reached Chayne’s shrine at a speed fast enough that he had to catch himself on the entryway before he stumbled inside.
And there you were.
The world seemed to stop.
For one brief, stupid second, Nai’o forgot how to breathe again even as he gasped to reclaim it.
Ulfie was sitting near your bed, startled by the sound of him coming in too fast and too loud, his face going instantly panic-struck at the sight of Nai’o. Nai’o would apologize later. He would. He’d probably apologize a lot, actually, because the poor kid looked like he might bolt.
But right then, all Nai’o could see was you.
Bandaged. Bruised. Your eyes closed with the same expression you'd take when catching a quick nap on one of the hay bales in the barn.
He wanted them to open. Look at him with that warm expression that told him everything was going to be okay. Open your arms for his daily hug that felt like torture to go without.
His whole body went cold and hot at once.
Dragon, if a hug could heal you, he'd never let you go.
The thing about Nai’o was that he felt everything.
He did not hide it well, and he never really wanted to. When he loved someone, he loved them with his whole chest. When he worried, he shook. When he was happy, everyone heard his hollering. There was no point pretending otherwise.
So when he reached your bedside, all that openness turned into a kind of helpless honesty.
His knees hit the floor before he fully realized he was kneeling.
He took your hand in both of his, like that alone might anchor your spirit here.
His eyes burned terribly. Worse than when Butterball kicked up sand.
Then he blinked hard, but it did not help. Tears spilled anyway, hot and useless and eating at the exhaustion creeping back in the most soul crushing way. He did not care. He could not care. The sight of you like this cracked something clean open in him, and there was no pretending it didn’t hurt like it was his spirit being ripped in two.
“Oh, no,” he whispered, voice shaking around the words. “No, no, no, hey—hey, you’re okay, right? You’re going to be okay.”
He did not know who he was asking.
You. Chayne. The room. The Dragon. Anyone.
His thumb brushed carefully over your hand, as if he could feel for proof there that you were still here. Still warm.
He wanted to say so many things.
That he was sorry he wasn’t there for you.
That he should have come home faster.
That he would have run the whole way back from the Elderwood if he knew.
That he was scared in a way he’s never been scared before, because this wasn’t crops drying out, a broken wheel in the middle of nowhere, or even money running short before the duchess demanded her due payment.
This was you. This was someone he loved lying injured in front of him, and he had no practical skill to fix it.
But he also knew, with the simple certainty of someone who hadn’t yet learned to distrust hope, that you were still here.
And because you were still here, Nai’o could keep believing. Chayne says your spirit is what needs time. That’s fine. He has all of it in the world, just for you.
His tears kept coming, but his voice evens out just enough for him to speak clearly.
“I’m here,” Nai’o whispers, squeezing your hand gently. “I’m here now. I should have been here before, I know, I know, but I’m here now. When you wake up, you can scold me all you want. I'll listen. Promise I will."
His lower lip trembles, and he laughs once in that sad, breathless way people do when they are trying not to cry harder. Not because he doesn’t want to, but because he if sleep is what you need then he won’t disturb you.
“I’m not going anywhere, okay? I’m right here.” He promises, “When you’re better, we’ll take that trip with Auni into Bahari City. All on me. I was planning to surprise you with it but that’s okay. It would’ve slipped out…you know I can’t keep a secret…”
Behind him, he heard Chayne moving to tend to whomever was in the cot beside you. Heard Ulfie shifting in his seat, before Nai'o felt a small hand pat his shoulder. Heard the quiet, careful sounds of a room full of people doing their best to help.
At some point Kenyatta came in to do her work, but she wasn't shocked to see him sitting there. They shared a weak greeting with each other before she pulled up a stool for him to sit on.
Nai’o felt guilty, relaxing once the pressure was off his knees, but the pinpricks in his calves were the only distraction from how his heart ached.
He only let go of your hand for Kenyatta to check your vitals.
He might not be smartest person in the room. He might not always have the right words. He might be useless to the entire situation — No. He certainly is.
Yet.
Nai’o just needs to be here when you opened your eyes. He can be here for you. He’d sooner abandon his path and sell shoe shines by the sea shore than let you wake up to an empty room.
He’ll make sure you smile and know that everything is going to be okay.
And later, when you were better and he had his voice back and his heart is not rattling around in his ribs like a loose stone, he’ll talk your ears off about how unfair all of this was and how very much he hated seeing you hurt and how he was definitely going to be more annoying about reminding you to be careful from now on. He might've thought you were some type of super human before, but just wait.
He'll hug you longer each day. Take the detour up that hill every night before going home, just to make sure you're safe and taking care of yourself.
Nai’o won't let you forget that he's there, even if he isn't as important to the grand scheme.
But for now, he will hold your hand and wait for you to rest. He won’t go anywhere.
Because you’re family to him in everything but name. That’s only a matter of time to change too.
And family takes care of each other. Through thick and thin.
FRAGMENTS OF A LONELY TIDE [masterlist]
dockworker!bucky barnes x mermaid!reader
— ⟢ SUMMARY: a grumpy dockworker reluctantly rescues you—a stranded, wounded mermaid—with every intention of sending you back to the sea once you’ve healed. until the idea of losing you becomes something he can no longer bear.
— ⟢ GENERAL WARNINGS: 18+ MDNI; bucky’s in his 40s; grumpy!bucky (starts off rude and cold); protective!bucky; sunshine!reader; injuries & blood; angst; loneliness; temporary feelings denial; mutual pining; heavy yearning; domestic fluff; smut. each part has its own specific warnings.
A/N: this was originally supposed to be a one-shot part of a collection inspired by that picture of seb up there, but the plot got a little out of hand. and honestly? I don’t feel like cutting scenes just to fit tumblr’s ridiculous 1000-block limit. so here we are! hope you’ll enjoy 🌊
the art of devotion masterlist
⤷ PARTS
༄.° PART 1 — mid-june
༄.° PART 2
༄.° PART 3
important notes: this series will have its own dedicated taglist! that being said, I’ll also be tagging my general bucky barnes taglist, so if you’d like to be notified about all of my bucky-related fics rather than just this series, that option is available too. if you are interested, please read this post here first!
Italian Tour Guide!Bucky x American Tourist!Reader
Summary: You need to unwind, and the answer is a just-girls-vacation to Italy, starting with the island of Ischia. Enter James, the sexy boat tour guide who you instantly connect with. As you slowly let down your barriers and give in to the spirit of island life, you and James grow very, very close.
Word Count: 10.6k (oops)
Content: smut (MDNI, 18+ ONLY) - fingering, oral m receiving, semi-public sex, bucky bending reader over a half wall (thanks @heldbybarnes for the inspo in your contractor fic!), uncut Bucky
A/N: Please for the love of god, do not get in my inbox or replies with your hot circumcision take, pro or con. Italian guys are usually uncut, statistically, and this would be a new experience for reader because American guys usually are circumcised. These are just the facts, and I am not taking a stance on this as an issue in general. If you get weird with me I will block you. Kisses!
It’s practically a hundred degrees in the shade, but at least the breeze off the Mediterranean somewhat tempers the scorching heat.
You stand on the dock, in your bathing suit coverup and the sun hat you’d hastily bought in a little corner shop, squinting through your shades as you scan the horizon. Natasha stands by your side, her hand sheltering her eyes from the sun as she looks along with you. Behind you, Yelena and Kate fan their faces and scroll through their phones, wincing at the UV index.
Natasha had been the one to plan everything. She’d dropped the proposed itinerary in the group chat three months ago under the heading, girls trip!!!!
It’s not in your nature to let go of the reins and give yourself over to the whims of your friends. But it had been a long year, and it was only halfway over, already leaving you burnt out and badly in need of a vacation. So you’d said fuck it and agreed.
You decide that fuck it will be your vacation mantra. You will squeeze every drop of leisure out of this trip, so help you god. You will make this vacation your bitch.
Your group has spent almost a week on Ischia so far, a lovely little island off the western coast of Italy, for those too snobbish to deal with the tourists clogging the Amalfi coast. Or so Natasha claims. She’s the expert, after all. It’s been heaven so far. Massages, thermal springs, afternoons lounging by the ocean or with a cocktail by the pool. You've been relaxing like you’re being paid to do it.
The itinerary today consists of a personal boat tour around the caves and castles of the region. Natasha had spoken highly of the tour guide, who she’d been communicating with by email, stating that he came highly recommended. You’re just excited to soak in the sights and get some day drinking done.
A small boat starts to close in from the distance, pulling in to dock. Off the boat steps a man in sunglasses — tan, broad-shouldered, and terribly, unfairly gorgeous.
You’re suddenly grateful that you put a little more effort into your appearance this morning.
Yelena lowers her sunglasses dramatically. “Whoa.”
Natasha, smooth as silk, steps forward and introduces herself in perfect Italian, offering him a friendly but firm handshake.
The man smiles. Jesus, that face could launch a thousand ships.
He removes his sunglasses and hooks them into the collar of his shirt. “Your pronunciation is very good,” he compliments Natasha. “I’m James. Good to meet you.”
Stunned by the gorgeous sea-blue of his eyes, you blurt out, “You speak English?” Stupid question. Obviously he speaks English. You could kick yourself.
His eyes move to you, briefly flicking over you from head to toe, and he chuckles good-naturedly. “It’s helpful in this line of work.” He tosses a wink in your direction, which almost sends you into a cardiac arrest, and then offers, “Can I help you ladies with your bags?”
Before you or anyone can answer, he reaches for the cooler dangling from your hand, his fingers brushing yours. At this point, you’re fairly sure you’re experiencing a medical emergency, and you let him take the cooler because you are temporarily frozen to the spot. He smiles again, just at you, before taking Natasha's beach bag and the few other incidentals the other girls brought for the boat.
Yelena hooks her arm into yours and starts whispering excitedly. You focus on remembering how to breathe.
One by one, he helps each of you onto the boat, offering a chivalrous hand so none of you slip. His palm is warm and calloused and you are being very, very normal about it when you place your hand in his. You convince yourself that you’re imagining things when his hand lingers a few seconds longer than it strictly has to.
Once the tour begins, James is surprisingly easy to talk to. It helps that there are many beautiful things to look at other than his face while he speaks. His relaxed manner immediately puts all of you at ease as he tells you the names and histories of nearby castle ruins. There is the slightest ghost of an Italian accent when he speaks English, but when he speaks in Italian, it’s a little mesmerizing. You feel like you could listen to him talk all day.
He sails the boat into a cave and kills the engine, inviting all of you to swim in the cool of the shade. You do your very best to not act shy or intimidated as you strip down to your bathing suit with the rest of the girls. You shouldn’t be concerned with the male gaze. You’re on a girls trip, after all.
But you can’t resist glancing back to see if he’s looking, and your skin warms when you see that he is. His gaze isn’t lecherous, but it’s certainly appreciative, and he doesn’t seem embarrassed to have been caught. His eyes don’t stray from your form, either, despite the three other beautiful women on the boat.
Suddenly, Kate slips on the edge and screams girlishly, grabbing into your arm and taking you with her as she tumbles into the water, and the moment passes.
Once you all have had your fill of exploring the cave, he sails you all to a slightly more open spot, the sunlight spilling over a nearby cliffside and warming the waters to a pleasant bath water temperature. As the boat slows down, a gust of sea-breeze carries away your hat and deposits it into the sea about twenty feet away.
“Oh no! Hat overboard!” Natasha cries, giggling at your put-out expression.
As the boat comes to a stop, James steps out from behind the wheel. As you move to descend the ladder to rescue your hat, he briefly places a hand on your arm.
“Stay. I've got it.”
All the girls’ jaws drop, including your own, as James peels off his shirt and tank top, kicks off his sandals, and tosses his sunglasses. There's just enough time to admire the ripple of his back muscles before he dives right into the water.
“Wow…” Kate marvels. “Gentlemanly.”
“Holy shit. This guy is unreal,” Yelena mutters.
In record time, James cuts through the water and retrieves your hat. Once he returns to the boat with a victorious smile and very wet, very tan abs on display, you do a very poor job of maintaining eye contact as you thank him and shake the water out of your hat.
After almost an hour of swimming with the girls, the UV index and your grumbling stomach give you a good excuse to return to the boat. The girls snicker and whisper as you climb up the side ladder, leaving you and James on your own for the time being. You do your best to ignore them. You're just getting lunch, after all.
But when James reaches out a hand to help you up, his other hand finding your waist to steady you as your wet feet skid underneath you, food is the absolute last thing on your mind.
The two of you dig into the cooler anyway, cracking open a pair of beers and picking at the fruit and cheese Natasha had picked up from the market this morning. You try your very hardest not to stare at the way his tank top clings to his still-damp muscles, or the way sweat beads and trails down the column of his neck. You fail catastrophically.
As you recline in the shade with a towel draped along your shoulders, James asks you questions about your life in America, your hobbies, your career. His eyes don’t wander from you as he listens to the answers, giving you all of his attention. It's extremely flattering. He listens to you drone on about your awful job without complaint. Eventually, you grow tired of the sound of your own voice, and decide to ask questions of your own.
“You have almost no accent. Are you from here?”
He nods. “Born and bred. But I went to school in the states. Came back for summers until I graduated and decided to move here full time.”
“Can’t blame you. It's beautiful here,” you sigh.
He shrugs, the warmth of his gaze landing on you again. “The states have their own kind of charm.”
It feels very much like he’s not really talking about your homeland. Your eyes instinctively dart away from his, trying to hide a smile and a flush that you can’t blame on the heat.
He smiles easily, taking a swig of his beer. “But it’s good to slow down. This is a good place for that.”
“Definitely,” you agree. “You have family in America?”
“My mother is American, my father was born here in Ischia.”
“How did they meet?”
“My mother studied abroad in Amalfi. She met my father at a bar one night, and the rest is history.”
You raise an eyebrow in disbelief. “That must have been hard for them. The language barrier, the different cultures—“
He shrugs again. “Not as hard as you’d think. When you know, you know.”
You don’t really have anything to say to that, your brain going dumb underneath the intensity of his eyes on you. Luckily, you’re saved from having to craft a reply when Yelena climbs back up onto the boat and wraps herself up in a towel.
“So, James," Yelena asks with a deceptively innocent tone as she sits down next to you, “what does your girlfriend get up to while you sail around with tourists all day?”
You discreetly elbow her in the side. “Lena—“
She turns to you with a devious expression. “What? I'm just making conversation.”
James laughs softly. “She's busy, ehm… not existing?”
“No way are you single,” Yelena protests. “That doesn’t make any sense. You're ridiculously hot and you own a boat.”
You groan and drop your face into your hands. “Oh my god, Yelena—“
“I have discerning taste,” he replies with a shrug. So quick that you almost miss it, his eyes flick back over to you. Yelena raises an eyebrow at you and says nothing.
You could just about die, but the arrival of the two other girls on the boat saves you from death by flirtation.
The boat tour is drawing to a close, much to your disappointment, but James insists there is one more spot that you all don’t want to miss.
He steers the boat towards a more populated swimming area, a smattering of families laughing and splashing in the sun. Then he surprises all of you by stripping off his shirt again and joining everyone in the water. Kate, Yelena, and Natasha applaud and hoot as he descends the ladder and lands in the Mediterranean with a splash. You just try not to stare like an idiot as he grins at you, shaking his hair like a wet dog while the rest of the girls squeal.
As you float and swim and feel the sun on your skin, you think — this really is a beautiful place. Maybe the most beautiful. Everyone here seems free and happy in ways you almost never feel. You're sincerely sorry to be leaving Ischia in a few days.
The sound of shifting water nearby catches your attention, and you turn to find James approaching you.
“Can I show you something?” he asks, his smile gleaming in the sunlight.
Over his shoulder, the smiles of your friends are encouraging. Kate even flashes you a thumbs up.
Fuck it.
“Why not?” you reply, summoning your most carefree self.
He swims out towards a nearby rock formation, and you follow in his wake. When you both arrive, he places his hand on your shoulders to move you. You fight back the shiver that threatens to run through you at the warmth of his touch.
“Turn this way. Good.”
You’re facing the west, where the sun is just beginning the descent from its zenith. You’re not sure yet what you’re supposed to be looking at, so you glance back at James for guidance.
“Now go underwater and open your eyes.”
The slightest whisper of anxiety creeps into your chest. You're not a surprise kind of girl. Giving up control has never been your strength. “Am I gonna see something scary?” you ask nervously, aware that you’re being a bit silly.
But James doesn’t laugh, doesn’t make you feel silly in the slightest. “No. Just trust me.”
For some reason, you do.
With a deep breath, you submerge yourself beneath the surface of the water and open your eyes.
You don’t know what you were expecting, but it certainly isn’t this. Against clear, green water, tiny bubbles lit up gold by the sunlight fizzle from the sea floor up towards the surface. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen. You stare around you in wonder, only to find that James has descended below the surface with you.
His eyes find yours, and even underwater, there’s something warm and certain in them, something that makes your stomach flip like you’re sailing a ship through a storm. When you can hold your breath no longer, you break through the surface, laughing and gasping for air.
James resurfaces alongside you, eyes crinkling at the corners as he observes your mirth.
“That’s amazing,” you huff enthusiastically as soon as you have enough air to get the words out. “It’s like we’re in a champagne bottle.”
Treading water, James inches closer to you. “Hai degli occhi bellissimi,” he murmurs, so softly you’re not sure if he meant to say it out loud, or for you to hear it.
You have no idea what it means, but the way he said it makes your heart beat just a little faster. “My Italian isn’t as good as Natasha's," you reply.
“Means you have beautiful eyes,” he says simply, earnestly.
“Oh,” you say softly, a little too stunned for an elegant reply. “Thank you. Y-you have beautiful… everything.”
That gets a laugh out of him, and you giggle breathlessly too in spite of your embarrassment. Just as the moment feels ripe with possibility, just as his eyes slip to linger on your mouth, the atmosphere is disrupted by a distant ruckus. Hoots, hollers, and wolf whistles carry across the water from the boat, where the rest of the girls have gathered to spy on the two of you.
You roll your eyes at their antics, but James just laughs again in that easy, unbothered way of his. “Come on,” he says, swimming in the direction of the boat and looking over his shoulder at you. “We can’t keep your friends waiting.”
The boat speeds back towards shore, back towards the dock and the towncar that will take you back to your hotel. Soon enough, the fantasy of the flirtatious Italian stranger will be nothing more than that — a fantasy. You shove down the growing disappointment and focus on the whip of the breeze in your face, the salt spray, the warmth of the sun.
James once again insists on helping unload the bags when the boat is docked, and politely assisting the ladies in dismounting. His hand squeezes yours just slightly in passing, and you briefly entertain the thought of asking for his number, before talking yourself out of it. He's at work. It's probably good business to flirt, especially with tourists who he’ll never see again, who will leave glowing reviews with the booking agency. It probably doesn’t mean anything.
As James and Natasha settle up, he continues to make idle conversation. “Anything fun planned for this evening?”
Kate pipes up. “Just dinner.”
“Where?”
Natasha gives him the name of the restaurant, (her Italian accent flawless, you note with mild irritation), and James unexpectedly frowns, shaking his head.
“No. Absolutely not. It’s a tourist trap. And the food is terrible.”
“What would you recommend?” you ask.
He quickly pats his pockets, pulling out a sharpie and a crumpled receipt, and carefully writes out a restaurant name and address. “Here.”
He presses the piece of paper into your palm, his voice low and warm and familiar. “Trust me, you’ll like it.”
It feels like it’s just for you rather than the whole group, and you feel your embarrassment flare up. Your girlfriends are probably watching from over your shoulder, with gleeful grins on their faces.
You’re jolted from your reverie when Yelena slings an arm around your shoulder and says to James, “You should meet us for dinner!”
Your head snaps in her direction, your eyes wide with surprise and a little mortification.
James laughs softly, his hand coming up to rub the back of his neck. Dio mio, his arms. “I don’t want to intrude on your, ehm… girls trip.”
“You wouldn’t be. We'd love to have you,” she purrs, squeezing your shoulder almost hard enough to bruise, her eyes darting between you and him as if to communicate, say something!
James doesn’t reply, and he looks at you like you’re the deciding vote. Like he won’t insert himself where he’s not wanted, and he’s trying to figure out if he’s wanted.
Fuck it, your brain chants in the background.
“You should come,” you blurt, then backpedal your enthusiasm just a bit, tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear. “I mean, if you don’t have other plans.”
A dazzling smile spreads across James's face, and he shrugs. “Why not?”
“Please feel free to bring any of your hot Italian friends,” Yelena adds nonchalantly.
“Should we call and make a reservation?” Kate asks, already googling the restaurant name on her phone. “Can we even get a reservation this late?”
“I will take care of it,” James assures her with an easy, dismissive wave of his hand. “Go relax. Drink. Enjoy the sun. That's what life is about.”
You all make your goodbyes, and the relief that it will only be a few hours before you see him again washes over you. Of course, that relief is followed by a colony of nervous butterflies that take residence in your stomach, their fluttering worsened by the way his eyes follow you as you all pile into the towncar.
Despite James's instructions to relax, absolutely no relaxation occurs back at the hotel.
The car ride is a half-squealed debrief that has you hiding your face in your hands, the rest of the girls jostling you playfully and plying you for details. As soon as you arrive back at the hotel room and the door closes behind you, you’re swarmed. Natasha and Yelena spend at least an hour critiquing outfit options for you, digging things out of their own suitcases and throwing them in your direction. After you shower off the traces of seawater clinging to your skin, Kate harasses you into letting her do your hair, promising that she won’t make you look ridiculous.
While you’re trapped in the bathroom, Natasha shouts over the roar of the hairdryer, “Your new boyfriend just texted me, dinner is at 8!”
You groan dramatically, but inside, your heart does a tarantella.
Once you've been poked and prodded and lotioned and potioned, Natasha wraps you in a strategically selected sundress – one with a hem that just brushes your knees and a neckline that ‘does you serious favors.’ You insist on a stop at the hotel bar before the car shows up — you desperately need a warm-up cocktail (or two) to calm your nerves, if you’re going to get through tonight without embarrassing yourself.
After a drive up a winding cliff side that turns Kate a little bit green, you arrive at the restaurant. It's gorgeous, all beachy stucco walls and blue patterned tiles. The hostess leads you all to an outdoor seating area with a breathtaking view of the Mediterranean.
Of course, leaning on the railing is another breathtaking view. James stands overlooking the sea, the evening breeze ruffling his hair, looking every bit like a priceless fresco you could find in a museum. His head turns to see your group walking up, and his eyes practically light up when they land on you.
You already know you’re done for.
There’s a handful of other patrons at other tables, and a small dance floor (you note with some trepidation), but the patio is mostly dominated by a large table reserved for your group. Already sitting down at the table are a few friends James invited, making good on Yelena’s request. A broad-shouldered man with sandy blonde hair and a dangerous smirk, another with shaggy hair and kind eyes and a deceptively muscular build, and a leggy brunette with dark eyes that Yelena eyes appreciatively.
James introduces them one by one, but you don’t absorb their names because his hand rests at your lower back, and you can feel the warmth of it through the thin fabric of your dress.
He pulls out your chair as you sit, the wine is poured, and the evening begins.
James's recommendation doesn’t disappoint. It's a set menu, with plate after plate appearing from the kitchen as the night progresses. Fresh seafood, decadent pastas, and seemingly endless bottles of wine.
It’s hard not to give in to the jovial atmosphere, especially once the wine loosens you up. James’s friends and yours volley interesting and humorous stories back and forth, with James chiming in to translate the occasional language gap. When he’s not playing translator, he leans in to whisper asides and little jokes to you, so close that his breath tickles your neck and sends shivers down your spine.
Halfway through, a guitarist comes through and everything livens as music fills the air. He takes requests from the restaurant patrons, sings duets with those drunk or brave enough to sing with him. As food gradually disappears but the drinks keep flowing, restaurant staff pass out novelty percussion instruments and pull people up from tables to dance.
Naturally, because everyone has officially had enough wine for the usual inhibitions to disappear, your entire table migrates to the dance floor.
You’re just buzzed enough to bust a move without tripping all over yourself and the people around you. And you’re not dancing with James, per se, but you’re not not dancing with him. He's just in your orbit, one of many people moving to the music around you, one that you just happen to interact with occasionally. That is, until he maneuvers you into a spin, and his hand finds your waist to draw you close, and then you are very much dancing with him.
His laughter and yours cut through the music, your bodies moving in time with each other in a way you don’t bother to overthink, close enough to be intimate but not obscene.
His mouth dips towards your ear. “Mi piace come ti muovi.”
God, that accent never fails to unravel you, even clueless as you are to the content of what he’s saying. “What does that mean?” you ask over the din of the music.
He turns you into another spin and replies, louder, “You are a wonderful dancer.”
You throw back your head in laughter as you nearly crash into him on the spin’s recovery. “You are such a liar!”
“I don’t lie,” he insists, his arm snaking around your waist and pressing your body close to his. “This you cannot fake.”
Emboldened by the feeling, you drape your arms around his neck and feel the music, your hips moving in conversation with his, and for a little while, everything else fades away.
The evening winds down, the car arrives to take you back to the hotel, and regretfully, it’s time to say goodbye again.
Under the backdrop of the sparkling night sky, James catches your elbow and asks softly for your phone. With a shy smile, you hand it off to him, and he quickly types his number into a new contact.
“You will call me?” he asks as he slips it back into your hands, standing close enough that you can breathe him in, the intoxicating mix of his cologne and sweat.
You raise an eyebrow playfully. “You want me to rack up your phone bill with international calls?”
“For you, I don't mind.” His hand finds your waist again, and he presses his lips to your cheek in a soft, lingering goodbye. You feel the slight scrape of his stubble and the fan of his breath on your skin, and maybe it’s the wine still in your system, but you feel a little weak in the knees.
After the rest of the girls load into the towncar, thanking James profusely and singing snatches of songs heard earlier in the night, he helps you in one last time. You squeeze his hand softly as you part, and you hope against hope that this isn’t the last time you’ll see him.
You wake up with the wine hangover of the century. Nevertheless, the only regret you have is that you didn’t kiss James. Well, you also regret not doing all the other things that come after kissing, either. But life is full of if onlys, and you resign yourself to letting this become yet another one of them. After all, you have one more night in Ischia, and then you all head back to the mainland. This is hardly the time to get in over your head with a guy you barely know.
With no big ticket events on the itinerary today, you spend the morning nursing your hangover in bed and slowly repacking your bag. When the afternoon rolls around, you and the girls rally enough to head down to the beach for one last hurrah in the sun and sand.
Of course, a hangover is no match for the spirit of the girls trip, and when six o’clock rolls around, you all venture back to the hotel bar for the aperitivo, wetting your whistles with the first drinks of the evening. After accompanying Kate for a bathroom break, you return to the table to find Yelena with your phone in her hands.
“What are you doing?” you ask, already feeling suspicious.
Yelena looks up, caught with her hand in the cookie jar. "Don't be mad.”
You snatch the phone from her hands, only to see the screen open to an exchange of texts with none other than James (whose contact she has changed to Sexy Italian Boat Man).
“James and his friends are meeting us for drinks,” she says cheerfully.
You try and fail to be mad, but secretly you’re thrilled. Still, for the sake of feminism, you have to at least pretend to be irritated. “I thought this was supposed to be a girls trip,” you point out, crossing your arms in faux disapproval.
She pulls you back into your chair with a serious look. “Babe. You have a shot with the hottest man on the continent, possibly on earth. And no offense, but you really need to get laid.”
You drop your jaw, outraged, but Yelena's face is the picture of innocence. “I'm just being a girl’s girl! And maybe I want to see that hot little brunette number again.” she waggles her eyebrows over her drink. “Have a girls trip of my own.”
The drinking establishment Yelena picked is… well, trashy. There's no other word for it. Fun, but trashy.
LED lights flash in blues and greens along the walls. The music is loud and danceable, and the drinks come in test tubes of many colors, labeled with cheeky pun names that James has to translate for the English speakers of the group.
It's the perfect place to get tipsy, dance your ass off, and flirt with a hot stranger. All activities you definitely plan to engage in tonight.
Ever the gentleman, James buys a round of test tube shots for the group, and everyone snatches one from the bar top. As you try not to fidget with the hem of the dress Yelena lent you, you select something bright blue that smells like coconut and poor decisions. When you toss it back, it tastes all right, but the aftertaste burns like jet fuel, making you wince. Everyone around you makes a similar face before breaking out into laughter and chatter.
The bartender lines up a new set of test tubes, and you start to feel brave enough to flirt. You glance up at James, who stands just next to you, playing it devastatingly cool. You pluck another shot from the bar top like a dare.
“So, if we’re gonna keep meeting like this, you’re gonna have to teach me some Italian,” you declare, leaning closer to him to be heard over the music, or maybe just to be closer to him.
“Is that so?” he replies, following your lead and picking up a shot as well.
“Mm-hmm.” You lick your lips, tasting the leftover rum and curaçao, watching as his eyes follow the movement shamelessly.
James taps his plastic test tube against yours and says slowly, clearly, “Cin-cin.”
“Cin-cin,” you repeat. “What does it mean?”
He smiles, lifting the shot to his lips. “Cheers.”
Not to be caught falling behind, you toss back your shot, the second already going down easier than the first. Discarding your test tube on the bar top, you toss your hair out of your eyes and say, “Teach me another.”
Without missing a beat, he responds, “Balla con me.”
“Balla con me,” you echo, a little more clumsily, a question mark in your eyes.
“Dance with me.” He takes your hand in his and begins to pull you in the direction of the throng of rhythmically writhing bodies.
You feel the thrum of the baseline through your feet, vibrating in your chest. You feel the heat radiating off all the people around you, the warmth of arms around you as James brings you in close. The lights flash, the music pounds, and you move with him like your body already knows his.
The shield of strangers between you and the eyes of your friends makes you bolder. You feel anonymous, like you could be anybody. Like you could be the kind of girl who dances far too close with a guy she’s only known for a day.
So you do.
You turn in his arms, guiding his hands to your hips as they sway to the rhythm. He takes the invitation to shift closer, his chest pressed to your back, his hips right against the swell of your ass. The beat turns filthier, and you don’t shy away from it.
Your hand wanders upward, behind your head to find purchase around the back of his neck as you move together, fluid, dangerous. His hands wander too, not feeling you up — he’s far too much of a gentleman for that. One hand splays against your ribs, keeping you pressed firmly against him as you dance. The other moves your hair off of your neck as he leans down, his lips grazing the shell of your ear and almost making you shudder.
His voice is low, warm, rumbling along with the bass line down to your bones. “Baciami.”
You huff something between a laugh and a sigh, turning in his arms again to face him.
“Baciami,” you say, copying his pronunciation to the best of your efforts. To better hear each other, your faces are so close that your noses almost touch. “What does that one mean?”
“Kiss me.”
The sway of your hips slows, until they come to a stop. In the dim, colored lights, you can just make out the way his eyes dart from yours, down to your lips, and back again.
Standing in the middle of a crowd of strangers in a country where you barely speak the language, you follow through on your words.
It’s everything you imagined it would be, and more.
Like everything else about him, his lips are warm. They move with instinct, with certainty against yours. It comes as naturally as dancing with him — the give and take, the dominance and surrender. His tongue nudges gently at your lips for permission, then sweeps into your mouth when you open for him. He makes a low, satisfied sound that you feel more than you hear.
You’re completely pressed against him from thigh to chest, but your arms drift over his sculpted shoulders and behind his neck to pull him somehow closer. Just like in the restaurant, everything fades away except his mouth and yours, your body and his.
His tongue strokes against yours, slow and decadent and filthy as the beat of the music. He tastes of sweat and amaretto and something addictive you can’t name. With the music blaring all around you, you moan shamelessly into his mouth, taking comfort in the fact that no one can hear it but him. Your hips tilt forward without permission from your brain, unconsciously seeking relief from the tension building within you.
One of his hands leaves your waist, trailing to your lower back and stopping there, fingers bunching in the fabric of your dress like he wishes he didn’t have to stop.
Eventually, you both need to come up for air, and you break apart from each other, nearly gasping, still close enough to breathe each other in.
He speaks just loud enough to be heard over the music. “Vieni a casa mia.”
You blink, a little stunned, a lot turned on. “I think I understood that one.”
There's a laundry list of reasons why you shouldn’t go home with him. He's almost a stranger. You're in a foreign country. You’ve been drinking. You have a ferry to catch tomorrow. You're technically here with your friends.
Guilt surges in your chest as you glance back towards the bar. “My friends—“
James, glancing over the heads of strangers between him and the bar, chuckles and assures you, "I think they’ll get over it.”
Through a break in the crowd, you see Kate and Natasha engaged in what appears to be some kind of drinking contest with the boys. Yelena and the brunette, Ava, are surreptitiously sneaking off in the direction of the bathroom, holding hands.
Yeah, you’re the least of their concerns right now.
His hand lingers at your lower back, his thumb tracing very distracting circles that burn through your shirt and into your spine. “Per favore,” he murmurs in your ear, and you’re pretty sure it’s the hottest thing you’ve ever heard.
“That means ‘please’,” you say breathlessly, when you manage to find command of the speech centers in your brain.
He hums approvingly, his other hand brushing hair away from your face and cradling your jaw. “I like how you say that.”
He's certainly very persuasive.
You’re a grown up, with a smartphone that can share your location. You’re buzzed, but not even close to drunk. You've taken krav maga lessons. You can handle yourself. And James is a professional contact of Natasha's, making him more trustworthy than a stranger walking off the street.
When he looks at you like that, every reason that you shouldn’t give in slips through your fingers like sand.
You take a deep breath. “Fuck it. Okay."
You still take precautions. You have James type the address into your phone and you text it to Natasha while he settles up the bar tab. When he summons a cab via a nearby taxi stand, you dictate the address to the driver in stilted Italian. You're not an idiot, after all. James bears your precautions without comment, gently pressing his lips to the back of your hand when the cab begins to move.
Because you still have some remaining class, the cab ride is an exercise in mutual restraint. You can still feel the ghost of his lips on yours, and he doesn’t let go of your hand, this thumb tracing sweeping arcs across your knuckles. Stolen glances and heated looks probably give the two of you away to the cab driver, but you keep a careful distance anyway. For now.
His apartment is, like him, stupidly charming.
He gently takes your purse and sets it on a nearby table, stepping back to let you briefly explore. It's a little on the small side, with an outdated kitchen and a few cracks in the floor tiles. James opens a set of curtains and a sliding glass door to let the night breeze in, and just outside is a small patio and an adorable breakfast nook, a half wall overlooking the vast, glimmering black of the sea and sky. You slip off your sandals and gravitate towards the door instantly, that view of the water never failing to take your breath away even after a week on this island.
James guides you wordlessly out onto the patio. Cool stone underneath your feet, you walk forward and place your hands on the half-wall, gazing outward. The warm night breeze kisses your skin, and you let your eyes flutter shut. His arms surround you again, his chest to your back like it had been at the club — but different now. Still charged, but softer, less urgent.
His lips meet the curve of your neck, pulling a sigh out of you. “Bellisima.”
You laugh softly, knowing that word. “I bet you say that to all the tourists.”
He smiles against your skin. “Maybe. But I don't do this.” Strong hands guide your hips, turning you in his arms, and his lips find yours again.
It's slow and sweet at first, but it doesn’t take long for the two of you to pick up where you left off at the club. Your ass and the backs of your thighs meet the cool plaster of the wall as he presses against you, his hands leaving warm trails as they roam over your spine, your waist, down to your hips.
His lips begin to explore as well, starting with the corner of your mouth, moving to the hinge of your jaw, the long line of your neck. Your pulse hammers in your throat as he nips gently and soothes the skin with his tongue, before his lips wander close to your ear again.
“Toccami,” he murmurs, the lesson continuing.
You repeat the word in a whisper. “Toccami.”
That smile plays at his lips again as his eyes find yours. “Very good.”
The praise settles low and hot in your belly, and one of his hands leaves your hip to intertwine his fingers with yours.
“Means ‘touch me’,” he translates softly.
You nod in understanding. Keeping his gaze, you drag your interconnected hands up your torso, pressing his palm to your breast and arching into it immediately.
“Toccami,” you whisper again, a plea instead of mere repetition.
He hums his approval, squeezing you gently and watching what it does to you with rapt attention. His other hand works the strap of your dress off your shoulder and his mouth descends, trailing hot, wet kisses over your collarbone, your chest, the soft curve of your breast that sneaks above your neckline. The hand still at your breast zeroes in on your nipple through the fabric of your dress, his thumb circling the numb slowly, firmly. You turn to putty in his hands, pliant and aching and gasping wordlessly for more, more.
His hands move lower to take your waist and lift slightly, and suddenly you’re sitting on the edge of the half wall. His eyes find yours, seeming to search for lingering reservations, or permission to keep going. You become briefly, acutely aware that you’re outside, and this isn’t exactly a secluded neighborhood. Anyone walking by on the sidewalk fifty feet away could hear you, even see you. But you’re on vacation, dammit, and you’ll never see any of these people again, and you really don’t want James to stop touching you.
Your legs part in invitation, and the hem of your dress rides up your thighs. James slots himself between them in an instant, his palms sliding along the newly exposed skin, his mouth closing over yours again.
You can’t remember the last time someone made you feel like this — sexy and free and so turned on you’re almost dizzy with it. The rough warmth of his palms drift higher, higher, until his thumb grazes your inner thigh, just shy of the edge of your underwear, so close to where you ache for him.
His lips part from yours just long enough for him to ask roughly, “Okay?” and wait for your reply. You nod eagerly, your mouth already slack with want before he’s even really touched you.
James groans as his hand moves to the growing wet patch on your underwear. He strokes you there, licking into your mouth once again to swallow the needy sound that escapes you.
His fingers graze your clit through the soaked fabric, and you practically whine into his mouth as your hips buck to chase his touch.
When he breaks the kiss to breathe, you beg shamelessly, “James, please, more.”
He immediately obliges, nudging the fabric to the side and finding that same spot, circling the bundle of nerves slowly but with precision. The touch lights you up, your brain going fuzzy with pleasure.
Your hands gather fistfuls of his shirt to help keep yourself upright, to pull him close and bury your face in his neck as mortifying sounds begin to spill out of your mouth. He allows it for a minute as he patiently winds you up, your breaths turning to little huffs and pants interspersed with moans. But in time, his other hand finds the nape of your neck, gently pulling you back a few inches and angling your face up towards his.
“I want to see you,” he says gently, before slowly sliding a finger into your entrance.
Your head drops back at the sensation, your eyes fluttering closed. Soon enough, one finger becomes two, working you open without any hurry while his thumb keeps up those delicious little circles against your clit. He adjusts the angle here and there, exploring, searching, until the arch of your body and the desperation in your voice signals to him that his fingers have found their destination.
They stay there, curling against that spot and coaxing you towards the height of your pleasure until your thighs tremble, until you whimper his name without care for if the neighbors would hear, until your body is strung tight like a bow and begging wordlessly for release.
“That's it,” he encourages you, pressing his forehead to yours. “Let go for me.”
A few more pathetic sounds escape, and you’re shuddering around him, intense pleasure moving through you like a tidal wave, washing over every corner of your body before gradually retreating. His eyes don’t leave you for a second, the awareness of being watched so intensely turning you on even more, prolonging the orgasm until your fingers slacken their grip on his shirt and you collapse slightly against him.
“Perfetta,” he mutters against your temple, then presses the gentlest of kisses there.
Once you come back to yourself a little and his hand finally retreats, you turn your attention to him. With your tiny dress rucked up to your hips and all of his clothes still in place, you feel a little exposed comparatively. One by one, you unfasten the buttons of his shirt and push the garment open, gazing at him appreciatively, like a marble statue you somehow get to admire up close.
As your eyes drag down his form, they catch the way he’s obviously hard and straining against his linen pants, despite being so, so patient with you. Your lips gently graze along his jaw, fingers trailing from his chest down to his abdomen, until they rest at the button of his pants.
“You gonna let me return the favor?” you ask, your voice still a little weak, but full of want.
He chuckles softly and kisses you in what feels like a very enthusiastic yes.
As smoothly as you can while working blind, you unbutton his pants as you kiss him, drinking in the satisfied groan he lets out when your hand sneaks past the waistband of his boxers and wraps around the base of him. You give him an experimental stroke, and something unusual catches your notice. He’s softer than you’d expect — not soft as in not-hard, because he’s evidently very, very hard. He's softer in texture than you’re used to.
And then you remember an offhand comment Natasha made about Italian guys, about how certain… cultural customs were different from America’s.
You’re a little caught off guard, but the thought of him being uncut doesn’t bother you. In fact, you suddenly find yourself extremely curious.
“Do you have a condom?” you mumble against his mouth.
As he goes for his wallet in his pocket, you slowly and deliberately ease yourself off the wall and sink down to your knees in front of him. When he realizes what you’re doing, his efforts stall for a second, like his brain is rebooting. And then he’s pulling out his wallet like nothing happened, though his fingers move just a little faster as he plucks a condom from its depths and shoves the wallet back into his pocket.
You take the time to carefully free him from his boxers and get yourself a good look. Honestly, it’s not as different as you’d expected, possibly because he’s (clearly and achingly) hard. His cock is a nice length and a very nice girth, decorated by veins that make your mouth water, with a soft fold of skin hugging the tip. You wrap your hand around him and stroke again, fascinated by the way the skin retreats when guided by your hand, by the way his breath hitches as you work him.
Once he manages to unwrap the condom, he holds it out to you — you’ve already got your hands on him after all. But you hesitate, a little unsure of the mechanics involved in accommodating the… bonus features in question.
“Maybe you should do that part,” you say, trying not to appear as awkward as you feel.
James looks down at you with a split second of confusion, and then it dawns on him, and his hands replace yours to roll the condom onto himself with practiced ease. “Right. American. I almost forgot.”
His expression turns slightly concerned, maybe even self-conscious, which is the opposite of what you want. He starts to ask gently, “Do you still—“
You nudge his hands away, grip him firmly at the base, and lick a long stripe along the underside of him in answer.
He lets out a startled sound, halfway between a chuckle and a moan. “Fuck, okay.”
Deciding that it can’t be that different from how you would normally give head, you follow your instincts, growing more confident with each swirl of your tongue over his cock, with each little noise he can’t hold back from making.
When you close your mouth over the tip and sink down around him, part of you wonders how it would feel without the barrier, what it would be like to feel that softness along your tongue, down your throat. The thought sparks some excitement, but not enough to overthrow your good judgment. You really like James, but you’re not trying to halt everything for an in-depth conversation about testing and past partners. And your fuck it mantra only goes so far.
The head of his cock hitting the back of your throat brings you back to the present, and you deftly work your hand over the remaining length you don’t manage to take. James groans, low and rumbling, his hand flying to your hair to ground himself. Encouraged, you begin to set a slow rhythm, enjoying yourself far too much to rush this. Every helpless, grateful sound he makes makes you even wetter, makes you throb for him in ways you haven’t felt in a long, long time.
Your eyes drift upward, and the ruined look on his face, the fluttering clench of his abs as he tries to control himself turns you on even more. You moan around him wantonly, try to take him even deeper, hollowing your cheeks on the uptake.
His hand tightens in your hair as he speaks breathlessly. “Aspettare.” Because you don’t know what it means, you assume it’s encouragement or praise from the way his hips twitch unconsciously. So you keep going, sinking your mouth down onto him again.
But then his hand cups your jaw. “Stop, stop,” he urges you gently as he withdraws, removing his cock from your mouth and gripping the base himself.
You look up in concern as you wipe your chin with the back of your gand. "Didn't you like it?” you ask, a little hoarse.
He nods, his other hand reaching to pull you up off your knees and into his arms. “Liked it too much. You are… incredible.”
James kisses you, slow and deep, moaning softly at the taste of himself on your tongue. Then he pulls back, fixing you with that stare full of intensity and desire. “I want to fuck you now.”
The barely there lilt of his accent, the wrecked rasp of his voice, the bluntness of the statement — it all does several overwhelming things to you. Heat throbs demandingly between your legs in response.
“Okay,” you murmur, incapable of a witty reply at the moment. “Right here?”
He nods again. “Right here. Can’t wait.”
His hands close over your hips and turn you until you’re standing how you started this, your back to his chest, his mouth on your neck. A playful nip, a reverent kiss, and then his hands move you again, pressing firmly but gently between your shoulder blades until you’re bending forward. Your forearms meet the top of the half wall, and your pulse roars in your ears when you realize the implication of this position.
James makes an approving sound, squeezes one of your ass cheeks, and then fully hikes the hem of your dress up and over your hips.
You feel the drag of your underwear down your legs, the sudden exposure of all your most sensitive parts on display in the night air. You gulp nervously and grip the edge of the wall. You've never done anything like this before – any of this, really. Nerves mingle with arousal in the pit of your stomach.
Behind you, you hear the wet slide of his hand on his cock, slowly pumping himself, and the anticipation makes you shiver.
“Is this still okay?” he asks, his hand settling softly at your lower back.
You decide that you’re going to be brave about this, because the building desire in your gut is too demanding to ignore, because you’re not ready for this to stop. Because in spite of your nerves, you want it, bad.
“Please, James.” You deepen the arch of your back, practically presenting for him, too turned on to be as mortified as you would normally feel doing so.
He mutters something in Italian that you don’t catch, and he notches the head of his cock at your entrance, easing himself inside you.
It’s the perfect stretch, filling you so well your eyes almost roll to the back of your head when he bottoms out. With his hips flush to your ass, he groans appreciatively, leaning over to plant a kiss between your shoulders.
“You feel so good,” he mutters into your skin before straightening up, pulling out and thrusting languidly into you again. “So fucking good.”
With every roll of his hips into yours, you push back to meet him. It's relaxed and unhurried. Not punishing, not rough. Just pure sensation, two people enjoying each other’s bodies. The rhythm stokes your desire into a smoldering fire, gradually building higher and higher with each thrust.
His hand grips your shoulder for leverage as he drives into you from behind, slow but unrelenting. The position is vulnerable, but somehow makes you feel powerful at the same time – especially as his murmured praise underscores the wet slide of your bodies moving together.
The intensity climbs higher and higher, your moans growing more frequent, your head dropping down onto your forearms when it becomes too much to keep it aloft. Unable to help yourself any longer, you slip a hand between your legs to play with yourself, so close to the edge you can taste it.
Even though you can’t see it, you can feel that James is affected by the way your cunt squeezes around him in anticipation of the fall. His grip at your shoulder tightens, his thrusts hit deeper and become less controlled.
“Fuck, I — right there, I’m right there,” he pants, voice straining and desperate.
“God, James," you half-moan, half-sob, your free hand gripping the half wall with white knuckles.
Your fingers work furiously at your clit as he buries himself deeper and deeper, and it seizes you all at once — spikes of arousal and pleasure that you feel down to your very marrow, muscles contracting with every wave of it. Your cry is something barely recognizable as your own voice.
James groans something unintelligible in Italian, thrusts as deep as he can and stays there — hips twitching, cock pulsing, his torso folding over top of you as he holds you close and shudders softly.
The sounds of the waves in the distance, labored breath, and the engines of faraway scooters and cars blend into white noise, soothing you as you float down from the high. James presses his sweaty forehead to your shoulder, sighing with satisfaction.
“That was good,” he says simply.
You laugh breathlessly and push yourself up on your forearms slightly, regaining some use of your limbs. “Yeah. That was really good.”
With a soft grunt, he pulls out of you and helps you stand up straight, pulling the hem of your dress back down with his usual care and tenderness. Carefully, he removes the condom and tucks himself back into his pants. He leaves his shirt unbuttoned, his chest glistening with beads of sweat that make him even more difficult to look away from.
His lips brush your hairline in a lingering kiss, and he mutters, “Let’s go to bed.”
“Tired already?” you tease, your fingers sliding underneath the fabric of his shirt and grazing his ribs.
James shakes his head as his eyes rake over you shamelessly. “I want to get you out of this dress.”
Strong arms wrap around your waist, bringing you close, his nose nudging playfully against yours. “And I want to taste you,” he adds, his eyes dark and full of desire that still burns for you even now.
Your mouth goes dry, and your knees go even weaker.
“The bed is more comfortable than the wall,” he points out casually.
You nod dreamily. “That sounds… perfetta.”
He laughs, kissing your cheek affectionately. “Perfetto. Perfetta is feminine, for you.”
You roll your eyes and kiss him, dispensing with the Italian lessons for the moment. “Just take me to bed, James.”
You wake up to possibly the most heavenly smell on earth — freshly brewing espresso.
Last night, after all of your spirited activities, you’d fired off a check-in text to Natasha and collapsed into James's linen sheets, the night breeze floating through the open window. You'd slept like the dead, the pleasant weight of his arm slung around your waist and the sounds of the sea pulling you under.
Now, when you open your eyes, the bed is empty beside you. You stretch your limbs, reveling in the pleasant soreness that lingers heavy in your body, and reach for your phone.
The first thing you see is a text from Yelena, timestamped forty-five minutes ago.
good morning slut!!! text when you get this so we know you’re still alive and didn’t receive the dick of death
You roll your eyes, smirking, and type up a reply.
i lived bitch
Your phone buzzes just a few seconds later.
so proud of you :) nat says ferry at 1:00, do NOT be late. let me know if you need me to pack your shit
You wince at the hour, wishing you had a little more time to get your life together, and a little more time to spend with you-know-who. Sighing, you pry yourself from the comfort of his bed, shrug on his discarded button-down from last night, and venture out to the kitchen.
You find James puttering about the kitchen in only his underwear, humming softly under his breath. A moka pot sputters on the stovetop while he spreads jam on a few pieces of warm toast. When he spots you, that easy grin spreads across his face and he reaches for your hand. His eyes migrate down your form, noting his shirt on your back and your bare legs beneath it, and he looks immensely pleased.
“Smells good,” you mumble, rubbing sleep from your eyes.
James pulls you into his arms, planting a brief but affectionate kiss on your lips. “Buongiorno.”
“Morning,” your reply, smiling up at him wearily.
“You leave today.” It's a statement, not a question, and you detect a hint of disappointment in his voice as his arms tighten around you.
You shrug, already resigned to your fate. “Yeah. Ferry to Sorrento this afternoon. I gotta get back to the hotel.”
“You have time for coffee.” Another kiss, this time pressed just underneath your jaw. “And a shower.”
“Is that your way of telling me I stink?” you ask facetiously, raising an eyebrow.
“It's my way of keeping you longer.” His lips continue their descent down the slope of your neck, and he reaches down to squeeze your ass playfully. “And getting you naked again.”
A cappuccino, a slice of toast, and a long and steamy shower later, you’re running behind farther than you’d like to be. It's looking like Yelena will have to pack your suitcase after all, but James, in true gentlemen fashion, offers to save time by driving the group out to the ferry.
Wearing your dress from last night onto the ferry is a no-go. It's a rumpled wreck, and wearing a hemline that high before sunset totally screams walk of shame. James generously offers you a button-down and a pair of drawstring linen shorts from his closet. You have to pull the drawstring tight so the shorts don’t fall off of you, and you’re sort of swimming in the shirt, but at least you look moderately appropriate for daytime. The shirt smells like him, which is a bonus.
You offer to send them back by mail once they’re washed. James shakes his head and insists that you keep them, as a little memento of your time in Ischia. The idea makes your chest ache with a bittersweet feeling.
It's a bit of a squeeze to fit all the girls and the luggage in James's Fiat, but they make it work. They're on their best behavior when you and James pick them up from the hotel (having been warned via text that you will push them off the deck of the ferry if they embarrass you). There's still a lot of giggling and conspiratorial looks and thinly veiled innuendo.
Before you know it, you’re all standing dockside, waiting to board the ferry among various strangers. The final goodbye looms over your head, like a dangling sword about to stab you in the heart.
Yelena loudly announces that she, Kate, and Natasha will bring the luggage on board, shoves you in James's direction, and starts grabbing bags before he can try to convince her to let him carry them. The girls escape up the ramp with their bags, leaving you alone with him.
James takes your hand in his, pressing his lips to your knuckles. “You will call me, yes?” he asks.
“I will,” you reply, meaning it. “If you’re ever in the states again, come see me.”
“If you ever decide to quit your job and come live the good life here, let me know.”
You laugh in surprise. Because that would be crazy. “I don't know about that. Once your country figures out air conditioning, or ice water, maybe I'll consider it.”
He shrugs, grinning. “It was worth a shot.”
Something delicate and uncertain hangs in the air for a moment, until James surrenders to it and wraps his arms around you, his lips finding your ear one last time.
“Non dimenticarmi.”
You pull back a few inches to look into those devastating, oceanic eyes. “What does that mean?”
His fingers brush your windswept hair away from your face, his expression soft and fond. "Don't forget me.”
Your heart seizes up in your chest again.
“I could never do that,” you promise.
In the full knowledge that your friends are certainly watching from the deck of the ferry, and not giving a damn about it, you stretch up onto your tiptoes and kiss him. You take as much time with it as you can afford, closing your eyes and trying to memorize the taste of him, the feeling of his arms around your waist, the notes of his cologne.
After a moment, your lips part from his reluctantly. James squeezes you in one last embrace, then sends you up the ramp to board the ferry with the last of the passengers. At the top, you look back. He's still standing there, looking like a dream, and he pulls a hand out of his pocket to wave.
You wave back, then turn to go find your friends before you do something stupid like change your mind, like run back down the ramp and into his arms like a rom-com heroine who doesn’t have to deal with consequences after the credits roll.
As you move through the crowd of passengers, Natasha waves you over from near the bow. You arrive to a chorus of exaggerated kissing sounds and lewd moans from the three girls. But once Nat sees your downtrodden expression, she immediately takes you in her arms, telling you all about the things in Sorrento that will cheer you up and take your mind off Sexy Italian Boat Man.
“I give it six months before he comes to the US to visit her,” Kate mutters to Yelena, thinking you can’t hear her over the lap of the waves and the noise of the crowd.
Yelena scoffs and whispers, "I give it a year before she moves here.”
Sambucky fic where Nebula breaks in on Christmas Eve to steal the arm, and Bucky panics and goes full into flight or fight mode. All he thinks about is keeping Sam safe (because established relationship. They’re sleeping next to each other) and fucking launches himself at Nebula because he don’t know who that is.
you let out a small shiver, when you step out of your work building.
tightening your jacket more around you, you start to make your long walk home.
sometimes you wish you had a car, so you don't have to do that much walking, but on the other hand, you're glad that you walk a lot since it helps your brain relax after a long day at work.
plus there's nothing better than reconnecting with nature.
just as you're a couple blocks away from your apartment you hear a whine. you stop in your tracks, wondering what that small, weak sound was.
another whine, similar to the first one has you looking down a dark alley.
you bite your lip nervously, knowing that you, a young woman shouldn’t go down an alley at this time of night but you can’t help the way your heart clenches at hearing those sounds.
you close your eyes, wondering if this will be the worst idea you’ve ever done and you might get abducted but before you can psych yourself out of it you hear another whine, louder than the last. it sounds like a… puppy.
damn it, if it's a puppy then you definitely can’t bring yourself to stand here and do nothing. especially with how it's so cold outside and it's raining. the poor puppy, is probably scared or even worse, injured.
you'll never forgive yourself if you walk past this alley, thinking that this whole thing was a trap for you or another person, but instead there was in fact a puppy sitting there, waiting for someone to come and help them.
you huff, throwing your hands in the air. you must look ridiculous to all the cars going by but you know what, what's the worse that could happen? i mean you could end up abducted or... dead but at least you died with the intention of helping a helpless animal.
you take a deep breath, wrapping your coat tighter around you, and then start walking down the alley to see if you can find whatever is sounding so hurt.
little do you know, something or someone has been watching you this whole time.
bucky sighs, running a hand down his face. today has been a long day and all he wants to do is get home, maybe call one of his regular women that will drop anything just to please him and go to sleep.
the soft sound of the rain hitting the roof of the car calms him as he looks out the window. his eyes squint when he catches a glimpse of a woman standing at the opening of an alley far up ahead.
he can’t exactly see her face until he gets closer but when he does, he sees that she’s utterly stunning.
probably the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen in his entire life. even with her face slightly wet by the rain.
“stop the car.”
“sir?” the driver asks, looking back and seeing that bucky near enough has his head pushed up against the window.
bucky gives his driver a glance, raising his eyebrow slowly.
“yes sir.” the driver says, practically folding without bucky even having to repeat himself.
the driver quickly parks at the other side of the street to which you’re on. giving bucky a perfect view of you.
you snuggled up in your coat, standing smack in the middle of the side walk, with your eyes closed and face titled towards the dark, cloudy sky. it’s like you’re talking to yourself in your head.
what on earth are you doing?
and why is he so entranced by you that he asked his driver to suddenly park on the side of the road, when he’s meant to be on his way home after a long night of handling business?
he narrows his eyes at you, watching the way the cold air trickles out of your mouth when you huff and throw your arms in the air, and the way your mouth moves softly like you’re trying to talk yourself into doing something.
“um sir, are we waiting for someone or—”
“shh.” bucky snaps, seeing you take a deep breath, wrap your coat tighter around your body, and walk into the random, pitch black alley.
what the fuck? bucky says in his head. what is genuinely wrong with this strange but beautiful woman. without thinking, bucky opens the car door and steps out.
“sir—”
“just wait here till i get back.” bucky grunts, fixing his cuff links before slamming the car door and following you.
he doesn’t know who you are, or why you’re deciding to walk into an alley by yourself at near enough ten in the evening. but he sure is about to find out.
bucky watches you carefully.
keeping a safe distance behind you so you don't notice that there's someone in this alley with you.
he wants to know what you're doing, but for the life of him he can't figure it out.
all he's seen you do is walk slowly, your hand pressed against the rough brick wall, to help you lead your way through the dark alley. he's seen you trip over your heels a couple times, and he's also had to stop himself from lunging out to catch you.
he doesn't know why he has this sudden urge to not only follow you but to make sure that you don't get yourself hurt.
he doesn't even know you... yet.
his thoughts are interrupted when he hears a small yap. it's so small that if he wouldn't of had enhanced hearing he probably wouldn’t of heard it.
“where are you hiding?” you coo.
bucky’s brows furrow in confusion as he keeps his slow stride behind you, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his slacks.
is this the reason why you decided to walk down here?
because you heard the noise of an animal?
do you not know how easy it is for attractive women like you to get ambushed in situations like this.
bucky shakes his head in disbelief.
because if you so easily caught his eye, imagine how many eyes you’ve caught from men that walk past you on the street daily.
too bad that that’s not going to happen anymore.
you’re his. no one else is having you.
bucky’s possessive thoughts get interrupted yet again when you let out a yelp, jumping back.
bucky can’t help himself but step a bit closer to see what scared his girl and if he needs to intervene.
his concerns cease to a stop when you suddenly kneel down and stand up cradling a small, dirty and damp puppy.
you don’t think you could’ve ever forgiven yourself if you ended up stepping onto that puppy, even though it would’ve been accidentally.
you didn’t think that it would’ve ran across your heels, and because you’re basically covered in darkness, you never even saw it coming.
you thought it was just a rat or something.
it was only when you kneeled down that you was able to catch a glimpse of its big brown eyes and its wet nose, and then you knew you found it.
and you’re so happy you did.
“oh look at you, you’re filthy.” you whisper to the small puppy in your arms.
“how can someone be so cruel to just leave you here.” tears start to cloud your vision, at the thought of someone dumping this poor, helpless animal in an alley to die.
you don’t get how some people can be so mean.
you shrug your coat off, wrapping the material around the puppy’s small frame. not even caring about the harsh chill that comes to your arms.
you stand up with it bundled in your arms and start to make your walk back through the alley.
you keep your head down, even once you’ve emerged from the narrow alley. your eyes focused on the precious bundle in your arms and not even noticing the figure that is walking straight towards you.
you gasp when you bump into someone’s chest, and you gasp again when you feel the warmth of a palm settling on your arm to stop you from toppling over.
“oh i’m so sorry.” you apologise, sidestepping the tall man and not even giving him a second glance.
your priority is getting home and calling the nearest vet immediately.
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