missbubblesoda🫧

ancient relic from 1995. ko-fi.com/missbubblesoda

[missbubblesoda]

𝄃𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄀𝄁𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄃 「 ✦ fic masterlist. ✦ 」 𝄃𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄀𝄁𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄃

genres:

smut (ᰔ)

angst (꩜)

fluff (❀)

「 ✦ RDR ✦ 」 ────────

arthur morgan x reader ── .✦

a summer’s worth of sugar. (ᰔ❀, COMPLETE) just a quiet collection of domestic moments shared in a remote forest cabin with a wanted man you happened to find bleeding in your kitchen. Somewhere between shared breakfasts, sketches in a worn journal, and the intimate hush of the woods, the dangerous stranger slowly begins to feel less like a guest and more like a husband you never planned on having. chapters: (1) | (2) | (3) | (4) | (5) | AO3

john marston x reader ── .✦

cigarettes, honey, and broken things. (ᰔ꩜❀, COMPLETE) you go about your quiet cabin life on a slow summer day, sugar-dusted pie on the sill, dirt worked deep beneath your nails. But the past still whispers through the trees, telling stories of campfire smoke, a gang of outlaws you once ran with, and a certain boy who carried the night in his eyes and wolf-claws on his cheek. Some loves are meant to stay buried. Others are only waiting to find their way home. chapters: (1) | (2) | (3) | (4) | AO3

「 ✦ RE ✦ 」 ────────

chris redfield x reader ── .✦

man nearing fifty. (ᰔ❀, COMPLETE) After a deployment to Eastern Europe goes entirely south, lingering ghosts chase you straight to the Captain’s door on a Friday night—a heavy stack of files beneath your arm and city slush melting beneath your heels. Somewhere between the quiet hum of late-night TV and the warm comfort of a homemade meal, the rigid boundaries of rank begin to blur, and soon, you find yourself proposing to cross a line the BSAA strictly forbids. chapters: (1) | (2) | (3) | AO3

「 ✦ AOT ✦ 」 ────────

erwin smith x reader ── .✦

early in the morning, especially when it rains, and a little before noon. (ᰔ꩜❀, COMPLETE) I basically took Isayama’s work, forced it into a romance story, and made Erwin the love interest. Commander meets cadet and they fall in love (not instantly though). Chapters: (1) | (2) | (3) | (4) | (5) | (6) | (7) | (8) | (9) | (10) | (11) | (12) | (13) | (14) | (15) | (16) | (17) | (18) | (19) | (20) | (21) | (22) | (23) | (24) | (25) | (26) | (27) | (28) | (29) | (30) | (31) | (32) | (33) | (34) | (Erwin’s letter) | (Where the air is sweet—FINAL) | AO3

[missbubblesoda]

man nearing fifty. (3)

chris redfield x fem!reader

summary: After a deployment to Eastern Europe goes entirely south, lingering ghosts chase you straight to the Captain’s door on a Friday night—a heavy stack of files beneath your arm and city slush melting beneath your heels. Somewhere between the quiet hum of late-night TV and the warm comfort of a homemade meal, the rigid boundaries of rank begin to blur, and soon, you find yourself proposing to cross a line the BSAA strictly forbids.

genre: 60% domestic fluff, 30% smut, 10% angst, 100% chris being a dilf

status: complete

warnings: none

notes: - down bad for re8 chris doesn’t even begin to cover the extent of my predicament so here’s this tooth-rotting fluff i wrote as a result of spending too much time imagining what dilf chris would do on his day off - was supposed to be a one-shot but guess whose wc suddenly tipped over 20k - I was literally writing this fic, wondering what his apartment would look like when the Veronica trailer dropped, and suddenly I didn’t have to wonder anymore lol. Though I’d like to think Village!Chris’ place would be tidier than Veronica!Chris’(?)

wc: 4.1k

other chapters: (1) | (2) | AO3 | masterlist

You swallowed the growing knot lodged high in your throat and stepped into the open kitchen, where his eyes were already waiting for yours.

He stood exactly where you’d predicted, his nose and cheeks fevered by the biting chill of the balcony—or perhaps just the lingering heat of your shared touch. He was barely three or four steps away, yet the sudden silence stretched the floorboards into a vast, grueling expanse, making it hard to believe that a mere ten minutes ago, there had been no space between your bodies at all.

You shifted your weight without meaning to, a tiny movement, as if testing whether the floor would sink beneath your feet if you dared to step closer. His body echoed the motion, adjusting subtly in place, as though deciding whether he ought to speak first or let you break the quiet instead. It was a rare window of hesitation you knew he wouldn’t leave open for long. After all, his body was trained to lead, not to falter.

Your knuckles whitened around the nylon ball in your palm as you watched his lips finally part.

“You’re heading out?”

The question was laced with a gentle smile that stopped short of his eyes—a familiar, subtle tilt of his lips that you mirrored by sheer reflex, despite the frenzied thundering of your heart against your ribs.

Ever the dutiful captain, he had thrown you a lifeline wrapped in a casual question—rescuing you from the confusion of figuring out how to act by offering an easy script to follow. Now, all you had to do was play your part and pretend that since the front door clicked shut half an hour ago, you’d done nothing but drop off paperwork and exchange pleasantries over the kitchen counter.

Yes, see you on Monday.

Five simple words that would let you snatch your phone from the table, pull your coat from its hanger, and slip out the door. They formed behind your teeth, clean and easy, but actually forcing them past your lips felt entirely impossible. So instead, you just offered him a small, tentative nod.

“They’re saying the storm will be here in an hour or two,” he warned, his gaze dipping to the ball in your palm, counting the restless tapping of your fingers before anchoring back on your face. “Could be sooner. Air’s growing too still.” He gestured vaguely toward the balcony. “Think you can make it home before that?”

Your eyes followed his lead, but the glass was a black mirror, throwing back nothing but the silhouette of your own hesitation.

“I can drive you,” he offered quietly. “If that’s alright.”

The words brushed soft against your ears—a sudden, tender warmth swelling in your chest despite the chill threatening the city outside. Still, you couldn’t bring yourself to accept. With rush hour traffic in full swing, your own commute would be a narrow escape, but manageable. It was him you worried for. You didn’t want him stranded in the whiteout, trapped somewhere between your apartment and his own.

Shaking your head lightly, you let your feet pull you into his space, lured by the rich, distracting traces of a freshly smoked pack woven into his clothes—especially that wrinkled shirt you bitterly wished he hadn’t been in such a rush to throw back on.

“You’ve got plenty of work to do, Captain,” you began, letting his rank hang in the quiet air between you—a futile attempt to remind yourself why tonight was a sweet indulgence that must never happen again. “I’ve already sidetracked you enough.”

You knew that, yet your feet stalled right in front of him anyway, frozen by the sheer greed to steal a few final seconds of his heat before stepping out into the bitter dark.

“Besides,” your eyes flickered toward the stove where his dinner sat forgotten. “I don’t want that getting any colder than it already is.”

A soft chuckle rumbled from his chest in response—a sound coarse as raw sugar, worn down in a familiar, human way that made you ache for the right to stay and make sure he got enough rest.

“Thank you.” The words spilled hot across your cheeks, his voice hoarse with tobacco. And you couldn’t tell whether he was thanking you for making him dinner, or for letting him fuck you breathless after it.

It didn’t matter. You would do both all over again if he only asked. And you knew he could read the submission in your gaze now that the room wasn’t dark enough for your thoughts to hide.

Before reason could stop you, you moved, the floorboards groaning faintly beneath your bare toes as you rose to press a soft, parting kiss against his jaw.

Though his stubble prickled sharp against your lips, you let the sting burn just a moment longer before tearing yourself away—just enough so the ghost of his touch could follow you all the way home.

“Anytime.”

He watched your lips shape the word, his eyes swallowing you whole like the farthest, bluest depths of the open sea—tracing slow, lingering paths from your mouth to your eyes and back down again, as though he stood balanced on the edge of a decision, debating whether the fall would be worth it.

And for one dizzy, sweltering heartbeat, a wild idea flickered to life inside your chest. Perhaps he wasn’t ready to go back to being just your captain. Perhaps he wasn’t ready to stop pretending either.

Not just yet.

His arm drew you in before you even saw it move, closing tight around the narrow of your waist. The heat of his forearm molded perfectly to the curve of your spine, intimate and familiar, as if your body had spent countless Friday evenings anchored against the heat of his.

He held you flush against the hard swell of his chest, your lips hovering just a mere fraction apart in that suffocating space where your breath became his.

“Do you mind if I kiss you before you go?” His eyes sparked embers all over your skin—a blistering blue that drew you in even as it scorched.

“Not at all, sir,” you breathed, the title a silken thread trembling in the hot, restricted air you shared.

The slow smile that touched his lips was the last thing you saw before your eyelids fluttered shut. There was a faint absurdity to it—calling him by his rank while the room still hummed with the scent of what you’d done—but years of conditioning were hard to break; and his lips had never taught yours to shape any other name for him.

Your lungs stalled as his mouth pressed against yours, completely forgetting their purpose the moment his tongue commanded you to open for him. Wide. Compliant. As though he owned you entirely. There was no need to coax you when he knew you’d been trained to obey him. No need to tease when he’d already claimed you. No need to be gentle when he already knew how deep you liked to feel him, how hard he had to press to make you crumble.

A weak, unbidden whimper bled from your mouth into his—a sound born from instinct rather than will as your chest begged for air. Far from stopping him, your cry only guided his hand to the nape of your neck, tilting your head back so you could feel his tongue bury even deeper. His grip didn’t bruise, it was just tight enough to grant you what you craved; just stern enough to hold you fast in case you tried to break free.

As if you’d even dare to, when all you’d ever wanted was this. Your hair tangled in his fist. His stubble burning your skin raw. Your entire frame trembling in his arms as he savored you like this.

Open and deep.

Slow, yet impatient.

Hungry, yet perfectly contained.

Never clumsy. Just wet.

Consuming you until there was barely anything left. Until your knees buckled. Until your mouth gasped helplessly against his. Until you came completely apart on his tongue and the suffocating temptation to call him by his name.

His real name.

Your hands cupped his face in blissful distress, his stubble bristling against your palms as your tongue matched his hunger—tasting dark coffee, cigarette smoke, and the sweetest mercy you’d ever been given.

Just seven days ago, you’d been watching him across the cold, shuddering hull of a transport helicopter. He was nothing but a statue in his own seat then—present in flesh, but mentally light-years away in a dark place of his own making. The whole ride, his gaze had been buried beneath a harsh, heavy frown, lifting only to check on Mia Winters as she soothed a restless baby Rosemary right next to you.

Yet here you were a week later, burying your broken cries into his mouth as you took him so completely. For years, you had used company policy as a shield against your own treacherous thoughts—the kind that visited on long, quiet nights when loneliness threatened to make you bold enough to dial his number. You had forced yourself to prioritize protocol, clinging to the belief that certain lines were uncrossable—that every single desire, every single thing you imagined his lips doing to you, was strictly outlawed by BSAA regulations. Never once guessing that he was just as willing to burn the damn rulebook for a single night with you.

Your chest hitched against his, your entire body shuddering in his hold as it waited for his permission to breathe.

And then, out of a sudden mercy—or perhaps just his own desperate need for air—he broke the kiss.

A sharp, violent gasp tore from you, oxygen flooding your burning lungs like breaching the ocean’s surface after nearly drowning.

He pulled away just barely, just far enough to look at you, like an artist stepping back to marvel at his own creation. Through heavy eyelids, he drank in your glazed gaze and your flushed skin; studying the shape of your lips as air escaped them in short, fractured sobs. And for one sweltering heartbeat, as he waited for you to catch your breath just so he could steal it away again, you allowed yourself the luxury to wonder if maybe, just maybe, he was every bit as addicted to this as you were.

“Do you really have to go?” he rasped against your mouth, his lips gleaming with your saliva and his chest heaving beneath your palms.

“I thought you didn’t want me—” you began, but he leaned in, kissing the rest of the sentence straight off your lips.

“—wasting my Friday evening?” you finished playfully, catching his bottom lip between your teeth before he could slide away. “Said it was too short or something.”

A deep, easy chuckle escaped him, rumbling beneath your fingers and brushing warm across your face.

“It is, but I don’t much like the idea of you out on those roads alone.” His hand slid from the nape of your neck to cradle your cheek. “Weather’s turning ugly.”

You let his thumb glide softly over your skin—a silent promise to keep you warm against the bitter night ahead.

Not that you needed much convincing anyway.

“Then keep me here,” you whispered, your hands sliding up his chest to drape over his broad shoulders, feeling the crumpled cotton of his shirt bunch beneath your fingers.

His grip tightened around your waist, pulling you in to seal the promise against your smiling lips—dissolving the world beyond the frosted glass, melting the kiss into something thicker. Something gentler.

Something sweet enough to last far beyond tonight.

-

The final hours of a Friday could never be described as quiet in a city like this. There was always a siren wailing somewhere in the heart of town, drunk laughter spilling loud onto the pavement, or a car zooming recklessly past the window just as you were about to drift asleep. Tonight, however, the storm had swallowed it all.

Only the wind broke the silence, knocking impatiently against the windowpane beside you, rattling the frame as if begging for shelter from the freezing night.

Downstairs, the streets lay entirely abandoned, buried beneath the heavy white blanket that had begun falling sometime after nine. You weren’t sure of the exact time; it had been hours since the clock last mattered. Your whole world had shrunk down to the low hum of late-night television and the damp whisper of your lips parting against his in a slow, sleepy chain of kisses shared in the dark.

Sometime after dinner, you’d tumbled into bed together, putting on a supernatural thriller you’d been wanting to watch for a while—but the right time never seemed to come when you lived alone on the outskirts. Online reviews had praised it, but you honestly had no idea how it ended. By the second act, your lips were already back on his, and long after the credits rolled, you still remained hopelessly tangled in his sheets—a leg draped over his lap, your skin tingling with the fading warmth of a hot shower, wrapped in nothing but his arms and the oversized shirt he’d pulled from his dresser for you to sleep in.

His palm traveled warm and raspy across your bare thigh, tracing a silent apology over the faint bruises he’d pressed into your skin earlier in the kitchen.

“I’m sorry.” His fingertips slid beneath the hem of your shirt to rest easily against the tender curve of your hip.

Shifting back an inch, you sought his gaze, your hand braced against the solid planes of his chest—bare, since he hadn’t bothered with clothes after his own shower. Completely indifferent to the howling blizzard outside, he’d walked back into the room wearing nothing but a pair of boxer briefs—the dark cotton clinging tightly to the hard, hair-dusted lines of his thighs.

Under the flickering glow of the TV, his eyes glimmered softly as they held yours—like a deep, stormy patch of blue sea caught in a midnight gale.

“Don’t be,” you whispered, your nose nudging his as you shook your head. “It was perfect.”

A faint smile softened his features, welcoming the brief, sugared pecks you began sprinkling along the line of his jaw, before concern tightened his brow once more.

“Still, I shouldn’t have handled you like that.” His thumb drew a soothing arch against your skin, as though the rough pad of his finger could somehow erase the purple blooming beneath. “Just look at you.”

A ghost of guilt shadowed his gaze as it drifted down to the thigh slung over his lap, where the distinct print of his fingers was branded in dark violets and vivid crimsons.

Had they been on your wrists or neck, you would’ve spent the entire Monday morning commute fabricating a lie for the office. But here, hidden away on skin only he was allowed to see, they were your secret. A secret that neither John, Emily, or—

Shit.

You bolted upright, your palms shoving against his chest for leverage.

“I forgot to text Charlie,” you breathed, already swinging your legs out of the heavy covers.

Your feet thudded faintly against the cold floorboards of the hallway, goosebumps prickling beneath the hem of his giant shirt as your body mourned the heat you’d just abandoned on the mattress.

At the end of the dark corridor, the kitchen greeted you with the low hum of the refrigerator. It sat drowned in a lonely midnight gloom, pierced only by the blinking blue of his laptop’s standby light and the ghostly glow bleeding through the frosted glass.

On the table, your phone still waited exactly where you’d abandoned it hours ago. Shaking your head disapprovingly, you swiped the screen awake, the sudden glare stinging your eyes in the dark.

12:01

Far too late for a call. Though you wouldn’t be surprised if everyone was still up, drinking the storm away over at John’s.

‘So sorry I missed tonight! Do NOT leave me out of the next one. I swear I won’t bail.’

Mischief curved your lips into a smirk as your thumbs typed the next line.

‘Drinks are on me next time. My place!’

You chuckled softly into the dark, knowing full well the message read more like a threat than an invitation. Absolutely nobody liked driving out to your apartment, they always joked that visiting you felt less like a casual hangout and more like a tactical deployment to the far edge of the city.

Grinning at the memory, you set your phone down on the wood beside his computer. Earlier, you’d stepped out of the shower to find him sitting before the glowing screen, his fingers flying across the keyboard as though he actually had a better place to weather the storm than buried in the warmth of the sheets with you. You had managed to coax him into snapping the lid shut for the night, but the blue light winking at you from the side of his laptop warned that his retreat was only temporary. After all, Captain Redfield wasn’t one to surrender. He was simply playing along, waiting for your eyes to close so he could brew a fresh pot of coffee and bleed the rest of his night away into briefings and reports.

Your gaze hovered over the white sea of classified files scattered before you, stopping where a glint of reflective silver caught the night filtering through the window. You didn’t dare disturb his arrangement, but you recognized the metallic edge of the packaging instantly.

More pills?

You stared at the silhouette of the blister pack for a dull, aching heartbeat. It was a bitter, agonizing thing—knowing that, at least for now, caring had to look like doing nothing at all. Supporting him had to sound like asking no questions at all.

Yet his words from earlier still found their way back to you, even in the dark.

‘He had this.’

They lingered in the breathless space between your lips every time his arms wrapped around you, haunting the quiet heartbeats after a kiss, whenever your eyes met in the gloom.

Why did the two of you get to share this warmth, while better souls lay buried in the snow?

You let the ghosts of the fallen trail behind as you retraced your steps to his room, taking a deep, numbing sip of cold night air before stepping through the door—shelving the bitter question in the back of your mind for another night that wasn’t tonight. For a future that wasn’t the present—this present smiling at you from the bed. Warm, real and entirely yours.

At least until the sun rose on a new day.

A wistful smile touched your lips as you walked over to him. To the hollow in the mattress that still held your shape. To the soft nest of blankets perfumed with his heat, completely indifferent to the wind lashing furiously against the window—a window to a world you were allowed to forget tonight.

“What did he say?” he murmured, the quiet glow of the television casting shifting colors across his features.

“Nothing yet. Just sent him a text.” Your words dissolved into a soft sigh as you sank back into the deep, sheltering warmth of him. “Midnight didn’t feel like the right time for a call.”

“They’re probably still drinking, you know.” His arm welcomed you back to his side, fitting you like a puzzle piece against his ribs. “If the snow locked the roads down, they’ll be sleeping on John’s floor tonight.”

You chuckled at the thought of poor Mr. Elba. If that was true, he’d be doomed to an all-nighter beside the chainsaw rattle of Charlie’s snores.

“Probably, but what if he actually picked up and asked where I was?” You shifted, propping yourself up on his chest, a spark of mischief in your voice. “What was I supposed to tell him then?” You dropped the question, along with a quick, sweet kiss against his lips. “That I chose to get stranded at the Cap’s?” Your mouth curled into a smile as his palm glided warm beneath the covers to find your waist. “That his hand is under my shirt—which isn’t even my shirt, but his?”

He huffed a quiet chuckle, his lips beautifully swollen from brushing against yours for the better part of the night.

“Don’t think they’d be too shocked.” His playful fingers slid down to cup the soft swell of your ass, threatening to spark a fire that would easily keep you both awake, if you weren’t already so tired. “They already think we’ve been doing this for months.”

You pulled back just an inch, just enough to get his eyes to confirm his words.

“Charlie’s not especially subtle once he takes his helmet off,” he explained, reading the silent question written across your features.

So he knew.

A soft huff of air escaped you.

Of course he did.

You should’ve known that very little ever escaped his notice.

“Guess he’s not,” you agreed, brushing a stray lock of hair from his brow before pressing a sleepy kiss to his stubborn, permanent frown. “I’ll make us pancakes tomorrow—if you promise not to sneak out to that computer the second my eyes close.”

A quiet, tired laugh escaped him, the sound melting like warm honey against your ears.

“Haven’t had those in a long time.”

“Well, if you want them, just stay right here until morning,” you explained softly, letting your cheek sink back into his chest.

Your hand settled on the grid of muscle across his abdomen, the hard ridges under your fingertips making you wonder exactly just how long a time that really was. Far too long, perhaps. Forging an armor like his couldn’t possibly take anything less than a lifetime. Your mind drifted to the younger version of him that lived in the hallway, next to his sister, in that faded frame from far too many summers back. What kind of breaking point had convinced him he needed to become indestructible? Maybe you’d get to hear that story from his lips upon some other winter storm, curled under these very covers, your ear resting right over the lulling beat of his heart, your skin fresh with his soap, smelling entirely of him.

“And don’t even think about trying,” you added, your voice blurring as your eyelids threatened to close. “I’m a light sleeper, Captain. I’ll know the second you move.” It wasn’t a bluff, sleeping with half an eye open was a hard skill bought with years of field duty.

“I won’t,” he rasped, the promise thick with sleep.

His fingers stroked through your hair, gently coaxing your stubborn eyelids into surrendering for the day. But you managed to keep them open just long enough to find his hand, linking your fingers with his just as the final words of the day left his lips.

“You can just call me Chris.”

A quiet smile bloomed in the dark, just as it had countless times at the sound of his voice. Only this time, it wasn’t a distorted frequency crackling through an earpiece in the back of an armored van or the cold depths of a cave. Now, it was here, brushing warm against the crown of your head. Beating life right beneath your ear.

You didn’t answer. Not with words. Instead, your thumb traced soft against his scarred knuckles, feeling the thick, rugged lines of past battles before bringing them to your lips for a quiet goodnight kiss.

In the haze of oncoming sleep, as the blurred watercolor of city lights shone through the frozen windowpane, a ridiculous question drifted into your thoughts—the kind of late-night absurdity born only when the brain is finally free from heavier burdens.

You almost whispered it aloud, but his chest had already settled into a deep, steady rhythm under your cheek. There was no point in waking him. Besides, what kind of man could actually punch a solid boulder and get to keep his hand intact?

A private huff of laughter tickled your throat.

Maybe one day you’d shed enough shame to ask him how that rumor came about. For now, you just closed your eyes.

—

Thank you so much for reading! I was in the midst of writing a spicy barn sequence with john for my next rdr fic when the intrusive thought of a spicy kitchen sequence with chris hit me and 20k+ words later here we are🤡 I’m glad I got it out of my chest tho. While writing this, I had two more ideas for future re8 chris fics I absolutely cannot wait to work with, especially a multi-chaptered one I’m super excited about! Not to mention, with Veronica coming out next year, a fresh wave of inspiration to write more filth involving chris is sure to follow lol All this to say, if you enjoyed this one, you can expect more chris fics in this blog💜🥹 It will probably take a while, since I have to finish this john fic I’ve been working on for months, and then my next Arthur fic first, but it will come for sure!🌸🫧 Again, thank you so much for reading!

[missbubblesoda]

man nearing fifty. (2)

chris redfield x fem!reader

summary: After a deployment to Eastern Europe goes entirely south, lingering ghosts chase you straight to the Captain’s door on a Friday night—a heavy stack of files beneath your arm and city slush melting beneath your heels. Somewhere between the quiet hum of late-night TV and the warm comfort of a homemade meal, the rigid boundaries of rank begin to blur, and soon, you find yourself proposing to cross a line the BSAA strictly forbids.

genre: 60% domestic fluff, 30% smut, 10% angst, 100% chris being a dilf

status: complete

warnings: none

notes: - down bad for re8 chris doesn’t even begin to cover the extent of my predicament so here’s this tooth-rotting fluff i wrote as a result of spending too much time imagining what dilf chris would do on his day off - was supposed to be a one-shot but guess whose wc suddenly tipped over 20k - I was literally writing this fic, wondering what his apartment would look like when the Veronica trailer dropped, and suddenly I didn’t have to wonder anymore lol. Though I’d like to think Village!Chris’ place would be tidier than Veronica!Chris’(?)

wc: 7.5k

other chapters: (1) | (3) | AO3 | masterlist

“What if we pretend it does?”

The offer left your lips before the moment could dissolve. Before his eyes could drift somewhere distant where they couldn’t hold yours in the silence.

His chest rose and fell beneath the soft cotton of his shirt, staring down at you like he didn’t fully understand what you were offering him yet.

But wasn’t against trying to.

“That it ends,” you murmured, your voice steadier than your pulse, your hand rising almost without permission.

Your fingertips brushed softly against his forearm—a touch that should’ve felt awkward, and yet, came frighteningly too naturally for a first time.

“That nothing out there needs fixing tonight,” you continued, your thumb stroking once, slowly, against the bare warmth of his arm. “And if something does…”

His eyes dropped to your lips then, just enough to watch them form the words.

“…that it can wait till morning.”

Your voice lowered to a soft rustle, barely audible over the loud hiss of the sauce beside you—which was surely simmering far lower and far thicker than it should have.

Still, neither of you moved to save it.

His eyes remained locked on yours, unreadable at first glance, but this time they weren’t distant. This time they didn’t drift anywhere beyond the exact coordinates of the woman before him. They stayed on you—dark and piercing— searching through the hidden intentions behind your touch.

Your skin sizzled under the light of his attention, but the heat was not enough to make you pull away. Instead, your palm remained molded to his forearm, rough hairs grazing your trembling fingertips, as you felt the muscle melt slowly beneath the gentle sweep of your thumb.

His lips parted a sliver as he watched you, as though an answer was supposed to come out of them. Still, none came. Instead, his hand shifted slightly at his side, fingers faltering once against his thigh as though he was about to reach out and either move your hand away, or touch you back.

And whatever it was, one more movement would’ve done it.

But the cheerful chime of the washing machine shattered through the apartment before you could find out. It rang proud and oblivious through the quiet hallway, splitting the fragile moment clean in half to announce that laundry was warm and ready.

You stepped back first, the thick, disorienting haze around you dissolving instantly as your hand slipped from the warmth of his arm.

Turning toward the stove, you quickly reached for the wooden spoon—your hands trembling with a sudden, urgent concern for the sauce threatening to dry against the pan.

Beside you, his silhouette lingered in silence for several suffocating heartbeats. Long enough it almost made you wish the washing machine would chime again. And then you heard it. The slow exhale of air dragging heavily through his parted lips. Not annoyed. Not relieved, either. It was something much rougher than both. Something measured. And for the first time in years, sound alone wasn’t enough for you to picture what expression sat on his face.

But you didn’t dare look up to check.

Not now.

Not with the memory of his attention still blistering against your skin.

Not with your heart fluttering like a trapped bird against your ribcage.

With unsteady hands, you reached for a nearby cup and poured a splash of water into the pan, forcing your focus on the steam the liquid had awakened. On the way it gathered against the windowpane, blurring the pink dusk outside. On the scent of peppers and garlic blooming back to life. Anything but the lingering warmth of his forearm beneath your palm. Anything but the ghost of his gaze still flaring bright across your cheeks.

Maybe he hadn’t noticed.

Maybe you’d stepped away just in time, before his eyes could fully interpret the desires hidden in yours, before he could fully grasp the true impropriety of what you’d almost suggested to your commanding officer.

Yes.

Maybe that was it.

Maybe you were simply imagining too much.

Maybe come Monday, he’d still greet you with the same polite nod in the hallway. You’d watch him disappear into his mid-morning briefing, and only then would you return to your station—cheeks warm as you pretended to focus on whatever file happened to be open on your monitor.

Maybe you’d hear his voice through your headset again next Thursday and absolutely nothing would be different. Because behind the safety of your screen, your lips would still curve like a well-kept secret, as if just hearing him speak from somewhere across the country was the brightest part of your day.

Maybe this entire moment would become nothing more than another Friday evening carefully folded up and tucked away between hundreds of others, buried deep in the drawer of almosts you’d never—

His hand slipped quietly from behind, casting a broad shadow across the sunlit counter as he reached around you. Past your waist. Past the spoon still trembling in your grasp. Turning the burner off with a soft, decisive click.

One small movement of his fingers, and it was as though the entire world narrowed down to the exact coordinates occupied by his shadow. The low hum of the flame vanished. The steady hiss of the steam faded into mist. Even the lively chatter drifting up from the streets below seemed to retreat somewhere far beyond the skyline. Leaving only the slow rise and fall of his breathing somewhere near the crown of your head. And the relentless pounding of your heart as it lodged somewhere high in your throat.

Your fingers tightened around the wooden spoon, your knuckles turning white against the handle as you watched his hands land firmly against the edge of the counter on either side of you.

They sat there—heavy and lined with old combat scars—waiting right beside your hips. Close enough to trap you against the stove. Far enough to give you a choice. Trying to respect some invisible professional boundary that seemed to fray a little more with every passing heartbeat.

It was a cage built from nothing more than solid muscle and faltering restraint—the bars held together entirely by all the ways he wasn’t touching you. And you stood perfectly still inside it. Secretly praying it would fall on you and bury you whole.

“Are you sure this is alright?”

His words brushed your ear in the quiet. Deep and hoarse. Both a warning and an invitation all at once.

Your eyes slipped shut.

Just for a moment.

Just in case this was all imagined.

Just in case you’d never actually escaped that village at all.

Just in case you’d still find yourself trapped in that dark, forgotten cave the moment you opened them again. Hallucinating the one fantasy you’d always come back to on your loneliest nights just to keep yourself warm.

But no.

The spoon slipped from your fingers, striking the edge of the pan with a soft clatter.

This wasn’t just a dream.

The kitchen floorboards remained solid beneath your bare feet. The blend of coffee and clean cedarwood still lingered rich in the air. The heat of his body still settled close at your back, far too real to ever mistake for a dream. Not close enough for his chest to find the curve of your spine. But near enough to feel. Near enough to hear the gears turning in his head.

Because he knew.

The question he’d asked told you as much.

The quiet understanding hidden within his words.

He knew exactly what you were offering him when you’d asked him to pretend. That duty didn’t exist tonight. That regrets didn’t linger on bare skin. That consequences could simply dissolve into the walls of this apartment and never follow you into tomorrow.

Yes, he understood the exact nature of the fantasy you were inviting him into.

And somehow, despite all that… he was still choosing to stay.

Your fingertips landed softly on the countertop next to his.

Slowly.

Carefully.

As though the slightest movement might scare the moment away.

The dying sunlight spilled like honey across the worn wood, gilding the backs of your hands in molten amber.

You hesitated only briefly before placing your palm over the back of his. Your fingers looking impossibly small and delicate resting atop his worn knuckles. The sight alone stole the very air from your lungs. Not because of the contact itself. But because he didn’t pull away. He simply allowed your hand to rest there.

Warmth over warmth.

As though it belonged.

“Mhm,” you hummed a soft reply, a smile tugging at your lips despite knowing perfectly well that a thin murmur was no proper way of talking to your captain. But as your palm glided slowly over his forearm—your fingertips feeling every ridge of muscle, every vein carved along its length—a formal ‘yes, sir’ felt like too much to ask of your trembling lips.

And he didn’t seem to mind. He’d never been the sort of captain who pulled rank simply because he could. Instead, he leaned down slightly, the cotton of his shirt whispering softly against the silk of your blouse, heat ghosting the shell of your ear with every breath he took.

“We don’t have to do this.”

The reminder came low and just the right amount of rough, edges worn down by mercy. The stubble of his chin bristled against the side of your neck as his lips formed the words. Not accusing. Not backing away. Simply giving you a choice—offering you an escape hatch before you crossed a line neither of you could ever come back from.

But, why would you ever want to?

Why would you ever wish to be anywhere in the world that wasn’t completely and inescapably surrounded by him? Utterly consumed by the massive shadow that swallowed yours whole across the countertop.

“I know,” you whispered, turning your head just enough to catch his gaze over your shoulder. Just enough for him to see every almost-touch, every single desire you’d spent years pretending not to have. “But I want to.”

Your fingers curled tighter around his wrist. Not enough to restrain him, no human had the strength for that. Just enough to guide his hand to the front of your skirt, just mere inches above the place you’d spent countless nights imagining him. Nights spent completely alone in the dark. When even sleep avoided your company. Nights when your own fingers sank deep inside you, and the memory of his voice whispered forbidden orders into your ear.

“Help yourself, Captain,” you breathed, the words nothing but a fragile thread worn thin by longing.

And there, in the blue sky of his eyes, you finally saw it. The quiet surrender of a man who was simply too tired to fight the comfort you were offering.

His hand slid down, large and heavy, your skirt rustling under the delicate friction. His fingertips squeezed carefully to fit into the tight space left between your thighs, until his broad palm curved easily against the mound of your warmth.

A soft gasp shuddered out of you at the touch, your shoulders jolting once before you could stop them. He hadn’t even moved yet. Hadn’t even taken full advantage of the permission you had given him. His hand remained perfectly still—torturously so—resting patiently against your heat, waiting over the ironed wool of your office skirt to see if you would change your mind and tell him to stop before it wrinkled under his grip.

But you didn’t.

Instead, your hand pressed down tighter over the back of his, spreading his palm even wider against your blossoming heat. Your fingers threaded through his like they already knew the shape, silently letting him know that it was okay if he touched you like this. If he ruined every seam of your uniform with his bare hands.

That you wanted this more than your next breath.

His knuckles shifted subtly under your palm, his fingertips brushing your delicate bud through the fabric. Slowly. Tentative at first, as though testing how firmly he was allowed to touch without breaking you.

You hummed softly under the sweet pressure, the sound escaping your lips without permission as you let your head fall back against his shoulder—your thoughts suddenly too heavy to hold upright as every muscle of your body melted under his fingers. Fingers that stroked surprisingly gentle despite all the scars they carried.

Through the lingering steam fogging the windowpane before you, you caught sight of the evening sky beyond the glass. The clouds were bruised a deep purple, bleeding bright streaks of orange beneath the approaching night. And reflected faintly against them: the two of you.

Blurred. Hazy. Dreamlike.

You felt so impossibly, beautifully small resting against him, consumed entirely by the iron wall of his muscles, slowly dismantled by the thick fingers teasing your entrance through layers of fabric.

The sight made your spine arch against him despite yourself, bright sparks of pleasure drawing your brows tight and sending your hips bucking involuntarily into his palm.

It was a touch that should’ve felt wrong, given the strict boundaries of rank. No protocol manual on earth would ever justify your captain’s hand stroking between your thighs, cupping you whole as if your shape had been designed solely for his palm. It molded perfectly against you, then around the narrowest part of your waist as he turned you to him—a firm, effortless movement that fitted your body like a puzzle piece into the tight space between him and the edge of the counter.

Your hands rose to his arms for balance, fingers curling hard into the dense meat of his biceps as your legs melted like wax under the blaze of his gaze. And God. You’d known stone softer than this.

He slid one warm hand down the curve of your skirt, wedging his fingers under the back of your thigh to lift you. Easily. Like your body was stuffed with feathers and not bone. Like you were a doll he wanted perched at the precise height required to ruin you.

On the counter.

His body crowding broadly over yours, blocking out the rest of the dimming kitchen.

Your legs dangling open at either side of his hips, the black cotton of his sweatpants skimming the soft skin of your inner thighs with the promise of his touch.

Fingers clumsy with anticipation, you reached for the hem of your skirt—a desperate attempt to clear the fabric out of the way. But you were moving too slow for him. Before your fingertips could even find the edge, his hands were already there—fisting the crisp wool, hauling it up your thighs in one greedy, impatient sweep, until it pooled wrinkled around your waist.

His gaze drifted down to the mess he’d just uncovered, where the sheer tan of your tights did absolutely nothing to conceal the dark, wet circle blooming wide against the cotton of your panties.

Heat stung your cheeks under the weight of his attention as your hands scrambled to the waistband of your tights, privately cursing your morning self for choosing something so utterly impractical to take off. As though reading your inner monologue—or perhaps aching in his own private way—his hands joined yours at your hips, flexing against the thin layer of fabric to help. But his rough fingers—fashioned for the cold steel of his Karambit and not the fragile weave of sheer nylon—pulled downward a fraction too strong.

The delicate threads surrendered under his fingertips with a quiet, silky rip, tearing away along the front seam, rolling back to expose a completely unobstructed view of the damp cotton clinging shamelessly to the hungry contours of your folds.

“Sorry,” he said, the word the kind of honeyed rasp no lady could ever be mad at.

“It’s okay.” A helpless little smile tugged at your lips. It was partly to reassure him that you didn’t mind the torn fabric, but mostly because you didn’t know what to do with your face when his eyes were fixed between your legs. Hot. Dizzying. Perhaps tracking the painful tightness of it, wondering how he’d gotten you this wet with just a couple of strokes through your skirt.

Under the amber glow of the parting day, you saw the exact moment the soldier vanished, replaced by the gentleman who simply couldn’t bear to see a lady wanting for anything.

The dark fabric whispered briefly under his fingers as he nudged the waistband of his sweatpants down. Just enough to let his cock spring free.

The sight sparked embers all over your skin, your nails digging hard into your goosefleshed thigh as your eyes drank him in. Swollen. Rising solid and proud against the coarse, dark hair at his base. The flushed, fat head already glistening with the need to touch you.

The sheer size of him was generous enough to warn that the stretch would hurt, and the curve was perfectly designed to find that one spot that made life worth living.

Goddamn.

Years of carefully suppressed desire tore impatiently through the seams of your lips in a broken little whimper—a helpless thread of a sound that seemed to chip away the final layer of his restraint. And even before his hand hovered closer, the ragged heaving of his chest warned that he was right on the edge of tearing the rest away.

Without ceremony, he hooked a thick finger under the edge of your panties, dragging the soaked cotton aside just enough to expose how utterly ruined you were for him.

The cool evening air fanned your bare folds, but the chill was instantly scorched away by his gaze—his eyes searing a deep, dark blue as they traced the glistening line of desire dripping along your slit.

Your eyes couldn’t help but follow the hard apple of his throat as he swallowed. Not subtle enough to ignore.

“I don’t have a condom.” His warning was a gravelly rasp that traveled straight through your core, making you clench around the mere idea of taking him bare. His eyes locked back onto yours, just long enough for you to see the thin seam of light framing the final door he was leaving unlocked. One final chance to back out.

But escape was the furthest thing from your mind. Not when he stood braced between your legs like that—his large hand wrapped around his swollen shaft, stroking the length once as if it could possibly get any harder. And even in his massive grip, his cock still managed to look incredibly thick and beautifully heavy.

You nearly whimpered at the sight, your aching folds gliding against each other as you shifted on the counter.

“I don’t mind,” you promised, the words rushing out to escape your lips before sense got in the way. Words born entirely of desperation, caution completely overridden by the hunger to break beneath the force of his thrusts.

“Are you sure?” he checked again, the question a mere gentleman’s formality, because his hips were already nudging forward—the glistening, velvet tip teasing your entrance before the words could fully leave his lips.

You nodded hazily before your brain could fully process the reckless lapse in judgement, your eyelids fluttering closed as his pulsing cock parted your folds slowly, sinking into your tight warmth with agonizing patience.

Your entire body shuddered at the sweet intrusion, your eyebrows drawing tight and your lips falling open as your velvet walls bloomed around the stretch.

Lowering your gaze, you watched together as he smoothly disappeared into you, inch by patient inch. Your body squeezed low grunts from the back of his throat, coarse like sugar as he eased his way inside, pushing until the dark hair at his base met the dusting on your mound.

A soft, sated whimper escaped your parted lips at the intoxicating fullness—a satisfaction he didn’t let you savor for long. Pulling back, he slid out just as leisurely as when he’d entered you, until just the thick head remained inside you.

He watched you try to follow him, your hips bucking forward, desperate to sheath him back in. But the strict, impassive grip of his hands on your waist directed otherwise. A bruising, silent command to learn patience.

You looked up into his eyes, his irises almost swallowed whole by black, his thumb pressed so tight against your hipbone that you knew it would bloom purple in the morning. No matter how difficult, how puzzling his decisions might seem at any given moment, on or off the field, you’d never once defied one of his orders.

Because you knew that under his command, obedience was a virtue generously rewarded.

The heavy arm he wrapped around your spine was your only warning before he sank back into you. One hard thrust—no easing in, just all of him in one sudden, claiming move.

You gasped under the unexpected force, your palms flying from the counter to the broad planes of his chest. The muscle flexed and swelled in tight ripples beneath your fingertips as he withdrew halfway. And you barely had time to fist the cotton of his shirt for purchase before he slammed forward again.

Deep. Relentless. All the way. Striking that one hidden bundle of nerves your own fingers never managed to reach. The one that turned the world all those blinding colors and bent your spine into sharp, painful shapes against his arm.

That was the start of it. And from the very first thrust, even as you squirmed against the wood and your walls fluttered distractingly around the rough intrusion, you understood completely. Clear as day. You had no say in this rhythm. Just as it was out there in the field, inside you, the Captain was entirely in charge.

And you didn’t feel like complaining. Not as long as he let you take every fucking inch of him.

He hitched your leg against his side to keep you from drifting too far back under the force, his fingers anchoring tightly under the back of your thigh. The newfound angle sank him even deeper with every forceful shift of his hips.

“God—” you cried out. Broken. Not knowing deeper was even possible. Beautiful, blinding shards shattered in your core, your body unable to tell pain from pleasure anymore.

Far from slowing him down, the torn cries he fucked out of you only seemed to make him pound faster. Harder. Every thrust growing more impatient than the last. The absolute opposite of mercy as the contents of the cabinet beneath you rattled in protest under the weight of all the regrets he was trying to bury deep inside of you.

Your fingernails clawed at the front of his shirt—a thoughtless, desperate search for an anchor that, much to your delight, he understood as a silent plea for more. His hand left your thigh briefly, reaching up to the collar of his shirt behind his neck to tug it over his head. Though the fabric was loose enough to surrender without resistance, your fingers scrambled to help, guided by years of late-night fantasies that always ended with you undressing him, finally uncovering the muscles of his body that his combat gear usually concealed from the rest of the world.

When the cotton peeled away, your eyes drank him in with greed.

From the hard slope of his freckled shoulders.

Through the pearls of sweat misting gently over the dark hair on his chest, shimmering like beads of liquid gold under the sunset light.

Past the thick vein that pulsed swollen and alive below his navel, rising more pronounced and detailed with each heavy movement.

Along the dark trail of thick, coarse bristle leading to the exact place where your bodies squelched when joined.

Every thrust caused the hard ridges of his core to tighten, rippling like coiled steel beneath his skin under the force needed to fuck you right. A rigid grid of lean muscle, hard-earned and deep-cut, catching the warm evening glow like a wall of carved marble that your fingertips desperately ached to touch.

So they did.

Under your palms, his skin was scorching hot, the muscle feeling every bit as dangerous as it looked on the field, when hugged tight by his black gear. And fuck, how you wished he would do this to you in that tight suit, too. Bend you over the control panel at the back of an operations van. Fuck you breathless while your desk groaned like this very cabinet you were sitting on. Sink his rough, calloused fingers into you when only the blue glare of your monitors bore witness. Mold you into whatever shape he wanted with his bare, blood-stained hands.

“C—captain,” you sobbed in delight, your head falling back as your spine arched against his arm. The title left your lips instinctively, but as your shredded tights dangled from one leg and your entire body broke apart on his cock, it sounded nothing like it did on the field.

“You alright?” he rasped, his voice breathless and strained, as though your velvet warmth was not gentle enough for him, suffocating him instead. “Does it hurt?”

He slid a warm, broad hand to the nape of your neck, his fingers tangling in your hair to tilt your head straight so he could see your face.

The last rays of day filtered through the blinds in long, golden bars across his face, stripping it bare of his usual shadows, and catching the stray lines of silver threading through his hair.

Through the haze of pleasure welling in your eyes, the sun reflected on the blue of his irises like a calm lake on a cloudless day. And you wondered if he even knew how handsome he was. How beautiful he looked shirtless, his chest heaving and pearled with sweat as he turned you into a moaning mess beneath him.

“Do you want to stop?” he asked through parted lips, his brows furrowed in a faint—almost protective—concern, though his hips didn’t stop.

“N-no,” you answered, your voice barely rising above the wet squelches echoing between your thighs. You hooked both arms tightly around his neck as bright sparks gathered low and deep within you, born precisely on the one sweet spot he kept hitting just to make you moan louder. “I’m fine, I—I just—”

You tried to explain, but it was hard to talk when he fucked you like this, hard to breathe when your entire body shuddered around his massive cock, hard to think when the force of his hips risked knocking your mouths together if you stayed upright, teasing your lips with the impossible fantasy of his touch.

“Nothing,” you whispered instead, a sliver of a sound you weren’t even sure he heard over the dry thuds of your heel against the cabinet doors.

You buried your head against the crook of his neck before temptation could trump restraint, before the fireworks blooming inside you could completely blind your common sense and drive your lips to his.

That would be greedy. To ask for a make-believe lover’s kiss when he was already giving you so much more than you were ever allowed to ask for.

He didn’t pry. Not with words. Though his hand slid down between your bodies, his scarred fingers searching through the slick warmth of your folds for the one button that would make you forget any concern you weren’t voicing.

“Captain—” you whimpered, like it was the only word you knew. As his fingers grew impatient against your swollen bud, you couldn’t think, you couldn’t breathe, but you didn’t want to. You only wanted this. Him. His fingertips like live embers against your heat, sparking a fire that made you cry out for him, your raw gasps a defenseless plea for him to break you.

To use you.

To completely ruin you.

To get you hopelessly addicted and then run away once he came, taking everything you had to give and leaving nothing behind but bruised skin and the impossible, agonizing yearn for more.

He pushed harder, his thumb circling your clit with relentless urgency. Your moans seemed to drive him wilder, harmonizing with the strained grunts escaping his chest, rising together in a tide of overwhelming delight that silenced out the groaning wood beneath you.

Then the world blurred white at the edges. The delicious, thick fullness of him crested deep inside your core, years of secret, midnight fantasies tangling into a tight knot with something softer—something far more dangerous than blazing lust. Something you wished you couldn’t name.

Something you wished you didn’t feel.

His title tore from your chest one last time, but it tasted entirely like his name, loud and broken as your walls, swollen by pleasure and the relentless force of his hips, finally surrendered—years of locked-away longing gushing out of you, spilling down the inside of your thighs and all over his counter.

Still, he didn’t stop.

He fucked you straight through it. Merciless as your entire body shuddered against his. Rougher as you came—especially as you came. Harder as your fingernails dug deep into his back. Deeper as you squirmed helplessly under his hold. Greedy for every raw sob, every breathless gasp, every desperate whimper your lips would surrender.

“Fuck, you feel amazing.” His words spilled hot against your cheeks, rough edges entirely worn down by pleasure. The deep lines of experience around his eyes were carved deeper by the suffocating delight your shuddering walls were offering him.

You smiled through heavy eyelids at the compliment, dazed and thoroughly fucked out, as you felt his palm slide warm down the curve of your ass, his calloused fingers slipping beneath the soft cotton of your panties, where they gripped and kneaded the flesh tightly just because he felt like it.

You had always loved getting praised by your Captain. It was the only thing on earth that could fix a bad week. So you moaned louder for him in gratitude, entirely unbothered—if not encouraged— by the bruising pressure of his fingers digging hard into the fat of your ass as he chased his own release.

You secretly hoped it left lasting marks. You prayed it would bloom a deep, violent purple in the morning. That way, there would be undeniable proof, that once upon a Friday sunset, even for a short while, you belonged to him. And, at least until the bruises faded—until you woke up one morning next week and couldn’t find the purple blush in the mirror anymore—you would still feel his.

His. Just like right now. Where there was no duty that couldn’t wait until Monday morning. Where nothing else in the world mattered. Not the regrets of the field, not the failed extractions, not the weight of decisions that couldn’t be corrected anymore. Only the present—warm, slick and twitching deep between your thighs.

You locked your ankles firmly behind the small of his back, anchoring him within you as you sensed the fantasy coming to its natural, inevitable end.

“You sure about this?” he asked, the question directed straight into your eyes. Shreds of caution still hid somewhere inside his gaze, but it wasn’t nearly enough to make his hips halt the rhythm they’d created just for you.

“Y—yes,” you gasped, your walls still fluttering weakly from your orgasm. What was one quick stop at the pharmacy on your way to John’s anyway?

“Please, come inside me,” you begged, looking straight into his eyes, your voice thick with the kind of pleasure that made every risk worth taking. “Please, Captain.”

Your ankles tightened their clasp around his hips—your legs a trembling prison of poor judgement and reckless decisions—but you didn’t care. You knew he was strong enough to break free if he truly wanted to.

But the arm around your back only braced tighter, holding you so close that your breasts pressed flush against the bare warmth of his chest, close enough that the distance between your lips was just a matter of a single, terrifying dare.

Your eyes drifted down to his mouth, parted to help him breathe through the strain, and you wondered, just for a brief, wishful heartbeat, if he’d let you kiss him if you just asked the right way.

If he’d kiss you back if you just leaned in…

A low, broken sound escaped him before you could decide—a grunt of pure, shattered delight exploding from deep within. Rich, hot, creamy. Generously filling you with what you’d asked for.

He thrusted into your tight folds a few final, erratic times, his hips stuttering as you felt the tension slowly melt away from his muscles.

His hand abandoned the curve of your ass, moving past your shoulder to press flat against the kitchen wall, supporting his weight so as not to crush you. Still, he didn’t pull out. His other arm kept you anchored tight against the damp ridge of his chest, utterly greedy for every final squeeze your swollen walls could give him.

A long, relieved sigh left his lips as he unloaded every last drop into you, his body tensing and shuddering over yours. And in the milky haze of satisfaction, it was impossible to grip the reins of your thoughts tight. Not with such liquid, useless hands.

You imagined that you were so much more than just coworkers. That this wasn’t some accidental first time. That he did this to you every single Friday.

That you were the only one he ever came home to after every brutal deployment.

You pressed closer against him without thinking, not knowing if you were still allowed to touch him like this, or if the game of make-believe had officially ended.

Still, he didn’t push you away. He simply stayed exactly where he was, catching his breath beside your ear. His chest heaved warm under your cheek, pressed so tight that you could feel the thrum of his heart beneath his damp skin—uneven, heavy, and racing in perfect harmony with yours as the kitchen slowly stitched itself back together around you.

The working day had completely dissolved, leaving the room drowned in a cold, blueish hue. Dark enough for the digital numbers of the microwave across the room to glow a stark green against the black.

5:51

A blinking, silent reminder that the fantasy was ticking away.

He pulled back first, sliding out of you with a heavy movement. You forced your eyes to stay fixed on the grain of the counter, fiercely resisting the urge to take one final glance at his glistening length before the elastic waistband of his sweatpants snapped back into place.

In silence, you felt his cum gush warm out of you as he stepped back, your body mourning the weight of his as it clenched around the overwhelming emptiness. But it had to understand that holding each other afterward had never been part of the deal.

Your eyes hesitated for a heartbeat before venturing up to his, though they didn’t betray a single thought. The sky had grown too dark for that, the plastic slats of the window blinds casting striped shadows across his face.

Somewhere down on the street, a car horn blared—an awkward, abrasive sound that did nothing to fill the blueish silence. A moment later, another answered, restless and impatient to escape the city traffic before the roads froze, and start the very same weekend you wished wouldn’t come.

Not this soon.

Your lips parted briefly to say words your brain still hadn’t even chosen, but his moved first.

“There’s a…” he began, his voice barely rising above the hum of the refrigerator. “There’s a bathroom down the hall.” He cleared his throat slightly, just enough to find his usual pitch—the steady, level cadence he used when he was talking over the comms, and not fucking you on his kitchen counter. “First door on the left.”

You nodded—your voice too worn to string any set of words together—though you weren’t sure he could see it in the deepening gloom.

With a light thud, your feet landed on the floor next to his discarded t-shirt, and he looked away towards the dark hallway to grant you a shred of privacy as you hauled down the crumpled wool of your skirt—your thighs sticky with the dripping evidence of what you had just allowed your captain to do to you.

The cold floorboards tilted slightly under your liquid legs as you let the shadows of the corridor swallow you whole. At the far end of the hallway, the blue hour bled a pale, fading rectangle of twilight through an open door, barely disrupting the black across the floor. His room, perhaps? A threshold to a life your feet itched with the need to cross.

You pushed the bathroom door open before the desire could settle deeper roots, your fingertips sweeping blindly the cold, unfamiliar tiles before they finally brushed against the light switch.

You’d barely managed to push the door shut behind you before your back collapsed against the wood, your body still utterly drunk on his touch and the sweet, lingering traces of him still clinging to your skin.

Inside the small space, the air was damp with the scent of fresh laundry, layered beneath the familiar musk of his cologne. Rich. Woody. Like rain-soaked cedar in the summer. The black crystal bottle stared back at you from its place on the sink, nestled between his toothbrush and a pair of small, half-empty prescription vials.

Strict, monospaced instructions wrapped around the amber plastic with detachment, and your fingers stuttered with the urge to reach out and let the label tell you about the secret battles he was fighting. But respect kept your hands at your sides, refusing to cross the line of his privacy despite the knot in your chest, tangled tight with all the comfort you desperately wanted to give but had no right to offer.

You forced your gaze away, your eyes landing reluctantly on the far corner of the room, where the washing machine sat quiet—clean clothes still trapped behind its misted-up door glass. Next to it, a heavy, dark towel hung neatly on a hook, looking slightly damp from his wash and sparking a trail of thoughts you were always very keen on following.

Sunset on a Friday. A hot shower to wash away the week, leaving the room barefoot with only the damp of that heavy towel wrapped around his waist. Drifting off on the couch while the washing machine hummed a quiet lullaby in the background. You wondered if this was his routine on rare days off like this—or if there was even room for such a thing in a schedule as fragmented as his.

The bathroom door shuddered with a dull, distant thud against your back as somewhere out in the apartment a latch clicked open—the sound softened by the wood, yet unmistakable. A cigarette break on the balcony, perhaps? Or maybe just a sobering moment in the cold night air. Whatever the case, the sound served as both a punctuation mark to your thoughts, and a quiet reminder that you couldn’t linger in his afterglow forever.

Leaning against the white edges of the sink, you forced yourself to meet your own gaze in the glass. The mirror was slightly fogged from the cooling laundry cycle, but through the crooked trails the droplets drew on the surface, you could see well enough.

Your hair was a wild, tousled mess, damp and glued to your forehead in darker streaks. Your silk blouse hung loosely—creased, twisted, and open two buttons down, though you had no memory of your own fingers ever touching them. Further down, your skirt sat wrinkled at your waist, the zipper awkwardly turned to the front. And your tights, torn and ruined, still clung hopelessly to your skin, rendered entirely useless by the very same fingers that’d carved the flushed, sweaty mess now staring back at you.

Disheveled. Askew. Entirely undone. And yet, you loved it.

What he’d done to you.

What he’d made of you.

‘You feel amazing.’

His words lingered hot against the shell of your ear, commanding every fine hair on your skin to stand on end. Your palm left the edge of the sink, trading the cold porcelain for the heat under your skirt as your body ached to reminisce. To relive it. Closing tight, your thighs trapped your fingers where his had been just mere minutes ago. And fuck. Why did he have to be so damn good?

In the thick haze of the memory, your eyes fell closed, your fingertips skimming absently over the patches where the cotton had begun to stiffen—its familiar softness replaced by the drying remnants of your shared pleasure. It was impossible to tell how much was yours and how much was his. Harder still to convince your already addicted body that this was nothing more than casual pleasure you were not supposed to indulge in again.

You forced your heavy eyelids open again, your hand reluctantly pulling away to reach for the wooden cabinet, where a pack of wet wipes sat next to a tin of beard pomade.

The sudden, cooling wetness practically sizzled against your flushed skin on contact, cutting through the haze as the wipe scrubbed away the sticky, white film of cream trailing down your legs. It was silly, you knew, to mourn the evidence of his touch as you actively washed it away. But how else were you supposed to feel when your entire body smelled of him? When the throb of his pulse still echoed inside your swollen walls, and the ghost of his hands still haunted your hips—hard enough to leave marks you would cherish once they fully bloomed in the morning light.

Dragging your fingers through your hair, you did your best to tame the mess his hands had made, before moving down to tuck your wrinkled blouse back into your skirt—smoothing your palms down the front in a useless attempt to flatten the creases his fingers had left behind. Finally, after a splash of cold tap water over your heated cheeks and a shallow breath of faint courage, you turned the knob and stepped back out into the aftermath—your ruined tights crushed into a tight ball in your fist.

Outside, the hallway had completely changed. A warm overhead light now flooded the corridor, chasing away the gloom and illuminating a side of him you hadn’t noticed in the dark.

Finding yourself alone, you allowed your eyes to wander for a moment across the frames lining the wall in front of you—a collection of private, visibly cherished memories shared through the years with a striking, blue-eyed woman of rich, cinnamon hair. She looked oddly familiar though you’d never seen her face before.

Her eyes shone with confidence—assurance laced with a spark of wit—as she stared back at you from multiple frames, sometimes by herself, sometimes with the Captain.

A small, time-worn snapshot quietly drew you in. They stood side by side, silhouetted against the glitter of a sun-kissed lake. Her auburn ponytail danced high in the wind, one arm looped easily around his. Their lips wore matching smiles, so perfectly mirrored they could only belong to the same bloodline.

While her quiet confidence commanded attention, your eyes couldn’t help but linger on him—at least two decades younger, his body not yet sculpted into the statue of hard muscle he was today. He was beautiful in a softer, untouched way, wearing a real, unburdened smile that reached his eyes and made them crinkle at the corners—a sight so rare it made warmth bloom deep within you as you imagined him in a past gentle enough to allow moments like this.

You’d heard once from Mr. Elba that the Captain had a younger sister. This must be her. Her smile gave it away, but it was her eyes that truly confirmed it. They held the exact same piercing, steel-blue depth as his.

The silken hiss of a sliding door gliding along its tracks sent a jolt straight through your shoulders. As it clicked shut, the glass pane sealed you into an airtight pocket of stillness and warm light, locking the screech of tires and the blare of distant sirens out in the streets below.

The faint rustle of feet against a rug bled into the remaining silence, followed by the heavy thud of bare heels meeting the cold kitchen floor. Three. Four. Each step tracked perfectly with the countdown clock pounding in your chest.

Until they stopped.

And for the first time, you found yourself cursing the training that forced your brain to map an image out of every single noise that reached your ears. Because even without looking, you could still see him with detailed clarity:

Staring at the hallway corner. Right by the table where your phone still waited to be retrieved. Fully aware you were standing just around the bend.

—

next chapter

[missbubblesoda]

man nearing fifty. (1)

chris redfield x fem!reader

summary: After a deployment to Eastern Europe goes entirely south, lingering ghosts chase you straight to the Captain’s door on a Friday night—a heavy stack of files beneath your arm and city slush melting beneath your heels. Somewhere between the quiet hum of late-night TV and the warm comfort of a homemade meal, the rigid boundaries of rank begin to blur, and soon, you find yourself proposing to cross a line the BSAA strictly forbids.

genre: 60% domestic fluff, 30% smut, 10% angst, 100% chris being a dilf

status: complete

warnings: none

notes: - down bad for re8 chris doesn’t even begin to cover the extent of my predicament so here’s this tooth-rotting fluff i wrote as a result of spending too much time imagining what dilf chris would do on his day off - was supposed to be a one-shot but guess whose wc suddenly tipped over 20k - I was literally writing this fic, wondering what his apartment would look like when the Veronica trailer dropped, and suddenly I didn’t have to wonder anymore lol. Though I’d like to think Village!Chris’ place would be tidier than Veronica!Chris’(?)

wc: 8.9k

other chapters: (2) | (3) | AO3 | masterlist

“Captain, I’ve confirmed the death of Ethan Winters.”

The words pierced through your earpiece, though not nearly as sharp as the silence that followed. Crisp. Perfectly hollow. The kind that let the background static ring in the foreground for once.

“I wasn’t able to retrieve the body, but I’ve recorded evidence,” the voice on the other end continued.

“Share your screen and I’ll go over the situation.” The Captain’s voice rang precise, steady, briefing the events of the last twenty-four hours with the exact composure everyone expected from a man of his rank.

Yet, on your monitor, the green line tracing the heart rate next to the callsign Alpha betrayed a spiked little secret nobody else in the field that night had the equipment to notice.

“She murdered him,” his voice came through the comms again, a note rougher this time. “And she is not gonna get away with it,” he finished, each word carrying the iron certainty of a man who had already decided exactly how the night would end.

Miranda was not seeing daylight again.

“Goddammit, when does it end?” Both, curse and question, came out lower, less modulated, spoken more to the dashboard of his truck than to everyone else on the line. Your fingers paused above the keyboard. You didn’t need eyes on him to know the lighter was already in his hand. The brief, sharp exhale preceding his words gave it away.

“What’s that, sir? The mission?” The operator’s voice came through again.

There was silence, the question answered only by the metallic, familiar scrape of flint on the Captain’s end.

“All of it. Three years trying to put this thing in the ground.” He paused, and for a moment, all you could hear was the hollow pull of smoke humming softly into your headset. You could picture it without meaning to. The cigarette caught between his gloved thumb and forefinger. The tip flaring amber beneath the permanent frown carved into his face. “Three years too long.”

His voice carried a brand of exhaustion no official report would ever document.

Your eyes drifted across the files crowding your secondary screen.

Ethan Winters.

A three-year nightmare the Winters never truly managed to escape, no matter how hard they tried. Dulvey. The Bakers. Mia Winters first. Then Rosemary Winters. The man had clawed his way through a godforsaken, freak-infested village buried somewhere in the middle of nowhere, only to die believing that, despite his best efforts, his daughter would never be saved.

You lingered on the thought until the heavy, distant thud of a car door echoed from the other end of the line.

“Terminate Miranda, and rescue Rose. That’s the mission.” The Captain spoke again, the exhaustion of the day left to rest in the passenger seat, sealed away behind reinforced steel. “Failure is not an option.” He reminded everyone on the line as much as himself, his words etched with that absolute finality you’d heard through comms a hundred times before. In grey briefing rooms. In the rubble of collapsed buildings. While he was caught in a sea of roaring fire and bioweapons alike. Little did the place matter to a man with the Captain’s name. The same name attached to stories forever whispered through BSAA hallways and classified files thick enough to fill entire cabinets.

As the crunch of boots over frost began crowding the line, your eyes flicked once more toward the vitals monitor. And this time, Alpha’s line pulsed steady. Flat. Controlled.

“Let’s move out.”

-

Your knuckles hovered for a second above the black steel before tapping it softly three consecutive times. Each knock, brief. Precise. Evenly spaced.

Through the frosted window at the far end of the hallway, the dying day bled vivid pinks and burnt oranges across the floor—a warm, colorful contrast to the harsh blues and artificial whites of the monitors your eyes had been glued to all day.

The weather app kept promising heavy snowfall for tonight, and the morning news had gone so far as to call it a “total evening whiteout.” Yet the pastel canvas melting across the horizon made it hard to believe either was actually on the way.

You couldn’t say you weren’t a little surprised when the muted thud of bare footsteps approached from the other side of the steel.

Despite the ugly forecasts, you hadn’t exactly allowed yourself to expect he’d be home at all.

Your gaze deliberately avoided the peephole before you, despite the way its silver rim caught the sunset light. You were certain a pair of eyes would be on you any second now, checking the visitor’s identity. So instead, you focused on the stack of papers tucked against your chest.

« Christopher Redfield »

The official label hung slightly crooked from the heavy envelope you’d lifted off his desk an hour earlier.

“Give me a second,” his voice called from the other side of the door. Then came the soft rustle of fabric. And a faint smile tugged at the corner of your lips before you could stop it.

Years spent on comms had sharpened your hearing in strange ways. When you spent that much time blind in the dark, you learned to construct hyper-specific images out of audio clues alone.

The shift of tactical gear.

The crunch of gravel beneath boots—and a close approximate of how many pairs of boots were moving.

The metallic snap of a magazine locking into a receiver.

The subtle, strained catch in his breathing whenever he raised that heavy Dragoon of his to block an incoming attack.

And now, somehow still crisp through the muffling barrier of the apartment door:

Cotton dragged hastily over bare skin.

A t-shirt, perhaps?

You guessed just a mere heartbeat before the deadbolt finally clicked open.

Then the door pulled inward.

And there he was.

Looking every bit as exhausted as his vitals had signaled when you’d last checked them a week ago.

“Hey.”

His greeting was a deep, raspy gravel, his voice falling even lower than what you were used to hearing through the high-frequency earpiece. Almost as though it were the very first word he’d spoken in hours. Almost as though he’d just woken up. And suddenly, a sharp prick of guilt stung you for being there at all.

Still, when he stepped back from the doorway, silently inviting you in, you didn’t refuse.

“Captain,” you answered softly, stepping across the threshold. You lingered right next to the shoe rack at the entryway, so you wouldn’t drag the three-day-old slush of city snow onto his floors.

His eyes dropped immediately to the thick stack of white cradled against your chest.

You smiled an apology before he could even ask.

“Investigations sent these over for you.”

“Already?”

“I know.” Your smile faltered into a pained grimace as your gaze skimmed the top folder one last time. Questionnaires. Incident reports. Psychological evaluations. Self-assessment forms that absolutely no one in this line of work ever answered honestly. “And… Research, I believe,” you added, placing the heavy stack into his arms. “Guess the white-coats couldn’t wait until Monday to get their hands on your field notes regarding the…” the word staled slightly on your tongue before it was even spoken, “…samples.”

God.

Was everyone at the BSAA—including you, apparently—physically incapable of not bringing up the mutamycete or the Winters for more than five minutes?

“I can always take them back…” Your offer trailed off playfully, trying to steer the conversation toward safer, lighter shores, “…tell them Captain Redfield doesn’t work weekends. That they’ll have to wait until the next business day for his report.”

Or that they can suck it up.

A quiet chuckle escaped his lips, and the faint smile that came with it carved the lines around his eyes a little deeper, a silent confession of just how poorly he’d been sleeping.

“You really think I’d make a lady waste even more of her already short Friday evening?” he asked, flipping the top folder open to inspect the bureaucratic damage himself. To estimate exactly how much work you’d just dropped into his lap. “You know I wouldn’t do that.”

Your lips returned his smile like a mirror, though your eyes drifted furtively past his shoulder. Toward the sofa. Where a green blanket lay tangled across the cushions in a loose, heavy heap. It looked comfortable. Lived-in. Perhaps still warm from sleep.

“That’d be unfair,” he continued, summoning your attention back to him. “You’re not my assistant.”

“Been thinking of applying for the position myself,” you teased, allowing yourself a more detailed look at his face only because his eyes were still fixed on the papers.

His hair had grown out slightly. Not just during the week since Europe, but over the months before that. It was still short by any standard, but nowhere near the buzz cut he’d carried when you first met him.

This suited him.

Too.

The dark strands falling gently over his forehead, still damp from an earlier shower, perhaps. Just uneven enough to frame the experienced lines of his face and the sharp angles of his jaw. If you were allowed an official opinion on the matter, you’d tell him to keep it exactly that way.

“Already tired of the field, Agent?” The faint emphasis he placed on the last word carried the ghost of amusement with it, though his eyes still hadn’t lifted from the paperwork.

Agent.

He hadn’t called you that in years. Hearing it roll off his tongue now, in the quiet of his apartment, while he was dressed in a simple t-shirt and loose sweatpants instead of his usual tight, black gear, made the word sound different somehow.

You swallowed the first response that rose to your throat. You wouldn’t say it. Not to your captain, of course. But… what field? The work you did for him when he summoned you to the “field” differed very little from what you already did back at the office on a normal Tuesday. Sitting behind a screen until your spine cracked. Feeding coordinates into a headset until your voice went hoarse. Tracing vitals, oxygen saturation, and thermals until your eyes dried up. Speaking in a contrived, calm cadence while somebody with a family bled out on the other end of the line…

It was virtually the same, the only difference being that the office came with a proper ergonomic chair, unlimited coffee, and no hostile bioweapons within at least a thousand-meter radius. In your position, the word “field” was just a code name for trading all that comfort and safety for a different type of office: damp basements beneath abandoned shacks, the lonely, cramped back of a surveillance van, or a cave as dark and wet as the one you’d been stationed in last weekend. Jesus. Calling that place a cave felt far too generous. Dungeon seemed a more accurate term for that moldy hole in Eastern Europe. The constant, rhythmic dripping of subterranean water alone had nearly driven you insane.

Even last night, half-asleep in your own bed, the leaking sound of your bathroom faucet had dragged you right back into that nightmare. Damp stone. Rotting wood. Endless black water lapping beneath the dock outside.

And God—that stupid boat.

You’d spent the entire mission terrified some rogue lycan would crawl out the pitch-black tunnels while you sat trapped underground, with nowhere to run except a rotting pier that led to another dead end. Luckily, nothing had happened. You’d thoroughly reconned the area before setting up camp there, but God, the field was awful.

And honestly?

You wouldn’t have it any other way.

Not when it meant being of use to him.

“Not yet, Captain,” was all you settled on in the end, summing up all those thoughts in the small shrug you gave him.

Another chuckle escaped him, softer this time, as he closed the folder and finally looked up to meet your eyes. It was a tired sound—the kind of chuckle people gave more out of politeness than genuine amusement.

Your gaze flicked one last time toward the tangled blanket on the couch, toward the fading warmth he’d surely collapse back into the second you left.

And you hoped he did.

He needed sleep.

Real sleep.

Not just the kind stolen in armored helicopters, or against damp cave walls with one eye half-open.

And the sooner you left, the sooner he’d be able to get it.

You were already shifting your weight back toward the open doorway when his voice stopped you gently.

“You want some coffee?”

The question came woven into a small, rare smile.

“Could really use some myself,” he admitted, raising the heavy stack in his hand slightly to show the reason why.

The invitation settled warmly somewhere beneath your ribs. If it had been anyone else, you might’ve assumed it was just a polite formality—the sort of empty gesture exchanged between coworkers to maintain office friendliness, fully hoping for a refusal. But you knew the Captain wasn’t like that.

He always meant exactly what he said.

“I’d like that very much,” you nodded once, lowering your gaze, partly to slip out of your shoes, and partly to hide the insistent little tug threatening the corners of your mouth.

You shrugged out of your coat as he leaned slightly over your shoulder to close the door behind you. The deadbolt locked you inside his space with a safe, satisfying click, instantly leaving the sounds of the evening commute outside. The distant car honks. The faint chatter drifting up from the street below. The lively city swallowed by a Friday sunset.

The apartment settled back into a heavy quiet. Only the low hum and occasional metallic shift of a washing machine disturbed the silence somewhere deeper down the hall.

“Saw anyone at the office today?” he asked, his voice growing fainter with distance as he walked toward the kitchen.

“Just mister Elba,” Your hand reached automatically toward the entryway closet, opening it without waiting to be offered the space. Not because you spent significant time here. Just enough to remember this was where coats were supposed to go.

Today, however, was the first time it was just the two of you.

“Oh, and Charlie,” you remembered suddenly, hanging your coat carefully beside his much larger, heavier jackets. “He went in today to fill out his forms.”

You knew his question hadn’t really been small talk. In the four winters you’d worked with him, you’d never once heard the Captain make idle small talk.

He wasn’t asking whether you’d crossed paths with the guys.

He was asking if they were doing alright.

After everything.

After… Europe.

“He called me earlier. Charlie,” he said from the kitchen, his voice slightly raised over the distant creak of a cupboard opening. “Said they’re going out for drinks tonight.”

“Tonight?” you echoed, though the air inside the closet was distracting, thick with the clean musk of his cologne trapped heavily among the fabrics. Rich. Woody. Like a cedar forest after a rainstorm. A scent familiar enough to smell sweet. “Well, I guess a little blizzard warning isn’t enough to get in the way of the fearless Charlie Graham and his bustling Friday night—oh?”

A steady, rhythmic buzz drifted faintly from inside your coat pocket just as you were about to close the closet door.

Your work line?

Strange.

“Speaking of the devil,” you murmured, swiping the call open. “Hey.”

“Hey, what’s up? So—I’m at John’s right now and we were wondering if you wanted to join us for drinks tonight.”

“Sounds great,” you answered automatically, already stepping away from the entryway and following the hiss of an espresso machine toward the kitchen. “But are you aware this is your work line… Canine?” You emphasized his callsign pointedly, a teasing warning in your tone.

“Oh, shit. Hang on, let me call you back—”

“Too late.” You shook your head, a smile curving your lips. “You know they’re already listening in.”

“Oh, okay,” he cleared his throat dramatically, and when he spoke again, his voice boomed louder, projectively clearer. “To any hardworking operators spying on—I mean, diligently working the wonderful Friday night shift…”

You could hear John’s strangled laugh somewhere in the background.

“…we’re gonna be here late, and you’re all invited to join. I would send you the location, but I know you can just press a key and pop it up on your screens at your convenience.”

Only faint static answered him. And somewhere farther down the line, the distant clatter of dishes and running water echoed from John’s kitchen.

“Guess they’re not interested,” you said as you passed the living room, the hardwood floors pleasantly cool under your tired feet.

“It’s probably for the best,” Charlie continued smoothly, and you could easily picture him sprawled somewhere across John’s couch. “And you? Doesn’t it sound like a dream? Getting stranded in yet another cozy little snow hell with your beloved, highly dependable teammates.”

You nearly rolled your eyes.

“Oh, you know I’d never pass on an opportunity like that,” you replied.

And you meant it.

It wasn’t every day your entire team got to come home alive after fighting literal werewolves overseas. Occasions like this called for a proper celebration.

The thought hummed softly in your mind as you rounded the corner into the kitchen.

He stood with his back to you, reaching for a jar of sugar in the cupboard—every ridge and valley of muscle in his arms perfectly framed by the golden sunset bleeding through the window in front of him.

You genuinely craved evenings like this. More than you’d realized. The rare times the seven of you managed to exist as something other than military assets. The stories from missions long before you’d ever joined the squad. Those Dion would retell with increasing inaccuracy the drunker he got. Stories that even the Captain eventually felt morally obliged to fact-correct, usually with a beer sweating in his hand and a rare smile on his lips.

“Great,” Charlie said through the line. “Not everyone’s coming, though. Cap’s not showing and neither is Dion. Said he’s couch-locked for the night.” You watched the steam from the fresh mugs curl lazily into the golden air. Just the sight of it made you forget the dirty slush outside. “Told me he was ready to crash the second he got home and last contact was like three hours ago.”

“What? Is Dion past his bedtime already?” you teased softly, and the Captain huffed the quietest laugh at that, though he didn’t turn around.

“My guess exactly—hey wait.” Charlie’s voice trailed off as John muttered something across the room. “Where are you now? Emily’s on her way over. If you’re still at the office, she can just swing by and pick you up.”

You hesitated. Just a brief hitch in your breath, but it was exactly enough time for you to realize that no combination of words could make your answer sound casual to Charlie’s ears.

“I’m at the Captain’s,” you muttered in the end. Because what choice did you have? Spin a random lie while the Captain himself stood within arm’s reach, close enough to catch every word?

A dead, muffled silence answered on the other end of the line, and you didn’t need visual confirmation to know Charlie was currently staring at John and mouthing something unintelligible. The heavy thud of a hand scrambling to cover the phone’s microphone was giveaway enough.

“I’ll text you when I’m on my way, okay?” you added quickly, filling the silence before it grew even louder.

“Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sure.” His words were suddenly strained with the kind of barely-contained laughter that told you exactly what those two would be talking about the second you hung up. “See you then.”

“Alright, see you.”

“No pressure if you can’t make it, though!” he managed to blurt out at the last second before the call disconnected.

You lowered the phone slowly, setting it face-down on the wooden table before pulling out a chair.

After this, you were absolutely never beating the allegations.

That you were secretly fucking the Captain.

Or, at the very least, trying to.

Depending on who you asked.

It had all started with John. About a year ago, during a deployment somewhere at the literal edge of the world. Cold enough that pearls of frost would gather along your lashes every time you so much as stuck your head outside the surveillance van.

The thing about snipers was that their entire craft was built around noticing the minute details other people tended to miss. Tiny, subtle stuff. The shift of wind through a canopy. A shadow buried deep through the brush half a mile away. The slight edge of a shoulder peeking past concrete. And John happened to be exceptionally good at his job. His right eye was trained to catch movements so small most people didn’t notice until he pulled the trigger and a body hit the ground.

And that same impressive, terrifying level of perception extended way beyond the battlefield.

“Why does your voice do that when you talk to the Cap?”

The question had come entirely out of nowhere, sometime around three in the morning, while he was pouring black coffee from a battered thermal flask beside the surveillance monitors.

“Do what?” You’d stared blankly at the screen, particularly interested in one of the dials on the communications panel, despite the fact it had been functioning perfectly fine seconds earlier.

“I dunno,” he’d muttered thoughtfully, as though looking for the most accurate word to explain what his senses had picked up. “It sounds different. Softer. Like Chris was n—”

“Alpha to Polaris, are you with me?”

Your posture had straightened instantly at the sound of the Captain’s voice crackling through the comms, deep and distorted slightly by the glacial wind.

“Yes, sir. Polaris to Alpha. The situation here is contained.” Your eyes had flicked toward John as some sort of traitorous reflex, just in time to catch the playful flint of victory dancing in his eyes.

“Yeah,” he’d mouthed, keeping his voice low enough not to bleed into the active frequency, snapping the lid back onto the flask before pointing it vaguely toward your headset. “Exactly like that.”

Before you could think of a coherent response, he’d simply vanished back into the freezing night, his rifle slung over one shoulder and his steaming coffee in hand.

He never brought it up again.

Not directly to you, anyway.

But you were fairly certain the observation had spread through the team after that. Or perhaps even before then. You tried not to think about it too much.

It was hard sometimes, though.

Just last week, for example. You’d been swabbing antiseptic along the curve of the Captain’s shoulder, where one of Heisenberg’s freaks had managed to slash him during an ambush. Nothing life-threatening. But it was nasty enough to require a localized sample.

He had sat there patiently on a storage box while you worked, shoulder bare beneath your hands, his mind most likely drifting back and forth between Rosemary Winters and Miranda’s mutamycete. The muscle had tightened under your touch, locked with the kind of controlled silence that let you know it hurt a hell of a lot more than he intended to admit.

So you’d sampled the wound gently.

As gently as your fingers possibly could.

Just like you did for all of them. Just like you’d done for Emily earlier that same morning when she’d limped into your station with a long tear along the side of her thigh.

Vitals needed monitoring.

Samples needed collecting.

Injuries needed documenting.

That was protocol.

No matter what anybody else chose to imply.

No matter the look Emily kept giving you from across the room—a smile half-hidden behind her monitor as you worked on his torn skin. Like you were doing something entirely outside of your official job description. Like she knew a little secret you didn’t.

But you did.

You’d known long before any of them had even thought to whisper about it.

The exact extent of your own predicament.

You see, you’d never been the type to ignore hard facts when it was convenient, much less lie to yourself about obvious truths.

And this truth?

You couldn’t deny it even if you wanted to. Which you didn’t.

Because the thing was, long before you ever joined him in the field, before the shared comms, before the long missions, before the endless nights spent whispering numbers into his ear, you had already known.

A truth that anyone with eyes could’ve deduced at first glance:

Captain Redfield was a very attractive man.

What you had indeed tried, however, was not to dwell on it while at work. On that black tactical gear. On how unfairly good it looked stretched over a body like his. Not because you didn’t want to—God, if anything, the problem was precisely how much you wanted to. But because your work demanded focus, and even the smallest lapse in concentration behind your monitors could put any of your teammates in a body bag.

So, you’d trained your attention not to linger on anything irrelevant to the mission at hand. Not on the rasp of his voice rumbling low and hoarse through your earpiece for hours at a time. Not on how much you liked the deep, tobacco-worn registers it could reach.

No.

You kept your attention exactly where it belonged. On monitors. On the shifting green pulse of vitals. On improvised extraction routes. On ammunition counts and thermal signatures and oxygen levels and coordinates blinking across glowing screens…

But eventually, the mission would end. Eventually, you’d go home, kick off your boots by the door, collapse into the moonlit quiet of your own bed, and think about it anyway.

All of it.

The black turtlenecks. The unfair width of his shoulders. The fabric stretching to its absolute limits across arms that had no logical reason to be that large, across muscle that had absolutely no business looking that good on a man nearing fifty. The way the swollen veins in his forearms stood out against skin darkened with hair whenever he rolled his sleeves up to work. The tight pants he insisted on wearing beneath combat straps and holsters like all those inappropriate thoughts you’d heard an alarming number of ladies at the office trade during coffee break weren’t entirely his fault.

And once your apartment finally settled into silence, once the traffic outside quieted to a low hum and the day stopped demanding things from you, you’d close your eyes and hear it linger somewhere deep in your memory. Long after you’d taken the headset off.

His voice.

God. The absolute command in it. The sheer, terrifying competence it carried. The way it never faltered even as he reloaded, even when entire, snarling hordes of bioweapons swarmed the horizon before him. The way he rasped orders into your ear with that same unwavering calm despite the thunder of gunfire and collapsing rubble all around him—as though as long as he was still talking, as long as he was still breathing into your frequency, nobody under his command was allowed to die. It was the kind of voice that curled low and deep somewhere warm between your thighs, keeping you company in the dark until sleep finally took its place.

So, no.

Despite whatever level of clueless denial John, Emily, or Charlie assumed you operated under, you had always been perfectly aware.

Aware of every extra second your attention lingered on his vitals monitor beyond what protocol technically required. Aware of the thick warmth that spread furtively through your chest whenever his pulse finally steadied after a prolonged spike. Aware that the more exhausted he looked, the more worn down life made him, the more the brutal years carved themselves into the creases around his eyes and the hard lines of his forehead… the more something deep inside you ached in response.

Not pity.

Never that.

Something far softer.

The urge to pull him somewhere quiet.

To use your own hands to melt the iron tension locked permanently in his muscles.

To feel the massive weight of his body dissolve entirely against yours for once, instead of just sitting back in the dark, watching him shoulder the burden of failed missions and impossible decisions alone.

And right now, looking at him standing before you—barefoot in the sun-drenched quiet of his kitchen, with the crushing exhaustion of the last three years written plainly across his face—the excuse evaporated completely. Those documents were not what had brought you to his door today in the first place.

“Thank you,” you murmured, accepting the heavy ceramic mug from his hands. Your fingertips brushed briefly against his knuckles. Warm. Scarred. The contact lasted less than a second, yet lingered far longer as you brought the coffee to your lips.

A small, private smile tugged at your mouth almost immediately. Partly from the heat sliding pleasantly down your strained throat, but mostly because he remembered exactly how sweet you took it.

And only then, setting the mug down on the wooden table, you finally let it slide off your lips. The question you’d been meaning to ask since the moment he opened the door.

“How are you holding up?”

His answer came in the form of a sigh—the sound long and heavy, scraping from deep within his chest, as though the chair he pulled out across from you were made of lead.

“Just…” He sank into his seat, his gaze drifting absently over the grain of the kitchen table, as though the right word lay hidden somewhere among the classified paperwork scattered between you both. “Pretty fucking tired.”

The admission came quiet and honest, woven with a feeble smile—just the faintest tug at the corner of his lips—that you returned instinctively despite the complete absence of humor in it.

He rubbed a large, tired hand over his jaw before continuing, his palm scratching against his week-old stubble.

“Feels like it never really ends.” He leaned heavily back into the chair until his shoulders slumped. “Miranda, The Connections, even the BSAA…” he huffed softly through his nose, disappointment shadowing the words. “They’re all part of it, but they’re not the entire problem.”

Lifting his mug, he took a slow, measured sip as if he needed the pause before he could go on. As if saying certain names out loud in the quiet of his home was simply too heavy. Too personal.

The Winters.

“If it hadn’t been them,” he said eventually, his voice dropping to a rough, low register, “it would’ve just been…”

His words faded into the evening air, leaving the sentence bleeding and unfinished.

But you didn’t need him to spell it out. You already knew whose ghost his thoughts were visiting.

Ethan Winters.

Back to the agonizing memory of walking away towards the roaring engine of a helicopter, while carrying a crying, fatherless baby in his arms.

“Somebody else,” you finished softly for him.

He looked up, a single, silent nod passing between you before he let his gaze drop once more, settling somewhere into the pale steam rising from his mug. He cradled it as he took another bitter sip—the heavy ceramic looking small and fragile in his scarred hands—as though the simple, radiating warmth of it might offer some small kind of solace against the oncoming storm.

And watching him sink into the lonely quiet of his thoughts, you only hoped it did.

You had thought about it a lot, too. About Louisiana. Before Ethan Winters ever set foot in Dulvey, at least twenty other innocent civilians had lost their futures to the horrors of that swamp. Before them, Jack and Marguerite Baker had once been normal people, too. And even before that, somewhere else in the world entirely, there had surely been another outbreak, another twisted experiment, another nightmare waiting patiently in the shadows for somebody unfortunate enough to uncover it.

Because the Captain was right. It just never really ended.

The problem had always been so much bigger than The Connections and their E-Series, or Miranda and her Cadou. Bigger than one bioweapon, one ruined family, or one entire godforsaken village. There would always be another rogue scientist convinced they could play God. Or worse, a group of them. Another tragedy.

You suspected the only real ending any of you were ever getting from this line of work was retirement. Or a body bag. Whichever arrived first.

You wished you could offer him something kinder than the truth. But even if none of you could stop the cycle completely, there was still one absolute certainty you could promise him.

“We’ll be there when you call, Captain.”

Your voice remained low, soft enough to suit the golden stillness filling the kitchen, yet firm enough to pull his attention back from the grey haze of his own thoughts.

“We’ll just keep pushing back until we can’t no more.” You held his gaze steadily across the table, refusing to look away from the raw exhaustion darkening his eyes. “Let’s just be stubborn like that.”

He held your gaze for a few, silent heartbeats after that. Longer than you were used to. Long enough for you to notice the perpetual frown in his brow melt just a fraction. Almost imperceptibly. Something so subtle and fleeting you would never know whether you’d simply imagined it.

“I’m not planning on quitting, you know,” he said after a moment, his chest swelling as he straightened slightly in his chair. The sheerest ghost of amusement touched his voice then. Not enough to make it cheerful. The Captain’s voice could never be described as such. Just something lighter. Just a little. “Not yet, at least. I guess sometimes it just gets…”

His sentence trailed off there, thick brows pulling together slightly, not like he didn’t know what word to say next, but rather that dragging it out of his chest required effort.

“Pretty fucking exhausting?” you offered gently, before bringing the ceramic back to your lips.

A quiet huff of laughter escaped him.

“Yeah.”

“Rest is allowed too, Captain,” you reminded him, your words landing softly somewhere among the scattered papers.

He nodded once, his smile small and private. It didn’t quite reach his eyes—it never did—but the late Friday sunlight catching against the bristle of his jaw softened his expression into warm, glittering gold.

A comfortable silence drifted naturally into the kitchen afterward. It didn’t feel heavy or strained. Just thoughtful, the void filled nicely by the distant hum of the washing machine down the hall and the muted car honks drifting up from a couple floors below.

You looked at him over the rim of your mug, trying to reconcile the tired man in front of you with the terrifying force of nature you’d been tracking on your monitors just days ago.

Soon, it would be time to leave. There weren’t many sips left in your cup after all.

What would he do after you walked back out into the night?

You tried to find the answer in the absent pattern his forefinger traced along the rim of the ceramic.

Fifteen minutes ago, you would’ve assumed he’d simply collapse back onto the couch, burying himself beneath the tangled blanket still waiting for him in the living room. But now? Now you weren’t so sure. It was easier to picture something far lonelier: the apartment falling into total darkness, save for the stark blue glare of his laptop screen illuminating the kitchen table long after midnight. You could picture him hunched under the weight of the quiet, eyelids threatening to close between paragraphs, one hand rubbing absently over his jaw before clicking on the next file anyway.

Sometime later, after the moon claimed the highest perch in the sky, he might switch on the television in the living room. Not to watch it. Just to fill the silence. Just to chase both sleep and ghosts away with the mindless murmur of late-night broadcasting.

He’d be there in the freezing hours of the night, his hand only stopping to reach for the stale, cold coffee sitting next to his work phone. Until, eventually, the first blue cracks of dawn would begin to peek through the blinds, and only then would he finally close the laptop and walk down the dark hallway to his untouched bed. Only because the work was finished, never because he had willingly surrendered to the weight of his exhaustion.

And it was not that the paperwork absolutely needed doing tonight. But perhaps because is was a far better, far safer companion than whatever thoughts he’d brought home from that village.

The image settled like stone somewhere deep beneath your ribs. And before you could stop yourself, the question slipped free into the sunlit quiet.

“Have you had dinner yet?”

He looked up from his coffee, his grey-blue eyes focusing slowly as if pulling himself back from a great distance. Then, he shook his head.

Of course he hadn’t. You didn’t know why you’d even asked. You’d be surprised if he’d eaten anything substantial in hours.

“I’ll heat something up later.” He gestured vaguely with his mug toward the papers across the table. “Just wanna go through these first.”

You nodded, your chair scraping lightly against the floor as you stood up.

“Okay, I’ll heat it up for you, then.”

A dim light of surprise colored his tired features.

“It’s fine. You—”

“Don’t have to? Yes, I do.” You smiled softly as you looked back over your shoulder, already carrying your empty mug toward the sink. “I’m the one who dumped half of those papers into your weekend. It’s the absolute least I can do.”

The faucet hissed to life beneath your hands, warm water splashing excitedly against the stainless steel.

“Besides, I won’t be able to enjoy myself at John’s knowing I left my Captain stranded in a mountain of work.” You glanced back toward him briefly, catching his silhouette out of the corner of your eye. “And starving on top of that.”

A light chuckle sounded behind you—or, at least, you chose to think it did. It was hard to tell over the steady rush of the water running through your fingers as you rinsed the mug clean.

You half-expected his polite protests to fill the silence once the faucet shut off—insisting he could manage on his own, that you didn’t need to trouble yourself. Instead, only the gentle rustle of cotton followed, as you dried your hands against the dish towel he kept near the sink. Then, the muted thud of nylon-clad feet as you stepped deeper into his space toward the refrigerator. And finally, behind you, the crisp click of his laptop screen being pushed back open.

A thick warmth bloomed inside you at the sound. That’s right. All he had to do was sit right there and wait. You’d make him something warm. Something filling. Something yours. And only after that, you’d leave him to his private evening, where he could stay up all night chasing his ghosts into the dawn if he really wanted to—but he was absolutely not doing it on an empty stomach.

The rubber seal broke free with a soft hiss as you pulled the steel door open, a wave of cool mist spilling across your face as the artificial white illuminated the contents before you.

A carton of eggs, a couple of cartons of milk, two large tubs of yogurt, one of cottage cheese, and a jug of orange juice missing half its contents. On the lower shelf, a few loose bell peppers sat next to a bag of red apples, another of fresh zucchini, a quart of berries, and a lone, untouched six pack of energy drinks away in the back.

Clean, high-protein, and while a little barer than yours, well-stocked. Surprisingly so. And the bright, cheerful colors of the fruits told you something quietly comforting: he’d actually remembered to get groceries after coming home.

Your fingers hesitated against the shelving.

“The leftovers are on the top shelf,” he called out from the table, a mere second before the rhythmic tap of his fingers against his laptop keyboard filled the kitchen again.

You hummed vaguely in acknowledgment, despite having already abandoned the original plan entirely.

Leftovers.

Your eyes lifted toward the stacked glass containers on the upper shelf, their contents fogged faintly by the chill.

Yeah, sure. Absolutely not. You were not feeding him cold, sad leftovers tonight.

Scanning the shelves again, your eyes landed on a lonely, half-empty jar of tomato sauce tucked into the refrigerator door.

Okay, you could definitely work with this.

You reached for the nearest glass container and popped the clasps loose, revealing several grilled chicken breasts sitting inside. Perfect. A rustic, garlic-and-vegetable pasta using the leftover chicken just to add substance. Simple enough not to keep him waiting forever, and exactly right for a man who’d survived the entirety of his time abroad off cold military rations and bitter caffeine.

You nudged the silver refrigerator door shut with your shoulder, the seal snapping closed with a soft thud. And after laying your haul out across the counter, you filled a heavy pot with water, set it atop the stove, and clicked the burner to high.

The blue flames that licked the bottom of the metal seemed to melt the kitchen into a slow sort of rhythm.

Knife against a cutting board.

Fingers against a keyboard.

Vegetables sizzling loudly as they surrendered their bright colors to the heat.

Outside, the dying day continued bleeding slowly through the glass windowpane—the deep oranges of the sunset slanted heavily across the countertops and cabinets, plating steel appliances in a coat of warm gold.

Inside, the sharp scent of garlic and herbs mellowed into fragrant waves, swirling in the air so insistently it made you realize just how hungry you actually were.

But this wasn’t for you.

The thought tugged gently at the corners of your lips.

Behind you, the steady keyboard taps paused briefly. Then resumed.

It was almost done. He just needed to wait a little more.

You reached for the jar of sauce and gave the lid a firm, confident twist.

Only, nothing happened.

After wiping your hand against the wool of your skirt, you tried again—bracing the glass against your ribs as you gave the metal a counter-clockwise twist.

But it didn’t budge even a fraction.

You stared at the black lid for a second before a quiet smile bloomed across your lips. Of course. The Captain had probably closed this thing himself the last time he used it, applying the kind of effortless grip strength that he used to hold onto moving helicopters or pin bio-fools twice his size against concrete walls. There was absolutely no way you were opening a jar of tomato sauce closed by Chris Redfield himself.

Still, you reached for the dish towel by the sink and wrapped it around the lid for one final, stubborn twist before you had to interrupt him for help.

“Here. Let me.”

The deep, cigarette-worn rasp of his voice echoed suddenly beside your ear.

Close.

Far closer than you’d ever expected.

Had this been anybody else’s voice sneaking up on you in the quiet, the sheer proximity would’ve startled you. But thousands of hours spent sitting in the dark with nothing but his low frequency murmuring directly into your headset, had trained your body to relax at the sound—even if he had never been physically this close before.

Not that you remembered.

And oh, you would’ve definitely remembered.

You hadn’t even noticed the rhythmic tapping of the keyboard had stopped. Or the way his shadow had quietly fallen over yours from behind, swallowing yours whole in the golden light. Had this been an ambush in the field, you would have been finished by now.

But this was just a Friday evening.

This was just his kitchen.

This was just him.

“Thank you,” you murmured softly, so softly the words dissolved into a whisper, your fingers loosening around the jar as his hands replaced yours.

And despite yourself, your attention betrayed you once more—lingering on the sheer size of his hands around the glass, making the heavy glass look like a tiny jar of sweet, indulgent jam. You watched the thick veins of his forearms shift and tighten beneath his skin as he gave the metal one brief, casual twist. And then—

Pop.

Just like everything else eventually seemed to do when faced with him, the seal surrendered easily beneath the effortless strength of his bare hands.

“I thought we were doing leftovers,” he remarked, handing the jar back to you.

“We are,” you smiled lightly, spooning a generous dollop of sauce into the pan, where it hissed loudly against the heat. “I’m using this leftover chicken I found.”

“Well, I don’t remember it smelling this good last night.”

You laughed softly beneath your breath, stirring more sauce through the sizzling vegetables.

“While my culinary skills might not be quite as legendary as John’s…” you lifted the spoon carefully, blowing on it before taking a quick taste just to ensure the data supported your claims, “…it’s definitely miles ahead of Charlie’s.”

That earned a quiet huff of amusement from him. Brief. Rough around the edges from both tobacco and lack of sleep in equal measure.

You smiled despite yourself, the sound thrumming across your skin.

“Wanna try some?”

The offer left your lips before your brain could properly catch up with it, before you could even begin to evaluate the logistics—or the outright impropriety—of the situation.

But it wasn’t every day you got to stand in front of his stove and make him dinner. So maybe, just this once, you allowed yourself entirely not to care.

If the implication of his lips touching the exact same spoon yours had just mere heartbeats ago surprised him, he didn’t let it show. Instead, he simply leaned forward slightly at the waist, accepting the spoon from your hand without visible hesitation.

The small movement brought him close enough for you to catch the clean, distracting scent of cedarwood and soap lingering right beneath the darker trace of coffee still clinging to his clothes.

His expression betrayed nothing, as usual. So you held your breath a little, until finally a low rasp of approval hummed somewhere deep in his chest—a rare, unexpected sound that almost made your smile bloom wider.

Almost.

Because even as his eyes remained locked on yours, something in them drifted miles away. That familiar, distant look settling into the grey-blue of his gaze like morning fog rolling over a highland lake.

“Is it that bad?” you teased softly, an attempt to pull him back to the surface before he disappeared somewhere you couldn’t follow him to.

His eyelids blinked once, focus snapping back as though rising from deep under.

“No,” he answered quickly, “no, it’s wonderful.”

The ghost of a smile touched his lips afterward. Clearly not one he truly felt. Just the practiced kind people wore when trying very carefully not to let heavier thoughts bleed through.

But he didn’t need to spell his ghosts aloud for you to know what their names were.

“Well,” you started, turning the burner to a gentle low until the bubbling softened into a peaceful simmer, “I would hope so.”

You set the wooden spoon aside before turning fully toward him.

“We can always talk about it, Captain.”

About Europe. About the village.

About them.

And the heavy luggage he’d brought all the way home.

He didn’t answer. Only the sauce crackled patiently beside you. The washing machine hummed faintly from the shadows of another room. Your breathing rose and fell alongside his, in a wordless duet of should’ves and what ifs.

Somewhere across the room, his laptop screen dimmed from inactivity, and only then did a different brand of fatigue seem to escape him—the rare sound of surrender exhaled quietly through his nose.

“It’s this.” His hand gestured vaguely toward the kitchen around you. “All of this.” Toward the stove. Toward the pasta waiting in the drainer. Toward the rich, earthy scent of homemade comfort filling the small room.

Toward you.

“He had this.” He paused for a wistful heartbeat before his voice dropped even lower. “She was making him dinner that night.” Mia Winters. “Or, at least, who he thought was her.”

Your thoughts followed his down the dark, snowy path they walked. To a different kind of kitchen. Tucked away in a remote countryside. Far away in both time and distance, yet clearly visible from where you stood: framed traces of happier days still hanging crooked in the dark, broken glass scattered across crimson-splattered floorboards, soft teal cabinets left half-open beneath the cold moonlight, a warm dinner on the table that could never—ever—be resumed.

Not with everyone present at the table, at least.

“That was the last moment of peace he ever knew,” he continued quietly, words delivered with the same brand of poise his voice always carried. But the faint, insistent tension pulling at his brow betrayed the true weight of the thoughts he was bearing. “A normal evening at home. His daughter sleeping soundly upstairs.” His eyes traced their way back to yours, pensive and searching. “His wife making him dinner.”

Wife.

The word landed softly between you. Stinging and warming you all at once. Curling strangely inside your tightening chest.

But that was not important right now.

This wasn’t about you.

This was about him. About how he always volunteered to take the blame, whether tragedies were his fault or not. Like it was instinct.

And perhaps it was.

Perhaps it was his deepest instinct.

To care.

Not only about the Winters. About his men. About field agents he barely knew. About faceless civilians reports would eventually go on to file as casualties.

That was his nature.

You’d watched it play out on a loop for years behind your monitors.

And it was that very nature that also kept carving pieces out of him, mission after mission, hollowing him out from deep inside.

“Captain,” you began, your voice barely more than a quiet whisper, because nothing louder was needed with how close you stood. “None of us could’ve known how any of this would play out.”

He held your gaze through your words, which stayed gentle despite knowing it would take far more than carefully chosen reassurances to truly lighten the burden on his shoulders.

“Just like the manual says,” you went on, “out there all we can do is make assumptions based on the information we have at the time, and hope they’re accurate enough to matter.”

As the words left you, your thoughts drifted once more toward Ethan Winters. Standing inside that kitchen before everything shattered beyond repair. His feet probably aching from a long day’s work. Maybe thinking about nothing more important than eating dinner with his wife and putting his baby daughter to bed.

One painfully ordinary evening.

And you wished too that things could’ve gone differently. That you could’ve done more. That time could walk backward when good people deserved another chance badly enough.

“Rosemary Winters is safe,” you reminded him softly. Even if her situation remained uncertain. Even if the future waiting for her would never truly be normal after everything she’d gone through. Still, she was not lost. Not split inside four flasks somewhere in a backwoods village.

“At least to me…” the smallest smile touched your lips, despite knowing that nothing you said could ever truly chase away the shadows of profound regret permanently darkening his features. “That doesn’t sound like the definition of a failure.”

He held your gaze in the amber quiet. A storm-grey haze still swirling behind his eyes. And maybe you were imagining it—maybe you only wanted to see it—but for the briefest heartbeat, you could’ve sworn you saw a patch of clearer blue peek through the grey.

“I guess it doesn’t.” The words left him in a sigh, optimism worn thin around the edges, but alive enough to make his mouth curve faintly at the corners. “It’s just sometimes I wish this could…” His gaze drifted briefly toward the darkening apartment around you, toward the empty hallway, toward the quiet living room. And you didn’t need him to say the word to know exactly how his wish was meant to end. “…Stop.”

You’d felt it too.

That private little fantasy of wanting the entire world to pause just long enough to let you catch your breath.

Long enough to let you forget.

“Even for a single day.” His words were roughened by regrets and perhaps years of longing for a life that always seemed beyond his reach. “Just for a little while.”

Maybe it was the dimming kitchen. Maybe it was the last stretch of sunlight nearly drowned by the city skyline. Maybe it was the slanted shadows it cast across the walls. Or maybe it was the soft traces of amber it left bleeding across the mature lines of his face.

Maybe it was simply the quiet landmarks of a normal life wrapping around the two of you in the dusk. The blanket waiting on the couch. Your shoes forgotten by the door. His laptop abandoned on the table between his mug and your phone. Your heavy coat squeezed in tight between his on the rack. The smell of homemade food and sweet coffee blending seamlessly with the darker notes of his cologne.

Together, it painted a picture deceivingly convincing:

The illusion of safety.

The fantasy of a life simple enough to allow Friday evenings like this to become routine.

Nothing more than dinner simmering on the stove and barefoot conversations under the sunset glow.

“What if we pretend it does?”

The offer left your lips before the moment could dissolve.

“Just for one night.”

—

next chapter

[missbubblesoda]

Hey I’m new here just wanted to stop by and say how much I enjoyed your Arthur fic! You are an incredible writer, and it became an instant fave of mine. I appreciate it, and you 🫶

Hope you have a lovely day!

Omg thank you so much for taking time out of your day not only to read the fic but also to let me know how the story made you feel! 💜🥹 I really appreciate it and I’m very happy to know it now has a special place in your bookmarks! I can’t wait to share more Arthur fics in the future! Have a lovely day too!💜🌸

[missbubblesoda]

Are you going to write more fics with Arthur? I reallu enjoyed the last one :)

Hello anon! absolutely!💜 I have at least 2 more Arthur fics in advanced stages of planning as we speak. I’m currently writing a John x reader that’s been in my to-write list since January haha the whole thing’s going way more slowly than I originally intended but after I’m done with that one, I will begin working on a low-honor Arthur x reader fic that I am super excited to share with everyone! The reader is going to be a wealthy lady from the Garden District of Saint Denis that happens to meet Arthur during the events of chapter 4, at the Mayor’s party. She’s engaged to a rich man (this time the Saint-Denis boyfriend will be real😂) and I don’t want to step into spoiler territory but it’s going to get super smutty and probably angstier than originally intended toward the end, especially as we move into the events of chapter 5🙈 I think it will be a nice change of scenery from my previous fics that mostly took place in rural areas. I’m looking forward to writing domestic, everyday moments from another perspective this time. Also, our reader character will be very proper and elegant which means it will be an absolute delight to witness outlaw Arthur slowly making a mess of her oh my God

[missbubblesoda]

Omg you canged your profile pic! Lol i almost couldn't find you 😆 i hope youre doing well!

Hey bestie! Hahaha Shrek is so photogenic I have so many pics of him I can’t wait to use as my dp😂 kkk I’m good! And you?🌸 always lovely to open this app to be greeted by your Leon reblogs, appreciate them, especially when he’s driving gigantic plastic lawn chairs on my dashboard. Thank you.

I’ve been working on my next fic (that John x reader I told you about then, the enemies to lovers, low-honor one) but it’s going so slow at the moment🥲 Writing Cigarettes and A summer’s worth was so easy and everything went so smoothly, but lately I’ve been going through it ngl😂 writing-wise haha I gave my brain a couple weeks to rest bc right now it can’t do anything but play dave the diver and watch rdr2 playthroughs haha

I’m hoping that this week with uni starting again I am able to fall into a writing rhythm. I tried again today and I was able to make quite a decent amount of progress so here’s hoping! lol I miss everyone, and interacting in the comments every week. I hope to be back soon!💕🥹 wishing you an amazing week!🫧🌸

[missbubblesoda]

AAAAHHHHH I just finished reading your arthur fic "a summer worth's of sugar" and I don't know how to say something. I love it so much it made me explode into confetti of happiness!! Thinking about the story makes me cry happy haha

My favorite is arthur taking a bath in the lake and the reader getting feelings from the drawings and notes he made about her it really made me weak too

Thank you for letting me read it for free, it's so sweet and fluffy that I must got the dentist to check my teeth ( ´ ∀ `)ノ～ ♡

(sorry if my english not good, i use translator)

Omg anon thank you soooo much for reading and for taking time out of your day to let me know how the story made you feel💜 I’m so glad you enjoyed it! “It made me explode into confetti of happiness” is such a vivid description I love it so much🥹

I’m happy you liked the lake scene! I had a ton of fun writing that bit. I knew I wanted to include a moment where we could peek into Arthur’s journal, and having him distracted and swimming shirtless in the lake was such a golden opportunity🙈

And you’re welcome, anon! It’s my pleasure! I love writing cozy, domestic stories and it’s sooo nice to know they can connect with readers this way🫧 thank you for making time to read them🌸 Sharing them with other fans and discussing them together is sooo much fun! I will continue to share many more in the future!

[missbubblesoda]

Take two!

I'm so mad! I typed out a whole dissertation in your ask and tumblr decided to delete it before I could hit send

Okay... lets see if I can recreate it lol

So, I let myself have a day after reading the Arthur fic, to let it marinade in my head! And I must admit, when you posed the first chapter of the fic, I didn't think you could pull it off again. I was just coming down from the high of the John fic and I was sure that there was no way you could write a fluffy fic that hit the same... oh how wrong I was, I sat there with a full heart and a fire in my chest regretting ever questioning your work!

Ah... chapter 5, my dear chapter 5! I have many thoughts! I will probably jump around a lot in this ask since i can't seem to sort them (and this being my second time writing it... I've forgotten a lot of the thing I wanted to write...ffs)

I remember somewhere in chap 3 thinking "Arthur should go to John and ask him to help him get rid of the pest in the forest"

And then you ACTUALLY DID write that!!!

Im telling you, I was so giddy when I read this! Also the fact that you managed to include the Marstons in such a good way! Chefs kiss!

I love to imagine Sadie and John teasing him while trying to purge all the skinners, they would deffinetly be on his back. Asking him what he has promised reader in order to stay with him lol but oh, how bitter-sweet it is!

Especially since we know something Arthur doesn't! He isn't supposed to be there... he is supposed to be long dead. His body under a cross, on a montain close to Armadillo. It broke my heart when the Marstons and Uncle talked about how they thought he was in Mexico, drinking himself dead. He doesn't know that in this iteration he got a second chance. That in another reality Reader was never able to catch him in her home, bleeding, with her cookies in his sachel... how beautiful it is that he finally got a chance to live out his life, to enjoy it even!

This! When I read "imaginary" I had the stupidest smile on my face! Finally he said ittt hehehe I know everyone already talked about this, but this was such a good plot point!

"Your new husband" Arthur Morgan, you've shoot me in the heart and cupped your hands together chatching evey single drop of my blood in your loving hands!

Love how they skipped every base lol yeah, she saved his life, they lived together for a few weeks... they married! An old married coupple through and through!

This scene was so stuck in my mind, I have dreamed it after reading! The beauty of being observed and seen... god I can imagine Arthur, butt ass naked, sitting at the table. His usual spot. His back warmed by the low fire, watching his butterfly sleeping peacefully.. his heart swelling every time he looked up to study the lines of her face while an uncaring storm breaks the sky outside. His whole world contained in that space... his world used to be so wast, cold and just as indifferent as the storm outside.. but how it is here! Warm, breathing and his entirely, just as he is hers.

Im a big fan of the fact that the Marstons keep visiting them! They are all a family now! Her and Abigail are now sisters in law, John her broter in law, Jack her nephew and Uncle her Uncle in law lol it feels so nice, finally she and Arthur are part of something stable and loving!

I absolutely enjoyed this fic! And never ever be sorry for writing over 10k words for a chapter! I would read an 100k word chapter of your work!

I hope you get to take a rest after this! I know you're writing an aot fic as well.. sadly I'm not into aot anymore, but I think I'll try to give it a read anyway!

I feel like I forgot to add a few things that I wrote the first time arround... but this mostly brings my view across!

Omg😭 First of all, I just wanna say thank you for taking the time out of your day TWICE to let me know what you thought about the chapter! I would be SOOO mad out of my mind if Tumblr did that to me. I was sooo excited when I got this notification so thank you for re-typing it🥹

Thank you sooo much for reading and supporting both stories I’ve written so far!💜 and I am so glad you enjoyed the Arthur fic just as much as the John one. When writing a summer’s worth I wasn’t too concerned about cigarettes & honey bc they are totally different settings/characters, even the reader-insert personality is different, so I felt like I was writing completely different stories for different audiences. BUT! I will admit I am a little nervous about the next John or Arthur fic I’ll write, I don’t want them to be super similar to previous ones but I do want to keep some elements I enjoy. Hopefully when the time comes they will be able to connect with readers in their very own special way🫧

Asdfghjkl it’s so funny how you were right about the plot many times before it even happened😂 like the fact that Arthur did ask John for help in the end, and also I remember back in chapter 3 you said you hoped she met the Marstons and then it happened hahaha I really enjoyed writing the Beecher’s Hope scene, so it makes me very happy to know you enjoyed it too! I absolutely love the idea of a cozy family dinner by the fire on a windy spring day for Arthur😭 he deserves all the moments of quiet joy and peace he can get and I will give him nothing but that in all my fics🙈 and yes! I also love to imagine everybody teasing him about his new husband phase kkkkk that’s why I LOVED writing every single Uncle line😂

“He doesn't know that in this iteration he got a second chance. That in another reality Reader was never able to catch him in her home, bleeding, with her cookies in his sachel... how beautiful it is that he finally got a chance to live out his life, to enjoy it even!”

This is so beautiful🥹 it made me tear up a little bit. Ever since I finished the game I constantly find myself thinking about Arthur and how his life would’ve looked like if he lived through it all and was present in the epilogue. And when doing that, I always imagine this type of life for him (not necessarily finding love like he did in the fic) but just enjoying his days in the peace and quiet of nature, no longer running away from the law and the violence from his past. To know this intention translated well into the story is so very satisfying. Thank you so much for wording this feeling so well!🫧

Hahaha I added the word “imaginary” on my final editing, just as I was about to hit post, to make it super clear that Arthur knew there was no other man in her life but him kkk I know everybody knew it already but I didn’t want no misunderstandings in their happy ending kkkk I’m glad you enjoyed that line/plot!💜

Love how they skipped every base lol yeah, she saved his life, they lived together for a few weeks... they married! An old married coupple through and through!

HAHAHAHAHA omg I laughed sm at the way you explained it idk why😂 it’s like she just chose him one day, married him in her head without him knowing sometime during those weeks they spent tgt, and uses the word husband based on vibes alone lmao

And I know I have quoted you a lot already but THIS RIGHT HERE

I can imagine Arthur, butt ass naked, sitting at the table. His usual spot. His back warmed by the low fire, watching his butterfly sleeping peacefully.. his heart swelling every time he looked up to study the lines of her face while an uncaring storm breaks the sky outside. His whole world contained in that space... his world used to be so wast, cold and just as indifferent as the storm outside..

ASHDSGFDSGHDFSG OMG I might actually cry, this is EXACTLY the kind of warm/cozy/comfy vibe I want to create with my writing🥹 it makes me SOOO happy to know this scene translated into exactly that! I pictured the scene without the storm originally and then I was like “let’s adjust the coziness slide bar to 100%” with a little rain kkkkk Thank you for letting me know how this scene made you feel💜 so satisfying to imagine Arthur waking up to quiet moments like this, and then being able to go back to sleep peacefully, knowing tomorrow is just another day of routines and domestic life.

And omg that aot fic was the first one I ever wrote, back in 2023🙈 My writing was sooo different back then, perhaps only the last chapters resemble my current style, which I was still trying to find at the time hehehe

Once again, thank you soooo much for reading, supporting my writing and indulging me with post-chapter discussions🫧 It makes the experience or writing and sharing stories 10x more fun!💜 I look forward to sharing more fics with everyone!

[missbubblesoda]

hiii ! i dont normally comment on stuff but i wanted to drop by here and say how much i LOVED a summers worth of sugar and just how much of a talented writer u are! u write arthur so well and the line about how ‘butterflies should always be around flowers’ was literally the sweetest thing ever!! i was kicking my feet like 🤭🤭 i cant wait to see the other stuff that u write in the future! i just know its gonna be a hit every time lol. have a great weekk!!

Hello anon! Thank you sooo much for reading and taking time out of your day to let me know how the story made you feel💜 this is a HUGE compliment and I don’t take your support for granted🥹 and omg that line was a last minute addition, literally one of the last things I changed, and now knowing how much you liked it I’m SO glad I did! Originally, Arthur was supposed to say something else, I think he was basically repeating himself, something he said in a previous line, but I didn’t like how repetitive/generic it sounded, and then this line about the butterflies popped in my head kkk I can’t wait to share more stories with you! I have many more ideas in store, I can’t wait to start write again! Have a great week too!🌸😊

[missbubblesoda]

I just want to say I absolutely loved your Arthur fic 😭😭😭 You write him so well and your writing style is genuinely so beautiful and eloquent!! Came for Arthur and stayed for the vibrant imagery 🙌. And I just have to ask… will u ever bless us with a Javier fic or one shot?👀🙏

What an absolute honor truly😭 that you enjoyed the imagery and writing to the point of reading 40k+ words from me💜 It means a lot! Thank you soooo much for supporting this fic and taking time out of your day to send me such kind words💜🌸 And Javier! Omg is this my first fic request ever? I’m honored, anon!🥹 Should I open my inbox for requests? Asdfsgaf🙈 At the moment, I am only writing for Arthur and John because those are the two men my brain can’t stop imagining in smutty scenarios all day long🤡 BUT! That doesn’t mean I am against the idea of writing for other beautiful men such as Javier and Charles🥹 I will just need a little help from you for the prompts when the time comes, you know just to get my gears turning haha so in conclusion, a Javier one shot can totally happen😈

[missbubblesoda]

I literally have tears pouring out of my eyes as I’m writing this, oh my god that was so beautiful! I could feel the yearning and the uncertainty leaping off my screen and punching me in my chest. And the end!! It was so so perfect! I love that you included other characters, and you did it so seamlessly! And I love love love love love me some soft Arthur smut and yours was just *mwah* you have a gift and I’m so thankful you decided to share it with us! Please please keep writing!!!

No matter how many times I say this, it’s never enough to express how grateful I truly am to everyone who gave this story a chance, and took time every week to read the updates. Thank you so much for reading and for letting me know how the story made you feel💜 it means a lot! It makes me so happy to know you connected with it in such a beautiful way🥹 and gosh I am SO GLAD you liked the ending omg and the smut! Haha I had spent more than 30k words building their relationship and the tension and I was so scared the love scene wouldn’t make the journey justice. But I was very satisfied with the way it turned out in the end and it’s such a relief to know you liked it too! Sometimes when you’re writing something, it’s hard to know if you like the scene bc it’s actually good or just bc you have spent so much time with it that your brain develops some kind of bias. Anyway, soft Arthur😭 assdfaaffdadgf I feel that’s 100% how high-honor Arthur would be during the intimate moments with the woman he loves. He’s such a gentleman😭 also, I’m very glad you enjoyed the ‘meeting the Marstons’ bit! It was a last minute addition tbh, my original plan was to mention have the reader mention briefly that they met at some point (like the MC recall that meeting but in a very brief way, no more than a paragraph) but somehow I just kept writing, I couldn’t stop and next thing I know! I had a full draft of a scene at Beecher’s Hope and I just had to polish it and include it. It was soooo fun to write. And it was such a cozy moment😭 I just imagined that family dinner and Arthur enjoying his loved ones’ company and ahsdfsh, it’s so perfect. He deserves cozy moments like that, and that’s all he’s getting in my fics🥹 I have so many more ideas for wholesome moments like that I can’t wait to include them in other fics ahdshdf I’m so excited to share them with everyone! Again, thank you so much for reading, and I hope to see you in the next one!💜

[missbubblesoda]

a summer’s worth of sugar. (5)

arthur morgan x fem!reader

summary: Just a quiet collection of domestic moments shared in a remote forest cabin with a wanted man you happened to find bleeding in your kitchen. Somewhere between shared breakfasts, sketches in a worn journal, and the intimate hush of the woods, the dangerous stranger slowly begins to feel less like a guest and more like a husband you never planned on having.

genre: 50% fluff, 50% smut, 100% Arthur is hot.

warnings: none (just small mentions of blood and stuff)

notes: Fulfilling your Arthur Morgan husband fantasy. Slow burn (patience is the longest yet most scenic road to smut.) Includes Arthur’s canonically perfect round ass naked in your kitchen. Includes Arthur enjoying a very ripe, very juicy, very pink peach in front of you. (I’m serious)

other chapters: (1) | (2) | (3) | (4) | AO3 | masterlist

wc: 13.9k (🤡)

The morning melodies of the forest wrapped around you like the softest quilt, crisp highland air dancing through your hair, rustling the leaves over and over until you realized how quiet the trail truly was.

It wasn’t the absence of sound—never that, the woods north of the Upper Montana were just as alive as those in the south—but the kind of quiet that settled deep into your bones. It lived beneath the chorus of birds and everything else around you. The rhythmic creak of saddle leather. The steady puff of the horses’ breath. And the hush of wind moving through pine and aspen, threading itself through every thought until there was room for nothing else.

Last night still lingered in your body like warmth trapped beneath skin. Not just the memory of his lips—though that burned still—but the devotion of his touch. The way he’d pleased you like no man ever had, as if you were something precious, something to be worshipped rather than claimed. The way he’d looked at you like he was afraid to break the spell by wanting too much.

And you understood the fear.

You, too, were now at risk of asking for far too much.

“You knew the man who lived here?” Arthur asked, riding just ahead of you, easy in the saddle—as if the land itself had shaped him to fit it.

To your left, Lenora View rested like a postcard of domestic peace. Old, weathered fabric swayed on the clothesline in the morning breeze, grayed by years of sun. Garden tools leaned where they’d been set down and never picked up again. Wrapped parcels and paper bundles waited patiently on the front step, untouched since ‘99. The little blue cabin now belonged to the ivy spilling from its flower baskets, roots claiming timber and eaves with quiet, possessive insistence—telling the ending to a mystery you’d first heard about last century.

“Saw him around town a few times,” you said, your eyes drifting back to Arthur, watching him without meaning to—memorizing the lines of his back, the way his head lifted toward the peaks as if greeting old friends. If your hands held even a fraction of the talent his did, you’d pull the reins right there and capture every sharp line, every soft shadow until he was yours to keep, long after the seasons changed and took him with them. “Went missin’ around the time I left town, don’t know if they ever found him.” You finished, forcing your attention back to the conversation.

“Oh, they did,” he replied, his shoulders moving with the horse, not against it. Free. Untethered. “Poor bastard drove himself off a cliff.” He tipped his chin toward the bridge, where the land fell away into jagged, cruel stone. “Wanna know what’s worse than dyin’ like that?”

Your face contorted with a wince. You couldn’t imagine much worse than meeting the rocks face-first. Even if fate gave you the mercy of a quick death on impact, the terror of the fall would be enough to shatter even the bravest soul.

“Dyin’ like that on the very road meant to take you to your bride,” he explained quietly, his voice barely rising above the thud of the horse hooves. “Man never showed up at his in-laws’ porch.”

A cold shudder rippled through you. It was a most horrible fate, indeed. Two, in fact. A lonely corpse forgotten under the shadow of a bridge. And a widow hauling her trunks back inside, step by confused step, as the realization set in that he wasn’t coming for her.

You wondered which was crueler—if she ever learned the truth, if she knew her lover was now a broken heap at the bottom of a canyon, or if she spent her years believing herself simply forgotten. Left behind by a forever that had only just begun to bloom. Haunted by the promise of mornings—quiet and ordinary—that now felt borrowed from another life. Coffee shared in comfortable silence. A soft sleeve brushing hers as he reached for the tin. A faint smile she hadn’t realized she wore whenever he teased her about the years ahead. Small things. Domestic things. Fragile, beautiful things that had shattered before they could ever truly begin.

The kind that made one’s chest ache with both possibility and dread in equal measure.

You knew better than to let yourself imagine too far ahead.

A man like Arthur didn’t belong to a life measured in seasons and routines, in lavender gardens and evenings by the fire. He belonged to motion. To horizons. To roads that never truly ended. And yet—treacherous thing—your mind still betrayed you with images of him splitting wood outside your cabin, of boots much bigger than yours resting by the door, of his laughter carried on crisp forest air as he leaned down to pick bay boletes beside you. Of shared meals eaten off mismatched plates. Of his coat—heavy and smelling of cigarettes and highland sun—draped carelessly over the back of a chair that had never expected to hold the weight of such a man.

He glanced back then, just briefly, as if he’d felt the weight of your gaze. His eyes softened when they met yours, something unspoken passing between you in the space of a heartbeat. He didn’t pry. Instead, he tipped his head toward the sprawling Valley ahead—a silent come see this—and you smiled despite yourself.

“How ‘bout a little race, butterfly?” he called, the breeze playing with those caramel locks you yearned to be the one whose scissors he asked for when they grew too long for his liking. “If I win, you leave that husband of yours for good.”

“And if I win?” you shot back, almost certain that he knew there was no husband thinking about you in Saint Denis—that the lie was nothing more than a thin, pointless game you both kept playing because it was just too fun to quit.

“Doubt that’ll happen,” he said, a challenge sparking in his blue eyes as he spurred his Shire into a sudden, thundering gallop.

You swallowed your doubts and urged your horse onward, the ground beneath you beginning to blur.

“Well, look at you!” you shouted after him. “All healed and bouncin’ on a horse like you weren’t bleeding to death last time I checked.” Your lips curved and your eyes crinkled under the sun, a smile that carried the ache of all your thoughts gently, like something brittle yet still very much alive. “If I had known that was all those wounds needed, I would’ve let you ride much sooner!”

His answer was laughter. Bright and unguarded. A sweet sound carried on the fresh breeze rolling into the open greens ahead of you.

The wind kissed your cheeks and tangled your hair, rushing cold and clean through your lungs as you rode fast along the creek. Morning had long since shaken off its sleep; the sun stood confident now, catching on river water and mossy stone, setting the world aglow as if it had something to prove. It was a freedom so real you could only feel it in the flesh—and never imagine.

Whatever tomorrow held—whatever ghosts waited for him, whatever roads might pull him toward an inevitable horizon where you didn’t exist—this was yours.

The day.

The sunlight.

The man riding ahead of you through a land far too beautiful to promise anything lasting.

So you let yourself have it.

Fully.

Without apology.

All of it:

The warmth of his familiar hands on your waist as he helped you down from your horse once you reached the sun-drenched fields he’d promised. The air crisp and heady, a smirk gracing his lips after having won a race you would have forfeited anyway. The price of losing—the promise to leave a ghost of a husband behind—was a prize far greater than any victory.

You let yourself have the press of his honey lips against yours beneath the bright, unapologetic sun—a sweet, butterfly claim that took hold the moment your feet touched the emerald grass, dusted with clumps of rebellious purple that refused to listen to the seasons. A few sprigs bloomed around your boots just because they could. Just like his kiss—born of pure whim, done simply because he felt like it. Because he could.

You let yourself have the sight of him setting up the tents in the heart of that purple sea—lavender still too young to pick, yet perfect to drink in with your eyes—his broad shoulders working beneath a vast, cloudless sky. It was a fairytale scene you glanced back at now and then as you knelt in the cool grass a few feet away, picking wild mint for the lunch he’d promised to hunt—as if you feared that looking away for even a minute too long, meant the horizon would finally decide to take him back.

You let yourself have the comforting scratch of charcoal against paper beneath the mellow afternoon sun. He sat on a flat rock by the water’s edge, black hat resting atop his satchel, lost in the quiet sanctuary of his art and his thoughts. A few rocks away, your bare feet greeted the creek like an old friend, threading carefully over mossy stones, skirts gathered as cool highland water slipped past your ankles.

The sharp, clean scent of the creek mingled with the faint, ever-present aroma of his cigarettes, a perfume that had become your new definition of safety. And in the silence—between the birdsong and the rushing water, between the soft grazing of the horses in the field and the wind stirring drowsy leaves awake—there was a peace so profound it felt fragile, like a soap bubble that could burst at anytime if the breeze blew in the wrong direction. You watched the way his brow furrowed in concentration, the way his large, scarred hand moved with such surprising grace across the journal page. In the early afternoon light, he wasn't an outlaw or a face on a wanted poster. He was just Arthur—simple and still—sharing a piece of the world with you.

And for the rest of the afternoon, at least while sunlight seeped into skin and moss alike, the quiet was enough.

But as the first stars pricked through the purple silk of the sky, as the last brushstrokes of orange slipped behind snowy peaks, and the Valley finally surrendered to the evening chill, the fairytale day began to drift away on the night breeze—feeling more like a memory than the present moment you were still allowed to experience. The quiet ache in your chest nudged you toward him, seeking the kind of bone-deep warmth you knew no campfire could provide.

“Here,” you said softly, handing him a steaming cup of coffee. You lowered yourself beside him at the entrance of his tent, sitting as close as you dared. Your head found the reassurance of his shoulder, resting there as you bid the day a silent, reluctant goodbye.

He said nothing beyond a low thank you—the words a husky, honeyed rasp carried off by the wind somewhere in the purple sea—before finishing his coffee in just a couple sips.

His warm hand came to rest on your knee, a bittersweet reminder that today was still here. That he was still here. You took a sip from your own mug, the cool night breeze kissing your sunburnt cheeks as if to soothe the worries you wouldn’t voice to him.

Your free hand found his under the fire glow—soap-worn fingers lacing through violence-worn knuckles. The gentle squeeze of his palm felt like it was pressing the ache right out of the tight muscle of your heart.

You stayed like that for a long while, listening to the chorus of cicadas humming somewhere in the brush and basking in the quiet comfort of his hand resting in yours. The Valley had gone blue with dusk, fireflies began to spark in the distance, and the firelight from camp flickered low and gold against the canvas of your tents.

Your thumb traced lazy circles along the base of his forefinger, feeling the rugged, uneven ridge of a scar—thickened like a ring of old damage that told a story of its own. You lingered there—curious, thoughtful.

“How’d you get this one?” you murmured, the question more tease than concern. Your gaze drifted briefly toward the darkening woods surrounding the camp—somewhere out there, a cellar hidden under the Valley, and an old woman who might still be haunting it. “Was it the old lady?”

He let out a soft chuckle, the sound a low vibration in his chest.

“This? No,” he said, leaning back a little, eyes lifting toward the first stars blinking awake overhead. “Bastard down in the Bayou.”

You shifted slightly closer without meaning to, your knee brushing his thigh as the night cooled.

“We’d been trackin’ him and his buddy for weeks,” he went on, gaze unfocused as he was pulled back into the suffocating, muggy wetlands of Lemoyne. “Got ‘em cornered in some half-rotted shack. I got my man. My friend took the other. All clear, all good…” His jaw tightened just a touch. “Until a gator crawled out from under the bed.”

“Oh—God.”

“I got distracted. As one does when a gator shows up.” He huffed a dry laugh, eyes flicking back to you. “The bastard I was tying up thought he’d try his luck, broke free and caught my finger between his teeth. Wouldn't let go.”

Your hand tightened around his instinctively, wincing as the image bloomed in your mind. The ring of scarred flesh felt even thicker now that you knew the story behind it. “Christ—how come you still got to keep the finger?”

He shrugged, as if being bitten by human teeth was just another part of the job. “Punched his jaw until he couldn’t close it no more.”

You winced again, a phantom pain throbbing in your own hand and jaw.

“Don’t worry,” he added quickly, the corner of his mouth lifting as he caught your expression. “He’s fine. Happily livin’ behind bars until they decide to hang him and his buddy. Reckon the law shouldn’t take its sweet time, though. Those two are known for their talent of squeezin’ themselves out of tight holes.”

You shook your head slowly, gaze dropping to the fire as it snapped and settled, still making sense of the story you’d just heard.

“Are you a bounty hunter?” you asked after a moment, your voice barely rising above the hush of the wind.

“Somethin’ like that. More like an assistant, really.” His thumb brushed once against your knuckles. “My friend does the huntin’. I just help her out sometimes.”

“Jesus.” The word slipped out before you could stop it, your thoughts drifting to this faceless woman—this unnamed force of nature—wondering what kind of life sharpened a lady into a blade like that. “Your friend’s tough.”

“She is,” Arthur agreed, his voice growing heavy with a different kind of respect. “Tougher than most men I know.”

The fire cracked softly in front of you, embers glowing with a drowsy, orange heat, while above, the stars stitched a brilliant quilt across the open sky. You held his hand a little tighter, suddenly aware of the life etched into every ridge and scar along his skin—knowing, with an aching certainty, that a life like his was not something a man simply stepped away from to pick mushrooms and chop wood in a forest cabin until the end of time.

And yet…

That same hand rested gently in yours tonight.

The same hand you’d found clutching his side, shedding precious drops of life on your kitchen table one fateful winter day. The same hand you’d cleaned and bandaged every morning as you nursed him back to health. The same hand you lifted to your lips now, pressing a soft kiss to the skin the doctor had stitched back together what felt like a lifetime ago. Your kiss was a silent plea wrapped in warmth.

To always remember you.

Wherever the wind took him next.

After all this.

After you.

Your gaze drifted up to his, content to simply look at him. Then, drawn into the blue depths of his eyes, you rose to press a wistful kiss over the scar on his chin, wondering—briefly, uselessly—who had put it there, wishing he’d linger around long enough to share that story with you some other night. Under these same stars.

You nudged him back gently, his back meeting the blankets inside the tent with a soft thud. And then you were straddling him, your weight settling comfortably over his, as you traced a line of slow, honeyed kisses along the caramel bristle of his jaw.

His hands came to rest at your hips, easy and familiar. His chest rose steady beneath you as your mouth drifted to his neck, your kisses sweet, caring and entirely his. That was how you wanted him to remember them: the ‘pretty lips’ he’d written about in his journal. Just softness. Just sugar. Just his.

At the same time, your fingers worked at the buttons of his shirt. Slowly. Deliberately. Each eyelet freed with blind familiarity and careful precision. There was no rush in your movements. You had all night, after all; just the two of you and the scent of crushed lavender beneath the blanket.

You pushed the fabric off his shoulders far enough to reveal the rugged map of scars across his chest. His hands roamed the cloth over your thighs, a deep, satisfied rasp rumbling from within him as your lips met the iron-forged muscle of his torso—scattering butterfly kisses over every patch of skin where violence had stolen the chance for sandy hair to grow.

His hand tightened on your thigh when your mouth brushed the scorched, distorted mark on his left shoulder. You wondered if it still hurt—if the pain still haunted him despite the scar looking old enough to belong to another lifetime.

“And this one?” you murmured, kissing it again just to be safe—as if your warmth might help the skin finally heal, hoping the feeling of you might linger on him for days. “Who did this to you?”

“Some Irish clown,” he rasped, his voice low and molten, a pleasant whisper that melted like honey beneath your touch. “Distant time. Different life. Ain’t ‘round here no more.”

You glanced up just enough to see him—eyes closed, brow faintly furrowed, every last thread of tension dissolving beneath your care.

And for this moment, at least until the sun rose again and the horizon claimed him back, he was yours to soothe.

So you did.

You moved down from his shoulder slowly, reverently, kissing every patch of his history that didn’t include you—every chapter of a life that had existed long before your paths crossed. Every shiny, gnarled line of scar tissue that broke the smooth rhythm of his skin—each one a quiet testament to the man he had been before and the man he had become after them. The outlaw who’d appeared bleeding in your kitchen one winter afternoon. The gentleman who’d placed your favorite flowers in a vase just so you’d smile at the sight. The artist who’d sketched you like his muse instead of the simple country woman you’d always been.

The man whose chest now rose and fell beneath your fingertips, his lungs whistling placidly as your lips traced a downward path, following the coarse line of hair that disappeared beneath the waistband of his jeans.

His nails bit into the soft skin of your arm when you drifted lower, abandoning all pretense of ladylike restraint, pressing your butterfly lips to the hard, swollen shape of him—held captive beneath a suffocating layer of rough denim.

But not for long.

Your fingers worked the leather of his belt free, the quiet jingle of metal and the whisper of fabric setting your heart into a wild, impatient rhythm—one your hands did not mirror. Instead, they moved with agonizing control as you unbuttoned his jeans, savoring every second, every low grunt that left his chest despite the desperate anticipation running through your veins, despite the searing summer blooming between your thighs. Wet and unapologetic. Midday heat sizzling over sweat-pearled skin. A haze of a summer fantasy flickering through your mind—peach lemonade on a sunlit counter, sweet beads of condensation rolling down cloudy glass, reality blurring at the edges.

Your eyes lifted to his as you tugged the fabric down, denim and cotton together. He met your gaze, his eyes fixed on you as if you were the first ray of light to reach him after an endless, biting night. Unable to resist any longer, you surrender to your desires, your attention drifting lower, savoring the iron planes of his chest, the dip of his stomach, until you reached the part of him every nerve in your body ached to feel.

A whimper escaped your lips at the sight—the sound soft and honest, impatient yet reverent. Just like him: rising solid and proud between well-muscled thighs. The flushed tip already glistening with anticipation, sweet drops sliding down the swollen flesh, following the thick veins that disappeared into the coarse hair at the base.

Your eyes drank him in with gratitude. Unashamed.

He was the most beautiful sight the Valley had ever offered you.

His gaze was heavy, half-lidded, dark with a hunger that made your skin sizzle as he waited—ached—for your touch.

And who were you to make a gentleman wait?

You reached clumsily for the front of your shirt, your fingers betraying your eagerness. But you hadn’t even undone the first button when his hand closed gently around your wrist, stopping you cold.

Your mouth parted to protest, but he sat up and pressed his lips to yours—soft and deliberate—as if to quiet any complaint before it could form. His experienced, gunslinger fingers took over where yours had faltered.

Your mouth curved against his in a smirk you didn’t bother to hide. He had said this was the fun part, after all.

He bared you without inconvenience, sliding the cotton down over your shoulders, revealing skin his lips only seemed to know how to worship. Your head tipped back, suddenly too heavy to hold upright, your neck turning liquid beneath the warmth of his breath. A feeble sound escaped your mouth—half-need, half-delight—as his lips pressed soft and tender against your chest, painting a trail of wet heat as they traveled lower, to where plump flesh spilled from the tight lace cradling your breasts.

Your body shivered, a small, involuntary tremor, as the cool highland breeze brushed over skin still damp from his kiss. His rough fingers worked the lacing open with careful, deliberate tugs, each eyelet slipping free until nothing remained between his gaze and the sight of you—bare, undone and aching for him.

Your nipples tightened in the night air, your chest rising and falling beneath his reverent stare, as if your body was thanking him for freeing your breasts from the constricting embrace of fabric.

You smiled at him, your eyelids heavy with want, and for a moment, you wondered if he’d reach for the charcoal behind his ear and start drawing you right then and there.

“You’re too pretty for a bastard like me,” he whispered, leaning down to press a butterfly kiss against the goosefleshed curve of your breast. “Too damn pretty.”

Your spine arched at his touch, at his praise, the weight of your upper body resting solely on your hands, palms pressed flat into the blankets beside you.

“Arthur—” you sighed his name into the star-freckled sky as his fingers guided your skirt up your hips and over your head, leaving only your lacy drawers between you. You lifted yourself slightly—an awkward, desperate motion—but it was enough. He slipped them away without making you leave the heat of his lap.

“Sweet butterfly,” he rasped, his hand drifting down to the summer raging between your thighs, sinking into it softly, unafraid to be burned. His fingers coaxed a fragile whimper from your lips. “Too damn sweet to be touched by nothin’ but the cleanest, softest hands.”

And yet you wanted his—blood-stained and bruised. Palms scarred. Fingertips calloused exactly where they curled around a trigger. You wanted those same hands that knew how to ease you open like this, gentle as a promise. Not teasing. Just preparing. Just reassuring. Only the sweetest pressure allowed in this fairytale.

Your hands found his face, cupping it, holding his gaze as the quiet, wet sounds of his touch filled the space between your bodies.

“Clean hands ain’t makin’ me feel this way,” you breathed, your mouth parting wide in a silent moan, gasping for the air you stole from his lungs. “A-Arthur…” He touched you exactly where he’d learned you liked it the night before, as though rewarding you for making his name sound so beautiful.

“Yours is the only name these lips won’t ever stop sayin’,” you promised, arching against the arm he kept around your back, drawing you closer. His neglected length—waiting with a painful, stoic patience between you—brushed against your belly as he shifted, a searing reminder of just how much he was holding back for your sake.

“God—yes…Arthur—”

He pressed the tender bundle of nerves between your folds with his thumb, the movement as careful and artistic as when he held a piece of charcoal between his fingers.

“Men like me don’t get to have this,” he murmured, his voice a bittersweet whisper—dark coffee with barely a sprinkle of sugar—a reminder meant more for himself than for you.

You stilled, your hands resting against the steady, heavy beat of his heart. You gently nudged him back until his head met the blankets, even though it meant losing the delicious fullness of his fingers inside you. You leaned down, pressing a soft peck to his lips, your voice a hush against his skin.

“You’re a gentleman, Arthur.” Your fingers slipped into the honey locks of his hair, combing through them as you hovered above him, sinking into the honest, blue depths of his eyes. “The sweetest man… and you don’t even know it.”

“Butterfly—”

“Shhh.” You pressed your lips against his again for good measure—half-kiss, half-smile.

Then, you left him there as you straightened back, your fingertips reaching carefully for his length. He jolted faintly at your touch, a small shudder running through his massive frame as your gentle hands wrapped around him, just enough to hold him steady. You shifted your hips closer, letting your aching, slick folds brush the prominent veins along his swollen cock.

A sound escaped you at the delicious contact. Though your legs felt liquid, you managed to press your knees into the blankets, rising just enough to glide your drenched slit along him—slowly, from tip to base and back again. Not taking him inside. Not yet. Just tracing the side of his length, letting your body become familiar with every ridge of him, coating him in your heat.

His nails pressed into your knee, his brow drawn tight as he looked up at you, then down to where your bodies met. Both of you were caught in the quiet spell of it, in the hush of that moon-drenched intimacy—in the slow, mesmerizing friction of flesh that had long ached for this. Velvet against silk.

“You’re one handsome man, Arthur Morgan,” you whispered, shifting your hips in gentle, swaying motions just to see his sharp features tighten in delight. “So damn handsome. Don’t know if they ever told you.”

He gave you a brittle, flickering smile through heavy lids—a small gratitude for a truth you weren’t sure he believed about himself.

You glanced down just in time to see the glistening tip of him brush your swollen bud, a thin thread of sticky desire stretching between you.

And you could tell—by the way his muscles shuddered under your worship, by the way his fingers sank into your skin as your velvet folds soothed the painful hardness of him—that he was not used to the softness. To the devotion. To the care.

To Arthur, all his body’d probably ever been was a tool for survival, a shield for others, a target for his enemies. But to you, it was something precious whose warmth you’d always crave, even after he was long gone from these lands.

“I want this, Arthur, ah—” your voice broke as the head nudged your clit again, a jolt of lightning sparking through your core. “I—I want us like this.”

Every day, of every season, back in our little cabin.

In the summer, after a long day under the sun, sweat-damp bodies tangled in freshly washed sheets.

In the fall, behind the reliable trunk of an ancient pine, a basket of foraged berries forgotten in the carpet of needles beside you.

In the winter, quilts spread before the hearth, snow falling onto the frozen surface of the Basin, your shadows dancing in black and orange against the worn timber walls.

And every spring, in this purple sea, just like now—the Valley flowers and the star-pricked sky the only witnesses to your lovemaking.

“Please—”

—don’t leave me.

You didn’t dare finish the thought aloud. It felt selfish to want more than what he was already giving you—greedy to ask for his future when this moment alone already felt like every beautiful thing this life had to offer.

“Arthur…” With a soft sigh of his name, you finally nudged him inside you, using your hand to tuck the glistening tip into your welcoming warmth—just barely at first, just enough for your body to bloom around the stretch. He grunted as you lowered your hips slowly, the sound like gravel over silk. You let yourself sink down inch by patient inch, your hungry walls closing possessively around him.

The soothing brush of his hands on your thighs was a caress meant to encourage, to praise you for how well you were taking him in. Yet as you lowered further, the increasing heat in your sensitive flesh brought a flicker of sharp discomfort, and for a heartbeat you wondered if you would be able to fit him fully at all.

But patience was a virtue these lands had long since taught you.

You reached for his hand, threading your fingers through his as you sank lower, as deep as the pain would allow. Until it numbed. Until the fullness grew so exquisite you could feel nothing but the solid, pulsing weight of him inside you.

“You okay, butterfly?” he whispered, the words breathless. His voice was soft as the breeze stirring the leaves outside, sweet as the press of his lips against the back of your hand.

You nodded, barely hearing anything beyond the rasp of his breath. Barely seeing anything but the gorgeous, moonlit fantasy before you: his mouth parted in silent praise, his brow drawn tight with a vulnerability people never expected from a man like him. But then again, they’d never seen him like you did.

He was such a gentleman, just lying there—hard and generous—letting you take your time, letting you move as you pleased, letting you use him as you pleased—utterly content just to see you happy.

And you were.

Happy to be the one taking him in like a compliment.

Like a lock that had finally found its key.

Your palms pressed against his chest as you lifted your hips a few inches, then sank back down again, a little more confident this time, the feeling of him so deeply a part of you now. A low sound escaped his throat—half-breath, half-praise—as his fingers tightened around the fat of your thigh.

You took it as encouragement.

So you did it again.

And again.

Soon, a comfortable rhythm formed between you, your bodies moving in harmony beneath the wide, starlit night. The clean mountain air brushed cool against your bare skin, raising gooseflesh whenever the wind hit your back, but the warmth between your joined hips burned bright enough to chase away any chill.

The world beyond the small tent of stitched blankets and dancing firelight seemed to fall away, leaving only the wet, rhythmic slap of flesh against flesh, and the steady cadence of your joined breaths.

“You turn me stupid, woman,” he rasped, his voice deep and rough, as if the words had to fight their way out of the breathless pit of his lungs. “Don’t know what you do to me.”

His gaze remained fixed on you as though you were the only thing in the whole Valley worth seeing. His hands slid along your hips, steadying you, guiding your movements without ever trying to take control.

You smiled down at him, your pace growing a little quicker, a little less careful, as the pleasure built inside you like a gathering midsummer storm.

His name left your lips like a prayer, your voice trembling as the sensation tightened deep in your core, spreading through your limbs until they were too liquid and too useless to serve you in this dance no more.

He felt it before you could say more.

With a sudden, gentle strength, he shifted, rolling you beneath him just as your knees threatened to give out. Your back met the blanket, the grass bristling faintly beneath the thin fabric, still warm from his body. He hovered over you, careful not to press his full weight down. One arm braced beside your head, his fingers lacing tightly through yours, while the other slid beneath your thigh, lifting and angling you just the way he needed you—just the way he knew would make you feel everything he wanted to give you.

“A—Arthur—” His name tore from your chest, loud and helpless, as though life wouldn’t give you another chance to say it after tonight, as though the Valley itself might carry the sound across the hills and keep it alive long after you were gone. The world blurred at the edges as the delightful fullness of him crested inside you, your body arching softly beneath his muscles, your fingers tightening around his knuckles until they went numb.

“You’re alright, darlin’,” he murmured, the low rumble of his voice more soothing than any touch. “I’ve got you.”

He kissed you through it—slow, deep, and steady—his tongue moving against yours with quiet devotion, as the combined depth of his thrusts became too much to bear. Your walls, swollen with sweet juice, finally surrendered—a summer downpour spilling between your thighs, drowning him in your delight.

But being the gentleman he was, he didn’t pull away from the storm he’d created. His lips stayed on yours instead—selfless, patient—holding you close without asking anything of you as you came undone in his arms, as fire embers sparked all over your skin, melting the tension away from your muscles. As your body softened beneath him, he continued to move with a deeper, searching rhythm, chasing his own release.

He found it a few heartbeats later. Your walls fluttered around him as he slipped free at the last possible second, just enough to bury his face in the curve of your neck. A low, broken sound escaped him—a grunt of pure, shattered relief—as his body tensed and shuddered. Sweet warmth painted beautiful shades of white across your belly before he finally stilled, his breath heavy and ragged against your skin.

For a long moment, neither of you moved.

Somewhere in the valley, a night bird called. Then another answered from farther off. The creek joined them, the cold water whispering over stone just a few feet away. Outside, the fire crackled softly—perhaps too small for the mountain cold, but neither of you felt any urge to tend it.

He stayed there, catching his breath against your shoulder, his weight warm and grounding. It was as if he feared that moving even an inch might burst whatever short-lived, beautiful bubble you were trapped in. Not just tonight, but these last few weeks.

And you understood. You stayed still too, only daring to move the hand that now traced slow circles across his freckled back, your fingertips savoring the strength beneath his skin, memorizing the map of his muscles before the trail could claim them back.

“Let’s go south through Black Bone Forest,” he broke the silence first, the words tickling your skin on their way out. “See that new ranch they built out there. Take it slow. Pick you some of those flowers you like. They grow ‘round there, too, those orchids.” His fingertips drifted along your ribs, slow and absentminded, as though he were sketching the path you’d follow come morning. “We can camp near Owanjila if it gets late. Leave at first light the next day… then we’ll make it south of the Montana before dark.”

You stayed quiet, listening to the low hush of the creek, the brittle crackle of the fire outside, the soft rustle of blankets whenever either of you shifted. You let yourself sink into the simple comfort if it—the grounding weight of his body, the lazy tickle of his fingertips at your side, and the wide, indifferent scatter of stars overhead.

You watched them as though they might hand down some ancient wisdom—something that would mercifully quiet the question your lips were aching to ask.

“And after that…” Your fingers moved slowly across his shoulders, counting freckles one by one, though your heart beat fast and uncertain beneath his body. And you wondered if he could hear it from where his ear rested against your chest. “Are you goin’ to Mexico, then?”

You felt the faint shake of his head.

“I gotta go to Beecher’s Hope,” he said quietly. “Ask John a favor.”

Your heart twisted. Mexico or Blackwater—it didn’t matter. Neither of those plans included you. Still, you liked the way he said that name—John—with a natural, lived-in warmth, as if you were supposed to know who he was. It made you feel, just for a moment, as though you belonged to some small corner of his world. You pictured the drawing you’d once glimpsed in a stolen morning—those men with their quiet smiles. One of them, perhaps. A brother.

“Will you come visit me, Arthur?” you asked, voice faltering just a little, the question barely rising above the hush of the wind. Your eyes stayed fixed on the patch of sky framed by the tent opening. “Sometimes. When you’re in the area.”

“Butterfly…” He drew in a slow, steady breath and lifted himself from the cradle of your arms, propping up on one elbow so he could look at you. The firelight from outside flickered softly across his godlike features, softening the hard lines of him. “You know I don’t much like the idea of you bein’ there alone.”

“Then don’t leave.”

The words slipped out before you could stop them. The years you’d imagined together—the four seasons in the cabin—unfolded inside your head like a map you weren't allowed to keep. But what if…

You pushed yourself upright and cupped his face in both hands, as though you could anchor him to your life by sheer will alone. In that moment, you forgot every promise you’d made to respect the man he was—his drifting nature, his wild heart. Because the thought of a life where you didn’t fall asleep against his chest every night felt like the cruelest torture imaginable.

“You can still travel,” you whispered, your voice thick with a desperate, brittle hope. “Still see the world. Camp under the stars. Ride wherever the wind calls you. Just…” Your thumb brushed a slow, loving circle along the bristled warmth of his cheek—longing, wishful. “Just come back to me in between, Arthur. Come back to me every time, before you leave again.”

Please.

He looked at you for a long moment, the starlight caught deep in his eyes, the same pale glow it cast across the Basin on a clear summer night.

“Whether it’s a trip to Saint Denis for cookies,” he said quietly, his hand sliding to the small of your back, drawing you closer, “or just down to Manzanita for groceries…if I leave you alone for a second while ‘em pelt clowns still roam those woods… how am I any different from that imaginary piece of shit you call your husband?”

A smile broke across your face, his features blurring through the warmth gathering in your eyes.

He leaned in first, slow and careful, as if he were giving you time to change your mind. His lips brushed yours in a soft, lingering kiss—sweet and reassuring. An owl hooted in the distance, and somewhere beyond the tent one of the horses shifted, a sleepy huff drifting through the night air along with the faint, comforting scent of woodsmoke and pine.

“Ex-husband,” you smiled against his lips, your hand sliding to the back of his neck, your thumb stroking gently just below his ear.

He huffed a quiet laugh, the sound warm and breathy between kisses. “So you’re single now, ma’am? Finally?” He pressed another kiss to the corner of your mouth, then to your cheek, as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to stop.

“No.”

He pulled back just enough to frown, confusion flickering across his face—then understanding dawned, playful and sure.

“You don’t mind your new husband’s a wanted man in a few counties?” he asked, the weight of his past haunting his voice beneath his playful demeanor.

“And who’s gonna come find him in the middle of the woods?” you teased, though you could still feel the tension behind his question. “You and the pelt clowns are the only men I’ve seen in all the years I’ve lived out there. If the law ever comes, I could always hide you in my cellar.”

You stole another peck from his velvet lips, as if you could kiss his worries quiet.

“And if they see my boots ‘round the house?” he wondered aloud, his voice deepening as he let himself drift into the shape of the life you were offering—the shape of the husband who shared a little cabin in the woods with his butterfly wife. “If they find my shirts in you closet, my guns in a chest under the bed…”

“I’ll just tell ’em they belong to my husband.” You brushed your nose gently against his, smiling, perfectly content to spend the whole night spinning little stories if it meant one of them would convince him to stay. “My sweet husband who sells exotic flowers in Saint Denis.”

He huffed, amused. “You’re one clever lady, ain’t ya?”

You laughed softly as he pressed his lips against yours one more time before drawing you closer, turning you around so your back rested against his chest. His arms circled you in a warm, protective hold. The heat of him seeped into your skin, still slightly damp from your lovemaking, his breath slow and even against the crown of your head.

You stayed like that for a while, your fingers drifting absentmindedly over the soft hair on his forearms, tracing the faint ridges of old scars. Above you, the sky stretched wide and endless, stars scattered like spilled sugar. His chest rose and fell gently against your spine, the rhythm slow enough to lull your thoughts quiet.

“I mean it, butterfly,” he said after a moment, his voice low and thoughtful. “What I’ve done… it ain’t pretty.” The words slipped into the night, carried away by the soft murmur of the creek. “Out there… law’s still lookin’ for folk like me. Last thing I want is that kind of life to find y—”

“Where?” you cut in softly. “Where are they lookin’ for you? We could just avoid those places forever.”

He paused, then sighed, as if remembering that the woman in his arms was as stubborn as mountain stone.

“Let’s see…” he murmured. “Annesburg. The whole stretch of Scarlett Meadows. Blackwater still, though I’ve been there a few times lately.” He fell quiet again, listening to the creek as though it might whisper the rest back to him. “Reckon Saint Denis too. Though I’ve passed through without much trouble. City’s too big for the law to care who comes and goes.”

“S’okay,” you said softly, pressing your hands over his where they rested just beneath your breasts. “Never even thought of goin’ to Rhodes or Annesburg anyway. Heard there’s nothin’ to see there but dust and coal. And who even needs Blackwater?”

He chuckled faintly at your optimism—a low, melodic vibration that traveled from his chest straight into your spine.

“What about Ambarino?” you asked. It was the only place you didn’t want to leave this world without seeing at least once—but you’d gladly give up every mountain peak in the country if it meant he stayed by your side.

“Don’t recall ever doin’ anything nasty up there,” he murmured against yours ear.

“Then, I’d like to see the Grizzlies with you. That round house you drew. The Springs…” you let the fantasy take root as you spoke. “I read in the Ledger that the water there’s bluer than the sky. So bright it almost hurts to look at. They say it changes colors, like it can’t make up its mind. Little ponds of boilin’ water.” You smiled faintly at the memory of the tattered article. “Ever been there, Arthur?”

He only nodded against your head, quiet and content to simply hear you speak.

“An old traveler once stopped through Strawberry,” you went on, your fingers tracing the thick, prominent vein along his forearm. “Sat at Mr. Cooper’s counter all evening, talkin’ about the places he’d seen. Said there was a poppy field real high up north. Bright orange ones. Claimed the land for themselves, he said—wild little things.”

Arthur stayed still, save for the hand that drifted along your side, his fingers warm and reassuring against your skin, sketching the blooming shape of a future you both knew was a gamble.

“He told Mr. Cooper you could see the whole country from up there. The Heartlands, Cumberland Forest, O’Creagh’s Run…even Flat Iron Lake if the sky’s clear. Like the land just opens itself up to you. And up there…” you smiled faintly, picturing the two of you as tiny specks in that orange sea. “He said the wind never stops. Just rolls through the flowers and makes the whole hill shimmer orange.”

Above you, the patch of sky framed by the tent flap seemed to fill with that imagined color—the orange sea the traveler had described, the wide world unfolding beneath it. You could almost see it: a quiet picnic in the sun, his head resting in your lap while the wind stirred the poppies and lulled you both into a lazy afternoon nap. Your horses grazing nearby, tails flicking at flies in the tall grass.

And you wondered if, in his silence, he was painting the same picture in his mind.

“He said there’s a lookout tower near the ridge. And a little cabin folk call the Witch’s Hut,” you added after a moment. “Nobody seems to know who lives there. Or if anyone does at all.” You let out a quiet, wistful breath. “Said that field was the prettiest patch of land he’d ever seen, Arthur.”

“I can take you there,” he promised quietly, his voice brushing your ear like a secret. “Late spring, when them flowers are in full bloom. Camp under the stars, just like right now.”

You turned slightly in his arms, searching his face, trying to memorize every detail in the firelight—the tired kindness in his eyes, the way the shadows clung to the stubble along his jaw. The world felt small and gentle around you, no bigger than the blankets beneath your bodies and the slow rustle of the leaves dancing in the night breeze.

“That sounds real nice, Arthur,” you whispered, your lips curving into a smile the moment they shaped his name.

“Butterflies should always be ‘round flowers.” He leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss to your cheek. Not hurried, not hungry—it was just warm and it was his. The kind of kiss meant for quiet goodnights, and not for farewells.

He shifted, the blankets rustling softly as he drew you down with him. One arm slipped around your waist as your back met the warm fabric beneath. You turned toward him without thinking, fitting against his chest like that was always where you were meant to rest. His hand settled at the small of your back, careful, protective—like you were something too precious he didn’t want the night to steal while he slept.

You listened to the steady rhythm of his breathing, to the faint thump of his heart beating life into his body beneath your ear. He caught your fingers in his and brought them to his lips, pressing a soft kiss to your knuckles that felt like a seal on a contract.

“I’ll take you everywhere you want,” he murmured again, as if he wanted the stars to be the guardians of this life you were planning to start together. “The Springs, the house on the hill, the poppy field.”

You smiled at the thought, watching the faint, pulsing glow of embers through the tent opening, basking in the fresh scent of the wildflowers crushed beneath your tangled bodies.

“There’s a place up north near the Reservation,” he went on, his voice drifting. “Where the Dakota’s born. Water’s emerald like this valley grass, but deep blue as the midday sky too… if that makes sense.”

You nodded against his chest, not quite able to picture a color so vibrant, but content to know that his plans—his future—included you now.

“You’ll love it up there, butterfly.”

Your fingers curled gently into his as a reply, wishing you could bottle this starlit night forever. Wishing you could fold it up like a letter and tuck it somewhere safe in the event that, despite your best efforts to build a fairytale together, the years eventually decided to take him away some day.

His arm tightened around you just a little more, soft and quiet as the valley itself. It was a wordless reminder that, though the future curled in uncertain, shifting ways beyond the canvas of the tent, the present moment was all you truly had.

And it was enough.

-

Rain hammered the roof in a steady, heavy rhythm, like a thousand angry fingers drumming on the planks overhead. It was the kind of summer storm that came down all at once, wild and unruly, carrying thunder and lightning in its wake. The scent of damp earth and crushed pine needles slipped through every crack in the timber, the forest air feeling softer for it—richer somehow—the oppressive heat of the day washed away and replaced by the cool, clean breath of the storm.

You stirred beneath the blankets, drifting in the hazy space between dreams and reality. Across the room, the fire in the hearth burned low, reduced to a blurry nest of glowing embers beyond your heavy eyelids, casting wavering shadows along the walls. The cabin was steeped in the soft scent of warmed sap and old smoke that had burned all night, while the world outside was reduced to flashes of pale light and the endless, roaring curtain of rain.

For a moment, you didn’t know if it was still night or if morning had come and simply forgotten to bring the sun with it. The sky beyond the small window by your bed was black as pitch, and the downpour made time feel slow and thick, as if the hours had melted into one another and settled quietly in the dark corners of the room.

You shifted, your body instinctively seeking a warmth that was no longer there.

Your hand brushed over the blanket beside you, searching for solid muscle, but found only the faint dip in the mattress where he’d been. The spot still held a trace of his heat—a ghost of warmth beneath your palm—and the sheets still carried the lingering smell of his skin. But the steady rise and fall of the chest you’d fallen asleep against was gone.

You blinked your eyes open, lashes heavy with sleep, and turned your head toward the corner where he liked to drink his morning coffee.

He stood near the kitchen window, his back to you, outlined by the dim, dying glow of the fire. The soft light traced the broad expanse of his shoulders and the strong line of his spine. It caught the firm, familiar curve of his ass before it artistically melted into the muscle of his thighs. There was something about the way he stood, the easy, unguarded posture of a man who hadn’t bothered with clothes after the night you’d shared.

He didn’t seem to notice you stirring. Just stood there, one arm bent at the elbow, a cigarette resting between his fingers—the ember at its tip pulsing faintly, a tiny orange star in the darkness.

He looked out at the black window where rain streamed down in silver lines, the storm turning the glass into a shifting, watery mirror that reflected nothing but the quiet life he had spent years searching for.

For a long moment, you simply watched him, listening to the distant thunder and the protest of the trees as they bent under the tempest. Every now and then, lightning flashed, outlining his powerful silhouette against the glass before plunging the room back into firelit shadows. The blankets were soft around you legs, silk against your skin, and in the cradle of their warmth you found yourself wishing—just a little—that this god of the wilderness you just so happened to call your husband would come back and lie down beside you again.

You rose from the bed, your bare feet meeting the cool floorboards with a quiet thud. You were only wearing the shirt you’d fallen asleep in—the same cotton shirt you’d brought him from Manzanita one distant spring afternoon. The fabric was faded now, worn thin by years of honest use and the countless mornings it had spent swaying on the clothesline beneath the bright sun.

“You have a beautiful ass, Arthur Morgan,” you smiled, giving the firm, plump muscle a playful squeeze before wrapping your arms around his waist. Your pressed your cheek snugly against the freckles on his back, skin warm and slightly damp from the heat of the room.

He huffed a laugh—easy, unguarded and entirely his. “Well, good mornin’ to you, too.” His voice came out a deep rasp, husky like the first words of the day always were—a quiet contrast to the storm raging outside. “Sleep well?”

You hummed your answer against his skin, breathing him in—salt, moist pine, premium tobacco, and the faint, lingering trace of lavender from last night’s bath.

“Mornin’?” You glanced toward the dark window where the Basin caught the lightning like a turbulent mirror, doubtful the clock ticked anywhere past three or four. “We can still sleep a little more. Come back to bed.”

“Was about to.” His hand came to rest atop yours, warm and heavy. “Thunder must’ve scared the horses, woke me up, too.” His fingertips brushed your forearm in an absent, affectionate stroke—the touch of a man who no longer had to keep his hands near a holster. A man who only cleaned his guns out of habit and fondness for the steel, and not necessity. “And then I felt like drawin’ somethin’.”

Your gaze drifted toward the scarred wooden table, where his journal lay open. A stick of charcoal rested across the center crease like a worker sleeping after a long day, proud of the finished lines it left behind on the page.

The firelight turned the paper a soft amber, making the woman in the drawing look even warmer, even more peaceful. She slept curled in thick, soft blankets, the folds of fabric shaded so carefully you could almost feel their weight. Behind her, a small window shimmered with rain, the glass streaked in thin, slanted lines as though the storm lived inside the page itself. You could almost hear the thunder roar, feel the hush of the dark room, the softness beneath her cheek, the deep, earned rest in her sleep.

And perched lightly in her hair was a butterfly, its delicate wings folded like a quiet ornament among the wild tangle of bed-mussed strands. He’d somehow made that unruly morning mess look soft, almost flattering—as if it belonged in a storybook instead of a real, ordinary routine.

And even after all these years, after all the lazy afternoons he’d spent trying to teach you the way of the charcoal in numerous, failed attempts, you still didn’t know how he did it—how he could turn something so simple into a fairytale.

“Oh, Arthur—” your brows drew together in fondness, a tender little frown and an even bigger smile taking over your face, letting him know how much you liked it. “It’s beautiful.”

“Good, ‘cause...” He reached for the journal, carefully tearing the page free so it wouldn’t crease. “It was for you anyway.”

You took the paper in your hands. Up close, the details felt even more alive. You couldn’t understand how he managed to capture something so vivid in the dim, smoky light of the hearth.

“I love it.” You rose onto your toes to plant a kiss against his caramel stubble, where a few lines of silver had begun to show, glowing faintly in the firelight.

He caught your chin softly, tilting your face up so he could kiss you a little longer, his lips still as sweet after all these years.

Just like that first time in your cellar, all those summers ago, with the Skinners’ threat hanging over your head and everything still waiting to begin.

The room beneath your feet was still your cellar—the cedar box still held quilts that smelled faintly of soap and dust, and the walls were still lined with jars of preserved plums and candied tomatoes. But now, an entire shelf was devoted to the journals he’d finished through the years. They sat tucked against the far wall, next to the corny romance novels you usually read for him under the mellow afternoon sun—after the chores were done, resting on a patch of grass by the shore, with his head in your lap and your fingers threading through his caramel strands…

No, the cellar was no longer a place meant for hiding. There were no more nights spent listening for footsteps above the floorboards, no more strangers with cruel intentions wandering through these woods.

Arthur had made sure of that.

On the distant sunset when you’d come back from Big Valley, he hadn’t taken you home to the Basin like you’d expected. Instead, you’d found yourself hitching your horse to the front porch of a sturdy farmhouse, the railings smooth and well-cared for, the timber still smelling faintly new beneath the crisp evening air. The sun sank low on the horizon, painting the tall yellow grass of the Great Plains a honeyed gold, just like the fur of the friendly Labrador licking your hands.

He’d bounded up to you the moment you stepped down from your horse, his tail wagging so hard his whole body wiggled. You’d laughed as the fur tickled your skin, kneeling to scratch behind his ears while his tongue slobbered happily over your fingers, the scent of hay and sun-baked earth rising from the yard.

The woman from Arthur’s drawing—Abigail, you’d learned—came through the front door at the sound of the dog’s excited barking. Her hair was gathered neatly into a bun, and the soft sway of her skirts made her look as though she’d simply stepped straight out of the journal page.

“John! Come here! Arthur’s back!” she called into the cooling air, hurrying down the steps to throw her arms around him. “Didn’t expect to see you again so soon. Thought you were halfway to Mexico by now.”

“Oh, I’d probably be happily drowning my regrets in tequila at some bar in Chuparosa if it wasn’t for ‘em damn Skinners.” He joked, his arm light and familiar around her shoulder. “Two arrows and several knife cuts later, turns out I’m still standing.” He signaled briefly to his side and his thigh, his tone light despite the gravity of the scars you both remembered too well. “Long story. The important thing is I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for the gentle hands and the incessant scolding of this sweet lady. Butterfly, this is Abigail.”

“Pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” you said, smiling back at her.

“Oh, just call me Abigail,” she insisted, moving without hesitation to pull you into a hug, her shirt warm against the evening breeze. “Thank you for savin’ this man. He’s one big stubborn fool.” She glanced at him, her brow furrowed in disappointment. “I don’t even want to know what he got himself into this time, but I’m glad you were there.” She turned back to Arthur, though her hand still rested kindly on your elbow. “How many times will I have to tell you? Someday you’re gonna get yourself killed, Arthur Morg—”

“What happened, brother?”

A man emerged from a nearby barn, short black hair under a sun-worn hat and long, deep scars carved into his right cheek. The marks were harsh—a jagged reminder of the same violent past Arthur had crawled out from—but his expression was anything but. His rough features were softened by the playful grin he wore as he approached.

“Finally decided to move in and help me run this mess?” he half-shouted, boots thudding tiredly across the yard. His voice sounded worn by years of trail dust and campfire smoke.

“John here was never much of a farmer, butterfly,” Arthur murmured to you, leaning close enough that you felt the brush of his breath at your ear. “Plays tough, but as you can see, he’ll always need me to save his ass. Ain’t that right, Johnny?”

“From where I stand, that could very well be yourself you’re talkin’ about,” John shot back, his lips curving in a grin. His gaze flicked toward you, tipping his hat in greeting. “Miss.”

“Good evenin’, mister—”

“What would any decent lady be doin’ anywhere within ten feet of a bastard like Arthur goddamn Morgan?” Laughter burst from the house, a voice too loud, too cheerful to belong to the body that followed it out the door. It was none other than the old man from Arthur’s drawing—long, untamed white beard and hair to match, face weathered like sun-bleached wood. He looked like he ought to be carrying a banjo, just to match the picture in the journal. “Have some self-respect, sweetheart,” he chuckled, giving your shoulder a friendly, yet heavy, pat that stung even through your shirt.

“Jesus, you still alive, old man?” Arthur greeted him, already stepping toward the doorway as Abigail ushered everyone inside. “Was hopin’ to come back to better news.”

“Ain’t that a fine way to greet your elders?” the old man scoffed, shuffling after Abigail. “Don’t go actin’ all tough just to impress a lady. I pictured you rottin’ in some ditch down in Casa Madrugada by now.”

“Just pretend he ain’t here,” Arthur murmured to you as you crossed the threshold. “He’s so ancient he might as well be a ghost and we don’t know it.”

You let out a small huff of amusement at Arthur’s comment, then quickly pressed your lips together, worried the old man might take offense. But he didn’t seem bothered in the slightest. He wore a smile that looked permanently carved into his cheeks as he settled himself at the table, an empty bowl waiting in front of him.

Once inside, the comforting scent of simmering stew, fresh bread, and clean wood wrapped around you like a blanket. The floors were smooth, well-swept planks that glowed honey-gold in the firelight. A braided rug lay beneath the table, its faded reds and blues soft under your boots. Decorative plates hung neatly along one wall, catching the flicker of the hearth in the salon. There, a piano stood silent but ready, and a large portrait of the master and lady of the house stood proudly above the mantel.

Just beneath it, sat a small statue of a squirrel wearing a hat and carrying a tiny gun. It immediately reminded you of Mrs. Hobbs’ work back in Strawberry—she used to make odd, charming things just like it. There was a word for that, she’d told you once, you just didn’t remember. You wondered briefly if she was still around.

Everything in the room felt cared for. Not fancy, not rich—but warm, lived-in, and honest. It was the kind of place where mornings began with coffee on the stove and evenings ended with tired laughter around the table.

“He’s been old his entire life,” John explained, dropping into the chair across from the old man. “You remember him young, Arthur?”

Arthur shook his head, placing his hat on a nearby peg. “He refuses to tell his age. Reckon he’s forgotten it.”

“That’s ’cause nobody ever asks nicely,” the old man said, folding his hands over his belly as if waiting for a miracle. Or, more likely, the stew.

“How old are you, good sir?” you asked with a polite smile as you took the seat beside him.

“You can just call me Uncle, miss,” he said, leaning closer and whispering the answer like a state secret.

“Oh my, really? You don’t look a day over sixty!” you said, perfectly mirroring the mischievous smile he was giving you.

“I know, sweetheart. My second wife always used to describe me as ageless,” he murmured, looking immensely pleased with himself. “See? That was easy.” He glanced at the younger men around the table. “Like I said, kindness costs you nothin’.”

“Yeah, yeah—like I said,” Arthur muttered, rolling his eyes as he pulled out the chair next to you. “Where’s Jack?”

“Jack! Come out! Your Uncle Arthur is here!” Abigail called, setting a heavy iron pot onto a thick wool pad at the center of the table. Steam curled from beneath the lid, carrying the rich scent of beef, onions, and herbs that made your stomach tighten with a sudden hunger you hadn’t realized you’d been carrying.

“Where’d he abduct you from, sweetheart?” Uncle asked, already dipping a ladle into the pot. “Blink twice if you need help.”

You laughed, the sound slipping out before you could stop it, and Uncle joined in with a wheezy chuckle of his own. He poured a generous helping into his bowl, thick, velvet drops of gravy sliding back into the pot. The sight made your mouth water, reminding you just how ravenous a long day of picking flowers in Black Bone Forest could leave a body.

“I wasn’t abducted,” you said, amusement still dancing behind your words. “Quite the opposite. I’d have lost my home and my horse, perhaps more, if it weren’t for Arthur.”

“Aww, well look at you, Mister Morgan,” Uncle teased. “Finally doin’ somethin’ gentlemanly for a lady.”

“Reckon Hosea would be proud,” John added with a playful grin.

“Oh, you two be quiet,” Abigail scolded, placing clean bowls in front of you and Arthur. The pottery was simple but sturdy, still warm from the wash water. “Arthur’s always been a gentleman. You two were just too busy with a bottle of bourbon or a damn Cattleman to even notice.” She turned to you, her expression softening. “Ain’t he a good man, miss?”

You nodded, smiling at her before turning your gaze to Arthur. He looked faintly uncomfortable with the sudden praise, shifting slightly in his chair as if he weren’t quite sure where to put himself when the spotlight wasn’t a threat.

“Finest gentleman I’ve ever met,” you said softly, your hand finding his knee beneath the table. “The sweetest, too.”

“Yeah, a regular dandy and a charmer,” he muttered, self-deprecating as everyone at the dinner table knew him. But despite the gruff words, his hand slid warm over yours beneath the wood, his thumb brushing your knuckles while the fire crackled in the little salon and the stew steamed between you all.

“Then you ain’t been around much, sweetheart!” Uncle burst out, a wheezy laughter that rattled in his chest, the sound so natural on him it felt as if he’d been born chuckling at the world’s expense. Abigail only shook her head, disappointed but used to it, as she took the seat beside her husband.

“Uncle Arthur.”

The young boy who’d always let you pick out the biggest eggs on a the busy mornings you visited Beecher’s Hope, stepped out of a room behind you. The lamplight caught in his light hair as he paused next to Arthur. He stood at once to greet his nephew, his rough hands turning remarkably gentle as he pulled the boy into a quick hug—the quiet, careful affection a sharp contrast to Uncle’s rowdy teasing.

You lifted your palm in greeting when he noticed you, a shy smile curving his lips as if he were surprised to find an unexpected face around the dinner table.

“Hello again, miss,” the boy said. His eyes were soft and thoughtful—the kind that made a person feel welcome without a single extra word.

“My lady here tells me you are one generous salesman, Jack.” Arthur said as the boy took the seat across from him.

“Is that so?” Abigail asked, smiling fondly at her son while she reached for the bread loaf and began slicing it, the crust crackling satisfyingly under the knife.

“The lady is one of our best customers,” Jack explained quietly, focusing on his bowl as he dipped his ladle into the pot. “She always buys more than anybody else.”

It was true. You always stocked up on eggs whenever you rode back from Blackwater. Trips into town were rare, and you liked having plenty set aside for the long weeks of mountain solitude ahead.

“And Rufus likes her,” Jack added, glancing toward his mother. “Because she’s kind. Doesn’t shoo him off like most customers.”

“Well, guess she’s a dog whisperer, ‘cause Arthur here clearly likes her too,” Uncle chimed in, craning his neck like a nosy crow to see if his jab had elicited the reaction he wanted from Arthur. “All that starin’ and holdin’ her hand under the table like a goddamn schoolboy’s got you lookin’ like a bigger fool than usual.”

John huffed a laugh, almost spitting out his stew, and even Jack let out a quiet snicker. You noticed John stealing a quick, contemplative glance between you and Arthur, as if trying to piece together a story no one had spoken aloud yet.

“Just let him be,” Abigail said, her tone a blend of warmth and authority. She set a slice of bread beside your bowl, her smile gentle, and knowing. “He’s happy.”

Arthur didn’t answer.

But his hand returned to yours beneath the table, despite Uncle’s teasing. His thumb resumed its slow, quiet circles against your skin—telling you, without a single word, that Abigail was right.

Later, as laughter rolled easy around the table—as John recalled the time he and Arthur had nearly blown themselves to pieces by lighting a cigarette beside a wagon full of dynamite, as Jack eagerly explained to Arthur a new kind of arrow his Uncle Charles had shown him how to make in his most recent visit—you found yourself sitting back, quietly taking it all in.

It was nice.

Nights like this.

For so long, your evenings had been made of quiet routines and dinners for one, the only sounds the crackle of the hearth and the wind brushing the eaves of your cabin. You’d forgotten how warm a house could feel when it held more than one heartbeat. How a fire seemed to burn brighter when it lit several faces at once. How a meal could stretch well into the night simply because there was always another story to tell, another memory to laugh over.

Yes, it was really nice.

To hold his hand beneath the table, hidden from the lamplight and teasing eyes.

To fall sleep to the distant grunt of bison somewhere out on the Plains, curled warm next to him in a clean, moonlit room. It was the same room he always stayed in when he visited, Abigail told you the next morning while you and Jack helped her wash the dishes from last night. The warm water had turned your fingers pink, the smell of soap and stew lingering in the air while plates clinked softly in the basin.

Jack was a good kid—quiet, polite—but there was something pensive about his eyes, something deep and restless beneath the calm surface. His mother mentioned he had a head full of ideas, maybe too many for someone so young. When she teased him about being so well-spoken he might grow up to be a writer, he’d flushed red as a beet, ducking his head as though the compliment blinded his eyes like the bright morning sun.

Watching him then, you understood why Arthur spoke of the boy with such quiet pride. Why his parents did.

And in the days that followed, you began to understand even more.

Because your stay at Beecher’s Hope lasted longer than you’d first expected.

As it turned out, Arthur hadn’t brought you there just for the pleasure of the visit. He’d wanted you as far as possible from Tall Trees while he, John, and their friend Sadie—whom you’d learned was the fearless bounty hunter he’d told you about—rode out to purge the woods of the rot and filth of the Skinners. They were gone several days. Long enough for you to notice how Abigail’s jaw tightened whenever the wind carried hoofbeats from the distance, only to relax in disappointment when it turned out to be nothing.

She hadn’t been happy about the plan. That much was clear. But she never took it out on you.

Instead, she let you help her around the farm—shelling peas on the porch while Jack played with Rufus in the front yard, washing shirts together by the river in the blue light of early morning, stirring pots over the stove while the kettle hissed softly beside you. And as you worked, she told stories.

Stories of 1899 and the years before that could have very easily filled a dozen novels. She spoke of muddy camps and long rides against snowstorms; of laughter around fires and silly arguments that lasted well into the night; of a man of the clergy who drank more than he ever prayed; of how Sadie had lost everything to the O’Driscolls before finding the steel she yielded now. She spoke of Hosea—an honest conman with a rattling cough and the kindest eyes—who was responsible for teaching both Arthur and Jack how to read, and a whole lot about life in the process. She told you how she’d almost lost John twice, first to wolves and then to lawmen. Of how he was mostly a family man now, but still remained wild and untamed, for the moments his friends needed him to ride with them.

She spoke of loyalty, heartbreak, and the strange, tangled family they’d all once been. Of how both Arthur and John still carried the invisible wounds of being left to rot by a man they’d once considered a father.

And by the end of your stay, between Abigail’s honest recollections and Uncle’s… more imaginative ones—as Arthur later called them—you felt like you understood better. The cold steel. The gunpowder. The endless, winding roads that seemingly always led to danger.

And it was because of those years—because of Arthur and the people who’d shaped him—that you now got to live this quiet, gentle fairytale in a remote—but never lonely—cabin in the forest. You had been his butterfly for years now. Perching on the edges of his journal pages while he drew, fluttering around him with little stories of things you’d seen while foraging in the woods, sharing memories from your youth in Strawberry that surfaced without warning—though there weren’t many left he hadn’t heard by now.

You pinned the drawing he’d just given you to the board in the kitchen. It hung across from the table, positioned perfectly to catch your gaze whenever it drifted—when you drank your morning coffee, when you scrubbed the lunch dishes in the sink, when you sat knitting across from him in the fading afternoon light.

The board had grown crowded over the years. Paper edges overlapped, older memories hiding behind newer ones, some curling faintly with age, others still crisp. Each one held a small, quiet piece of the life you’d built together.

There you were, sitting in the middle of an endless sea of poppies, your dress swallowed by the swaying petals, and though the charcoal was monochrome, your mind insisted on seeing the vibrant, fire-bright orange that had burned across the field that day.

There, bent over a patch of violet snowdrops near the so-called Witch’s Hut, a place you’d visited almost every summer now and which, as it turned out, held no trace of magic other than the quiet peace of the mountain.

Next to it hung a sketch of you perched on a sun-warmed rock at the edge of Cattail Pond—a fishing trip born on a crisp autumn whim, the water drawn so clear it looked ready to ripple at the slightest touch.

Another caught your horses grazing beside the round house near Bacchus Station, their manes lifted by the late spring breeze, your reliable horse looking delicate and small next to the midnight mountain of his Raven Shire. You could still feel the warmth of the sun as it washed the mossy roof in a liquid gold that afternoon.

And then there was your favorite, a masterpiece of perspective he’d simply titled: Sunset at The Loft.

It showed the world breaking open beneath that high Ambarino ridge. You could see it all—the rolling Heartlands, O’Creagh’s Run reduced to a shimmering pond in the distance, the deep shadows of Cumberland Forest, and the sliver of Flat Iron Lake on the horizon.

It had taken him three full days, perched at the high balcony of the tower, studying the light until his fingers were more charcoal than skin. You remembered those days with a longing, sweet fondness: the rhythmic scratch of his charcoal blending with the cries of birds flying level with the lookout; the focused lines of his face glowing pink under the cherry-colored skies, the way your legs had ached for a week from climbing that dizzying ladder just to keep him company. And when the daylight finally died and he latched his journal shut for the night, that same endless world would shrink down to just the two of you, the crisp highland air, and the low murmur of your voices as you traded stories beneath the cold, bright diamonds of the Ambarino sky.

Quiet moments.

Little fragments of peace.

Sometimes you thought the cabin was growing too small to hold all the bliss that had grown inside it over the years, ever since that day you’d met him in your kitchen with his mangled leg and your peaches in his satchel.

“C’mere,” he called softly from the bed.

He was already lying beneath the covers, one arm crooked behind his head, the other lifting the blanket in a silent, familiar invitation. You crossed the room and slipped in beside him, the sheets already cool from the brief absence of your bodies. He pulled the blanket over and wrapped his arms around you the way he had every night since that starlit evening in Big Valley, all those laps around the sun ago.

Outside, the rain kept pouring—hard and steady against the roof. Inside, you were warm and safe, tucked against his chest, his heartbeat slow and steady beneath your ear.

“You think they’ll make it?” you whispered into the night, watching a flash of lightning leak through the thin curtains, illuminating the room for a heartbeat before fading back to ember-glow.

“Butterfly,” he murmured against the crown of your head, his breath stirring your hair, “in the years I’ve known John, bullets ain’t stopped him, snow ain’t stopped him, the law hasn’t stopped him…hell, not even a pack of wolves could.” His chest rumbled rhythmically under your cheek as he spoke. “What’s a little mid-summer shower gonna do but get his hat wet? If the man wants to fish, he’ll be here.”

You chuckled softly against the heat of his skin. John, Abigail, and Jack were meant to come fish in the Basin today. Some fisherman from the east near Rhodes had spun John a tall tale about a rare bass that supposedly inhabited these high-altitude waters—a "king of the mountain" that had eluded every hook.

But despite all the long, stubborn afternoons he and Arthur had spent trying to lure the beast out of the depths of the Basin, you’d never seen them pull up anything but good ’ol tiny Rock Bass. You and Abigail didn’t share their competitive disappointment, though. You were more than content with the "failure," enjoying countless afternoons picnicking along the shore, watching the water shimmer like shattered glass while Jack skipped stones and Arthur tried—with a persistence that bordered on cruelty—to convince John it was finally time to learn how to swim.

You loved every second of it. The laughter, the bickering, the simple peace of a family that had finally stopped running. You silently hoped the clouds would break by dawn, if only to see the look on John's face when he inevitably caught another finger-sized fish.

But for now, you’d rest. Cradled in the arm he tightened around you, his hand resting warm at your waist. For now, the world was just the size of your room. You let the song of the rain lull you back to sleep, drifting off in the absolute certainty that come morning—rain or no rain—the day would begin with the scent of strong coffee and the sweet, familiar brush of his lips.

—

It seems like we’ve made it to the end of this journey💜 When I started writing this fic last December, I never expected readers to connect with the story in all the ways you guys did. What an amazing time I’ve had with you in the comments every week! I hope the ending did the journey justice! Dying to know what you think about it! Also, you guys are amazing for putting up with my insane word counts, especially the last chapters which were absolutely deranged (what was even that?! lol) As always, thank you so much for your support.🦋💐

I’ll go ahead and link my Kofi here in case you’d like to support my work this way too☕️😊 ko-fi.com/missbubblesoda

Lastly, it goes without saying that I’ll be back with more stories soon! I’m currently working in two low-honor fics (for John and Arthur). If you’d like to be notified when I post the first chapters, don’t hesitate to reach out and let me know which one you’d like to be tagged in🌸 Until the next one!🫧💜

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[missbubblesoda]

I hope that 🦋 gets railed by Arthur in the next chap- OMG WHO SAID THAT!? WHO SAID THAT!?

HAHAHAHAHAHA😂😂😂 lmaooo not to spoil anything about tomorrow’s chapter, but bestie I would never, NEVER, dare to tag a fic “50% smut” and not give you at least one detailed, sensory enriched railing scene to justify it. Rest assured, the question now is how, where, who starts it and who will be on top when it happens🤡 just as much as the next person, I’m feral for dom arthur and the idea of his muscular, sweat-pearled body hovering over us but idk, I just feel like he would like to be ridden…

[missbubblesoda]

i don't know how you do it but you write Arthur so perfectly??? i could read your fics for a job

Ashfdhgafd omg this is a HUGE compliment💜 I am sooo happy to know you’re enjoying the story and that Arthur feels in character🥹 thank you soooo much for reading and supporting the fic. I’m very glad you feel you could do this for a job bc bestie tomorrow’s chapter is hitting 13.7 words as we speak. I apologize in advance for such insanity. I take full responsibility, don’t know how that happened. All I can do for now is give you a heads up so you get the comfy chair and the mug ready. I’m gonna steal a few minutes of your time tmr😈 literally can’t wait to hear what you think about the ending and fic as a whole.

[missbubblesoda]

Reader is so much stronger then me... i would have been so mad at him if he said this to me.. i dont know why lol id be mad out of frustration i suppose.

The Saint denis husband adds so so much friction and pent up energy tho, i feel like ive said this like 5 times already, but i really do like that plot point. I wonder how she will talk her way out of this one, becouse i am starting to feel like Arthur might actually be believing the husband story, if only slightly.. and if so, that means he is serious about Reader and might wanna commit to her... i dont think he is the type of guy to hit and run and leave a family broken... he cares too much to do that... i know that she expressed the concern that he might want to leave a few times already.. but i just dont see it. Ofc i know Arthur differently from her.. in my mind he is a man chasing stability, the gang was his family and his stability. Even tho it might look like he cant be tied down, but by god, Dutch and Hosea had him tied down real good. And i feel like he wished for stability more then Dutch ever could.

The chemistry between the two is so well done! I can really feel it! I really felt it with John in the other story, and i had my doubts about this one, since i feel like John and Arthur are very different personalities but by god, you pulled it off! You really managed to write the two of them so distinctly! I feel like John would have been faster in his persuit, and probably more cynical about the whole husband thing. Hed probably call reader out on inconsistencies.. where Arthur just watches and absorbs, plays along... these are 100% my favorite portraits of the two of them!

In other news...

DUDE STOP TALKING ABOUT MY HUSBAND GAAHHH

ASDGFHGFDG omg I know writing these take precious time out of your day, but please never stop sending them kkkkk I just LOVE reading your post-chapter thoughts and opinions🙈 they give me life. It’s the next best thing to being a fly on the wall as you’re reading them! Kkkk

The husband plotline! I know! I feel she should just scream “fine you win I’m single just rail me” next time he brings the hubby up. But at this point, they prolly just like playing the game. As a reader so accurately described “they’re just roleplaying having an affair” lmao which I think is hilarious kkk their kink i guess🤡 And you’re absolutely right, Arthur would never break a family. High-honor at least. (Low-honor though…you just gave me an idea for a future fic🤡) but I’m not sure he buys her little lie tbh. Girl didn’t even try, where are the men boots around the house, his shirts, his thingies? Arthur probably knew a woman lived there as soon as he walked in and sized the place up, her age and interests and all that. He’s probably just felt like playing along, and like you said omg John would’ve totally called her out on her bs😂 i also tend to imagine 1899 John a little less in touch with his feelings than epilogue John or Arthur? Like, he’d probably just take a long time to realize the MC is down bad for him. He’d probably think he’s falling in love alone, which would be so cute😭

And about the ending and Arthur leaving or staying, omg it’s hard to give my opinion without spoiling anything about tomorrow’s chapter. But I agree with everything you said. Despite his drifting nature, the gang was a constant in his life for over 20 years, the only reason he drifted was because the gang did. It’s an interesting way to look at it, like he wasn’t against the idea of settling down with the gang say pre-canon when Dutch was about to buy land for them to settle down but then decided against it or smth like that. Or the Tahiti idea. It looks as if he just wants to be where the people he cares about are. Plus when him and 🦋 talk in Strawberry, he does mention he’s just looking for a little quiet. With that said though, Arthur, as we know, is a very selfless man. And I can see him leaving too. Perhaps not because he can’t be tied down like the MC thinks, but because he also told her in that same conversation that noise seemed to follow him wherever he went, and I know he wouldn’t want that noise finding her too.

Finally, I just want to add I’m soooo glad the chemistry between them work💜 I was scared too! Since John and Arthur are very different, and the fics are very different too in setting and conflict. I’m glad to know you enjoyed both stories💜

HAHAHAHAHA He’s obsessed with the cookie man I fear😭 I’m so sorry but there are a few honorable mentions weaved in chapter 5 too. You’re gonna be so mad when he brings him up again and I apologize in advance.

[missbubblesoda]

I need you to tag me in EVERYTHING you write, and i mean EVERYTHING

I love u

Ashgdagdfsgadf OH MY GOD😭 a permanent taglist? this is the BIGGEST compliment ever! 🥹💜 Thank you sooo much for reading and supporting my writing! It truly makes my day to know you enjoy the stories just as much as I do writing them🫧 I will of course tag you in every new fic I share from now on hehe😈 just message me if you wish to unsubscribe kkkkk just kidding🙈 Love you back!💜